The Healing Powers of Horses & Mental Health
It’s perfectly normal to have many questions about how Equine Assisted Therapy can help improve our mental health. This blog post was created in hopes of answering some of the more common questions we hear.
How can Equine Assisted Therapy help us learn to better manage anxiety?
Horses have an amazing ability to pick up on the emotions we feel in our body, including anxiety. Often, when we experience anxiety, we notice it in our nervous system, in how we feel in our body, and in our body language. This can also be sensed by the horses around us. Learning in real time to soothe anxiety, for instance, through deep breathing, can also be recognized by horses. Our equine partners do a great job of helping us learn to work through anxiety sensations by co-regulation. Sometimes the calm nature of a horse can also be a signal to our own nervous system to slow down, teaching our body to work through anxious feelings. Working with horses has taught me greatly how to manage and reduce my own anxiety.
How can Equine Assisted Therapy help with my low mood and depression?
Connection, movement, and nature are all helpful when treating depression. Equine Assisted Therapy offers all three of these benefits in session. Regardless of what is being done in the hour, just the act of being outdoors and moving the body can help shift us out of a depressed state. We know that we cannot heal in isolation; connecting with both horses and a therapist helps create a feeling of being heard.
How can Equine Assisted Therapy help with a history of trauma?
Sometimes, when we have experienced trauma, it can be difficult to connect with and feel emotionally safe in the presence of other people. This is where the support of animals can come in. Animals, including horses, often provide an unconditional positive regard that helps us to feel safe in their presence. It is not surprising that, through equine assisted therapy, many of us who have experienced trauma can once again learn to develop safe connections with another living being.
How can Equine Assisted Therapy help with nervous system regulation?
Regardless of why our nervous system might be dysregulated, we can often learn to regulate it through co-regulation. Horses move through different nervous system states fluidly and with ease. Observing and learning from them in real time can teach us how to transition between different states as well. Dr. Bailey of the Polyvagal Institute commented that, “Pure connection of one nervous system to another nervous system is always at play”¹ when being around horses.
How do you integrate typical therapy models into Equine Assisted Therapy?
Just like traditional talk therapy, your therapist might choose to work from a specific therapy model. This works the same in Equine Assisted Therapy. For instance, if I was working with someone from a Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT) lens, we would be focusing on taking a look at the way we talk to ourselves, how that might impact the horses around us, the state of our bodies and behaviours, and how to reframe this through our connection with horses. A big part of CBT therapy is also behavioural activation, which may focus on movement, interacting with horses through activities, and forming connections with the horses through engagement.
Real-time epiphanies through an indirect approach:
As horses are involved, therapy can often be indirect as opposed to direct. This means that the realizations and epiphanies that occur during therapy happen alongside experiencing, engaging and interacting with the horses. Very profound learnings can occur during Equine Assisted Therapy, much like traditional therapy, they just come around a bit differently.
The difference between Equine Assisted Therapy and Equine Facilitated Learning:
Both Equine Assisted Therapy and Equine Facilitated Learning are offered as services to better help clients learn about themselves while engaging with horses. The difference between the two is that Equine Assisted Therapy is delivered by a trained therapist with the ability to provide psychological interventions. This allows traditional therapy models to co-occur with Equine Facilitated Wellness.
I hope this list helped answer some of your questions and gain more understanding in the healing powers of horses. To learn more, book in for a free consultation:
References
Polyvagal Institute. (2023, November). Introduction to Equine-Assisted Interventions using polyvagal principles [video]. Introduction to Equine Assisted Therapy Using Polyvagal Principles. https://www.polyvagalinstitute.org/items/introduction-to-equine-assisted-therapy-using-polyvagal-principles
