The feisty Norwegian Fjord is our September Breed of the Month on YourDressage! Did you know that dressage riders who choose a registered Fjord as their dressage mount are eligible for special awards through the Adequan®/USDF All-Breeds Awards program? The Norwegian Fjord Horse Registry and the Norwegian Fjord Horse Alliance Inc. are participating organizations!
By Leana Tank
There is a paradigm shift happening in the equine therapy world. The divide between “therapy” programs and the many people and programs incorporating healing, relationship, and connection into lessons, mental health programs, and other settings is beginning to dissolve.
As an occupational therapist working in mental health settings with individuals with autism and serious mental illness, I have witnessed for many years how deeply movement, nature, horses, and well-being are connected. Occupational therapists are trained to recognize the inherently therapeutic properties of meaningful activity and to facilitate participation as a pathway toward highly individualized growth. This is different from the traditional therapist-client relationship and the idea that our role is to “fix” people. Instead, the goal is to understand the many ways people find healing, meaning, and connection – and then support them along their own path.
When I look at horses, the community that surrounds them, and the possibilities both on and off the horse, I see avenues for physical, mental, emotional, and community healing that extend far beyond what is typically offered in the therapy world. Working in systems that support the seriously mentally ill, I see daily how much healing is supported by addressing not just the “mental” but the entire complex system of the body and the natural and relational environment. I recall reading Paul Belasik’s work, Riding Towards the Light, and finding his thoughts on dressage as connection to nature and a path to enlightenment to be a revelation.
I have always been a horse girl: a Pony Clubber, an intercollegiate team member, and eventually, after my son was old enough to tag along at the barn, a horse owner again. That return to horse ownership brought me my unicorn, a Fjord pony named Sunniva.
I had dabbled in traditional hippotherapy (using horses as a therapeutic tool to achieve specific goals) over the years at local centers, but I never quite felt enough alignment to pursue it fully. I watched many autistic children struggle to fit into traditional models because of sensory sensitivities (i.e., torturous mandatory helmets and boots), or because program rules were simply too rigid to accommodate highly individual needs.
In fact, Sunni herself had previously worked as a therapy horse. But when I tried using her in the customary therapeutic-riding model, with a side walker and leader, she seemed miserable. She nipped at her handler and became uncharacteristically sour. What she loved was something else entirely.
Sunni excelled as a lower-level dressage pony, with a butter-smooth collected canter and half passes to the moon, working with a wonderful local dressage program to build her up through Third Level. We enjoyed the occasional show together, and in 2019, we even won the First Level Adult Amateur division at the National Dressage Pony Cup. More importantly, Sunni has always had a remarkable ability to bring joy and confidence to her riders, including people rebuilding their confidence after injuries or anxiety.
The possibility of merging my professional world as an occupational therapist with my horse world began to take shape when I discovered an approach that aligned so many of my interests: dressage, nature, autism, mental health, and travel.
Horse Boy
I met Rupert Isaacson at a retreat he led with Jane Pike at Warwick Schiller’s ranch in California. I had already been drawn to their understanding of the nervous system, relational neuroscience, and attunement-based approaches, both in my relationship with horses and in my work in mental health. I remembered Rupert from the 2009 documentary and bestseller, The Horse Boy, which chronicled his experiences with his autistic son, Rowan. What I did not realize at the time was how integral dressage training had become to the Horse Boy Therapeutic model and how strongly I would resonate with the therapeutic approaches that grew out of his experiences with Rowan and mentorship from Temple Grandin.
Rupert discovered that when he rode with an autistic child in the saddle in front of him, something remarkable could happen: when the horse moved in soft collection, particularly canter or piaffe, speech would suddenly become possible. He found that this effect could be replicated with many children after Rowan. Neuroscientists later confirmed that the gentle, rhythmic hip movement created by collection can support oxytocin production while reducing cortisol, creating conditions that may support communication, learning, and development.
In his quest to develop better tools for training horses into collection, Rupert found his way to the Valença family in Portugal, who use the French classical system developed by Nuno Oliveira to train many breeds of horses in a systematic and replicable way.
Producing horses capable of delivering this kind of effect requires a high level of horsemanship. Many therapy horses come donated, broken, or in some kind of pain. It is essential that they have maximum physical and mental well-being if they are being asked to give well-being to a human.
As the time demands of horse training within his large therapy program grew, Rupert developed an additional program called Takhin, which is the name for the Mongolian wild horse, meaning “honored one.” It teaches classical in-hand exercises in a way that can be incorporated into therapeutic programs, allowing service users – including adults with trauma, veterans, autistic adults, and people with other mental health conditions – to participate in the training, conditioning, and rehabilitation of therapy horses.
The system uses lunging, long-lining, and in-hand work taught in a clear and systematic way. It emphasizes collaboration, connection to the historical roots of dressage, and horse well-being, while also empowering participants with a sense of purpose and meaning.
I was able to visit Horse Boy programs around the world and see how they integrate nature, music, art, and community in innovative ways that serve anyone who walks through the door.
I leapt at an invitation to visit Liskennet Equestrian Centre in Ireland, and there I saw the Horse Boy model incorporated into residential programs on the farm supporting autistic adults with severe behavioral challenges.
Their “Step In, Step Down, Step Out” model gradually integrates participants back into the community, using horses and the nature around the farm (imagine riding through arches dripping with flowers down hawthorn hedge-lined lanes) to help reduce serious aggression and self-harm. The model has been successful enough that the Irish government has invested in replicating it throughout the country.
Dressage and Therapy
At its essence, dressage is meant to maximize a horse’s physical and mental well-being. Done well, it develops muscle, balance, power, connection, and harmony – qualities that support a horse’s health, soundness, and longevity. But dressage can also become an art form and a personal practice, much like yoga or a martial art. It asks us to become more aware of our bodies, our minds, our emotions, and our relationship with another living being.
Pluvinel innovated the classical schools of the 17th century to intentionally use dressage and horsemanship to cultivate emotional intelligence, virtues, ethics, and character in aristocratic youth of the time. Today, I believe dressage – both ridden and in hand – can still serve as a powerful tool for growth and healing, for both horse and human, in a beautifully reciprocal relationship.
In addition to my saintly Fjord, I acquired a brilliant Lusitano named Magico. He needed a job after growing up in a large herd in Texas. So, I brought him to a local therapy barn, Legacy Stables in Grand Rapids, Michigan, and established my own Takhin program there. We began using him to teach adult clients the basics of classical in-hand work, which they could then apply to many of the therapy horses. It has been incredibly rewarding to watch the therapy horses blossom in their movement and posture.
The group operates as a learning laboratory, trying different strategies to understand what each individual horse needs and what approaches will benefit them most. Throughout the process, we incorporate concepts of self-awareness, understanding the nervous system of horse and human, breathwork, energy, and communication. These concepts come up organically when working with horses – if we are willing to slow down enough to notice them and hold space for the conversations that emerge.
Magico is blind in one eye from an old cataract and has only recently begun his work under saddle. Yet he connects beautifully with therapy clients. His own “disability” has never diminished his brilliance. He generously guides people through the fumbling first steps of in-hand work, or simply offers an example of a flourishing and brilliant being who happens to have a disability.
One day, a child with one blind eye visiting the center discovered Magico and exclaimed, “He is blind just like me, but so beautiful!”
Magico also loves the Spanish walk. I often invite children to point a “magic wand” at his front leg and say any magic word they like. He is more than happy to respond with an enthusiastic jambette. These moments are small but profound. They are about recognition, possibility, and the experience of seeing yourself reflected in another being – and discovering that difference does not diminish beauty.
Takhin
In-hand work has enormous potential because it is accessible to people who are newer to riding. The skills can often be learned on the ground much more quickly than someone can develop the physical and cognitive skills required to ride effectively. Incorporating in-hand work, initially through Rupert Isaacson’s dressage program, Helios Harmony, rapidly reverse-aged Sunniva; we suddenly had access to piaffe and an extended trot with all four feet off the ground – quite a feat for a 24-year-old Fjord pony!
At the same time, the work benefits the horse. In-hand exercises teach balance and self-carriage, helping create a horse that is soft, confident, and well educated in the movements eventually asked of them under saddle.
Lunging and long-lining are taught using teams, emphasizing collaboration and the importance of supportive partnerships to effectively train horses. Assisted in-hand ridden work allows riders to experience more complex movements such as shoulder-in and half pass. A person on the ground creates the movement while the rider uses very light aids, allowing the horse and rider to learn together in a clear and supportive way.
When practiced consciously, dressage becomes an extraordinary exercise in awareness – of body, mind, emotion, and the constantly changing relationship between horse and human. It also creates opportunities for neuroplasticity through problem-solving and learning novel movements. There are many more benefits – far too many to list in a single article. But the occupational therapist in me is especially drawn to the fact that all of this can happen without necessarily feeling like “therapy.” That distinction moves us away from the paradigm of a broken person who needs to be fixed. Instead, it invites participation in a beautiful, demanding, reciprocal art form – one that can cultivate awareness, confidence, connection, and vitality as a natural part of the process.
Current Therapy Opportunities
Having two schoolmaster horses for in-hand Takhin work has allowed me to support others who want to build or expand their own programs. Visitors have traveled from around the country to spend time with my horses and learn skills they can incorporate into existing equine-therapy programs serving veterans, equine rescues and therapy centers, retired-sporthorse retraining programs, corporate team-building workshops, trauma and neurodiversity-affirming riding programs, foster programs, prison-based and post-incarceration horse training programs, university equine programs, wellness programs, and more.
I am also drawing a growing community of wonderful adult amateur women – many with histories of post-traumatic stress disorder or some form of neurodivergence – who are drawn to horses and dressage because of the connection and relationship they offer, but who do not necessarily find a home in traditional lesson or competition-focused programs.
For these riders, access is paramount. Having horses who can teach skills on the ground and under saddle in a supportive environment – one that accommodates motor-coordination challenges, trauma, auditory-processing differences, and neurological differences, with an awareness of how to support learning and the emotional well-being of horse and rider – is fundamental to making the delight of horses accessible. Many people come to horses looking for a community; sometimes the goal is not a ribbon. Sometimes, it is simply the experience of belonging.
A Worldwide Possibility
I am deeply grateful to care for these two very special horse souls. Sunni and Magico are both incredibly kind, generous, open-hearted horses, and they continue to bring new ways of expanding access to the world of horses for the broader public. It is exciting to see more innovative ways that people are partnering with horses to find greater connection around the world. I have visited programs in Ireland, Germany, Spain, and throughout the US that have wildly broadened my idea of what is possible within therapy programs. These are often built by families of autistic kids or autistic people themselves – listening to the voices of autistic people and those who care for them is so important when building programs that truly meet people’s needs.
Charles de Kunffy is quoted as saying, “Classical horsemanship is therapeutic riding.”
Horses have partnered with humans for hundreds of years for countless purposes: war, agriculture, transportation, sport, and companionship. Perhaps we are now entering another era – one in which horses become partners in helping humans reconnect with nature, with one another, and with themselves.
The possibilities feel infinite. Perhaps that is the most exciting part: we are only beginning to discover what can happen when we stop asking how horses can be used to treat people and start asking what becomes possible when horses and humans are given the opportunity to heal, learn, and grow together.
