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Equine-assisted therapy makes sense

Some LI therapists say that the intuitive horse provides a window into ourselves

BY DENISE FLAIM | denise.flaim@newsday.com

10:29 PM EDT, July 22, 2007

I am standing in a horse pen at Gold Rush Farms in Baiting Hallow, where the pickup trucks outnumber the Hummers, at least for now.

Near me in the round pen, munching contentedly on a patch of grass, is a 19-year-old bay quarterhorse called Kool.

The name fits. He is blithely concentrating on the grass. He knows I am with him in this dusty dirt ring, but it appears he couldn't care less.

"Just do whatever feels comfortable," calls Susan Ehlers, 55, a licensed master social worker, from outside the pen.

I stand, and watch.

The wild and the divine

Bedouin legend holds that God made the horse by blowing on a handful of southerly wind. It is as good an explanation as any for the ethereal appeal of this creature, who even in domestication retains a glint of the wild and the divine in those wide-set eyes.

Horseback riding has long been recognized as therapeutic, and many groups run programs for developmentally disabled children to gain confidence in themselves by taking the reins. But in recent years, some mental-health professions have begun to see that just interacting with equines, saddled or not, can provide windows into ourselves.

Kool is one of several horses Ehlers uses for a new-agey-sounding movement called equine-facilitated experiential learning, which basically echoes that old English proverb, "Show me your horse, and I will tell you who you are."

Horses, Ehlers explains, are ruthlessly honest -- they don't know how to be otherwise. Because they are prey animals, they are exquisite communicators, alert to the subtlest changes around them. Sort of like big, maned mirrors, horses reflect back what those around them are feeling and thinking.

Ehlers got her certification in equine-facilitated experiential learning at Epona Equestrian Services, a process that include four one-week-long seminars at the organization's ranch in southern Arizona.

She remembers her first equine encounter there. Instructed to select a horse, she was drawn to Comet, a black mare who, she heard in passing, had a hip problem. As Ehlers moved around the horse, touching her and interacting, she focused on the horse's hip. Perhaps if she massaged it, she thought, Comet would find that soothing.

As she touched the area, the horse moved away.

Perhaps it was the other hip, Ehlers pondered. So she went to the other side and resumed her probing.

This time, the horse retreated more rapidly.

As she reached out to try yet again, her instructor stopped her. Wasn't the horse's message resoundingly clear? Hadn't Comet said she didn't want Ehlers' help, however well intentioned?

"It was a total light bulb -- in my heart," Ehlers remembers, adding that she had long realized that overhelping others was something she has struggled with -- and resolved -- in her own life.

But then, with Comet, it poked its head out again, a reminder that we are all works in progress.

Horses live in the present, not the past or future, Ehlers explains. They are infallible barometers of the now.

And right now, I am thinking that it's probably time to actually do something. I walk closer to Kool.