lifestyle
Equine therapy soothed
my anxiety and helped
me regain inner peace
BY TAMARA SOUTHWARD
6 January 2024
As a writer, words mean a thing or two to me. So if
anyone had told me that the best therapy I would receive
involved no words at all, I would have been the last to
believe it.
I’m the kind of person who gets restless during yoga,
shushed at spas, and am a bona fide expert at drowning
out meditation guides with my own louder, ruminating
thoughts. Getting lost in stories has carried me through
my life; escaping to the movies or in the pages of a book
helps me reckon with my own goings-on, but addressing
my issues directly?
‘You and your air time,’ my friends joke, referring to the
two words I often use to cut any chat that’s gone on for
too long, about someone or something that doesn’t
deserve, well, the air time. Every summer since childhood,
I have taken to sitting outside after everyone else has
gone to bed and listening to the crickets, looking up at the
night sky and letting my thoughts drift into eternity with
nowhere to bounce off. (The thing with eternity is that
when you’re in a good place, it feels great. When you’re in
a bad place, it feels doorless).
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Stillness can be either perfect or
overwhelming, and when the alone
time that the ‘happy me’ (who I would
look back on with envy) shifted from
invaluable to dreaded, I was at a loss.
The key, as it would turn out, was to
indeed let those thoughts drift — but
for them to ultimately bounce off
something. In this case, that something
was a horse.
Be it for children with disabilities,
people with ADHD or war veterans
suffering from PTSD, horses are
increasingly used in therapy. But
despite riding from a young age, my
move to London four years ago
cemented the end of an era: at this
point in my life, as far I was concerned,
there was little difference between
returning to the barn and going on
safari.
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This past summer, I returned home to Canada following an emotionally damaging year that had left
me with something even scarier than internal wounds: I was at a place where I was unable to
distinguish between my gut feeling and anxiety. I have always struggled with anxiety — I didn’t really
realise this until one of my best friends said it point blank — but what would always leave me feeling
somewhat in control was my ability to separate rational worries from irrational ones. And no longer
being able to pinpoint which was which was terrifying.
I was existing somewhere between panic and survival mode and any happy times felt fleeting. Along
with this was the guilt: my best friends and family are second to none when it comes to love and
loyalty, yet I constantly doubted everyone.

While at home, I spent time with loved

ones in my special places and couldn’t
understand why I didn’t feel better. The
usual back-to-school feeling that I had
hoped would kick in before returning
to London was replaced by deep-
rooted disquiet and, in a moment of
nostalgia, I called up the barn that I had
spent my childhood summers riding at.
I walked into the tack room and looked
up at the wooden nameplates and
horseshoes decorated with nail polish
and glitter glue and, as I picked up the
saddle and bridle for Devilwood, who
grazed in the back field, felt with the
weight in my arms a lightness in my
chest.
That afternoon, my mother was early
to pick me up, and on our drive home in
what felt like a Jenna-goes-home
moment from 13 Going on 30, quietly
commented that I hadn’t seemed this
at peace in a long time. A few days
before my flight back, she came into my
room to say she'd found a woman
online who owned a barn just outside
of London and used her horses for
equine therapy. Would I be willing to try
it?

I accepted somewhat reluctantly and, two weeks after returning to London, made my way to the
stables on a rainy afternoon. As I walked down the long driveway, the horses in the fields — who I
would come to know by name — peered at me curiously.
I’m not sure what I expected —trained riding school ponies?— but was surprised and saddened to
learn that the horses, for the most part, had troubled pasts and were probably in need of therapy
themselves. Some had been abused while others had unknown histories — which is of course the case
with anyone we meet for the first time. I often think that, particularly in an era of social media, we all
like to have the full story (and often think we do) from the start. The truth is, we never do, and like
with the horses, we learn people’s stories through their actions versus their words.

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In S. E. Hinton’s The Outsiders, Ponyboy, the

narrator, says this of his brother:

Soda had this buckskin

horse, only it wasn't his. It
belonged to a guy who kept it
at the stables where Soda
used to work. Mickey Mouse
was Soda's horse, though.
The first day Soda saw him
he said, ‘There's my horse,’
and I never doubted it.
I felt like this with Chance, the chestnut
Thoroughbred who in many ways was just like me.

A key tool in equine therapy is mirroring: paying close attention to how our behaviours and
internalised emotions impact the horses, and increasing self-awareness as a result. In working with
Chance, I wasn’t focused on my words or facial expressions, but on what I was emanating. I’ve always
known that horses sense how we feel — but grooming, walking and running with Chance made me
realise just how impossible it is to be truly present with others if you aren’t with yourself.

Like me, Chance can spiral. Following a

heartbreaking history of abuse, his bubbly
nature and the way he runs to me for a
nose-bop is testament to the liberating
power of forgiveness. But like many of us,
when triggered, he panics, and there is
something about seeing the whites of his
eyes and that split second between calm
grazing and full-charge that just
encompasses all-consuming fear. And in
bringing him back to a place of safety by
calmly stepping back but keeping my feet
firmly on the ground, with my hands
outstretched, I validate the moment
without running from it: I— we — let it go.
People are more like these sentient beings
than we think and with Chance, I learned
more than I have in weeks of pouring out
my feelings to the most equipped of
listeners.

Being on a horse is the ultimate metaphor for life. You sit in the saddle and you have the reins, but the
horse is a being of its own: sometimes you ride together, other times you fall off. Being alongside a
horse, having him come to you, follow you, let you drape him in a blanket when all of his previous
associations with touch are triggering — that is the epitome of connection.

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Through equine therapy, I have learned to pay attention and to truly work on what is within. Most of us
address the surface before the roots. Sounds cliché, but so many of us continue to do it daily. With me,
it took an animal who could care less about my job, how I spend my time, who I surround myself with, to
make me realise how much finding peace — and maintaining that peace when threatened — at my core
matters.

Through equine therapy, I have

learned to pay attention and to
truly work on what is within.

I have always loved horses and even after a bad fall at my first riding school that had me in hospital, I
did the only thing that I could: get back on. ‘Horses teach us humility, if for no other reason than their
size,’ my mother said — who never was a horse girl, but via both her best friend and I, was what you
might call a horse girl’s girl.
Spending time in the natural world is one thing; truly engaging with it is another. When I am at the barn,
I forget that I own makeup; I have dirt on my clothes but have never felt so refreshed. I am beside
something bigger than me, but set a boundary of what can and cannot be done. I am present, in touch
with my intuition and above all, trusting. Trusting of an animal that could buck at any time: throw me
off, get spooked by something in the woods and take off in a fear-riddled spiral— but I know that I can
bring myself, and the horse, back to a place of safety. To a place where we can return to the corner of
the woods and let out that breath versus hold it. Patience, compassion, determination and belief are
given equal weight.

There is no one-size-fits-all approach when it comes to therapy. I’ve heard raving reviews of
traditional therapies such as CBT and alternative ones from art to dance. But there is something to be
said about having a living being with you — one that has centuries of history alongside humans— and
being out in the natural world together, co-existing in what might be the safest and surest place on
Earth: the present.

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