Disability Training

Disability Training can be termed as planned and systematically arranged procedures and other interventions designed to help persons with disabilities achieve a higher level of personal sufficiency. Monty’s Principles can be used for training of people with disabilities.

What is Monty’s Principles?

Monty’s Join-Up Principles is about a balanced existence, encouraging trust, reliability and comfort from others, but it can only occur when an underlying desire for partnership exists on both sides (trainer and horse). Join-Up is the act of causing the horse to want to be with you instead of away from you through communication.

The communication is with the use of what is called “Equus”. It is a language of gestures and not sound. Monty has written extensively about how Equus is done and thus how Join Up is accomplished. This can be found in the book, From My Hands to Yours by Monty Roberts and he outlines thoroughly the use of the language and the act of Joining Up. The Join-Up principles while originally developed as a tool to work with horses hold true in an infinite number of applications to human beings.

Monty’s Principles of Join-Up goes beyond horses to human beings. The principles are about philosophies of communication and relationships. Join-Up principles show that not just horses, but humans too, thrive in a cooperative and safe environment and stumble in climate of fear and submission.

Monty speaks with corporations, translating his theories about rewarding positive behaviour with horses, to human applications. Monty has made presentations at corporate communication events and he uses the horse model and shares how more can be accomplished with mutual respect and cooperation.

School administrators and other specialists have been visiting the Monty’s farm to see how Join-Up principles offer alternatives to children without the fear of pain, or punishment. Educators are applying Join-Up principles in their classrooms. Using Monty’s principles, the Kinghurst Junior School in Great Britain, has gone from being labeled as a failing school, to be classified as a centre of excellence.

Monty has used success of Kinghurst as a model for schools world wide. Monty offers his programme Monty’s Principles to public and private schools, corporations and equine therapy groups.Monty’s Principles have been developed in cooperation with experienced teachers and administrators in different and challenging environments. It trains teachers in the use of a methods for teaching that employs a horse’s communication system as a model to aid teachers in class instructions and provides course materials for the method.

Medical personnel are now using the Join-Up communication formula when working with children with autism. These children show a similar level of sensitivity to the horses in regard to body language, tone of voice and touch. The non aggressive, visual based communication that is integral to Join-Up horse training philosophies has proven a useful tool when working with these children’s special needs.

The Join-Up principles can be applied on children with Cerebral Palsy. I have taken Christabel to a stable and she has tested a bit of riding on a horse. This has been a limited experience due to time constraint. Initially, she had to visit the stable in order to know the horse she was supposed to use. She had to touch and feel the horse and occasionally feed the horse. She finally rod the horse for a limited time and the programme ended due to other demands. The short stint she had with the horse was very exciting for her and she was talking about it at home. The programme will be continued in 2009. ©Monty and Pat Roberts

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