Enhance your mental health journey with horses. Horses can sense and mirror our emotions, help us build trust, confidence, and self-awareness. Equine-assisted activities have been shown to reduce stress, improve mood, enhance emotional intelligence, improve communication skills, and increase self-esteem.

Our programs are often customized to meet the needs of the individuals(s), family or team(s) we are serving.

Our Ohana Equine Specialists work closely and often partner with various outside credentialed specialists, including but not limited to: LPC, LCSW, LCSW-C, LICSW, ATR-BC, THP and GC-Cs.

EQUINE-ASSISTED ACTIVITIES:

An Equine Specialist in Mental Health and Learning (ESMHL) integrates horse-human interaction through Therapeutic Horsemanship (TH), and Equine-Assisted Counseling (EAC).

Therapeutic Horsemanship (TH)

An Equine Specialist integrates horse-human interaction in unmounted activities, concentrating on building healthy social-emotional skills and coping strategies. This program is designed to build basic life skills, including focusing, orientation, and emotional intelligence. During these
sessions, horses act as natural and practical “bridges” to create and develop a human-equine bond, as well as human-human bond, based on trust and respect. With the assistance of the horses, clients are confronted with their own inner limits, and the horses help them to overcome such limitations.

Equine-Assisted Counseling (EAC)

An Equine Specialist in Mental Health and Learning, partners with a mental health professional specializing in talk therapy to address the client’s counseling goals. This experiential approach allows professionals to teach a wide range of life skills and coping techniques to those struggling with mental health. These interactive processes provide participants with insight for observation and growth, while promoting healthy communication, social skills, patience, and confidence.
Horses are highly perceptive to subtle changes in their environment, often mirroring the emotions of those around them, giving the participant and specialists insight to further client’s counseling goals. *In partnership with a Mental Health Specialist and incorporates talk therapy.

BIG HEARTS, LITTLE HORSES- Our mini horses, Kokoleka & Pineapple, live full-time in "miniland" next to our Ohana therapy shed. They inspire joy and bring delight to all our programs.