Horses as Teachers: A Transformative Experience for Well-being Practitioners
Discover how you can tap into equine-facilitated learning to increase self-awareness, unlock blindspots, build confidence and breakthrough unconscious patterns in your clients.
Insight alone can only take clients so far.
At Kenshō Stables, we invite well-being practitioners to experience a powerful, body-based modality that supports emotional intelligence, nervous system regulation, and embodied presence: Equine-Facilitated Learning (EFL).
In this immersive half-day experience, horses act as highly attuned partners—responding to human energy, emotional states, and relational patterns in the moment. Their feedback is immediate and non-judgmental, helping participants move beyond awareness into felt integration—where clarity, steadiness, and self-trust are experienced, not just understood.
Led by Gretchen Fox Palmer, an executive coach and masterful facilitator with 15+ years in emotional intelligence and leadership development. Each session unfolds at our well-being centered 25-acre horse ranch just outside Austin — a natural environment for meaningful transformation.
What You’ll Experience
A guided equine-facilitated learning session with Gretchen and the horses
Firsthand understanding of how horses reveal patterns in presence, boundaries, communication, and energy
Time for personal reflection and observation of the modality in action
Integration conversation and connection with like-minded professionals
Who It’s For
Established well-being practitioners with active clients
Professionals who host VIP days, retreats, or group experiences
Practitioners seeking to add somatic or experiential elements to their work
Leaders ready to offer new experiences to their clients and offerings
Why Experiential Learning Matters:
Lasting change isn’t learned cognitively — it’s experienced somatically.
Transformation happens when old patterns, stories, and protective strategies are interrupted at the level of the body. In purely talk-based approaches, that shift can be slow and elusive. With Equine-Facilitated Learning, the body is brought into the process immediately.
Standing alongside a 1,100-pound prey animal naturally brings us into heightened presence. Horses are exquisitely sensitive to their environment, and in their company our nervous system organizes itself in real time. Attention sharpens. Sensation increases. We move out of rumination and into direct experience.
This state of embodied awareness is where meaningful change occurs. Insight is no longer abstract—it becomes felt, integrated, and actionable. Clients don’t just understand something new; they experience themselves responding differently in the moment.
In this work, shifts happen not through force or effort, but through attunement, clarity, and choice. When the body recognizes a new, more regulated way of being, change can occur quickly—and tend to last—because it has been lived, not explained.
Why Horses?
Horses are exceptionally attuned partners in human development.
As prey animals, their survival depends on accurately reading their environment—moment by moment. Over thousands of years, they have evolved a refined ability to sense intention, emotional state, and subtle shifts in energy. They respond not to words or explanations, but to what is happening internally and relationally in the present moment.
In equine-facilitated work, these responses gently reveal patterns that often remain unconscious in everyday life. Without judgment or agenda, horses offer immediate, honest feedback—reflecting how a person is organizing themselves emotionally, somatically, and relationally.
This creates a powerful experiential learning environment that supports:
Self-awareness — noticing how internal states are expressed through posture, breath, attention, and behavior
Emotional regulation — practicing steadiness, focus, and coherence under mild stress or uncertainty
Authentic presence — cultivating grounded confidence and congruence rather than performance
Pattern awareness and change — recognizing habitual responses and experimenting with new ways of being in real time
With horses, insight is not abstract. It is felt, embodied, and integrated through lived experience. Change occurs in the body first—where it can be sensed, practiced, and remembered long after the session ends.
Masterful Transformation Facilitator
A Lifelong Catalyst for Change.
Recruited by Fortune 10 giants and Silicon Valley startups alike, Gretchen Fox Palmer has spent her career driving transformation and redefining norms to set new standards. As a leader in high-stakes, high-profile communications for publicly traded companies, she is a master at EQ skills for navigating crisis, driving change management, and cultivating healthy, high-performance cultures and communities. With two decades of experience, Gretchen has proven herself to be the strategist leaders trust when the stakes are at their highest.
Proven Results
Gretchen Fox Palmer’s EQ programs deliver measurable impact:
87.5% of participants cite emotional intelligence skills taught as critical to company cultural shifts (EQ @Work)
85% report improvements in personal well-being
94% gain confidence in managing tough conversations
76% report improvement in morale in “I believe my company cares about me” survey question category
Casual, Coach-Friendly Environment
Participants are able to learn individually while connecting with colleagues and peers in a casual, tranquil, nature-based setting.
Debrief areas for private post-workshop group or 1:1 coaching for you and your clients.
Enjoy the grounds, offering a bonus ‘nature immersion’ experience
Revenue-sharing and mark-up opportunities for future sessions available.
Powerful, profound breakthroughs in one day.
Date: Week Day & Weekend Options
Each session includes:
Introduction to EFL
Three Transformational Workshop experiences
Debrief and discussion on integrating EFL into your work
Time to enjoy the grounds
Investment — Green Bottle Method
The full value of this EFL experience is $675.
Using the Green Bottle Method, practitioners are invited to choose their level of investment based on capacity—while honoring the value of the work and the horses.
🟢 Full Bottle — $500
Recommended
This is the practitioners full-bottle price and reflects a strong alignment with the depth of the experience and the true cost of delivering this work.
Most practitioners will choose this level.
🟡 Mid Bottle — $425
For practitioners who feel called to continue the journey but need a bit more flexibility right now.
This option allows you to stay in integrity with your “yes” while still participating fully in the experience.
⚪ Light Bottle — $375
For practitioners who genuinely want to deepen their relationship with equine-facilitated learning but are navigating tighter financial constraints.
Choosing this level is an act of honesty—not diminishment—and is offered with trust.
FAQ’s
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The purpose of equine facilitated learning (EFL) is to expand our personal awareness through a series of equine guided experiences.
These experiences allow us to enhance our abilities to notice and learn from our emotions and feelings as well as those of other sentient beings (animals and humans).
The EFL exercises are designed as building blocks to open new neural pathways in our mind and our body by stretching our ability to feel the presence and intention of others through using our entire bodies as a sensory device.
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Yes! Equine facilitated learning exercises are done on the ground guided by a trained coach and horse professional. Horses are always in controlled environments (behind a fence or in a halter with a lead rope). These are non-riding experiences.
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All horses will be under control in a fenced paddock or on a lead rope in every horse experience. In addition, you may refrain from being around a horse as much as you choose. We encourage everyone to explore fears like fear of horses, safely with professional guidance.
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Absolutely not, you may choose to do whichever sessions you want; however, sessions build upon each other and so it is advantageous to complete them all.
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Our workshops are intimate experience with group size capped at a maximum of 5 participants.
Still not sure if our workshops are right for you?
We want to ensure a positive and vibrant group experience for each participant at each event. You can schedule a 1:1 call with Master Facilitator Gretchen Fox Palmer to see if this event is a good fit for you.
