Equine Assisted Therapy incorporates an experience-based approach to achieving mental health and wellness, with horses as the co-assistants in the therapeutic process. Facilitated by a registered mental health practitioner, clients are offered safe experiences with horses for the purpose of addressing social, emotional, cognitive and behavioural challenges, and to support self, relationship and life-skills development.

Fundamentally, Equine Assisted Therapy aims to facilitate learning through experimentation and exploration to build awareness into our personal self-experience and self-experience in relationship with others. This awareness development supports understanding into the typical ways we think, feel, behave and relate to discover how our tendencies in responding to our world shape our present and future experiences. By becoming aware we empower ourselves to have choice into how we decide to respond to life at any given moment.

With horses as the teachers, modelling how to live authentically, in presence and embodied awareness, Equine Assisted Therapy assists clients to build internal and external tools and resources that can be utilised in times of need to manage challenging social and emotional situations. The more supports we have access to and can use at any time, the more likely we will be able to creatively adjust to presenting life conditions in flexible, choiceful, and adaptive ways.

Within the safe, non-judgemental relational space that horses offer people, clients can begin to step into relationship with horses to experiment with new ways of being to support personal change, growth and development. This is the rich opportunity that experiential learning approaches provide. Extending beyond just thinking, verbalising and reflecting about change, experimentation can allow participants to update outdated ways of living no longer serving them well, as they begin to explore and practice different thinking processes, emotional and behavioural responses to promote quality of life and well-being.