Generate and Grow Connection
Equine Facilitated Psychotherapy (EFP) at Generation Farms, Nanaimo
Equine Facilitated Counselling and Psychotherapy is an alternative to services conducted in a traditional office setting. It makes use of the natural attributes of the horse combined with the skill and experience of the therapist. EFP assists people in making the personal changes in their lives that they have not been able to accomplish on their own. Good therapy always involves developing or re-activating a person’s own natural ability to heal. There are opportunities with horses that can help reconnect to positive resources, see problems in a new way, and support the journey to new possibilities. A frequent result is for clients to come to understand their strengths and gifts, and to feel more whole. In EFP, therapeutic goals are set, a plan developed, and progress is re-evaluated.
At Generation Farms, EFP can be combined with other approaches such as Self Regulation Therapy, Hakomi, Nature-Based, EMDR (Equilateral) and Family Therapy. It also can be offered with a relationship and horsemanship focus.
Horses have a powerful role in healing trauma. They live in the present moment, highly aware of their surroundings, without the ability to ruminate about the past or worry about the future. They fully use all of their senses, including their ability to read the inner state of another. They are social and respond warmly to humans who are in touch with their emotions. Their attentiveness to the present state of a human has the capacity to heal old wounds through the bond of connection in the here and now. Not creatures of the cognitive, horses have the gift of intervening on an emotional and somatic (body) level. This makes them wonderful partners in the Generation Farms approach, which focuses on the body and natural responses.
In Equine Facilitated Counselling and Psychotherapy at Generation Farms we help people regain their ability to experience these attributes that come so easily to horses. People then heal naturally. With guidance from a facilitator and a horse, in the natural environment, people can update old traumas and reconnect with the memory of how to function well and think clearly.
