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Is Equine Assisted Therapy Right for me?
No horse experience is necessary.
No matter what you find yourself struggling with, horses are uniquely made and qualified to help you process, grow and heal from trauma.
Benefits include:
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Growing in self confidence, communication skills, leaderships skills and learning to set healthy boundaries.
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Growing your capacity to connect with yourself and others.
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Growing the ability to process trauma on a bodily level not just cognitively which is sometimes beyond the current awareness of the client.
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Learning the ability to see past strategies and themes and reevaluate their current ability to serve effectively.
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Increasing the ability to see not only your current personal and relational strategies and struggles from a nonjudgmental and honest perspective. To find a safe place to process and change patterns that are hindering authentic and healthy relationships with yourself and others. Learning skills that help build safe, trusting relationships.
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When you cannot verbalize thoughts and feelings, you can try out new behaviors and get unbiased feedback from your equine connection.
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Learning the ability to physically see anxiety through the horses eye and learn to somatically manage it.
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Working through the process of grief, and the symptoms that accompany it.
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Growing the the ability to process relational difficulties and practice new strategies to heal.
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Helping clients have the ability to work through issues such as breakdowns in communication, anxiety, control issues, stress, feelings of shame, helplessness, frustration and fear.
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Learning to ask for help and support from others.
For youth and adults, the experiential nature of equine therapy has been found to be highly effective. This work works in helping struggles resulting from divorce, remarriage, life transitions such as birth and child moving out of the house, parent going back to work, bullying,
It helps the clients find resources, grow coping skills, leadership skills, confidence, communication skills, and process story.
Is the Story Work Course for me?
Our lives are built of memories and those memories are the stories that make us who we are today. They create the lens at which we look at ourselves, others, the world and also God. Some of those stories are ones of blessing but others are ones of harm. To understand who we are today it is so helpful to go back to these stories, not to relive and be retraumatized by them but to understand the defense structures we have developed to help us manage the deep pain and hurt we have experienced but also are in place to guard and protect us. We yearn to be truly known, to be fully seen, to fully be our true selves without having to put on masks. But it is scary. Terrifying really. Brené Brown says:
"Owning our story and loving ourselves through that process is the bravest thing that we will ever do.”
She also says:
"... if we do not claim worthiness inside of our story, we end up hustling for worthiness on the outside of our story – who we are and what we believe becomes secondary to who do you want me to be and what do you want me to believe."
We cannot keep the past from visiting the present. But we do have the capacity with work to take the power away from stories in our past so they don't write our present and our future. We also have the ability to live more fully in the present and be a part of rewriting the future allowing deeper richer more authentic relationships with both yourself and others creating hope and purpose. Story work can facilitate this hard work.
Story work reaches deeply into the roots of what makes act and react in certain ways. It exposes our defensive structures that at one time kept us safe from trauma but now seems to hinder deep connection. It identifies the filters at which we look and interpret life, relationship and faith. It brings understanding in places we have felt stuck.It helps us to identify and dismantle guilt, self judgment, shame and the struggle to move toward goodness, beauty and blessing. It helps us move toward our purpose and calling. It is effective in person, online, individually or in small groups. It is a very effective modality to moving forward, making progress, finding healing.
UNDER CONSTRUCTION
The course is still under construction but please fill out a contact form with the link below mentioning your interest. Currently, the course will consist of reading and discussion of selected material, writing and working through two to three personal stories either individually or within a group setting. Can be set up in person or online.
10 week Story Work Course
