Hitting One’s Stride

Fast-forward more than two decades, and you will now find Schaad and her husband, Rob Chavarry, residing on-site at Hunkapi Farm with 35 horses and 52 farm animals that serve as therapeutic aids, including donkeys, chickens, cows, pigs, dogs, cats and a goat. The organization has grown beyond solely horse therapy to provide equine-assisted programs to 300 people per week that include therapeutic riding for children or adults with special needs with a goal of recreation; life skills for children and adults, teaching social skills, boundary setting and assertiveness; and psychotherapy with masters-level therapists addressing clinical goals, such as decreasing symptoms of anxiety, depression and post-traumatic stress disorder.

Hunkapi’s First Responder Program, now in its 14th cohort, starts to change the culture within the first-responder community and the belief systems around PTSD by helping program participants understand the effect and build-up of energy resulting from regularly overriding the natural fight, flight, freeze response. Horses help first responders understand this biological response and train them how to dissipate and deactivate it from their system so they can be more ready for work the next day.

Those who aren’t interested in horses are welcome to experience the sanctuary of the farm where vegetables are grown and farm-totable dinners take place, as well as yoga and sound bowl healing. The entire farm connects people to mind, body and spirit in an experiential way. “It’s not cognitive. We’re not teaching people to be in their heads,” Schaad said. “We’re teaching them to experience something and how to integrate that into life.”