Stonington — Out in the field along Route 184, the horses that make up the therapy program at Horses Healing Humans were enjoying their two-week holiday break. Inside the administration building up the hill, a new therapy space was taking shape.

Lee Paradis, executive director of Horses Healing Humans, said the new space is almost ready after about a year of work, and it will be used to incorporate physical and occupational therapy into the programming. She said some people who come in for therapeutic riding need to stretch and get loose before they can sit on a horse properly.

"They would come up here to the therapy space first, and then once they're all massaged or stretched or whatever it is that they need, then they would go down to the barn and be able to have their full lesson on the horse," she said.

Horses Healing Humans was founded in 2011 in Voluntown and moved to the current facility in Stonington a year later as it grew. Paradis said she has had horses her whole life, and she benefited greatly from an equine therapy program after a car crash.

"A lot of people go to physical therapists, they go to occupational therapists, they go to a mental therapist. Those are all separate appointments working on separate things," she said. "We're working on all of those things at the same time, and it's fun."

The new therapy space will have dedicated offices for mental health services and for the physical and occupational therapists hired by Horses Healing Humans to work there on a part-time basis. Paradis said the physical and occupational therapists also will be able to advise other staff on appropriate exercises and activities, and if they are certified in hippotherapy (which is the use of horseback riding as a therapeutic or rehabilitative treatment), they can work one-on-one with their patients during their therapeutic riding lessons.

The facility offers horse-based psychotherapy and vocational skills training as well as therapeutic riding, including a horseback yoga program called "EquiZen." Paradis said many programs are developed by Professional Association of Therapeutic Horsemanship (PATH) International, but some are adjusted or created on-site to cater to specific needs, such as breast cancer survivors or seniors with memory loss.

Their programming for veterans, which was started in 2012, also will expand in 2017 to include monthly "mini retreats" to introduce them to equine therapy. They watch a film about equine therapy for veterans and go to the barn to meet the horses.

"Invariably, the horse that they need to be working with is the horse that chooses them, and usually that's the one they have an affinity for as well," Paradis said. "There's this energetic magic that happens between the veterans and the horses, and they always end up with the horse that brings them what they need at that time."

a.hutchinson@theday.com