Equilibrium horse healing

27/02/2026

One for us to listen to over the weekend. I’ve been following both Lockie and Becks for sometime. Both are strong advocates and voices for the horse.

Podcast Episode · HORSE, FIRST - with Lockie Phillips · 25 February · 2h 2m

27/02/2026

Thank you to The Whole Horse Journey for sharing this, it really speaks to what I see time and time again when working with horses.

So many people call me out because they feel something just isn’t right with their horse, even though they are doing everything they possibly can. Good care. Thoughtful management. Veterinary support. Love and patience.

And yet… something still feels held.

Often the history isn’t fully known, but the horse’s body tells a story anyway.

What we often describe as behaviour isn’t really who the horse is.It’s how their nervous system has learned to cope.

Many of the horses I work with are living in adaptation, holding past discomfort, stress, pain, or uncertainty within their bodies long after circumstances have changed.

My work isn’t about fixing behaviour or forcing change. Gentle energy work supports the nervous system to soften, release tension, and gradually find regulation again.

Sometimes the changes are obvious.Sometimes they’re very quiet, deeper sighs, better rest, softer eyes, curiosity returning, small moments where the horse begins to choose rather than react.

And it isn’t a quick fix.

Each time I return, I’m often seeing small adaptations taking place within the nervous system itself. Change happens at the pace the individual horse feels safe enough to allow.

But over time, something shifts.

The horse becomes more available. More comfortable in themselves. More present.

That’s when you start to meet the real horse underneath —not because their past disappears,but because it no longer defines every response.

This article explains that process beautifully ❤️

We spend a lot of time trying to work out what a horse is.

Sensitive.
Lazy.
Dominant.
Anxious.
Shut down.
Opinionated.
Easy.
Difficult.

Those words feel like descriptions of the individual, but most of the time they are descriptions of how that individual has learned to exist in a specific set of conditions.

That is where the misunderstanding begins, because behaviour that developed as an adaptation gets mistaken for personality, and once we believe we are looking at personality we stop asking what created it.

The real question is not “what is this horse like?”
It is “what state is this horse living in while they do these things?”

A horse who is energetic in a regulated system can pause, change, soften, and return to connection. The energy has shape and variation.

A horse who looks energetic in survival is driven and repetitive. The environment can change and the internal state does not.

A horse who is quiet and processing remains present and available.
A horse who is quiet in shutdown is absent.

Stillness and activity on their own tell us very little. The quality of the nervous system underneath them tells us almost everything.

When you begin to look through that lens, the labels start to fall apart, and stereotypic behaviours move out of the category of “traits” and into the category of “history.”

Because what stands in front of us is never just temperament.

It is a nervous system shaped by predictability or the lack of it.
A body shaped by how much movement has been possible.
A gut shaped by feeding patterns and time without forage.
A social brain shaped by whether attachment has been stable or repeatedly broken.
A stress response influenced very early in life, including the age and method of weaning.

Add pain that has been low-grade and long-standing.
Add dental discomfort that altered how the horse used their mouth.
Add hoof balance that changed posture and loading.
Add reproductive or endocrine changes that shift thresholds for reactivity and recovery.
Add an environment where deep sleep was not consistently possible.

These things do not sit in isolation. They accumulate and organise the way the horse experiences the world.

Stereotypic behaviours belong inside that accumulation.

They begin in a biological context. In some horses gastric discomfort is part of that context. In others it is early feeding patterns, social instability, or restriction of movement. Once established, the behaviour is no longer simply a response to the original trigger. The brain has learned a fast and reliable way to alter internal state. Dopamine is involved. Endorphins are involved. The motor pattern becomes efficient and easy to access.

Which is why the behaviour can remain when the life has objectively improved.

Not because nothing has changed or because the horse is choosing the behaviour over the new conditions. But, because the nervous system has stored a strategy that once worked.

Oral discomfort sits in this picture as well, sometimes as a contributor, sometimes as a consequence of the behaviour, and sometimes alongside it without a single clear line of cause and effect. It belongs in the assessment for that reason, not as a simple explanation but as one layer in a system that is always multi-layered.

Genetics sit there too.

Selection for speed, for environmental sensitivity, for high arousal, for stoicism - these shape baseline thresholds. Two horses in the same management do not experience that management in the same way. That is individuality, not pathology.

So the task is not deciding whether a horse is traumatised or expressive. It is learning to recognise whether the behaviour you are looking at comes from a system with options.

Most people live in the middle of this, not at the clear ends.

The feed has improved.
Turnout is longer.
The herd is more stable.
Pain has been addressed.

And the horse is better, however they have not transformed.

This is the point where people often feel they have failed.

In reality this is the point where observation becomes more accurate, because behaviour stopping is no longer the only marker of progress.

Recovery time becomes meaningful and so do moments of curiosity. Variation where there used to be only one response becomes meaningful as does rest becoming deeper.

Flexibility is the sign that the system is changing.

Rehearsed motor patterns are stored in parts of the brain that favour efficiency. Stress responses that have been repeated over long periods fire more quickly. That is how learning works. So a horse can be physically comfortable, socially stable, nutritionally supported and still return to a stereotypic behaviour at certain times of day or in certain contexts.

In that situation the meaning of the behaviour is different. It is no longer organising the horse’s entire day. It is no longer the only available way to cope.

And that is where our interpretation becomes an ethical question.

If we read adaptation as personality, we train the coping strategy and never meet the individual. If we read everything as damage, we erase the individual in a different way.

What begins to appear when the body and the environment start to support life instead of endurance is preference.

You see what this horse chooses when choice is possible. You see how they initiate interaction, how they rest, how they move when movement is not driven by tension, how they respond when there is time.

That is the point where the real horse becomes visible.

Not because the old behaviour has vanished, but because it is no longer the only story the nervous system can tell.

Survival narrows behaviour.

When safety, physical comfort, and social stability widen what is possible, behaviour gains variation
And variation is what allows you to read an individual instead of a coping strategy.

24/02/2026

Jim, the quiet one.

Jim is a bay Thoroughbred, sixteen years old, though he looks more like six. Such a pretty, gentle face. There’s a softness about him that draws you in.

While I was holding space for Mambo’s healing, Jim stood nearby soaking up the energy and releasing the whole time. He was more than ready when it was his turn.

At first, the messages weren’t forthcoming… until I reached the base of his neck.

I only ever glide my hands, there’s no manipulation in what I do but the reaction was immediate. Around the base of his neck and through his withers, his whole top line was holding so much. The fascia didn’t feel like it was gliding; it felt fixed, almost crystallised. The skin rigid over his entire body.

As my hand passed over that area, he snapped at the air. Not at me, just a reflexive, protective reaction. Clear communication. That area is guarded and tender.

I sensed a field injury, an awkward fall, possibly rotational. I couldn’t see the full picture, but the body was very clear. There’s also a lot of tension in his hamstrings and pelvis, which fits with compensating for something higher up.

What struck me most was a sense of resignation. A horse who has perhaps lived with discomfort for long enough that it became normal.

But once the releases started, they came in waves. His body responding, softening, letting go.

I’m hopeful he’s more comfortable now and that as the fascia and nervous system continue to unwind, he’ll be able to release even more of that protective holding.

And the cards…

All three horses engaged with the cards that day. It wasn’t random. They were responding energetically and intuitively selecting their cards.

Jim, despite his quietness, was absolutely part of that. In fact, he was the most enthusiastic and I have a tooth mark on his card to prove it.

Quiet doesn’t mean disconnected. As he stood there, I saw it, that little glimmer. A soft twinkle in his eye that hadn’t quite been there before.

Almost as if something in him was returning.🤍

24/02/2026

Mambo is a beautiful grey Arab gelding. Grounded. Wise. Deeply present. From the moment I arrived, he had plenty to say.

He showed me images of riding across the coastline, the sun dancing like diamonds on the water. Vast skies. Open space. Freedom.
He showed me a little blonde-haired girl who comes to visit him. There was such softness around that.

During the hands-on work, his body spoke clearly. As I moved along his abdomen, it felt tight, like a drum. Guarded. Dense.

I questioned it. And he gave me the word hernia.

The only word I knew that described what I was feeling an incision. A weakness in the wall. A place that has been opened and repaired. A twist.

At that point, I hadn’t been told the full history. His person then confirmed he had undergone major colic surgery. A section of intestine had been removed in a resection.

Physically, the emergency had been handled. But energetically, the body was still holding the imprint. There was memory in that tissue. A vulnerability in the abdominal wall. A holding pattern.

We focused there gently as he completely soaked up the energy like a sponge. You could feel him drawing it in. And there was a clear shift, a softening through the belly that felt profound.

Elsewhere, I felt stiffness through his shoulders, pelvis and stifles. At 26 years young this energetic restriction is normally consistent with arthritic change. Not acute pain, more asking for circulation, space and flow.

When I asked what he would like to support him, he gave me a very clear answer.

Boswellia.

Certain. Direct.

Then something even more beautiful unfolded.

He sniffed both of my hands slowly and deliberately, acknowledging the energy transference. Then he walked over to his person and did the same.

She has recently trained in Reiki.

And it was unmistakable.

What she’s doing… I want you to do with me.

He wasn’t asking for treats. He was redirecting the energy back to her. Encouraging her to practise. To trust what she has learned. To step into it with him.

We then moved to the cards.

He was fully engaged, splitting the deck, narrowing it down, then carefully selecting the card himself by nuzzling it out.

When it was read, his person burst into tears.

It spoke of three grey horses.

And he is the third grey horse in her life.

You couldn’t script it.

Sometimes the horse is not just receiving the healing he is guiding their person as the teacher.

The horse as animal spirit guide prompting you to step into your own power.

And that… is the real work. 🤍

22/02/2026

I first met this handsome boy in January.

Physically, he is in good shape. He’s not a horse who has been beaten up by racing as he wasn’t successful in the sport. The emotional pain he carries is heavy. This emotional load is what I believe drives many of his reactions.

When a horse has had to suppress so much for so long, the body becomes the container. The emotion gets pushed down. Stored.

When I arrived for this return session, the difference was striking. Immediately on starting his healing session he placed his head over my shoulder and gently pulled me in for a hug.
Last time, he spent much of the session walking away. Avoiding. Unsure. It’s common with horses who aren’t used to having emotion brought to the surface. It can feel uncomfortable in the body when you’ve spent your life stuffing it down.

This time, he stayed.

He was calmer. More open. Still chewing and using his rope like a comforter but he didn’t move off. He allowed the process.

Once again he took me to his weaning but this time the communication was clearer. The fear, confusion and cries of the others bought me to tears. One day you’re frolicking in your field with the protection of your Mother. The next you are scared, confused, alone.

The releases were stronger. Longer yawns. Layers shifting.

When I worked around his throat, he shared the burning sensation here and down into his chest, that sense of overexertion. Of breath under pressure. There was something deeper I felt in my own throat chakra, a voice unheard and the cries of loneliness.

As I supported that area, he dropped his head. Eyes closed. Entering a soft, meditative state. A horse who can hold himself like a coiled spring… softening.

He then allowed me to work over his entire body far more easily than before. We moved through all his chakras and finished with grounding work, helping him feel more rooted and connected rather than hovering in hyper-vigilance.

At the end, I invited him to choose a card for his owner. I split the deck and let him indicate which half. He gently nuzzled one card out and it was deeply relevant to her own journey.

Because this work is never just about the horse.

Later I heard he walked calmly in from the field. No explosiveness. More grounded.

There is still work to do. The weaning trauma is very prevalent in him, almost as though part of him is still that frightened little baby. And just like humans, when trauma occurs, a part of us can remain at that age. When triggered, we revert.

But this time, he didn’t avoid it.

He stayed.
He felt.
He released.

Healing is often described as “peeling the layers of an onion” because change doesn’t happen all at once. Each layer represents protection, stored emotion, or past experience that once kept us safe. As one layer softens and releases, another gently reveals itself beneath bringing us closer to the core, not through force, but through patience and safety.
🤍

19/02/2026

A wonderful post from The Whole Horse Journey, describing the indescribable.

I used to think I couldn’t reach my horses.

I thought maybe they didn’t like me.
Maybe we weren’t a match.
Maybe I just wasn’t good enough.

All the things we put ourselves through when it feels hard.

I used to ache for the way it felt when I was a child.
When horses felt simple.
When connection wasn’t something I tried to manufacture.

I would stand there thinking, how did something that once felt so natural become so hard?
Where did it all go so wrong?

I thought something was missing in them.

It wasn’t.

It was missing in me.

People say it’s a feel and it is.
But you can’t feel what you’re not present for.

I wasn’t fully in my own body. I wasn’t truly here.

The moment that changed, everything changed.

And I know that those of you who have struggled in your relationship with your horse will understand exactly what I mean.

The answers were never in trying harder.

They were in coming home to myself.

Conversations with horses are not something we start. They are something we step into.

By the time you reach the gate you have already been felt.

Your pace. Your breath. The level of organisation in your body. The quality of your attention. Whether you arrive scattered or whole. The horse has registered all of it before you have registered them.

This is why two people can stand in the same place and the horse will feel different to each of them.

Not because the horse changed. Because the conversation did.

What we often call communication in horsemanship is actually only the visible surface of a much deeper process. We tend to focus on the behavioural layer because it is the easiest to see and the easiest to measure. The horse moved. The horse stopped. The horse yielded. The horse complied.

But under that is a constant exchange happening through tissue, through timing, through orientation in space, through breath, through the eyes.

The body speaks first. Always.

A horse does not experience your cue as an isolated aid. The cue arrives inside a whole physiological picture. Your muscle tone, your balance, your internal tempo, the degree to which your attention is stable or fragmented. All of that reaches the horse at the same time.

This is fascia to fascia, nervous system to nervous system. Energy to energy.

A body that is braced asks a different question to a body that is organised. A mind that is elsewhere creates a different environment to a mind that is here.

And the horse answers the whole question, not the one we think we asked.

When you start to watch from this place the horse’s language becomes much more detailed.

The eye is no longer just soft or hard. It is mobile or fixed. It includes you or it looks through you. The jaw is no longer simply chewing or not chewing. It tells you about internal pressure, about the ability to process, about whether the system is shifting state.
The rhythm of the walk tells you whether the body is available for conversation or whether it is managing load.

These are not training details. They are sentences. Most of the time the horse is speaking in changes, not in behaviours.

A fraction more weight into one forefoot.
The breath that was high in the chest dropping lower.
The moment the skin starts to move again.
The way the neck stops being a stabilising rod and becomes part of the spine.

If we are only looking for the big answer we miss the whole dialogue that led to it.

Feel lives here.

Feel is not something in your hands. Feel is the moment your inner world becomes quiet enough that you can sense another life without trying to control it. It is interoception and exteroception at the same time. It is your system staying organised enough that the information coming from the horse has somewhere to land.

And this is where your own state matters, not from a place of judgement but from a place of clarity.

If you are highly anxious your perception narrows. Your system is scanning for what might go wrong. You will see faster, bigger, louder. You will miss the small early shifts because your body is preparing for impact.

If you are shut down the opposite happens. The world goes quiet. The subtle changes do not reach you because your system is conserving energy.

The horse is still speaking. Constantly. But the signal arrives in a body that cannot fully receive it.

And yet this is not the whole truth, because horses very often move toward people who are shut down or anxious.

Not away from them.

Because a collapsed nervous system is not predatory. Because there is no demand in it. Because there is space.

Horses so often walk toward the people who believe they are the most broken. The anxious. The shut down. The ones who say they cannot feel. Because there is no performance in them. There is honesty in the body. And in that space the horse begins to breathe differently.

So the conversation still happens. It simply happens more slowly, more quietly, sometimes with the horse taking the regulating role first.

You do not have to be perfectly regulated to be in dialogue with a horse.

You only have to be honest in your body. The moment you stop performing regulation and start allowing organisation to return, the horse feels the change and answers it.

What many people call energy sits across all of this.

It is attention.
It is intention.
It is the electromagnetic field of the heart.
It is the timing of your nervous system.
It is the way your tissues carry tone.

The heart generates an electromagnetic field that can be measured beyond the physical body, and that field changes with emotional and physiological state. Two bodies standing close to one another begin to influence each other before a single word or gesture passes between them.

A horse’s heart is four times the size of ours.

Whatever is moving between you when you enter that field is not imaginary. It is measurable in some ways, and deeply lived in others. It is also something that every tradition that has ever lived closely with animals has always known in its own language. The Lakota speak of mitákuye oyásʼiŋ - all things are related, all things are connected. Sufi horsemen spoke of the horse as a mirror for the soul. In ancient Vedic horsemanship the rider’s prana - their life force, their breath energy - was understood to move through the reins as literally as pressure does.

The science and the sacred are not in disagreement here. They are describing the same experience from different directions.

You can measure parts of it and you can experience parts of it that are not easily measurable, but in practice the horse does not separate those categories.

They feel the coherence or the incoherence.

Quantum biology has shown that living systems use forms of coherence that allow processes to happen with a speed and efficiency classical models could not fully explain. These discoveries are still young, still unfolding.

So when we ask whether two nervous systems in close proximity might be interacting through mechanisms we do not yet fully understand, we are not leaving science. We are standing at the edge of what it is still learning to describe.

Whether you call what moves between you and your horse field communication, resonance, coherence, or the thing your grandmother simply called feel, the lived reality of it does not change.

The horse felt you arrive.
They always do.

The signal moved faster than your feet. Something in them oriented toward something in you before the gap between you was closed.

That is not mysticism trying to become science. It is lived experience that science is only beginning to find language for.

This is why you can stand at the gate and think about your horse and the head comes up at the far end of the field. Your body has already shifted. Your focus has direction. Your physiology has changed. The conversation reached them before your feet did.

So a conversation with a horse is not a technique and it is not a moment.

It is a continuous loop of

Perception
Response
Adjustment
Perception again

You ask a question with your body.
The horse answers with a change.
You allow that answer to alter your next question.

That is dialogue.

Not making the horse right or wrong.
Not getting the movement.
Not achieving the outcome.

Staying inside the exchange long enough that both nervous systems reorganise through it.

And this is why the most profound conversations often look like nothing.

Someone standing next to a horse.
A lead rope with slack in it.
A long pause.
Breathing that becomes the same.
A blink that happens in both bodies.

From the outside it can appear as if nothing is being trained. From the inside everything is being said.

People have stood beside horses in this way for as long as there have been people and horses. The specific words change. The nervous system science is new. The understanding of fascia is newer. The spiritual traditions are ancient. But the experience at the centre of all of it is the same.

Something in you meets something in the horse.

And whatever you believe about the nature of that meeting - whether you locate it in fascia and electromagnetic fields, in ancient tradition, or in something that has no name in any language - the horse is not concerned with your framework.

They are only ever asking one question.

Are you here?

And when the answer is yes, in the body and not just in the mind, the whole conversation changes.

18/02/2026

Winters used to be tense.
Mud, pinned ears, chasing, panic at the gate.
I’d spend half the time bracing myself.

This year they stand quietly.
She nickers.
He yawns and releases.
They share hay. They share space.

What changed?

Not just them.
Me.

After my accident on Ruby, I carried rejection. Comparison. Frustration.
Even when I didn’t mean to, my thoughts weren’t kind.

And thoughts are energy.

When I stopped comparing.
When I stopped labelling.
When I softened how I spoke and thought about her…

Everything shifted.

If you want to heal your relationship with your horse, start here:

• Notice your inner dialogue
• Drop the comparisons
• Speak about them as if they can hear you (because energetically, they can)
• Regulate yourself before you walk through the gate

How we show up changes the field.
And they respond to that field.

Peace in them began with peace in me 🤍

17/02/2026

Sharing Micheal’s energy clearing and alignment with you all to bring in the year of the fire horse. 🔥🐴

The shedding is complete, now comes time for radical change, followed by amplified manifestations & abundance. Be ready!Website link for reiki infused crysta...

17/02/2026

A really informative post about gastric ulcers. No surprises that racehorses have the highest frequency of occurrence, 80 to 90 %. I had no idea that ulcers can occur or re-occur within 24hrs which is why it’s so important to address the cause rather than simply treating the symptoms.

https://www.thehaypillow.com/blogs/news/causes-of-equine-ulcers-7-stress-factors-solutions?fbclid=IwZnRzaAQBs-xleHRuA2FlbQIxMQBzcnRjBmFwcF9pZAo2NjI4NTY4Mzc5AAEeSvvU7Ht18GUEs8IZ1X5V4t348Nxx_GNARuJF4jsVoMPdYbisDxZlN7QWsfg_aem__Du3mRey42pXAVbYuKfbYw

Gastric (stomach) ulcers are commonly caused by lack of forage & stress. Learn how to protect your horse with these 7 actionable solutions.

17/02/2026

Freedom, forage and friends. 🙏💛

17/02/2026

The other week I went to see a beautiful thoroughbred called Herbie.

When organising the visit, his owner mentioned the farrier was coming beforehand and that he might be a little sleepy. I didn’t read anything into it as some horses find the farrier very relaxing.

When I arrived, his head was almost on the floor as he had been sedated.

I waited while he began to come round and when he seemed more present, I stepped in to connect.

I placed my hand gently on his heart space, the way I connect to read the body through the energy field and was immediately overcome with dizziness. Spaced out, almost floored.

That’s how strongly I felt the sedation in his system.

This healing made me reflect on the effect it had on my energy field and how ours may feel to them.

Horses feel energy so clearly. So much of their communication is energetic. The slight twitch of an ear. The smallest softening or tightening around the eye. The way they claim space through the use of their energy. We often aren’t tuned in enough to notice but when you are you see it all the time.

If I could feel such a profound shift in him, how must they experience us?

It’s no wonder they react when we arrive stressed, rushing, in our heads, carrying the residue of our day.

For a while now, I’ve been consciously grounding myself before I step out of the car.

I imagine my energy dropping down into the earth, rooting deeply, and then drawing that steadiness back up into my heart space. A few slow, grounding breaths. Out of my head. Back into my body.

I notice the difference it makes to how they receive me.

Because that’s what they seek from us.

Connection.

They need to feel us.

If they can’t feel us, if we’re scattered, tense, somewhere else entirely it must feel to them like that sedation felt to me.

Distant.
Unavailable.
Unclear.

How we turn up matters.

Not what we do.
Not what we know.

But how we show up for them. 🙏💛