Equine Empowered Hold Me Tight® Couples Workshop is not a Hold Me Tight® Seattle Workshop. Dennis & Kim Eames of HMTS are partnering with a group of experienced Equine Assisted Therapsits from the U.S. and Canada  to provide this unique experience harnessing the power of working with horses to learn about ourselves and our cycle. 

Equine Empowered Hold Me Tight® Couple Workshop

Hosted by Asbury University Equine Center in Wilmore, Kentucky 

horse

Join a team of EFT Therapists from across the U.S. and Canada, and the Equine Center’s horses to learn about and fight you and your partner’s “Demon Dialogue” or destructive cycle.

  • Identify and break free from patterns of conflict

  • Overcome loneliness and isolation 

  • Increase connection, intimacy, and passion

 

March  14-16

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horse

What is Hold Me Tight® Workshop?

This in-person event is designed to help couples strengthen their bond, resolve conflict more effectively, and deepen emotional intimacy. It will guide couples through transformative conversations that foster secure and loving bonds. Lunch will be provided!
This marriage retreat will include:
  • Teaching of Hold Me Tight Conversations,
  • Experiential hands on learning with horses
  • Supportive environment with therapist trained to facilitate your private break-out conversations with your partner/spouse. 

What Makes it Equine Empowered?

Horses act as mirrors to our own experience, they can give us visual feedback about our own inner worlds, the horse will be incorporate into this workshop to demonstrate connection, disconnection, and reconnection.

Couples will be given at least three or more opportunities to work hands on with a horse through a structured activity. Horse experience is not required for these activities, all activities will be done on the ground (not on horseback).

Hold Me Tight Title Font

What are the 7 Hold Me Tight® Conversations
for a Lifetime of Love?

In the first 3 conversations we learn about the cycle, your relationship’s enemy – the stuck patterns you get caught in over and over regardless of topics. Conversation 4 provides a process of identifying your core relationship needs and practice sharing them with your partner. This process becomes the antidote to the cycle or “Demon Dialogue” as Sue Johnson refers to them.

  1. Recognizing Demon Dialogues – First, you identify common behavior pattens and the emotions and intentions that drive disconnection and conflict. Then you share your basic moves and experience in the cycle with your partner.
  2. Finding the Raw Spots – Next, you find connections between your current reactive response to your partner and past raw spots from old relationship injuries, often in childhood. As you share about the a source of a raw spot with your partner it begins to help your partner see they are not the primary cause of your response.
  3. Revisiting a Rocky Moment – After you can spot your demon dialogue and increase your acceptance of both your and your partner’s parts in the cycle what do you do? Conversation 3 provides a tool for reconnecting and repairing after getting caught up by the cycle. 
  4. Hold Me Tight® – Now, building off of what you learned in the first 3 conversations you start to identify what you need with your partner to tame the cycle. Then you share with these fears with your partner and get practice letting them know what you need.
  5. Repairing Injuries – In conversation 5 you use this same process from the Hold Me Tight Conversation and apply it to a specific time of hurt in the relationship. 
  6. Bonding Through Sex and Touch – Building on what you learned about the emotional disconnect cycle and applying the same principles to the sexual disconnect cycle.
  7.  Keeping Your Love Alive – The last conversation in the program builds on the understanding that a love relationship is a continual process of losing and finding emotional connection; it helps couples to be deliberate and mindful about maintaining that connection.

Schedule:

Friday, March 14, 6p-9pm
Saturday, March 15, 9a-5pm
Sunday, March 16, 9a-5pm

Lizzy Guthrie

Elizabeth Guthrie, LMFT

Emotionally Focused Therapist

Elizabeth Guthrie is a horsewoman, and Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist. She carries a passion for walking alongside people, to help them strengthen their relationships to self, others, and God. Elizabeth is a graduate of Asbury University, and Asbury Theological Seminary. Elizabeth is an active therapist and the Director of Asbury University’s equine program.

Elizabeth focused her clinical work on integrating natural horsemanship with the use of Emotion Focused Therapy, and she enjoys utilizing this integration with a variety of populations from presenting to a group of Iranian therapists, leading equine assisted Hold Me Tight programs for trauma survivors. Elizabeth is a AAMFT approved Supervisor in training. In her spare time, she can be found biking or in nature. She enjoys taking her family on endurance bikepacking trips.

Natasha Wakefield, Registered Psychotherapist, Ontario Canada

Natasha Wakefield, RP

Emotionally Focused Therapist

I’m a Registered Psychotherapist (College of Registered Psychotherapists Ontario) with a Master’s degree in Counseling and 20 years of clinical experience working with couples, families, individuals and groups. 

In my practice, I am deliberate and genuine in my creation of a safe, judgement free zone. I provide a unique blend of attachment focused, trauma informed, evidence based talk therapy and blend it with the natural healing power and presence of horses and nature. 

Decades of neuroscience tell us that the path away from anxiety and depression, and to health and happiness, is through connection with others.  Together, we will strengthen and restructure your most important relationships, leading you to increased well-being.  I work hard to ensure that all of my clients feel safe and heard to help them heal themselves and their relationships.

Dennis Eames, MS, LMFT

Certified EFT Therapist & Supervisor

My mission is to cultivate relationships that heal both in my personal and my professional life. At Infinity EFT I assist couples, families, and individuals create secure and connected, passionate and safe relationships that last.

My wife and I have been married for over 30 years and have two apprentice adults. We moved from Alaska (where we lived most of our lives) to the Puget Sound Area of Washington State in 2021.

  • Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist, WA
  • Certified Emotionally Focused Couple, Family, & Individual Therapist & Supervisor
  • AAMFT & WA Approved Supervisor
Kim Eames

Kim Eames, LMFT

Emotionally Focused Therapist

Martin W. Bartel MTS-C,

Martin W. Bartel MTS-C, RMFT-S, RCC-ACS

Emotionally Focused Therapist

I’m a Registered Psychotherapist (College of Registered Psychotherapists Ontario) with a Master’s degree in Counseling and 20 years of clinical experience working with couples, families, individuals and groups. 

In my practice, I am deliberate and genuine in my creation of a safe, judgement free zone. I provide a unique blend of attachment focused, trauma informed, evidence based talk therapy and blend it with the natural healing power and presence of horses and nature. 

Decades of neuroscience tell us that the path away from anxiety and depression, and to health and happiness, is through connection with others.  Together, we will strengthen and restructure your most important relationships, leading you to increased well-being.  I work hard to ensure that all of my clients feel safe and heard to help them heal themselves and their relationships.

Facilitated by:

Elizabeth Guthrie LMFT, (Kentucky)
Dennis Eames LMFT, (Washington)
Martin W. Bartel MTS-C, (British Columbia)
Natasha Wakefield RP, (Alberta)
Kim Eames LMFT (Washington)

Price per Couple:

$495/couple

$345 before February 1st,

$395 before February 28th

Sign up is a two-step Process:

Submit Registration Form

Pay:

• By Venmo@James-Guthrie-27

OR

• Pay by Check (email here for info)

Venmo QR code

“I’ve done about 15 marriage workshops in the last 20 years. Hold Me Tight® workshops are the first I’ve experienced that make a lasting difference, because they go upstream to where the real problems start.”

-Jenée O’Brien

Hosted by:
Asbury University Equine Center

744 Shanty Hill
Wilmore, KY 40390
Hold Me Tight® 2025 is the registered trademark of Sue & Douglas Johnson

Equine Empowered Hold Me Tight® Couples Workshop is not a Hold Me Tight® Seattle Workshop. Dennis & Kim Eames of HMTS are partnering with a group of experienced Equine Assisted Therapsits from the U.S. and Canada  to provide this unique experience harnessing the power of working with horses to learn about ourselves and our cycle.