| Featured Article - March
2006
In The Shadow of Equus A Hospital's choice for treatment
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| Remember
a story years ago of a lady who purchased a horse that she kept in a
paddock near her home. Every evening after work she would groom her
horse and spend time petting it and watching it graze. A well-meaning neighbour often wondered why she didn’t ride and, during a chance encounter with her one day, he ventured to ask. “Oh, I couldn’t do that!” she exclaimed. “I can’t ride.” “I’d be happy to give you a lesson or two, to get you going,” he offered. He had ridden for years. “No! No thank you.” She seemed almost in tears. “I didn’t buy the horse to ride. Just to spend time with.” You see, she was a nurse who worked in the emergency room at the local hospital. She dealt with high levels of stress and trauma every day, sometimes to breaking point. Spending quiet time with her horse, brushing and stroking him, and listening to the gentle rhythmic sound of his chewing helped her unwind, relax, and get grounded. Perhaps more than any other animal (no offence to dog and cat lovers), horses offer much more than just the thrill of riding for pleasure, sport, or competition. It has long been recognized that their unique skeletal structure and gait offer enormous therapeutic benefits for physically disabled riders. But since the 1970s, the medical community has also recognized the emotional and mental value of the human/horse relationship which can help resolve problems people may be having with their own relationships, stress issues, and behaviours. In England, the Priory Hospital North London is an independent hospital specializing in the treatment of mental health problems including such debilitating conditions as manic depression, phobias, post traumatic stress disorder, schizophrenia, psychosis, obsessive compulsive disorder, and addiction. To help people with drug and alcohol problems, the hospital introduced Equine Assisted Psychotherapy (EAP) as part of its clinical regimen. Their work with horses has been so successful that EAP now includes patients with eating disorders. “Horses don’t lie,” states Dr. Neil Brener, Medical Director, in an on-line article on Priory’s website. “They provide immediate, highly accurate feedback about their handlers’ personalities, attitudes, and moods by precisely mirroring what human body language tells them. The horse’s physical reality unleashes powerful positive and negative emotions in most people — delight and despair, love and loathing, friendliness and fear are commonly experienced when confronted by these powerful, intelligent, high-spirited, and kind animals.” The hospital recently paired with a local riding school that provided a string of animals from an 18-hand Shire called Guinness to Shetland ponies for the program. “Working with horses reveals specific coping skills and styles, while the use of metaphor allows the therapist and patient to transfer the human/horse relationship into human interactions,” says Dr. Brener. “A patient who finds it difficult to set healthy boundaries in relationships will allow a horse to nip. While the patient might think this behaviour is affectionate, it is actually aggressive and the therapist can explore this misconception as a clinical issue.” |
At
a recent demonstration of the horses and therapists at work, celebrity
guest Monty Roberts (author, The Horse Whisperer) was delighted to see
his long-held beliefs put in practice. As a young adult, he had always
been told that this approach to problem-solving was crazy. But Mr.
Roberts had studied natural horse behaviour for many years and his
theories, now studied by academics, have been found to be sound. Horses are sensitive to body language and they can sometimes point out inconsistencies between verbal and non-verbal communication. For those who lack the confidence or the skills to be assertive or to make decisions, focusing on a horse to accomplish a task can reinforce ways to structure their own directions and help them set achievable goals. If a child can make a horse stop, that same child may also develop the ability to stop a person doing something, especially something undesirable. The horse, by association, empowers the child to assertive action. Likewise, grooming, with its rhythmic brushing and organized method, is a valued sensory activity that can help a child with, for instance, ADHD. They learn to replace impulsiveness with planning. “How patients approach their horses and related tasks offers irrefutable insight into how they approach other life challenges,” says Dr. Brener. “Working with and caring for horses takes time and physical, mental and emotional effort... Talk is replaced by tasks involving touch, movement, and other elements that aren’t part of the usual therapeutic environment, enabling dysfunctional behaviours or patterns to emerge during the therapy session. With the therapist’s help, patients learn about and practice successful new behaviours that will help them in all facets of their lives.” For people burdened with emotional or psychological problems, a relationship with a horse could be exquisitely painful before rewarding. “Horses inform patients about their level of connection by ignoring or walking away from them, being distracted by other horses or movements in the yard, or eating,” explains Dr. Brener. “The moment when the horse responds to the patient is an excellent opportunity to practice congruence with feelings and behaviours.” Almost everyone who has invested time with horses understands that the relationship becomes symbiotic, and that nurturing and caregiving build an intimate bond in which horse and handler understand and respond to the body language of each other. In so many ways they are wonderful teachers in confidence, self-esteem, patience, and humility, qualities that are assets for everyone anywhere in life. Read Margaret Evans' column "In The Shadow Of Equus" each month in Pacific & Prairie Horse Journal
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