Corporate Teams, Clinical Staff & Facilitator Training
Equine Assisted Therapy
Groups, Treatment Centers & Equine Therapy Sessions
Shakti Ranch · Santa Monica Mountains, Malibu
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Who we are
We believe some of the most meaningful learning happens when we step outside familiar ways of doing things.
Our approach is grounded in trauma-informed practice and informed by emerging research, but it isn’t confined to a classroom or a prescribed method.
More about us
Forget trust falls and leadership slogans. At Equine Therapy Malibu, the work is guided by the horses. Unimpressed by titles, status, or carefully crafted personas, they respond instead to presence, clarity, and intention.
The horses offer a reminder that meaningful leadership isn’t power over, but rather power with and power to.
Horses aren’t fooled by the performance of calm or confidence. Instead, they respond to posture, breath, and energy before a single word is exchanged, surfacing communication and behavioral patterns that otherwise go unnoticed.
Through co-regulation, attunement, and realtime feedback, horses help participants find an authentic steadiness that translates back to high-pressure environments like boardrooms, client sessions, and stressful life events.
Group exercises with the horses reveal places where clear leadership and trust break down inside a team in minutes instead of months. Time with the horses allows participants to get real-time feedback about their patterns in a playful but real way.
Learn to do this yourself
Level 1
Three modules and twelve lessons: fundamentals and ethos, integration with nature, and embodied movement. A live half day, online or here at the ranch, with the lessons yours to keep.
$397 online, $750 at the ranch
Continuing education hours available
Enroll in Level 1For a whole team
We train your people together, over several days, in a program built for your organization. Everyone who finishes can go on toward certification.
By arrangement
A call first, then a proposal built around your service
Arrange an introductionLevel 2
Five modules and a capstone: facilitating safely with horses, equine somatics, parts work and metaphor, boundary work and intuitive sensing, and sustainable business practices. Five months: monthly weekends at the ranch for the first four, then your capstone.
$5,355
or $5,200 by bank transfer, or four monthly payments
Enroll in Level 2After Level 1 you can bring this into work you already do, and plenty of people continue. After Level 2 you are a Shakti Ranch Certified EAL Facilitator and can run your own sessions. You do not need a license for either.
Explore the trainingCome to the ranch
For companiesBring your teamHerd-guided experiences that help teams strengthen communication, leadership, and collaboration, thoughtfully tailored to your organization’s goals, challenges, and team dynamics.Programs for leadership teams
For treatment centers and clinicsSessions for the people you treatSessions at the ranch for the people you treat, and a day of their own for the staff who treat them. A single visit, or a standing schedule.How we work with clinicsFor anyoneCome on your ownPrivate individual, couples, and small-group sessions for personal growth, therapeutic work, and small teams testing the water before a full retreat.See sessions and ratesRose Mary Riggs ran change management for Fortune 500 companies at Accenture before spending two decades with horses in the Santa Monica Mountains. Clinical work is held by licensed staff.
Mirroring is the word for something horses do without being asked. A horse responds to the state a person is actually in rather than to what they say or intend, so the way it behaves near somebody becomes information about them. Arrive braced and holding it together, and the horse answers the bracing.
What makes it useful here is that the herd does not respond uniformly. Each of these four is tuned to something different, and what they show you arrives through their own temperament.
SophieThe Lead MareTakes in someone's anxious or unsettled energy and hands it back grounded and calm.
CashThe Straight ShooterIdentifies exactly what a person or a group is avoiding, or where they lack boundaries.
FrankieThe IcebreakerThe fastest of the herd to approach someone new, and the usual starting point for anyone nervous about horses at all.
AbeThe Steady OneA steady, unshakeable presence that a group arriving already running hot can borrow from.Which of them comes over, and how, is part of the work. Meet the herd.
“Rose Mary has the ability to help each person she works with to see the best in themselves and others.”
Julie McAfee, Women’s Empowerment Coach
Our practice pioneers breakthrough methods that fuse neuroscience, somatic work, and the horse-human bond to train stronger leaders and more effective clinicians.
Learn morePrefer to start smaller? Private individual, couples, and small-group equine-assisted sessions are available for personal growth, therapeutic work, and small teams testing the water before a full retreat.
Choose a session to book.
More than twelve of you, or something not listed here? Write to us and we will build it around you. A session is paid for when it is booked, and how moving or cancelling one works is on its own page.
October 22 to 25, 2026 • Malibu, California
Named by National Geographic among the world's best grief retreats, best for equine therapy. Four days at a private Malibu estate with the horses of Shakti Ranch. Eight rooms, fourteen beds, one circle of women. Every bed includes access to connection, chef-prepared meals, and special moments with our herd of therapy horses. Led by Angela Schellenberg.
Rooms and datesNext cohort, Friday, November 13, 2026 • Monthly weekends at the ranch
The certification itself, and the only place it is taught. Five modules across five months: facilitating safely with horses, equine somatics, parts work and metaphor, boundary work and intuitive sensing, and sustainable business practice. Monthly weekends at the ranch for the first four months, then a workshop you design and lead yourself. Level 1 is the prerequisite. You leave a Shakti Ranch Certified EAL Facilitator, able to hold Equine Assisted Learning on your own.
Enroll in Level 2Next cohort, December 12, 2026 • Live on Zoom, or in person at the ranch
A live half day introducing this work through a trauma-informed, somatic and relational lens: how horses read us, and what happens when you stand next to one on purpose. Open to anyone, whether or not you ever intend to facilitate, and the prerequisite for the Level 2 certification here at the ranch. Taught with Angela Schellenberg, whose practice is the approved provider of the continuing education hours.
Enroll in Level 1No. Most people who come here have never handled a horse, and nothing in the work assumes you have. The herd does not care what you know about them. They respond to how you carry yourself, which is a thing you already have with you.
No. All of it happens on the ground, alongside the horses rather than on them. That is what makes the work legible: standing next to a twelve-hundred-pound animal, your posture and your breathing become information you can actually read.
It is both, and the difference is worth being exact about. Equine assisted learning is experiential work on communication, relational patterns, leadership and presence under pressure.
It is not psychotherapy, and it is what corporate & private groups and institutions are booking.
Equine assisted therapy sessions are also experiential. Private, couples, and group or treatment center sessions are guided by Certified Shakti Ranch EAL Facilitators.
Graduates are Shakti Ranch Certified EAL Facilitators. That is a qualification to integrate horses into work you are already trained and licensed to do. It is not a license to practice psychotherapy, and it does not stand in for one. The two-part path is taught by Rose Mary Riggs, Emma Barnosky, PhD, SEP, and Angela Schellenberg.
Yes, and it is a large part of what happens here. Before this, Rose Mary spent her career as a change management analyst at Accenture advising Fortune 500 companies, so the room you are coming from is one she has worked in. Corporate programs are built around your team rather than run off a shelf. Executive off-sites, leadership development and team work all sit here.
Bring that with you. Nerves are not a problem to get past before the work starts; they are usually where it starts. Horses read tension accurately and without judgement, which means a nervous first ten minutes tends to be the most useful ten minutes of the day. Nobody is pushed toward an animal they are not ready to stand near.
Most sessions run ninety minutes, and horse time tends to run long. The introductory session with Rose Mary runs three hours, the children’s session fifty minutes, and the larger group workshop two hours; the rate card gives each one. Closed-toe shoes you do not mind getting dirty, long pants, and a hat with a brim, because there is very little shade in the round pen. Bring water and a snack.
In the hills above Malibu, California, at Shakti Ranch. The canyon cools fast after four, so the late afternoon is both the best light and the reason for the extra layer. Get directions.
Something not here? Write to us and we will answer it properly.
