What is Equine Therapy?

Equine Assisted Psychotherapy, is a unique approach to experiential learning and personal development. Clients are offered safe experiences with horses for the purpose of learning social-emotional skills, personal development, and professional development skills (e.g. leadership and team building). Equine Assisted Therapy works with children, adolescents and adults.

Our approach

Our approach is based on the EPI (Equine Psychotherapy Institute) model. The EPI model is accredited by the PACFA (Psychotherapy and Counselling Federation of Australia). It offers a uniquely qualified program of training to its certified practitioners. This means our clients can have the utmost confidence that our practice is based on field leading principles and ethics. We use solid, scientifically proven and effective methods.

The EPI Model

The EPI model is trauma informed and founded on the Gestalt approach to psychotherapy. The method focuses on creating awareness of the here and now, rather than the traditional approach of looking at historical issues. Developing awareness of what you are experiencing right now, in this moment, your feelings, emotions, and physical senses, allows you to develop the resources to recognise feelings and beliefs (often formed by some form of traumatic experience) that are not serving you well.

Knowing this enables clients to build resources within themselves to both cope and readjust. You can replace long held negative beliefs about yourself or the world around you with a healthier mindset.

This is a holistic approach to health. Health being the ability to move towards aware, flexible, embodied, choiceful, satisfying, and adaptive contact with ourselves and others.

Who is it for?

This method is for both people interested in social skills development, team leadership skills and those who are dealing with trauma or disabilities. Often psychologists and other mental health professionals refer clients to our practice when their clients find themselves stuck.

This method is for both people interested in social skills development, team leadership skills and those who are dealing with trauma or disabilities. Often psychologists and other mental health professionals refer clients to our practice when their clients find themselves stuck.

By design, Equine Assisted Therapy is not mental health therapy in the traditional sense (room-based therapy). It has proven itself very effective in assisting clients with trauma to build awareness and create resources to cope with and successfully life with trauma experiences. Our practice works in conjunction with local mental health providers ensuring that the client is assisted in the best possible way.

Where our model has proven especially valuable and effective is with clients who feel uncomfortable in a traditional room based session. Being out in the paddock with the horses creates a calmer, less formal approach. This is particularly useful with children, teenagers and young adults.

Why horses?

In many people horses inspire a sense of beauty, power, expression and freedom. And one key to their effectiveness is their size. Horses are a large animal, to which our human brain responds in moving into a higher state of awareness. Horses provide us with a sensory experience of calmness, trust, neural system regulation and emotional safety. This in turn creates situation where, in this heightened state of awareness, the brain and body response stimulates the growth of new neural pathways. You’re in a sense, jump-starting a new learning capacity in your brain which normally rarely gets accessed by the brain.

Horses respond to people in a completely non-judgemental way. They react to what they see and hear. And they have a unique ability to sense our emotions and body language. They do so better than even a mental health practitioner can.

This honest response to you as a person, their ability to actively seek closeness to people, opens you up to a sense of affection, connection and emotional safety. This helps you create new neural pathways and body memory.