One goal of The HERD Project is to work with 30 girls who struggle with anxiety and/or depression. Dr. Jill wants to take these girls through a six to eight week process to teach them new skills that they can use for the rest of their lives. Think of it as an intervention. If your daughter has encountered these types of struggles, she might need to learn that she does actually have the power to influence her own emotional state. Although we may feel like the victims of our own psychology, we are often the creators of it!
Scientific research has shown that the heart is very sensitive to our positive or our negative thoughts and feelings. The heart, it turns out, is attuned to our stress levels. The heart sends tons of information up to the brain. The brain then sends information out to the rest of the body through the nervous system. Heart focused breathing, combined with positive thoughts (thinking of someone, someplace or something that is easy for you to love or makes you feel happy) can begin to bring the brain into a state of balance. We call this balance between heart, emotions and the mind: Coherence. The state of coherence feels calming, and is rejuvenating for the entire body. It makes you feel happier.
In addition to being a counselor, Dr. Jill is a certified HeartMath practitioner. HeartMath is the biofeedback system that we use to teach coherence. We just clip a small device to your earlobe and the device reads your pulse. Then we plug the device into the phone or the computer and we get feedback on your stress levels through the HeartMath App. This App has games and other ways to engage with it, to teach you how to bring yourself into a state of balance. Balance feels good.
Then we step into our time with horses. Horses are like living biofeedback systems because they are so attentive to our moods and energy. Sometimes we don’t notice that the horse is noticing us. Through the HERD Project activities, we experiment with how our breathing affects the horse, how the horse responds to our body posture; the way we walk, where we look, how we hold our head, if we are breathing. The languages of the horse are body language and energy language. We learn to “speak” these silent languages!
Then teens practice taking these same skills into the rest of their lives. What does confidence feel like, look like, walk like when you’re at school?