Reining in Anxiety: 
​A Program for Children and their Families

Many children and adolescents have mild to moderate anxiety. 

Our new program — Reining in Anxiety— is evaluating whether the combination of therapeutic horseback riding (THR) and cognitive behavioral therapy reduces the symptoms of anxiety. The program teaches kids, and their parents, tools and techniques to better manage anxiety.
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​Learn more about our program below, including the science behind therapeutic horseback riding, cognitive behavioral therapy, and how this 10-session program is designed to help ease the symptoms of anxiety and improve day-to-day functioning.  

We partnered with GallopNYC in New York City in 2019-2020 (read about this collaboration to the right) to test the Reining in Anxiety program and are current evaluating the data from that pilot study, with results expected to be published in Winter 2021.  Read more about that collaboration, here or click on the article to the right. 

This spring, we are partnering with Fieldstone Farm, located in Chagrin Falls, Ohio, to again pilot the Reining in Anxiety program, this time with an emphasis on the collection of physiologic biomarkers (i.e., cortisol, oxytocin, and alpha amylase) from both humans and horses, which will tell us about the program's impact on both the human and horse stress response system and the program's impact on anxiety symptoms in youth. 
**Please note that some of the sections on this website are for participants (kids and their parents), instructors, research assistants, and volunteers only, and are password protected and are currently under construction until February 15, 2021).**
Read about our recent collaboration  with GallopNYC!

​​Ride ....

Ride to Build Confidence, Self-Efficacy, and Self-Regulation
Therapeutic horseback riding can help kids build confidence in managing their anxiety. Horses and human share similar  social and responsive behaviors, and as such, it is easy for kids to create a strong bond or connection with the horse. 

And, because horses are herd/ prey animals, they are finely attuned to human behavior, and as such, horses can reflect or mirror kids' behavior, and kids notice and recognize that --often more than the verbal feedback they may get from a therapist.
Learn ....
Learn Strategies and Skills for Managing Anxiety
CBT, or cognitive behavioral therapy, is a proven set of strategies and skills that helps kids better manage their anxiety.
Over the course of ten sessions, kids and their parents learn new skills and strategies for better managing anxiety.

Some of these skills include: recognizing and finding clues to their own anxiety, learning and practicing relaxation techniques and other skills for coping, as well as changing negative thoughts and learning problem-solving skills.

Practice

Practice the ​Strategies and Skills and Use them to Rein Anxiety 

Using their journal, kids will practice the  strategies and skills they learn each session to help them better cope with anxiety. 

For example, in one of the sessions, kids will identify coping skills for anxiety, like listening to music; in another, kids will learn about negative thoughts they may have, write them down, and write down other better thoughts that they could have. In this way, the homework in the journal  reinforces the skills learned in each session.