Why Horses?
The Presence of a Horse Can't Be Missed!
The size, beauty, and majestic nature of the horse make them both awe inspiring and intimidating at the same time. Its hard to be in the presence of a horse and focus on anything but the moment. This makes horses uniquely suited to experiential therapy and learning, in which a person finds solutions to their problems by engaging in hands on activities.
Social Animals
Horses are social animals with defined roles within a herd. They have distinct personalities, attitudes, and moods. They can be stubborn or they can be playful. In other words, horses are a lot like us! The way we communicate with a horse reflects how we communicate with people. Horses force us to be authentic and to recognize how we are behaving in our relationships with others. This makes experiential therapy with horses an effective treatment for family relationship issues, ADHD, Oppositional Defiant Disorder, adoptions, and children in foster care.
Horses and Trauma
Prey Animals
Horses are highly intelligent prey animals. They have honed the skills of "fight, flight, or freeze" in order to survive in the wild. They are naturally intuitive and they can sense intention and recognize if we are the same on the inside as we present on the outside. This provides us with a window for change that we might not have recognized in an office setting.
