Rupert Isaacson: How a Father’s Search for His Autistic Son’s Voice Became the Horse Boy Method

2026-07-24

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This Week on In Stride Sinead Halpin-Maynard talks with Rupert Isaacson about how horses helped his nonverbal autistic son find his voice, and how that discovery turned into a therapeutic horsemanship method now used around the world.Meet the Guest: Rupert Isaacson Rupert Isaacson is a horseman, author, and founder of New Trails Learning Systems, home to three therapy programs used with autistic kids, veterans, and trauma survivors, work that began after he discovered that riding a horse helped his nonverbal autistic son, R...

This Week on In Stride

Sinead Halpin-Maynard talks with Rupert Isaacson about how horses helped his nonverbal autistic son find his voice, and how that discovery turned into a therapeutic horsemanship method now used around the world.

Meet the Guest: Rupert Isaacson

Rupert Isaacson is a horseman, author, and founder of New Trails Learning Systems, home to three therapy programs used with autistic kids, veterans, and trauma survivors, work that began after he discovered that riding a horse helped his nonverbal autistic son, Rowan, find his voice. He's also a classical dressage rider trained in the centuries-old "Old Masters" tradition. Rupert wrote the bestselling book and film The Horse Boy about the family's journey across Mongolia to help Rowan, and before that founded the Indigenous Land Rights Fund, which helped the Kalahari Bushmen of Botswana and South Africa win a landmark case for their ancestral land.

In This Episode, Sinead and Rupert Discuss:

How he first noticed that a horse's gait directly changed how much his son communicated, and discovering the science behind it
The three therapy programs he built and how each one meets autistic kids, veterans, and trauma survivors where they are
Why classical dressage, not just a calm horse, is what makes a horse capable of this kind of therapeutic work
His ride across Mongolia in search of a shaman, the journey that became the book The Horse Boy, and the land rights advocacy work that came before it
Why he believes healing takes both hard science and a little bit of magic

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