Learning how to interact with a horse offers benefits for both parties: the principles of natural dressage can be therapeutic for people.
- Equine therapy: what is it for?
- Benefits of equine therapy
- Know and respect the nature of the horse
- How to interact with a horse
Equine therapy is an animal therapy that helps many people overcome difficult personal situations or improve certain physical problems. It is not a new therapy: the father of Western medicine and great inspirer of naturopathic medicine, the Greek Hippocrates, recommended “the healthy trot of the horse” to soldiers who returned wounded and traumatized from wars. Over the years it has been studied how the relationship with a horse can improve the mental and physical health of people
EQUINE THERAPY: WHAT IS IT FOR?
Hypersensitivity of the horse allows him to help people. Equine therapy serves:
- To treat people with physical or mental disabilities.
- To rehabilitate criminals.
- To escape addictions.
- As a method of personal growth.
In the seventeenth century, some doctors used horseback riding to combat gout and in 1875 the French neurologist Chassiagnac discovered that a moving horse improves balance, joint movement and muscle control of patients.
This physical approach grew in the world, France and Germany from 1950 and is the one that predominates today. However, it has as much or more to offer on the psychic level because the patient has to build his relationship with the horse.
You have to behave in the right way to earn their trust and respect. You must learn to grasp their subtle messages, which will help you do it with other people, and you must also control their words, gestures and behaviors. If it does, the horse responds with its friendship.
Somehow the animal is offered as a mirror that reflects virtues or shortcomings and thus helps us grow.
People with cerebral palsy, schizophrenia, drug dependence, or relationship problems with others can receive a lot of love from the horse and, most importantly, learn to give it in return. Surely that is why equine therapy achieves such amazing results.
The discovery of the sensitivity of the horse has led to it being treated, when it is sick, as a complex and evolved being. The horse responds incredibly well to homeopathic treatment, Bach flowers and acupuncture, which has always been administered in China.
Dr. Ramón Rossello, a regular collaborator of Cuerpomente, found one morning that this horse was suffering from an acute abdominal syndrome that kept him lying down and moaning in pain.
He called Marita Cassola, an acupuncturist specializing in animals, who told him the points he should treat and Ramón, in the absence of needles, did it with shiatsu techniques. The improvement was immediate.
After thousands of years sharing life, people and horses can finally take care of each other and grow together. Perhaps the last step of the relationship will be taken when the human being forgets that “the horse is only to ride it” (it is more than a bicycle), when it stops trying to obtain its obedience.
So, you can enjoy what the horse can teach you, which escapes words. You have to live it!
BENEFITS OF EQUINE THERAPY
An equine therapy session produces a remarkable set of effects on the human being, both physical and psychic.
AT THE MUSCULAR LEVEL
The person is exposed to back-and-forth movements similar to those performed when walking. The patient has to react to a series of stimuli produced by the horse’s trot by activating some muscles and relaxing others.
“ROCKING EFFECT”
The horse transmits to the rider’s body between 90 and 110 rhythmic impulses that stimulate balancing reactions and produce a pleasant sensation, which contributes to the psychic and emotional well-being of the rider.
RELAXING HEAT
The 38-39 ºC emitted by the body of the horse, an animal a little warmer than the human being, help to relax the excessively rigid muscles. In the disabled. The physical effects are interesting for people with any physical disability.
DISPUTE RESOLUTION
On the psychic plane, riding helps to overcome isolation. It promotes the overcoming of fears, increases confidence and the ability to concentrate, and dissipates emotional tensions and inhibitions.
Before the horse you can express and receive emotions that have caused or still cause conflict with people.
COMMUNICATION
People and children with verbal communication difficulties can get along well with horses. Autistics find it very difficult to communicate but move quickly with horses because they use similar gestural language.
OVERALL IMPROVEMENT
The horse returns the smile to depressed patients, stimulates the social character of shy people, favors the control of violent impulses, lowers blood pressure and relaxes very nervous people.
KNOW AND RESPECT THE NATURE OF THE HORSE
Over the past two million years, the horse has survived in perfect harmony with nature without the need for man. He has been able to find grasses of good grass, clean water in crystalline streams and places to shelter.
Only a few thousand years ago, perhaps ten thousand, man began to tame them and use them for their work or to move, and for other more violent activities such as war or hunting. And, despite having received very severe treatment, horses, with their exceptional energy, have always responded to the demands of man.
Whether by nature or for social reasons, in many cultures powerful men have tended to impose themselves on the weak. It is not strange that the human being wanted to obtain by force the obedience of the horse, which after all has received a treatment similar to that sometimes suffered by women and children.
But at the same time, there have always been men who have recognized the nobility, loyalty, and even wisdom of the horse. The qualities of the animal, which could not be erased by domestication, have allowed the human being to overcome the relationship of mere utility with him.
Until the 1960s he fulfilled his obligations in the field and in transport. Later, motor vehicles, whose power is still measured in “horses”, replaced them.
In 1865 there were about 675,000 horses in Spain. In 1980 there were only 248,000 left. Pessimists were already seeing the horse at the zoo. But in 1990 the census counted 260,000 copies. It seems clear that we are witnessing a rebirth of the horse, and what is better, a transformation of its bond with the human being.
Of course, domination and exploitation continue, although now it is for sports or leisure purposes, but there are also many people who try to relate to horses in a different way, probably because they want to live, in general, in greater harmony with nature.
The film The Man Who Whispered to the Horses (Robert Redford, 1998) brought this theme to the general public, inspired by the authentic experiences narrated in the works of Monty Roberts (published by Ed. Tutor).
Tom Booker heals through understanding and gentle methods the problems of violent behavior of a horse that had suffered an accident. That film helped many people see horses differently and above all made known another way of treating them.
People who know the art of whispering, Indian dressage or natural dressage, are currently in high demand, both in the world of competition and among fans who have problems with their horses or want to relate to them in a more “human” way or why not, more “equine”.
At the same time, equine therapy centres offering care to people with disabilities or following social rehabilitation programmed have multiplied.
The fundamental thing about the change is that now psychology is taken into account, the soul of the horse. Among us this approach is made from the science of ethology, which studies the behavior of animals, but other cultures did it from observation and intuition.
The essential psychological characteristic of the horse is that it is peaceful. To protect himself from danger, he flees, he does not confront himself. That is why in freedom he lives in packs whose members remain alert to any sign of threat captured by any of his companions. In addition, the herd has a leader, who is not the strongest and most violent horse, but an experienced and serene mare.
Another characteristic is that the horse needs to feel safe and for this it requires open space, to flee if necessary or at least see a way out.
When these data were not known or despised, a wild horse was hunted with a noose and then trained based on coercion, shouting and physical punishment. Then it remained locked in a narrow block because it was the most practical and economical.
As the horse does not react well when you try to dominate it, the consequence is a relationship of distrust and psychic imbalances in the animal, and in the tamer who does not just achieve what he wants.
On the other hand, who knows what the soul of the horse is like would prefer to do like the Cherokee Indians, who followed the wild herds for days, without overwhelming them too much, and suddenly turned around towards their camps. The horses followed them and entered the fences that had prepared for them. This happened because horses respond to that kind of pressure with back pressure.
They also began riding in the water, where the horse learned to support the rider without resistance and without receiving punishment, and perhaps he felt safer in case of fall.
So, it turns out that these Indians did not resort to violence, they respected the need of the horse to be with others of their kind and to adapt to new situations at their own pace.
HOW TO INTERACT WITH A HORSE
The good relationship between horse and people begins from the day of the birth of the foal. The caregiver caresses and massages it so that it begins to assimilate the type of contact it will have with humans.
Among horse’s contact is very important, especially among foals, because they are continuously playing and touching each other.
They love caresses, but they have to be done with all the palm and squeezing a little, because if we pet them like a dog or a cat, we will tickle them that they dislike. At the same time the caregiver also enjoys contact, a pleasure that people too often deprive themselves of.
The secret to teaching the horse things and relating amicably to it is to know its language. It is a very communicative animal, with a highly developed social capacity.
He has a code of gestures to understand with the other members of the pack and the human being can use it to listen to him first and speak later.
For example, if the horse directs its ears forward, it is open to the proposals of the caretaker; If he crushes them backwards, he doesn’t like the situation at all.
If they come to understand each other man and horse, this animal is endowed with such sensitivity that it can capture the intentions of the human friend it carries in the rump through a slight movement of the legs, a certain inclination of the body or even its breathing. No need for reins, whips, or punishments.
In addition, the horse perceives if the person next to him or who is on him is calm and confident or nervous and insecure. He knows when it is a small child or a sick person who requires exquisite prudence.
