Equine Assisted Learning is an experiential therapeutic treatment approach utilizing horses as partners to foster personal and emotional resilience. Equine assisted Learning therapy offers numerous advantages over traditional therapies.
Clients can build trust through non-threatening interactions with horses. Successful engagement with horses also can foster a sense of accomplishment; students learn that perseverance and dedication can overcome even their greatest challenges.
1. Grounding and Mindfulness
EAL helps individuals hone their focus by staying present in the present. Engaging in activities with horses requires participants to be mindful of both body and emotions, leading them towards increased self-awareness in daily life.
Horses are highly responsive to human emotion and energy, providing immediate feedback about an individual’s behavior. This enables participants to gain a better understanding of themselves as individuals as well as an avenue for emotional regulation.
Recently, students enrolled in an EAL class were required to take part in a Clifton Strengthsfinder assessment and identify both personal and professional strengths. Each student organized these strengths into themes which then formed the basis of horseback activities covering topics like stress-to-strength ratios, relationships and resilience as well as student coaching on applying them both within classroom environments and outside of them.
2. Self-Esteem and Empowerment
Equine therapy offers individuals experiencing trauma a chance to interact with horses and develop their self-worth, giving them the confidence boost needed for recovery. Group sessions of EAL also encourage social skill-building as participants interact with each other while building healthy peer relationships.
Equine therapy provides participants with an opportunity to develop positive thinking and a hopeful mindset, helping them navigate difficult situations with courage. Fostering this type of mindset involves strengthening coping strategies and emotional regulation skills such as deep breathing exercises or journaling to create resilience in oneself.
Equine activities provide students with a series of carefully designed activities designed to build confidence in themselves and become comfortable asking for assistance, creating strong inner strengths that translate well to both academic and professional life.
3. Communication Skills
Horses possess an uncanny ability to read people’s body language, emotions and behavior without judgment or bias, acting as emotional mirrors for clients while providing real-time self-awareness and insight into how their actions impact others.
Participants learn to communicate more effectively at work and in relationships. Team building activities provide additional training that encourage collaboration, trust, leadership and problem-solving abilities.
Take the Lead is a group activity designed to develop communication skills through working collaboratively to solve problems while bonding through interaction with horses. Its results are life-altering; stress levels decrease significantly while healthy relationships develop further and teams strengthen.
4. Teamwork
Wild horses rely on each other for survival, creating intricate social structures within their herds that provide a perfect analogy for teamwork and collaboration – something EAL sessions provide unique opportunities to do hands-on! By practicing teamwork skills with horses in EAL sessions, participants can form new patterns of interaction and communication that may foster growth as individuals or teams.
Research conducted at Cummings School of Veterinary Medicine at Tufts University revealed that an equine assisted learning program significantly increased both resilience and quality of life among first-year veterinary students. The weekly sessions involved groundwork with an equine teaching herd, horse behavior lessons and linking those lessons back into human interactions.
One student involved with the program described how one particularly challenging exercise helped her understand the significance of forgiveness and trust. She found the horse’s response to her request for “forgive” as powerful feedback that could be applied in daily life – precisely what equine instructors strive to accomplish through their work.
