Written by Barbara Wright
When I received human stress control therapy and felt the incredibly efficient and fast transformation of my fears into simple events in my past, I was compelled to try eye movement therapy and bilateral body tapping therapy on Victoor, the spookiest horse I had ever met (even after many sessions of retraining with traditional methods, Victoor, an Arabian gelding, startled and spooked constantly).
Victoor responded so well to my experimental approach that I read and studied everything I could about all the available eye movement and body tapping therapy techniques, then transformed the human protocols for the horse’s vision and physical form. That this protocol had never been tried on horses before (or any other mammal, for that matter) was surprising to me. I developed Equine Stress Control Therapy (ESCT) in 2002.
ESCT is based on human therapies that are commonly used in triage situations by therapists arriving on the scene of accidents and catastrophes. That it works on recently traumatized horses, as well as those suffering from abuse, injury or memory trauma for some time, underscores the fact that the fear cycle in humans and horses is very similar.