I had the pleasure to join Jenn Laforet on her podcast, Bloom Notes in Bloom: Celebrating Moments of Joy, Laughter, Strength, Resilience, Care & Compassion. In our conversation, we discussed how nature can be incredibly helpful for releasing that judgement and softening your gaze on imperfections. There are many times in our lives when we can feel that there are failures and a demand to be perfect. When we're out in nature with the trees, flowers, and birds, they're not looking at us and judging our appearance, our success at our jobs, or our ability to stay in a marriage. They're just seeing if we treat our mutual environment with respect and assessing for their safety. In our chat, I offer the metaphor of goal setting with dandelions and how growth requires change. Listen to our conversation above or on any podcast platform.
Compassionate Meditation
Be Brave Enough to Let the Wild In
In struggling with anxiety, we are often clinging to a fervent desire to impossibly maintain control. It may be the yearn for control within our futures, for the safety of our loved ones and related to judgements of others. Like striving to control the falling of rain, this drive to hold tight to that beyond our locus of influence is futile. No amount of thought will ever predict the future as it’s rich with interdependent complexities too diverse to fathom. We can no sooner anticipate the flight path of a broad-winged hawk dancing on thermals than our own journey through tomorrow. In the wild, we realize control is an illusion and the forceful struggle to resist inevitable change painfully limits our potential. It is when we release control and allow for wildness that we find ourselves.
Animal-Inspired Journal Templates
As we’ve highlighted here before, journaling is an evidence-based approach proven to benefit both your physical and emotional health. Research offers that journaling is linked to a host of benefits, including: improved mood and sense of well-being, reduced symptoms of depression, reduced intrusive and avoidance symptoms following trauma exposure, and improved working memory (Baikie & Wilhelm, 2005). Since it can be challenging to get started with a journaling practice as the blank paper stares dauntingly back at you, we’ve created additional prompts to support you in growing with your journaling.
Scroll through for six more animal-inspired journal templates to help guide you in a reflective writing practice! (Click to download printable PDF templates.)
Loving-Kindness Meditation
Often, we find it easy to share compassion with those we love, whether horses or humans. We tend to speak to them with gentleness, readily sharing our kindness and accepting their imperfections. While, we may reserve the cruelest thoughts and feelings for our own mind and body. Thankfully, through practice, we may develop self-compassion that supports us in learning to give ourselves the same care we’d share with a good friend, two-legged or four-legged.
We invite you to pause for a guided meditation to offer your affirmations of loving-kindness to a special horse, person and finally, yourself. You are worthy of life, love, and light, just as the horse.
A Guided Imagery Practice: A Moment on the Farm
It’s wild out there right now. It’s a time of uncertainties and countless, unprecedented changes that makes it tough for any of us to adapt and stay calm. We are all worried. Worried about ourselves, our friends, families, and communities, and our futures—amongst a multitude other concerns.
In moments like these, it’s essential for us each to take time to build resiliency for the many stressors of modernity that are simply out of our control. Try our brief, guided-equine imagery to get a mindfulness moment today.
8 Tips for Healing From the Loss of a Pet
There is no right way to grieve the loss of your animal, and many find it helpful to seek additional resources to support your coping with the loss.
Our animals hold incredible meaning in our lives and there are many ways to honor their memory, and certainly a wave of emotional reactions are expected during the bereavement process.
Healing Traumatic Wounds on the Farm
From then on, the damage of trauma continually triggers the brain and body into continual activation or deactivation--“fight or flight”--whenever encountering any other stressful events. Therapeutic support may help repair the damage of trauma exposure you may be experiencing.
Receiving this therapeutic support on the farm may especially help you heal from these traumatic wounds by targeting a few key areas.
Four Myths About Horses
Myths relating to horses are prevalent in articles, books and movies featuring equine-assisted therapies. It’s important to understand that horses are not magical mirrors to solve all of our problems with a miracle flick of their ears and blink of their swirling eyes.
Here are a few popular myths we want to dispel right here, right now.
Equine-Assisted Camp
As we all eagerly anticipate the arrival of summer, it’s got me thinking about camp! One of my favorite camps to facilitate is a week-long, equine-assisted camp to empower young women within the inclusive, farm environment. The group includes six girls from the ages of 7-17 with a range of emotional/cognitive/physical challenges. Working with horses optimizes opportunities for growth in confidence, social and communication skills development, and team building within this population of emerging young women.
Here are some highlights of the activities campers engage in together throughout the week on the inclusive farm!
Mantras
We all experience tough moments where we need to buck ourselves up with a pep talk to power through. So when it gets gritty and you need to find the fortitude to persevere, a mantra is a perfect go-to! Even Thomas the Tank Engine had one with his classic “I think I can, I think I can.”
Horses are wonderful muses to inspire your own supportive mantra boost! Check out a few of our favorite equestrian-inspired mantras to try when you need to feel strong and empowered!
Equine-Inspired Journal Templates
Journaling is an evidence-based approach proven to benefit both your physical and emotional health. When you write down your emotional experiences, you activate the right ventrolateral prefrontal cortex in the brain that helps to relax neural activity linked to strong emotional feelings. Not to mention, studies also offer that journaling is associated with improved outcomes for fighting diseases like asthma, rheumatoid arthritis, HIV/AIDS and cancer. Overall, putting pen to paper to reflect on the day in your own words helps both physical and emotional wounds heal faster.
Here are seven equine-inspired journal templates to get you started on a reflective writing practice!
Three Equine Approaches to Optimize Mindfulness
A session on the farm today transformed into an impromptu mindfulness session when we discovered the herd laying for an afternoon interlude in their paddocks. Not wanting to disturb their naps, we met our horse where he was today--utterly relaxed with his hooves tucked under him, eyes gently closed and trusting of his environment. We sat together in a circle with the snoozing horse and guided the client through a meditation, grounded in the natural, bucolic environment.
Here are three equine techniques (no pony required!) to try as you delve into your next mindfulness practice, whether it’s taking a few minutes to focus on your breath or using a guided meditation on an app (Insight Timer, Calm, or Headspace).
Newly Designated as Certified Equine Interaction Professional: Education
We are pleased to share that Elevation Equitation executive director, Erin Teigen, is now recognized as a Certified Equine Interaction Professional: Education (CEIP-E) through the Certification Board for Equine Interaction Professionals (CBEIP)! The CEIP-E credential indicates verification of extensive professional experience and independent assessment of knowledge in the field of equine interaction services. The certification is currently the highest level of competency assessment offered for equine interaction professionals in the U.S. and Canada.
The Benefits of Therapeutic Horseback Riding
When you partner with a 1,000-pound horse, you gain incredible confidence to feel empowered in facing the challenges of your own life. Therapeutic horseback riding promotes horses as stewards to help broad populations of individuals with emotional, physical and/or cognitive challenges progress in their individualized equestrian goals and learn riding skills. Gaining independence with horses holistically translates into continued achievements in riders’ everyday lives. Working with horses may optimally encourage significant developments in confidence, strength and resiliency through mind-body integration.
Coming Soon!
Check back soon for updates to the Elevation Explores blog!