Slide notes
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1)
2) Life began in the rhythms of the ocean…
3) We carry rhythm inside, in our heart beat, and our breathing…
Take a minute now and find your own breathing rhythm.
And see if you can find your heart beat—either by taking your pulse or by tuning
inside you.
4) There is a rhythm to relationship, a dance of give and take that you can see
between an infant and mother. An attunement, where one reads and responds to the
cues of another.
5) Sometimes the rhythms and relationships are aggregate.
6) Sometimes they are very moving.
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7) Riding brings rhythm together at all levels of our existence:
Physical
Emotional
Cognitive
Spiritual
8) This talk inspired by several questions that I had over the time I’ve been a
therapeutic riding instructor and horse assisted therapist. I’ve done a lot of work
with people who have experienced trauma and very disruptive reactions. I noticed
and wondered…
9) The research on trauma is widespread. So, briefly, what is trauma? The
perception that survival is in danger, either our own, or someone else’s.
“ The Trauma Response is perhaps the most avoided, ignored, belittled,
denied, misunderstood and untreated cause of human suffering. Although it is
the source of tremendous distress and dysfunction, it is not an ailment or a
disease, but the by-product of an instinctively instigated, altered state of
consciousness. We enter this altered state – let us call it survival mode– when
we perceive that our lives are being threatened. If we are overwhelmed by the
threat and are unable to successfully defend ourselves, we can become stuck
in survival mode. “– Peter Levine
Trauma is carried in the body and in the brain. It is a survival/stress response.
Our BODIES focus entirely on survival and all non-essential functions (functions
(complex thinking, language, digestion, reproduction) shut down.
These responses, if they last long enough, are considered Post Traumatic Stress
Disorder or PTSD.
10) Trauma Symptoms
11) The effect is constriction.
“Because our bodies do not register that we are now safe, we remain stuck in
the past, rather than being in present time.” –Peter Levine
Trauma responses are often misdiagnosed in children and untreated, so that
symptoms continue on into adulthood –Hanson
So how can we help? How does riding help? How can we focus our riding
experiences?
12) Research on riding and trauma? Not much!
So where else can we look?
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13) The brain is an action organ and as it matures, it’s increasingly
characterized by the formation of patterns and schemas geared to promoting
action. People are physically organized to respond to things that happen to
them with actions that change the situation.”
But when people are traumatized, and can’t do anything to stop it or reverse it
or correct it, “they freeze, explode, or engage in irrelevant actions. Then, to
tame their disorganized, chaotic physiological systems, they start drinking,
taking drugs, and engaging in violence-like the looting and assault that took
place after Hurricane Hugo. If they can’t reestablish their physical efficacy as a
biological organism and recreate a sense of safety, they often develop PTSD.
(Besel van der Kolk)
Brain research has taught us a great deal about how the brain functions. Our
understanding of the human brain and the way it works has undergone dramatic
upheavals.
14) Brain organization is hierarchical, from simpler, lower levels to more
complex.
Brain development begins with the simpler process in the brain stem, and works
up to the complexities of the neocortex.
The organization of higher parts of the brain depends upon input from the lower
parts of the brain.
All of the pieces of the brain communicate and coordinate with all of the other
parts of the brain.
This development takes 25 years, and is never completely finished. Our brains
continue to grow and change throughout our lives.
15) Get out your hand and make a brain model.
16) Brain Stem/Diecnephalon :
 Manages motor regulation, arousal, appetite/satiety, sleep, blood pressure,
heart rate, body temperature
 Self Regulation
 Reptilian Brain—reactive—non-processing
 First to develop—very young children who are traumatized often get stuck at
this developmental level.
 Sensation driven:
o tactile, auditory, visual, olfactory
o Vestibular—sense of balance
o Proprioception-where our body parts are in space
o Visceral—information from our bodily center, part of intuitive
knowing system.
 Organized & regulated by patterned, repetitive neural input.
 Use of patterned, repetitive neural input to the brainstem and diencephalong
monoamine neural networks would be organizing and regulating input that
would likely diminish anxiety, impulsivity and other trauma related
symptoms that have their origins in dysregulation of these systems.
 How would riding help with this level? (FLIP CHART)
o Sensory stimulation,
o Bilateral motion
o Repetition
17) Limbic System
Affiliation/reward, attachment, sexual behavior, emotional reactivity
• Mammalian brain—capable of interpreting & processing experiences
• Interprets & encodes experiences to determine level of safety or threat, and
retains the schema in a memory.
• Rhythmic motion helps with self-regulation, by calming lower levels of the
brain, thus allowing higher levels of the brain to function.
• There is also a rhythm of relationship—a reciprocity-almost a dance. Can see
this in the infant-mother relationship.
• Attunement is the “ability to read and respond to the communicated needs of
others, which involves synchronous and responsive attention to the verbal
and non-verbal cues of another” (Hanson, 2011,p.8)
How would riding help with this level?
Animal human bond
Rhythm of relationship—use of hands to teach posting trot.
Incorporate ritual to increase sense of predictability and safety. Greetings,
getting a helmet, using the same grooming sequence. Having a closing ritual
helps prepare children for transitions within and away from the barn. Stop
riding at the same place, have a predictable ritual closing, etc.
18) Neocortex
 Cognitive brain—Concrete thought, abstract thought.
 Planning, judgement, adjustment
 Incorporates and coordinates input from lower levels of brain function
 Shuts down under extreme threat.
 Benefits from introspection, mindfulness, meta-cognition (thinking about
thinking) and actual trauma processing, cognitive therapeutic approaches

How would riding be useful here?
 Brain Gym bilateral movement activities stimulate cognitive processes
 Building competencies through ground work and riding skills
 Strengthening sense of resources and safety—Safe Place, Mindfulness
 Opportunity for focused mindfulness experiences (VdKolk, ) and metacognition (Siegel)
 Processing memories—shifting the type of memory from implicit to
explicit
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19) Neurosequential Model of Therapeutics: a treatment approach to working with
children who have single or complex traumas developed by Bruce Perry, based on
brain development research.
With ongoing trauma brain development is impacted with cascading negative
effects.
People can get stuck at the brain function level that predominated during their
traumatic experiences.
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Healing children who have been abused repeatedly or neglected requires
that we provide experiences that are relevant to the emotional age of the
child (which may not match the chronological age.
Healing approach must match the dominant brain function.
A person who is functioning from the brainstem level needs a healing
approach geared to bilateral movement and self regulation, etc.
A person functioning at the limbic system level needs a healing approach
geared towards emotional response and relationships needs healing at that
level as well as the brainstem level
A person functioning at the cognitive level can benefit from cognitive
therapies, and needs healing that approaches all 3 approaches.
Activities provided in a healthy, stable context. Both the child’s environment
and the treatment.
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Treatment needs to be
o rewarding (to engage the child),
o repetitive (to help the brain reorganize),
o rhythmic, 80 bpm
o bilateral stimulation (to help both sides of brain develop),
Provide attunement (responsiveness to the expressed cues of others)
But he is not specific as to which therapies to use.
What are you seeing here that would be relevant to riding horses?
20) NMT—limited research but some promising results.
21) Another approach to healing trauma was described by Daniel Siegel in
Mindsight
“Integration is the heart of well being” --linking of differentiated elements into a
functional whole
Two types of memory (implicit & explicit)
Role of the hippocampus
Right and left brain processing
Mindfulness awareness with body processing
Top down meets bottom up
22) Elements necessary for safely processing memories:
How can riding horses help here?
23) The goal to help clients integrate their experience into their coherent narrative
of themselves and their lives, thereby integrating the past, present and dreams of
the future.
24) This led to more questions.
Any others you can think of? (someone in the group recommended Sensory
Integration—an excellent idea!!! SH)
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25) Bilateral Rhythmic Stimulation: Are any of you practitioners of these?
Eye Movement Desensitization & Reprocessing (EDMR)
Bilateral eye movement, auditory stimulation and tapping for processing
trauma. Well researched.
I’m an EMDR practitioner and I’ve seen profound changes in people in a short
time.
I’ve begun to use the bilateral rhythm of riding as my stimulation. More on
that later.
Emotional Freedom Therapy (EFT)
Tapping on meridian points. Some supportive research .
This is not one I know much about, but I’m going to look into it further when
I get home.
Brain Gym—Bilateral movements, crossing over boy. Used for educational purposes,
not tested w/ trauma.
While this has not been researched well is meets some of the criteria of the
NMT protocols
GABA goo???
GABA stands for gamma-aminobutyric acid. GABA helps inhibit fear and
anxiety responses.
Dan Siegel refers to GABA goo as the calming responses we can initiate that
helps integrate the neocortex with the limbic responses, and keeps the
cognition on line.
This is a reference to an intriguing thing I heard about—a doctor talked
about going to a conference on Anti-Aging where they said that the GABA
receptors are the hardest to reach, and they can be accessed with bilateral
rhythmic motion. But I have not been able to find any thing on it.
26) Somatic Focused Treatments
27) EMDR
28) EMDR and horseback riding—I’ve only done this with people who have riding
experience.
29) Moderate to vigorous exercise helped reduce PTSD symptoms for veterans,
children, adolescents, college students.
Those who exercise before their traumatic experiences had fewer post trauma
symptoms. People in poor physical health had higher levels of PTSD symptoms.
Participating in sports & games showed no significant improvement.
Research is fairly strong, but no mechanism has been determined as to why exercise
helps.
How might this support riding?
30) Music/Dancing/Drumming
Drumming proved to be helpful in some studies.
Group music therapy was studied with clients who had not benefitted from TF-CBT.
There was a positive effect.
Active music participation resulted in improved social competence in adolescents
with social skill deficits.
Community dancing proved helpful for child warriors and torture victims in Africa.
Research here is not as strong.
Social connection & bilateral stimulation
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31) Mindfulness
32) Back to my original questions:
33) Possible answers
34) Possible answers
35) Possible answers
36) Possible answers
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37) Summary
38) Conclusion. But this is actually ONLY a hypothesis. We need to test out the
observation and see if it’s “real”.
39) Where do we go from here?
40) Resources
41) Resources, cont.
42) The end. Many thanks to all the horses, people, and researchers that helped
with this presentation!