Equine Assisted Learning Vs. Equine Therapy

Understanding the differences...

What is the difference between Equine Assisted Learning and Equine Assisted Therapy?

This is one of those questions that gets asked all the time. And there is a significant difference.

This is an area where we ask ourselves do I need more credentials or not so many credentials? It’s really important that you do the research.

There is a massive difference between Equine Assisted Learning and Equine Assisted Therapy. With this piece the biggest noticeable part of it is the therapy portion.

The Definitions:

Equine therapy also referred to as horse therapy, equine assisted therapy and equine assisted psychotherapy is a form of experiential therapy that involves interactions between patients and horses. Notice how many times the word therapy has been
mentioned in all of this. And that's because it is real therapy. That means you need a licensed therapist, professional counselor, psychotherapist, whatever it may be, to be doing the therapy portion of it. Why? Because it’s dealing with the psyche of the brain.

We need to be very careful with certifications that are saying it's a therapy piece because it's only therapy if there is a licensed therapist. Otherwise, reaching into the psyche when we don't have any right to touch a person’s psyche is dangerous. I like to think of it this way. If somebody said, I want you to do some therapy with me, even with a horse, I would say, I'm not able to do that. I don't have that kind of background. It would be the same as if somebody said, I'd like you to wire my house for all of the electricity. I would say I'm not capable nor qualified to do it.

However, it seems to be something that gets skipped over because perhaps it’s not tangible or you can't see that piece or what it is, but please be very cautious with therapy. You should not be wiring somebody's house if you are not an electrician and you should not be rewiring someone’s brain if you are not a qualified therapist.

The Research

A therapeutic piece can come from the actual client who comes into the programs because the horse is the actual therapeutic piece. Yes. Therapeutic. Through research, we know why a horse actually has those healing powers.

The research is from The Heart Math Institute. It is an informative place to read about Horse Heart Math. For example in heart math our horse's heart can weigh 9-11lbs compared to the human heart which is 0.5lbs-0.8lbs. (As an aside our human brain typically weighs between 1.2 and 1.4 kg. The horse's brain weighs between 600 and 800g.) These are big differences. Heart intelligence is the flow of awareness, understanding and intuition we experience when the mind and emotions are brought into coherent alignment with the heart.

The Heart Math InstituteWe see that a horse’s heart is massive in comparison to ours. What we can also take away fromthis, is all hearts have an electromagnetic field. A horse’s heart is five times more powerful than ours, extending up to nine metres (courtesy of The Heart Math Institute). Due to this a horse’s heart energy can help take away anxiety, reduce heart rates and produce endorphins for clients, this is a big part of the healing portion that horses offer. Whether you are going through equine therapy or through equine assisted learning, this is part of what you are receiving by working with a horse. This is the research component as to why they are a healing therapeutic piece in the programs.

The Difference

Back to Equine Therapy, always make sure therapy is with a professional. We never want to claim that we're doing any therapy component when we do not have a degree.

In equine assisted learning, the therapy component doesn't exist in your arena. You are trained to facilitate objectively driven programs that help the human actually to do their own therapy piece, coming up with their own answers and solutions to the problems that they have in their lives. We don't need to touch on or hear where they've come from to be able to do that.

One other side of equine therapy is the hippotherapy side. For any of you who haven't heard of that before. That's a different kind of physical therapy and people are riding in that program. So that should be mentioned. Two equine therapy processes can be riding or it can be on the ground.

Again, it should be somebody who is licensed properly to be running the programs that they're running, especially in hippotherapy. It is a phenomenal practice. We had the opportunity to witness a session with patients. The therapists have to get everyone on the horses and sitting properly so that the riding stretches out the correct muscles. Again, they are licensed to be able to do so. They have the proper education and training of the musculature. They understand all of the pieces on how our bodies work. They have the background to be able to sit someone properly on a horse and by using the motion of the horse allow the client to stretch out the different parts of their body. I know they use a lot of volunteers because you need people on all sides of the horse when a human is on top of the horse, just to make sure no one falls off.

Horses Are Therapeutic

You can say horses are therapeutic because we understand that piece. They are symbiotic creatures that allow us to go through a therapeutic piece. Sitting in a quiet room, being creative, playing music or meditating, these are things that we cause within ourselves as a therapeutic feeling. Whereas therapy is the outside portion that someone is bringing to us.

With regards to checking out credentials, it’s very important to understand when businesses were established. How they became established and what their credentials are, because if they don't have credentials who are they working with now? Who are their clients? If they don't have clients, they're just training you to hopefully go out and do it. They're making money off your certification.

The Equine Connection certification, even though it's only five days online and three days in-person that we're together, it's more than just that. You can never be an expert in any field in five days. It's impossible. So we never claim that to be so. What we do claim is we help you to be the most successful in your business that you possibly can. Why? We train you for life. After you take the five days with us, you get an online training course. Then you are with our global group where we’re constantly training. There is never a time when you're not being trained. We've made this program so you
have the ability to leave your life for five days instead of it being six months because who’s got six months to go away from their family, their home, their business, their work? And it's just like anything else, this experience that we teach is the experiential part.

You have to be able to go out there and figure it out with your clients and be actually doing things to gain more knowledge as well. So that's why even during the course, you have to actually facilitate other human beings to get that feeling, to understand what it's like to go out into the world and then be able to do it at home. You can then come back with more questions.

It's so true that you need that experience behind you to be able to properly run the course. And that's why you have to look into what the experience is that’s behind you, because that is your certification in a lot of ways, too. You know, the other thing is, if you’re going to spend money on a certification, I do believe you get what you pay for. So if you're looking at two different certifications, I can tell you this. It's not apples to apples, make sure you're researching what it is that you actually get for your money.
One more thing about equine therapy before we discuss more equine assisted learning.

The other side of this is that it can be a group experience and it can be one on one for the equine therapy side as well. As long as there's the proper management of the therapist and ratio, I guess, to numbers as well. In equine therapy you can have group programs. And you can do the one on ones as well.

Same with equine assisted learning. It works the same way but it's the facilitation process that is different because we don't have that therapy aspect within equine assisted learning. There is equine assisted learning. There's equine assisted personal development. There's equine assisted learning coaching. There's equine assisted plus etc. Equine assisted that term itself just means that it's working with the horse. Hopefully working with a horse not using a horse.

They’re our words. We work with horses. We’ll discuss equine assisted learning in our format. That's the best way to cover it, we'll just speak on ours because it's too hard to speak on a lot of the other ones out there because there is great and there is not so great. There's such a range that it's really only fair that we speak of our own certification when we're talking about equine assisted learning.

I never look at the people when I’m on an Equine Assisted Learning website because the horse will tell you if this is good or if it is not going well. I can be totally miserable inside and still have a beautiful smile on my face. That's not going to tell you anything. However, if you look at the horse, horses don't lie. We know that. They are reacting to what is actually happening versus the happy smiley people that have just been told to smile for the camera.

Is EFL the exact same as EAL?

All the EAL's aren't the exact same. EFL is equine facilitated learning, so it could still be working with a horse and facilitating the process depending on what the outcome would be for that specific certification.There aren’t any black and white answers,
there are always gray areas.

The definition we have here is: equine assisted learning is a learner established educational experiential program that is facilitated within a group format or one on one and focuses on ground activities rather than riding horses. More specifically, equine assisted learning is a horse course with an effective solution to human development that promotes individual and group growth. It is about building skills and working with horses as the teachers.

We have an armor of skills. When we're presenting our first programs we always talk about building the armor of skills. We have it as a poster showing the different pieces of armor. You get a chest plate here or you get the leg plate. It all represents a skill that clients are building so that when they've finished the programs (which is usually 8 to 12 weeks, our clients come once a week for an hour and a half) they keep adding these skills so that they're stronger when they leave us. Our programs are designed in such a way that you have a beginning, a middle and an end, the bonus is at the end.

They have the ability to parallel instances in the program to their lives. So they take the learning out of the arena and put it into their life. It's not just whatever they picked out of the arena that day. We always have a focus with each and every obstacle program that they are doing in the arena. One time it might be about communication, next time it could be active listening, next time could be trust, that is the focus. We know that they are leaving with a specific skill every time. And that's why they are able to build the armor for themselves to take out into the world.

Plus, we can work with our organizations (for example Calgary Dream Centre) to make sure it's the right skills for them. That's going to help them parallel what they're learning in their organizations as well. The bonus with our certification is because the person who designed these programs did this, we don't have to. We were trained in it. We had to become pros to be able to turn into experts.

She did the research on how human beings actually learn in life. That’s already established. She looked into research on how wild horses communicate. Then she married the two to come up with these objectively driven programs that will always give you a result. We can tell our organizations or individuals there will always be a result. These programs are designed that way.

You are trained in facilitating these objectively driven programs. Listening and watching, you’re checking to see what the horse is saying. Because if the horse isn't showing a change, you never get to step in and say, how are you feeling right now? It's set up so that we are trained to hear our horses. They are the actual teachers, hear what they say, to have a step in to help them with the skill they are working on that day.

You are prepared for every program so that you know exactly how to run it. What happens if somebody says something that's therapy? You have to respond the way the facilitation works, it doesn't go there. If you're properly facilitating, which we train you to do. Then you don't have to worry about getting to that therapy portion or how people are sharing. It’s a different way for the client to be learning and they know that it's a skill that they're going after here as well.

We don’t delve into the emotions of a person that is what the horse is there for. People will change things for the horse that they wouldn't do for people. Something changes inside of them. You can get a flood of emotions and tears, we don't step in. The reason is, here is a horse, we see that the horse is fine, giving the client a solid strength to be able to just release the way they need to. The horse isn’t going away. The horse isn't trying to move. We're never going to step in during that moment and say, are you okay? Why are you crying? We don't need to know why and say words that won’t help. Our words may embarrass the person. The client will deal with what they’re going through with the healing from the horse. Remember the horse is doing the teaching and healing not us.

We allow the process to happen because the person needed a release from their insights and whatever it was we don't need to know. That person got to it because they worked with the horse, the teacher and we allowed that process. If the person cries for the whole program in the arena, the 40 minutes, we allow that because we have the ability in these programs to understand what is necessary and when a step in is not necessary.

It changes lives, women especially. Always, it goes to the objective, say the objective was trust for that day. They trusted the horse and the situation they're in. They felt safe enough to be able to release. If it was about communication, it still goes back to this as well.

Knowing how to facilitate properly gives you many options to help people in a different way. This is where they come up with their own answers and make their own changes in life. Sometimes in an hour we can see the changes. It's phenomenal. It is the most humbling experience to be in the presence of a human being with a horse, who goes through a change because the horse told them. It really is a true privilege on this earth to know that the purpose of what you're doing is really helping other humans to be able to move forward.

We always say to our clients. The number one thing that a horse needs is to feel safe. I say: let's parallel that to a human because if we as humans do not feel safe within ourselves we can't move forward.

The biggest piece in what is the difference between equine assisted learning and equine
therapy, is the word therapy. So always truly understand if you are setting yourself up for a certification in therapy, that you should have more education behind you that allows you to understand a person's psyche. This is the most important part of the therapy portion. You need the professional certification background to be able to run a therapy program.

As far as the equine assisted learning goals, or equine facilitated development or equine personal development or all those different aspects. Make sure you do your research, really understand where the business came from? How are they certifying people? Are they thinking of the horse’s welfare? Look at their website pictures. Look at the horses. You want to be part of a certification that’s always placing the horses as number one, the welfare of the horse is first.

We are helping humans just like you to be able to live the dream that you want. How? By making a living working with beautiful, incredible, intelligent horses, helping human beings be able to make a change in their lives and move forward with those changes.