Sunday, December 5, 2010

New Equine Assisted Therapy Programs!


We are very excited to see some new programs get underway at the Pembroke Campus in the New Year. It has been a goal of mine to produce some exciting, innovative and new programs to clients in the Ottawa Valley, using our Natural Horsemanship principles to lay a foundation conducive to personal growth and development. Spending hours and hours researching the different "equine assisted" programs, I decided to go to the original source of "equine assisted philosophy", Greg Kersten and his OK Corral Series.


In October, I flew out to Portland, Oregon and took a beautiful 4 hour bus ride south (and over Mt Hood) to Bend, where I met Greg, his wife and about 20 other participants of the OK Corral's Green Milepost. We learned the basics of Equine Assisted Psychotherapy (EAP), including the art of using observation and knowledge to create symbolic metaphors that the EAP team uses to assist the client. Greg shared the experiences of his life that lead the development of his programs, and was an inspiration to all of us!


In November, Catherine Grant and I drove down to Wheatfield, Indiana to participate in Greg's Red Milepost, a seminar specifically geared at crisis management. We learned what emotional skills are needed to make a "bad" situation "ok", and had the opportunity to meet a terrific group of counsellors at "Christian Haven". They are a private school dedicated to helping some kids that had a bad start in life. We were very inspired by these folks!


We are very pleased to have Greg booked for a Yellow Milepost in May 2011. Greg will show us how we can promote emotional health and growth for families, and look forward to having some local (and not so local) counsellors and mental health professionals come and join us for the seminar.
www.okcorralseries.com

This Week! - Catherine, Kate, Marie and I are headed to Nova Scotia to participate in a HORSE BOY METHOD clinic, where we will learn how Rupert Issacson uses horses in a program for Autistic children. Issacon wrote the New York times best seller The Horse Boy: A Father's Quest to Heal His Son, which is accompanied by the documentary movie called The Horse Boy. Issacson also heads the Horse Boy Foundation which offers opportunities to Autistic children, and we are fortunate to be a part of one of the last Horse Boy Method seminars presented by Issacson himself. Kate will be participating as a rider in order to get certification to use Issacson's program at our own facility. More on this in a couple of weeks!

www.horseboyfoundation.org
www.horseboymethod.com

What this means!



Starting in January 2011, we will be offering our Equine Assisted Therapy Programs. Please feel free to contact us if you would like more information, or pass on our contact info to someone who may benefit from our programs! We will be busy presenting our programs outlines to the various service agencies throughout the Ottawa Valley, in order to spread the news of our newest programs!



Alison Vandergragt
Equine Assisted Therapy Program Facilitator