Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Thank you, honourable members of Parliament and distinguished guests.
I am honoured to be here to talk about equine assisted psychotherapy. I'd like to start by making a bit of a distinction between three practices in the field. You can have equine services for physical rehabilitation; you can have some for education, which is equine assisted learning; and you can have some for therapy. Today I will be talking more about the ones geared toward therapy.
In my private practice, I treat soldiers who have been diagnosed with operational stress injuries.
I'd like to explain something before I go on to speak about equine assisted psychotherapy. When members come in, their anxieties are usually very high. Soldiers usually function in more of a fight-flight mode, or survival mode, so in order for us to be able to use any cognitive-based approach to process traumatic events, we need to bring them to a baseline level of calm and stabilize them. In my practice in the office, I've found that for many of them it's very difficult to manage that. A lot of soldiers don't respond well to meditation and things like that. Soldiers are active, and they like to move. So it's been a challenge in my practice, and my colleagues agree with me on that.
When a soldier comes in and is diagnosed with such an illness, it has an impact on the soldier's entire life. It has an impact on their sense of safety; on their ability to trust themselves and to trust others; on their sense of power and control over themselves and over their environment; and on their self-esteem and their intimacy. It affects families, it affects children, and it affects them.
In terms of where equine assisted psychotherapy fits in, when we do equine assisted psychotherapy it's first of all based on nature. You're outside. Just being in nature has benefits on health, just being out, just being in tune with the natural rhythms of nature.
Then you are dealing with an animal that is quite large, that you can stand and look at eye to eye. You are asked to do certain activities with a mission in mind, so the pressure is on to perform. Some anxieties can come in. The situations you place people in are to imitate real-life situations. The material can be used as a metaphor for what is really at the surface for this particular member. However, these emotions come out in a safe environment where you are supported by your mental health professional and your equine specialist. You can really practice then and there. It's very experiential in nature. You can practice your natural coping mechanisms and see how they work or do not work. If they don't work, you can try to figure out a new one and practice it then and there. This is the richness of this therapy.
Now, it's active in nature but it's also very reflective in nature. One thing that stunned me when I began working with soldiers was that they have learned to soldier on and to not pay attention to the pain, to keep going: you're on tour, you have a job to do, you can't get into emotion. This becomes something of a habit, and it's hard for them to connect with emotion.
A horse is a very, very valuable tool, because a horse is not comfortable with a person saying something on the outside and feeling something else on the inside. Horses survive by reading the non-verbal, and also by being able to feel emotional states. There is a biological explanation for that, which I will not get into today, but they can feel emotional states. When a horse sees that the non-verbal and the emotional state do not go together, it doesn't work. A soldier has to look at what's inside to be able to have good cooperation with the horse and to have some success.
The idea behind this equine assisted psychotherapy is not to bond with an animal. The idea is to face your fears in a safe environment and to learn from little successes so that you can reintegrate into society with your family and with your children.
In the last phase of trauma treatment, after processing trauma using the cognitive, evidence-based approach, it is also nice to later reintegrate a member and help them develop skills, or get better with their skills, in practice with their family.
Equine assisted psychotherapy can be done with the family. It can be done with couples. It can be done with colleagues. It has very big value in that you wouldn't be able to get that working in an office.
That's my presentation. Hopefully, it gives you a bit of a picture. If you have any questions, feel free to ask.