Day Women's Well-Being Horse Retreat in NC

Endings and Beginnings - Letting go and moving on through EFEL

December 27th to 30th, 2025

We do horse retreats in Equine Facilitated Experiential Learning (EFEL) at our farm here in Western North Carolina.

The focus of our retreats is Well-Being, Empowerment, and positivity. All the work with the horses and donkeys is done from the ground, so no riding experience is necessary. Our retreats involve experiential individual work with the horses and also include mindfulness, meditative movement, tons of time in nature, and amazing, healthy food.

Our retreats are small so as to provide our guests with the opportunity to be fully engaged in everything we do. Many of our guests have called the retreats life-changing.

Imagine 4 days- all about you. In Nature. Guided by a loving and wise herd of horses, miniature donkeys, and even a steer. Healthy & delicious food. A healing Reiki or massage session. A gorgeous tiny home cabin in the woods. And endless time to focus on your heart. Intentions and reigniting that which brings you joy.

The Retreat Experience

This small women’s retreat is a unique opportunity to hone your writing skills as we use the land, the Earth, and the equines as inspiration. We will convene at the beautiful 28-acre Imagine Equus Farm where you will enjoy both quiet and space and also group interaction.

Part of your days will be spent doing Equine Facilitated Experiential Learning as a way to open your mind to a different way of seeing, being, and connecting. We will experiment with the place this takes us and our writing.

As with most of our retreats at Imagine Equus Farm, the timing of this retreat is very purposeful. We will look at and finish out the year past. We will also use this time to refresh and rejuvenate ourselves for the new year- thus Endings and Beginnings.

Join us for this unique Equine Experiential Learning Retreat held in the Foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains in Western North Carolina. We will be combining our days working first with the horses doing experiential work.

Then in the afternoons, we will work with an experienced professional writer doing exercises and looking at how the experiential horsework impacts ourselves and our writing. Through the experiential horse experiences, we will go deeper into ourselves tapping into our innate intuition. This retreat is designed to be a canvas for your creative juices to flow.

Our focus will be on endings and beginnings…This is a perfect opportunity to finish the year 2025 focusing on you and your own desires. How much of your time is taken up by things you don't really love? We will close out unfinished "business" for the year and turn our intention to our new desires for 2026.

Endings and Beginnings are designed to dig deep into that which brings you passion and joy and to bring that out. The work with the horses will all be groundwork, so no riding experience is necessary. We will, however, be working closely with the horses, so closed-toe shoes will be required.

As with all of our retreats at Imagine Equus Farm, there is a large emphasis on providing you with a peaceful oasis wherein you can let the rest of the world slide away and give yourself the gift of focus just on you. The meals we share will be healthy, tasty, and nourishing.

You will stay in beautifully designed and appointed tiny home cabins or in spectacular nearby vacation villas or cabins where the focus is your comfort and a gorgeous setting. We want you to have a place to relax, your mind to expand and your spirit to soar.

Time seems to be the one thing there is never enough of. What if we could make more of it to spend doing the things we love most? We will seek during our retreat to use the wisdom of the horse to look at things like how we physically use our time and what consumes the most of it. And how we can shift to a place where we spend more of our time doing what we love.

With the direction of the horses and tapping deep into our own intuition, we will seek guidance so we may use our time in ways that are the most fulfilling and feel best for us. Similarly, we will identify and banish the habits and behaviors that have been hijacking our lives and consuming our headspace in 2025.

The intent of the work we do here is to let you learn through experience with the equines, yourself, and even the group. We also want to provide you with an exciting, thought-provoking, and relaxing getaway.

Much thought has gone into the cabins and places you will be staying in so that it can be your peaceful oasis away from home. The food we serve during the retreat is local organic, healthy, and delicious. We want your time here at Imagine Equus Farm to be incredible! We also want the experience to provide you with the insight and excitement to integrate some of what you experience here into your everyday life.

So why an EFEL retreat? Well, first horses are awfully cool to be around. The work we will do with the horses is “experiential” in nature. That means you learn by doing and engaging rather than being told or talked at. No lectures here. This retreat is not about riding the horses either.

Rather, it is about finding ways to connect with them- to understand them at a different level. Why might you want to do that? Horses are amazing communicators. They have an incredible ability to stay present and read energy.

As such, they are also wonderful teachers to help us develop an ability to be really present, be aware of, and read, incongruity in ourselves and others, and be overall more centered and grounded. Horses are generous teachers, and if we listen, they can help us with our inner balance and overall well-being.

During our retreat time, we will be spending time with horses and donkeys. However, since all of the work with the equines is groundwork, no riding skills or previous horse experience is required.

You deserve an experience and time that is just about you. Leave the rest of it behind and come join us for this one-of-a-kind women’s retreat!

Benefits

Rediscover yourself after too long of feeling disconnected
Learning by doing and engaging rather than being told or talked at
Be overall more centered and grounded
Be really present
The ideal place to unplug, slow down that fast pace, and get back in touch with nature
Be more relaxed and refreshed than you’ve ever been
Become stronger mentally and find inner peace
A chance to get away and step aside from all the hustle and bustle of city life
Peace and quiet for the mind, refreshing energy for the body
The ideal location to unplug and enjoy the beauty of nature
Drop out of “normal life” for a period
Have a wonderful time learning a different practice than your own

Reignite your inner heart space & creativity


What Makes This Retreat Special

Our Women's Retreats are specially designed to be all about you!

We get that, for the majority of women, life is just too busy.

Whether you are a professional, a stay-at-home mom, or a caretaker for a parent, the thing that seems consistent is that there is never enough time left for you at the end of the day.

Does life feel even too crowded to find the time to consider change?

Or just being able to do something for yourself?

Our retreats are designed to be an opportunity for you to stop, focus, and really begin to tap back into what feels important to you again.

How do we do that?

All of our retreats incorporate some form of Equine Facilitated Experiential Learning or EFEL.

We get right into nature and with the horses you have the ability to redirect your time to you on our 4-day journey to reignite your passion and joy.

Your Retreat Facilitator Kim Kupferer, has put together a unique program for each retreat wherein participants will have experiences with the horses and donkeys.

We focus on "experiential learning" with the horses which means that you are actively engaging with them and having an experience rather than being talked at.

The horses are amazing teachers and through EFEL show us horse wisdom such as non-verbal communication, authenticity, balance, energy awareness, boundaries, intuition, true leadership, mindfulness, appreciation and fully living in the moment.

While not therapy, the impact of the work with the horses and donkeys can be eye-opening and life-changing.

All of our work is done from the ground, so no riding experience is necessary.

We really seek to provide you with a magical and wonderful time while you are here.

We also strive to equip you with the tools needed to carry that balance and harmony into your everyday life.

For this retreat, we will have the added bonus of focusing on writing for several sessions where we look at how our experiential work with the horses opens us in different ways with our written word.

We are really excited to add this unique component to this retreat.

We are looking forward to looking at how you tell your story and how that changes as we do the experiential work with the horses.

We also love this retreat because of the intentional timing of being at the end of the year.

We will focus a lot of our time on releasing what we need to from 2025 and using some kind of horse wisdom and self-focus to direct & empower our plan for 2026!

Finally, we are unique in that not only are our retreats really small, but they are also held on our land and farm.

Your retreat center for the time you are here has been created by our facilitator on our 28 acre land that is home to our herd.

So you get to me with and see them in their natural environment.

We maintain the sacredness of this place year round.

When you are here you will get to know the animals, trees, creeks and land as well as enjoying a memorable and positive retreat.