In keeping with the theme of mental health awareness this month, this week I'm sharing with you about yet another outside-the-box therapy modality. This one involves horses.

I first became curious about equine therapy (aka “horse therapy”) when Linny was in residential mental health treatment. In the programming at “res” (as it’s often called), each week the treatment facility would take participants on a trek out to a place that specialized in equine-assisted psychotherapy. Equine Assisted Psychotherapy has been shown to help with a myriad of challenges – such as, relationship issues, depression, anxiety, anger management, trauma and recovery. The horses act as a sort of a mirror for the person they are working with and provide direct and non-judgmental feedback that helps clients to become grounded in the present moment, identify unproductive patterns, and create change in the moment. (You can check out Stand InBalance for more information.)

In this week (and next week’s) episode, I talk with equine-assisted therapeutic facilitator, Kuniko Vroman. I connected with Kuniko after having repeated soul-stirrings that kept nudging me to try equine therapy. By following a series of Divinely inspired breadcrumbs, I connected with Kuniko and, before returning to work from my leave of absence, met with her weekly for a short while to see what this horse therapy thing was all about. 

If you haven’t noticed by now--I’m a talker. So, when Kuniko and I sat down to talk about all things equine-assisted psychotherapy/therapeutic services, we talked…and talked…and talked. The next thing I knew, we’d been talking for over 2 hours! We covered so many good subjects that I couldn’t bring myself to edit our conversation down to only one episode. Hence, you get back-to-back weeks horsing around with us!

To connect with Kuniko or learn more about equine-assisted therapeutic activities and services, check out her website HelpingHoof.org. Helping Hoof, is the non-profit  501(c)(3) organization Kuniko founded to fulfill her mission of providing equine assisted therapeutic activities to individuals experiencing mental, physical or developmental challenges. 

You can also follow her on Instagram at @helpinghoofeaat.

You can follow me on Instagram at: ⁠⁠⁠@karen.e.osborne⁠⁠⁠

Click on this link to join Club Sandwich (the LITSZ Private Facebook Group): ⁠⁠⁠LITSZ_Club_Sandwich