HORSES AND WATER
Innovative therapies instill confidence and more in veterans
Serving as a military police officer in the U.S. Air Force left Angie Colella with post-traumatic stress that she struggled to cope with until she found an unusual form of therapy: horses.
Taking part in BraveHearts Therapeutic Riding, the largest healing horsemanship program in the country, has helped the Melrose Park resident feel relief from the PTSD and depression that were affecting all parts of her life.
For Colella, who’d done counseling and taken medications with little positive effect, working with horses was the answer to easing her mind.
It helps her to take a measure of how she’s feeling before she interacts with the horses.
“Horses are like mirrors of the energy I am putting out,” Colella says. “If I go in high strung or stressed, the horse will be that way. I have to be very aware of where I am (mentally and emotionally).”
Learning to work with horses has enabled her “to take a step back and ground myself,” she adds. “Those are the tools horses give us.”
BraveHearts, which has locations in Poplar Grove and Harvard, is an example of a non-profit that is helping veterans through innovative forms of therapy. Another is Downers Grove-based Diveheart, a non-profit that provides adaptive scuba experience programs for veterans and others with disabilities from all over the world.
BraveHearts
Founded in 2007, BraveHearts provides equine-assisted services to veterans primarily in northern Illinois and southern Wisconsin and to veterans who visit from other parts of the country.
The majority of veterans aided at BraveHearts served during Operation Iraqi Freedom (OIF) and Operation Enduring Freedom (OEF), which together account for 55% of its veteran population,
says Jeanna Sorgani, administrative director at BraveHearts.
About 11% are Vietnam Vets, and about 34% is comprised of those who served during other eras including the Gulf War, Korean War, and peace time.
The nonprofit’s innovative recreational therapy is provided at no cost to veterans who experience healing horsemanship through riding and ground activities.
In addition to riding, veterans are required to learn whole horsemanship activities such as grooming and tacking.
Confidence and more
Colella started taking part in BraveHeart’s therapeutic activities in 2017. “Nothing is handed to you, but they give you the tools so you can be successful,” Colello says.
Colella has progressed over the years to become a certified therapeutic riding instructor. She recently started working part-time at BraveHearts, and believes working with horses has instilled confidence that she can apply to other areas of her life.
“If I can guide a 1,000-pound horse with just two pieces of leather, what can’t I do?” she asks.
The benefits that veterans have reported from equine therapy includes increased self-esteem, self-worth, trust for others, community integration and decreased depression, anxiety, post-traumatic stress disorder attacks and self-inflicting thoughts, according to BraveHearts.
Diveheart
Another organization helping veterans is Diveheart, which was founded in 2001 by Jim Elliott, and is dedicated to building confidence, independence and self-esteem in the lives of veterans, children and adults with disabilities through scuba diving, scuba therapy and related activities.
Elliott was seeking new challenges
and experiences for his loved ones who were living with disabilities. His father was a disabled U.S. Army veteran and his oldest daughter Erin was born blind. After teaching his daughter to downhill ski, he thought scuba diving might be a way to help people with disabilities, both physical and cognitive, to have new experiences and boost their can-do attitudes.
For veterans who’ve experienced disabilities, getting into water can be freeing. “It’s mainly to get them — a lot of the time for the first time — out of a wheelchair and into the water and give them the experience of zero gravity,” Elliott says.
Diveheart grows
Diveheart has introduced adaptive scuba to thousands of veterans since 2001, and has plans to expand. Elliott says the organization is close to having raised the money needed to build a deep warm water therapy pool on 10 acres in the
Chicago area.
Farther afield, the organization also offers adaptive scuba experience programs for people with disabilities all over the world and has spun off more than 50 similar scuba therapy programs.
In other news of Diveheart’s success, a documentary about Diveheart “Adapting to Dive,” premiered at the Classic Cinemas Tivoli Theater in Downers Grove in 2022. The film that captures Diveheart in action was made by filmmaker David Marsh and covers an adaptive diving trip to Cozumel.
Elliott says the organization is on a mission to grow scuba therapy and to spur and support research into its benefits.
Taking the plunge
One of the most famous vets to take part in the Diveheart program is U.S. Senator Tammy Duckworth, who was 36 in 2004 when she lost both her legs. She was flying a Black Hawk to her base in Iraq when it was struck by a rocket-propelled grenade that pierced the floor of the cockpit and exploded.
When she took to the water in 2007 under Diveheart’s tutelage, Duckworth had not been scuba diving since her college days many years earlier.
In a documentary that was filmed about Diveheart for PBS, Duckworth confessed she was somewhat apprehensive about taking part in the scuba dive because she said her body is a bit asymmetric since her injury.
As an injured veteran, “you lose a lot of confidence in your body and yourself,” she said at the time. The experience of getting back into the water was a revelation for her. “I felt strong and powerful and I was able to keep up with everybody else just using my arms,” she said. “It was very liberating once we figured it all out. It was a real confidence boost.”
For more information on BraveHearts, go to braveheartsriding.org. For more information on Diveheart, visit diveheart.org.