TAONARA Course Centre

Educating people in the Way of the Horse

In the menu on the left you’ll find information about our courses, the teachers, our location and how to enlist.

The Academy Of Natural Academic Riding Art
Riding Art, Science and Spirituality in one unique recipe!

TAONARA stands for The Academy Of Natural Academic Riding Art and arose from the ever growing demand of the occasional courses held at Equihof. Even though the market seems full with courses on Horse training and riding, there is a new growing demand for a different way of interacting and training with Horses.

Most of the nowadays training methods are still based on the way we used horses centuries ago. The result of that is that most methods often are more in spite of the horse then in service of the horse. The courses at TAONARA are based on the newest scientific research, old spiritual wisdom from West and East and classical and academic horse training methods which have proven their benefit for the Horse over many eras and which find more and more back up within scientific research.

All trainings given at TAONARA are based on the biomechanics of horse and rider and the natural laws that apply for each individual situation. That is why we can explain every lesson in a transparent and logical way. Therefore there is a theoretic part before every practical part.

The most striking core of TAONARA however is that we view the horse as an intellectual being with his own culture. That very Equine intellectual and culture has allowed the specie Equus to survive very successfully over millions of years amongst the many larger predators and the various other huge life threatening dangers. The fine tuning that was caused by this way of survival and which has been perfected with each and every generation presence the horse with the ability to help humans to develop themselves in general, physical, mental and even spiritual way.

Therefore TAONARA presence a full course range each year given by Josepha Guillaume and several host teachers.

Within the Natural Academic Riding Art we (only) use a soft cavesson, a cordeo, a lunge line and a clicker.

Hence the  name

TAONARA are the first letters of each word of The Academy Of Natural Academic Riding Art.

TAO means ‘philosophy’ and ‘NARA’ is a region in Japan where the modern Buddhism was shaped from the battle between what was called science and what was called magic. The truth lies somewhere in between.

There  is no such thing as coincidence.