[Music] [Music] are you ready to go in May is mental health awareness month and part of spreading awareness is talking about different types of therapy today we're visiting an equin Therapy Center to learn how horses can help with mental [Music] health when did Reigns get started uh Reigns was founded in 1982 at LTC um as a part of their therapeutic um PT and OT program I believe um here in shoan it's moved around the county a little bit um we've been at this facility for nine years now um so we were able to purchase it in February of last year um otherwise we had leased it from The Majestic Crossing dairy farm up the road um they're very generous and leased it to us for a dollar a year so that way we were able to secure a permanent home now with stability and everything yeah cuz it's a nonprofit right it is yep it's great it is through and through focus on getting his nose in first over his ears the now this goes up high on his cheap okay give him lots of room a big Bo great job nice and gentle job we serve people with physical cognitive and emotional disabilities and disorders we do an evaluation prior to participation in Reigns to make sure that it's a safe fit for everybody involved um we so we serve a wide wide variety of diagnosis um an area that I have a lot of passion in and have worked to grow a lot has been specifically the youth mental health and education program um so there was kind of a old kind of story of the therapeutic riding was like pony rides and you know you put people on and go in circles and I was like no this is a lot more than that all right so our focus is going to be on getting riple warmed up to ride I see a lot of people who could potentially fall through some cracks and so that's where we're really trying to be a different form of service that can step in and hopefully provide some support to prevent that when you're ready let's practice a woe practicing our big loud confident vocal cues it's pretty cool to see the connections being made um a lot of times working with people is hard you know we're with people all day long you got a lot more social social cues to read and it's exhausting but our participants get here and they can just go be with their horse the horses don't really conceal their emotions as much and so they can match up really well and just have that have that relationship with another being but not the exhaustion of a being another person Braden you can go ahead when you're comfortable and grab on The yellow section of those rains and hold your hands above Ripley's neck I like to say horses have a six sense they're very interceptive so they're very sensitive to the emotions and the attitudes of everyone around them so horses are herd animals and they're flight animals so they tend to look to the the beings around them whether that's horses or people for how they should respond in a situation so why that makes them such magical tools um for our participants is that they are very reflective so um you know if you're not having a good day I'm going to be able to tell right away just based off of how your horse is feeling um both an emotional and a physical sense so we have some horses that you know one day you're like why is that horse just walking sideways and we can't keep him all walking on a straight line and the horse realized before any of us that the rider is crooked in the saddle and so maybe then we know you know here's a physical um thing that we can focus on correcting in lessons and then also from an emotional standpoint a lot of especially our teenagers who are coming in from a day at school and they just have so much going on in their head you can see that reflected in the horse that they work with take a nice deep breath and let it out through your mouth what else do you like about working with the horses have they helped you yeah how have they helped you at home how so cuz I used to be a really angry kid and now ever since I came here it's been helping me okay what were you angry about I just didn't really like at school I I get bullied a lot so M okay that's hard yeah and they also help you do what um they help me like come like if let's say I I don't get frustrated here but like let's say I I get frustrated it would it usually helps me to like pet them cuz they're really soft and all that bradden I'm noticing that your woses are coming a lot quicker what are you noticing about how you're queuing that maybe is helping Ripley you're being bossy I would say you're being confident yes your your woe is quite confident he can hear you and he's paying good attention so how did you get involved with Reigns we were um just looking for avenues for Braden to help um him his social skills to enhance um peer relationships and somebody mentioned Reigns and we thought oh we'll just give it a try and and see where that takes us you want to walk back take and and we're done for the day hi I love you he just started this season right what are some changes if any that you've noticed already well I think the second session I believe they really helped the boys look at reading the cues of the horses and um the instructors do a really good job pointing out like Braden what do you think the horse is telling you right now what cues might he be riy be sharing with you or what do you think he's feeling and those are all things that he sometimes struggles with with people and peers and so it's neat to see how he can take some of those components of working with a horse and an animal and then related it to people [Music]