Equine Therapy | Sunshine Coast Psychotherapy

The horses support and challenge us to:

Overcome difficulties and challenges in our lives

Develop new mindfulness and self-support skills

Increase confidence within ourselves and with others

Build body awareness and emotional intelligence

Learn about the way of the horse

Understand and safely express our feelings

Explore our boundaries and leadership skills

Improve our communication skills

Equine Assisted Therapy is a creative, empowering and experiential way for clients to connect with themselves, with horses as their assistants, while exploring their own feelings, behaviours and patterns.

Horses are free, sensitive, powerful and social animals. They help clients accept, enjoy and become aware of their experiences in the present moment. This acceptance brings about choices and natural change. This can lead to clients feeling more at home, alive and fulfilled in themselves and in their lives.

Based on a clients’ unique needs, wants and therapeutic goals they are offered relational horse experiences. These may include horse observations, meeting horses at liberty, grooming, ground/lead sessions, liberty lunging/circle work, herd sessions and led mounted sessions. Sessions are held in a safe, supportive and natural environment while stepping into an authentic relationship with the horses.

Horses are highly attuned to sense and pick up on subtle changes in a person's heart rate, breathing, posture and intention. They live in the present moment, have full bodied awareness and experience authentic relationships with each other.

In this way they are able to offer us honest, non-judgemental feedback and act as metaphors for what is happening in our lives and relationships. Our patterns and ways of relating are often unconscious to us.

Horses model ways to release, ground, touch, be present, be aware, connect to our senses, listen to our feelings, have healthy boundaries, communicate effectively and have genuine relationships and contact with each other.

Client Testimonial:

"Horse therapy has not only given me the gift to reconnect with horses but to reconnect with myself. Allowing insight into my thoughts, feelings and a sense of balance and strength." Bec.