HETI Webinar – The Horse as a Path to Human Functioning: A Systemic Bridge Between Clinic and Stable by Blanca Zegers Larraín

Equine-assisted services live at a crossroads between two worlds — the clinical and the equestrian — that too often speak different languages. This webinar proposes functioning as the shared, systemic goal that unites them: not a sum of isolated skills, but the whole person acting, relating and participating in real life. Drawing on the WHO ICF framework and years of interdisciplinary practice, we will explore how the horse — read through different clinical lenses (sensorimotor, communicative, social-emotional, cognitive) — becomes an active agent that drives functioning across all its dimensions. The relationship between human and horse is itself the therapeutic space where functional change emerges. We will also address a practical gap: equine-assisted therapies need shared constructs that connect clinical observation with what actually happens in the saddle and in nature. We will introduce Eco-ICF, an ICF-based ecological observation tool developed to build that bridge — reading functioning from within the human–equine interaction.