Chaplain uses horse curriculum in retreats for military families
"When we work horses, they mirror our emotions. -- Kathy Lehnhoff therapist"
By DAVID LOWE Staff Writer

PHOTO BY DAVID LOWE Manuel and Jennifer Salazar try to slip a halter on "Cheyenne" while participating in an Equine Assisted Learning activity at Tyson's Corners Retreat and Conference Center. Equine Assisted Learning helps participants apply metaphors of human-horse interactions -- from teamwork and communication to dealing with frustration -- to teaching, counseling, marriage and other interpersonal relationships.

Therapist Kathy Lehnhoff's instructions seem simple, but they are not always easy.

Halter a horse, Mrs. Lehnhoff might tell those in her Equine Assisted Learning class. Walk it with a lead rope. Make the animal move in a circle.

Participants keep working until they accomplish their task, but Mrs. Lehnhoff's goal goes beyond simply meeting an objective. The most valuable moments in an Equine Assisted Learning session come when those enrolled discover why they think and behave as they do.

The program -- used for teachers, mental health professionals and military families, among others -- allows groups to explore their interpersonal relationships by working with horses.

Participants do groundwork with a horse -- or a donkey on occasion, Mrs. Lehnhoff said -- while a licensed professional therapist and a trained equine specialist observe the human and equine behavior, respectively. The curriculum allows participants, without ever mounting a horse, to apply animal metaphors to their interac- tions with people.

Participants can learn from their response everything from fear and frustration to whether they take too many risks or how effectively they communicate with others, said Mrs. Lehnhoff, a licensed professional therapist and co-founder of EquiQuest.

The therapist will offer classes Oct. 18-19 at Tyson's Corners Retreat and Conference Center. The Oct. 18 session is titled "Winning with the Oppositional Student," while the following day's clinic will offer mental health professionals an introduction to Equine Assisted Psychotherapy.

Mrs. Lehnhoff said horses' nonverbal communication and empathy allow humans working with them to see how their feelings and behaviors affect other people.

"When we work horses, they mirror our emotions," she said.

Equine activity can teach educators, for example, about transference and countertransference, phenomena psychologists now realize strongly influence teachers' effectiveness. Horses reflect fear, anger, frustration or other emotions in the humans who approach them, just as teachers or students often project outside stress onto each other in the classroom, the therapist said.

After completing the program, teachers will understand better how their own stress or anger can hinder students' learning, Mrs. Lehnhoff said. When in class educators can recall the experience of controlling their emotions to accomplish a task.

"I want them to have some insight into their own behavior," she explained.

The Keller school district, near Fort Worth, has used Equine Assisted Learning for years with excellent results, said Mrs. Lehnhoff. The therapist also works with teachers in Kerrville, where she has a private practice. More than 60 teachers at Peterson Middle School in Kerrville have tried Equine Assisted Learning in order to set goals for assisting at-risk students.

Gene Tyson, owner of Tyson's Corners, has incorporated elements of Equine Assisted Learning into his retreats for soldiers and military families. At a recent session, couples preparing for deployment to Iraq -- the third or fourth for many of the non-commissioned officers -- practiced their communi- cation skills in "catch and halter" exercises.

Spouses, some accustomed to horses and some without equine experience, had to slip a halter around a horse while another couple observed both the humans' and horse's behavior. After the exercise, observers commented on how well the couple communicated and how they worked together to overcome challenges with the horse.

Manuel Salazar, preparing for his third deployment, said the equine program at Tyson's Corners gave him and his wife, Jennifer, a chance to hone their marital teamwork. Salazar admitted he is "not a horse guy," but the couple succeeded in slipping on the halter when they began whispering to the horse -- and talking to each other.

A group session at the retreat center with other military families allowed couples to discuss relationship issues along with deployment details, Salazar said.

"You get caught up in all those things, and you forget about each other," he said.

Chris and Dianne Johnson began attending marriage therapy before their wedding and continue to seek opportunities to attend retreats for military families. The "catch and halter" drill allowed the couple to overcome frustration together, which Mrs. Johnson said parallels the challenges parents face.

"Sometimes it's a battle, because we both think we know what's right," she said.

Johnson said he appreciated the support fellow officers and their wives offered each other during the Tyson's Corners retreat.

"A lot of these people are more mature and more open to discussing things," Johnson said.

The willingness to talk during Equine Assisted Learning results partly from physical activity, Mrs. Lehnhoff said. Kinetic energy, even a simple motion like brushing a horse, limits psychic tension and makes participants feel comfortable discussing emotions or problems, she said.

Tyson found equine groundwork an effective way to cope with grief when he tried an exercise at a clinic Mrs. Lehnhoff conducted in Medina. Asked to brush a horse while talking about a personal loss, the Lampasan found he still faced considerable sadness over his father's death.

"You'd think after 50 years there wouldn't be much grieving left," said Tyson, "but I could barely finish the task. That was a tremendous revelation."

He believes his facility's quiet, wooded setting, along with equinerelated therapeutic activities, help retreat participants reveal feelings they have been suppressing.

"We've had success in bringing things out that were below the surface," Tyson said. "It's very relaxing, and there's no stress. Couples really do well out here."

As an active, experience-based program, Equine Assisted Learning also helps those who try it retain self-knowledge they acquire, Mrs. Lehnhoff said. Studies have indicated people remember only 20 percent of what they read and just half of what they hear, she said.

"We remember 80 percent of what we do," the therapist noted.

For that reason, Mrs. Lehnhoff believes Equine Assisted Learning helps educators adopt teaching methods suited to students who no longer learn from traditional styles. Factors ranging from abuse at home to video game playing -- research shows video games cause users' brains to produce dopamine, the same chemical as the addictive agent in cocaine -- make many children unresponsive to lectures and rote memorization, she added.

Teachers who have done experiential learning, as with horses, learn to accommodate pupils' needs for hands-on education, the therapist said. Equine-based learning also can improve interactions with at-risk students, such as those with Oppositional Defiant Disorder, Mrs. Lehnhoff said.

Because they are "prey" animals, horses run away from perceived danger rather than stopping to assess the potential threat, the therapist said.

"That's the kind of behavior we're seeing in schoolchildren," she said.

The tendency to withdraw emotionally applies especially to Oppositional Defiant students, 80 percent of whom had insecure attachment problems as young children. Such students need to be touched about 50 times a day for a second or two to feel secure, similar to the way touch can calm a horse.

Those who have tried Equine Assisted Learning also can apply the "approach and retreat" method to at-risk students. For pupils who need physical contact to focus their attention on lessons, a teacher can improve the learning process by walking the classroom up and down -- or "approaching and retreating" -- while speaking, Mrs. Lehnhoff said. The same approach helps when having trouble getting a horse to obey, she added.

While the curriculum teaches participants about working with others, those who try horse-based learning often learn just as much about themselves, Mrs. Lehnhoff said.

At one demonstration, a mental health professional with severe vision problems struggled for 20 minutes trying to place a halter on a 14- year-old mare. Mrs. Lehnhoff watched as the mare wrapped its neck around the professional and tried to help with the exercise by dropping its head into the halter.

"She told me, `No one in my life has ever stuck with me and been patient with me until I got it,'" Mrs. Lehnhoff recalled.

The equine learning participant later wrote the therapist to thank her for the session, saying it had changed her life and that she had been called to attend for a higher purpose.

Sometimes revelations come from simple tasks.