Women's Empowerment Curriculum Programs
Empowerment for women - helping women develop skills for their life's journey. Move forward and reclaim your power!
Gully's Learning Ranch is proud to offer our Women's Empowerment Program - our Women's Curriculum Program - to women looking to rebuild or feel empowered in their lives. Our program offers a safe, unique, and interactive learning environment - with the lessons learned in the arena being paralleled back to every day lives. Paralleling back to real life reinforces what was learned during the session and encourages retention to use the skill at home, at work, and into the future. What the participants learn is important. However, what they remember is priceless! By creating a unique memory, working with horses allows the participant to retain more of what was learned during the sessions, compared to "classroom-type" empowerment programs. Our teacher's will provide lessons that will develop skills for women to tackle the ups and downs of life and the choices they make.
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When horses are the teachers, the participants are in an environment that is authentic and non-judgemental. Horses' instincts are naturally heightened to ensure survival as prey animals - this means that they react to the stimuli around them in both an immediate and honest way. That stimuli includes the stimulus inside of each participant - is the participant nervous, excited, anxious, happy, aggressive? They have the ability to determine the type of energy that is within us. They can also determine when our intention is not clear - when there is an imbalance between our social facade and our inner selves. They react to this imbalance and allow the facilitators of the program to interpret the horse's responses to help the participant move forward. The non-judgemental environment provided when working with horses, allows women to be themselves, without the fear of being judged. The horse does not care about the clothes we wear, our weight or height, our beliefs, or where we have come from. What they care about is helping us to become the best version of US that we can be!
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What Will Participants Learn?
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1. For clear intention, inner dialogue must match exterior actions.
2. Force does not equate to movement.
3. In order to move forward, we must stop looking back.
4. How to build and develop healthy relationships.
5. How to accept responsibility and be accountable.
6. That working together in a team is a rewarding opportunity.
7. That it takes courage to make changes within themselves.
8. How to think creatively and problem solve effectively.
9. How to overcome barriers in order to have personal growth and change.
10. How to develop their decision making skills and to use those skills to take appropriate risks to get out of their comfort zone.
11. How to slow down, have patience, and take things one step at a time.
12. How to become a leader within themselves and how being that leader is important when communicating their intention with others.
13. How to realize the benefits of effective communication and how that affects the interpersonal relationships of their lives.
14. The value in mutual trust and respect - especially when working in a team.
15. How to develop personal integrity and find the benefits of inner balance.
"A day that helped me look inward to myself and my 'restrictions'. It felt liberating to let go and share."
Who Would Benefit?
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Our Empowerment program is designed to provide direction and the development of life skills for women who are:
- Rebuilding their lives after trauma
- Sexual abuse or exploitation
- Mental and/or physical abuse,
- Stress, depression, and anxiety
- Attempted suicide
- Rebuilding life after prison
- Homelessness
- Struggling in their personal or professional life
or for anyone who is looking for an empowerment program with results.
What to Expect as a Participant
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Our Women's Empowerment Program is a curriculum program that runs for 4-, 6-, 8-, or 12-weeks consecutively. Typically run as a single participant program, we can also accommodate groups wishing to come in together or organizations that work with women who are looking to feel empowered in their lives. Single Participant programs mean that the participant is one-on-one with our Certified Equine Facilitator and their horse teacher. Weekly programs are 75-minutes in length and include an objectively-driven exercise with our horse teachers. Our unique BuildingBlock program means that we build on the skills developed the week before, as well as those skills that we have developed throughout our lives. We may think we are effective in a certain life skill, but until a horse tells us so, there is always room for development.
Each week, we begin our session with a briefing in our Barn Classroom, where we discuss what we will be focusing on that day and reflecting on the past week's objective. Then, we head over to our arena with our horse teacher, where we work, at eye level with our horse, through our week's objectively-driven obstacle course. Throughout the session, the Certified Equine Facilitator parallels lessons learned from our horse teacher to everyday life and how we can use these skills for positive change and achieving our goals. We end our session back in our Barn Classroom, where we have a debrief discussion on what we learned from our horse, how we can apply these lessons to our goals, and reflect on the objective of the session. Handouts and worksheets to take home with you are provided to allow for additional learning retention and application of that learning to everyday life.
