How to Read Your Horse’s Body - Jim Masterson

So I typically kick the episodes off by having the guests tell us who they are and what it is they do. OK, so I’m Jim Masterson and I do and teach a form of equine body work that I call the Masterson method. When I was developing this thing and started teaching it, I was trying to come up with a name because when I was working on horses, I just called it integrated Equine Performance body Work, because it’s integrates a lot of different things into body work to help performance. But I was trying to come up with a descriptive name for it when I started teaching it, and I couldn’t. So I just decided to call it Masterson method.

But it’s a type of body work where you learn to read and follow the responses of the horse as you’re working on it, like subtle changes in behavior that correlate to what you’re doing with your hands. So the responses to what you’re doing as you’re working on the horse. And I learned if you start to learn what to look for and follow those responses from the horse, that the horse will lead you to where there’s tension in the body and when they release it by changes in behavior. And so it’s a type of body works that it’s not anyone specific modality. It actually you end up doing lots of different modalities that you didn’t even know you knew because you’re following the responses of the horse.

And it turns out it’s super effective because you’re working with the horse and with the horse’s nervous system to help it release tension. And it’s very rewarding because it’s interactive it with the horse. And getting feedback from the horse is super valuable no matter what modality you’re using. But when the horse gets that you’re getting what it’s saying, the horse really starts to trust you. It has an effect on your relationship with your horse too.

So my wife said when I started teaching this, I had to have a 15 second elevator speech. What is it? What’s a method of equine body work where you learn how to read and follow responses of the horse? They help put release tension in key junctions of the body that must affect performance. So that’s the ten second elevator.

Speech. So how did you end up on this path of one, I guess even starting a bodywork practice of any kind? And yeah, I guess just how did you get involved or interested in bodywork? I wasn’t interested in bodywork except over the years I needed massage and chiropractic. But in 1998 I was looking for something to do.

My wife and I had just come back from Hawaii and she’s always been a hunter jumper person and she was riding at a barn here in Fairfield, IA, a hunter jumper barn. And the trainer was looking for a groom to go on the road with her to show that because some of the clients wanted to show get out on the road. So the trainer was looking for somebody to haul the horses to the shows and groom them. And I was around horses when I was a kid and I had we had our family horse. So I was familiar with horses and I was comfortable with them.

So Conley said, why don’t you go to work for Val at Grooming on the Road? And so I did. And I when I was at these shows, we started here in the Midwest and then started to expand out as they were doing better. But I would notice when trainers or owners would have massage therapists or chiropractors or crania sacral therapists work on horses. I noticed these subtle changes in behavior like the I would blink at a certain point or they would look and chew or start yawning when they release tension.

And that’s what got me interested in it. And and then one other, a couple of key things. There was one really, really good old horse chiropractor from New Zealand who would come out to the East Coast or to Lexington to adjust horses. He’d learned from another old guy in New Zealand how to do it. He is very long lever, forceful techniques, but really knew how to read the horse when he was working on it and you got amazing results.

So actually I wanted to do what he was doing, but he didn’t train people. But whenever he was around, I would hold the lead rope for him or drive him around to different barns and just to be helpful and pick up, learn things. When he made an adjustment, he would step back to what he called, see what the horse has to say, and if one of the sides he got a good adjustments, he would step back and he would, the horse would stand there for a little bit and blink its eyes a few times. Then it would start to yawn repeatedly. That was a sign to him that he got a good adjustment.

So that was a really interesting thing to me, how the horse was telling you what was going on in his body. That’s what got me interested in it. And so when you say like you’re reading a horse, I’m assuming that is it just with your eyes that you are reading them? Or does reading them also involve some feel or like how? Because I guess everyone can know that when their horse has a big adjustment and it starts yawning, it’s releasing endorphins, whatever.

But how do you know to get there? Is the? Yeah, there’s two parts to that. One is 1 is the there’s two type of techniques that we use in this method and they developed from just observing people working on horses and watching the horses. 1 is a very light using almost no pressure, what I call air gap pressure, just barely touching.

And I noticed this, we were at a show that our trainer hired a massage therapist to massage our horses when I was grooming and this guy would start by running our hands very lightly down the top line of the horse on the bladder Meridian. It’s a Chinese traditional Chinese medicine Meridian that other than that, I know nothing about traditional Chinese medicine. But she would do that to relax the horse and calm the horse and kind of connect with the horse. And I noticed that she was doing that every once in a while, the horse would blink like a definite blink, not just blinking. And I was thinking the horse is feeling something under her hand and she’s not even putting any pressure on it.

So she showed me how to do that and how to do where the Vladimir is and how to do that. And I did that. But when I got to a place where there was a blink, I would stop and just wait and do nothing because I can tell the horse is feeling something there, or just wait and do nothing. Don’t put any pressure on, don’t rub it, don’t do anything. Just wait and keep the horse’s attention on it.

And the horse might continue to blink. And then at one point, the horse dropped his head and started licking and chewing. And at one point the horse started yawning repeatedly, like the sign that the chiropractor used as a good adjustment. So that was interesting that if you don’t put pressure on the horse will tell you what’s it will tell you what’s going on. So horses survive and I just put this together as I worked on horses.

But horses survive by blocking out, paying attention. That’s how they survive in the wild. If they start to show any sign of lameness, they become a target. And that’s why it’s hard for, it’s not so easy to diagnose lameness in the horse. You have vets that are flexing and watching them prod and like you’ll get 3 vets and two different opinions and it’s like they’re really good at covering up because that’s what they have to do.

So I learned that if you don’t put pressure on the horse, they have nothing to block to brace against. If you’re putting no pressure on and watching for subtle changes in behavior, they’ll tell you where there’s tension there. And if you do nothing, which I was really good at, ‘cause I’m naturally lazy and I didn’t know what to do anyways, I wasn’t trained. Just wait there. The horse’s nervous system would go from whole blocking it out to releasing it.

And then later I learned the bigger words for that were the sympathetic nervous system. If you wait long enough, they’ll let go of that blocking out and the nervous system will release it. And they’ll tell you with those larger responses like yawning and licking and chewing. So it was just noticing a couple little things and then messing with it. And then I realized they were.

And so I started to anyways, I realized they work. I just continued doing it. And so you mentioned horses and the light feel, what about a deep tissue massage or something like that to I don’t know if is that different because you’re personally releasing the tension with a massage versus the light touch is almost like them releasing the tension. Yeah, you can massage muscles and you can get the muscles to relax and release tension by massaging, which is good. There aren’t many modalities that aren’t good in one way or another for the horse, but I learned that when you just bring horses attention to it and you’re waiting for their nervous system to release it, that’s just another way of releasing it.

I think it and that’s one reason it’s so effective. When I started developing some techniques and working on 100 jumpers, I was in that environment where it’s a pretty competitive performance environment. And so I realized that it worked. And so the I think like you, you hit on it the key the difference is rather than the person separating muscle fibers and getting things to let go, you’re bringing the horses awareness to it and waiting for them to let it go. But there’s another part of the techniques there.

There are movement techniques that ask for movement in the joints and junctions and muscles of the horse in a relaxed state. Not in a not getting them to stretch, but when you ask for movement going down the vertebrae of the neck and supporting the way the limb and relaxing the scapula. When you ask for movement of a joint or junction and muscle in a relaxed state, it allows the horse to release tension in the muscles and connective tissue associated with that movement. So it also helps you find the tension because when you, for example, if you pick up the horse’s leg and ask him to relax scapula and then slowly drop the leg and the foot so the scapula moves, drops in a relaxed state. If there’s tension in any of the muscles associated with that movement, as you ask the horse to relax his scapula, when he feels that tension, he’ll pull up and pence and where he normally would just be blocking it out if he were moving it, when the horse tenses, if you support it and allow him to relax whatever that tension was, he’ll release it.

So you’re using movement in a relaxed state under the bracing response to where the horse feels attention and allowing him to relax it. So it’s a similar concept as doing the light work, I call it search response, stay, release with no pressure. You’re bringing the horses awareness to where it’s been blocking out tension and when you keep his awareness on it and also in the movement, you support it a little bit, he can release it and then you can go on through the movement. So you’re helping the horse with the movement, but it’s the horse’s nervous system that’s telling you where the tension is and when it’s released. Yeah, so it’s almost like with the foot thing or picking up their leg, when they go to pull back, they’re just like they’re not even thinking of it.

No, they’re not even thinking it. Pence and you yield or soften. And then that’s the counterintuitive part because when normally in a horse tenses, we brace. When the horse braces, we soften and the horse releases some of that tension and then you can move through it. So you’re actually doing, the horse is really participating in the process.

They’re telling you where and you’re giving, putting them in a position where they can release it. So it’s pretty cool. Have you ever heard or read the book The Body Keeps Score? Yeah, I probably have it and I read part of it. Got a little heavy for me places, so I didn’t read all of it because I got what I got.

I didn’t need too much of the heaviness. But yeah, I know the book. But yeah, it’s just so interesting as you’re, I’m just in the middle of it and as you’re talking, it’s just so profound how easy it is for humans and horses. I didn’t even think about the idea of horses being able to necessarily block out pain and that being the reason that something is tense. I figured something was tense because they’re thinking it’s painful.

And so to hear you say that is just interesting about just how similar I think our nervous systems are between horses and humans. Horses don’t have any option. They have to survive. If they start showing signs of lameness, then they become they go to the top of the menu. So they don’t even think about it.

They don’t analyze things like we do. We analyze. To be honest, I think the horse when it knows it’s compromised, it just does all it can to not show it until the point that it starts to show it until it either it goes lame or it starts to misbehave. A lot of times a horse is misbehaving because it’s physically uncomfortable or when it starts to get start to effects its performance. So a horse, a horse that can can or well on both leads, all the sudden he has trouble cantering on the right lead.

There’s a reason he didn’t just decide they didn’t all get together that night and say, hey, let’s not enter on the right gate tomorrow. So it starts to show up at some point where that’s how they have to deal with it. But off the bat, they really have no option except to just ignore it. And I really mean no option. It’s not like they even don’t even know they have an option.

No option. They. I’ve been on this kick of horses with behavioral loops and horses are so good at just obviously they don’t really have much of A choice, but they’re just so good at being present and just blocking things out. And sometimes I notice if you have a horse that like always does this one thing, like where does that start? And I use a mounting block as an example where like sometimes you get up on the mounting block and like you put your foot on the strap and you go to swing up on that horse and they’re already walking off because they’re anticipating like what’s to come.

And it’s almost, I’m thinking of your picking up the leg example. And like how many horses do riders work with for like you pick up a hind leg and immediately they snatch it up and then they might relax down and whatever, but you almost never get that. Oh, OK. I can just calmly pick up my leg where you’re almost saying once you get them to break that loop of they’re going to pull back. But if you stay there with them and whatever.

Yeah, so with it anytime you’re moving using your hands on the horse with this type of method of body work where they’re you’re asking for movement or picking up a regular or anything, anytime the horse braces or pulls you have to yield. You can’t weak tenant grabs anytime there’s a resistance or bracing or resistance, you soften the second it happens. So then, so like you said, that’s how you break that part of that particular group would be when the horse starts in. Some of you get really good at after a while, you you learn to stop and eat before the horse starts the tents. Then they relax.

Whatever they were starting the tents. Do you know Doctor Peters? Doctor Steven Peters, your horse’s brain. Yeah. And I do clinics with him and with Mark Rashid.

And they’re really interesting and I learned a lot just doing the clinic with them. But horses doing something for a reason. So it’s either it doesn’t, if it’s not what you want, like you got up to the mounting block and the horse walks off, it’s because he doesn’t know what you want. Or he’s, that’s what he’s learned to do. And sometimes we blame it on the horse.

So he’s being a jerk. They don’t know how to be a jerk. They either don’t understand or they’ve been. That’s how they learn to do it. Or they’re afraid, or they don’t feel safe.

Exactly. And there’s so many. I always try to tell people like it. There needs to be a baseline where, you know, because so many people can’t tell tension people when the horse snatches its leg up, people might associate that with, Oh yeah, I know that his S, this is a connected to their SI or this is connected, but they don’t necessarily think, oh, this is my horse showing tension. I see.

I mean, the horse is talking to them. Yeah, and to them it’s like this thing that they almost like questions are really good at accepting. Oh yeah, this is just how my horses we’re like. Sometimes I come in and I’m like, Oh no, they’re actually telling you that they’re not standing mountain block because they’re saddle actually doesn’t fit and they’re not doing anything over here because they were really good, boy. But this is their way of explaining to you what’s going on.

And yeah, maybe we can just chat about when you say tension, what does that look like? What does that feel like? What is? Tension. OK, Yeah, well, it’s tension.

So it’s, I use it as kind of a generic term for resistance, but it can be pains or it can just be, it can be restriction. It can be tension, could be a sore muscle. And then in a relaxed state, when you get all the muscles around that but relaxing, you ask for the movement. If you hit a spot where the horse feels tension, like a little muscle spasm or pain like a knot, or it’s just tight, you know where it’s uncomfortable, then because muscles contract and let go, they don’t push. They only pull together and let go.

So when with the repetitive movement, for example, tighten, let go, tighten, let go, tighten, tighten, tighten, pretty soon they’re just tight. So when you’re going through the range of motion in a relaxed state, the horse feels that pain and then he tenses, he pulls away. But there’s also a restriction, which is more like over time, you put a saddle on the horse’s back that doesn’t fit properly, the back’s going to get sore. The muscles in the back are going to get sore and if you keep putting that saddle on it don’t fix it, they’re going to get sore and then they’re going to get tight. Then they’re going to be sore and tight.

They’re not going to have their range of motion anymore. And then if you keep putting on the saddle, pretty soon there’s horse isn’t going to feel a thing, but his back’s just going to be frozen. The muscles are going to be. So that’s restriction. There’s no pain at all at that point.

It’s just the muscles have just tightened up and then there’s no feeling. So that’s restriction. So that would be tension, but it’s I call that restriction. It’s not soreness, it’s just restricted in movement or an old injury, say an old Fetlock injury or flexor tendon. And the fetlock might not, it might be have a limited range of motion, but it’s no longer sore kind of like when you sprain your ankle, it’ll be sore and then eventually the soreness will go a bit way, but that’ll be restricted in movement.

Yeah, it’s funny. I actually twisted my ankle like last winter and that thing, I’ve broken my ankle plenty of times and it was not nearly as much of a pain in the butt to rehab as my sprained ankle because I had to be. So like when you break a bone, it’s put in a cast. You don’t really have to worry about it. You get put out of the cast, you get put into physical therapy, cool.

You do your exercises, whatever. When you have a sprained ankle, like all of a sudden everything around it is compensating to not move it. But then you don’t want to not move it because you don’t want to lose the mobility in the joint. Wonder yeah, if also there’s scar tissue involved with soft tissue injury, so maybe that also causes restriction at the end, more restriction. But when it’s immobilizing the cast once, the initial pain goes away, then you’re out walking around all over.

Exactly. And you don’t necessarily have to even think about the healing process where like when you have something that hasn’t necessarily required like a mobilization to that extreme, you can put yourself, I’m sure it’s the same as horses, where This is why limited turn out is a thing when you’re rehabbing an injury because horses are bound and possessed to go out in the field and bronk around and OK, they landed funny from that airborne maneuver. And now you you’ve got to do all this stretching and mobility stuff with them because they’ll just develop that scar tissue. What are you do a lot of clinics, you see a lot of I’m sure you see a lot of horses and a lot of different types of horses. Are there some common things, whether that’s behavioral issues, whether that’s just tension or things that you’re feeling with your hands or whatnot that you’re seeing either more commonly or just overall, you’ve noticed this trend of horses always they’re really sticky in the lateral work or horses are really stuck in their pole or it is there?

I mean, there’s some things that are common to all horses, like tension in the pole and Atlas is huge in the horse. Anything going on in the body will create tension in the pole in the Atlas and but some things will directly like dental issues TMJ because right, so that’s sore front feet will create tension in the pole in that Atlas and often on the same side as the foot. If you have a right front foot that’s sore over or even not over a long period of time, pretty quickly they’re going to be really tight in the pole in Atlas on the right. And because compensating every stride, right, every stride, they’re compensating. So pole Atlas is the biggest thing.

And also when you release tension in the pole in the Atlas, that’s the first step to releasing tension in the rest of the body. So that’s probably the most important junction. But other common things, let’s say they have soreness in the right foot and overtime, it doesn’t have to be huge, just a little bit, then they’re going to get tighter in their rights pole and upper neck, and then they’re not going to bend as easily to the right. And I find that like for me, 8 or 9 out of 10 horses bend easier, easier to the left in the neck. They get tighter in the pole on the right and I don’t know if that’s because of the rider or because they’re just naturally born that way.

They’ll bend more easily to the left and they’ll Corkscrew to the right and flatten their they flatten their neck and flatten their head and go like that to the right rather than bending like this. So that’s coming. But the other backs sore backs can come from lots of things, not just the saddle compensating for both front feet sore. They shift their weight to behind and I guess it leads to that. The next thing is what causes what we’re finding in the body.

It’s caused by everything’s caused by something. Any tension in the body is caused by something and it’s not usually going to be even tension, but a feet, foot and leg issues, big cause of tension in the body in different areas. Dental issues, not just floating the edges, but the teeth have to be balanced to the body. The whole TMJ and teeth are like a support system for the horse’s body and when they’re over floated or they get out of balance, it’s not just affecting the TMJ, it affects the whole body. The way they’re being ridden is huge.

If they’re being forced into the bit and forced into collection, that’s not balanced. They’re not going to have balance development and strength in the body. They’re going to have very tight jaw and TMJ and they’re going to be very sore and tight in the hamstrings because they’re being pushed into the bit. They’ll be inverted in their back and then so that’s a big one. It’s just the way they’re being ridden or conditioned.

So how would I say I’m an untrained horse person in terms of putting my hands on my horse and feeling my horse? How do I know that my horse’s hamstrings are tight? Let’s see, there’s a couple ways that you probably could start exploring that and the first is to do that Bladimerdian technique I was talking about, which is on our website for free. I want everybody to learn how to read their horses subtle body language, but also to find out what’s going on with their horse’s body. So the Bladimerdian runs from the pole along each side of the top line down to the group and then it splits off and goes down each hind leg.

So as you’re going along, you’ll see where the horse is giving her these sponsors go, right? I call it search response. Stay released so you go lightly and lightly which is hard for people to put no pressure on the horse. They think 5 lbs is no pressure but no pressure means £0 and slowly go along and watch for the responses. And then when you search for a response you stop and wait there till you get a larger response.

The horse will tell you and its body by its responses where it’s feeling stopped. And so that’s one way you get to the hamstrings or the it’ll usually start before that up in the croup and the gluteals and you go down the hamstrings and they’re blinking and then you get down to the hawk and they pick up their leg. You’re not even touching the hawk. They’re probably telling you they’re so hawk. So that’s a good way to see, just to see what’s going on with your horse’s body.

Or you can palpate with your fingertip for the head back of your nail and palpate muscles all over the body and the horse will will flinch away from you. If we’re sore somewhere and I don’t know wherever, my calves, but if you drive your finger down my calves, I’m going to react. Most people have pretty tight calves and they’re sore when you push on if somebody else grabs them. Yeah. So you can palpate user pressure, or you can just go using no pressure and paying attention to what the horse is saying.

How important do you think it is? How often should owners be putting their hands on their horses? Not just brushing, not just grooming like hands to horses like before every ride. Once a month, just in general. You may be just in general just to check in just to one.

I’d assume they’d probably have to do it a lot in the beginning to develop what their horse feels like, but. You just, I can’t even put my hands on a horse without paying attention closely to what it’s saying with its eyes. You just go right up to a horse and put your hand on. And to us, that would be normal. But to the horse, if you’re watching, they might get, they stop blinking, their eyes might get a little bigger than that.

I can’t even put my hands on the horse without starting very lightly, not like delicately, Oh, I’m going to hurt you, but just not just putting my hands on and then paying attention to what they’re saying. So it just becomes a habit every time you’re around your horse. You can ask what’s going on with his body by searching. You can do this anywhere on the body. You don’t have to do it on that bladder, Marinian.

I’ll just walk up in the back might look a little tight and so my hand will just go to the back and I’ll search lightly there and, and just see and watching the horses, his face and his eyes. Maybe some horses are blinkers, some horses are lip twitchers that so just watching or see when you put your hand somewhere, if the horse just internally tenses up or internally relaxes, you can see externally when they’re relaxed or when they’re tense. If you start paying a lot closer attention to your horses subtle body language, because that’s how they communicate in the wild, they don’t have a huge vocabulary. So anytime you put your hands on, we’ve had a lot of people go through our courses and a lot of people are trained in this and a lot of horse owners just go to the weekend to learn how to do these techniques and how to read the horse. But it changes the way you interact with your horse.

Once you really start paying attention and they start to trust you because they know you’re paying attention on their level of body language. We think of them as a big, huge, strong, unpredictable creature, but this is all other side before you even get there. It’s always so interesting when because as horse professionals, I feel like just because we look at horses so often, it’s very easy for us to sometimes pick up the subtle things, even if we’re not always aware that we’re doing it just based on sheer numbers. I was actually working with a client who had a force who didn’t want to get on the trailer, and the woman originally kept using the term stubborn. She was like, she’s just being stubborn.

She’s just being stubborn. And then one day she was doing it and she was like, Oh my God. I just looked at her eye and realized she’s afraid of the trailer and I was like, yes, this is an. You go through this process of first learning she’s being a jerk, she’s stubborn. Eventually you start to notice other little things.

Yeah, I know what you mean. Exactly and I. That’s how I learned, that’s how I learned you know, I just that’s how I learned. I used to loading a trailer I think and get frustrated and then I slowly, especially after doing this work, I realized horses do everything for a reason. They don’t just do it because.

Yeah, no. And it’s so true. I sometimes like my #1 mission is to just change verbiage around horses because so often when we’re in situations like I could have the best, softest Cowboys on this podcast and everyone could admit that at some point they’ve been standing at a trailer with a horse and we’re not the best version of a horse person. And so I think it’s very, but as humans it, it’s so easy to see, oh, OK, the horse isn’t doing said thing, ergo is being bad versus horse is doing this thing planting at the trailer. Is that cliche?

It’s not that you have to, it’s that you get to, that’s a good one. And so sometimes when I’m working with horses, especially if I’m having a tricky day where yes, sometimes these people who work full time jobs, at the end of the day, they just want to go to the barn and have a ride. It can be very frustrating when things are not. Necessarily happening in. A desirable.

When it’s not a good day, for whatever reason, it might be the person’s bringing the energy to the barn, or it might be something’s been going on there that got the horse worried about something else. We always associate it with us. He doesn’t like me or he’s not doing this and I’m because he doesn’t like me or because he’s he’s not respecting me. The horse is doing it’s there. He’s planning his feet over there.

He’s doing what a horse does and we take it on. He’s doing it because of me and he’s not, he’s doing what a horse does in that situation, which if he’s worried he’s not going to go there or he’s going to want to check it out. And we take we have our egos are so huge that and me too. I’m a human. It’s we immediately take it as they’re doing it to us and he’s not doing it.

What a horse does in that situation and we happen to be there. Yeah, that’s a good way to think of it because it is so true to realize that it’s all communication, right? And I’ve had that same client with the trailer, actually the other day. She was like, I realized all of my horses, they get into this type of situation and they do this like Big Gulp thing. And I didn’t have an answer for her, but I was like, you’re noticing like these subtle things that I think so many people take for granted either in human to human relationships, but especially in horse to human relationships where we, we do take things so personally.

It has. It could have literally 0 things to do with us. Dealings, we have no idea. They’re dealing with this survival. They’re with the survival situation in their mind.

It’s survival for them. That trailer, getting in that trailer, like they’re scared. Whether it’s real or not, they’re scared. And it’s so hard to this thing that I’ve been doing lately, which is funny, but when a horse starts to do something, I’ll pause and I go, your feelings are valid because I know they’re working through something and I’m just on their back for this journey or whatever. And I’m sure there are times where you’re working on horses and they’ll come at you with a hoof and you’re like, I hear you, we’re doing this right now.

But your feelings are valid. Your feelings are valid. You’re allowed to feel this way because you self are a being with your own emotions and whatnot. It’s not about me. And that’s helped especially with my own.

If we think it’s about us, then we’re going to try to rush him through it because we’re trying to get to our goal. What’s our goal? We want them to do this or to do that or just give the horse time to figure out what’s going on and we don’t do that. It doesn’t mean don’t go, don’t cross the screen. It means pause and let the horse figure it out and then maybe you’re going to pause.

If every time you try to cross the stream it turns into a battle, Maybe the time you pause until give the horse a chance to figure something out and then leave and come back and do it again. So you want to help them through it. We want to get it on. We want to do it on our agenda, not on their agenda. I was listening to a business podcast not too long ago and the guy was giving sales advice and he said, I always tell my salespeople after they’ve given you 3 rejections and you hit them with this, don’t say anything until they say something.

The pause, that space of time, gives them the ability to work through what it is you’ve just put in front of them, and then they feel the need to rise up to it and answer it. And because humans get very uncomfortable with space. We need to always be doing something or have something happening. Exactly. When you pause, you’re actually taking all the you’re taking pressure off that you in that situation.

You’re taking pressure off the other person. When you pause, it’s a different type of pressure. It’s maybe pressure coming internal pressure with the human. Then when you pause and I call it stepping back and see what the horse has to say and just wait. That’s the search response.

Stay the wait part. You’re giving that other person horse a chance to really feel what it feels like without any pressure because horses pick up on your agenda. If you have any agenda, they pick up on it and they pick up on your intention. So that pause takes the intention off. I don’t know how many times I’m working on a horse and I step back and this happens.

Teaching and everything. Step back, see what they have to say, step way back and just it gives them a chance to see what they have to say. But then you’re waiting, They don’t show you any sign of release. And as soon as you start talking to somebody over there, they start yawning. Soon as you really take the pressure off and like loading a horse, you think this horse is never going to get on.

And you’re having standing there at the door to the trailer and you think he’s never going to get on. And then all the sudden he steps on as if he was fighting it for his life 5 minutes ago. And then you stop and then you wait. And then all the sudden it’s you know what I’m doing the body work, and you’re searching and you get a response and you wait until you get a release. The question is always how long do you wait?

You wait till something happens. That’s how long you wait. And that’s up to you. But I always say, if you wait 20 more seconds after you decide you’re waiting long enough, often you’ll get the horsepower released because you’ve let go of something. Yeah.

So it’s interesting your story with the salesman, the pause, how, how potent that is. They’re strong or actually, I don’t know, potent, but yeah. But yeah, no. And I think expectation is such a big word because I have show horses and they’re event horses and jumpers. And I’ve recently started doing, I don’t have any shows for a few months.

And so I’ve recently started doing this thing where I bring my trailer out and I do groundwork around the trailer. And I might even be in the trailer, and the horse’s job for that day is to just wait at the bottom of the ramp. And I’ve been doing this to train myself out of the intention of getting horses on the trailer. Yeah, you’re training yours. We always think we have to train our horse.

Exactly. And I realized that I tend to have the biggest problems trailing my horses when I have to be at the vets at 3:15, even if there’s no necessarily I have no whips, I have no anything. There’s no pressure on the horse. My expectation is enough pressure for that horse to be like this does not feel good. And so The funny thing is that I’ve had I had one horse who had has had really bad trailer experience.

She’s flipped herself over in the trailer. She’s a really anxious par and within three sessions of me having no intention of getting her on the trailer, she has started stepping on the trailer all on around the court. And I told my fiance I was like, what I’m going to start doing is I’m going to start setting a timer for myself. So if in 20 minutes or whatever I just stop and I’m done. And that way I can, when I actually do have a time, I can still work on not putting that pressure.

You have a little internal timer that’s going to go off in 20 minutes and that gives you permission to not rush it. Exactly it just. Because it’s it’s a whole new thing training yourself to get put yours on the trainer on the trailer rather than training the horse to get on the trailer. It’s so funny because I’ll have clients who they never have an issue getting horses on the trailer and at some point you have to go half the horses that I have don’t want to get on the trailer and 90% of those horses have not necessarily had a bad trailer experience. So then what’s the they get on the trailer?

They I think there’s some subset of horses that muscle through their feelings and refuse to release their feelings. And so despite the feeling they’ll get on the trailer, where then there are horses that because of the feeling, they’re not getting on the trailer. So I find those horses that are willing to muscle through a bit tougher to work with because I really have to, like, be present and conscious with myself because I always have to prevent them from getting on the trailer because they just whip. Yeah, and I want them to get on because it feels like a good place. Not just because they.

Yeah, because they’re afraid of the consequences. And I’d be interested if you notice, like with bodywork, if there are some horses that just really struggle to let go. Like there’s so many horses are so different in from say the bodywork point at perspective. I’ve when I was working on lots of hunter jumpers, like 50 a week during the season in Wellington and I work on them every week or every couple weeks some of them. And I could tell the ones that are really tough, like they would start to get a sore front foot, they get sore both front feet, but usually 1 is more sore than the other.

They start to get a sore foot, come back a week or two later. They’re just tighter and tighter on the right, but they get tight everywhere. And on the left hand there’s a diagonal compensation. They get tighter and tighter and tighter. They just tough it out and then eventually when they go lame like it’s time, like they really need to be treated.

And there are other horses where I’d go, I could tell they were they were shifting. They’d start to get sore on one foot in the front and they’d shift to the other foot. And the next time I’d feel where the, because there’s like the pectorals and other muscles that tighten up, I could feel this or this horse is compensating side to this side now and that side and especially the longer the shoeing cycles got. But it’s funny because the barn managers or the trainers or the riders, they would say, yeah, she, she’s a what you call a drama queen. It’s there’s horses that they just express everything right now.

And then there’s horses that are just tough. They just stick with it until something goes. So from the bodywork point of view, but even I got 2 Morgans when they were two and three and they were brother and sister and he’s still alive. He’s 32. She passed away a couple of years ago, but I got them when they were young and the mayor man, she was just, it’s funny because she would do anything.

She would do anything riding her. She would learn. When I first time I got on her, I just was sitting on the fence and I stepped over on her back, slit over on her back while she was eating. No problem. And her brother was much more.

He was, he’s a little spookier, but he held it in and he would spook in place when you’re riding him. If he got scared, he wouldn’t spin out from under you. So my wife really loved him because he’d take care of her even if he was scared. But the difference in personalities between those two and then just loading them, I think the first time she was so used to following me and we just walked on and she got on. I don’t know if it’s always a trailering issue.

It’s more of a leading issue. They’ll follow you anywhere. I’m a loopy lead rope and you walk in. And then he was a little more worried. But then as soon as she was in, pretty soon they just go on their own.

The difference in personality is pretty clear. Everybody knows that who has horses. I think they recognize the horse’s personality, but some are just tough. They’ll just tough it out and others. Well, compensate or do something, change things a little bit.

Yeah, no, it’s funny. I have these two horses right now and they’re owned by the same person. And one of them is this chestnut warm blood mare has been basically pampered her entire life that she has been owned by this adult amateur. She’s a good girl, but she’s that Oh no, I absolutely cannot work today. My saddle pad is not exactly where it needs to be and I am a little sore in my hamstring and she lets you know what’s going on.

This her second horse is this thoroughbred mare and this thing she like broke her cock and the vet did not think this horse was going to be able to come back from this injury. And I swear to God, this horse willed herself to come back from this injury and she is walk truck sound and I’m like I palpate her and she I’m like this horse could be absolutely crippled and she just refuses to let anyone know because she and again doesn’t no behavioral problems. No, she just is such a little workhorse that when she actually had the time off, she did not like it or appreciate it. She really likes the kind of mundane day-to-day life of just being in a program where this other horses, if I don’t have the right fly spray and get liniment after my ride and this that and the other thing, I absolutely cannot deal. And it really is funny because I’ve always like, as much as you worry about the one that’s not necessarily showing you everything, you go and but she wants to do it and she wants to be here.

And if she didn’t, she could source, could easily. She’s athletic enough. We’d all be in trouble. And she just every day comes out and she’s just OK, Yeah, I’m here, I’m cool. And the other one comes out and you know exactly what kind of day she’s having.

And it’s so funny because two horses owned by the same person. Yeah, and I think I look at those kind of things as I’m not an expert on herd dynamics or psychology or anything. When I see that kind of those two different horses, for example, that’s their job in the herd in the wild has something to do with the way they are rather than getting amphomorphizing too much and making it too much into a human thing. Because then we go down that path that whatever that horse’s job in the herd was supposed to be, that’s who they are. Like the little Princess might be.

Her job was to spook at the smallest quitter a mile away. Her job was. And the other job was to know we’re going to push through this and make them brave. For example, the other way I like to think of first thing, like whatever this horse is, the way it is, that’s it has something to do with its job in the herd in the wild, rather than starting to make up human excuses for it. It is fun, but I don’t find it helpful to go down that road too.

Yeah, I do think the anthropomorphizing thing is it’s different as a professional talking to a professional because we understand that at the end of the day, these are herd animals that have. They’re not humans at the end of the day. And human humans. Just recreational riders who maybe only have one horse and don’t necessarily understand herd dynamics. When they start anthropomorphizing, it’s more of a they’re bringing the horse into the human where we’re trying to discuss dissect horse behavior.

And that’s a nuance that I don’t think it’s talked about enough. When anthropomorphizing comes up, the words are all being used to help us understand the horses. Humans. Exactly. Yeah, we’re using our language and observing in our language, so it’s helps to relate to how we would feel on a situation.

Or just to give word to the. Behavior at the end of the day, to realize that they’re not a human and that they’re motivated by different things. Like we don’t. Their primary thing is survival is safety. That’s their primary thing.

And ours isn’t always safety. Ours is all are we going to have fun or is this going to be rewarding or am I going to reach my goal of this? It might say that’s their first thing. Yeah, this has been an excellent conversation. Thank you so much for joining me.

How do people find you? Follow along with what you’re doing, All of that good stuff. A website, mastersandmethod.com is easy to remember and we teach courses all over the country and the world. We have 60 instructors around the world. We can courses just to get started.

I want horse owners to be able to do these bodywork techniques on their own horses. And then we have an advanced five day advanced course and you can go on from there if you want. But that’s the first thing is just to learn how to work on your own horse. And you can go on our website or our YouTube channel or our Facebook page and all of that. And on our YouTube channel we have lots of video clips on how to do different techniques.

I want people to try it and see if the IT works for them or if it’s their thing. And then if they want to learn more, they can go to the website and buy the Beyond Horse Massage book or DVD or look for a course. But a lot of this stuff, once you just learn the basics, you can apply them to your horse, see if you like it or if it’s going to be helpful for you or your horse. I could rather do something different or just keep going the way you’re. Going I think that YouTube videos are a good resource.

And that Vladimirdian technique, it’s on our website for free. 17 minute video on how to do that, what to look for so people can what to look for. The lighter you go, the deeper the horse is feeling it through their nervous system and fascia probably. So when you’re working in one area of the horse, if you’re in the Bladimer and you might be working in the lower neck area, in the Withers area. And often some horses, you’ll see them stomp their hind foot or kind of kick at their belly.

They’re feeling something up in their groin and you’re bringing their attention to it in the lower neck and Withers area because there’s fascia connections between it. So you don’t have to know what those connections are. But my point is that when you’re doing this really light work on that horse’s body and you know what to look for, it can tell you all kinds of things. He is a little bit weak on the right hand or something like that. So anyways, I’m just plugging the Vladimir D.

It’s more than just watching for a blink and waiting for a yawn. That’s good to know. Cool. OK. Thanks for this conversation.