Registered office: Heather Lodge, Edlingham, Alnwick, Northumberland, NE66 2BL, UK. Tel: 01665-574727, © 2011

HIPPOTHERAPY

Many people think that because we work with people with

disabilities and horses, we provide riding for the disabled.           

Many people, particularly children with only mild to moderate

impairments, will benefit physically and psychologically from

having RDA lessons. Hippotherapy, on the other hand, is not

about learning to ride or simply enjoying the pleasure of being on

Hippotherapy is an intense but fun one-to-one patient-centred

movement therapy which maximises the potential of individual

clients and depends on the skills of physiotherapists with

In practice this means that a physiotherapist qualified to practise

hippotherapy can analyse an individual’s movement on the ground

and on horseback and select the horse’s walking speed and

direction specifically to benefit a particular client at a particular

time. Variation in the horse’s movement are used to make it easier

or more difficult for the person on horseback. The RDA does not

and cannot provide this one-to-one specialist physiotherapy

Hippotherapy also allows people both at the mild and at the

severe end of impairment to be challenged individually and their

potential to be maximised. This means that children with severe

disabilitites which make it impossible for them to be on horseback

on their own, can benefit from a horse’s movement, as

physiotherapists qualified to practise hippotherapy have had

specialist training that enables them to sit behind the child and

guide and support his/her movement and posture. All this is

impossible in an RDA session.

seeing a specialist physiotherapist for a specific musculoskeletal or neurological problem

differs from going to the gym for general fitness.