The Signature Seminars®

Signature Seminars® Include:

1. Lead with Your Heart- Lessons From a Life with Horses
2. Right Brain vs. Left Brain – The Neuro-Equine Model© in Practice
3. Zen Mind, Zen Horse – The Spiritual Lessons That Horses Bring to Life
4. A Hero’s Journey with the Help of Horses
5. From Barnyard to Boardroom – Learning the Power of Nonverbal Communication in Business
6. From Barnyard to Bedside – Improving Nonverbal Communication Skills in Healthcare
7. Cancer Warriors – Learning to Fight Cancer on Your Own Terms and Win!
8. Selecting & Training Horses for Equine Assisted Therapy and Learning
9. *NEW* Neuro-Equine Model™ Certification Program

The Drs. Hamilton are available  to bring these programs directly to your group or facility world wide.

These workshops are unlike any other equine-facilitated program anywhere else in the world.

Drs. Jane and Allan Hamilton have written and taught extensively about the Neuro-Equine Model©, and how the deep emotional bond between horse and human develops. This connection is not simply affection, but is also an interaction between complementary evolutionary biologies and strategies (namely, prey versus predator).

When human beings interact with horses, they are drawing on right-brain intuitive and emotional capabilities rather than the language, verbally dominant abilities of left cerebral hemispheres.

These programs are based on the award-winning book Zen Mind, Zen Horse: The Science and Spirituality of Working with Horses, by Allan J. Hamilton, MD,which was awarded the Nautilus Gold Award for spiritual works of non-fiction”that change the world one book at a time.”

1. Lead with Your Heart: Lessons From a Life with Horses

This program takes working with and relating to horses to the next level—true partnership and bonding. Your horse already knows how to be a horse. What he’s waiting for is: Do you know how to be the leader he needs? What holds our horse back is not him. It’s always us. It always comes down to the obstacles and boundaries we create for ourselves. So, advanced horsemanship is about working on enhanced awareness of how we sabotage our relationship with our horse and how we can begin to get better results with less frustration. It will bring greater joy and fulfillment to both you and your equine partner.

See Events page for the schedule!

2. Right Brain vs. Left Brain: The Neuro-Equine Model© in Practice

This program puts an emphasis on getting participants to interact with horses in a unique supervised one-on-one session under the tutelage of  Dr. Allan Hamilton. It also includes didactic seminar-style classroom work and group processing under the supervision of Dr. Jane Hamilton to help underscore the science behind the Neuro-Equine Model® and how to apply it in our partnership with horses and in our broader context of our lives in general.

3. Zen Mind, Zen Horse: The Spiritual Lessons That Horses Bring to Life

This program explores the spiritual and mindful concepts horses can help to teach us. Dynamic didactic seminar sessions clarify the science behind the unique opportunities and abilities horses offer human beings to see spiritual guidelines at work.

4. A Hero’s Journey with the Help of Horses

This course uses principles from Joseph Campbell’s Hero with a Thousand Faces and asks us to become the heroes of our own spiritual journeys.  The seminar includes immersive, interactive, didactic sessions as well as work with horses in the round pen and arena.

5. From Barnyard to Boardroom: Learning the Power of Nonverbal Communication in Business

Effective communicators and negotiators learn to use and interpret body language cues.  Through specially designed equine facilitated activities, participants explore nonverbal communication within business and corporate settings. It was developed in conjunction with faculty from the Eller MBA Program and Eller College of Management or the University of Arizona.

6. From Barnyard to Bedside: Improving Nonverbal Communication Skills in Healthcare

In collaboration with the University’s of Arizona’s College of Medicine, Dr. Hamilton has developed the world’s first and premiere program using equine facilitated resources for healthcare professionals to enhance communication and improve bedside manner.  The program  has now been reproduced in medical schools in the United States and around the world.

7. Cancer Warriors: Learning to Fight Cancer on Your Own Terms and Win!

This program explores the emotional and spiritual principles that can assist individuals in their personal journeys to integrate cancer care, cure, and survival into their way of life, their way of seeing, and their way of being. The program focuses on the emotional, psychic, and spiritual issues that surround struggling with cancer.

8. Selecting & Training Horses for Equine Assisted Therapy and Learning

In round pen and arena sessions, participants will explore the features to look for when choosing a horse for equine facilitated programs.  Further activities address “making the most of the horse you’ve got.”  Participants will learn to assess horses as they work in the round pen and the arena. The program will use multiple horses for each participant to enhance each participant’s ability to quickly assess a horse’s suitability for a particular session and how to quickly and fluidly develop strategies to work with a horse’s personality rather than fight it.

9. The Neuro-Equine Model™ of Equine-Assisted Therapy Two-Day Certification Program

Based on Dr. Allan Hamilton’s award-winning books, Zen Mind, Zen Horse: The Science and Spirituality of Working with Horses and Lead with Your Heart: Lessons from a Life with Horses, this is a certification program designed for two groups of individuals.  The first is therapists, clinicians, psychologists, counselors and educators who want to learn how equine-facilitated therapy or learning can work for them as a powerful and easy tool to help guide and counsel others.  The second group is horse professionals who wish to add a new dimension to their partnership with mental health providers and educators to add horse-assisted therapy and learning to their list of professional services.  In a powerful and time-tested model of groundwork with horses, Dr. Allan Hamilton (a Harvard-trained brain surgeon and world-renowned horse trainer) and his wife, Dr. Jane Hamilton (a clinical psychologist and world expert on the use of animals in therapy) will demonstrate and train participants to apply the Neuro-Equine Model™ to harness specific tools and techniques in equine-assisted therapeutic approaches with clients, and use them to address a host of mental and emotional problems.  Drs. Hamilton have trained hundreds of professionals in the United States and around the world to use the principles of neuroscience to understand and effectively apply equine-assisted techniques in both individual and group situations to great effect.  They will not only cover the individual exercises and techniques but also will demonstrate their use in a variety of clinical and professional scenarios to accelerate progress and create powerful breakthroughs. This program is designed for individuals who wish to become certified in the use of the Neuro-Equine Model™ and how to apply it in professional settings.  This is a rare chance to learn the powerful tools offered by the Neuro-Equine Model™ and then learn to apply them with a fresh perspective on equine-assisted therapy and learning to tackle educational and emotional issues.

Any of the Signature Seminars® can be brought to your facility and customized to meet the needs of your program.

Equine programs are tailored to meet the needs of the individual participants, and are suitable for both therapeutic and educational purposes. All courses are available in a single-day, two-day, or three-day format. The equine-assisted programs offered by Drs. Hamilton have been featured in such publications as Western Horseman, Equus, Practical Horseman, Spirituality and Health, as well as on PBS, CNN, and NBC television.