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Choosing to Heal at Beachwood: What are the physical, emotional, and psychological benefits of Integrative Equine Therapy?

At Beachwood, we’re aware of the significant experiences that people are having during their integrative equine therapy sessions and afterwards. 

In our centers in Rhode Island, Florida, Pennsylvania, and California, we’ve been noticing what has changed for clients. Whether Beachwood clients come  for a 7-session Beachwood intensives and or choose integrative equine therapy sessions weekly over 7-10 months, Beachwood’s clients have told us that life feels very different after Beachwood. 

The physical, emotional, and psychological benefits of Beachwood’s Integrative Equine Therapy experience looks and sounds different for everyone, yet what people report has much in common.  After experiencing integrative equine therapy with our warmblood horses, our clients repeatedly report a sense of relief, a sense of lightness, a sense of calm, and a sense of curiosity that wasn’t even imaginable when clients first decided on Beachwood.

Choosing Beachwood and Integrative Equine Therapy: How does it feel when emotions and physical feelings start to shift?

Choosing to Heal at Beachwood: What are the physical, emotional, and psychological benefits of Integrative Equine Therapy?

At Beachwood, we’re hearing how significant it is for people who have been feeling stuck and unable to find their way through emotional healing. One of the words we hear most often to describe an integrative equine therapy intensive is “transformational.” 

Beachwood clients share how transformational it feels to just take the time to focus on themselves. Being outdoors and in nature is increasingly being linked in scientific studies to feelings of wellbeing.  Whether it is for an afternoon, or a few days. Taking the time for yourself to work with the integrative equine therapy horses, is one of the first steps in self-care.  

Some clients have been struggling with a very difficult situation or an intense family issue.  When they come to Beachwood to work with the horses, they feel stuck and as if nothing will shift that feeling. After integrative equine therapy sessions at Beachwood, clients report that things shift and they are able to feel so much better in such a short time. 

What are the side effects of Integrative Equine Therapy? It can lead to relief, a sense of lightness, a sense of calm, and a sense of renewed curiosity! How cool is that?

Choosing to Heal at Beachwood: When it’s never felt safe or good, how do you know what could be different?

At Beachwood, folks realize that finding out what could be different is an important part of the integrative equine therapy experience. It’s transformational.

·       Perhaps you grew up in an environment or situation that didn’t feel safe, or good. 

·       Perhaps you never felt like you were good enough? 

·       If so, how do you know there is another way to feel? 

Those around us can tell us to focus on our health and well-being and practice gratitude. And we might really want to do that, but how can we imagine something we’ve never felt? 

At Beachwood, during the work with the integrative equine therapy horses, we learn what “something else” feels like in our bodies, our emotions, our hearts. 

When we are able to process experiences like anxiety, trauma, grief, PTSD, and stress-related illnesses with the integrative equine therapy horses at Beachwood, a world of possibilities starts to open up. 

Choosing Beachwood: Discovering What “Good” Feels Like and Making Choices from that Place

At a mind, body, spirit level, what does “healthy” and “well” and “healing” actually feel like and what changes does it make in our lives? 

When you choose integrative equine therapy for yourself, you uncover aspects of your thinking and your perspective that can be really young. Those parts of us, formed when we have overwhelming experiences are stored separately from conscious thought, are only aware of the overwhelming experiences that you lived through.

It makes perfect sense that those parts never want you to live through something that terrifying and overwhelming again. Fair enough! And because of where they’re stored, our parts also have no idea that anything else is possible until you find a safe enough environment and process to start to build the bridges to conscious thought.  

Literally—those very young parts of you don’t know anything outside of their experience exists. Experiences, situations, and people that feel awful and terrifying also feel familiar. 

Problem is, things that are “familiar” can be the closest thing to safety we know. They may not be safe at all. But we may not know what the alternative feels like. It’s one of the reasons we are drawn to experiences and people even when, we are consciously aware it’s not good for us. We just know that it feels bad and it feels familiar. 

It’s a loop that makes perfect sense from the perspective of a part of us that only knows how to survive. When we are operating from a survival perspective, it’s the only perspective there is.  

We aren’t even aware that anything else could be possible. 

What else could come into our lives if we knew how to heal and allow those healthy connections to develop? 

How could we know that it’s possible for an experience to be exciting but not scary? How would you know that a situation could be new and healthy for you? How would you know which people are safe to connect and interact with? 

Transforming my Perspective: How Integrative Equine Therapy clients describe the effect of their sessions at Beachwood

At Beachwood we know that when we build a neural pathway to the part of our brain that holds trauma with integrative equine therapy, we are able to shift out of the fight or flight loop. And when we can see the world from a place of calm connection, we can have all kinds of other experiences. So many opportunities become available!

What can help us shift perspective and heal? When we experience the support of Beachwood’s warmblood horses and integrative equine therapists, we have the opportunity to have the transformational experience.  

What could change for us after Beachwood? We could become aware that we aren’t in the same place we were, and that it’s possible to make choices, rather than have reactions.  

Choosing: How it Feels After a Beachwood Integrative Equine Therapy Sessions

Whether you come to Beachwood for a 7-session intensive in Rhode Island, Pennsylvania, Florida, or California, or you come for sessions spread out over a 10-month time period, you can start to build a different future. You can start to experience things through a different mindset and choose to do it differently.  

With newly accessed coping strategies, you have a new perspective from which to see your life.  

Each choice you make becomes part of building a new future.

When you are able to focus differently, you are able to notice positive experiences in your life, that add to the shift in perspective.  Life doesn’t look the way it did when you were really young and didn’t have options. 

It sounds so simple, but it’s deeply powerful and transformational to bring parts of you into connection with the version of you that has so many more choices, skills, options, and tools. 

What could things feel like after Beachwood’s Integrative Equine Therapy sessions? It’s like waking up to yourself for the first time and then noticing how much more your life could include.

Call us today on 1-877-788-4325 and start working with Beachwood’s Integrative Equine Therapy horses this month.

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