Equine Therapy For Couples

Equine Therapy for Couples

You have probably heard about Couples Therapy – and you might have pictured it out to be couples sitting with a therapist in a room where they talk the problem out until they reach a resolution.

Well, you’re not wrong. That’s the conventionally acceptable way to do it. But over time, couples therapy has evolved and has found its way to horses!

Yes, it literally involves individuals trying to rekindle the fire with their partners by seeking the help of a horse.

Traditionally, equine therapy has been used to help people with physical disabilities and those who suffered from trauma. Over the years, equine therapy has evolved to also become a form of therapy for couples. It has been called Equine Facilitated Therapy.

A conventional therapy for couples is usually done in a room setting. However, this does not always work well for some couples and one of the reasons for that is its setting. Some couples may be too conscious of the fact that they are in “therapy”.  EFT gives couple therapy a boost in a way since it’s done outdoors and it involves physical activity veering the couple’s attention away from the idea that it is “therapy”.

SO WHAT IS EQUINE FACILITATED THERAPY?

Equine Facilitated Therapy (EFT) is a process and series of activities in which couples engage with horses and a therapist in team building exercises that may facilitate change (EAGALA, 2001)

Because horses are naturally highly attuned to their environment, they can help unlock and reveal what the couples are actually feeling. When these unresolved or maladaptive relational patterns of couples and individuals show, that’s when the couple can begin to address what the problem is. This is what makes Equine Therapy novel. In essence, it helps reconnect disconnected partners by finding out what it is that disconnects them in the first place.

The activities that couples undergo in EFT vary. It can include Horse haltering and Horse billiards.

Horse haltering- In bird’s eye view, the therapist lets the couple halter the horse to the best of their abilities and observe their behavior in doing so.

Horse Billiards– To uncover the mechanisms that a couple would use in situations, the horse billiard activity would come in handy. In this course, billiard pockets are prepared in the arena for this activity. The couples will have to get the horse, which is the billiard ball in this activity, in each of the pockets.  The therapist will look into how couples interact or work together.

In both activities, the therapist will also observe body and verbal languages used during the entire activity. It is a good activity to discover behavior patterns.

OKAY, BUT WHAT ARE THE BENEFITS AND WHY A HORSE?

Horses’ naturally high sensitivity to emotional energies enables them to react accordingly to the subtlest hints of emotions.  People can use their huge size as a metaphor in overcoming their fears and challenging situations in their lives. This also means that the challenge for each of the couples is found in how they would be able to get the horse to be comfortable with them enough to make them complete the activities.

What EFT ultimately creates is an opportunity for the couples to get a better understanding of themselves and their function in the relationship – or in the society in general. 

To put it simply, in EFT, each of the couples would have to find a way – including but not limited to changing their behavior – to get  along with the horse. But the takeaway from the activity is the fact that both partners understand that a change in behaviour is required and that they must be willing to work on the change to make things “work”.

Linda Thomson