Trauma Informed Practice in Equine Assisted Services

Explore the three trauma recovery stages—safety and stabilization, processing, and reconnection—and how equine assisted practitioners stay within scope while guiding clients toward post-traumatic growth.

Explore physical, emotional, mental, sensory, spiritual, and relationship trauma types and how trauma responses—fight, flight, freeze, fawn, and faint—activate in clients and practitioners.

Design trauma-informed equine environments and address safety by preventing shouting, hitting, or pushing horses. Acknowledge that practitioners may carry trauma and prioritize confidentiality and safety.

Horses, as prey animals, signal safety and dysregulation, guiding trauma-informed practice. They provide co-regulation and sensory input that help clients return to the moment in a calm, safe environment.

Create a protected space in equine assisted settings for trauma healing by ensuring emotional and physical safety, confidentiality, and intrusion-free environments while fostering collaboration, up-to-date training, creativity, and connection.

Learn six trauma informed principles for equine assisted services, including safety, trustworthiness, transparency, peer support, collaboration, and empowerment, plus addressing cultural, historical, and gender issues and the four R's.

Learn how trauma-informed language in equine assisted services shapes safety and empowerment by mindful word choices, such as client versus service user and gentling over breaking.

Use a trauma informed checklist for horse environments to map safety. Explore co-regulation, consent, voice, choice, trust, empowerment, collaboration, kindness, compassion, and staff trauma awareness with a free macrosoma download.

Design protective spaces and embed trauma-informed practices in equine assisted services to prevent retraumatization, while training staff and encouraging practitioners to attend to their own trauma.