The healing power of horses
It is a beautiful, sunny morning in Otaki, a small town on the Kapiti Coast of New Zealand’s North Island. At the Horse Sense farm, a block slightly inland from the expansive coast, a young man walks around the horse paddock slowly and awkwardly, looking studiously at the ground. As he sits down on a brightly coloured barrel in the middle of the enclosure, one of the four horses in the paddock walks over, stops right in front of him and gently nuzzles his face. Although the young man continues to gaze only at the ground, a gradual and noticeable change comes over his physique as the hunched shoulders slowly relax and his whole body comes to be at ease.
Although the young man continues to gaze only at the ground, a gradual and noticeable change comes over his physique, as the hunched shoulders slowly relax and his whole body comes to be at ease.
This physical relaxation is just the first stage of Paul’s weekly therapy session using Equine Assisted Development and Counselling, where the mere presence of the calm, regal horses surrounding him seem to have an immediate soothing effect. As a young person from a severely disadvantaged background, Paul lives in a residential care facility and, during his initial sessions, he refused to communicate with either the trained psychologist or the two equine specialists who co-ordinate the therapy. Now, after several sessions, Paul — although still shy and hesitant — engages with the herd of horses who are part of the “therapy team” and has started to articulate his feelings, both verbally to his therapist and by writing in a journal at the end of each session.
“Just last week Paul had an amazing moment with one of the horses,” comments Geraldine Keith, psychologist at Horse Sense. “And then he said he was happy! For him to say that was stunningly out of the blue, because this is a very sad boy.”
How horses can help
Equine Assisted Development and Counselling, and related therapies such as Equine Facilitated Psychotherapy and Equine Assisted Learning, are innovative healing models that utilise the remarkable characteristics of horses to assist people with a wide variety of psychosocial challenges. Although equine therapies have become increasingly mainstream in the US and Europe, where they are widely used and educational institutions and health insurers recognise their validity, in Australia and New Zealand these forms of therapy are still in their early stages in terms of public awareness of methods and outcomes. However, with steadily increasing numbers of people looking for new and holistic ways to answer deep-seated questions, such as “Who am I?” and “What is life all about?”, horses may just provide a way to access those answers.
In Australia and New Zealand, equine therapy is currently used to help with a wide range of issues, from personal development, stress management and coping with lifestyle changes to dealing with anxiety, grief, depression, recovery from trauma and other serious mental health challenges. According to Alison Selby and Alexa Smith-Osborne, researchers on the effectiveness of equine interventions, equine therapy “works across all age groups and cultures, and has been applied to work with families, groups and individuals and is not gender-specific”. In the US, it has been used within prisons, military services, hospices and hospitals, and even in medical schools, where Dr Allan Hamilton pioneered the “Barnyard to Bedside” program, using horses to teach medical students calm, non-verbal communication principles and stress management.
Equine therapy and the recognition of the powerful bond between humans and horses is not a new concept: in countries and cultures throughout the world, the horse has occupied an important place in history. The use of horses in a therapeutic setting can be traced back to 5 BCE, where interaction with horses was used to cure a variety of illnesses. There are multiples stories that highlight the significance of the human/horse relationship, from ancient to more recent times, showing that the horse has been a constant companion in the development of human life.
In equine therapy, the emphasis is on giving people the space to make their own interpretations rather than be told by “an expert” what their feelings mean.
According to “horse whisperer” and advocate of natural horsemanship Buck Brannaman, “Over the eons the horse has done so much for the human being. The horse has helped them conquer continents and he’s gone places with the human — just because of the ancient bond between the horse and the human, he went there with him. So the human being owes a lot to the horse in how the world has been settled.” Brannaman, whose 2011 documentary Buck is a personal testament to the healing power of horses, also states that a horse “is a mirror to your soul. Sometimes you might not like what you see … sometimes you will.”
A finely tuned intuition
The ability of horses to mirror your innermost being is precisely the reason they are perfect for this type of holistic therapy. Horses are non-predatory animals whose survival depends on reciprocal communication with their herd. This means they are highly attuned to social and interactional behaviours, as well as to minute physiological changes in their herd mates. During the process of equine therapy, the human becomes part of the herd and the idea is that the horse’s intuition and its subsequent reaction to a person’s emotions provide an immediate insight. If the client’s non-verbal communication is incongruent with their verbal communication, a horse will always react to the non-verbal.
According to psychologist Geraldine Keith, “One of the reasons for using horses is that they are walking sensate. They are this extraordinary mix — more so than other animals — of mindfulness and being in the present and being grounded. And they are a superb teaching device for teaching mindfulness.” Animal healer Margrit Coates describes horses as being “all-round teachers, and metaphors for learning to deal with feelings of being overwhelmed by something bigger than yourself. They are also catalysts for healing and empowerment.”
In equine therapy, the non-verbal communication of horses with a client is a metaphoric expression of the person’s underlying emotions. According to researchers Alison Selby and Alexa-Smith Osborne, “The dynamic interchange which occurs between clients and horses offers a dimension to clinical work that is not possible in the traditional confines of the office setting.”
The concept of creating a new and alternative space for the exploration of the self is affirmed by Geraldine Keith, who says, “One of the dilemmas of being a very experienced psychologist is that I have seen it through waves and waves of fashionable models — from psychoanalysis to behaviour therapy to hypnotherapy, to psychodrama etcetera, and trying to find the merits and blending it in, knowing what’s useful. But this [equine therapy] is a field where somehow all that sits quietly in the background and signals itself as I observe what is happening out there in the paddock.”
What’s in a session?
According to Jenny Gibbons, equine specialist at Horse Sense, there is no such thing as a “typical” session in her experience of Equine Assisted Development and Counselling. The sessions are defined as a “learning experience” for the client, and the therapists at Horse Sense are quick to point out that they themselves are constantly learning from the horses and the clients and are still often surprised by the results of their sessions.
Therapists work with a wide variety of people from all walks of life, from children to adults, male and female, with a range of personal issues. This means that, while there is always an outline to a session that has been personally tailored to the individual’s needs, it can become quickly diverted. “What happens is we call it ‘doing the 360’,” says Gibbons. “We have a great plan, we talk about it, we email and then we go in there and it goes somewhere completely else, and the horses are doing all sorts of things, and that’s where we have to be quickly figuring it out. Because it’s always about the client. Some therapists will go in and say, ‘No, these are the prescribed goals’ … but for us it’s about where the client needs to go.”
In equine therapy, the emphasis is on giving people the space to make their own interpretations rather than being told by “an expert” what their feelings mean. Keith comments on equine therapy’s difference from conventional modes of therapy: “I think that is one of the areas where people struggle, as they are so used to being in a commanding or authoritative therapising relationship. But horses are such powerful, therapeutic agents — working in this field is an art and a science. To me this holds a constant sense of absolute wonder.”
The slow emergence of research on the effects of equine therapy has highlighted increased self-image, trust and general life satisfaction as just some of the positive impacts reported by participants.
Another major departure from other kinds of therapy settings is the impact of the natural environment on the session. For many people, being out in nature, as opposed to being in some kind of counselling room, achieves an immediate connection with the Beauty and simplicity of nature itself. This is a direct contrast to perceptions of personal problems and life stresses. Horses live in the moment, and exercises in an equine therapy session create experiences in the “here and now”, where the immediacy of being in the same space as these impressive, 500-odd-kilo animals is unavoidable. Literally, hiding from the horse — physically or mentally — is impossible.
“The horses start acting — or reacting — as soon as the people arrive here,” explains Keith. “For instance, one young boy we worked with, the moment he got out of the car the horses went berserk and then later we were told that is exactly how he behaves at Home.”
This means horses are powerful messengers: their feedback is uncompromisingly honest and they require a person to work hard. There is no quick or easy way of building trust and a real relationship with a horse and, as the horse provides a constant mirror to ourselves, it can provide an unflinching reality of patterns and beliefs that we would otherwise prefer to keep quiet.
“We are bringing really complex mental health issues into this arena,” says Keith. “That includes quite a few very high-functioning people who have had a critical episode, who have lost confidence or have had big issues which they need to find a way through. And with the horses, people find courage. They identify the components of the problems and begin to work out what they need to attend to and what they don’t need to attend to. They feel the feelings and work out what is important.”
Effects that last
What is important, of course, varies from one person to the next. What’s certain, though, is that clients of equine therapy who learn to relate to horses with kindness, respect and responsibility are empowered to apply those skills to themselves and their lives. The slow emergence of research on the effects of equine therapy has highlighted increased self-image, trust and general life satisfaction as just some of the positive impacts reported by participants.
According to Rose, who is using equine therapy to overcome dysfunctional family dynamics, “I benefit just as much as the children coming here. It’s chill-out time, and working with the horses — just as with the kids — that’s very therapeutic. I’m a grandmother raising my grandchildren and there is not much help out there for us. When you get knocked back all the time, everything is negative — you see life a bit negative — whereas coming here has helped me to gain confidence and self-esteem as well. So it’s made a huge difference. Huge.”
For clients like Paul, whose life history taught him to withdraw from relationships and emotions, equine therapy is providing a safe space to once again explore how to feel and how to communicate. “At the end of the day,” says Jenny Gibbons, “it’s about realising the true connection — and that’s what we are all doing here. This form of therapy works. I don’t even really know how; maybe our understanding of the precise reasons is still limited. But, if you look, wherever we have been, horses have been helping us — and this is a new paradigm at the moment, of a new age, and horses are again helping. Helping us to understand ourselves.”
