Most of us know how being in the presence of (healthy) animals generally helps us to feel calm, mindful and content.
Of course, being in the presence of ill or injured animals can bring us many emotions such as excitement if you’re like me and in the presence of a nice fracture, or stress and sadness if we see a terminal patient, and many, many other emotions in between.
For now, I’m talking about being with animals who don’t need our veterinary skills. Animal-assisted therapies can include pet as therapy (PAT) animals attending sessions outside of their homes, equine-facilitated learning (EFL), equine-facilitated psychotherapy (EFP) and many others.
Equine-facilitated psychotherapy
EFP is different to anything I thought I knew about the mental health benefits of being with animals. It’s very different. It may appear vague, but I have been blown away by the effects this therapy has on clients coming from so many different walks of life. And yet there is so little discussion compared to talking therapies.
There are no treats or riding of the horses. Therapy horses are different to riding school ponies or horses in a livery yard. Usually, natural horsemanship is practised with turning out, barefoot, track grazing and socialisation high on the agenda for their care.
In therapy, the therapist is the “facilitator”, but in EFP, the horse is seen as a co-facilitator. So, there is usually the client and the horse, and then there is the psychotherapist who guides the session and often just observes the horse’s reactions to the client and vice versa.
Horses are excellent teachers in our journey to discover and understand ourselves. This is because they are herd animals, social by nature, and therefore have a heightened awareness of the rest of their herd members, which includes us.
Enabling mindfulness
We might never before have experienced such genuine deep attention to us by another. The horses have no agenda, they aren’t trying to get anything from us, they are focused entirely on the present moment. Mindful. Curious about us. Eager to be with us.
We know the benefits of focusing on the present moment. John Kabat Zinn describes mindfulness as “focusing on the present moment, on purpose, non-judgmentally”.
This focusing on just here and just now for as long as we can, instead of rehashing the past or worrying about or planning for the future, can make us feel more grounded, more settled and more peaceful in our heads. This we have described in previous articles.
Horses are preyed upon in nature, and so have a keen ability to sense changes in their herd members, and they do the same in their interactions with us
Horses are preyed upon in nature, and so have a keen ability to sense changes in their herd members, and they do the same in their interactions with us.
It’s so interesting to watch a group of horses sense each other’s behaviour. Even without an ear twitch or vocalisation, or any movement at all, the horse can feel something and convey that feeling instantly: for example, short-lived stress because something moved in the bushes, and all the others look up, look around and decide as a group if this thing is worth stressing about.
This ability of horses to communicate through vibes is now apparent to me. They sense changes in emotion, energy levels, behaviour, focus and attention, and they immediately reflect that information back to us. In that sense, they are our mirrors. And such huge mirrors they are, even the Shetlands; they are glaringly honest in this reflection.
The science of horse–human connectedness
The “magic of EFP” can be partly explained in neuroscientific terms by the fact that there is a remarkable similarity between the limbic (emotional) brain of horses and that of humans – much more so than the limbic systems of cats and dogs.
The limbic system is a group of interconnected structures that regulates our emotions and behaviour. The limbic system works together with the cerebrum and cerebellum to process memory, thoughts and reasoning.
The similarity in our limbic systems to that of horses may explain in some part the bonding we feel with a horse, which is a different type of bond to the one we form with a cat or a dog.
Another possible explanation, which I found hard to subscribe to until I investigated it scientifically, is that the horse thorax has an unusually large and powerful electromagnetic field. Bear with me on this. All animals can sense an electromagnetic field, and it has an effect on us. The effect on me is usually mesmerising, while others describe it as calming or hypnotising.
But it can be measured.
Magnetocardiography (MCG) is a technique to measure the magnetic fields produced by electrical currents in the heart using extremely sensitive devices such as the superconducting quantum interference device (SQUID).
There are many wellness devices on the market the size of a yoga mat that generate an electromagnetic field to aid wellness. While they are FDA-approved and seem to be very helpful for many users, they are not evidence-based therapies.
A study by Martiny et al. (2010) showed that in patients suffering with depression that was resistant to traditional antidepressant medication, transcranial low voltage pulsed electromagnetic field therapy showed a clinically and statistically significant better outcome than treatment with sham transcranial low voltage pulsed electromagnetic field therapy
A study by Martiny et al. (2010) showed that in patients suffering with depression that was resistant to traditional antidepressant medication, transcranial low voltage pulsed electromagnetic field therapy (T-PEMF) showed a clinically and statistically significant better outcome than treatment with sham T-PEMF, with an onset of action within the first weeks of therapy.
Neither of these is proof that it is the electromagnetic field of a horse that makes equine therapy different to other animal-assisted therapy. However, I needed this and much deeper exploration with double-blinded placebo-based trials before I was able to see EFP as a realistic and effective type of therapy.
Emotional intelligence
Horses can serve as both our mirrors and our teachers in terms of emotional intelligence, congruence and relationships. Emotional intelligence is self-awareness, self-regulation, motivation, empathy and social skills.
When we are with a horse in that safe space, where there are no other distractions, we have to be self-aware. That means being aware of how we are feeling, what’s going for us emotionally and how we convey or don’t convey that on the outside.
Self-regulation makes us stop, pause and choose our reaction to an emotion rather than just acting reflexively or the way we’ve always reacted. During equine therapy, everything slows down thereby creating this space and time between emotion and action. Once learned and relearned during the therapy sessions with the horses, this self-regulation becomes a healthy habit and our new normal.
Equine therapy does not focus on “goals” or “endpoints”. So, while motivation to get what’s best out of a particular situation is part of emotional intelligence, it’s less important and even unimportant in EFP.
Empathy is a huge part of EFP. Through our relationship with the horse, their needs are very obvious even to someone who may normally find social cues and clues difficult to recognise. Also, the horse is neither emotionally complex nor needy. These baby steps of understanding how someone (the horse) is feeling, and being able to be in that space with them, teach us so much about “walking a mile in someone else’s shoes” when it comes to people.
Again, through small steps with the horse – where we use eye contact, relationship skills and self-awareness, have mutual positive regard with the horses and react to their signals – we learn social skills that we can use with more hard-to-read individuals (people).
When something is learned, relearned and set down in an experiential and feeling-based way, as it is in EFP, the learning can be more easily transferred to the human–human sphere of relating, creating lasting and positive change for the therapy client
Lessons learned with our equine companions are experiential, ie in-person through actual experience, and therefore the associated new neural pathways are more easily created and reinforced. When something is learned, relearned and set down in an experiential and feeling-based way, as it is in EFP, the learning can be more easily transferred to the human–human sphere of relating, creating lasting and positive change for the therapy client.
And these intelligent, sensitive creatures are also our friends. They live entirely in the present, offering us patience, forgiveness and another chance when we get it wrong.
Congruence
Horses are radars for incongruence and will reward us when we behave in a way that is in keeping with who we really are and what we are truly feeling.
I have seen this so many times in this training. If we or the client are not focused on the present moment, or if we are showing our false self (incongruence) because that’s what we’re used to doing as a form of self-protection, horses generally don’t like that. They just walk away and choose not to bond with that incongruence.
It fascinates me every time.
This offers valuable learning opportunities in terms of true self/false self, emotional fluency, congruence and relationship skills.
Being congruent, ie our true self, is so much better for our mental well-being than being what we think we should be from watching TikTok and scrolling through Instagram. Often, we’re not aware that we’re doing it, but in EFP it is pointed out to us by the horses. When we let go of all that stuff and choose to be present and mindful, that same horse will stop eating and walk over to us to just be with us.
Final thoughts
The magic of EFP is when we know that the horse has chosen to be close to us physically and emotionally because we have chosen to be in the present moment, showing our true selves and letting go of our “stuff” for that moment.
When you get to that sweet spot with a therapy horse, it’s like being sucked into a vortex; for those precious moments, nothing matters apart from that close bond. Sounds, sights, thoughts: they just evaporate away while you and the horse are in a trance-like state. It’s so powerful and therapeutic and I would have never believed its power before training as an EFP psychotherapist.
