Awakening Natural Leadership

Strength, Courage, Freedom: An Equine-Assisted
Leadership Experience

Free Bird Farm & Stables in Buchanan, MI
Nov 8 (evening), 9 (full day), & 10 (morning), 2024

Join us for an immersive equine experience that brings the core concepts of Natural Leadership to life. If you’re looking to break patterns that aren’t serving you, bring more balance into your life, or gain immediate and powerful greater awareness of yourself and your role in relational dynamics, join us.

This unique equine-assisted program is transformative. This is partially due to it being a whole body experiential learning adventure. Participants will observe, practice, and refine new skills and play with tools while interacting with horses. What is gained is directly and immediately applicable to personal and professional relationships. No prior horse experience is necessary; we focus exclusively on working with horses from the ground. This will not involve any riding activities. We also have horse experts that will monitor and maintain safety for you and the group while honoring the well being of the horses.

Horse medicine is a symbol associated with strength, courage and freedom – gaining these things takes practice, and these magical creatures partner with us to teach something relational and fundamental to our existence as mammals. This weekend will be an unforgettable holistic wellbeing experience integrating mind, body and spirit.

We begin with a gathering on Friday evening at 6:00 pm to introduce ourselves to one another and start to feel the shape of our herd while we share a meal. Then, on Saturday, we return to the gorgeous Free Bird Farm & Stables for the full-day immersive equine experience from 9:00 am until 5:30 pm. Saturday evening is free so guests can reflect on the day, rest and recharge. Sunday, we wrap up with a half-day equine experience from 9:00 am to 12:00 pm.

We have limited space for 12 registrations, with three co-facilitators (Brad, Michael & Rune). The 4:1 ratio of participant to facilitator is intentional and allows us to create radical support for each individual while also holding a loving container for community and connection. We commit to building a container of safety that allows us to play in new fields together while accelerating a deeply felt learning process. We ask that each person participate in Friday's gathering and stay for the full day on both Saturday and Sunday. This allows you and the group to gain the greatest insights by traversing the full arc of the experience, individually and collectively.

Facilitators Brad Lande-Shannon, Michael Marks, and Rune Christensen are all certified in equine-assisted coaching using the Natural Leadership model. As facilitators, we take a deeply personal and refreshingly practical approach. Plus, we each bring our own vast and unique life and professional experience and several certifications to our coaching.

The Circle Up Experience has guided hundreds of experiences over the last twelve years that are similar to this. You are in safe and experienced hands. The Circle Up Experience has also built and facilitated small and large programs for individuals, couples, families and groups. To learn more about our customized offerings, be sure to visit our website.

Where to stay? Accommodations are not included, but there are neighboring farms and local rentals through Airbnb or VBRO. Hotels are also available in nearby Niles, MI. We can share some options with you, just ask!.

Scholarships are available. Our Natural Leadership model focuses on the needs of the herd - both individuals and the group as a whole. We want to ensure that scholarships are given where they are needed most, and we don’t want to exclude anyone based on their ability to pay. Availability may be limited. Please complete this form if you or someone you know would benefit from a scholarship. We will review all applications and offer a discount of anywhere from 25% to 100% off the regular price.

Pricing options

At this retreat you will learn how to:

  • Access Natural Leadership Awareness channels to gain a broader perspective and enhance your overall awareness in any situation.

  • Sense the spectrum of pressure to proactively adjust before stress and overwhelm impact your relationships.

  • Communicate and listen at a sustainable pace.

  • Recognize when others are open to feedback and how to work with resistance.

  • Develop a stable leadership presence that draws others to you.

  • Use influence, power, and voice while maintaining psychological safety.

  • Establish healthy boundaries in all your relationships.

  • Create ease and connectedness in group settings.

Located at 11930 N Red Bud Trail in Buchanan, Michigan, we are 90 miles (1.5 hour drive) from Chicago. The directions via online maps are straightforward, and we are easy to find. All visits must be pre-arranged. When you arrive at the farm, there are two drives - please utilize the service road at the north end labeled ‘farm’ for access to the equine facility. Please note our 5 mph speed limit. This was installed to promote safety and reduce disruption to our delightful neighbor, Jack. Please drive slowly and be mindful of foot or farm-related activity.

Free Bird Farm & Stables is situated in beautiful southwestern Michigan and offers the region's premier equine facilities and amenities. Our entire property is devoted to the care, training, and development of horses and their owners. Our experienced staff features world-renowned equine specialists are passionate about providing an extraordinary standard of care and exceptional experiences with our beloved horses. The 21+ acre property has 17 stables, a heated indoor riding arena, an open-air outdoor riding arena, rolling hills, lush pastures with trails, and serene foliage. Our facility is home to equine-assisted coaching and leadership development through The Circle Up Experience.

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What is Natural Leadership?

Natural Leadership is a leadership framework. It is our innate mammal capacity, as HUMAN ANIMALS, to take care of our NEEDS and to function in an interdependent relationship with others. When we are accessing our Natural Leadership, we can:

  • Sense nonverbal signals and attend to our needs and the needs of others.

  • Adjust to pressures, stresses, and changes in our environment.

  • Find EASE quickly and efficiently.

  • Create relational systems which allow us to negotiate needs and share resources so we can survive and thrive individually and in trusted groups.

Why We Gather

Circle Up’s model of Natural Leadership and experiential learning with horses integrates human psychology, animal behavior, and natural systems to offer a unique approach to personal and professional development.

Humans have lived in “herds” for thousands of years — communities, big or small, that have provided us a safe haven for sharing resources and leaning on each other for support and fellowship. Even in these highly technological times when self-sufficiency is the norm, we still long to be connected. It’s how we truly thrive.

When we stray from our herd and stop practicing the basic elements of community-building and trust-growing, our groups and relationships suffer. Through meaningful experiences and intentional conversation, we can reclaim and revive this simple but essential part of our human story.

Gather

Why We Engage With Horses For This Work?

See yourself through the eyes of a horse, and you see your true nature.

Our starting point with any group is with our horses. Simply put, horse work is our assessment tool. While more traditional approaches can be valuable to how we understand ourselves and each other, few are so immediately transformative.

Our equine-assisted activities (non-riding) allow the horses to teach you and show you parts of your leadership that need more room to play.

As prey animals, horses possess exquisitely attuned emotional systems and they are able to pick up on the ever-changing nuances of mammals’ internal workings (that includes humans) as they assess for safety. The cohesion of the herd is at the heart of the group’s survival.

They rely on a radical commitment to awareness and to an ever-present feedback system flowing through their herd. This unique sensing system allows the horses to read each other and their environment so they can detect danger and look for opportunities to rest in safety.

It also allows them to read us and to notice the places where we are blocked. Because so much of our innate power is trapped in our thoughts and often self-defeating scripts, our truest desires are just out of our reach.

This is an opportunity to get honest AND gentle feedback from your equine teachers and coaching and support from your human facilitators.

You will leave this experience with an open channel of your authentic power ready for you to bring into your world.

Pricing options

  • Brad Lande-Shannon

    Owner, Head Leadership Coach

    A long-time C-suite executive himself, Brad Lande-Shannon has a first-hand understanding of the pressures and stresses that face company founders, leaders, and high performance teams. This is partly why he first turned to Natural Leadership as he faced his own professional challenges.

    Brad's passion for horses has been a life-long pursuit. Having competed with the National Cutting Horse Association as a youth and now as an adult amateur dressage competitor, he’s combined his deep horse expertise with his executive leadership coaching. Over the course of his career, Brad has guided thousands of leaders on values, purpose, emotional intelligence, and well-being.


    Certified in the 15 Commitments of Conscious Leadership and following training from The Center for Equus Coaching (formerly The Koelle Institute), Brad enrolled in the Natural Leadership program. Compared to other programs, Brad says Natural Leadership is, “deceptively simple and multi-dimensional in its use cases to apply and teach.”


    Brad has an equestrian facility that offers Natural Leadership facilitation, coaching and programming at Awake Ranch, near Portland, Oregon, which he acquired with his husband in late 2022.


    Send Brad an email.

  • Michael Marks

    Natural Leadership Facilitator

    Michael Marks is the founder and driving force behind Free Bird Farm & Stables, a sacred space designed to restore the spirit of humans and horses alike. During his third decade of a notable career in commercial real estate, Michael attended an equine assisted coaching retreat that forever changed his life. Michael now directs more creative energy towards curating experiences which celebrate the healing magic of horses while elevating the consciousness of leaders.

    Michael’s passion for horses began at a young age, sparked by memorable visits to the countryside and, ultimately, the racetrack with his father. Their shared love of horses fostered a strong bond and built a lifelong connection to these uniquely intuitive and energetically honest animals. Michael purchased Free Bird Farm & Stables in 2011 and started transforming it into what it is today. His mission to share the magic of horsework with others is palpable throughout the property.


    Send Michael an email.

  • Rune Christensen

    Natural Leadership Facilitator

    Rune is a certified conscious and natural leadership coach with a knack for empowering organizations and individuals to lead with purpose, authenticity, and maybe just a little bit of horse sense. Growing up in Denmark, Rune spent his teenage years surrounded by horses, forging a lifelong bond that would eventually lead him to the world of equine-assisted coaching. With certifications in conscious leadership, natural leadership, and training as a Co-Active Professional Coach by CTI, Rune is also on the path to becoming an Internal Family Systems Coach by the IFS Institute. He blends these approaches to create transformative experiences that inspire self-awareness, intentional action, and a strong link to one’s intuitive knowing.


    When he’s not connecting people with their inner wisdom, Rune is likely out on the open sea, indulging his passion for offshore sailing. There, he finds a similar sense of connection and flow with the deep blue ocean, the wind, and the creatures of the sea—proving that whether on land or water, Rune is all about guiding others on their journey to becoming mindful, impactful leaders.


    Send Rune an email.