From Equine Assisted to Eco Assisted

MiMer Centre has never been afraid of change, or growth. And we always have our own integrity as our guiding principle. Like anyone else, we sometimes lose what is important to us out of sight, but when that is called to our attention (in different ways), we course correct.

At times that means making small adjustments, at other times, it means making huge ones.

As an organization we have lately been through a series of tough calls, difficult obstacles and hard decisions.

It has also been a productive time for learning. Learning done the hard way, but as someone told me, that is the learning that sticks.

The challenges that we have faced have also helped us move forward. It has helped us both broaden and deepen our work. As well as firmly anchoring us in what we believe is important work to do.

And it has clarified to us what role we want to have, in a world where often the ones that shout the loudest are the ones that get heard the best – we have chosen a more low-key, but persistent way of working. That is, a role away from competing about who teaches equine assisted interventions the best. Or who can be the largest and most known deliverer of education, workshops etc, in our field

Instead, we will simply trust that the ones aligning with our work will somehow find us. And together we will figure out what you need to reach your potential and dreams.

From Equine Assisted to Eco Assisted

The ecological part has always been important to us, but we are now taking it one step further and by that changing not only our prior laid out-course, but how we name and speak about our work. We are moving from calling our work equine assisted to eco assisted. It does not mean horses disappear out of our work, it means we broaden ourselves to include not only horses, but also other being and other entities, even the whole ecology and ecological thinking from diverse areas of work and science.

It means we will expand on and update our course material. Which will take some time (You can still sign up to our old material/courses – now cheaper than ever – and they are still VERY good). Which is a good thing, as we will then have to carefully think about what kind of educations, mentorships, supervising opportunities, networking events etc we want to offer that comes from our core visions and missions, instead of “just” putting out fires, filling gaps, jump on the same band wagons as every other organization, join where we are invited and so on.

It means we are more grounded than ever today, that we have grown more stamina – or as our Finish board member Sonja Lairila perhaps would say – that we have found our Sisu.

It means we know what we know, what our strengths are and what we need and want to do. And that we are not afraid to take the lead in moving towards somewhat unknown territories.

It might sound “big” – but is more about following our hearts

As well as letting go of work that we are not cut out to do, or that is not right for us.

Personally, I believe much more in training the right people than training many people. And by the “right” people I mean the ones that feel attracted to the work we do. And I know this is not always easy to grasp (what we do), because we grow, learn and develop so fast our offers never really can keep up with our own pace.

Meaning we sometimes outrun ourselves. We have always been thorough when we have developed our trainings and other offers, but then again – when we have run them for a while, we ourselves have moved on, often both deepened and broadened our understanding, knowledge and skills – and true to ourselves we want to offer all of that to those who join us to learn and grow. Which is why manualized work and educations does not really suit our way of thinking, educating and offering support to practitioners, facilitators and students.

Which is why we are leaving traditional courses/course structures behind and will allow ourselves (as well as our students) to be more experimental and have more choices. While that might sound fluffy – it is nothing but. What it means is that we are taking our role as a thinktank seriously, and it means that we take each one of our students seriously and will match each of your engagement and willingness to dive deep into your own learning and growth.

I promise you – it will seem clearer when you get used to another way of thinking about what you need to be a fantastic eco-assisted facilitator (no matter if you are doing therapy, coaching, social work, learning etc and no matter if you want to stick to only equine assisted work or a more broad eco assisted work).

MiMer has been around since 2013 and has been a foundation/trust since 2017. And we have had engagements around the world (in more than 10 countries) – and offered all kinds of learning, growth and network opportunities, in person as well as online, to students in far more countries than those ten.

We have been a bit quiet during 2024 and so far during 2025, since we had to make some choices, that came with some consequences. During 2024 – we had to do a major course correction, and that invited us to press the pause button and do some deep thinking, as well as some checking of our compass and pondering our path ahead.

Are you interested in joining us?

Now we are on the move again. And when we build this partly new MiMer – we are looking for people who might feel called to join us.

Our website will need an update, but you find some good information about us there: www.mimercentre.org.

Another place to check us out is on our online learning platform: https://mimer-centre-school.teachable.com/

And then in the group Equine Welfare and Equine-Human Interactions that we have run as long as we have run MiMer (since 2013): https://www.facebook.com/groups/equine.welfare.and.equine.human.interactions

And then we run two other groups: Rewilding - Rewild your Heart: https://www.facebook.com/groups/rewildyourheart

And Ecotherapy and eco-mindfulness: https://www.facebook.com/groups/ecotherapy.ecomindfulness

There are a multitude of ways to join us. As a student, as a collaborator, as a host of a MiMer event/course/workshop, and even, if you have gotten to know us and feel called, you can apply to do work closer to our board/with our board.

We are still here. More than ever. More grounded than ever. Ready to follow this new and expanded path of ECO-assisted work. And where it will take us, we will only get to know by following our hearts and the path ahead – that is partly about braving some wilderness (paraphrasing one of Brené Brown’s book titles). It is about having courage to draw outside the proverbial lines, daring to offer a course-mix that is not the usual and to do it in ways we believe in, always anchoring them in what we know – right now – knowing that the only certain thing is that what we know now – will change. Still trusting that we are really good at what we do – which is to support deep learning.

If it sounds a bit rebellious – it is because it is

Part of our new path is to even firmer ask the hard questions, advocate for those who either do not have a voice or feel like they don’t. We are more than ever promoting critical thinking, inclusion and diversity, as well as responsibility and accountability.

I do want to add that all our work still is (now more than ever) trauma informed, trauma sensitive and trauma focused – in a non-pathologizing, non-medicalizing way.

Welcome to contact us if you feel curious at us and our work: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

We are looking forward to meeting you!

My warmest regards,

Katarina Felicia Lundgren, Director of MiMer Centre