Bramblewood Stables

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Taylors, SC
Bramblewood Stables

Visitors by appointment only. A unique urban farm offering riding lessons and human growth

With lessons offered for all ages and abilities every day throughout the week, Bramblewood is also a full boarding and training facility. ARIA certified instructors and a magical environment are just minutes away from downtown Greenville, SC.

07/03/2025

At Bramblewood, we’ve always believed that horses have a way of helping people heal, but there’s a side of that process that doesn’t get talked about enough.

In her latest piece, Kim writes about what happens when people unknowingly project their emotions onto horses—and onto the people who work with them. It’s called Not a Mirror, Nor a Mystic, and it’s about the emotional weight horses are expected to carry in the name of healing — and what happens when they stop.

This post isn’t just for horse people. It’s for anyone who was ever expected to carry something that wasn’t theirs.

Read or listen here:
📍 https://stableroots.substack.com/p/not-a-mirror-nor-a-mystic

06/26/2025

At Bramblewood, the work doesn’t begin in the saddle. It begins long before that—on the gravel road, at the rusted gate, in the way the land asks nothing and offers everything.

We just released the second recording in the Bramblewood Regathering Series, a collection of guided audio experiences designed to bring the rhythm of the farm to you—wherever you are.

This newest piece is called The Gate Is Open.
It’s not a training session or a mindset hack.
It’s a quiet arrival. A walk into the hollow where the barn holds steady beneath the trees.
It’s for anyone who’s been bracing, and wants to remember how to soften.

🎧 The audio is free to listen.
🌿 Paid subscribers receive access to the full workbook + growing Regathering library.

Listen here:
https://stableroots.substack.com/p/the-gate-is-open

06/19/2025

At Bramblewood Stables, we’re naming what so many in the horse world are feeling.

The old model of public riding stables—built around output, optics, and squeezing one more lesson into the day—is no longer serving the people who care for horses or the horses themselves. The world is shifting, and so is the work. Costs are rising. Support is thinning. But the horses are still here. The land hasn’t stopped speaking.

What we’re doing at Bramblewood isn’t behind the times. It’s exactly what the times are asking for: slowness, relationship, nature.

For over two decades, Bramblewood has been quietly developing a new model—one rooted in presence, nervous system awareness, and horse-led connection. What we thought was survival has become authorship. And now, it’s time to name it.

This is Slow Horsemanship.

A living, relational system for horse people of all ages.
A future model rooted in something ancient.
And there’s space here if you feel the pull.

🔗 https://stableroots.substack.com/p/slow-horsemanship

06/14/2025

This week, Bramblewood Stables has been sharing the four core pillars that form the spine of its work.

It began with Riding, where boundaries and movement meet. Then came Story, where language becomes a way to integrate what the body has carried. Yesterday, we stepped into Respite—a space where presence happens and restoration becomes possible.

Today, we arrive at the fourth and final pillar—the one that gathers all the others and weaves them into a whole.

🔥 This is Pillar Four: Coaching.

Coaching at Bramblewood isn’t therapy, and it isn’t about performance. It isn’t focused on fast solutions or surface-level success. Instead, it begins in the body—where old stories live quietly in breath, posture, and the way we brace for what comes next. It begins in the nervous system, in the quiet rhythm of how we relate to pressure, to stillness, and to our own truth.

Over time, clients begin to notice the old voices that shaped the rules they didn’t realize they were still following—voices that told them to stay small, agreeable, invisible. In this work, those voices aren’t silenced or ignored. They’re named. Befriended. And then gently replaced with something more aligned with the person who’s trying to emerge.

This coaching is about recognition. Regulation. Authorship.

Some clients work remotely, by phone or Zoom. Others meet on the farm—on the porch, in the pasture, or walking through the woods. Wherever the session takes place, the approach is the same: real conversation, quiet noticing, and the slow untangling of the stories we’ve outgrown.

Many people begin with nothing more than the ache that something isn’t working. And that’s enough.
Because at Bramblewood, the work doesn’t begin with a goal.

It begins with what’s real.

And wherever it leads, we move with it—together.

🔥 This is Coaching. This is Pillar Four.

Next, we’ll share how all four pillars—Riding, Story, Respite, and Coaching—form one living structure. And how they merge with the three anchors of our work: Movement, Presence, and Voice.

06/13/2025

Pillar Three: Respite | Projection & Presence

At Bramblewood Stables, not every session involves a saddle—and that’s intentional.

Respite Sessions were first created in the early days of the pandemic, when the world felt too tight and too loud. What began as a way to offer space has since become a core part of the Bramblewood approach.

Today, every new student begins with a Respite Session. Not because we don’t trust their experience—but because we trust the land and the herd to set the tone.

These sessions aren’t about performance.
They’re about presence.

🌿Sometimes it looks like brushing a horse under the trees and talking through the weight of the week.
🌿Sometimes it’s classical groundwork—building strength and softness, one muscle at a time.
🌿Sometimes it’s bodywork, co-regulation, or simply breathing beside a horse until something shifts.

There’s no one way to experience a Respite Session.
They are shaped by the person, the horse, and the day.

But what remains constant is this: Respites allow humans to drop their agendas and meet the horse honestly. Whether someone is returning to horses after time away, beginning a new chapter, or simply seeking quiet connection, Respite is where the work begins.

For some, it’s where they stay. For others, it’s the doorway into coaching or riding.

Either way, Respite is not a fallback. It’s a foundation.

Learn more or inquire about sessions here:
https://www.bramblewoodstables.com/respite

06/12/2025

🪶 STORY | Narrative & Integration — Pillar 2 of the Bramblewood Way

At Bramblewood, we believe that story is more than memory. It’s how we metabolize experience. It’s how we revisit without reentering. It’s how we return—without erasing who we’ve become.
This is the heart of our second pillar: STORY.

Through Stable Roots, Kim Carter writes weekly reflections drawn from life at the farm. And her blog, Relatively Stable, captures the stories of people who have decided to live differently. These stories are personal, but they carry the collective weight of what it means to show up with honesty, to choose connection over control, and to stay long enough for the truth to come.

This week’s post, The Boundary is the Lesson, brings together:

– A little girl who met a horse and simply called her “warm”
– A young rider who chose groundwork over cantering
– A teenager asking to hear a story about boundaries
– And a moment of rupture between friends that led to repair

As always, the horses are at the center—not as symbols, but as witnesses. They don’t carry our stories for us, but they stand beside us as we learn how to hold our own.

🪵 Pillar 2 is STORY. And this week, The Boundary is the Lesson, is live on Stable Roots:

https://stableroots.substack.com/p/the-boundary-is-the-lesson

And also available as an audio reading on Relatively Stable (check you favorite pod platforms)

06/11/2025

At Bramblewood Stables, riding isn’t about control. It’s about boundaries.

For more than two decades, Kim Carter has led a riding program that goes beyond technique. Here, riding is a conversation—between horse and human, movement and stillness, clarity and confusion.

Students don’t come here to force results. They come to learn how to hold their own shape with kindness. How to ask without demanding. How to stay present when things don’t go as planned.

This isn’t a performance-based program. It’s a relationship-based one.

Every lesson is grounded in the belief that horses respond not to commands, but to truth. The kind that starts in the body. The kind that’s felt before it’s spoken. And the land itself—the barn, the fields, the trees—holds space for all of it.

We don’t just teach people to ride. We teach them to listen.

We’re currently welcoming new students.

If you or your child are ready to explore riding through the lens of relationship, you can learn more or reach out here:

https://www.bramblewoodstables.com/lessons

🌿

06/10/2025

Bramblewood Stables was never meant to be just another riding barn. Founder Kim Carter created it as a place to come back to herself—and over time, it’s become that place for others, too.

Not everyone sees it that way. Some come for lessons and never notice the deeper work unfolding underneath the rhythm of the barn. Some leave when they realize the program isn’t about performance.

It never was.

At Bramblewood, students are invited to show up messy. Riding is a conversation, not a command. Coaching isn’t about fixing—it’s about making space for what’s ready to surface: dreams, clarity, vision.

Here, horses aren’t used. They meet you where you are. And through it all, the land quietly holds you while you sort through what’s next.

Kim leads Bramblewood differently now than she did in 2005. She’s no longer waiting for permission. She’s shaping this work by listening to what she’s always known beneath the noise.

For the first time in two decades, she’s taking full authorship of her work—not just the writing, but the riding, the coaching, the stillness, the whole living system of it.

If you’ve been part of this story—or feel called to be—thank you.

We’re just getting started. It’s time to integrate the whole story.

06/05/2025

A new Stable Roots post (and voiceover) is now live from Bramblewood’s, Kim Carter.

This essay is a deeply personal remembrance of Brenda Boozer, a woman who helped raise a generation of strays with fierce love and an open door.

Kim was asked to speak at Brenda’s funeral when there was a question if the original speaker would be able to make it. She arrived, but Kim’s writing wouldn’t stop. What followed became a reflection on chosen family, Southern legacy, grief, forgiveness, and love that outlives us.

“She didn’t just mother her own kids—she mothered all of us. The wild ones. The ones who didn’t know what home meant yet.”

This piece is part eulogy, part return, and part blueprint for how we carry the ones we’ve loved forward.

You can read or listen to Where the Wild Roses Grow now on Stable Roots.

👉 https://stableroots.substack.com/p/where-the-wild-roses-grow

Address

175 McConnell Road
Taylors, SC
29687

Telephone

+18643633727

Website

http://www.bramblewoodstables.com/, https://stableroots.substack.com/

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