The Benefits of Horse Riding on Human Health and Mental Abilities

Everyone knows the fact that riding is useful. But few people realize how great and versatile the benefits of regular exercise riding. The benefits of riding for the health of your body and mind – is truly enormous. Let’s look at what it is. The authors of Cheapwriting.services have prepared an article on this topic.

Of course, it is physical activity, followed by fatigue and crepatoria (especially for beginner riders). But on the other hand – solid benefits, and for everyone. This fitness, and weight loss, and massage effect, and improve posture, and the fight against stress, and even help in the treatment and prevention of many diseases.

Unusual doctor

The horse is not only a good friend, helper, but also a doctor. Hippotherapy has been known since ancient times. It is common knowledge that hippotherapy greatly helps children with musculoskeletal system disorders, but this is not the only indication for them to become better acquainted with this unusual “doctor”.

Today, experts say that communication with horses is also useful for children with hypertension stages 1 and 2, autism, aphasia, hydrocephalus, blood diseases, polio, multiple sclerosis and other diseases. Therefore, hippotherapy often becomes a topic for nursing essay writing in college. 

Horse as medicine: riding and hippotherapy

It is believed that there are no absolute contraindications to hippotherapy. And the relative contraindications are serious cardiovascular diseases, scoliosis of 3-4 degree, as well as sprains, subluxations, instability of hip joints.

What does the horse treat?

There are two directions of hippotherapy: physical rehabilitation, when specially selected sets of exercises train certain muscles, and psychological rehabilitation. In other words, correction of the psycho-emotional sphere.

Physical rehabilitation

Hippotherapy develops the child’s physical activity, helps restore impaired functions, improves or restores lost skills and helps form new ones. In fact, horseback riding is a special form of therapeutic exercise, where the sports equipment is a horse, a living creature.

Riding provides simultaneous involvement of virtually all muscle groups of the sick child’s body. This happens reflexively, because when moving with a horse, the rider has to try to maintain balance in order not to fall. In this way, both healthy and diseased muscles of the body are stimulated to activity.

Psychological rehabilitation

It is believed that children whose behavior at school, in the family deviates from generally accepted standards – the “difficult” children – often feel like failures, ready to lose. Such a child feels deep despondency, he or she has bouts of bad moods.

Deviant behavior can be an attempt to attract attention, to prove their own importance to themselves and others, or, on the contrary, to take revenge for their failures. Working in the stable, taking care of the horses, keeping the equipment in order, participation in general labor gives a child with behavioral disorders an opportunity to join the life of the team and to receive satisfaction from work well done.

For children with mental retardation, horse riding is also a chance to gain faith in themselves.

Even though these children are often clumsy and their understanding of complex instructions is impaired, they can and want to ride a horse.

Children with autism live in their own world, cut off from everything outside, and do not know how to communicate fully with the world around them. Activities and repetitive movements help them get rid of their fears and find their favorite activities to develop their abilities and build their intelligence. Horseback riding is a great way to do this.

It is also useful for children with visual and hearing impairments. The ways of teaching such children are different: for deaf children the imitation method is effective, for blind children – clear instructions and repetition. Blind children also need the instructor to tell and describe what they see around them. Children with hearing and visual impairments find it difficult to do independent activities, they feel unsuccessful. Riding gives them experiences that they are often deprived of: emotional elation, joyful excitement when reaching a goal.

Riding as fitness

Riding a horse puts almost every muscle in your body into action, even the muscles you don’t use in normal life. The muscles that get the most exercise are your back, lower back, abs, thighs and calves, biceps and triceps. Riding at a front trot is equivalent to an active walking stride, and a gallop is equivalent to a cross-country run. You will not get as good as in a gym, but muscles will be evenly pumped and toned. Extra volume will gradually disappear from the hips and abdomen, and the body will become slimmer and tighter.

Horseback riding and academic performance

Japanese scientists have stated that riding horses is beneficial to children’s learning. It turns out that riding horses increases the ability to learn and improves memory in children

The fact is that the resulting vibrations activate the nervous system, which helps children learn. 

They claim that after a ride on a horse, a child’s ability to navigate in the environment and solve mathematical problems significantly improves. Well, if writing assignments are difficult for you, you can turn to paper writers for hire to perform student duties.

And for any person – young and adult, healthy and not – a walk on horseback will be an excellent way to find inner harmony.