{"id":8592,"date":"2020-02-25T09:50:11","date_gmt":"2020-02-25T14:50:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/magazine\/?p=8592"},"modified":"2020-11-11T16:42:49","modified_gmt":"2020-11-11T21:42:49","slug":"healing-with-horses","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/magazine\/healing-with-horses\/","title":{"rendered":"Healing with Horses"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

It had been nearly four decades since Michael served as a\ncombat soldier in Vietnam, but he bore psychological wounds that felt as raw as\nthey did when he first returned home. And they showed no sign of healing. He\nwas perpetually fearful of open spaces and couldn\u2019t recall the last time he\u2019d\nslept through the night, tormented as he was by terrors that awoke him at odd\nintervals, compelling him to uncomfortably wedge himself under his bed for some\nsense of security. But then he visited Serenity Stables, and something\nfundamental began to change.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Founded in 2015 by Monmouth University alumna Ren\u00e9 Stone,\nSerenity Stables, From Combat to Calm, is a nonprofit farm in Atlantic\nHighlands, New Jersey, that provides what\u2019s known as equine-assisted therapy to\nU.S. veterans returning from deployment with a broad range of physical,\npsychological, and emotional disabilities. It\u2019s part of a growing trend across\nthe country aimed at using the unique temperament and intuition of domesticated\nhorses to help veterans work through myriad developmental and physical\ndisabilities, including the severe mental health challenges that stem from\npost-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI grew up around military men, and I know that when these men are traumatized, they won\u2019t sit on a couch and talk to someone about how they feel. And here\u2019s the thing about PTSD\u2014when you have PTSD you don\u2019t feel anything,\u201d says Stone, a mortgage loan originator by trade who has more than two decades of experience owning and caring for horses. \u201cThere\u2019s a change that happens to you on a biological level when you\u2019re traumatized. You\u2019re frozen. It\u2019s not that you don\u2019t want to cry, it\u2019s that you don\u2019t know where crying is. What the horses do is evoke emotion. They unlock the frozen part of you. And no matter how hard you try to stay frozen, you are going to melt when you\u2019re around them.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And that\u2019s precisely what happened with Michael. As part of\na larger group of Vietnam vets visiting the farm one morning in 2017, Stone\nasked Michael to walk into the field and spend some time with her stable of six\nhorses. Not to ride them or walk them or groom them\u2014just to spend time with the\nherd. And as he found himself standing there amongst the animals, their\nunavoidable evocation of presence and immediacy helped Michael begin healing in\nways that were as surprising as they were instantaneous.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cHe came back from the field and said to me, \u2018I can\u2019t\nbelieve this, but that\u2019s the first time in decades that I\u2019ve been out in an\nopen space when I wasn\u2019t thinking about being ambushed,\u2019\u201d recalls Stone. \u201cAbout\nfour days later I got a call from Michael\u2019s therapist and he told me that\nMichael woke up in his bed after sleeping through the night for the first time\nin as long as he could recall. And that was after just one session with the\nhorses! This was very early on in our journey, and that\u2019s when I realized we\nhave a very powerful way to heal these men.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

And Stone knows better than most just how profound a role horses can play in processing and healing the scars of trauma. After all, it was a horse that saved Stone from her own psychological turmoil many years ago.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

***<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Stone\u2019s love of horses stretches back to her childhood growing\nup in Keyport, New Jersey, when her boyfriend\u2019s sister brought Stone to visit\nher stable in Holmdel. Stone\u2019s affection for horses was immediate, not only because\nof the animals\u2019 aesthetic beauty, but also because of their distinctive and\ndisarming disposition. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"
Former Marine Mark Otto (foreground) was the first veteran to go through Stone\u2019s program. Now, he brings other veterans from the Samaritan Daytop Village to Stone\u2019s farm each week. \u201cIt is very fulfilling to share this experience so that other veterans can benefit from it as well,\u201d says Otto. <\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWhen you\u2019re around horses you realize right away that they are very <\/em>present. It\u2019s not like being with a dog. Dogs really just want to please you. And they\u2019re predatory by nature. But horses are prey animals, and that means they are consistently reading and sensing their environment,\u201d says Stone, who graduated from Monmouth in 1992 at the age of 29 with a degree in communications. \u201cThat\u2019s how they\u2019ve survived for millions of years. And when you\u2019re with a horse they bring you right into the present moment as well. You need to stay present or you\u2019re going to get hurt. And that\u2019s a real gift, because most of us aren\u2019t in the present. We\u2019re thinking about yesterday or worrying about tomorrow.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

To be sure, Stone had plenty to worry about during her formative\nyears, which were both financially strained and emotionally tumultuous. When\nStone was just 13, her father\u2014a former Merchant Marine who suffered from\nPTSD\u2014attempted to take his own life at home one afternoon. In a panic, Stone\u2019s\nmother called the police, who entered the house and eventually wound up shooting\nStone\u2019s father through Stone\u2019s bedroom door, leaving him paralyzed from the\nwaist down. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI spent the next several years in and out of VA (Veterans Affairs)\nhospitals trying to get care for my father, who eventually needed to have his\nlegs amputated,\u201d recalls Stone, whose mother died of lung cancer four years\nafter the shooting. \u201cI spent a lot of time with the men at those hospitals, and\nit was just a god-awful site. Men suffering or dying on gurneys. Rats in the\nhallways. Just wretched. I would sometimes play piano for them and sing songs,\nand I promised myself that one day I would do something to help them.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Stone also vowed to buy her own horse once she\u2019d graduated from\ncollege, a dream that was financially out of the question during her youth. And\nso, shortly after graduating from Monmouth, she leased her first \u201ccrazy\nthoroughbred\u201d and then bought her own horse in 1997, a roan thoroughbred named\nTristan who is currently 30 years old. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI think the real reason I always wanted my own horse is that I just love the experience,\u201d she says. \u201cThere\u2019s something very spiritual about the connection you have with them. There\u2019s no other feeling like it in the world.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

And this, says Stone, is what makes these animals so ideally therapeutic for victims of trauma. Not only are they mystifyingly captivating, but they also reflect one\u2019s internal state of mind at all times. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"
\u201cEngaging with the horses has helped clear my mind,\u201d says Will, a former Marine. He is pictured with Texas, a 21-year-old Tennessee walker whose owner, an Army colonel, loans him to Stone to use in the program. <\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThey can hear your heart beat from four feet away. They can sense a tiger from a quarter mile away and <\/em>they can tell whether or not that tiger is hungry,\u201d says Stone. \u201cSo if you\u2019re afraid or timid or at peace, the horse will mirror and reflect that emotion. That\u2019s how they\u2019ve survived. They\u2019re always reacting.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Before Stone could merge her passion for horses with her internal promise to help U.S. vets, she first had to endure even more personal tragedy of her own. In 1997, her horse kicked her in the head, fracturing her skull and causing a traumatic brain injury from which she took more than a year to fully recover. Shortly thereafter, Stone was involved in a car accident that resulted in the death of a young boy\u2014and that, she says, was when she first began to realize that she too was suffering from PTSD. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cAnd the only place I could go to feel any degree of peace was\nat the barn with Tristan,\u201d says Stone. \u201cThat\u2019s when I first made the connection.\nTristan saved my life. And he was a very good therapist.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Equine therapy was barely in its infancy at the time, but in\n2012 Stone purchased 25 acres of land in Virginia, where she figured she would\nstart her own program 10 or 15 years down the road, assuming she\u2019d wait until\nshe retired from the mortgage business. But fate, she says, had other plans. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Three years after purchasing the Virginia property, Stone\nlearned that a 15-acre farm two miles from her house was up for lease, so she\ndecided to take a look. The evening after she visited the property, Stone says\nshe woke up in the middle of the night with an unshakable conviction that she\nshould begin her equine therapy journey much sooner than expected. So she\nleased the land in early 2015, got her necessary certifications, and by the\nspring of that year Serenity Stables began treating its first veterans\u2014and it\nhas served more than 1,000 individuals since. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWhen I sit back and think about it, I\u2019m struck by how we should all listen to the voice inside of us that pushes us toward our destinations,\u201d says Stone. \u201cThis project was the first time I actually did that. And it\u2019s been amazing.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

***<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It\u2019s important to understand that equine-assisted therapy is not\nabout riding horses or conversing with a human therapist in the traditional\nsense. Instead it\u2019s about allowing veterans to interact with the horses in myriad\nways, giving them time to react on those interactions, and then using those reactions\nto open pathways to healing. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cTalk therapy is when I ask a question and the client responds\nin order to process their feelings. But with equine therapy, it\u2019s about a\nrelationship between the client and the horse, which I help facilitate,\u201d says\nBrooke Lichter \u201914, \u201916M, a licensed social worker who earned her bachelor\u2019s\nand master\u2019s degrees in social work from Monmouth. Lichter\u2014who is certified\nthrough the Professional Association of Therapeutic Horsemanship International\nas an equine specialist in mental health and learning\u2014was instrumental in\nhelping Stone create Serenity Stables and now serves as the program\u2019s mental\nhealth specialist. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"
Jack, who served in the Navy from 1998 to 2001, finds a moment of calm with Samson, a 14-year-old buckskin quarter horse.<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIt\u2019s really the horses who are the therapists,\u201d says Lichter,\nadding that she and Stone follow therapeutic guidelines established by the\nEquine Assisted Growth and Learning Association (Eagala) through which they are\nboth certified. \u201cThe client will tell me their goals and I, as the mental\nhealth professional, try to facilitate exercises that will help. It\u2019s my job to\nhelp them work things out with the horse and then come to their own\nconclusions. I don\u2019t give solutions or advice, because it\u2019s all about learning\nfrom the horse.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

According to Stone, the Eagala model asks therapists to watch for four different signifiers: shifts, patterns, uniqueness, or discrepancies. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cLet\u2019s say I send a veteran to go introduce himself to the herd.\nAs he approaches, I notice all the horses stop and don\u2019t move. Then suddenly\none of the horses walks around in a circle. That\u2019s a shift and a pattern,\u201d says\nStone. \u201cThen the circling horse paws on the ground over and over again. That\u2019s\nanother pattern. So I might pull the client back and say, \u2018Hey, notice how that\nhorse is pawing the ground?\u2019 And he\u2019ll say, \u2018I was digging for a bomb. And it\nexploded.\u2019 Now he\u2019s crying for the first time in 10 years, and only then can he\nbegin to process what he\u2019s feeling.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Currently, most visits take place on Wednesdays, when a group of\nvets begins with lunch at a nearby restaurant hosted by Mark Otto, executive\ndirector of the United War Veterans Council. After lunch the vets come to the\nfarm, where they\u2019re encouraged to walk around and meet the horses. Stone and\nLichter ask them which horse they feel connected to, and the women will\ninstruct them on how to groom the animal of their choice. After that Stone\neither teaches them how to lead a horse or she might let the horses loose in\nthe field to let clients simply observe the animals\u2019 behavior. The session then\nbecomes slightly more concentrated when Stone and Lichter ask the vets to each\nbuild an obstacle course using myriad objects\u2014cones, jugs, buckets, wood\u2014each\none representing something they\u2019re struggling with, something they\u2019re currently\nbothered by, or something they may even be happy about. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThen we ask them to try and lead a horse through the obstacles and tell the horse anything they want to get off their chest, because horses are very good listeners,\u201d says Stone. \u201cSo let\u2019s say they build a structure that represents fear or apprehension and the horse stops and won\u2019t go through it. I might then ask them to write down a word that represents what\u2019s bothering them. But we never ask the vets how they\u2019re feeling. That\u2019s not what they want to talk about, because they don\u2019t know <\/em>how they\u2019re feeling. It\u2019s always related back to the horse, so we only ask questions surrounding the horse and its behavior. The horses become the metaphor for what is going on with them subconsciously.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Time and time again, Stone says she is surprised by the\nextremely nuanced and insightful reactions these vets bring to the process. For\ninstance, Stone was working with a group last summer and she was bothered by\nhow much grass had grown in the horses\u2019 ring. It was irritating, she says,\nbecause the horses just wanted to eat the grass, making it extremely difficult\nfor the men to lead the animals through their obstacle courses. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"
Stone has served more than 1,000 veterans at Serenity Stables. \u201cThis whole experience has really humbled me greatly,\u201d she says.<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWhen we finished the session I asked one of the guys, \u2018What did\nyou think?\u2019 And he said, \u2018Ya know, I looked at all the grass, and I realized\nthe grass is like our addictions. The horses needed to focus, but all they\nwanted was grass all the time.\u2019 That just blew me away,\u201d says Stone. \u201cThat had\nnothing to do with me. It\u2019s all about the horses. The horses will always show\nyou what you need to see.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

On a typical week Stone says she sees between five and 10\nveterans at Serenity Stables, the vast majority of whom are post-9\/11 combat\nsoldiers in their 30s who served in Iraq and Afghanistan. And even though Stone\nhas established long-term relationships with various VA hospitals in the\nregion, one of the most significant challenges is actually getting veterans to\ncome out to the farm in the first place. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWhen they get back from active duty these vets are injured and in mental collapse,\u201d says Stone. \u201cThey\u2019ve experienced consistent trauma, and then they return home and they\u2019ve lost their unit. Their herd. They were injured in their herd, and they need to be healed in a herd. And that\u2019s part of what we provide, so long as they\u2019re willing to participate.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

To be sure, Stone\u2019s experience with Serenity Stables has not only changed the lives of hundreds of U.S. vets, but it\u2019s also changed her in ways she couldn\u2019t have imagined before she started this program nearly five years ago. \u201cThis whole experience has really humbled me greatly, and it\u2019s made me a much more patient and calmer person. If you just quiet your mind and body, you can probably recover from anything. I didn\u2019t used to think that way,\u201d says Stone. \u201cAnd I see it all the time with these men. I remember one time a vet said to me, \u2018Every time I come here, something bad falls off me.\u2019 That right there is more of an accomplishment than any of the mortgage accounts I\u2019ve closed or awards that I\u2019ve won. I will never forget it as long as I live.\u201d <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Rene\u0301 Stone discovered the benefits of equine therapy while recovering from her own personal trauma. Now she\u2019s using horses to help veterans suffering from PTSD. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":60,"featured_media":8609,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"image_focus":"{\"x\":46,\"y\":38}","hide_title":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[93],"class_list":["post-8592","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-features","tag-alumni-donor-profiles"],"thumbnail":"\"\"","catString":"Features","issue":"Spring 2020","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8592","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/60"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8592"}],"version-history":[{"count":21,"href":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8592\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12655,"href":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8592\/revisions\/12655"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8609"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8592"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8592"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8592"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}