The Therapy Farm in Toone, Tenn. uses unique approach in mental, physical health

What if behavioral and mental health afflictions like anxiety, depression, ADHD, and autism could be treated with cute, docile animals? At a nature and animal therapy-based farm in Toone, Tennessee, they can be.

The Therapy Farm, a 30-acre plot of land in Hardeman County, offers counseling and occupational therapy with a twist.

Goats, chickens, ponies, miniature horses, dogs, cats, pigs and rabbits are at the forefront of care.

In its one year of operation, the farm's specialized approach is offering a unique alternative, off the beaten path, to traditional and equine therapy models.

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Farm founders combine love of people, animals

Three years ago, Emily Kalinowski, her husband, and their two young children moved from a Chicago suburb to rural Toone, dreaming of combining their love of people and animals.

"With animals and nature, there's so much of that that we love personally, and then there's so many research-based benefits of it for working with people in occupational therapy and therapy," she said.

Emily, a Licensed Clinical Social Worker (LCSW), previously worked at the Lake County Children's Advocacy Center. In 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic prompted her transition into private practice in which she primarily saw patients virtually.

The Kalinowskis had already toyed with the idea of moving somewhere warmer and having a large piece of land for some time, and so began their new era of southern living in West Tennessee.

"We kind of had this vision of how this will work. My husband wanted to do the animals and the farm; I wanted to do therapy and combine the two, and it's been great," she said.

A place of healing

Everything at The Therapy Farm is intentional, from the outside green space to inside the office. Client preferences and comfortability are of top importance and treatment is individualized.

Emily's counseling practice primarily centers around both adults and children who have experienced trauma.

During her tenure at the advocacy center, she witnessed how particularly excited the children would be to see the facility's office dog, Mitch.

"My vision was just really to create this place for kids to come and heal from trauma, and we really wanted to do wrap-around services so we can support different dimensions of a child's needs and support the whole family," Kalinowski said.

If desired, a faith-based component is offered in both counseling and occupational therapy.

Existing research on the benefits of animal-based counseling prompted Emily to take several trainings to ensure intentionality with incorporating animals in her therapeutic services.

Though the farm is in Toone, virtual sessions are available in Tennessee or Illinois.

Innovative occupational therapy techniques

Caroline Mroweic is the facility's occupational therapist and Emily's childhood friend from Chicago.

After working overseas in Vietnam and, after completing a subsequent fellowship in Texas, she was offered a job at one of the state's top neurological rehabilitation facilities. Saying it didn't entice her heart as an occupation, Mroweic declined the offer and took a job at The Therapy Farm instead.

She works exclusively with children, unlike Emily's counseling services, which would otherwise normally be seen in an outpatient center. Her work entails executing nature and animal-centric interventions to promote cognitive and physical self-regulation in her clients.

Occupational therapy is a form of therapy that helps children with physical, sensory or cognitive challenges better perform daily activities.

She sees a variety of ages once a week for one hour and brings parents along for sessions to learn what they could be working on at home.

The nature side of an OT session, for example, could include the use of a small obstacle course located in the surrounding wooded area, serving as a calming outdoor activity to help children work on gross motor and vestibular skills.

"A big part of regulation, as well as our functional movement, starts at being able to balance ourselves upright, so when you work on uneven surfaces, they have to navigate over obstacles, which helps them to develop those skills that are needed for basic, underlying motor movements and sensory processing for their regulation," she said.

While incorporating animals, Mroweic says she typically lets the kids decide which animals they want to visit.

Goats can be brought into the therapy gym for activities like yoga and practicing gross motor skills. Working with horses teaches caution and fosters a sense of safety awareness.

Hippotherapy, (hippo derived from Latin "horse"), has been extensively researched as a means of treating those with physical or neurological disabilities.

Farm therapy as a whole is not as well researched and warrants a touch of innovation on Mroweic's part.

"Some of the kids have a really hard time with regulating their autonomic nervous system, which basically means their fight or flight response. So a big part of what I'm trying to do in this safe environment is mitigate risk and lead kids through handling those stress responses, so they can hopefully start to incorporate those stress responses in a better way," Mroweic said.

The future of the farm

Reflecting on the last year of operation, Emily aims to continue expanding her niche in trauma work with animal-assisted therapy and has goals of delving more into group sessions, which the farm already offers as an option.

"I used to do groups a lot and loved that, so we were talking about doing a parent-teen support group, possibly just as a free resource to the community," she said.

"I also used to do a high school girls group and did art and sometimes we do art [here] with the animals, so those are probably the next two things I'm looking at for the fall."

On 30 acres of land, in an unincorporated small town in Tennessee, The Therapy Farm is leading the charge in its unique approach to mental health and occupational therapy treatment.

Sarah Best is a reporter for The Jackson Sun. To support local journalism, subscribe to the Daily Briefing here.

This article originally appeared on Jackson Sun: The Therapy Farm in Toone, TN uses unique approach to healing trauma