Equine-facilitated body and emotion-oriented psychotherapy (EBEP) is a new manualbased treatment for patients with mental disorders who have participated in conventional psychotherapy in the past without a positive treatment outcome. The horse's high sensitivity and responsiveness to human body language is used as an aid for the patient to improve awareness of his or her emotions, bodily responses, and communication. During the program, the therapist helps the patient not only to be more aware of emotions, cognitions, bodily sensations, and behavior when interacting with the horse, but also to verbalize his or her experiences. Gradually, the patient demonstrates more consistent behavior; improves nonverbal and verbal communication skills, becomes more self-confident and assertive with increased problem-solving skills, and functions better with fewer mentally distressing symptoms. In this paper, we describe the content and the different therapeutic steps of the program and have discussed further steps needed to establish EBEP as an alternative therapy for patients not responding to or accepting traditional psychotherapy.

AimThe aim of the study was to describe how therapeutic interaction with a horse has the potential to provide opportunities to work with relational issues for a client with a background of parental substance misuse and severe trauma in childhood.BackgroundPsychotherapy facilitated by horses uses the client/horse relationship as an aid for breaking dysfunctional behavioural patterns. The key therapeutic element is to use the horse's high sensitivity and responsiveness to human body language as an aid to improve awareness of emotions, bodily responses and communication.MethodologyA single case study with in‐depth interviews was conducted using Interpersonal Process Recall to reveal subjective configurations of events in therapy and their corresponding reflections. Thematic analysis was used to analyse the material.FindingsFour themes were found in the analysis. The client displayed dysfunctional behavioural patterns in the relationship with the horse. The negative reactions and uncooperativeness the client got from the horse aided the client in changing to more constructive behaviour.ImplicationsThis study may give increased awareness of the benefits of psychotherapy facilitated by horses.

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