Berkman Academy
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Berkman Academy
Most therapy sessions end with homework. This one ends with evidence.
In most traditional therapies we tell the client: "try this at home".
The change is supposed to happen after the session. Out in the world. Sometimes it does. Sometime it doesn't.
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In Tamir's sessions, the change happens in the arena.
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The client works with a horse in real time. The horse responds honestly to what the client is actually doing. When the client shifts their behaviour, the horse shifts its response.
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The client doesn't leave with a strategy to try. They leave with something that already happened in their body. Not a plan. A memory of already doing it.
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That's the difference between insight and change. And it's the difference between sending someone home with homework and watching them walk out knowing they already did it.
Tamir speaks from a place most clinicians dream of
It's not another therapy room. He doesn't even sit down, and the session isn't about talking.
Tamir works from Berkman Academy, an equine assisted therapy center in Melbourne's outer east, where a horse is about to tell you more about your nervous system than three years of talk therapy did.
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His work sits at the intersection of trauma, embodied practice, and behaviour change. The body keeps the score, and the arena is where the score gets rewritten. In practice.
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What makes his voice different is that he's not describing a model. He's describing what happened last Tuesday with a real person, a real horse, and a change that nobody in the room expected.
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He works with kids who've been told they can't engage. With veterans who haven't said the thing out loud to anyone. With adults whose bodies carry what words haven't been able to reach. And he brings those stories into every room he speaks in, not as illustrations, but as evidence.
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The audience leaves knowing something they didn't know before. Not a framework to implement. A shift in how they understand what change actually requires.
Tamir brings a talk that captivates, inspires and engeges.
Tamir speaks across a range of topics that draw from the same body of work, and can tailor any session to the specific audience and context.
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Trauma and the body. Why trauma lives in the nervous system, not the narrative, and what that means for how change actually happens.
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Embodied behaviour change. The difference between understanding something and doing it. What it looks like when the learning happens in the body, in the moment, rather than in the mind between sessions.
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Nature, movement and horses as therapeutic tools. How working outside, with animals and with physical movement, accesses parts of the human experience that a consulting room can't reach.
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Body language and nonverbal communication. What we communicate without words, what we miss when we only listen to what's said, and what a horse teaches you about the gap between the two.
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Resilience that sticks. Why resilience built through doing is more durable than resilience built through insight, and what the conditions for that kind of change actually look like.
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Leadership and followership. What a horse herd reveals about the kind of leader people actually choose to follow, and why safety matters more than authority when you want a team that stays.
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Teams, trust and communication. How trust breaks down silently, what mixed signals cost a team, and what working together with a horse in real time shows you about the way your team actually functions versus how you think it does.
Who books Tamir?
Allied health professionals and clinical teams seeking CPD that changes how they practice, not just what they know.
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School wellbeing coordinators and educators who are holding students that every other referral has missed.
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Community organisations and youth services working with young people who have complex needs and haven't connected with anything in a room.
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Corporate and leadership teams ready to understand what safe leadership actually looks and feels like, from an animal that has no interest in your title.
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Formats
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Keynote, 45 to 60 minutes.
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Workshop, half day.
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On-site experience at Berkman Academy, half or full day. Professional development day for clinical or school staff teams.
About the speaker
Tamir Berkman is the founder of Berkman Academy, an equine assisted therapy and counselling practice in Bayswater North, Melbourne.
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He is a qualified counsellor registered with the Australian Counselling Association, a veteran, and spent 25 years as a corporate marketing manager and consultant to some of Australia's leading brands, non-profits, and government bodies.
He works weekly with NDIS participants, veterans, young people who won't engage with traditional therapy, and corporate teams.
He has presented to the Mental Health Professionals' Network and speaks regularly to allied health and education audiences on embodied approaches to therapeutic change.
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He doesn't speak from research. He speaks from what he saw in the arena this week.
Let's talk about your event.
Every booking starts with a short conversation. Tamir responds within two business days.
0405 689 210