Bodywork 4 Horses

12/30/2024

Thank You 2024 🫶🏻🩵💙🐴Grateful for all my Clients and Blessings 2024 Brought into my life. Remembering those 🐴 that have passed on. Every Horse that comes into your life truly touches your soul! therapy #2024

12/14/2024

National Horse Day! Should be Every Day! Here are a few that have blessed my life!

12/01/2024

https://www.equitopiacenter.com/the-horses-diaphragm-more-than-just-a-breathing-muscle/

In this post, Tamara Elkayam writes about the importance of the horse’s diaphragm and explains why is is not just a breathing muscle.

11/23/2024

3 Things you may notice as an owner when this muscle is tight……
Here we go

1. Difficulty with Hindlimb Flexion or Lifting
Are you struggling with canter leads?

The biceps femoris plays a role in flexing the hind leg, especially when the horse is moving or lifting the leg for activities like trotting, cantering, or jumping. If this muscle is tight, the horse may have trouble lifting or flexing the hind limb properly, making movements like picking up canter leads or extending the hind legs difficult or awkward.

2. Shortened or Stiff Gait
Do you notice they are “Short behind”?

Tightness in the biceps femoris can lead to a shortened stride in the hind legs, causing the horse to move with a more rigid, less fluid gait. The horse may feel stiff in the hips or pelvis, which can affect overall balance and movement, especially when asked to perform tasks that require full hindlimb engagement like collection or jumping.

3. Reluctance to Step Under or Engage Hindquarters
Do you get shouted at by your coach to ask for “More hindleg underneath them”?

A tight biceps femoris can cause discomfort, making the horse hesitant to step deeply under with their hind leg, which is essential for pushing off and driving forward. This may show up as a reluctance to engage the hindquarters, especially during more demanding work like uphill work, tight turns, or exercises requiring increased hindlimb collection.

Your massage therapist will check this muscle and the hamstring group in general along with all other important muscles in the hindquarters. Always share how you feel your horse has been going or feeling lately on initial client questions, this really helps your therapist work out the picture for you x

CAREER IN EQUINE MASSAGE 2025
Visit www.woldsequinemassage.co.uk
or informal chat with Olivia on 07583411990

11/18/2024

💉 The literal “shot heard round the world”. It sounds like a horse received Flunixin or Banamine intramuscularly on an episode of last night? We would like to remind everyone that despite being labeled for intra-muscular use, horses should only ever receive this drug orally or intra-venously. Something that the folks at Yellowstone would need to be on the lookout for after this misplaced administration would be signs of gas and swelling under the neck or a painful injection site. Administering IM banamine to a horse can cause clostridial myositis and can lead to a serious infection that requires surgical and antibiotic intervention. Despite intervention, these infections can be fatal.

11/11/2024

ENGAGE THE SLING BEFORE YOU DRIVE FROM BEHIND

baby race horse getting thoracic sling engagement 😊😊😊🧡🧡🙌🐴

You can see how in the before picture this horse appears collapsed into the ground. His feet are splayed and chest is wide and soft and looks like it is falling into the ground. This is called ‘columnar loading ‘ it means that the horse is loading into the ground like a building, it is the opposite of ‘tensegrity’ which implies a balance of the compression elements giving you suspension and recoil. If your not using your tension elements and just start collapsing into your front end the only way you can really hold yourself up is by tensing through the elbow and thus splaying your front feet.

This baby is 1 year old, never been ridden and already is collapsing into the front end and is losing the ability and desire to engage and lift the thoracic sling.

There is no pectoral activation in the before. He is wide and collapsing in front. For a race horse this is a posture that will make him prone to injury because as he fixates this way it will be more and more difficult for him change and get his front end out of the way.

In the meantime those folks that don’t believe in spinal flexion of the thoracic spine will insist on driving into this braced, blocked, fixated front end that is now being stabilized by the elbows that will externally rotate and brace and a activated brachiocephalicus muscle which will further contract trying to stabilize the neck trying to prevent further compression as the hind end is driven into a front end that is locked down and collapsing into the ground.

I learned in vet school that when there is much opposing discussion about things it usually means none of the answers are correct.

If you cannot lift and engage your thoracic sling so that you have the ability for suspension and recoil as in tensegrity please do not think that driving into it is the solution. If you want your horse to feel like a motor boat you have to have the lift first and then you can drive into it.

Yes you need drive but the road must be open

If you don’t have lift the drive will cause more compression and collapse, creating more dysfunction.

Does that make sense ?

So the answer is your need lift for the drive to have a place to go otherwise you just drive into a brace.

The horse on the right has an engaged thoracic sling. This only took about an hour and this particular little fellow still had a lot of restrictions that will need follow up. But it’s a start - he can now get his front end out of the way allowing for hind end to come under instead of around.

He will be able to push off the ground instead of collapsing into it allowing triceps activation and development.

He will be able to open up his rib cage and breathe deep fully expanding into his diaphragm and creating internal lift to his back. His waist will lengthen, lumbar spine align and psoas relax creating movement to the pelvis and softening the angle so the hips now in alignment can push back at the ground with their full power.

All this in an hour.
All this from re training your nervous system out of dysfunction into function
Lift your sling to lift your back.

Please don’t drive into your horse if he cannot engage his sling and definitely do not back these horses up !!

10/28/2024

SLOOOOOW DOWN!

SLOW your walking down to 1 step per second with and without your horse next to you.
SLOW your hand movements down as you touch or do things.
SLOW your talking down.
SLOW your breathing down.
SLOW your pulls and pushes down on the leadrope.

SLOW to FLOW!

Humans are WAAAAY to fast for horses and this is one of the leading causes of reactivity and opposition reflex in horses.

Speed = stress.

Let me teach you what speed does...

When the brain perceives a threat, it causes the body to release the stress response hormone cortisol. Cortisol levels and speed go hand in hand.
Cortisol provides the body with the fuel it needs to flee a scary situation or fight against it.

The thing with the mind-body relationship is that the brain feels an emotion such as fear, which create a physical response in the body, but the body can also move at a certain speed or in a particular way and create an emotion in the brain. It can be reverse engineered.

This is how special the intimate relationship is between the brain and body.

The other thing to remember is that, collectively as a social animal, when speed is noticed by another mammal (no matter the species), it alerts the unconscious brain to threat.

Speed is an alarm system in a social system (consciously and unconsciously).

If you walked down a road and everyone started running, you'd find it hard not to run even if you didn't know what the cause was. You are noticing that others are running and in a direction, so you mirror them to increase your chances of survival. You don't need the reasoning part of your brain for this. You just activated your primal (survival) part of the brain.

One other thing to remember: HORSES CAN SMELL CORTISOL. So not only does your speed act as a visual alarm system to your horse, it also acts as an olfactory one!

Would you want to interact with someone who caused you to feel constantly on alert?

These little things are the beginnings of what ripples into chronic stress in both humans and horses.
You spend enough time around someone who is fast in their movement, your nervous system will condition itself to being on high alert.
HELLO 👋 CHRONIC STRESS!!!

Slow your movement down = slow your thoughts down.
Slow your movement down = lower your cortisol.
Slow your movement down = feel connected with yourself, the world and others in it.
Slow your movement down = slow your alarm systems down and eventually they'll turn off.

Slow down so much that it is uncomfortable. It won't be uncomfortable for long, I promise 😉

Happy brain training 🧠
Charlotte 🙂

10/22/2024

A thought-provoking read.
By Jane Smiley

Most horses pass from one human to another - some horsemen and women are patient and forgiving, others are rigorous and demanding, others are cruel, others are ignorant.

Horses have to learn how to, at the minimum, walk, trot, canter, gallop, go on trails and maybe jump, to be treated by the vet, all with sense and good manners.

Talented Thoroughbreds must learn how to win races, and if they can't do that, they must learn how to negotiate courses and jump over strange obstacles without touching them, or do complicated dance like movements or control cattle or accommodate severely handicapped children and adults in therapy work.

Many horses learn all of these things in the course of a single lifetime. Besides this, they learn to understand and fit into the successive social systems of other horses they meet along the way.

A horse's life is rather like twenty years in foster care, or in and out of prison, while at the same time changing schools over and over and discovering that not only do the other students already have their own social groups, but that what you learned at the old school hasn't much application at the new one.

We do not require as much of any other species, including humans.

That horses frequently excel, that they exceed the expectations of their owners and trainers in such circumstances, is as much a testament to their intelligence and adaptability as to their relationship skills or their natural generosity or their inborn nature. That they sometimes manifest the same symptoms as abandoned orphans - distress, strange behaviors, anger, fear - is less surprising than that they usually don't.

No one expects a child, or even a dog to develop its intellectual capacities living in a box 23 hours a day and then doing controlled exercises the remaining one.

Mammal minds develop through social interaction and stimulation.

A horse that seems "stupid", "slow", "stubborn", etc. might just have not gotten the chance to learn!

Take care of your horses and treasure them.

10/14/2024

Why don't horses PANDICULATE as often as cats & dogs? Great question! Unfortunately the answer isn't an easy one, but it needs to be said. The main reason we don't see horses pandiculating very often is that most domestic horses are not sound - according to the FEI 88% of horses competing and training are NOT SOUND. And when horses are in pain or are ill, they tend to pandiculate less than normal.

What is normal? Well, we know foals have been observed to pandiculate up to 80 times per day, but around the world it's typical for horses to pandiculate less and less as they age.

We do see an increase in equine pandiculation after/during some bodywork experiences, during Equine Hanna Somatics® sessions, and also in horses that are switch to more healthy training methods.

Other factors that likely contribute are that as prey animals, horses typically spend more time on their feet and moving around than predators - that is if they have the space to move and are not confined. By moving, their muscles don't stay in a shortened state as often or for as long as happens when a dog or cat curls up to sleep.

The purpose of pandiculation, as far as we know, is to return shortened muscles to a neutral resting length so they can be ready to lengthen or contract for healthy and efficient movement - so it makes sense that animals that sleep or sit still more often would need to pandiculate more often (after they wake or rise from being recumbent).

Personally I have NOT observed horses to pandiculate in response to discomfort - BUT I have seen horses do 'stretches' that can look like pandiculations on the surface, because there are only so many movements a horse body can make. A Pandiculation is not just the body position, but involves neural impulses that come from the voluntary motor cortex of the brain, followed by the slow coming out of the movement (which involves a series of inhibitory neural impulses that gradually de-contract the shortened muscles).

The body position or movement without the slow coming back to neutral that is internally mediated, or when done manually by a practitioner, or when trained to be a conditioned response to a cue, is not a pandiculation, and will not have the same outcome of resetting resting muscle tone.

www.EquineHannaSomatics.org

10/01/2024

Excited to share my website is updated and I have officially added PEMF & PEMF/Massage Combo Services to my offerings in addition to massage services.

As many of you know, I had the opportunity to receive training and offer PEMF ( both Pulse PEMF and Magnawave) therapy while I was working on racehorses in 2022/2023 following the FL>KY>NY>NJ>KY 🏇circuits.

It was literally a dream come true to have that opportunity in life and I am so grateful for all I was able to learn and experience during that chapter. 🏇🏇🏇

While I’m currently back in Kansas City, I’m excited to finally be able to offer PEMF to the equine/equestrian athletes in this area and hopefully start to travel more to some shows/events/races around the country.

For over 20 years, I have been doing massage therapy on both people and horses and I’m so fortunate to get to make a living doing something I love!

I look forward to continuing to learn & grow in the ever changing field of Equine Therapy and my goal is to contribute in helping these amazing horses before, during and after their athletic careers.

Please check out my website and let me know if you have any questions!

09/23/2024

09/08/2024

Just wanted to re-introduce myself! I moved back to the Kansas City area last year after spending a year traveling the Thoroughbred racehorse circuit doing various therapies for pre-race, maintenance, re-hab, etc. I have also been a human massage therapist for 20 years and have massaged horses for most of that time. Recently, I added PEMF and Red Light to my available services. Please check out my website and feel free to contact me if you are interested in therapy for you and or your horse. My human massage office is in the Northland (Briarcliff area). I am a big fan of the importance of both horse and rider being in balance!

Massage Therapy, Bodywork, PEMF for horse & rider (humans)