Book Review: ‘The Horse Cure’
By Michelle Holling-Brooks
If you’re looking for a book that demonstrates how powerful horses are when dealing with mental health, this tear-jerker is a must read! The Horse Cure by Michelle Holling-Brooks is a book composed of true stories that Holling-Brooks has encountered while providing Equine-Partnered Psychotherapy and Coaching (EPPC) at her facility, Unbridled Change.
Holling-Brooks shares her personal situation and how horses helped her heal, which motivated her to start Unbridled Change. Horses taught her that it was okay to trust and be open to love. She has embraced her experience and now is helping others heal and grow utilizing horses.
“EPPC is a therapy that embraces mute, physical experience and communication with a powerful, aware animal.” Holling-Brooks educates the reader on how attuned horses are to their physical and emotional environments making them an effective means through which to teach clients how to communicate based on love and connection rather than power and control.
Each chapter of this book is a different encounter with a different client. Holling-Brooks uses many different encounters to provide the reader with an understanding that horses help a variety of people throughout their lives, including but not limited to, mothers, veterans and children.
Aside from the different types of people horses are helping in EPPC, she shows how the horses help to heal different diagnoses and issues such as PTSD, anger management, reducing destructive behaviors, impulse control, awareness, developing fine and gross motor skills, learning to accept help, domestic violence, trauma, depression and bipolar disorder.
This book provides a good depiction that the client and horse lead the therapy session. Holling-Brooks states multiple times throughout the book that there’s no right or wrong way of participating with the horse as long as they both remain safe.
She puts clients with horses that have similar stories so each person can relate to the horse. She also utilizes exercises that allow the horse to help the client to connect to real life situations, which aids the clients in expressing their fears and concerns about issues in their lives.
This book demonstrates how horses respond to us and build relationships with us. It shows us the power of utilizing horses to heal and grow all while tugging at the reader’s heart strings.
If you’re looking to read true stories with favorable outcomes that’ll warn the heart, you can fine HorseandRiderBooks.comThe Horse Cure at .
