Horses are the best companion to your own true self

As a practice, equine therapy goes back to ancient times but has only been applied to modern psychological needs from 1960 onwards. A very different approach from other psychological techniques, equine therapy or EAT, is making use of the horses’ natural ability to understand other animals’ emotions and motives. For horses this ability makes the difference between life and death, as they need to assess if any possible predator is a threat or not.

In general, us humans, attribute our communication efforts solely to language. However, numerous studies have shown that most of our communication efforts happen throughout tone, pitch, body language and other non-verbal aspects occurring in the process. Through horse assisted coaching we can transfer some of the natural instincts found in horses towards the recipient of the method, thus making the coaching subjected person more aware of non-verbal cues, helping them to trust, nurture and become more assertive, helping them gain greater self-esteem, self-control, empathy, self-awareness, emotional awareness and ability to focus on important tasks at hand.

Walking you through the process

Normally, we expect to find coaches and therapists within their office practice or within the confined city space landscape. With Horse Assisted Coaching things are different. Getting to the practice means most of the time escaping the city and its cluttered environment. This practice normally happens around large wonderful green fields during summer, or white wonderlands if winter. Given you have arrived at the meeting point, you will be led into a barn and expected to close your eyes and mindfully breath for your ‘body-scan’. This practice is supposed to tune your feelings with your thoughts.

After this phase comes to an end, you are then invited to either groom, feed, halter or lead a horse. While you are interacting with the animals, you will be under my close scrutiny and a feedback session into your behaviour patterns will surface closely after. The goal here is to identify the shift in your mood, emotions and actions and guide your transformation towards your desired goals. Patient goals vary from becoming more accountable, more responsible, more self-confident to improving their problem-solving skills and exerting greater self-control. By employing Horse Assisted Coaching to our advantage we can identify and address your particular needs in terms of emotional range and behavioural challenges.

Another undisputed advantage of this type of therapy is the fact that it usually happens in an open environment, the above mentioned field, and thus will enable and equip you, besides the previously mentioned benefits, with a spectacular range of endorphin releases associated with sport activities.