Equine therapy
Improves balance, mobility, communication and behavior.
What is it?
Equine therapy is an advanced technique that you will find at Sol Solet. It improves balance, mobility, as well as communication and behavior. We do individualized classes, or with small groups, fully adapted to the possibilities.
If you want to know more about equine therapy, our physiotherapist Ricard Barnés tells you in detail what it is, what it works and what positive effects it stimulates!
“Equine therapy is a resource that allows us to take advantage of the relationship with the horse as a therapeutic mediator.
Riding a horse breaks the isolation of the person and creates a bond with the animal. This produces a reaction that is not only muscular, but also sensory. It affects the whole body of the person, who experiences a global sensation.
The person is exposed with the horse to movements similar to those made by the human body when walking, serving as a pattern of stimulation to enable or rehabilitate walking.
Benefits
On a physical level, equine therapy makes it possible to work on balance and mobility, but it also acts in other areas such as communication and behavior (establishing a code of communication with the horse and rules of conduct with the animal).
Riding a horse overcomes fear, improves confidence and the ability to concentrate while reducing tensions, physical and emotional inhibitions.
Equine therapy is an alternative and complementary treatment to other treatments that are commonly used.
In general with this therapy have been observed:
- Physiological effects: Increased ability to perceive stimuli, when in a situation of movement.
- Psychic effects: It stimulates attention, concentration and motivation to different movements and positions on the horse. It is essential to increase self-esteem and self-confidence.
- Physical effects: The horse has a body temperature and a volume much higher than that of a human being, which means an important transmission of warmth and security when it is embraced and touched by the child”.
How we work
Our way of working:
Valuing all the benefits of equine therapy in the equestrian field, we work under two concepts.
Adapted horseback riding: Small groups of people with common problems, where socialization is worked on and stimulated, as well as the evolution towards the most normalized riding possible according to the level.
Equine therapy: Individualized classes fully adapted to the possibilities and needs of the specific person, attending people and children with cerebral palsy, autism, behavioral disorders, hemiplegia…
Always with a previous assessment to study the benefits and type of therapy that best suits each child or person. Depending on the specific needs, we sometimes work in groups of two students.
Mostly we work with ponies because we think that to achieve the maximum therapeutic benefit not only the student has to adapt to the horse, but to establish a good relationship and treatment according to the child’s needs, the horse has to have specific characteristics that provide the specific stimulation for the most adapted therapy.
Monitor
Ricard Barnes Torras
Titles:
- Physiotherapist col.no. 1619
- Osteopath
- Post degree in traumatology
- Post degree in pediatric physiotherapy
- Postgraduate degree in rheumatologic physiotherapy
- Teach method course (for autism)
- 6 years of experience in equine therapy with children with different pathologies and difficulties.
- 15 years of experience as a physiotherapist for children with different disabilities (in a special education center).
