Gestalt Equine Psychotherapy
Australia
Gestalt Equine Psychotherapy GEP
Introduction to GEP
What is GEP (Gestalt Equine Psychotherapy)?
What is GEP for Groups?
What is GEP with Children and Adolescents?
Why Horses?
What Horses offer?
What GEP offers?
Effectiveness of Equine Psyghotherapy (EAP)?
Gestalt Equine Psychotherapy provides quality Mental Health, Psychotherapy, Personal Growth, Organisational Consulting/ Groups, and Specific Learning opportunities for:
• Couples
• Families
• Organisational groups
• Groups
Client Needs & Issues that can be addressed with GEP include:
- Depression, Anxiety
- Attachment, Trauma & Abuse
- Relationship Conflict, Communication, Breakdown
- Child, Family Issues, Needs & Behaviours
- Organisational Change, Team Building
- Personal Growth & Exploration
- Life Changes, Transition, Grief & Loss
Team Building Session
The field of Equine (Horse) Psychotherapy and Learning – including Equine Assisted Psychotherapy and Learning (EAP & EAL), Equine Facilitated Psychotherapy & Learning (EFL & EFP), RDA and Hippotherapy (Riding for the disabled, and mounted work for people with physical, intellectual & developmental disabilities conducted by a OT or Physiotherapist) – has been flourishing in America and Europe. There are various programs across the world, addressing a range of client needs with positive and sometimes profound outcomes.
Although the field of Equine Psychotherapy & Learning is relatively new in Australia, we here at ‘Gestalt Equine Psychotherapy Australia’ are confident and drawn to the powerful growth & healing that can occur in this work with horses.
Gestalt Therapy has been a prominent Psychotherapy worldwide since its inception, and has continued to grow well into our modern times. At it’s heart, Gestalt Therapy is a psychotherapy that is holistic, humanistic, relational, respectful and alive. Gestalt therapy is an effective approach for all psychological, social, emotional and clinical needs.
Gestalt Equine Psychotherapy (GEP) grew as an extension of, and different application of, Gestalt Therapy. It’s emphasis on relationship with horses, and horses as co-facilitators in the process of human development and emotional and psychological healing, fits very well given horses natural capacity for Awareness, Contact and Connection, Emotional Intelligence, Congruency and Authenticity in relationship. Thus, horses offer a natural possibility for people to stretch into new capacities for self awareness and authentic relationship, and an opportunity to attend to their developmental ‘unfinished business’ in the GEP session.
Gestalt Equine Psychotherapy makes itself explicit as a psychotherapeutic orientation that has its theoretical roots clear (in Gestalt Therapy, as compared to say Psychoanalytic, Cognitive behavioural Therapy, Case Management, Family Solutions & Systems Therapy, Behavioural Therapy, Medical disease and illness model etc). Though gestalt is notably holistic, so may well incorporate many of the aforementioned approaches, given certain client presentations or needs. So, first and foremost Gestalt Equine Psychotherapy is a ‘Psychotherapy’ that makes it’s theory and practice explicit. Secondly, Gestalt Equine Psychotherapy is practiced by Gestalt Therapists, who have completed training as a Gestalt psychotherapist, in addition to, and distinct from, their base qualifications as a Psychologist, Mental Health Social Worker or the like. Gestalt therapists have then undertaken training in Equine Psychotherapy and Learning.
As introduced by Duey Freeman, founder of Gestalt Equine Institute of the Rockies (GEIR) in his Gestalt Equine Psychotherapy training, January, 2010, there are other physiological and bodily healing capacities that horses can offer. Specifically the horse can offer a ‘holding’ (physically and emotionally), and a different experience of ‘nourishment, touch, motion and emotion’ (so essential in developmental growth) that many psychotherapists struggle to offer clients in repairing early attachment and trauma experiences lodged in the body and brain memory.
Gestalt Therapy’s emphasis on embodied and integrated being in relationship, in the here and now, fits incredibly with horses natural capacities for presence and relational being. Intimate relationship, developmental healing, trust in the world and oneself and opportunities for further self actualisation, can begin to occur in this work with horses. This experience with horses can then begin to facilitate trust and further self integration in relation to the therapist, and, other human relationships and the wider world.
What is GEP?
GEP is Psychotherapy with Horses as Co-Therapists. The therapy occurs in a safe place, a paddock, menage or roundyard, with Gestalt Therapists trained in Equine Psychotherapy and Gestalt Equine Psychotherapy. There may be one, or many horses participating in the session. After an initial check in and initial assessment of the clients needs and issues, the client is offered a relational experience with the horse/s that is specific to the needs /issues presented. The client is offered some clear guidelines about the process, the horses, and supported in ways that are appropriate – given the unique needs and psychotherapeutic issues. The relational experience with the horses offers opportunities for the client to explore and make contact that is grounded and alive. It is an opportunity for embodied awareness, in the moment, in relationship. There is no possibility of being ‘right’ or ‘wrong’. It is purely an invitation to experience, build awareness and experience authentic contact and relationship. The therapist/s, the client/s, and the horse/s create a unique opportunity for growth, deepening self understanding and contact, from the non-verbal and verbal experience in the moment.
The GEP process works with self exploration and healing across all levels of experience – bodily and sensing, emotional, cognitive, and spiritual. GEP understands horses as living the essence of gestalt, and as teachers for awareness, full bodied contact, choices, self responsibility and healthy self-regulation. The horse-human experience offers a different opportunity, free from analytical, judgemental, and incongruent ways of being.
Horses invite humans to stretch different parts of themselves – beyond the thinking analytical mind, deepening the experience in the body, intuiting and sensing, into the feeling realm. This opportunity is very often healing in itself, a being with, on a sensing and energy level, and an unconditional presence. Unfinished business or core issues operating as patterns in beliefs, thinking habits, bodily and emotional patterns, become clear and available to awareness, contact, intention, choice and action.
What is GEP for Groups?
Small and large Organisational groups are offered an opportunity to be together, with horses as co-facilitators, to deepen their understanding of – and contact with – eachother, the group, the group’s visions, roles and responsibilities, to build awareness, choice, and possibilities excellence and endless creative solutions. Teams can become more emotionally intelligent, value individuals in the team as well as the group as a whole, build resilience and brilliance by freeing up individual’s strengths, value and effectiveness. Conflict can be addressed with awareness and respect. Vision can be strengthened. Dialogue can be opened. All in the most unexpected ways – by being with horses and engaging with team activities with horses leading the way.
Lessons on creative solutions, managing feelings and useful thinking patterns, managing change and challenge, strengthening leadership and effective teamwork, finding one’s place in the herd, and innovative outcomes,. Lessons on Leadership, knowing and managing feelings, fears, needs for belonging, strengths and underdeveloped capacities, strengthening capacities for trust, authenticity , awareness, curiosity, confidence, intention and action.
These are just a few lessons that a day in a GEP workshop can offer organisational groups. The ½ or full day GEP for Groups is based on the structure, function, process and needs of the organisational group.
What is GEP with Children and Adolescents?
The GEP process is defined by the needs of the child or adolescent , their developmental level and attachment style, and the unique psychotherapeutic focus. The horse experience, and verbal discussion is appropriate to the stage and needs of the child. The sessions may be offered in conjunction with parent or family sessions.
Why Horses?
Horses are beautiful, intelligent, sensitive and strong animals.
Horses live and breathe gestalt - they live in an aware, self regulating, authentic and relational way, within their own being and in the ‘herd’ and field at large. They are deeply embedded in a web of relationship, and there is a constant connection that occurs moment to moment, in the herd and broader environment.
Horses are prey animals and therefore have a sensitive, hypervigilant nature with a tendancy to flee from changes or perceived danger. They communicate predominantly non-verbally, via body expressions, energy and behaviours, and can pick up subtle changes in the horse/person/environment.
Horses are oriented towards connection and relationship due to being social animals with a herd structure. Horses experience, and then respond. Due to horses being highly perceptive species, they will react behaviourally to a person’s non-verbals, intention, feelings and thoughts, especially if they are incongruent to the person’s presenting behaviour or words.
Horses have many similar traits to humans. They are social animals, prefer to be with peers, have roles in their herd, have distinct temperaments and personal styles. They have feelings, moods and preferences, and an approach that works well with one horse may not work with another. They are playful, curious and creative…. The list goes on. Horses provide vast opportunities to reflect on parallels between the relational experience with the horses, and ones relational experience at large (in their life).
Relating with horses encourages the development of skills and values that promote emotional health, ie patience, fairness, commitment, emotional congruency, relaxation and good breathing, clear communication, care and slowing down, firmness and determination, good and consistent boundaries …
The ‘Way of the Horse’ or horse wisdom is very rich for us as human beings and the inter-species relationships can teach us much about health, awareness and Balance – Integration of Being. If Horses have not been damaged psychologically by the mistreatment of humans (intentionally or unintentionally), they offer a clarity of being, an authentic being which is both simple and profound in its capacity for Self Regulation and Relationship. Generally life lessons learned specifically from the ‘way of the horse’ can include teachings on: wisdom of prey as different from predator ways, authenticity, managing feelings as information, stretching capacities to feel, intuit and sense from a distance, honouring sensitivity as a strength, offering insights around boundaries, roles and our ‘place in the herd’ / life purpose, opportunity to be in the moment and be present, connecting with nature and the natural world.
Horses are often depicted by artists, shaman, and spiritual indigenous communities as Beings of Freedom, Power, and Spiritual Wisdom. Connection with horses has the potential of connecting us with our deeper essential self experience and the deeper wisdom of the universe – oneness of all beings.
What Horses Offer?
Horses offer much to the psychotherapy and learning equation.
As mentioned, there are many benefits that horses offer to those in many horse fields and sports, including encouraging responsibility, work ethic, assertiveness, patience, confidence, clear communication, and healthy relationships.
In the therapeutic/learning encounter, horses specifically offer :
• A mirror of what clients feel and experience due to their natural instincts of responding to subtle changes in the field/environment ie subtle body language, behaviour and emotional energy. When a change is made in the person’s intent, feeling and behaviour, a change in the horse follows. Thus horses encourage self-awareness and congruency of body, feelings, thoughts, and beliefs.
• Non-verbal feedback from horses can be powerful, and integrated, sometimes on a level beyond words.
• Authentic and honest feedback to the clients, free of judgement and interpretation.
• A ‘safe challenge’, an opportunity to explore one’s way of managing difficult situations, fear, attitude, and way of being in relationships and the world.
• A captivating and unique way of engaging humans in their own growth via relating to magnificent, large, sensitive, and social animals.
• An opportunity for some people to feel less resistance than they may do in person to person therapy approaches.
GEP is an experiential therapy that offers experimental learning, embodied contact, attachment and relationship development, opportunities for emotional, cognitive and behavioural patterns to become available for change.
GEP offers experiments in contact, relationship, awareness, choice, skills development and self exploration in the here and now.
The process involves experiencing something new in the moment, a new feel and body memory. The relationship with horses creates new feelings, emotional experience, attachment and relational intimacy that can become new ground from which to reach out in human relationships. Unresloved emotions and unmet needs can become figural and available for completion and integration over time.
In summary GEP can offer :
- the inter-species relational experience in the here and now is an opportunity for deep emotional and psychological healing to begin to occur,
- particular skills can begin to be stretched and developed ie boundary setting, problem solving, energy and body feel, grounding in breath, concentration, confidence…
- an immediacy of experience, awareness, meaning-making and contact,
- supports mindfulness, an ‘out of your head back to your senses’ grounding,
- encouraging self regulation, choice and responsibility,
- a deep relationship with Self and other Beings.
Effectiveness of Equine Psychotherapy
Equine Assisted Psychotherapy has been found to be an effective treatment for many varied psychological issues in children, adolescents, and adults. Some studies finding significant improvement in outcomes for children and adolescents include:
• Children with depression and anxiety
• Children with difficult behaviours
• Children and adolescents ‘at risk’ with maladaptive behaviours
• Incarcerated adolescents
• Adolescents with disruptive behaviours
• Adolescents with conduct, mood and psychotic disorders
• Adolescents with depression, anxiety and low esteem.
Some studies indicating significant improvements for adults include:
• Adults with unresolved grief
• Adults with depression, anxiety and social disorders
• Adults with eating disorders
• Couples therapy
• War veterans with Post Trauma Stress Disorder
EAP is being used for individual, couples and family work with positive outcomes around the world, and many studies are indicating that the treatment duration is reduced with this work, compared to traditional counselling and psychotherapy.
