Lucknam Park’s equine therapy aims to foster emotional growth

Luxury Wiltshire country house hotel and spa Lucknam Park has developed an equine therapy offering to provide its guests with a holistic, experiential and highly specialised form of therapy that incorporates working with horses.

Led by Dawn Cameron, Lucknam Park’s Equestrian Centre manager for over 20 years, the sessions aim to improve both mental and physical health and are designed to help individuals learn how to communicate with others and release anxiety.

Acting as a form of mindfulness, guests can connect with the animals in a natural setting, being taught to control the horses through their body language.

A horse’s natural instincts and methods of communication rely solely on the placement and subsequent release of pressure, so guests will be taught to control the horses through their body language in what is a form of mindfulness practice.

Creating connections with the animals is said to encourage guests’ emotional growth, helping them to learn about themselves and develop new ways of thinking – all of which are skills transferable to their personal relationships.

“The handler has to adopt their body language to communicate with the horse,” explains Cameron, “They will need to understand how horses interact in the herd environment, which is completely different to the ways in which we communicate. They have to completely focus on the horse.”