Not traditional counselling.
You are the expert of your own life.
Horses for Hope offers another option for people from traditional room based counselling therapy.
Located on a beautiful 25 acre property just outside of Shepparton in Regional Victoria, we offer a nature-based therapy experience unlike any other.
People who have hopes of overcoming the effects of problems in their life come to Horses for Hope seeking support in their search for ways to create positive change.
Narrative Therapy: you are the expert in your own life
At Horses for Hope, we use Narrative Therapy as the main theoretical model in our equine-assisted counselling sessions.
“Narrative therapy seeks to be a respectful, non-blaming approach to counselling and community work, which centres people as the experts in their own lives. It views problems as separate from people and assumes people have many skills, competencies, beliefs, values, commitments and abilities that will assist them to reduce the influence of problems in their lives” - Alice Morgan, author of “What is narrative therapy?”
How our therapy works:
Our sessions involve sitting down in a beautiful refurbished 100 year old barn, talking through situations and discussing what ways the participant can assist a horse in their therapy session. Each session is different, and both participant and horse will learn new skills that are appropriate to their emotional and physical capacity on the given day. We then head out to the paddock to begin working with the horse and doing an activity that connects and gently challenges you both.
By helping a horse to feel safe and calm, the participant is also able to develop specific ‘horse yard skills’ such as emotional regulation, leadership, communication and respectful boundaries. These horse yard skills are transferrable, and can be used to face everyday life challenges and stressors. Facilitating this reciprocal therapeutic connection between human and horse is the basis of what we love to do.
Some of the benefits:
Emotional regulation and understanding feelings.
Body awareness and learning to listen to the body.
Mindfulness: observing your thinking mind and choosing your responses to thoughts.
Revealing inner resources (leadership, compassion, bravery) and choosing new stories and self narratives that are useful and positive.
Natural horsemanship.
Our participants help teach our horses to feel calm and safe using specific natural horsemanship techniques we have refined over almost two decades.
Our horsemanship philosophy has evolved to include inspiration and evidence-based approaches from many of the great horse men and women around the world. Horses For Hope uses a non-dominant, partnership focused, and trauma informed approach to working with horses.
We like to acknowledge the ideas of Monty Roberts, largely considered one of the founders of natural horsemanship as we know it today - and more recently the work of Australian horse trainer Warwick Schiller, and his emphasis on creating partnership and trust with horses, rather than the traditional dominance method of training.
Everyone is welcome.
Our program is suitable for all people aged 3 upwards.
Our team can deliver tailored programs for corporate and community groups.
We work with people in relation to grief, life transitions, abuse, trauma, accidents, or suffering from the effects of developmental or other mental health issues.
Horses for Hope maintains and adheres to the current Australian Government Child Safe Standards (July, 2022).
To understand these new standards, please click here.
Horses for Hope can assist individuals, families, and groups in developing life skills such as:
Personal Agency & Self Efficacy
Anger Management & Emotional Regulation
Team Work & Leadership
Assertiveness & Boundaries
Trust & Relationship Building
Compassion & Empathy
Confidence & Self Esteem
Self Awareness & Listening
Trauma informed practice.
Many of the participants and horses who come to our program have experienced the world as overwhelming and unsafe.
We are aware of the diverse impacts of trauma and the stigmas, structures and fears that obstruct healing.
As welcoming hosts, we facilitate an antidote to traumatic experiences by structuring physical, emotional, psychological and cultural safety in all we do.
Through reciprocal co-regulatory relationships between our staff, participants and horses, we model secure connections sensitive to the lived experiences of trauma.
We support the people who come to the program to develop confidence in their ability to regulate emotions, offer opportunities for increased decision making and promote the development of personal agency.
Our reparative processes go beyond traditional healing paradigms, and our participants and horses can come away with seeing new possibilities in their world.
Stillness through connection.
Some describe our sessions as a break from their noisy mind, where thoughts are quieted and settled for that time spent with the horse. Some have described it as a pleasant respite from troubling times, roles and responsibilities.
By stepping into stillness, this in turn often creates opportunities to refocus and review ones current situation. To discover latent capacities and inner strength to write new personal narratives that are healthy, positive and supportive.
We are grateful to
We would like to acknowledge co-founder of Horses for Hope, Tiffany Peverall, who shared the dream and initial development of our program. Thank you also to David Epston
& Michael White, co-founders of Narrative Therapy, for their coaching and inspiring us to use the Narrative Therapy framework in relation to horses, and to Monty Roberts for his thought leadership on better ways to connect with horses in the support of people.