Equine Assisted Psychotherapy

IHT and Reins Down Ranch offer a treatment modality called Equine Assisted Psychotherapy which is an experiential form of psychotherapy where horses are involved in the sessions.  "Experiential" means that you will involved in hands-on experiences with the horses that are designed to reflect things going on in your life.  The process is not always about interacting with the treatment team, although that will happen at times, but is about providing you the opportunity to experience, explore, problem-solve, discover, be creative, gain insight and experience practical applications of what you are learning in the moment.  The process is about "doing" along with "talking."

There are several reasons we choose to use horses in this work, but primarily it is due to their nature as social and prey animals.  As a result of this nature, they have an extraordinary ability to read nonverbal communication-picking up on messages we are sending which we are not always conscious of.  With this, they start responding to us in familiar ways that remind us of other people and things in our lives.  It is through this that they become metaphors (symbols) providing us the opportunity to work on ourselves in relation to those aspects of our lives.

Horses do not know our past, education, gender, race, or other labels we may apply to ourselves and each other.  They live in the moment and can be a part of this relationship without the biases we as humans put on each other.  This provides even more value to the insight they can provide us about ourselves.