Equine Facilitated Wellness, or EFW, is just one of several terms out there that describe the practice of healing with horses. Related terms include Equine Assisted Learning (EAL), Equine Mental Health, Equine Psychotherapy, and others. We are not certified equine facilitated wellness practitioners. We are, however, starting the journey to become EFW practitioners this year when we complete our Exploratory training in May 2019, at the Healing Hooves program in Cremona, AB, under the tutelage of Sue McIntosh.
Sue has been a huge influence and mentor through the writing process of our book project, “Sharing the Now: Mindfulness Exercises to Enhance the Connection with Your Horse“.
Resources in the field of Equine Facilitated Wellness include the EFW Canada website and Sue’s Healing Hooves EFW blog. You will find various pointers on how to navigate this complex field and pursue training with these resources.
If you are more interested in reading about how people have experienced the healing power of being around horses, here are a couple of books that explore this topic.
- Dunning, A. Foreword by Linda Kohanov. (2017). The horse leads the way: honoring the true role of the horse in equine facilitated practice. Great Britain: YouCaxton Publications.
- de Waal, F.B.M. (2019). Mama’s last hug: animal emotions and what they tell us about ourselves. New York: W. W. Norton & Company.
If you have other books that resonate with you, please share those book recommendations in the comments of our posts. We’ll be doing a separate post on this soon!