Authentic You
Women's Workshop
​Looking to feel empowered in your life? Do you struggle with finding inner balance? Ready to start a journey of self discovery?
Workshop Schedule
Morning Schedule:
9:50am - Doors Open (We start no later than 10:15am)
10:00am - Introductions & Orientation
10:30am - "The Journey"
Equine Assisted Learning Arena Exercise #1​​
11:40am - Balance & Energy Mini Workshop Part I
Afternoon Schedule:
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12:00pm - COUNTRY LUNCH!
12:45pm - Balance & Energy Mini Workshop Part II
1:15pm - Communication Assessment
1:30pm - "Balance & Boundaries"
Equine Assisted Learning Arena Exercise #2
2:40pm - "Beat The Crystal Ball" Setting Up For Your Future
3:00pm - Workshop Graduation!
LEARN MORE ABOUT OUR WOMEN'S WORKSHOP
When was the last time you took some time for yourself? Have you ever been interested in trying a self-help program to try and find your authentic self or have, perhaps, already tried some? Have they really worked?
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What makes our Authentic You empowerment workshop different from the rest of the self-help empowerment workshops out there, is that the results LAST. Sustainable change within yourself comes from the self discovery of problem solving and coming up with the answers yourself. Learn by doing - experiential learning is the best and easiest way to learn!
What to Expect
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Gully's Learning Ranch is proud to offer a program that will lead you down the path to self discovery. Authentic You Women's Workshops are designed to help you find your inner balance - helping you feel empowered to tackle all of life's ups and downs. By building on skills we may think we have mastered, working with horses allows us to see, within ourselves, what we truly need to work on. Your teachers are completely honest, upfront, authentic, and extremely forgiving. The workshop is designed to focus on skills such as communication, negotiation, trust, building healthy relationships, self-confidence, empowerment, and more. NO riding and NO horse experience necessary. Restroom facilities and refreshments available throughout the day. Our 1-Day Women's Workshop is ~5-hours of self-discovery, including two (2) objectively-driven arena sessions and a country lunch.
Read parallels to their everyday life that participants have experienced while working with horses, that have helped them move forward with their lives
Who Are They For? ​
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Women's Workshops are designed to encompass all women in a fun and interactive atmosphere. However, our program will be especially beneficial to:
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Women who suffer from anxiety, depression, self-harm, self-doubt, loneliness, and/or general sadness.
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Women who are experiencing emotional pain, grief, or the struggle of a dependent loved one.
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Women who feel unbalanced in their life and seek inner balance and peace.
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Women who suffer from low self confidence in their professional life and/or personal life.
Come as an individual, group, with or without family members - even if you have a fear of horses or are allergic to them. Female youth are welcome to join, as long as they are ages 12 and up.
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How Will This Workshop Help?
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The horses are your "life coaches" in this unique empowerment workshop. Horses respond to the stimuli around them. As prey and flight animals, they are constantly aware of their surroundings and are quick to react. Horses need to be aware of their surroundings at all times to maintain herd safety. By silently communicating and reading each other's stimuli (and the stimuli around them), they are able to flee from danger in the blink of an eye. When we work with horses, they also sense the stimuli inside us (our energy we bring to their environment), just like they would with one of their herd mates - they let us know when we do not have a balance between inner stimulus and exterior facade. These naturally astute senses create a unique learning opportunity that provides a safe, non-judgemental, and empowering environment, all while having fun and interacting with these amazing animals.
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How Do Horses Read Our Energy?
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Science has proven that everything is made up of energy. There is energy within us and all around us. Energy needs to be grounded - just like in our electrical circuits that we use every day. Grounding is an extremely important aspect to completing the energy cycle. In order to stay connected to their environment, horses have this grounded and connected energy. Horses have the ability to naturally ground themselves, and those around them. Horses are unique teachers that teach you in a way another human cannot. The horse will respond to the real you - not the facade you put up to protect yourself or others. They respond to what we are feeling inside ourselves. Horses have the ability to read and feel our energy - they know the true, authentic YOU. As prey animals, a horses' number one priority is to feel safe. For survival alone, they are able to distinguish between a calm, relaxed energy and a nervous energy. When you are approaching or working with a horse, they are able to sense your intention and your vulnerabilities - they can tell if you are open, honest, and working without confusion or shut down, anxious, and lost. With their natural grounding abilities, horses have the ability to ground our own energies and release "stuck" energy (or barriers) that prevent personal development, empowerment, and growth.
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Your Path to Self Discovery
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Our Women's Workshops are designed to allow you to naturally develop deeper trust and increased self confidence - along with many other healthy life skills. The horses will teach you the impact of grounding your energy and feeling connected to the environment around you. Horses do not judge - they just are. Whether you are a fast learner or a slow one does not matter to our teachers. Our Women's Workshop are not designed to be a quick fix - those never last anyways! Our workshops are a process - a process in which you are the leader to your own learning. A process that will ultimately lead to find the path of your own happiness, during any stage or time of your life, no matter what burden you may carry. Our workshop will guide you to find a balance in your life - the balance between your inner self and your outer world.
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Aren't you worth discovering your path? Life is way too short to not be your authentic YOU - take action!
What Does the Workshop Include? ​
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1. Our small class sizes means you get optimal learning from your teachers.
2. Your own personal Success Guide and Direction Book.
3. Objectively-driven arena sessions with horses to guide you to find your authentic self.
4. An individual communication assessment to better understand your own communication style and the communication styles of the people in your life.
5. Country lunch and refreshments (drinks and snacks) throughout the workshop.
6. Unique bookmarks with a picture of your horse teacher and their own stories.
7. Setting Up For Your Future activity that will allow you to think clearly about how you handle the ups and downs of life.
8. A life-changing workshop!
Take a Deeper Look into an Authentic You!
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Throughout the course of the workshop, we work through different modules - some modules are done as classroom work, while others are done engaging and working with our amazing horse teachers. Take a deeper look into what our workshop truly has to offer!
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The Goodies & Workshop Tools:​
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Included in your workshop is a folder that includes gifts to remember your learning during the workshop, as well as tools to help you continue down your path to self-discovery of your true, authentic self by applying what you have learned from your horse teacher to your everyday life. Our unique, custom Authentic You folders include:
1. Sketch For Success Guide Book: This beautiful Guide Book, custom-made for our Authentic You workshops, allows you to directly apply what you have learned with your horse teachers in the arena to your work life, home life, and into your future. By learning more about ourselves during the workshop, we can better understand what WE need to focus our energy on in order to find positive change within our lives.
2. Worksheets & Activities: Included are two worksheets/activities that are completed throughout the day. These can be taken home and gone through again in order to solidify your learning.
3. Postcards & Bookmarks: Chakra Postcard included to help us stay balanced in our lives. Also included are bookmarks for each horse teacher that we work with during the workshop.
4. Certificate: At the end of the workshop, there is a certificate to complete. This is to help us remember what we have learned and how we can apply our learning to our everyday lives.
5. Other Goodies: A Gully's Learning Ranch pen, refreshments, and a country lunch is also included!
"The Journey" - Objective: Building A Relationship Within
Equine Assisted Learning Arena Exercise #1
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Our first Equine Assisted Learning arena exercise is working as a team, with the horse as our teacher, to complete an obstacle course with the objective of building healthy relationships. The desired outcome of this exercise is:
1. Building a Relationship Within: How important is building a relationship with ourselves? Let your horse help you find answer to your life's questions. By building a relationship with ourselves, we can connect and create relationships with other in an authentic way.
2. Building a Relationship with Our Horse Teacher: Learning how a horse communicates with us through body language, and also how to work safely with our horse teacher, are important in getting the most beneficial experience possible.
3. Building a Relationship with Each Other: You will meet new people while working with your horse teacher. We work as a team, meaning we need to learn more about each other in order to work effectively to creatively solve the problems of the obstacle course.
4. Starting The Journey: Paralleling our lessons learned from our horse teachers to our everyday lives, allows us to self-reflect on how we can find personal development through positive change. How can we apply the lessons learned in "The Journey" to our journey into the future as our authentic selves, while building healthy relationships?
"Balance & Boundaries" - Objective: Communication
Equine Assisted Learning Arena Exercise #2
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Our second Equine Assisted Learning arena exercise is working as a team, with the horse as our teacher, to complete an obstacle course with the objective of effective communication. The desired outcome of this exercise is:
1. Effective Communication with Others: Learning what YOU need while communicating with others. For communication to exist comfortably, we all need clear boundaries. How important is personal space while communicating? How can you adapt to working with other communication styles? With a focus on how important reading body language, active listening, and clear articulation can help to clearly communicate and understand those around us.
2. Effective Communication with Ourselves: What are things we say to ourselves? Do we realize how powerful our own words are to ourselves? Do we listen to ourselves? Realizing how important positive self-talk is helps us to understand how damaging negative self-doubt is. Self-love is the first step towards finding your authentic self.
3. Finding Balance: When our head is thinking one way, but our heart or gut are feeling another, we find ourselves unbalanced within our lives. Trying to please others at the detriment to your own physical, mental, and emotional wellbeing, creates unbalance between our inner and outer worlds. You cannot pour from an empty cup. It is important to make sure that you are spending time on your own wellbeing. If we do not make time for ourselves, it leaves you without time to keep yourself balanced. Being balanced within ourselves really does bring us to our authentic selves and knowing who we are.
Workshop Module # 1:
Personal Communication Assessment
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Learning what we need to know about ourselves to communicate with ourselves and effectively communicate with others around us. During this module, you will:
1. Learning the Benefits: Learn and understand the benefits of learning your communication style and better understanding other's communication style.
2. Learning the Styles: Learn about the 4 communication styles, what they need to communicate with them effectively, and what growing points each communication style has to develop and overcome.
3. Being a Leader: Learning about different communication styles will help you to adapt to being a strong leader. With different communication styles, we can have conflict within a team. Being a strong leader means you are able to adapt to different communication styles in order to effectively communicate with the team.
4. Teamwork: We may not like everyone on our team, but by understanding our teammates communication style, we can better understand what they need for effective communication and understnad where they are coming from with their communication style. ​
Workshop Module #2:
"Beat the Crystal Ball" - Setting Up For Your Future
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This is an activity designed to help us with preparing for different things in our lives that could happen in the future. This helps us to understand how we can handle certain situations, while staying positive and true to ourselves. By understanding how we can handle these situations, we can feel more confident in making the step forward into the future as our authentic selves. This "card game" generates a future scenario in which we can see negatives, but are encouraged to change those negatives into positives. 5 category of cards generate the scenario. The card categories are:
1. Who: The "Who" card will tell us who the scenario is happening to. These cards include: "You", "Friends", "Family", etc.
2. How: How is your life changing from this scenario? These cards include: "Transformation", "Upward Spiral, "Downward Spiral", etc.
3. What: What aspect of your life does the scenario involve? These cards include: "Money", "Career", "Relationship", etc.
4. When: When will the scenario take place? These cards include: "1 Year", "1 Week", "6 Months" from now, etc.
5. Emotional Response: What is the strongest emotion during this scenario? These cards include: "Anxiety", "Calm", "Angry", etc.
Workshop Module #3:
Balance & Energy Mini Workshop
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Horses are incredibly balanced and grounded animals who, in turn, keep others balanced and grounded around them. This balance is in an emotional, physical, mental, and energetic sense. Within this "mini" workshop module, you will learn:
1. What is Energy? Learn about the Laws of Science that both humans and horses follow. How is energy transformed, manipulated, and balanced in our everyday lives.
2. Detecting Energy: Learn about how energy is just as detectable, measurable, and scientific as our bones, muscles, and organs.
3. Main Energy Centres: As bodies of energy, where does this energy build and how can we move and clear blocked energy in order to find personal development through positive change?
4. Horses as Energy Workers: Learn how horses help others find balance within their environment by utilizing their enhanced senses and intuition.
5. Empowered Interactions: Horses create and sustain physical, emotional, and energetic balance within their environment, social structure, and within themselves. Experience firsthand, how a horse can help us release, ground, and transform our energy to find positive change.
“My rational mind kept telling me that I had nothing to be sad about, but my emotional self pushed me to keep it a secret that I felt depressed all the time. There is no way to explain the burden I walked through life carrying. I had tried many programs and read many books, and even if I felt a temporary lift, inevitably I glided back to my unhappy self.
A friend suggested I take in one of the Women’s Authentic You workshops ... Over all my protests that I didn't even like horses and I was beyond the point where even a human could help, let alone an animal, I went because they pushed me so hard to show up.
"The Authentic You women's workshop was an amazing experience... Although I love horses, i don't have much experience with them. Despite being a bit skeptical about what a horse could really teach me, I was awed at how much I learned through them. It was truly magical.
Had I know the difference it would have made in my life, I would have gone years ago! It’s so hard to explain but so real to experience. At the end I looked into the eyes of my horse and I felt he truly exposed who I was and it was all right! I didn't have to be somebody else or apologize.
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That was a year ago, and I am writing this letter to remind others that there is a way out of your burden. It was an amazing experience and it stays with me to this day!
– Elizabeth S.
Approximately nine months later, I am still finding that I am learning things from this experience as I reflect back. I made some amazing connections with other women as we supported each other throughout the [workshop].
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I would highly recommend this fun, informative, uplifting, and inspiring course for any woman who is struggling to find herself. The course and the women who teach it are one of a kind."
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- Paige
Where Do I Stay?​
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We are able to offer a list of available hotels, motels, inns, and bed & breakfasts in the area. Ridgetown is known as the "Friendliest Town". Small but quant, Ridgetown has its roots planted in the Southwestern Ontario landscape. Incorporated as a village in 1875, Ridgetown has a rich history with many historic homes and buildings. Ridgetown is located in the Chatham-Kent region of Southwestern Ontario - a mainly rural collection of villages and towns. Chatham is the largest town in the region and offers all amenities. Chatham-Kent is located approximately half way between London and Windsor. We are in the most southern region of Ontario - not located in the snow belt often associated with London.
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What Other Acitivites are Available? ​
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Gully's Learning Ranch is certainly not the only activity in the region to enjoy while visiting. Whether you are interested in the historical significance of the area or the beautiful natural wonders it has to offer, here are a few of the top must-sees:
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With history dating back to the 1790's, Chatham has the beautiful Thames River running through it. Due the historical significance of the region during the War of 1812 (Battle of the Thames, etc.), the landscape is speckled with monuments, re-enactments, and historic sites to visit.
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Chatham-Kent is a part of the Black-Canadian Heritage Tour as the region played a pivotal role in the Underground Railroad. Visit Uncle Tom's Cabin, a settlement that housed refugees from the slave trade, and other historical sites.
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The Ridge House Museum offers the experience of Ridgetown during the late 1800's. Located mere minutes from the ranch, this small living museum offers a glimpse into middle class Victorian Canada.
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We are located 10 minutes off the shores of Lake Erie, where you can enjoy may water activities such as swimming, fishing, and boating. The warm and clean waters provide a beautiful swimming experience which also boast commercial fishing - eat locally caught pike, perch, smelt, and more.
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Located 15 minutes from Gully's Learning Ranch, Rondeau Provincial Park offers hiking, biking, water sports, and swimming opportunities. Rondeau is a perfect spot to birdwatch during the "Festival of Flight" - a large migration of birds during the Spring. This migration is known around the world and Rondeau's 300+ species of birds have people "flocking" from all around North America, to see them.
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Other nature hotspots include Point Peele National Park and the most southernly point of Canada, Peele Island.
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Greenview Aviaries Park & Zoo boosts activities such as Shakespeareland, a splash pad, and of course, the animals.
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Chatham-Kent offers many fantastic restaurants, eateries and breweries.