What is Equine Therapy?
Equine Therapy, Equine-Assisted Psychotherapy, or Equestrian Therapy, is a behavioral health modality that incorporates contact with horses into treatment. It may involve therapeutic riding horses or simply interacting with them, observing them, and experiencing the calming, connecting effects that horses have on many people. There are several therapeutic benefits that equine therapy offers.
Exposure to the beauty of horses and how it makes humans feel to be around them has been anecdotally understood for many hundreds of years. Equine-assisted therapy formally incorporates these benefits into therapy in a structured way.
For equine activities to qualify as therapy, the equine therapist must be an equine specialist and certified therapeutic riding instructor as well as someone who has undergone extensive mental health education and training, to ensure that contact is targeted and psychotherapeutic. Sometimes these two functions can be provided by two different people, as when a psychotherapist works together with an equine specialist to provide complete equine-related treatments and other therapy programs such as cognitive behavioral therapy, experiential therapy, and more.
This form of therapy has been used to treat the symptoms of addiction, depression, anxiety, eating disorders, physical limitations, and many other kinds of suffering affecting women. It is believed to work through the mechanism of promoting empathy, heightened awareness, self-awareness, and confidence. It affects pathways of the nervous system and works on the mechanisms of co-regulation, in part, as well as through physical contact and the beneficial effects of physical activity and spending time outdoors.
It has been used also to treat physical health conditions and forms of medical disability or genetic syndromes, such as cerebral palsy, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, and traumatic brain injuries, and is considered, overall, to have many wide-ranging applications related to bringing holistic health and balance.
At Villa Kali Ma, we offer equine therapy as a part of our mental health treatment programs, our trauma work, and our addiction recovery offerings. We do this because we’ve experienced firsthand the ways that this therapy helps integrate healing lessons around health, happiness, emotional growth, communication skills, emotional challenges, and sustainable recovery. We also include it in recognition of the growing body of evidence indicating its healing potential such as equine-assisted physical therapy. When you practice vulnerability by understanding the horse’s behaviors through horse care, it can work wonders during horse riding.
How Does Equine Therapy Help During Recovery?
Equine therapy has been demonstrated to assist women who are seeking to recover from trauma, mental health struggles, and/or addiction, and is especially effective when used in combination with a comprehensive addiction treatment program that addresses all aspects of being.
It works because horses naturally pick up on the moods, emotions, and energies of human beings. The specific horses and ponies used are chosen and trained for traits like patience and calm, as well as a great ability to not be disturbed by any discordant energies presented by a patient of the treatment due to mental disorders.
Because the horses that are used are steady, settled, and emotionally attuned to the person receiving treatment, they can serve as a source of nervous system co-regulation which provides great therapeutic value and therapeutic purposes to those struggling with mental health conditions.
Horses are naturally known to tap into subtle signals, are very intuitive, and can sense what people need and feel. For these reasons, horses and ponies that are trained to assist can help hold, modulate, and reduce chaotic emotional energies being experienced in the nervous systems of clients who are struggling with mental health problems, trauma, and addiction.
The wordless, soothing bond of connection created between a horse and the recipient of treatment is an experiential learning for the client, who is allowed to feel what a deep, calming bonding with a safe other feels like. It goes beyond traditional treatment in talk therapy. The immediate feedback that animal therapy gives is worthwhile.
This deep learning then is translatable to other areas of life experience, having deeply positive knock-on effects in the realm of relationships as well as in the personal ability to self-regulate. For many wounded women, the experience of connecting without words with a horse conveys for the first time what calm holding and nonjudgmental witnessing feel like in the nervous system.
The Benefits of Equine Therapy
Equine therapy is associated with positive changes in a variety of domains. It is noted for its ability to alleviate symptoms of PTSD, as well as reduce stress. It helps with depression and anxiety both and is linked to an improved ability to learn and form new, positive patterns and habits across all areas of one’s life.
For women who tend to become ensnared in destructive relationship patterns, it helps correct one’s emotional experience of closeness, appropriate boundaries, and healed trust in interpersonal interactions. Complementary therapies in a clinical practice navigate an individual’s emotional challenges in slightly a different way.
It is believed to calm emotional distress and to have long-lasting effects by changing the ways that negative emotions are processed in the patient’s nervous system. Through sessions, we can internalize mechanisms of reducing and releasing over-charged distressing emotional sensations. This means we self-restore to states of safety and well-being. The implications of this factor suggest that equine therapy is a strong trauma modality.
Villa Kali Ma includes equine therapy in part for this purpose, because that which has wounded us the most is often pre-verbal and may respond better to interventions that assist and support the body to release pain and heal wounds without having to verbally explain every detail of the disturbing memories. Mental health professionals during equine-assisted therapies will be able to assist women to heal and grow.
In addition, a mental health professional shares the observation, and leads to the following positive effects:
- Greater emotional awareness, empathy, and self-understanding
- Improved self-esteem, assertiveness, and confidence
- Ability to form better bonds with others and maintain relationships over time
- Greater trust, in oneself and also in others
- Practicality and problem-solving skills
- Greater willingness to explore, experiment, and learn through interacting with the physical and natural world
Types of Equine Therapy activities
There are several ways of interacting with horses and ponies that may be used in a comprehensive treatment plan.
Equine-assisted Learning is a category of equine therapy activities that is centered on developing what are called “life skills” through interactions with horses. Life skills in recovery such as impulse control, emotional self-regulation, and discerning somatic boundaries are possible to develop through working with horses therapeutically.
Additionally, through learning and practicing specific equestrian activities and skills involved with caring for horses, such as learning how to bathe, feed, groom, lead horses, and ride them, people in equine therapy programs can have the experience of facing challenges, thereby developing confidence, self-esteem, and more positive outlooks on life at large through overcoming them. Equine therapies can help significantly with therapy horses for those who experienced trauma.
These life skills of confidence, impulse control, and emotional self-regulation, greatly empower us to navigate through other aspects of our lives, as well, which is why they are considered life skills.
We can discover previously unknown potentials for better focus, self-mastery, and general effectiveness, which helps us do our best in school, work, and relationships with others.
Hippotherapy is another category of equine therapy, which focuses on the ways that the movements of horses can be used to help with sensory processing. This operates through the ways that our nervous systems can understand and learn from the nervous systems of horses.
Hippotherapy is usually used with people who might seek occupational therapy or speech therapy and works with those of us who are overcoming a motor or neurological disability. The mechanisms that make hippotherapy successful, however, work on anyone and can provide benefits for anyone seeking greater coherence and reconnection between body and mind internally.
Therapeutic horseback riding is also used in equine therapy, and it involves the activities and benefits related to learning over time to ride horses. With support from an equine therapy practitioner, horseback riding leads to deep bonds of communication between animal and rider. It is also a pathway for improving self-confidence, and greater feelings of security in the physical body, and has positive effects on the nervous system as rider and horse synch in shared rhythms.
Finally, there is a version of equine therapy known as Equine-assisted Psychotherapy, which directly works with clients to meet psychotherapeutic goals, in an equestrian setting. Equine-assisted Psychotherapy activities are tailored towards reducing symptoms associated with trauma, mental health problems, and substance use disorders. Similarly, equine-facilitated psychotherapy can assist teens and children alike.
As such, activities and interactions with horses are shaped towards learning how to reset the nervous system to peace and safety after activation into fight-flight states, how to stop and redirect negative loops of recovery-interfering thoughts and behaviors, and improving feelings of relatedness and belonging.
Villa Kali Ma Offers Equine Therapy for Women in California
At Villa Kali Ma, equine therapy is an integrated part of our holistic treatment program for women. We use holistic therapy in our offerings for women who are recovering from trauma, mental health struggles, addiction, and any combination of these three factors. Equine therapy is available through our residential treatment program, as well as in our Outpatient offers for women in the community. Equine-assisted therapy’s sole purpose is to help individuals heal physically, psychologically, and mentally.
If treatment here at Villa Kali Ma isn’t accessible for you at the moment, you may be able to access addiction therapy services in your local area, or close by. More and more equine therapy centers are popping up around the United States. Look for someone who seems credible and safe to you, and pay attention to how you feel, because Equine Therapists need to feel trustworthy and appropriately experienced to help you in equine-assisted therapy.
Equine therapy holds much promise as a standalone therapy and can provide many benefits. If you are looking into equine-assisted therapy specifically to address your mental health, addiction, or trauma challenges, however, we do encourage you to also seek help in the form of a structured treatment program that includes psychotherapy as well. Types of holistic therapy are powerfully effective when used in combination with a whole package of treatment modalities. Contact us today to begin your journey to healing and recovery.
