Hippotherapy: a comprehensive method of rehabilitation

The method of treatment with horses is the most common among all methods of zootherapy. The first mention of the method of "hippotherapy"connect with the name of Hippocrates. He wrote that riding helps wounded and sick people to forget about their ailments, and people with psychological disorders get rid of depression.

The main diseases in which it is recommendedhippotherapy, are infantile cerebral palsy, autism, Down's syndrome, mental retardation, the consequences of the transferred non-infection, the consequences of clinical death and others diseases of the nervous and musculoskeletal systems.

Today, hippotherapy refers to nontraditional methods of treatment. In general, children who are recommended for hippotherapy become children. But there are also clinics in which this method of rehabilitation is available to adults.

The principle of treatment with the help of horses is based on the fact that during horse riding, in addition to a healthy muscle group, the affected muscles are instinctively involved in the process of maintaining balance, the functions of the vegetative system are strengthened.

Since hippotherapy means riding a horse without a saddle and stirrups, the animal's body plays role of a kind of biological massager. After all, the temperature of the horse is much higher than the temperature of the human body.

In addition to the biomechanical factor, which includes the performance of physical exercises on horses, hippotherapy also has psychogenic factor. It is on it that the treatment of diseases of the nervous system, such as cerebral palsy and mental retardation, is based.

The basic principles on which the psychotherapeutic effect of hippotherapy is built: unity of time, unity of place, unity of actors. With regular sessions, hippotherapy helpsreduce the feeling of anxiety, helps to ease the inhibition, adapts the patient to real space and time, promotes the emergence of independence.

Hippotherapy significantly increases the patient's self-esteem, because during the lessons nodevices related to disability. Man independently controls the balance, while riding a horse, which significantly adds confidence in their abilities.

It is believed that the positive effect of and the influence of the horse's biofield per person, although this fact is not recognized by allscientists. Communication of a person with this animal produces a direct therapeutic effect. For example, in the case of rehabilitation of patients with autism, the horse acts as a kind of intermediary between the child and the surrounding world. Spending a certain time near the animal, the child learns to learn the world in a new way, he develops a sense of independence, the desire to develop increases. Classes help to adapt in society.

Hippotherapy also implies the motivation for treatment. Rehabilitation process It brings more pleasure than traditional procedures and medication in the body. The patient should be happy to wait for a new occupation, a new meeting with the horse and an exciting horse ride. And the situation itself, far from the hospital walls, allows a person to forget that he is ill, to perceive the treatment that hippotherapy brings as entertainment.

This method of treatment has a lot of positive aspects, but still, like any method of rehabilitation, hippotherapy has several contraindications. First of all, horseback ridingare forbidden to patients with acute forms of mental, neurological and cardiovascular diseases. You can not refer to this method for those who suffer from osteoporosis and fragility of bones, as well as suffering from hemophilia and kidney disease.

The process of rehabilitation has individualfeatures and is selected depending on the patient's disease, the degree of complexity and the desired result. Hippotherapy knows a lot of examples when, after a course of rehabilitation, people with physical disabilities started take seriously horseback riding, and even reached certain heights. The main thing is that they got the confidence that life is not only pain and suffering. There was self-confidence and a desire to live.