HORSE AND RIDER
TEXT: KIRSTEN SPRATT
HIPPO THERAPY THE 'MAGIC' OF THE HORSE'S MOVEMENT
I
have been a horse-lover ever since my first pony ride as a little girl. Yet, besides being a lover of horses, I am also an Occupational Therapist, which is my other passion. I love working with children with various diagnoses. I love seeing them progress and develop to their full potential. I love watching them achieve a milestone previously thought to be unachievable. I love seeing them battle and then succeed at doing something that comes so quickly to the rest of us. I consider my job to be a real privilege. For many years I have wanted to tie these two passions together, and I would like to take the rest of this article to
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explain to you how I have managed to do just that after discovering the benefits of a treatment strategy called Hippotherapy and an association called EATASA .
EATASA In 2020, in my quest to marry my passions, I stumbled upon an organisation called Equine Assisted Therapy Association of South Africa (EATASA). EATASA is a group of Occupational Therapists, Speech Therapists and Physiotherapists who have formed an association to train qualified therapists in how to use their clinical reasoning HQ|159A