Life Adventure Center hosts training for equine-assisted therapy

The Life Adventure Center in Versailles uses outdoor adventures to work with people affected by trauma. From Wednesday through this weekend, the center is hosting the Equine Assisted Growth and Learning Association (Eagala) to conduct training for mental health and equine experts to work with one of their resources of nature: the horses.

“Horses have some innate qualities about them that make them super beneficial for therapeutic activities,” said Emma Ingalls, a program coordinator at the Life Adventure Center. “They also will pick up on and sometimes mirror or feed emotions that people will have. So a lot of times they can kind of be a tell for something that’s going on inside of you that maybe you don’t even know is happening.”

The Life Adventure Center offers a variety of programs on their 575-acre property that teach resilience. Part of their programming involves working with their horses.

“When I started working here it was very eye-opening for me to see the connection that people can have with horses,” executive director Julie Breitigan said. “Especially women who have survived trauma, when they would interact with a horse, the empowerment that you would see within them, like the physical change that you would see, and that real connection and partnership with a horse was really eye-opening.”

The interactions between horses and humans is an important tool for therapeutic use, but it differs from other forms of animal therapy.

“The way you interact with a horse is like a lot different than a dog,” Ingalls explained, “because a dog, what they want is affection, but a horse wants safety. So they need to know you are in charge and that you are a safe person.”

The Eagala visitors are training mental health and equine professionals from around the country how to utilize horses in mental health therapy.

“I think the most interesting thing for me has been watching the ability of the equine professionals and the mental health professionals being able to work together for a common goal of helping people move towards their goals,” said Eagala trainer Randy Mandrell.

Breitigan shared, “being able to share and utilize this space, we have a 25,000-foot indoor arena, which is huge, so to be able to use this space to bring people together like-minded and become more aware of best practices ourselves, it’s a great opportunity for us.”