Riding horses has long been believed to be a physically beneficial activity for humans, an idea that traces back to the ancient Greeks. But it wasn’t until the 1960’s that therapeutic riding became a formal practice. Largely catalyzed by the efforts of Danish equestrian Lis Hartel, who won Olympic silver while battling the ravages of polio, Hartel won silver in individual dressage at the 1952 Helsinki Games and again in 1956, competing both times while permanently paralyzed below the knees from polio, with her arms and hands also affected. She went on to open the first therapeutic riding center in Europe, work that grew into the Lis Hartel Foundation in the Netherlands, still active today.Olympedia · Lis Hartel
Therapeutic riding is not teaching a disabled person how to ride. Neither is it counseling on horseback with emotional or behavioral therapies. It is a specialized form of physical and neurological therapy. I believe therapeutic riding, as I practice it, isEquine Assisted Neuro-Rehab.
The outside of the horse is good for the inside of the human, not because the horse is a gentle soul, or because of some emotional connection; but because of the physical attributes of simply sitting on a horse in motion: the rhythm, the vibrations, the movement patterns, the physiology.
Physical therapy uses movement and specific exercises to restore function to the body. Therapeutic riding in the form of Equine Assisted Neuro-Rehab uses the movement of the horse combined with specific exercises to restore function to the brain and body. Classical riding is physical therapy for the rider, just as much as it is for the horse.
The motion of a horse’s back at the walk resembles the natural movement of the human pelvis in the walk, and can provide benefits to the joints of the rider’s hips. A 2015 motion-capture study measured the pelvis motion of six children walking on the ground, then riding four different horses at the walk. The pattern of movement was similar in both – the horse’s walk moves a rider’s pelvis the way the rider’s own pelvis moves when walking on two feet. Balance training has been shown to raise levels of BDNF (brain-derived neurotrophic factor), a protein involved in the growth and repair of brain cells. A study of older adults found serum BDNF rose significantly after a program of balance exercises – a close analogue to the way a horse’s motion constantly challenges a rider’s balance.Garner & Rigby, 2015
Balance training · BDNF
A classically trained horse moves in a special way which we call collection. The well trained horse lifts the back, lowers the hips, and moves with increased spring like action of the hips and hind legs. Collection modifies the whole body vibrations created by the horse and directs them more toward the rider’s core and trunk. I believe this amplifies the effects of BDNF release in the rider’s brain. These benefits all exist just from passively sitting on a well trained horse in motion. The trainer guides the horse through its movements, while the rider simply sits in the saddle passively receiving physical therapy.
Combine the benefit of riding a collected horse with the exercises traditionally used to train a rider, and now you have an extremely powerful therapeutic method. Simple counting patterns and specific arm and leg exercises used to train a rider how to sit on a moving horse now bring a new dimension to the work. Counting the horse’s strides up to ten by twos in English, Spanish, or French co-activates the language, math, and logic centers of the brain. Perform this mental gymnastic while riding the horse on a circle in the sitting trot and doing arm circles or trunk rotations and you can activate additional brain regions involved in muscle movement, self-control, and proprioception (the body’s built in GPS system that allows you to know where it is in space). These combination exercises spread the therapeutic benefit across more areas of the brain and invoke a basic principle of brain function and learning – brain cells that fire together wire together. The principle traces to Donald Hebb’s 1949 book The Organization of Behavior, which first proposed that connections between brain cells strengthen when they are repeatedly active together. The catchy phrasing above is a later shorthand summary of Hebb’s postulate, not his own words.Hebb, 1949
I always had a suspicion that my oldest daughter, Kelly, was born with some level of autism. She exhibited many of the classical signs – unpredictable screaming emotional tantrums, obsessions with subjects like dinosaurs, repetitive behaviors, and self-stimulating behaviors. We managed her conditions as best we could and tried to live as healthy a lifestyle as we could, which seemed to help Kelly. Living on a small hobby horse farm, eating lots of fresh garden foods, and homeschooling seemed to give Kelly an almost normal and functioning life. We figured either Kelly was healing or we just needed to live the appropriate life for her to function. In 2024 that all changed. It took a team of specialists months to make the new diagnosis: autistic catatonia, a rare condition even among the rare. We realized that we had so much more to learn.
It started on Valentine’s Day, 2024. Kelly slept all day and never got out of bed. We attributed it to fatigue from a minor illness and didn’t think much of it. As February moved into March we watched our once happy daughter deteriorate before our eyes. There were days she would grab her head and scream in terror, crying out that she was broken. When she started hallucinating, I drove her to the emergency room. It was the first of many hospital visits yet to come. The diagnosis was malignant catatonia. She was in the hospital through Easter.
When the medical team finally made enough progress to release her, a friend with horses nearby offered Kelly the chance to ride. We started simply – Kelly in the saddle, Leo beneath her, walking. Without thinking, I returned to my classical riding roots. I guided Kelly through all the seat exercises I used to teach my former riding students. The horse, the riding, and the exercises did what no one expected – accelerated her healing beyond where medical treatment alone could take her.
Over the following months Kelly’s body began to wake up. The stiff rigidity and slow motion movement of catatonia began to disappear. Her ability to move, to respond, and be present in her own body started returning – enhanced and longer lasting after each riding session. The medical interventions required to keep her functioning decreased as her time in the saddle increased. Now, two years later, Kelly is mobile and becoming more interactive. We are not out of the woods, yet. She still has bad days that are a struggle, but she continues to make progress towards living a healthy, functional, and independent life.
My goal was to simply keep my daughter alive and functioning. She always loved horses, and letting her ride seemed like the only thing we could do for her. The horse did the rest.
The horse is the chrysalis. What mounts is a caterpillar. What dismounts is a butterfly. From this hidden work emerges what neither horse nor rider could have made alone.
Kelly’s story is not finished. Neither is the work of bringing her back. Her condition is stable, but that stability is fragile. She works with Ruby four or five days a week. Some days the progress is immediate and obvious. Some days there seems to be no effect – but perhaps it prevented a worsening that might have happened without it. We enjoy the good days and pray hard for a reduction in bad days. Her healing, and our prayer, continues – day by day, in the arena with Ruby.