A little bit about this post. This blog post has been adapted from a seminar that Brittany gave down at the United States Olympic Training Center about a year and a half ago. She was fortunate enough to be able to co-instruct down there with Daniel Stewart with the Equestrian Athlete program. Part of what Brittany does as an Equine Facilitated Psychotherapist is working with athletes and working on their mental health and how their mind can impact their performance and emotional wellbeing.

We’ve split this seminar into 4 different sections. This week is Part 1

How many of you have ever had a bad at work, school, or home? Maybe you’ve gotten a bad grade or a poor review; had a fight with your parents, sister, boyfriend, girlfriend, significant other? 

And then, because you’ve had this  really crappy, awful day, you decide to go to the barn.  Makes sense to me; the barn is my happy place.  And riding and being with my horses is always this amazing, magical feel good rush…. Ok, so that was said with a hint of sarcasm… it doesn’t always feel that way, but the barn IS my happy place. 

Long story short, I bet many (if not all of us) have at some point used the barn and our horses as a “pick me up”.

This, again, makes complete sense. But what I bet you don’t know, is that there is actually a scientific reason for us wanting to use the barn and our horses as a pick me up:

Horses have the ability to change the neurochemistry and the neurobiology of our brains. 

Now, I’m sure you’re going “what does that actually mean Brittany?”  

(Along with  “yes, but now I’m stuck at home, in quarantine… so who cares” but hear me out and use this as a educational opportunity)

This actually is quite fascinating for several reasons to me as a equine facilitated psychotherapist:

1. It’s helpful for us to understand WHY we crave being around horses 

2. How we can actually use this to help us rewire our brains to change our thoughts and behavior patterns.

Connecting with horses (not just riding; grooming or just even being around them) can cause our brains to release positive neurotransmitters. The three big ones that are triggered are: oxytocin (the love hormone), serotonin and dopamine, which are responsible for the happy feelings we get.  All three of these neurotransmitters make us feel safe, secure, happy and loved. Which is one of the reasons we love being around horses. 

Being connected with horses can also cause the levels of cortisol found in our brains to decrease. Cortisol is the hormone that is released when we are stressed. So many times being around horses reduces our feelings of fear, stress, anxiety, and depression. 

Lastly, riding can also cause our brains to release the hormone Adrenaline.  Now, adrenaline is a crucial part of the fight/flight response.  It is what gets your heart pumping, blood circulating,   which can make us feel on top of the world and untouchable (think that high you get on Cross country or right after you finish a round). 

Because your body believes it’s getting ready to flight/fight, it causes you feel to untouchable so you can survive.  But it’s another cool perk to being around horses, or for me being able to gallop around cross country.  

Let’s recap this: being around horses in a connected, fully present way, can REDUCE our feelings our fear, stress, anxiety, and depression while INCREASING our feelings of safety, security, happiness and being loved.

What our brain is actually doing is training us to seek out these situations in which we feel good. So when we’re around horses and we FEEL good, we’re going to keep going back to them. And that programming of our brains is what we call a neural path way or neural programming. We build routes along our brain to process information, sensations, feelings, etc. and the ones we use all the time are like deep ruts; we’re habituated to using them.

This is a wonderful thing. Except for when it isn’t.

Think about something about your self you’d like to change.

For example, say when you get upset you're a yeller. It’s a thing. It's not always bad, (at least you can give voice to whats bothering you.. but we’ll talk about that later), but really you're finding that yelling when you’re upset doesn’t actually solve anything or help you get your point across. So you’ve made the decision that when you get upset you’re going to TRY and express yourself calmly and with intention. 

Hah yeah, it’s not that easy. But it SOUNDS like it should be easy…. 

And its SO HARD because you LITERALLY have to think about it every second, every time you are presented in a situation that you can default to the old pattern (the yelling), it’s almost painful to try and do something, anything different. But that’s what its like to try to change a neural pathway..

But horses and being around horses can help us to work with these neural pathways, and create new neural pathways IF we do things with conscious intention. Because being around horses cause our brains to release those hormones that can allow us to start to start the long hard slog of changing those neural pathways.

So let's go back…  with all of this new scientific knowledge about our brains and horses;  Its not surprising that when we have a bad or stressful day we go to the barn and be around our horses to change our feelings. Better that then binge watching Netflix and eating chocolate. (which can also release those hormones, but in much smaller doses, which is why you have to do more of it….)

As you all know in the real world one of my other jobs is being an equine facilitated psychotherapist.  Which means, that I work with people struggling with issues such as anxiety, depression, low self-esteem, and working with them and horses so they can have a better quality of life. 

Now, remember like we talked about earlier… being in connection with horses can make us feel better because of all those feel good hormones that our brain releases, so working with horses can improve our mental health. So not shocking that we now use horses to help us improve our mental health intentionally. 

Understanding this is important for understanding how we can use this to our advantage when working with our own mental health. Next week, we’ll address how we can be cognizant of this when we are working with horses.