Therapy with horses at Take Flight Farms can help to heal the wounds of war and provide opportunities for personal growth and recovery.
Equine Assisted Psychotherapy (EAP) can be very benefical in improving the mental health and overall quality of life for members of our military services. Research being done under the guidance of EAGALA has shown very powerful results when working with soldiers in EAP. These results include:
- Over the course of treatment, soldiers went from being outside of the herd of horses to joining it, eventually catching a horse and leading it across the pasture. The "harnessing of fear" served as different metaphors for the soldiers, such as lessening the terror of recurrent nightmares and shedding emotional armor in order to return intimacy to their lives.
- The experience of being accepted by and incorporated into the herd opened floodgates of grief for the loss of fellow soldiers, innocence and parts of self.
- Interaction with horses created in many a desire to be more social and to connect again with the world at large. NOTE: Horses are very social creatures whose mental health relies heavily on interaction with other horses.
- Detachment and numbing tactics are meaningless when used around horses. Detached people often lead to detached horses. This tends to cause mixed emotions but also led soldiers to useful insights about how people in their lives reacted to their own emotional detachment.
Click here to read the full-text article, written by Joseph Lancia, DO and reprinted from EAGALA In Practice Magazine, Spring 2008.
For more information about military services at Take Flight Farms, please contact us.