What Is Emotion Regulation?

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Humans rely on vision to explore the world, while horses use smell and touch instead.

In many areas, equine skin can detect lighter touches and pressures than human skin can.

Using smell and touch, horses notice human anxiety and play it back to us.

Strong human emotions are often difficult to manage, and learning to control them is never easy. Most skeptics would assume that no animal, let alone a horse, could help us humans develop emotion regulation… but they can.

Unlike humans, with our over-reliance on vision, horses navigate the world primarily through smell and touch. The average horse has all the neurological machinery to detect and interpret odors that a bloodhound has. Bloodhounds, just for reference, can detect an odor that’s 12 days old from 12 miles away. Not bad, given that we humans can barely sniff out raw steak on the kitchen counter.

The average horse also has exquisite touch sensitivity. Many areas of her skin can detect a lighter touch than the human fingertip is capable of feeling. She can sense a rider turn his head a couple inches to the left or right,........

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