CAREER PATHS

WHAT ARE WAYS TO INCORPORATE HORSES INTO TEACHING AND HEALING HUMANS?

… Or “Do I have to be a therapist?”…

The equine assisted field has apparently emerged into the public consciousness as “equine therapy,” and it is not very clear what that really means.

A Consensus Terminology Document
A multidisciplinary team participated in a comprehensive 2-year consensus-building process to recommend the adoption of optimal terminology regarding the work, which you can read here: Optimal Terminology for Services in the United States That Incorporate Horses to Benefit People: A Consensus Document

To simplify: it cannot be called therapy unless it is provided by a licensed practitioner accepted by your state and local legal regulations. See Mental Health Counseling below.

Certification and Licensure are different. Equine assisted training does not provide licensure to provide mental health therapy.

There are OTHER paths to providing equine assisted interactions. Note on the chart below the variety of ways to incorporate horses into therapy, learning and workplace training.

Equine Assisted Careers is specific to EAP and EAL, Equine Assisted Psychotherapy and Equine Assisted Learning. For adaptive or therapeutic riding refer to PATH, the Professional Association of Therapeutic Horsemanship International.

Equine Assisted Careers does not receive payment from any training organization.

EQUINE ASSISTED CLIENT CONTEXT

Please note: Many EAL training programs do not train for a counseling or therapy context;
this information is only provided for comparison purposes.

You may not copy, reproduce, distribute, publish, display or modify this information without written permission from Linda Pucci.

MENTAL HEALTH COUNSELING

What Is It? Equine Assisted Psychotherapy (EAP)

Commonly called Equine Therapy. Here is a link to the optimal terminology document for the equine assisted field that provides preferred definitions to be used in the profession to more clearly define services for consumers and more reliably measure scientific research on interventions.

What is Therapy?

You love horses and think helping people by involving horses sounds like a great job. Horses may certainly be “therapeutic,” but what IS “therapy?”

A Medical Model of Facilitation
How is it defined, and what is required to provide it legally and ethically?

Here is a link to the American Counseling Association.
Read What Is Mental Health, by the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA).

What Credentials Are Needed
To provide therapy will include training and education in diagnosis and assessment, ethics, and models of applying mental health therapy or counseling to aid someone in emotional and mental pain.

At the bottom of this section is a link to examples of some mental health credentials to pursue and their acronyms.

To incorporate horses into providing therapy requires enough experience with horses to understand and be able to recognize the feedback they can provide. There are many equine assisted certification models that teach the facilitation of this feedback.

A Rewarding Profession
This is a worthy and rewarding profession that requires diligent rigor to pursue. Yes, there are other career paths in this field that utilize an educational model to deliver services professionally.

Follow the link below for a partial list of some mental health credentials.

MENTAL HEALTH LICENSURE GUIDE

EQUINE ASSISTED LEARNING

EAL, Equine Assisted Learning, is an experiential educational approach to developing problem-solving skills and communication in education, personal development and leadership while incorporating horses into ground-based activities and observations.

AHA Moments

An early founder in this field recognized the benefits of Outward Bound’s design model of moving students through a sequence of engaging experiences in nature, promoting skill mastery, and incorporating reflection where students can learn from their success as well as failure. The addition of horses to the experience can create an unfamiliar state of knowledge in the individual requiring adaptive coping when receiving feedback from the horse. A skilled EAL facilitator can lead the interaction experience to guide or model problem solving behavior to a solution that builds self-confidence, self-esteem, and an enjoyment of the learning environment.

An Educational Model of Facilitation

The structured facilitation process of EAL differs from EAP. EAP addresses the issue. EAL engages the principle. EAL experiential activities are typically offered to groups, and can be used to reengage students in academic learning as well as with at-risk adolescents or simply to teach life skills to youth.
EAL is also used in life coaching. personal development, and wellness programming.

See some of the different EAL applications at the link below:

WORKPLACE TRAINING

Equine Assisted Learning, EAL, for the Business World
has its foundations in the adult education model, providing structured programs designed to equip employees with skills and knowledge to enhance their job performance. This is sometimes called corporate training, but many types of businesses and administrators utilize these services: banks, nonprofits, school administrators and more.

Team Building Activities help to build communication and collaboration through problem-solving to achieve shared goals while receiving immediate, unbiased feedback from the horses which creates a unique awareness of how we appear to others.

New Neural Connections

Experiential learning with horses engages multiple senses and promotes neuroplasticity, which is the brain's ability to reorganize and form new neural connections that shift thinking patterns and associated outcomes.

Thriving Organizations

Leadership development, organizational development, and executive coaching alongside the team development, all with the help of horses, enhance cohesive, thriving organizations.

This is facilitation in an educational model and not a therapeutic model. While it is open to outcome, it is also goal and purpose oriented as well as experientially engaging.

To learn more click below.