How many times does this question come up when training facilitators or delivering equine facilitated interactions? And how many different ways are there to answer it? Our understanding of horses has thankfully moved on from the view of them as mindless automaton, the Skinner’s boxes of traditional behaviouralist approaches. Similarly, […]
Emotional intelligence
24 posts
This week I was lucky enough to spend an incredibly inspiring day at a conference on "Neurodiversity in the Workplace" with the Athena® team. I was struck by the Chair's (Dan Harris) prescient parting words, they were a powerful reflection on the future of the workplace, they paraphrase as best […]
I first read of Plato’s “the allegory of the cave” in The Republic, when I was in my 20’s. To be frank it was a stretch to comprehend. Now increasingly close to 60 it is beginning to make a little more sense to me. Without trying to recreate the detail […]
So how do horses make us human? There is a question. Someone once asked me what my thinking was on there being empathy in the relationship between horses and humans. Empathy is generally described as the ability to put ourselves in the shoes of others. To understand their experience. "To feel […]
The literacy of feedback involves an understanding of the conscious and unconscious language within exchange. My work, whether in board rooms or stables, consistently returns to one topic, developing a meaningful level of self awareness! Even if it is not the core agenda, it so often rears its head. Author […]
As facilitators and coaches (and similarly for those in therapeutic practice) we are often charged with, or engaging in, working with the idea of supporting change or developing in individuals. Yet so often we encounter a degree of resistance, even if our clients wish for it. Kagan and Lahey, in […]
A lesser-known element of my career these days is delivering Stress Awareness and Resilience training across the construction industry. Not always the easiest industry to share these types of messages with, but a place where these skills are of incredible importance and very much needed. I have a simple model […]
Maslow started with the basics – first the physiological foundation, the primitive needs of keeping ourselves fed, watered and sheltered. Without safety our ability to function is compromised, our performance is stilted by low-level stress-reactions that arise from insecurity. Our cognition often fogged. Our creativity dulled. Our brains are very […]
Outside-in or Inside-out is a reflection on how we see ourselves and our minds, and our relationship with what goes on there within. As someone for whom mindfulness serves as a consistent foundation I often express the idea that we are not our thoughts, any more than we are our […]
I have recently been revisiting the places of my childhood. These are the places in the English countryside populated by woodland and streams, with soundtracks of burbling waters, breeze in the leaves, and the natural harmonies of birdsong. In the elapsed years the superficial has shifted, more things are shut […]