What is Equine Therapy?

Ok, so it looks different. Why is that beneficial?

For many people, the down-to-earth, casual environment creates a level of safety that feels different from entering a professional office space. “Come as you are” is important in building a sense of belonging. We are designed to “belong” somewhere –we heal in community – so this feeling is important.

The outdoors is something that many people don’t get much of anymore. More and more people live the vast majority of their days indoors. Lots of research (which I won’t get into here) points to the decline of physical and mental health because of this shift in our daily living. So being out in the fresh air, sunshine or rain, seeing sky and trees and grass and animals, engaging all our senses, incorporating natural movement through walking and interacting with the animals – these all have an impact that is positive as we work on our mental health.

Talk therapy can only go so far. More and more research is showing the necessity of engaging our whole being in healing. We often hear from clients that traditional therapy didn’t work for them. This isn’t necessarily their fault or their old therapist’s fault! Our wounds run deep throughout our whole being – hard things, chronic stress, traumatic events… it is all stored in our body, not just in our brain. We can’t only process something verbally – we must also process it emotionally and physically. For some people, just being outdoors and incorporating natural movement is enough as we talk through things. For others, we slow down the talking and spend time processing through rhythmic movement (riding a horse, walking, stretching, rocking on chairs, etc) and through connecting with our emotional experience (naming things more deeply than “sad/mad/scared” has immense value). For many people, without processing things more holistically, talk therapy will never work, because they aren’t yet at a point in their healing where they can just implement strategies to help them change. It’s like telling someone to “just stop doing that” or “calm down.” They can’t! They need to learn how to process their experience in other ways, to get to where they can logically process and talk through healing and growth.

For example, someone struggling to leave an abusive partner won’t be able to “just leave” without finding and building up their internal sense of self-worth. To truly embody that self-worth requires them to explore their past, develop awareness and regulation of their physical, emotional, and cognitive experience, and learn to make choices and set boundaries (and hold them) to support that self-worth. They can practice all of these skills in a safe, nonjudgmental environment with the horses and their therapist. Once the self-worth is truly internalized, they take it with them into every environment – which empowers them to do something as difficult as leaving an abusive partner.

The ability to do an activity and practice what we’re talking through is also immensely beneficial. Imagine sitting through an algebra class and not practicing solving equations as you go – you’re just supposed to remember what you learned and then go out and apply it. That’s hard! Some people probably could do it, but there is an obvious benefit to practice as you learn during class. Having the horse giving real-time feedback is like having a kind and helpful teacher working alongside you. The horse is able to respond in the moment, which gives you opportunity to respond… it’s a real relationship with real dynamics and back-and-forth. Horses are also nonjudgmental and very forgiving of our mistakes, offering us a lot of grace as we learn. But they also won’t lie to us – they’ll let us know there was a mistake made! This is where the clinician comes in with their training in horsemanship to help clients understand what the horse is saying in the moment.

For example, one activity we often utilize is asking the horse to connect with us. It’s a “simple” activity that allows for a lot of nuance, so we can tailor the direction of the session based on what the client needs most. We might do this out in a field, or bring a horse into a smaller arena, then ask the client to approach and request that the horse comes over to them. Some clients march right over boldly and pet the horse on the face. Some horses are pretty comfortable with that and enjoy the “scratchies,” while others will pin their ears, tense up their body, and maybe try to move away from that invasion of their space. Some clients will stay back and ask the horse to come to them, maybe timidly or unsure about why a horse would ever choose to come to them. The clinician can help clients interpret what’s happening and make choices about what they might like to change, to better the relationship with the horse. Then the client might try again in a new way. In learning these relationship skills with the horse, the client will gain insight into their own styles of interacting (that might be healthy or need some adjusting), understanding where that style began – maybe past wounds have influenced how the client approaches new relationships or new situations. We might need to pause and check in with our own bodies, too – maybe the client is holding some tension about doing a task they think they have to accomplish perfectly or they will fail. So in our sessions, we are working in a multifaceted way to develop understanding and self-awareness, empathy and other-awareness (because sometimes it’s not you!), building new skills, regulating our nervous systems, identifying deeply-held beliefs, and creating change in our thoughts and behaviors based on our new understandings. It’s pretty powerful stuff! And it’s pretty hard to write about, because there is so much nuance. To describe every piece of what’s happening even with this simplified example, could easily fill an entire book!