What happens in a session?
During sessions, the Intouch Equine team work with the client and the horses to explore, create, experiment and problem solve together.
Activities can be with a horse one on one, with several horses or within the entire herd. A client can expect to interact with the horses through groundwork experiences, grooming and other hands-on activities rather than riding or horsemanship.
Working with the Intouch Equine team, the clients can then explore, discuss and process their feelings, behaviours, and response-patterns.
The focus of the program is dependent upon the needs of the client and can include issues such as non-verbal communication, responsibility, teamwork, self-regulation, expressing or containing emotions, body awareness, assertiveness, creative thinking, problem solving, relationships, respect, self-control, and confidence.
We can design sessions to work with the presenting issues and concerns while providing the opportunity for safe exploration and growth.
For Kids
Equine assisted mindfulness and grounding strategies can assist children to improve their present moment awareness, awareness of the self and others, and better regulate their emotional experiences. The development of these skills can facilitate improvements in behavioural control and emotional well-being, and increases the child’s capacity for attention, concentration and learning.
Horses and EACP can also support children in developing social skills, distress tolerance and self confidence.
For Teens
Equine assisted leadership and problem solving techniques encourage psychological flexibility and behavioural adaptivity. These interventions can also assist teens to develop assertive communication and negotiation skills, as well as explore their emotional experience and expand the scope of their understanding of relationships.
These skills promote safe personal boundaries, and help to develop conflict resolution which can help overcome hardships such as bullying.
For Adults
Equine assisted behavioural interventions allow an opportunity to explore alternate perspective taking, test out predictions and cognitive bias through exposure to novel stimuli, and actualise self-potential. These techniques help to gather rich experiential evidence associated troublesome cognitions and/or emotional distress; cognitive learning is reinforced with a congruent emotional experience which aides and more meaningful learning experience – a powerful mechanism in facilitating acceptance and change in conditions such as anxiety and depression.