Addiction, pain, and eating disorder support therapies are important for long-term healing. At Casa Palmera, we are the only facility of our type that has an in-house equine therapy program for addiction recovery and eating disorder support.
Equine therapy focuses on dynamic group and individual interaction between humans and animals and allows a person to cultivate trust and optimism – an integral part of any successful eating disorder support system. It can be highly therapeutic for men and women who are caught up in the cycles of addiction, need eating disorder support, or are seeking relief from other illnesses.
Interacting with horses can help humans to remember that we are a part of and connected to all things in nature. Horses are powerful yet graceful, and they are extremely forgiving. Equine therapy is a powerful therapeutic tool for addiction, pain and eating disorder support that acts as a metaphor for our relationship with ourselves. It reminds us of the essential importance of respecting and taking care of our bodies and ourselves as we learn to channel the compassion that we apply to the animals and direct it towards ourselves.
A horse's sensitivity to our own body language and other non-verbal cues allows us to discover and examine unconscious signals that we communicate to other people and the world around us. In such therapies such as addiction healing or eating disorder support, understanding this non-verbal communication is imperative. For guests, the horse becomes a "co-therapist" and serves as a listener and also a mirror that reflects feelings, thoughts and emotions. Horses also rely upon their instincts instead of judgments and preconceived thoughts or behaviors when interacting with humans, which makes Equine Therapy so unique and valuable to the healing process and for alleviating psychological disturbances and providing eating disorder support.
