True Nature Equine Bodywork & Wellness

A lot to think about here and yes to all of it.

There's something so powerful about having a "hard conversation" with a horse. About bringing up something for them that challenges a belief they've held for their whole life, or something that scares them. Having a container in which hard conversations can happen freely, without the horse or human having to fear for their lives, is what sets this type of training apart from others.

Safety is not the same thing as avoiding discomfort, activation, or conflict forever. A relationship that can only function while everyone is calm is not actually prepared for real life, nor is it giving either party enough credit.

I do not believe in keeping horses under threshold always. I don't think this is beneficial for them, nor do I think it's responsible or sets them up for success. Because, as we all know, they are horses. They will spook at something, they will scare themselves when they believe a horse-eating troll is hiding behind that tree. And they will, undoubtedly, go over threshold.

And when they do, if you have not trained your own nervous system on how to handle yourself around a horse over threshold, you will also go over threshold.

And when you go over threshold, you will speak to your horse in a way that makes no sense to them. You will be in your sympathetic nervous system; you will be operating in fight or flight, and you will make big corrections and do big things with your body without control of your emotions.

And when you do this, your horse will have absolutely zero idea how to react. They might be terrified of you suddenly, because you got bigger than you've ever gotten with them and reacted from a place of fear or anger. They may resent you, because they assume that you are angry at them for something they did not believe they had control over. They may fight back, simply because they think you are attacking them.

There are countless combinations of what might occur, if suddenly on a Tuesday, you and your horse go over threshold together in a parking lot when neither of you have any practice in speaking to each other in a heightened state.

This is why it's crucial that we work with our horses in all kinds of situations, nervous system states, environments, etc. This is why it's imperative that, when they begin to go over threshold, we sit in that space with them and help them find their way through it, instead of immediately backing out and dropping them back down below threshold.

Your nervous system will not be able to learn how to stay regulated in the face of a panicking 1200-pound animal until you practice. And, as we all know, you have to put your own oxygen mask on before you help others. If you cannot regulate yourself, your horse will not be able to trust your guidance or your training, and you will both be stuck in a cycle of avoiding hard conversations and staying below threshold because it's too scary for both of you when s**t hits the fan.

So, how do you do it?

You create scenarios in which you know your horse will up-regulate, and you do so in a space where you can feel safe, supported, and held. I am not saying to terrorize your horse and send them into a full-fledged panic state. You need manageable activation. Choose a mid-level trigger. The horse still gets to communicate, and you still listen. The difference is that communication does not automatically mean you make the hard thing disappear. A set of eyes observing and helping to coach you through it is wildly helpful. You hold your ground, you set your boundaries, and you help teach your horse what it feels like when:

1. Your nervous system gets up-regulated, too.
2. Your intention changes from "please can you do this" to "I need this from you right now."
3. Your boundaries, voice, and body language gets louder, not from a place of anger/fear, but from a place of "What you are doing does not work for me, and I need you to hear me."

Spoiler alert: You will not be perfect at this when you first start. Take it from someone who has gone into full fight/flight mode in front of a horse and acted from a place of frustration, fear, etc. You will be triggered and likely will go over threshold yourself, which is why it's crucial to do this in a setting where you can bail yourself out if needed and tag in a friend while you breathe and re-regulate.

I remember as a child the feeling I would get in my body when my mom would use her "mom voice" and tell me to stop moving when we were out for a walk in the neighborhood. In that moment, I did not fear that my mother was going to kill me, but I sure as hell stopped in my tracks and looked at her for guidance because I knew something was not right.

THIS is what your horse can learn to do in moments of up-regulation, panic, fear, etc. They can learn that your intention getting bigger, your voice getting louder, and maybe even your physical cues getting stronger does not mean they need to fear for their lives, but instead means they need to stop and look at you for guidance.

They will never learn this if you don't practice it. They will never learn that you can indeed save them from themselves when they hit the panic button if you avoid the hard conversations. YOU will never learn that you can save them from themselves if you avoid it, either. They cannot learn how to communicate with you through activation if the two of you never practice communicating through activation.

The goal is not to teach the horse to tolerate being terrified. The goal is to teach both nervous systems that activation does not have to mean the loss of communication, relationship, or safety. Nor does it mean that there is something wrong or that they are being bad. It's simply a part of life.

Escalation is not the enemy. Being incapable of controlling your own emotions, regulating your own nervous system, and trusting yourself and your abilities is, though. And choosing to avoid the hard stuff and never teaching your horse how to handle a big change in intention, a louder aid or a reasonable demand is robbing you both of a relationship in which you can navigate the human world together.

Thanks for coming to my TED Talk. 🫶🏻

We live in a very success-driven culture. Striving, achieving, improving, it’s a constant quest and the horse world is no different.

But what if we defined success differently? What would it look like? Here’s the catch: you have to create the definition with zero reliance on external validation other than what your horse tells you.

How does that shift your vision of success?

Maybe, sometimes success with our horses is about the things that we choose not to do. The things that no one else sees.

✅You don’t drill, you find and reward the try and pause instead
✅You unlearn something that you thought was useful but no longer is (or realize never was)
✅You stop aiming for perfection
✅You let go of an old ambition that no longer fits your horse - or you
✅You take a breath and respond instead of immediately reacting
✅You decide not to ride because you know you're not really present
✅You ask why when there is resistance instead of pushing to get a result

Competition may be a nice showcase for all the hard work put in at home, but it is not the ultimate measure of who we are as horse people. That happens on a Tuesday at the barn in the back field when your horse quietly walks beside you. Or how your horse responds when you ask for something new or challenging - and how you respond when your horse struggles.

It’s a shift in perspective that can create the space to make better decisions. Sometimes it’s the things we don’t do as much as what we do that equal success.

Photo credit: Barbara Olsen

I’m sharing this again because I’ve seen a bunch of posts lately (more than usual) about people passing or elderly or sick people who suddenly have to offload their horses. This never has to be the case if we plan ahead. Please, make sure that your horses have a soft landing if something happens to you. 

How many times have you seen horses listed for sale or adoption because their owner died, or became too ill to care for them? Often these are older animals that have been with their owner all or most of their lives.

Have you known someone who discovers that the horse they sold didn’t actually stay with the “forever home” they sold to, and now they have to deal with the heartbreak and worry of having no idea where their former horse is?

Have you ever cringed at a sales ad that says “need gone now/by xx date”?

Have you heard about people who pass away without providing for their horse and the nightmare of probate that can ensue that leaves the horse in limbo?

How about the rescues that hapoen daily from elderly owners that ceased to care for their horses for financial and/or physical issues?

Don’t throw the dice. Plan for the future.

Even if you are single, no children, of modest means, not yet in your golden years, make a will. Do it for your horse (and your other animals). Figure out the best solution/s, talk to the person/organization and make sure they are on board, and earmark the money to support on-going care to the extent that you possibly can. I know, it’s not a fun thing to think about - it took me a few years to get my act together and line things up, but I’ve slept better since I did.

If you sell your horse, do what you can to be able to provide a safety net. Include a buy back clause in the sales contract or a first right of refusal if the new owner decides to sell or if something happens or things don’t work out. Yes, people will be dishonest, yes you might not be able to afford two horses but don’t let that prevent you from trying to keep tabs and perhaps assist with rehoming if necessary.

Don’t wait until you are in desperate straights - horses cost a lot of money to maintain well, and our life circumstances change. Sometimes the change is sudden. But sometimes you know it’s coming. Let the horse go to the right home while you have the time to make a good decision. Help others do the same.

Respectfully ask to stay in touch with the buyer. If a buyer doesn’t seem up for it, it might be a red flag. Maybe just asking the question is worth gaging the response.

Train your horse to have good ground manners and to be easily handled to help ensure that they will find a good home - think of it as at least some insurance against a less-than-desirable path.

Finally, sometimes laying your elderly, chronically ill, or challenging horses to rest when you go is the best, kindest solution that avoids a potentially much rougher road.

Sometimes we don’t have much control, but it’s worth exercising the control we do have to ensure the best landing for our horses when they are no longer ours.

Don’t run on assumptions. Don’t stick your head in the sand. Don’t leave your horse hanging.

These are interesting times we are living in. At the dawn of the new age of AI and social media dominance, virtually any request is delivered customized to help us feel happy, smart, attractive, successful, in control. We crave - in fact have become addicted to - a regular flow of feel good dopamine hits from our socials. Now that’s getting transferred into our expectations of daily life.

The horse world reflects this - the search for the easy fix, the fast start, the right look, the perfect horse, the flashy movement, the miracle aide or equipment. We seem to be a lot less willing to accept adversity as a natural part of life, including life with horses.

I worry about our growing aversion to disappointment in the age of on-demand happy horsemanship. Don’t like the answer you get? Move on to someone (or something) who will tell you what you want to hear. Not what you need to know. And they're out there, because professionals often feel the pressure to bend to unreasonable client demands in order to make a living. Perhaps more so now than ever.

Is life meant to be served up on a platter? Why does resilience matter? And what happens when our ability to accept and cope with difficulty is eroded?

Brain science tells us that it’s in the in-between place of struggling with questions that we (both horse and human) learn best. Ask yourself: did you learn more when everything went exactly to plan or when it didn’t and you had to figure it out? Mistakes and the learning that can come from them stick with us far more than the easy experiences.

Our quest for the quick-and-easy button means we are skipping foundational skills that do not set us up for success with horses. And that lack of skill will snowball over time, creating more anxiety and fear. Any horse feels this instantly and can not, should not, be expected to make up for it.

To get out of that cycle, we have to be willing to ride the struggle bus for a bit.

Being with horses, learning from them, caring for them, cultivating a connection where we provide calm leadership is gained through our willingness to learn and grow and change. It is, I hate to break it to you, a life long journey. Finding the education that supports this and helps us deal with the harder questions is what builds confidence and creativity and lessens fear and uncertainty. The result: greater ease, more joy for both horse and human.

But we have to actually work at it, for it.

I don’t know where all this leads. I do know that horses are the ultimate reality check. They will tell us if we are doing it right, or not. They will tell us if we’re present, or not. Can we slow down and adjust our increasingly over-the-top expectations enough to actually listen?

Photo credit: Gulsum Coban

How often do we allow ourselves to experiment? So much about how we think about horses is heirarchical, whether we realize it or not. One must do this before you can attempt that. Follow to plan. Stick to the rules. Keep doing step 3 until you get it right before you move on to step 4.

It’s comforting to have guidelines. And jumping too far ahead when you or your horse isn’t ready isn’t a great idea. But I think we’re missing out by not allowing ourselves to play a bit more, to be creative, to try different, sometimes seemingly wacky things - especially if we are getting the sense that our horse is bored, not learning, feeling like they have retreated, or blowing through things.

Or maybe you’re the one who is (also) bored, not learning, shutting down, blowing through.

I don’t think we give ourselves enough credit, enough freedom to trust ourselves and our horses to try different things, to color outside the lines, to mix it up in order to get to that place of greater ease, athleticisim, degree of difficulty.

Brain science and just plain experience tell us that it’s in that liminal, inbetween space that mixes play, experimentation and struggle that breakthroughs and learning happen best - not through drilling. We have to be willing to wander in the wilderness a bit in order to come out the other side where the cool things start to happen, to click, often in a way that we just couldn't anticipate.

I am always experimenting to a degree in bodywork sessions, asking questions with my hands. I see and I assess and I feel, but how each horse needs me to go about helping them is going to vary a bit, or a lot. So, I try different things. I might struggle a bit in the place of unknowing until I try something else and the horse responds in a way that I know I’ve hit on something good. Yes there are processes, but nothing is rote.

Think of it this way: there are no mistakes in creativity.

More often than not it’s in the in-between, where the struggle lives, that the answers lie. And in that dopamine-powered, ah-ha moment is often where the joy and the fun hang out.

One of the most unproductive things we do as horse people is compare. We judge our own progress, level of skill using the measuring stick of others and their horses. This is a natural output of a horse culture that often sees competition and moving up the (riding) levels as the ultimate measure of success.

Horses need to be doing X by the age of X. Riders need to progress at the rate of X in order to feel like they are keeping up with everyone else.

But here’s the thing: true progress, progress that sticks, that is based on trust and the well-being of horse and rider is not a comparative game. It is different for each person, for each horse, to some small or large degree.

Progress moves at the speed of relationship.

How long does it take to develop a relationship based on trust, safety and calm? Only you and your horse can answer that, based on 100 different factors unique to both of you.

In general, the horse world needs to slow down. Horses are started too young in virtually every discipline. Riders are pushed too fast to do things in order to be deemed successful or to compete or to just be part of a training program. Comparative timelines get us into trouble, make us feel bad, make us see our horses as less-than.

I have certainly learned this in bodywork - that no two horses respond the exact same way, heal on the same timeline, even when dealing with very similar issues. There are just too many factors unique to each horse.

It takes bravery in today’s horse world to move at the pace that is right for you and your horse. To stand up for the space and time needed for that to happen, despite what your trainer, your barn mates, your own need for keeping up tells you.

The rush to accomplish can leave trust behind - and that can get you into trouble. Throw the comparative expectations out and take the time and the path you and your horse need to build a solid foundation together. Because slow is always the fastest way with horses.

Visual from a deck developed by Katherine Lowry EQUILibrium Equine Services.

Why is easy so hard?

I was having a conversation over dinner recently (thanks for the inspiration ladies, you know who you are!) about, what else, horses, and the idea of ease came up. And it struck me - easy can be hard for us to accept.

Horse people are wired to get sh%$ done. Horses require work, simply put - the care, feeding, riding or whatever we are doing together, it’s a commitment of time and money and heart and brain and body, not necessarily in that order. Culturally, striving and achievement are usually at the top of our (long) to do list. We just seem to be wired that way.

But what happens when things actually get easy? Or, maybe the question is, what happens when we start to notice the ease? Can we accept it as legitimate or is it a fluke? Do we even notice it or do we blow by it in the pursuit of the next level of difficulty? Do we pause with it, revel in it, reward it?

First we have to feel it. And beileve it. And enjoy it. This, apparently, can be challenging.

For some of us, that seems to be asking a lot. If it’s not hard, are we even trying? If it gets easy, can we just be with the ease, allow our horses to be with it too? I’m also talking about the many small moments of ease that are likely happening with our horses that we either don’t really notice or that we just run through to the next bigger accomplishment, the bigger ones that we think deserve reward.

If we allow ourselves, our time with horses is filled with moments of ease that we don’t even experience. How awesome to begin to tune into them, to know that your horse is seeing and feeling that you are tuning into their tries and their successes, no matter how small.

I am always searching for the ease in my bodywork sessions, looking to find that space where the horse breathes a bit deeper, relaxes a bit more, let’s go of some holding pattern or tension. When that happens, I step back. Take a moment. Let the horse really feel that transition, process it. If it’s a big shift, that’s often where I’ll end a session. Why? To allow the ease to stick.

It’s worth asking yourself: are you allowing yourself to really feel the ease? Because trust me, it’s there. And your horse is waiting for you to notice.

We want an answer that makes us feel better.

Cause -> Effect = Solution. But that is not always possible. This has become increasingly evident to me in relation to horses.

Because there is a hell of a lot that we don’t know. About the horse’s body. About how behavior indicates issues. About environmental influences. Sure, we’re much better informed now than we were even just a few years ago.

But there’s still a lot we don’t know. A huge lack of data. And yet decisions still have to be made. Decisions that alleviate suffering. Decisions that change the course of our personal goals and expectations. Decisions that end up having to be made without any clear diagnosis.

This is so difficult. We want to know that we are doing the right thing, the best we can do. We need proof. We want to look at a diagnostic, to have the vet say “this is it”. But so very often, this just isn’t possible. Even with all the money in the world, we can’t often figure it out. Not because anyone is negligent. Or because we are unfeeling. Or because we don’t have access to top tier care/diagnostics/treatments. Sometimes, often, we just don’t know, can’t ever really know.

So what do we do? This is where a form of true horsemanship surfaces. When owners are willing to make hard decisions in the face of a lack of hard evidence. To reroute goals and expectations. To pivot to a path that serves the horse first, even, especially in the face of our own discomfort.

To stop treating without longer term positive results.
To stop riding, or riding at a level that the horse simply can not tolerate.
To stop normalizing a level pain, behavior and disfunction.
To stop perpetuating hope in the face of suffering.

We want to run out every possibility. We want to believe that the horse is tolerating. We want to believe that the next specialist will have the answer, the next set of injections will do the trick. I get it, we just want to believe. We want relief via definitive answers. We chase them with all we’ve got.

But, we have to put the horse’s need for relief before ours. We have to be able to step back, to see what needs to be seen - because we know our horses better than anyone - and to make really hard decisions in the face of an unsolvable riddle, with nothing to tell us that we did the right thing, other than the alleviation of our horse’s pain.

It’s often the hardest - and the most important - thing we will ever do for our horses.

And we need to try to do this with some grace, some self-forgiveness. I do not know a single horse owner who does not regret having not done the right thing, whatever that might be, sooner at some point in their life with horses. It’s hard to feel good about giving up riding and retiring your horse, or moving a horse from a competitive to a noncompetitive path, or euthanizing a horse when you are doing any of these things without a clear diagnosis.

Some things simply can not be solved. And that's okay.

Doing what we know, in our heart of hearts, is the best thing for these beloved animals, the greatest form of compassion. It is not giving up. It is acknowledging that, despite our very best efforts, we will never find the answer that makes us feel better about doing the right thing.

Sometimes bodywork is not about working with the body.

Sometimes, honestly most of the time, it’s about opening the door to a sense of safety and trust first.

The horse pictured had a tense overdeveloped neck. He picked up a stiff trot at the beginning of our session without much of an ask. I could see and feel his anxiety 30 yards off when I walked into the arena.

The photo was taken the next time the trainer, Toni Corn brought him into the arena.

My jam is working with these kinds of horses, the ones that are wary and guarded. I love working with these horses in particular because I know that, even when it doesn’t look like it, they are always, always looking for a way to connect. A way to feel just a bit safer.

Aren’t we all?

I think sometimes we forget this - about the horses, about ourselves.

I only see the horse for a hour a month, I might only see the horse one or two times. So the willingness to continue to build trust and provide the best possible environment on the daily is key. This has become critically important to me in my practcie. It feels unfair to provide an hour where the horse begins to connect and reset only to be plopped right back into a situation that just doesn’t allow for this to continue in any real way. These environments are the cause of a lot of issues (start by turning your horse out more, preferably with other horses), so unless something changes, what I do is less likely to stick. In the case of the horse pictured, I knew Toni would provide what was needed.

This is all to say, really, that we are all just out there seeking safety, and until we feel it, not much is possible. As the famous Ram Dass quote says, I believe that we are all just walking one another home. One breath, one pause, one moment of shared connection, shared safety, at a time.