EAPD (Equine Assisted Learning for Personal Growth and Development) is an experiential approach to help individuals, groups or organizations acquire desired life skills. By including CliftonStrengths into EAL sessions, your sessions can inspire clients while equipping them to harness their strengths for growth.
Horses provide instant feedback for human participants by responding nonjudgmentally and offering instantaneous reflection of what they observe.
Self-Awareness
EAPD can help you meet your personal growth goals whether that be increasing self-awareness, improving communication skills, or managing stress. By setting clear objectives before beginning, sessions can be tailored specifically for you based on what works for your unique circumstances – for example grooming horses to foster connections while building empathy or leading them around an arena could serve as practice in leadership skills or even simply helping identify emotions and behaviors like how your horse responds to body language or how you speak – in addition to practicing leadership skills or even just keeping the horse fit!
Our team of trained facilitators utilize horses as tools for exploring relationships and life skills through guided activities. Their nonjudgmental presence, coupled with their ability to mirror human emotions and behaviors, provides participants with a safe space in which they can reflect upon themselves.
Self-Confidence
An animal like a horse is an invaluable way to build one’s self-confidence. Being natural herd animals, horses respond directly to human body language and emotions – they will pick up on feelings of insecurity or anxiety quickly while providing instant feedback that allows for self-awareness.
Equine-assisted Experiential Learning is a form of personal development that utilises equine interaction to assist individuals in breaking through any barriers to their success by building stronger relationships and mastering more effective communication techniques. This results-focused approach can improve mental wellness while creating lasting changes in daily activities.
Hilltop Horizons provides Equine Assisted Learning sessions to both children and adults of all ages. Sessions are led by experienced Equine Specialists trained to follow PATH Intl’s (the Professional Association of Therapeutic Horsemanship International) guidelines to ensure both human and animal participants’ safety. Sessions usually consist of unmounted sessions in which individuals engage with horses using natural horsemanship ground skill techniques tailored specifically to meet their goals.
Communication Skills
Horses provide immediate feedback that enables individuals to become more attuned with their emotional and behavioral responses and manage them more effectively in real-life scenarios.
Individual Equine-Assisted Learning (EAL) sessions are often used to treat mental health conditions like depression, anxiety, anger management issues, substance abuse issues, PTSD symptoms and relationship conflicts. Sessions are led by trained equine professionals as well as qualified clinical behavioral health therapists.
Group Equine Assisted Learning is an experiential form of education in which horses are used to facilitate group dynamics such as teamwork, empathy and effective communication between members of a group. This powerful and unique form of therapy allows individuals to gain practical skills that they can apply in both their personal and professional lives.
Stress Management
No matter the purpose of your quest – be it improving interpersonal skills, building leadership or communication abilities or managing mental health challenges such as anxiety or posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), horses offer valuable insights into yourself that may provide a pathway towards personal transformation.
Horses offer immediate feedback through their reactions to human behavior and can provide instantaneous reactions as an immediate mirror of emotions, making them great teachers of nonverbal communication.
Hilltop Horizons provides unmounted EAL activities led by certified therapeutic riding instructors trained to the PATH International standard for education and safety. One popular activity at Hilltop Horizons is Trial and Temptation where two participants lead a horse through an obstacle course filled with hay bales, buckets of grain or carrots without touching or dislodging it from its path in an arena setting.
Learn to integrate the CliftonStrengths model into EAL sessions. This training will equip you with the knowledge and tools to design, adapt and lead horse-based activities that support client’s personal growth journeys.
