What is EAP?

Spring Reins of Hope employs the efforts of our Herd to help people with their personal growth, positive healing and lasting change. With the assistance from horses we are able to provide the following opportunities for our clients:

Build Confidence

Learning and mastering new skills with large animals such as horses enhances the client’s confidence and ability to tackle new projects/challenges.

Renew or Establish Self-Efficacy

Learning to communicate and achieve an aspect of harmony with a horse promotes renewed feelings of empowerment, replacing feelings of hopelessness with motivation.

Increase Self-Awareness

Interacting with the horses offers the client many opportunities to become aware of their size, spatial boundaries and also the causes and effects of their thinking and actions.

Improved / Assertive Communication

The horses’ sensitivity to non-verbal communication and signals assists the client in developing greater awareness of their emotions, body language, motives and is easily integrated toward other relationships in life. Communicating effectively with horses requires the client to demonstrate assertiveness, direction, focus and initiative. These are important traits that enable the client to express their needs, boundaries, and rights more effectively.

Trust (Send–Receive–Build)

Learning to interact with, communicate to, and work with horses is ultimately a lesson in building trust. With the horses trust starts with honesty, much like that in human relationships. Horses can lead the way to an understanding of trust, especially for those who have their trust violated in the past.

Gain Perspective

Through grooming and other focused activities with the horses, clients are able to put aside any tormenting or limiting beliefs for a moment and focus their attention toward a safe and caring interaction, which can then act as a stepping stone in other situations.

Decrease Anxiety

Many research studies have shown that human-animal interaction significantly reduces physiological anxiety levels. Even if the client is initially fearful of the horses – the horses’ genuineness and affection puts the fear to the background and allows an open door to embracing the calming effects the horses offer so freely.

Realize Acceptance and Assurance

For many individuals with emotional or behavioral problems there is either a long term or recent history of feeling isolated and rejected by others. The horses, with their non-judgmental and unconditionally accepting approach invites the clients back into the spirit of life. Also, sometimes there is a fear of embarrassment to try new things, so when clients observe the comfort that the horses show “just being themselves” they are able to relax with them and start to feel that too.

Gain Personal Control

Particularly for those whose issues involves the loss of control over impulses the need to communicate with a horse in a calm and non-aggressive manner promotes the skills of emotional awareness, emotion regulation, self-control, and impulse modulation.

Improve Social Skills

For those individuals who experience social isolation or withdrawal, a positive relationship with a horse is often a stepping stone toward practicing the social skills needed to build relationships and friendships with people. Horses are also social beings so they understand the need to belong.

Establish Healthy Boundaries

Safe emotional boundaries can be a challenge for individuals who have experienced prior relationships that were controlling or abusive. Clients discover that interacting with the horses, within the context of a respectful and trusting relationship, can be healing. Also the size of the horse puts some effective physical boundaries to the forefront immediately. Horses utilize their size to teach ‘respect’ for physical boundaries and also provide opportunities to create and maintain your own healthy boundaries.

Creativity, Intuition and Freedom

Oftentimes, people with emotional, behavioral or social issues have been inhibited, over-controlled or intimidated to the point that they have lost some measure of spontaneity and freedom. The playful aspects that naturally occur when interacting with the horses can help to restore a spontaneous ability for healthy recreation and play. Having some fun and games with the horses can open up creative thinking, intuition and a chance to feel the freedom of the moment.