A Message from Dr. Stephanie Burns

Enroll in You Hold the Reins

Teachers, books, and online lessons are the source of WHAT we want to learn, know, or do.

Few mentors have the time to teach you HOW to apply the skills of a lesson into a learning process that embeds the skill in your behavior.

The You Hold the Reins series teaches YOU how to take what you see, what you hear, and what feedback you receive, and direct your own learning.

You will learn how to practice effectively and efficiently, install new skills, develop them to the point where you can perform them without thinking, and improve the ones you already possess, including when you're stuck.

Our mentor is Dr. Stephanie Burns, an International expert in adult learning, human behavior, and the brain.

You Hold the Reins
is a 3-Part Online Webinar Series with Q&A Sessions

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Following This Program, You Will:

  • CHOOSE your lesson sources, such as trainers, clinics, books, YouTube videos, and more.
  • WATCH what is being taught, practice with a teacher, or get feedback.
  • THEN go home, and CONTROL YOUR LEARNING PROCESS.

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You Will Learn HOW to Learn.

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Webinar One:

A Path to DEVELOPING NEW SKILLS and Knowledge: Deep Learning

Webinar Two:

STRENGTHENING NEW SKILLS and Knowledge - Executing Without Thinking

Webinar Three:

IMPROVING AN EXISTING SKILL You Mastered Earlier –
Changing Long-term Memory

Become a more effective student.
Grow your skills more efficiently.

Who is this series for?

1. Riders of all levels and disciplines who want to learn more efficiently, and have more ways to respond when what they're doing now fails to be effective and causes them:

* To do the same thing over and over again, hoping it will work better next time
* Frustration

* Giving up

* Blaming the teacher, the horse, or other people.

2. Those who recognize that learning is a superpower that unlocks the vault for riders to grow their skills most efficiently, believe in themselves, and become more confident.

3. Trainers, teachers, coaches, parents, friends, and mentors of all sorts, who want to understand more about how students can help themselves learn.

WEBINAR ONE: June 9, 6:00 PM, CST

NO PROBLEM if you can't attend a live. It will be recorded and accessible indefinitely within 36 hours on the YHR Website.
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A Path to DEVELOPING NEW SKILLS and Knowledge:
Deep Learning

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IT ALL STARTS HERE.

In this first session, we'll build a map of the learning process, including the development of new knowledge and skills in the brain.

We'll work on solidifying our understanding of what learning is and what it is not.

Understanding does not necessarily lead to learning, and it is crucial to be able to make this distinction in our pursuit of goals.

In a perfect world, education would be driven by a teacher, but today, much of the process WILL be in your hands. To drive this process, you will need this foundational knowledge.

We will focus on developing a new skill or knowledge area from scratch. We'll apply our theory of the learning process and create a set of strategies that relate directly to introducing new knowledge and skills to your brain.

In this First Webinar, You Will:

  • Learn the distinction between acquiring information and developing knowledge and skills
  • Understand what it means to install complex skills in the brain through a learning path.
  • Discover HOW to introduce your brain (and body) to a new skill from scratch – installing it.
  • Understand the concept of deconstructing a skill or knowledge area into its elements.
  • Decipher which sources provide quality information to you as the student: teachers, books, videos, and podcasts.

WEBINAR TWO: June 16th, 6:00 PM CST

NO PROBLEM if you can't attend a live. It will be recorded and accessible indefinitely within 36 hours on the YHR Website.
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STRENGTHENING NEW SKILLS and Knowledge -
Executing Without Thinking

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In this second session, we'll explore the process of taking a newly built skill or knowledge area and advancing it.

This is the second phase of learning, where all new skills and knowledge must be cultivated to ensure we can access them automatically in the future.

We'll achieve this by learning how to strengthen the memory networks we have already built, so that the newly acquired skills can be executed or recalled without conscious thought.

The strategies we discuss will be specific to this stage of development.

In this Second Webinar, You Will:

  • Review the limitations of short-term memory.
  • Learn strategies for strengthening memory networks.
  • Discover how to build a progressive learning map to guide your study or practice.
  • Know how to detect when a change is occurring.
  • Understand the process of a new skill smoothing out and recalling new knowledge more quickly
    until it requires no conscious thinking.
  • Discover how to minimize the installation of bad habits and weaknesses.

WEBINAR THREE: June 23rd, 6:00 PM CST

NO PROBLEM if you can't attend a live. It will be recorded and accessible indefinitely within 36 hours on the YHR Website.

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IMPROVING AN EXISTING SKILL You Mastered Earlier –
Changing Long-term Memory

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We're not done yet!

In this third session, we'll tackle yet another skill development aspect.


Often, when building new skills, they may not be executed to the level we had hoped for.


We practice and practice, but they don't improve. We can feel stuck, akin to hitting a plateau.


The session focuses on the strategies for navigating potential roadblocks and improving an existing skill.

In This Third Webinar, You Will:

  • Deconstruct it again, find faults, and overflow errors.
  • Come to understand that you cannot pay attention to two things at the same time. One element at a time.
  • Discover that you want to prioritize consistency over accuracy for this process.
  • Teach your brain the changes in the movement pattern, or fix up misunderstood knowledge.
  • Turn it over to your brain. You get to play coach.
  • Lock it in.
  • Feel the difference between the old way and the new way. Make what was hard easy and what was easy hard.
  • Discover the birth of a new habit.
  • Stitch improved behaviors into the whole.

AFTER EACH of the THREE SESSIONS...

Barb will share perspectives and potential applications for our horses based on the strategies presented in the previous webinar.

Barb will release a short video with examples for how to potentially integrate the concepts from the previous webinar into our riding.

BONUSES!

BONUS TRAINING #1

Making Memories Training

In this recording, you'll discover how to create lasting memories.

It will build on our sessions, providing deeper insights and strategies for creating lasting memories.

Memory is your asset; memorizing is a skill that allows you to do amazing things with it.

When you are done, you will be able to 'play with' specific strategies for whatever you want to do:

  • Your brain needs to know that you want it to remember!
  • Creating a memory is not a passive activity. It's like doing what you did to learn stuff in school. You DID SOMETHING.
  • The 'something' you do has to make sense in how the brain creates memories.
  • The speed, ease, and efficiency of remembering something have only to do with how you do it.
  • How good or not suitable you are at making something memorable has NOTHING to do with age or intelligence.
  • If you have effective strategies for memorizing things, you will be able to memorize them more quickly. If you didn't or don't, you will memorize new information more slowly. FULL STOP. It is not magic.
  • Memorizing something takes a short amount of intense, concentrated time. That effort pays off for all future times when you can confidently access that information or skill. What's best about it is that it's a one-time effort; once it's completed, it's done.
  • Nobody becomes a good memorizer without practice.
  • Having something deeply memorized eliminates fear and anxiety about forgetting during performances.

BONUS TRAINING #2

Bonus Live Webinar
Date and Time to be Announced.

When Fear or Anxiety Rears Its Head

Being afraid can be a realistic roadblock to getting where we want to go with specific goals
we are aiming to achieve. The simplistic cliché of ‘feel the fear and do it anyway’, in what
can be high-risk activities, such as horse riding, is crazy. It can put you on a path to being
injured or worse.
“You cannot rightly be called a wimp when you avoid or delay activities that scare you.”
~S. Burns

So, what do we do when fear or anxiety rears its head?
In the late 1990s, Stef completed her Ph.D. titled: The Emotional Experience of Adult
Learners. It covered the effects of all types of emotion on learning behaviour. Then, as it
happened, the sole focus on fear and anxiety emerged during a project in the world of
horses and riders. Her book, Move Closer Stay Longer was published as a result of this work
and is still in wide circulation today. There are many 1000s of people from both within and
outside the horse world who will attest to the success of the strategy taught in the book.
In this bonus webinar, Stef is not talking about the book, but teaching much of what is in the
book. It’ll be a reminder for some and new thinking for others. A fear of something can rear
its head unexpectedly at any time. Best to be prepared.

This session will explore:

  • Being afraid
  • The nature of fear and anxiety
  • The action-readiness program triggered by an emotion affects behaviour
  • Fear and anxiety is always about something specific
  • What you can expect from the transformation of fear
  • The process for finding the specific triggers for your reaction

BONUS TRAINING #3

Live Webinar led by Barbra
Date and Time to be Announced.

The Language of Feel

It’s a live webinar training led by Barb, during which she’ll share a system for learning how to develop feel with your horse.

In this bonus, The Language of Feel, Barb will introduce you to a system of communicating and connecting with a horse through feel. It’s the same system she’s taught to hundreds of riders with tremendous success.
The strategy is straightforward, not mystical.
When you practice consistently, it becomes a way of riding that underpins everything you do in the saddle with your horse.

What we’ll do:

  • Delineate the terms, relationship, feel, and connection.
  • Explore the sequence of mind-body synchronization and understand why this learning feel strategy is designed this way.
  • Share exercises to help you develop feel with your horse in the saddle.
  • Give examples of how you can integrate these fundamentals of communication into your technical skill practice.
  • Use your warm-up to practice these skills as well as strengthen other mechanics you may be working on for your discipline.
  • Take time during the Workshop to strategize how this could be used in a sequence during a maneuver with your horse.

What others are saying about learning from Stef and Barb

"I have known Stef Burns for more than thirty years. To put it mildly, Stef’s work is profound.

Her ideas and strategies build on each other and continue to grow over time, leading to life-long learning, regardless of what the personal stories might be.

She is always inspirational. This is because her work is based on professional research and is planned and executed with precision.

Everything she does is done with a clear purpose in mind - to support people to pull down the walls that impede their learning and being."


~ Mark J DeGaris BEd - Advanced Skills Teacher. 35 years experience in Education

"Hearing Dr Burns' message has helped me in turning my thoughts around. I'm turning 75 this month and I work every day in changing my thinking to "I don't know but I'm going to try" and then move forward. It's hard for sure but I see improvement every day. "

- JB

"Your webinar has really helped me see that everything is going along as it should, I actually am slowly improving and what I've learned here is going to help me keep the frustration out of it and allow it and other future learning opportunities be so much more enjoyable.
I'm grateful to know I'm never too old to change my brain!
Thanks so much Dr Stef and Barb."

- RG

Meet Dr. Stephanie Burns, Our Awesome Mentor

'Stef' specializes in human behavior and the development of the adult brain and body. She is known for working with adults who want to cultivate new skills and has focused on this topic for decades.

She is most passionate about the results people have when they understand and implement the knowledge and practical suggestions in these webinars.

She's worked internationally with various groups, including corporations, education departments, musicians, horsemen, and athletes. Her book Move Closer Stay Longer was written for horsemen and women who, at some point, encountered fear in their time with horses.

Barbra Schulte - Your Host

A singular desire drives Barbra - to help others grow their potential inside and outside of the arena.

 

She is a High-Performance Coach, cutting horse trainer, the author of six books, the publisher of video blogs and online programs, clinician, and speaker.

 

As a national cutting horse competitor, Barbra was the first woman to win two legs of cutting's triple crown. In 2000, she was awarded the National Female Equestrian of the Year Award by the AQHA and the Women's Sports Foundation.

 

In 2012, she was inducted into the National Cowgirl Hall of Fame. In 2020, she received the American Horse Publications Equine Industry Vision Award for her positive impact on the horse industry. In 2022, she received the Modine Smith Humanitarian Award from the National Cutting Horse Association.

 

Barb is the CEO of the Center for Equestrian Performance. She lives in Brenham, Texas, with her husband, Tom.

ENROLL NOW IN

YOU HOLD THE REINS

Step into a world of self-led learning, self-belief, and self-confidence!

Three-Part Webinar Program

$197
One Payment Option

ENROLL WITH ONE PAYMENT

Three-Part Webinar Program

Two payments of $99
2nd payment billed after 30 days

ENROLL WITH TWO PAYMENTS

If, for any reason, you are not completely satisfied with this program within the next two weeks, we will refund your money.