CHRONIC
DISEASE AND PHYSICAL ACTIVITY
HIPPOTHERAPY
IN
CHILDREN’S WITH BRAIN PARALYSIS Skeyakis
Stelios, Stratoglou Panagiotis, Georgiadou Evdokia
T.E.I.
Thessaloniki, Department
of Physiotherapy, Greece
The word Hippotherapy means
“treatment with the use of a horse”. The
Hippotherapist is a physiotherapist or an ergotherapist with additional
training in horse movement.
In Hippotherapy the horse is used
as a tool of treatment, like a moving machine, and the child on the
horse as a patient and not as a rider. In our case the horse
influences the rider, not the rider the horse. The
Hippotherapy applies individually, with a physiotherapist or
ergotherapist and the horse trainer who is responsible for the horse
walking quality and movements.
The term Hippotherapy first
used by the Germans in 1960 and in 1970 they first founded a center in
order to train people how to use Hippotherapy. In 1976 a
Swiss Hippotherapic team established in Basel. According to
Professor Bauman of the Child Hospital in Basel, “the
hippotherapy, practiced by therapists, is insuperable as a treatment in
selected cases of brain paralysis”.
There are two
types of Hippotherapy: The classic Hippotherapy where the
physiotherapist or ergotherapist place the patient on the horse,
analyze his reactions and moves the horse in order to influence the
patient and finally achieve his target; The developing Hippotherapy it
is used as the classic one with the difference that the physiotherapist
or ergotherapist helps the child to sit on a specific point and he is
capable to ask or help the child to move within that certain
point. The main goal is to make the rider to get used of the
movement sitting on the horse back. The rider is instructed
therapeutic from the horse and in no way is trying to influence it.
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