Taking Root
Bringing you the mysterious Saturday sessions revealed -- plus workshops, workbooks, shaking things loose and a napping squirrel
I’ve been listening to your words, all of you who have crossed my path this week, and the general consensus is that things are feeling more struggle-full than usual. Big struggles, little struggles, existential struggles. Lots of barriers and pushing against obstacles with little energy left over for the basics.
My solution to my own trudging this week was to give myself permission to shake things loose, to stop being so linear, to get over myself in the best of all ways. I wrote about it this week in Earthquakes. Have a look and consider giving yourself permission to shake things loose a little. For my part, I find that the barrier I’m trudging over is usually myself. Up and over. Myself. Delightfully.
I spent two hours the other day getting the words just right on the website for the launch of the teen sister workshop to my journaling workshop that is launching on Friday. As I was finishing up, my finger scrolled a right click that erased the page. I thought I was the master of the save-in-progress. Nope. I hadn’t saved and I hadn’t copied or pasted. It was all just gone.
I say all this to also give you permission to start over. The second attempt might feel less polished than the first, and maybe that was the whole point. Shake it up. Keeping everything together takes a whole bunch of energy that might be better spent getting over yourself in the most delightful way.
This week I bring you:
Journaling Workshops (adult, teen, virtual)
The mysterious Saturday at 11:00 sessions with me and Sarah Farris
Feeling made conscious when we’re in conversation
Adult Saddle Club
Stable Roots Apprentice Group happenings
A napping squirrel
Writing With the Herd Spring Sessions:
Teen Journaling Workshop — Sunday, April 28th 2:00-4:00 PM. This in-person workshop will be exploring our wants, motivations and how we connect our inner self with our outer selves. A long time ago we had weekend group coaching sessions for teenagers and this workshop will be bringing that back, better than ever.
Exploring Your Wants — my journaling workshop is about to launch this Friday April 19th 6:00-8:00 PM. Available spots were quickly snatched up and I am thrilled to be sharing time, space, and the writing work with you all in the peaceful sanctuary of Bramblewood Stables.
Friday, May 17th 6:00-8:00 PM — Next month’s workshop sign-ups are open. I’d love for you to join me as we come together again to explore our wants and go deeper. These workshops will build on the previous month’s explorations but new attendees are encouraged to join us. There is also a virtual session scheduled for Sunday, May 19th, 1:00-3:00 PM if you can’t join me live. Just choose option on the drop-down menu of the signup form.
Saturdays at 11:00
Sometimes the best things just happen.
Sarah Farris and I didn’t consciously set out to create a weekly lesson hour where the yin/yang of our separate lines of inquiries came together into rich deep-dives into philosophy and groundwork with the horses. It just happened.
I was interested in human growth, she was interested in horse training, and after some time we realized that these two things were actually the same thing.
Sarah and I have always taught at 11:00 on Saturdays while sharing space in the ring with our individual clients. Maybe all this came together because of how exceptional the clients happened to be at that hour — middle schoolers, high schoolers, adults, all curious about how the world worked and how our connections to horses strengthened our perspectives.
Someone would ask a question or we’d jointly ponder an idea and suddenly we were all looking at our watches wondering how an hour had passed.
Somewhere along the way, Sarah and I merged our people and began approaching the Saturday at 11:00’s as an ongoing joint project. And that’s when magic started happening. And sometimes that magic is literal, as in Laci Olsen having a conversation with Magic, the pony.
Topics aren’t planned, but they flow organically and we all leave with something more than what we had when we entered the ring together.
If I’m present for the session, except more “Talky Talky” than when Sarah is solo-leading the show :) (We all know this is a myth, but we’ll just keep saying it so we’re not putting Sarah on the spot).
You’re welcome to join us as an auditor and you’re welcome to join us by taking part in the session. Just send Sarah or me a text and let us know you’re interested.
It’s never the same without Sarah, but my baby version of 11’ses happens on Sundays at 11:00. If Saturdays don’t work for you, we’ve got options.
Feelings Made Conscious
It’s just hard to put into words, the feel thing that we’re describing when working with the horses. Most of us have made a habit of not feeling — for good reason. The world is tough and we craft our armor to balance work and life and people.
Like the Saturday at 11 sessions, a high point of my week is when Sarah returns to the farm on Tuesdays after the weekend and we have a chance to convene on the ideas that have come to us in the meantime. We are always mutually delighted to discover that, like human growth and horse training, we might have started on separate paths, but our thoughts have led to the same idea.
Talking to Sarah this week, we were discussing feel and how to best describe that sense of cellular agency to our clients.
How do we describe the process of taking a thought into a feeling into an action?
We might spend the rest of our lives working on the answer to that, but Sarah’s insight was brilliant, as always.
The more we practice our ability to tap into the felt sense of our motivations, the body-sense of the awareness that prepares us to act, we form and develop new habits of manifesting that thought into physical action.
“It’s feelings made conscious,” Sarah said.
We’re going to be exploring that more, I’m sure, this Saturday.
Join the conversation with us.
Adult Saddle Club
Tonight we’re all gathering for April Adult Saddle Club beginning at 6PM.
Brooke Chapman always go above and beyond making sure the horses and the people are cared for and this evening is no exception. She’s planned a luau theme for Moose’s 20th birthday, saying aloha to a new decade for our gorgeous Dutch mare.
The theme of our talk is incorporating clean language — stripping away our metaphors and assumptions — when approaching the horses. We’ll be exploring our projections and how shifting our perception can help us uncover previously hidden insights.
Adult Saddle Club meets on the third Thursday of every month. Don’t let the word saddle fool you. Horses are the creatures that bring us all together, but no riding is required and our topics span the earth, namely, how we can grow as humans to improve our relationships, to ourselves, each other, the horses, and the world.
Stable Roots Apprentice Program
Our core group of apprentices met via Zoom this week where they explored how incorporating Clean Language with clients and with the horses can change the conversation from inner to outer, from our narrow perceptions to a broader outlook. And by Clean Language — I don’t mean putting a filter on our mouth 😁 but the opposite, taking our filters off so we can see the world in a different way.
Apprentices helped me refine a new Clean Language workbook during the meeting, but the question we all had was how Lorem Ipsum became the standard place holder text for printing. Apparently it’s been used in printing since the 1500’s and the Latin can be traced back to 45 BC.
Ancient roots — things are never as new as I think they are. Thank you horses. Thank you, writing.
Stable Roots Apprentices are established and budding equine professionals who want to build their practice and transform the horse industry with current science and ancient wisdom. They humbly commit hours each month refining their philosophies, mastering Socratic questioning, and building each other up.
They’re helping me explore the beta version of a program that we will launch globally within the next year. If you’re thinking about working within the horse industry, reach out and see if my apprentice program is a good fit for you.
It’s been a big week! I’ll leave you with a squirrel we found napping on tree near the farmhouse back porch. I feel like he embodies the energy we’re all experiencing right now and he absolutely has the right idea.
Love,
Kim
