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Farm Therapy Is No Joke
A crash course in nature, healing, and expansion
I teach people how to ride horses for a living, and I also partner with horses in helping humans achieve self-growth. Very little of that growth happens when we’re actually riding the horse. Most of it occurs when we’re doing mundane tasks that help keep the horses alive.
And you know what we’re doing around the farm when we reach the most trance-like familiarity with the genius of our subconscious mind?
Shoveling poop.
Yep. Something magical happens when we’re cleaning horse manure out of the barn.
We might be moaning about having to get started with this thankless task, but whatever we’re worrying about when we pick up the manure fork will seem a lot less important when the horse stall is cleaned.
And the crazy thing is — science is starting to give us an answer for why we feel better after filling up a wheelbarrow with a big, steaming heap of equine byproduct.
Here is what you can gain by pulling on some muck boots and contacting a local farm to see if they need extra hands.
Ecotherapy
I spent the first part of lockdown stressing over how the farm was going to survive. Then, a peculiar thing started happening. The longer people were trapped in their houses, the more my inbox began to overflow with messages. By the end of 2020, we had more people interested in the work we do at the farm than any time in the riding stable’s 20-year history.
It wasn’t some break in the space/time continuum that made this happen. Instead, people finally had enough time to slow down and figure out that they weren’t getting enough nature in their lives.
Hiking takes time for planning and travel. People in urban centers might not have access to a park. Those with backyards are usually consumed with indoor to-do lists and can’t take advantage of the closest trees. But, a farm — with or without horses — delivers two things: 1. Nature and 2. Purpose.
A 2018 review of nature therapy techniques and purposes published in Frontiers In Psychology states, “Greencare is recognized as an increasingly important phenomenon. It encompasses or involves…
