Blue Ridge | CONVERGE: Leadership Conference Sessions

We live in a world that teaches us to push. When something isn’t working…try harder. When someone isn’t responding…be more assertive. When we aren’t getting where we want to go…put in more effort. And sometimes that works... But sometimes…the harder we push, the harder everything becomes. What if there were another way to be effective? Softness is often mistaken for weakness, passivity or simply being “nice.” But real softness does not ask us to give up our intention, our strength, or the result we’re trying to create. It asks a vastly different question… How much effort does this moment actually require? In this one-hour experiential workshop at Missed Path Sanctuary, participants will explore Softness in relationship with a horse…where trying harder doesn’t necessarily get you further, and another living being gets to have something to say about how you show up. There’s nothing to get right and no horsemanship experience is necessary. There is simply an opportunity to notice what happens when we bring our intention into relationship with another being…and become curious about how much we’re bringing with it. The experience will be followed by a facilitated conversation exploring what happened, what we noticed…and where our own relationship with effort, pressure and effectiveness may be showing up elsewhere in our lives. Softness is an introduction to the experiential work of The Thirsty Horse Academy…and an opportunity to discover that strength and force are not always the same thing

Someone questions a decision we made…and we begin wondering whether we’re capable. Someone corrects our work…and we make it mean we’re not good enough. Something doesn’t go the way we expected…and suddenly what happened has become a story about who we are, what we can do, or what is possible. We all carry beliefs about ourselves and the world around us. Some serve us well…others may be shaping our choices, our behavior and even the possibilities we see without us ever realizing it. In this one-hour experiential workshop, participants will be presented with a challenge involving one of the horses at Missed Path Sanctuary. What happens from there becomes the material for exploration. Rather than simply talking about limiting beliefs, we’ll have an opportunity to notice them where they actually matter…in the way we respond, the choices we make and what happens when the result we want doesn’t immediately appear. The experience will be followed by a facilitated conversation exploring what happened…what we noticed…and what the experience might reveal about the way we meet challenges beyond the pasture. Limiting Beliefs is an introduction to the deeper experiential work of The Thirsty Horse Academy…where the relationship with the horse creates an opportunity to see ourselves, our patterns, and our possibilities a little differently.