​Equine Facilitated Learning - Why horses?

By working with horses and joining their herd, we benefit in invaluable ways.

Horses are nonjudgmental and highly discerning prey animals with much to teach us about acceptance and the value of trusting our intuition. Their survival depends on their “sixth sense”, hence they interpret and respond to subtle changes in breathing, muscle tension, hormones, and the arousal level of other horses and predators – an ability which they naturally apply to humans.

Horses demand that we stay heart-centered. The heart is much more than a mechanical pump. It is an  intelligent organ of perception.  It holds great power and potential for aligning us with divine guidance and information that most humans don’t recognize or utilize in their decision making.

​“The heart generates the largest electromagnetic field in the body. The electrical field as measured in an electrocardiogram (ECG) is about 60 times greater in amplitude than the brain waves recorded in an electroencephalogram (EEG),” Rollin McCraty, Ph.D. explains in The Energetic Heart. Studies at the Institute of HeartMath show this powerful electromagnetic field can be detected and measured several feet away from a person’s body. 

​By being around horses, we develop non-verbal communication skills.  Horses teach us about emotional agility, the ability to flow with our emotions or energy in motion, and emotional-acuity, the ability to use emotions as information. Psychoneuroimmunology researchers have discovered that neuropeptides, molecules carrying emotional information, are generated not only in the brain, but most dramatically in the heart and the gut.  Our gut feelings are not a metaphor. 

Working with horses, we:

• Develop fluency in the language of sensations and the ability to listen to the messages behind emotions.  The language of sensations is a highly nuanced language that scientists have discovered actually transmits information between the heart, the gut, and the brain.  We learn to use the whole body as an organ of perception.  Learn more about the Making of Emotions at the Institute of Heart Math here
• Develop dual awareness  of self and other(s) as herd members 
• Cultivate empathy and tune into ourselves and our surroundings.  We develop the power of attunement  
• Learn to be on horse-time in the present moment
• Learn to be more horse-like: grounded, embodied, authentic and congruent
• Learn to set appropriate boundaries and to connect with non-predatory, authentic power, our instincts, and our intuition

“It’s been clinically proven that just being in the vicinity of horses changes our brainwave patterns.  They have a calming effect which helps stop people from becoming fixated on past or negative events—giving them a real positive experience.”
​– Franklin Levinson, therapist

"By learning to locate consciousness in the heart, we can begin to know the world – animal, mineral, and human – in a way that is long forgotten but most natural to us. Heart cognition moves us from a rational orientation in a dead, mechanized universe to one in which the unique perceptions and emotions are noticed and strengthened…to deeply experience the living soulfulness of the world constantly reweaving us back into the fabric of life.” - Stephen Buhner

As prey animals, horses “retain a vital connection to instinct and nature while also being associated mythically with a strong sixth-sense and the ability to carry riders between this world and the other." - Linda Kohanov 

Our Guiding Philosophy

Learn more about our guiding philosophy HERE

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