Occupational Therapy Utilizing Equine Movement (Hippotherapy)

Skills Addressed in Occupational Therapy Session Utilizing Equine Movement and Equine Assisted Learning

Sensory Processing

Therapists can provide opportunities for enhanced or dampened sensory input, allowing opportunities for the patient to plan, organize, and actively carry out adaptive behaviors. Equine movement provides highly organized sensory input into vestibular, proprioceptive, tactile, and visual systems simultaneously in the context of a meaningful, enjoyable activity. The sensory input may be modified and/or graded to meet the needs of the patient. The sensory input is consistent and ongoing.

Equine movement offers a controlled method of progressively challenging the patient’s sensory systems, with enhancements possible through careful manipulation of the horse’s gait, tempo, degree of impulsion, transitions, and pairing of equine gait with alternative positioning and/or equipment modifications. The horse provides multi-dimensional movement through space, providing opportunities to experience visual flow and vestibular input within a functional context.

For most patients, the experience of the horse’s movement is a novel one, allowing for development of movement strategies outside of their habitual patterns and moving beyond their wells of stability/compensatory strategies. The natural variability of the equine environment is functional and promotes active problem solving. This variability can be minimized or maximized by the therapist.

The horse’s movement provides multi-modal sensorimotor experiences that are precise, rhythmic, and repetitive, all of which are necessary for most human behavior. These movement characteristics can be graded by the therapist based on the needs of the patient.

• Targets vestibular, proprioceptive, and visual input overlaid on a functional task

• Targets core control with low amplitude pelvic and spinal mobility

The horse has an organized nervous system that allows the patient to experience organized multidimensional movement and multi-sensory input. As such, an organized system (the equine movement) ‘lends itself’ to a disordered system.

Motor Skills

The dynamic movement of the horse aids in improving motor skills by improving strength, body awareness, reaction time, rhythm, bi-lateral coordination, visual motor integration and balance. The rhythmic bi-lateral stimulation from the horse stimulates the corpus callosum and cerebellum- parts of the brain that are responsible for integrating the two sides of the body, the part of the brain that controls movement, balance and posture. The basis for many motor skills is postural control, an area that is targeted during occupational therapy sessions utilizing equine movement. Motor planning is another area that is very important for motor skills- the rhythmic input from the horse helps to improve motor planning through providing a framework for rhythm and timing.

Life Skills and Executive Functioning

Conducting therapy on the farm offers a unique environment that offers a variety of opportunities for patients. Patients gain life skills through caring for/mimicking daily living tasks in the equine environment.

Social Emotional Skills

Social emotional skills are challenged through interaction and communication within the team. The team includes our equine partners, 1 leader and sometimes a side-walker, and the therapist. We utilize social emotional tools like books, games and horse care activities to treat social-emotional skills.