Sometimes a ‘horse hug’ is just what’s needed. A horse who voluntarily goes to stand in the presence of a person processing fear often can work like a psychological embrace.

A group of middle school campers were seated around the rail during an equine experiential learning session (in the education-based therapeutic experience, participants learn life and emotional skills through the relationship with the horse). They are at a pioneer place for this innovative form of education - Barbara Rector's facility in Tucson, Arizona. The scene continues in her book: "Adventures in Awareness, Learning With the Help of Horses." Three boys started talking about their fear – of the horse. One had fallen off a horse on a trail ride and broke his arm. Another had been run over by a bolting horse. The third, speaking for his friend, said he been really hurt by a horse, so he was afraid to get too close, much less ride.

Rector went out to the paddock to the herd of eight therapy horses, including purebred and part Arabians, a paint mare and a Welsh pony mix. Like something akin to a herd mare dynamic, they clustered around her as she spoke to them.

Rector spoke to the herd: "Ok, you all, lots of fear as well as dis-interest in this group. I know you’re sensing their hesitancy, but I need for you to stroll over to the fence and engage." Rector concluded the interchange with a final pat to a horse in the herd.

She was followed by the horses. When Rector got to the kids, a horse named Vargas stepped up to the rail. Her assistant instructor said "Look, Vargas is choosing his team." Vargas placed his huge head in the lap of Zachary (name changed for confidentiality) the boy who had been stepped on and had expressed the most fear. Vargas stood still.

"Do you feel like you've been singled out?" Rector asked.

"Well, I guess so. This is hard to ignore," Zachary said. He was scrunching back in his chair away from the face against his chest.

"Consider asking him to move his face," Rector suggested.

"Horses don't speak English," the group responded.

"Or do they?" Rector queried.

Vargas pulled his head back through the rail after a minute and went to the boy afraid of being reinjured after a broken bone. Again he pushed his head through the rail and into John's lap.

"Am I being picked too?" John questioned.

"What do you think?" Rector asked. John's face was alight with a shy smile of delight, said Rector.

Vargas again removed his face and went to the third boy who had expressed fear and dislike of horses. "Yes,you too," he appeared to be saying, as he stuck his head into the seated boy's lap.

"Well then, that's the Vargas group," Rector said to the gathering youth.

Later she asked them what gift Vargas gave them. "If he spoke English, what would he be saying to you?"

"It's okay to say you're afraid,' said Zachary. "In fact, it helps to talk about being afraid. The power goes out of the fright."

Developing such awareness is part of what equine facilitated experiential learning is about, says Rector, where a person can become conscious of fear, a person is empowered towards making healthy behavior choices.

"Physical, emotional or psychological fear - horses bring all these fears together in a session." Says Lynne Howarth, Executive Director at Medicine Horse Center, a facility offering equine assisted learning in Mancos, Colorado.

A 16-year-old girl participated in an equine experiential learning program for adolescents at Medicine Horse Center. Instructor at the Center, Trish Lemke, described her as "open, gregarious, and not afraid to show emotion." Yet, Lemke said, the girl, an only child of a wealthy family was "intensely afraid" of being left alone by her parents. She talked of her parents often leaving on the weekends, and feared they wouldn't come back.

She sat in a circle with her group in the paddock, talking through feelings of abandonment. Elving, the horse she worked with in sessions, came by the circle of his own will (though there was lots of grass) and placed his front legs next to the girl who was seated on her haunches. Her head was bent over. Elvin dropped his head by her and stayed there, for fifteen minutes.

The session concluded with the group suggesting maybe she had different support systems she didn’t know she had. In the various ways equine experiential therapy works, the horse's interaction with the girl was a huglike expression of support.

Another interpretation of the horse embracing in a more literal sense comes from what Rector calls the "heart hug" - when the horse wraps his head around the participant akin to a mare with her foal.

The human facilitator in equine experiential therapy can interpret, through long term experience and understanding of the horse's non verbal language, when his interaction expresses support. It is this support that facilitates emotional discovery in an innovative way.