Study finds animal and human hearts beat in sync during horse therapy

Animal and human hearts beat in sync during equine therapy Keystone-SDA

When lovers look into each other’s eyes, their hearts beat in unison. This effect has now also been demonstrated in equine therapy in a pilot study involving Swiss participants.

+ Get the most important news from Switzerland in your inbox

In horse therapy, the heartbeats of humans and animals adapt to each other, report Swiss and Viennese researchers and therapists. In their studyExternal link published in the journal Complementary Therapies in Clinical Practice, they also demonstrated the stress-reducing effect of this therapy. The research team included Karin Hediger from the University of Lucerne.

Equine-assisted therapy is considered a promising method for the complementary treatment of people with intellectual disabilities. The research team led by clinical psychologist Anna Naber and Roswitha Zink from the Viennese children’s hospice and therapy centre Lichtblickhof wrote that the improved motor control through horse therapy has been proven many times over, but the psychological benefits and the underlying mechanisms are not yet fully understood. Lisa Maria Glenk from the Messerli Research Institute for Human-Animal Interaction at the University of Veterinary Medicine Vienna was also involved in the study.

+ How animals enliven a Swiss nursing home

Clients, therapists and horses analysed together

In the pilot study, physiological values for stress reaction such as heart rate or the stress hormone cortisol were measured together for the first time in clients with an intellectual impairment in early adulthood as well as in a therapist and therapy horses. The measurements were taken before, during and after a standardised therapy session.

“We found that the heartbeats adapted to each other and synchronised – but only under certain conditions,” Naber explained to the Austrian news agency APA. The decisive factor was a positive relationship between the interaction partners: the hearts of the client and the horse only beat in sync if it was the client’s favourite horse. And the effect between therapist and horse was greater when the therapist interacted with a horse with which she had a strong relationship.

Signs of relaxation

The study also showed that horse therapy had a stress-reducing effect on the clients. After contact with the horse, the young adults had lower levels of the stress hormone cortisol in their saliva and their pulse rate was lower, “both signs of relaxation”, says Naber.

In addition, the so-called heart rate variability was higher, a measure of the organism’s ability to adapt and adjust to stress, which indicates a high level of well-being. “When solving a challenge, the heart rate was significantly lower when the horse was present than when the challenge had to be solved without a horse,” said the clinical psychologist.

Increasing acceptance of equine therapies

The fact that horses have a positive effect on well-being and help to reduce stress and experience relaxation is already known from many observations and experiences in daily equine therapy practice. This also applies to the importance of “relationship” in the therapeutic setting.

The study will now make this experience scientifically demonstrable. “We hope to achieve greater acceptance of equine-assisted therapy and optimise the framework conditions for it,” says Zink.

Translated from German by DeepL/jdp

How we work

This news story has been written and carefully fact-checked by an external editorial team. At SWI swissinfo.ch we select the most relevant news for an international audience and use automatic translation tools such as DeepL to translate it into English. Providing you with automatically translated news gives us the time to write more in-depth articles.

If you want to know more about how we work, have a look here, if you want to learn more about how we use technology, click here, and if you have feedback on this news story please write to [e-mail].