Actively shaping life instead of drifting along is at the heart of the Life Design approach.
This concept was developed by Stanford professors Bill Burnett and Dave Evans, who showed in their book Designing Your Life how the principles of Design Thinking can be applied to designing one’s own life.

• Design Thinking invites us to experiment boldly, adopt new perspectives and create solutions that truly fit our own lives.
• Positive Psychology strengthens the focus on resources, meaning and what makes us feel alive.
• Resilience enables us to remain capable of action and optimistic even in uncertain times.

But what does this have to do with horses?
In Equine Assisted Experiential Learning (EAL), we meet horses as mirrors of our inner state. They respond sensitively to body language, presence and emotions—more honestly than any feedback conversation.

Research shows that EAL strengthens key personal competencies such as emotional intelligence, self-awareness and empathy (Braun et al., 2024; Gehrke, 2020). These abilities are essential for consciously designing and successfully living one’s own path.

Life Design means playing with uncertainty, testing hypotheses and learning from experiences. Horses make these principles tangible: they demand clarity, invite creative solutions and help bring actions into alignment with inner values.

Thus, an encounter with horses becomes more than a coaching session—it becomes a living prototype for one’s own life.