Sarah Janosik is the co-founder of Relate Center, a professional therapy practice that focuses on the role that the mind, body, and emotions together play in creating change, resolving issues, and living a more satisfying life. In her work with individuals and couples, Sarah uses this holistic approach to create a much deeper experience for her clients.
Sarah’s practice includes coaching for those who are living with cancer and those who love and care for them through the Relate Center and Cowgirl Ventures.
The Relate Center is a collaboration of independent professionals providing psychotherapy and physical therapy. They treat many issues including relationship concerns, anxiety and depression, trauma recovery, female and male sexual issues, injuries and rehabilitation, chronic pain, and female and male pelvic floor issues. Services include psychotherapy, sex therapy, physical therapy, Pilates and equine-assisted learning.
We understand the body, mind and emotions all come into play, no matter what issue is at hand. Our approach is informed by our expertise and perspective cultivated through decades of practice in our respective disciplines. Working together under one roof, clients experience this convergence through a sense of being understood and fully supported in their own process.
Cowgirl Ventures was founded in 2005. The project combines unique experiential learning and professional assessments designed to understand one’s personal style and help provide innovative solutions. We offer leadership as well as professional and personal development training programs in collaboration with horses. Equine Assisted Learning is based on the belief that people learn best by direct and purposeful contact with their learning experience and can alter the way they feel, think and behave beyond habitual barriers and resistance accumulated through life. The experiential nature of Equine Assisted Learning provides an opportunity for people to fully participate with their mind, body, and emotions.
Horses are among the best guides for personal development. Horses are innately honest and authentic, making them perfect teachers for humans. Being sensitive to the environment for their survival, horses respond to both positive and negative changes in posture, stance, and breathing with other animals and people. They provide constant feedback through their whole body to incongruence between feelings and behaviors. This allows them to respond honestly and to be non-judgmental mirrors and teachers of our conscious and unconscious emotions and behaviors. Individuals learn how to use emotional, mental, and physical cues within themselves and others.
Horses are highly attuned to nonverbal communication. They have the capacity to help us to look deeply within ourselves, understand emotion as information, connect with each other in way that feels natural and authentic. They can help people learn to communicate and respond beyond the limitations of words. This process is best learned through experience.
Horses are sensitive relational beings that thrive on connection. Horses mirror our inner states. Interacting with them can help us learn how to be more present, clear, and connected to our authentic aliveness.
Working with horses teaches skills to calm and regulate your nervous system and be more present and balanced during times of stress and disconnection in yourself or those around you. The helps to reduce performance anxiety and supports the capacity for flexibility, resiliency, and well-being.
Explore aspects of power through a series of non-riding interactions with horses:
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Power to know and connect to yourself
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Power to engage body, emotions, mind, and spirit
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Power to communicate and connect authentically with others
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Power to take inspired actions in your life
Through a series of specially designed activities, participants will deepen their awareness of personal issues, core feelings, and areas of bodily tension that inhibit their ability to reach their true potential. In our hands-on non-riding activities, participants will work closely with one or more horses to experience the horse’s ability to reveal your strengths, challenges, and styles.
All of the experiences take place within a safe environment with close monitoring by a horse handler and facilitated by a therapist/horse professional. The horses are familiar and comfortable around people. In each experience, the participant can choose how close to be with the horse – inside or outside the gate, and whether to have the therapist next to them.
The horses for the workshops and therapy are carefully selected for their ability to interact with people and other animals in a calm and responsive manner. Each horse is evaluated beforehand through their nonverbal communication on their willingness to participate. On the day of the workshop, we interact with each horse, looking at their attitude and behavior to see if they seem ready and willing to be present and supportive.
Horses are co-therapists and give feedback through their responses to subtle, unconscious patterns and feelings of participants. In each experience, care and respect for the horse is equal to care and respect for the participant.
Benefits of working with Cowgirl Ventures …
Develop the ability to use the body as information and access your wisdom to become/remain “present” and “grounded” in any given moment
Become emotionally resilient by understanding and utilizing the messages of emotions
Become aware of any incongruence of feeling and behavior
Learn and understand how to use all of your senses in gathering information and making decisions
Learn and integrate how to become aware, set and maintain healthy personal boundaries
Explore leadership through interactions with our horses
Discover false self-messages that limit full participation in your life
Develop and deepen awareness of limiting patterns and behaviors
Learn skills that support a more authentic and fulfilling life
Sarah is the Co-Founder of Relate Center and of Relate Equine, where she facilitates equine-based awareness and growth workshops for individuals, families, and groups. For over two decades, she has been a business owner, director, and leader in the field of equine learning and therapy, providing equine therapeutic services to out-patient residential centers for adults in the Austin area.
She also provides coaching for individuals, families, corporate, and leadership groups. She has led and guided teams of business professionals and facilitating multiple programs at numerous locations. Sarah has always had a passion for creating, collaborating, and sharing knowledge to complement the growing field of change and healing using experiential learning.
Sarah is an Advanced Eponaquest Instructor. She was trained at an Equine Facilitated Learning Program at Epona International Study Center in Tucson, Arizona. The Epona approach focuses on the dynamic relationship of the horse and participant. The focus is on the experience in the interaction rather than on the outcome of a task or riding skills. Sarah’s mentor Linda Kohanov is an author, speaker, educator, and horse professional who has become an internationally recognized innovator in the field of Equine Facilitated Learning and leadership development. In her latest book, The Five Roles of a Master Herder, Linda has developed a unique assessment and leadership program to develop leadership skills.
Sarah received her Bachelor of Arts degree from Trinity University in Psychology. She earned her MSSW at The University of Texas at Austin in Social Work and a post-graduate internship at The University of California Medical School in San Francisco. She is certified to coach individuals in Professional DynaMetric Program (PDP), a leadership behavioral profile.
3160 Bee Cave Road, #300
Austin, Texas 78746
512 327 3723
[email protected]
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