What Is Equine Assisted Therapy?

Because we learn best through experience, in Equine Assisted Learning (EAL) clients are offered safe experiences with horses in order to develop awareness, learn life skills, and learn how they experience relationships. By building awareness of behavioural, emotional, and thought patterns that no longer serve them well, people learn more positive ways to live their lives. This is the essence of Equine Assisted Learning and therefore the essence of Equine Assisted Therapy.

Our therapy programs have been developed to assist people to work through stressful times in their lives. These times can be brought about by emotional, physical, behavioural, or cognitive issues.

Equine Assisted Therapy focuses more on somatic experience and behaviour change and less on the counselling process or mental health diagnosis. Sessions are integrated with horses in a meaningful way based on client feedback.

Themes that are common for many people to explore include:

Each session focuses on the client, the practitioner, and the relationship with the horse(s) while using an experiential approach to bring about change for the client. Sessions are co-facilitated by a practitioner and one or more horses in order to assist personal and professional development and growth for the client.

Through our programs we work with rehabilitated, retired racehorses, who have themselves experienced trauma and are now in a healthy state.

Racing Hearts is certified by the Equine Psychotherapy Institute (EPI). Our programs are tailored to each individual and are based on the EPI and Gestalt model of counselling and psychotherapy.