Youth

Horse Spirit Connections offers personal development sessions for youth that promote growth through FEEL (Facilitated Equine Experiential Learning)®. Engaging with horses allows young people to experience a pure, authentic relationship where they feel safe exploring ‘relationship’ with a horse who offers unconditional support and love without judgment. This starts the process of trusting self and others.

Horses are valuable teachers as they connect us to the natural world, to compassion, to love, and to honesty.  Because they are prey animals in the wild, their survival depends on being highly attuned to the energy of their surroundings.  This natural instinct makes the horse a powerful, direct, non-verbal and non-judgmental guide – one the youth respect.

Our country setting removes urban distractions and simplifies options for young adults to gain new insights and new ways of interacting with themselves and others.

Interacting with a big intimidating animal provides a means for them to confront fear and gain more courage and confidence.  More importantly, it removes young adults from their ‘comfort zone’ and requires honest communication in their interaction with the horses.

As horses are responsive to human emotions and actions, they will immediately sense and respond to someone’s emotions and behaviours.  Horses are honest and never lie.  For example, a frustrated adolescent can cause the horse they are interacting with to become equally frustrated.  The horse will act out the frustration they are sensing. If the adolescent acknowledges the feeling the horse will change its behaviour.  Our young people learn the importance of being ‘real’.

With FEEL young people will:

• Increase self-confidence
• Uncover personal issues
• Practice setting boundaries
• Trust intuitive knowing
• Learn emotions are information
• Improve communication skills
• Deepen trust and respect for self & others
• Develop leadership qualities

Learning to embody horse sense helps young adults face their personal life with confidence and improved decision-making abilities. With this new knowledge, they can begin to see themselves and the world in new ways helping them self-regulate and develop rapport.

• Horses are animals that make me feel grounded and safe.
• I felt ‘real’.
• I am powerful – I just need to allow myself to be and not get caught in others’ expectations of me – to just be.
• I learned how important it is to communicate and make connections with people.
• I need to speak my mind. I’m so unsure of myself so I never speak up. But turns out, when I share, people can relate and want to listen.
• Thanks to the horse’s help I learned that often I do what I think others would approve of or see as proper instead of what I really want to do.