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The Equine Therapy program at the Bay Pines VA Healthcare
System provides Veterans with therapeutic interventions
through respectful partnerships with horses. The approach to the
program is built on evidence-based coaching methods
designed specifically to empower Veterans to successfully address
adaptive challenges.
[Terry Murray] The whole premise of the
program is to really allow people to enter into a
reflective experiential learning environment that is unique and
novel. And one of the things that we've learned through our
research is that novelty of experience is a trigger to
transient events. It actually helps trigger creativity and
allows actual neurogenesis in the prefrontal cortex to start
to emerge. So there's actually bio-chemical changes in the
brain that are occurring when people are in nature and working
with the horses in this environment. Because, typically,
it's a very unusual experience for people. It's usually their
first time with a horse.
With Equine Facilitated Experiential Learning
and elements from traditional coaching modalities,
the approach focuses on the self-reflective process that
emerges through the development of the horse/human relationship
in specifically designed, ground-based exercises.
[Jesse Raoul] For me, it's helped me
reestablish relationships with people
that I've been dealing with. It's helped me
reestablish, just be able to live life with a better quality
of life, I think. And it's been, it's been extremely,
extremely helpful for me.
The Equine Therapy program's reflective
exercises help Veterans demonstrate different states of
being, helps them discover new easy to use tools for coping and
dealing with anxiety, and teaches them useful techniques
to better respond to stimuli in stressful times.
[Amy King] The positive impact that the VA
has introduced into the classroom with
Recreation Therapy programs like this is that, you know,
once you are in the classroom for so many hours a day and then
you have opportunity to go out on a weekday to participate in
an outdoor activity like this and have that relaxation, but
yet use what you've learned during the week. And then go
back into your regular schedule. You really feel motivated to put
in the work because you see how well what you've learned works
out in the real world.
As prey animals, horses are highly sensitive
to their environment. A horse's primary survival
mechanism employs emotions as information. They feel an
emotion, discern the message behind the emotion, take
appropriate action, and return to grazing.
[Elizabeth Blankenship] We're here for
Equine Therapy. Specifically a lot of people
think about Equine Therapy as just therapeutic
riding, which it is. It's a great, you know, great
intervention. We do what's called equine assisted
experiential learning and what we do is a lot of team building
ground, we call it ground level activities and we learn about
the horses. We learn about their behaviors. How they communicate
with each other. Just a lot of just horse education in the
beginning. And then we start to talk about ourselves in that
same matter. How we communicate. How we interact with others. And
then we can kind of transfer what we learn about the horses
into our everyday life.
By partnering with horses, Veterans
learn to ask for space, set healthy boundaries, lead without
force, relax without losing awareness, and rebuild trust.
[Jared Ezzard] You can't reach everybody with conventional
therapies. So some people respond better to this type of
environment. We've seen Veterans who would have very little
interaction with humans while in the programs. They blossom here
and end up realizing they can talk to a horse and feel
comfortable and feel non-judgmental and then we see
that transfer to how they react with peers after
they've come on the outing.
The Equine Therapy program at the Bay Pines VA
Healthcare System is offered as one of the many recreation
therapy activities available to eligible Veterans. To learn more
about the Bay Pines VA Healthcare System's recreation
therapy program, please visit:
www.baypines.va.gov/ services/RTS .asp.