Equine-Assisted Psychotherapy (EAP) offers a unique and supportive way to explore personal growth and emotional healing. EAP is “experiential,” which means that you will be involved in hands-on experiences with the horses designed to reflect things going on in your life. The process is not always about interacting with the treatment team, although that will happen at times. It is about providing you the opportunity to experience, explore, problem-solve, discover, be creative, gain insight and experience practical applications of what you are learning in the moment. The process is about “doing” along with the “talking.”
In EAP, clients work with a team including a licensed therapist and an equine specialist, as well as carefully selected horses. This work can be particularly beneficial for those seeking to build emotional resilience, enhance self-awareness, or navigate life’s challenges in a meaningful way.
Morgan is dually-certified through the Eagala Model of EAP as both an Eagala Mental Health Professional and Eagala Equine Specialist, and partners with various therapists and horse professionals in the community to provide services to clients throughout the greater Missoula valley.
To learn more, check out this video from Eagala or give us a call to talk about what you’re looking for.
Equine-Assisted Psychotherapy (EAP)
Why Horses?
There are several reasons we choose to use horses in this work, but primarily it is due to their nature as a social and prey animal. As a result of this nature, they have an extraordinary ability to read our nonverbal communication – picking up on messages we are sending which we are not always conscious we are doing. With this, they start responding to us in familiar ways reminding us of other people and things in our life. It is through this they become metaphors (symbols) providing us the opportunity to work on ourselves in relation to those aspects of our lives. The horses tend to play out our life stories, and then may either show us or provide opportunities to change what those stories look like.
Horses do not know our past, education, gender, race or other labels we may apply to ourselves and each other. They are in the moment and can be a part of this relationship without the biases we humans put on each other. This provides even more value in the insight they can provide us about ourselves.
