Horses Empowering Children with Personal Growth

Chapter 12
Riding Home

Not everyone likes horses. They’re also not a silver bullet solution for healing every deep emotional or physical wound any human has. But there is scientific, psychological, biological, and experiential evidence that some of today’s equine therapeutic programs are, and have been, making a profound difference by helping thousands of men, women, and children achieve life-altering emotional breakthroughs. Remarkably they are recovering from deeply painful afflictions through the simple love, understanding, and acceptance that comes from establishing a relationship with a horse.

But I believe that creating such a relationship has the power to do even more. Many emotionally wounded men, women, and children are not born that way. Discovering who one is, how one fits into the world, and connecting with one’s own humanity can begin long before a person is wounded or subjected to life-damaging traumas. 

What if more children could spend time interacting with horses?  Horses help and inspire children to learn, grow, and become healthy, functional adults. Could horses empower these young folks with both the self-worth and the sense of values necessary to overcome some of society’s compulsive obsessions with power, materialism, and celebrity?

Stephanie Lockhart believes they can and has created Natural Horsemanship For Children ~ www.youtube.com/watch?v=5FYbqA7M3pw. Her program enables children to acquire the same love, trust, respect, and compassion that is naturally inherent in the herd dynamics of horses and then utilize these abilities with their parents, their friends, and in all of their other human relationships. Stephanie Lockhart is the founder and program director at the Center for America’s First Horse, in Johnson, Vermont. (For more information about the Center for America’s First Horse, see Resources on this website.)

It is the hope of this author that anyone, adult or child, who wishes to take a break from what they already know and reach out to something new or different, something that may bring feelings of self-awareness, joy, wonder, humility, and peace of mind, as well as anyone who needs help in healing their emotional wounds, that they will now know that there’s another way.
Welcome to the healing power of the twenty-first-century horse.