Life coaching for corporate executives uses a unique equine approach

There’s a woman in Woodbury for whom “horse sense” means a whole lot more than most people.

Ann Romberg, one of the city’s newer residents (she was due to sign the final paperwork on her townhouse in the Seasons neighborhood on Nov. 18), is the co-founder of Wisdom Horse Coaching.

It’s not, as you might think from the name, a company geared up to horses or riders; rather, it’s aimed squarely at the high-flying executives of the corporate world and people who want to do more with their lives.

Romberg and her business partner Lynn Baskfield say that horses are incredibly intuitive animals who can reveal much about the people who interact with them.

This information can be interpreted with the assistance of life coaches Romberg and Baskfield to enable the business people and regular citizens who enroll on their courses to identify areas of confusion, weakness or unhelpful attitudes.

“We have three brain centers in our body. Our brain, our heart, and our gut or intestines,” explained Romberg.

“When people talk about a gut feeling or intuition, that’s where it’s coming from.

“There’s an electromagnetic frequency to all of these; a certain measurable frequency… and for something we know in our heart — really has meaning for us in our heart – there’s a certain frequency to that, and horses really pick up on that. All the words aren’t in the way.”

Wisdom Horse Coaching, which operates out of Hawk’s Ridge Ranch in Hudson, Wis., and also offers retreats at ranches in Arizona, Arkansas and Costa Rica, boasts of having offered its brand of equine life coaching to corporate clients including Wells Fargo, Medtronic and St. Paul-based Travelers.

Romberg says she uses a variety of simple tasks involving the participants seeking insight and the horses getting up close, although she points out all exercises are conducted on the ground.

The activities might range from haltering and leading a horse to persuading a horse to move from one end of the paddock to the other without using a lead line or food to bribe it.

And though the tasks sound simple, the results can be profound, say the life coaches.

“For example, we had a team out from a university,” recalled Romberg. “They were in charge of creating a masters program for students.

“They examined the halters, figuring out how they worked. The horses came up and stuck their noses in them, and [the participants] would say, ‘No. We can’t do that; we don’t understand how it works.’

“Some of them never did halter the horses. They had to figure out the halter first.

“What that translated to was they had a bunch of students coming in and they were trying to figure out what they did last year and how that had worked.

“They were obsessing about the ‘halter’ and not focusing on the students.”

Romberg remembers another occasion, when a member of a team from one company only grudgingly took part in the tasks.

“It really showed her true colors on the job,” said Romberg. “People hadn’t seen that side of her before and you could really see the light bulbs come on.”

She’s also seen great break-throughs with clients, who have suddenly “seen the light” when confronted by a horse who refused to obey them before they addressed a particular issue on their mind.

For Romberg, who worked in I.T. and project management in corporate America for more than 20 years, it’s especially rewarding to see attitudes altered and hearts changed as a result of her work with the clients and the horses.

“I have a real passion for [the corporate executive clients] if they want to make work a more humane place,” she said.

“I really support bringing more heart and soul back into the corporate workplace.”

For more information, visit www.wisdomhorsecoaching.com or call Ann Romberg at (651) 766-8920.

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