Our service aims to improve the overall well-being of community members, and therefore reduce suicide and crime in the community. By including horses and other therapy animals, we also aim to promote empathy across species and help people to access the wisdom of animals. Through psycho-education, participants will learn how animals self-regulate, set boundaries, and embody the here and now.
Our practice allows for participants’ autonomy and focuses on experiential learning where individuals are given unique feedback. Through the process of equine-assisted learning, participants will reconnect to their bodies and balance their head, heart, and hara (gut intelligence). Balance, awareness, and choice will open the door to personal power and emotional well-being.
Horses provide unique and immediate “in the moment” feedback, and the way that we reflect upon this feedback can be a powerful tool for change. Therefore, including our equine change agents, as well as other therapy animals, can help people with the following:
Inhabiting the here and now; living in the present
Inhabiting our physical body
Using feelings as information to foster emotional congruence and authenticity
Breathing and using our senses to self-regulate
Increasing self-awareness, choice, and responses
Improving both verbal and non-verbal communication skills, and enhancing one’s capacity to communicate with both directness and subtlety.
Exploring expression and boundaries in relationships
Forming authentic and trusting relationships
Developing leadership skills
Participating in mind-body experiences in order to develop new neural pathways.
Horses do not judge and do not manipulate. Nor do they discriminate based on socioeconomic status or income. Horses respond to people uniquely, based on the individual’s inner substance. Horses often seem to know what we need and what we are feeling.
As horses are large prey, play, and herd animals, interactions have the potential to be intense or confronting. But they can also build confidence and provide rich metaphors to help us understand and better manage other areas of our lives.
Horses are social animals with distinct personalities, needs, and relationships within the herd. As such, different horses will respond differently to the same stimuli. As with humans, what works with one horse, might not work with the next. However, unlike many humans, horses are naturally honest and live their experience. If they don’t like something, we will see it played out in their behaviour. Horses are also prey animals, and so they are highly attuned to their environments. Their non-verbal communication is subtle, decisive, and a necessary form of communication for the survival of the species.
Horses’ clear, direct and non-judgemental way of communicating their needs can act as a powerful tool for self-reflection in humans. Observing the herd can encourage us to look more closely at our own subtle cues in non-verbal communication, and reflect on how we might be unknowingly impacting our relationships. This self-awareness will help individuals to move towards goal attainment.
Horses often uncover hidden issues within humans, including:
Trust
Boundaries
Impact of body language and non-verbal cues
Affection
Patience
Assertiveness
Trust
Leadership
Ready to experience the healing nature of horses?
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