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SAINT JEAN DU GARD, France: Horses not only are fun
to ride but can help teach relationship skills as well as helping
people with physical or mental disabilities, according to promoters
of equitherapy.
“Horses mirror the feelings
people try to hide,” said the pioneer in the discipline, Linda
Kohanov, who runs the Epona center in Arizona in the United States.
“They teach relationship skills.”
Two main disciplines come under
the equitherapy umbrella: the equine-facilitated psychotherapy and
equine-assisted personal development.
But therapeutic work with horses
does not necessarily involve riding, said Brigitte Martin,
co-president of France’s Equine-Assisted Therapy Federation.
“It can happen during grooming,
or with the horse on a long rein. The horse acts as a mediator
between the therapist and the patient.”
Martin works with children who
are autistic, blind or deaf, and facilitates their contact with a
pony.
“The child becomes less
agitated and more relaxed,” she said.
Equitherapy can improve posture
and well-being, added Josee-Laura Delacoux of the French National
Equitherapy Society SFE.
“You see people opening up,
smiling more. Horses are very sensitive. They pick up on emotions,
without being judgmental, and this allows people to express
themselves.”
Claire Morin, from the French
association Cheval Contact, says riding itself is not essential, but
can be important.
“People’s lives can be
transformed by interaction with a horse. They see how they
communicate with others, and what they need to change in themselves.
They learn how to say no, and set limits, but in a natural way,
without a power struggle.”
“There is an intuitive
communication that occurs between horses and humans. The horse
brings people into the here and now,” she added.
Yves Rivet, who founded a riding
school in Charente-Maritime where mentally handicapped people work
as grooms and assist the instructors, says the initiative has given
them a new vision of themselves.
“People who come to ride see
them not as handicapped people, but as trained stable hands. The
stigma is removed.”
--AFP
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