Our Roots
Founded by Jenn Best – Certified Personal Development Coach and Grief & Loss Support Coach certified through Equine Assisted Learning (EAL) Canada – Sacred Willow Equine Centre is a holistic wellness facility that offers horse-led healing to help humans transcend their traumas and cultivate deep safety with soul, body, and the world around them.
Sacred Willow adopts a client-centered approach, valuing the practitioner’s accreditation, horse’s guidance as healer, and the individual’s own lived experience. These three components are equally necessary to creating a healing journey that works for the specific individual, and yields long-lasting results.
Sacred Willow Equine Centre welcomes anyone who feels our facility is the right next step on their healing journey – both adults and youth - and ensures that all beings who seek support with us are equipped with exactly what they need to walk their unique path as their most authentic self. We strive to ensure healing is accessible to all humans, including all gender identities, different physical abilities, age, or life circumstances. Our facility offers a wide range of services including Grief & Loss Support, Caregiver Support, and Reiki Energy Healing. Our facility is located in Ladner, B.C. and we have access to a network of credible practitioners and are happy to make referrals in the client’s best interest as applicable.
We Lead by our values
From how our business is run, to collaborating with other practitioners, to co-creating with you and our herd, we are driven by our core values.
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Integrity
We prioritize honest, open communication and boundaries within our professional relationships - with colleagues and clients. Accountability to our practice, to ourselves, and to one another is paramount. We practice within the scope of the accreditations that we carry. Integrity holds us to a high standard of care for the horses and environment we teach and learn within.
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Safety
Safety is paramount in our practices, ensuring a secure environment for both horses and humans. Safety extends to the physical, emotional, mental and spiritual bodies of our staff, clients, land and animals. This value guides our actions, fostering peace of mind and well-being for all.
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Growth
Fostering development and transformation within the community, we are open and willing to push beyond the edges of comfort, to yield the rewards. Shedding past beliefs and creating new neural pathways in response to situations, people, and our environment. We hold ourselves accountable to heal and grow, so that we can best support our clients.
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Humility
Humility allows us to remain grounded and open to learning. It encourages genuine connections with clients while recognizing the wisdom of nature and the horses we work with. We collaborate with other practitioners to best meet the needs of our client, prioritizing the client and affirming our belief that their healing matters above all else.
Meet Your Facilitator
Jenn Best is an Equine Assisted Learning (EAL) Canada certified Personal Development Coach with special accreditation in Grief and Loss support which she received through Stronger Life Connections in partnership with EAL Canada. Jenn is also Reiki Certified level 1 and 2, and Animal Reiki Certified level 1 and 2. She actively volunteers with the Therapeutic Riding Association and is working toward certification as a Therapeutic Riding Coach to extend her practice in support of youth and adults with disabilities.
Jenn founded Sacred Willow Equine Centre in response to a deep inner knowing that she was meant to be a conduit for horses and humans to heal together. As a facilitator of Equine Assisted Learning, Jenn’s centres the power that horses bring as mirrors, guides, and ultimately healers. Through this co-creative experience, Jenn puts emphasis on addressing the learner on a physical, mental, emotional and spiritual level and curates the experience to each learner understanding that every individual is unique in their needs and path they are currently on towards healing. “There is something unique about horses”, Jenn says. “They have a profound ability to bring people out of the darkness and into light and to be able to facilitate their magic and to witness the results it brings to my clients is a gift, humbling and an honour I do not take lightly”.
Jenn’s doors are open to anyone who feels Sacred Willow Equine Centre is the next step on their healing journey, and supports both youth and adults. Jenn prioritizes working with individuals experiencing grief and loss, to help them feel not so alone. She helps them find a sense of peace as they move through these deep, and often difficult, emotions. Jenn also takes special interest in supporting caregivers to ensure they receive back the care they so freely give.
It is Jenn’s vision that humans transcend their traumas and cultivate deep safety with soul, body, and the world around them and it is her mission to enable this transformation through facilitated horse-led healing.
Meet Your Teachers
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Ellie
Ellie is our beautiful 21 year young Icelandic Mare who’s strong personality makes her a quiet but powerful leader in our herd. Ellie’s role in our Equine Learning program has had a profound impact in supporting our learners.
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Elsa
Elsa is our 7 year old mini Mare having come to us from an Alberta rescue she had a bumpy start to life but has settled into being a fan favourite with both Child , teen and Adult learners in our EAL programs at Sacred Willow. Elsa although small has a huge heart and gift for showing us where we need to work in certain areas of our lives. She teaches us to show up in authentic ways , encouraging healing and growth.
HOW WE CO-CREATE
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Facilitator
Jenn brings professional expertise as an EAL Canada certified Personal Development and Grief & Loss Support Coach, as well as Reiki Level 1 and 2 practitioner. Jenn leverages this expertise to create sacred space for the herd, the willow and land to guide your healing in a way that works for you.
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Healer
The horse is our teacher. It freely shares guidance and ancestral wisdom that it holds within its essence; The same wisdom that many humans have forgotten. The horse guides you to yourself — to your roots — helping you shed distractive energies so you can live authentically and confidently.
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You
This is your healing journey and above all, it needs to work for you and with you. Your story, your wants, needs, and boundaries are always respected and factored into the approach that is taken to help you achieve your healing goals.
Why Horses?
Humans’ relationship with horses spans over centuries and has transitioned through different states - ownership, servitude, tools, livelihood, companionship and many more.
Equine Assisted Learning focuses on the horse as guide and healer, bringing to the forefront a new co-creative relationship between horse and human.
Horses have an incredible power to mirror humans, to empathize, to demonstrate to humans new ways - or perhaps ways we have forgotten - of processing emotions and situations that perplex and way on us.
““There is something unique about horses. They have a profound ability to bring people out of the darkness and into light and to be able to facilitate their magic and to witness the results it brings to my clients is a gift, humbling and an honour I do not take lightly”. ”
Have you seen a child throw themselves to the ground when they are upset?
What about a horse shake off abruptly and then almost as suddenly, it exhales and achieves a state of calm?
These are both tangible examples of how animals (human and non-human) intuitively calm their nervous system.
Humans have conditioned themselves to forget these methods.
Horses remember them.
They utilize them regularly.
They freely demonstrate to us how we can remember them to heal ourselves.
They help re-connect us to our centre, to the earth, and to spirit.
Horses help us rediscover our truest selves.
The Willow is your map to your center.
It demonstrates fortitude, and how to support yourself through adversity.
The Willow reminds you that you are capable, supported, and deserving of care.
Why the Willow?
The willow tree stands tall yet moves with the wind, symbolizing empathy, adaptability and resilience.
It is a symbol for grief and mourning, and healing from deep loss.
The willow is thought to be a connector of the physical and spiritual realms, a bridge between the two . . .
It demonstrates the fortitude that comes from anchoring in an authentic, soul-led existence within this physical world.
Rather than grow deep, its roots grow wide, extending to the resources it needs to flourish and self-nurture.
It communes with the land, the waterways, and the animals that graze beneath it.
Like the willow, the broader your roots and the more anchored you are within community and the natural world, the greater your capacity to hold strong through the complex and powerful emotions that are part of the human existence.