Article – Blackmore Vale Magazine – Dorset - April 2006

Back in January I read with interest an article about Equine Assisted Psychotherapy by Josephine Sellers. As the writer for the Blackmore Vale Equestrian features, I usually focus on local equestrian business and services as a horse owner and rider myself. Having read the article on EAP I was intrigued about this little know technique and decided to get in touch, which led to a truly inspirational meeting with Josephine and her beautiful herd of horses at her home near Wincanton.  Spending time with Josephine and her horses really helped me understand the potential of the work they do together and how horses have so much to offer everybody, not just riders, as the focus of EAP is not riding or horsemanship, it’s a powerful and effective therapeutic application.

Here Josephine explains how EAP is a field of psychotherapy in which horses are worked in a partnership with a counsellor/psychotherapist to help clients achieve emotional growth and learning….

I work as an Integrative/Transpersonal Counsellor and in the last couple of years I have become involved with a powerful and moving therapeutic application that is beginning to take foothold in this country – Equine Assisted Psychotherapy.

I write here about the deep relationship that binds horse to human, which has been in existence since the year dot.  I have owned and loved horses for the past 35 years and have always felt passionate about them. A couple of years ago I had a short term physical disability and because I could not ride or drive my horses at that time, I spent a lot of time just sitting with them, feeling them and talking to them. Gradually I could see that my two horses were able to mirror my personality in its diversity and I was given ‘food for thought’. The outcome was to discover that we could work as a team to help ourselves and thereafter assist others to understand themselves more fully.  Via a string of interesting synchronicities, I was then given the opportunity to train in this therapeutic application via Eagala USA -  www.eagala.org.uk

Equine Assisted Psychotherapy engages the ability of the horse to mirror unspoken human behaviour and emotions. This therapy, often worked in a therapeutic triad, of client, therapist and horse professional, using these mirroring abilities of the horse, is considered to be short term, solution based, allowing the client to regain their faculty of personal choice over their reactions.

What is it about horses, that makes them so capable of this work and produce results so swiftly?   For me the answer is found in their high sensitivity. Horses have to live very much in the moment for their daily survival and they are totally honest.  Their senses are finely tuned and they pick up human thoughts and can read human behaviour and mirror it back to us for us to see.   For me they are just telepathic and you can’t lie to a horse and so, ultimately, we can’t continue to lie to ourselves.  Horses can help us to become authentic and remember who we really are beyond our masks.