Why Do the Same Issue Keep Coming Back? - Elisse Miki

I typically kick the episode off by having the guest tell us who they are and what it is they do, and then we just get into it. So whenever you’re ready to kick us off, you can tell us who you are and what it is you do. All right. Well, thank you for having me. I am Elise Mickey, and I am by profession a human licensed and equine certified manual therapist.

And I’ll describe a little bit deeper what that is for me because I’ve done sort of multidisciplinary training within that realm. So I originally started my career in human therapeutics and I did a bachelor’s degree in kinesiology with the focus on exercise science. And I worked in that career for many years and I did a whole. Wide range of sort of different occupations within that career. So I worked in athletic training.

I did a lot of personal. Training and then I started getting into rehab and I really. Loved the rehab like that just lit me on fire. So I dove deeper into rehab and started doing athletic rehab training. So training athletes that were injured to return them to sport and then I also worked in within insurance agencies for.

Workplace injuries and motor vehicle accidents and then my career in kines terminated in brain injury rehab and that was sort of where my entire. Like. My brain blew up because I was like, Oh my God, this is like this whole other world of really interesting work that I can be doing. But I felt that I was lacking skills and that’s that job showed me that is that I was working within a team with occupational therapists, physiotherapists, pyros, physios and osteos and I was the kin and I was always. Envious of what they were.

Doing and like the manual stuff specifically, I was like, I want that. So yeah, that kind of pushed me to go to school for RMT, which is registered massage therapy in Canada. So I wanted manual skills. So I did RMT and that’s where my practice still lies today. I graduated that.

Almost 12 years ago, I think. It’s been a long time. And during the course of that career, I also like loved it at first, but I started hitting some roadblocks that were pretty consistently showing up in my practice. And it led me to ask some more questions. I’m like, well, why is, you know, everything I’m doing?

Like I have the exercise kid degree. I have a registered massage therapy. I have all these skills and I was still finding people coming back. With the recurring issues, the same presentation over and over and I was like, why is that? So that’s when I started digging deeper and I found osteopathy and I talked with a quite a few osteopaths before I actually applied to the program and was like, oh.

Yeah, this is what I need. This is sort of the missing. Piece the way that they describe their understanding of the body. So that’s what pushed me. To start my human training in osteopathy and concurrently at the same times I was working with horses just more in like a pleasure.

Sentence and I was bringing myself back. Into the equestrian role, because I’ve been off for quite a while doing all these education, and when I returned to the equestrian world with the RMT and with the can, I was like looking around and just noticing that. A lot of the science that I had learned for human rehab and human therapeutics wasn’t really consistent across equine, right? And I thought, why is that? So I started also doing my equine training and like I did equine therapy diploma, equine cranial sacral, equine osteo, I started stacking up more education on the equine side of things to try to answer those same questions.

And that’s where everything sort of converged with the equine osteo and the human osteo training. I was like, OK, now I’m understanding why what I was doing before it wasn’t wrong, but it just wasn’t the complete picture. I was missing a lot of information. And that’s where my practice is now. So yeah, now I still treat humans, I treat horses, and I have a team of therapists that work with me.

And help support all of the horses in our local area. And I also have certification programs for people that want to learn what I do and how I do it. So I’ve got the two ortho and cranial programs as well, and. That’s a big part of where. My work is at right now is just trying to get other people this education if they want it.

Yeah. When I had originally reached out to you, I think I maybe saw an ad for one of your courses, and that was part of the reason I wanted to have you on, because you’re clearly into educating people on this topic. But within just your bio, there’s so much to unpack because I got really lucky when I was a teenager and a person who I did a working student for was a Grand Prix dressage trainer. But she was in school at that time for human physical therapy, to become a doctor of physical therapy. And the way her program worked just broke down the human body as well as a force body.

And really the way I started treating riding with like my skeleton, working with their skeleton. And then as I became a professional in this sport, I go because I never really believed in massage. I had never had a massage personally, but I had some off the track thoroughbreds who didn’t take too kindly to masseuses and, you know, tight bodies and all of that. And so I never really thought much about the muscular side outside of fitness, right? Not really.

To me, Brassage did the suppling. I got the horses chiropractic and that sort of thing, but never the manual work. And when I I moved in with an owner and she had an osteopath for her horse and this was kind of the first time I even heard of what osteopathy was. And so maybe we could get into now even what that is and how it maybe differs from things like manual massage or chiro or that sort of thing. Yeah, No, it’s a great question and I feel like this is.

One of the ones where there’s just so many misconceptions. And I’m so grateful that you wanted to do this podcast because I think it’s important to get the information out there. So starting with like what is osteopathy? Why is it different? I’ll start it with by explaining it’s not particularly one thing or something that.

We do. It’s the way of seeing the body, and it’s the framework that osteopathy provides to understand what you’re seeing. So it’s a really big topic. That’s why I made notes because I really want to make sure to give your listeners like some actual understanding and takeaways from this. But yeah, why it’s different?

So most people think of it or I get this, a lot of people are like, oh, it’s like massage or stretching or fascial work and oh, some people do visceral work and it’s like, these are all true, right? So with osteopathy, it’s all of these things and that’s why it’s the bomb to me, because it’s actually all of my prior education plus some that we are learned. To first how to evaluate all the systems in the body. So that’s the other difference is that osteopathy put the focus on all the system, not just the musculoskeletal system, which is what is generally covered in most manual therapy disciplines because that’s the base is our musculoskeletal system which includes the muscles, the tendons, the joints, the ligament success. And that is important it.

Still holds. Great value, but Osteopathy says that’s great. But there’s also, you know, quite a few other systems like the respiratory system, the digestive system, the. Circulatory system and the big one, the nervous system. Right.

So what osteopathy does is teaches you how to understand and evaluate. All of the. Systems in the body and then yes, it provides. Us with albums and some techniques that include all of the above Massage joint mobilizations. Facial work, myofascial work, motor control, visceral work like cranial sacral.

Cranial sacral is one of the systems within osteopathy that we utilize. So that’s why I’m like, no, it’s the bomb because it’s like everything, right? And that’s why my brain exploded when I found him. Like this is what I’ve been missing is I understand the MSK system very well but I couldn’t understand why things kept recurring and then it came back to not understanding how the nervous system is actually regulating. All the other systems in the body.

Right. Yeah, Where do we want to go from here? So what it actually is is sort of what I said, studying the systems over musculoskeletal purely and over symptoms. So that’s another big piece about Osteo. That’s a little different from my prior trainings.

So Osteo asks why things exist in the 1st place versus that it exists. So for an example of that is just that symptoms include. Things like pain. So if it’s a human, they can verbalize their subjective report of pain. Tightness, so tight muscles, that’s something that we can see and feel in the horses.

There’s lameness, which we can see, and then there’s behavioral stuff. So those are all symptoms, right? They’re giving us information that we can see about. The state of the. Body where osteo is different as it says.

So we see that, but what is actually happening to create that? What are the inputs that are driving that? And we think about inputs, we’re talking about the nervous system input. So like, why is this happening in the 1st place? Why are those muscles?

Tight. Why is the brain sending the signal to create contracture in these muscles? Why is the brain sending a signal to? Move a certain way, what’s the reason for that right. So those are the inputs proprioception.

So another big thing that an osteopath will understand. I’ve open evaluate its proprioception because those are inputs that the. Brain is constantly receiving from joint, viscera, muscles, tendons, ligaments, everything. There’s these little sensors everywhere that are constantly telling the brain what’s going on inside the body, and then the brain will give its output, which is the symptom. So I hope that sort of makes sense.

Are you following me so far? Is this? Yeah, it’s almost like the functional version of manual body work. Yeah, I’m just flipping it upside down a bit. It’s like we all can see the symptom.

That is not up for debate, but we need to ask better questions about why we’re seeing that symptom rather than just chase the symptom and suppress it, if that makes. Sense, Yeah, yeah. So it, it’s where a vet would maybe look at something, see the lameness, say let’s inject this thing or this other thing. You kind of look at it and say, OK, where does this stem from? And then you try to fix that.

Yeah. And understanding that. Let’s take take a hawk, for example, because that’s a common injection site for horses with hawk arthritis, right? It’s like we. All agree that there’s arthritis there.

That’s not up for debate. But my question is why is the body doing this right? Because arthritis, especially fast progressing in in younger horses is questionable. Like well no, that’s not normal Physiology. So we need to ask why is the body doing this and why it is?

What is loading this joint in this way to cause a rapid acceleration of arthritic changes? Because that’s not normal. Right. And I’ll say it’s very similar in human medicine. I’m sure everyone’s encountered this.

Is that generally, yeah, your GP is going to treat regionally, right? So if you come in and say my shoulder hurts, the GP is going to check. Your shoulder, and they’ll probably give you some form of treatment for the shoulder, whether that be pharmaceuticals or referring you out to chiro, massage, physio. They generally don’t look at the whole body picture either, right? Because they’re just not trained for that.

But osteopastor humans would. And they would say, let’s zoom out and just figure out why this shoulder is under duress in the 1st place. Naturopathic doctors would do the same. They would take a holistic approach and understanding what’s creating the conditions for this. Yeah, yeah.

And I think it’s even to kind of sum that up, a couple of years ago, I was having some real shoulder pain and I went and saw someone and they told me I’d ribs that were out, but my ribs didn’t hurt. My shoulder hurt. And so there was a different, you know, the, the cause of that was that I don’t work out enough and need more muscle to support things from popping out. But I never would have known that had I gone to someone who maybe was just like, here’s how we’ll fix your shoulder. And so that that sort of whole approach of, yeah, the, this is what’s being presented.

Where does this stem from? And maybe that’s how we start to get into this kind of compensation or symptom versus cause sort of thing. Yeah, that’s exactly it, right. So the symptom is the shoulder hurts. The cause is unknown until we evaluate the whole body, right.

So it’s highly possible too that you could have an acute shoulder injury that is still a possibility on the table, but that would present very differently than a more chronic issue. Yeah, for sure. So maybe we chat about what are some patterns you’re seeing in horses that this is what’s being presented to me. This is how I go about finding out what the root cause is. That’s a loaded question.

Because wow, there’s a lot. Of things that are presenting, I think in part due to like modern domestic horsekeeping, right. Do you mean in terms of like what’s the most common presentation I’m seeing or? Yeah, yeah. Or just I find things tend to come in wave.

So maybe something you’re seeing a lot of right now that’s top of mind for you. Well, I’m seeing pretty frequently across. All cases is just back pain, right? So just horses that are having dysfunctional spinal motion, let’s say, because there’s a wide range of reasons that a horse can experience back pain. And I think actually this will tie in nicely to another point that I wanted to share with the listeners of just personally, like I had a lot of light bulb moments going through school because of what they taught us and, and how the body sort of organizes itself hierarchically.

And this is a big one. So I’ll talk about now is there’s a concept called spinal facilitation. And it was, yeah, I didn’t had never heard of this theory in my prior trainings. And in osteo, they brought it up fairly soon. I’m like, OK, so you guys need to Start learning the theory on spinal facilitation.

And I was like, what is that? And it explained a lot of what I experienced before in my human practice. So essentially. When the nervous system in a. Specific area becomes more reactive either due to pain or injury or disease, so it can be internal too.

It will keep producing the same output which is like tension around the site, right? So the brain is always going to protect whatever it is that has had an impact or injury, like I said. But the easiest way to understand it is that the nervous system doesn’t separate the body into parts the way that we do. So what this means is that we have our spinal cord. The same area of the spinal cord is going to receive information from many tissues, so that a spinal segment let’s take the lower back.

OK. So like L1 to L6 in the horse, the spinal? Cord is going to receive. Information from the muscles, OK, so the muscles have those little sensors saying? I, you know, I feel like this or I’m sore, whatever.

The spinal cord is also going to receive information from the joints that are in. The actual like the vertebral segments, it’s going to receive information from the internal organs, OK. And this is really important to understand is that all of these nerves are converging at the same vertebral level, the same vertebral segment. So the brain is getting all this information and like I said, it doesn’t always go. Oh, I know this is coming specifically from the organ on the right, right?

It’s just getting a message that there is a problem here. And that we need to be on guard or protect this. Area. So what happens is over time it’s something that we call sensitization and that segment because it’s being stimulated repeatedly with all of these messages come in and become sensitized, which means it takes less to set it off. So This is why sometimes when you’ve injured your back and it’s healed and we’re at one to two years.

Later so the. Actual tissue in salt has healed and recovered, but the person is still experiencing back. Pain. Or issues with their back right that it’s. Just that it’s still bugging.

Me this is in part due to this sensitization and it’s now turned into sort of like a chronic feedback. Flu. So that’s number one. And #2 is that organs? So in the case of the lower back, we’ll look at the digestive tracts, a large intestine and back when organs are in flames.

So think leaky gut. OK, the brain is going to prioritize the organ health over everything else because organs trump like they. We need an organ more than we need a. Loose lower back muscle. Right.

So the brain is going to prioritize the inflammation in the organ, which. Means that it’s going to send those signals and the muscles. In the area are going to be told to contract protect this region now this was. Major light bulb moment for me because I treated hundreds of patients in human land for. Chronic back pain.

But when I understood this, I started asking better questions about their digestive health, about history of injury around digestive issues, etcetera, etcetera. And guess what happened is I started uncovering that most of my patients with IBS or females. With any. Array of like, yeah, yeah, uterine endometriosis, ovarian test, even just difficult cycles, all of them were positive for that. And the low back that does not mobilize.

So I would massage it, I would mobilize the joints. It would work for a moment, right? They’d feel better for about a week or so. And then the pattern came back. And now I understand why is because the brain was prioritizing the organ health over the soft tissue health at that point because organs are more important.

So that’s one that I’m seeing a lot with the horses as well. And there is a lot of documented stuff around ulcers and the impact that has on the. Mid T spine and holding it in extension right? So when the horse is actively ulcerating, are there? Are.

Open wounds in the stomach. The same thing is going to happen is that segment of the spine is going to protect that organ, which means it’s going to be tighter and it’s going to stick down into extension, right? So inverted. Same thing for. Kidneys, etcetera, liver, like any organ, you just have to understand where those segments are and you’ll start to notice these patterns in the horses too.

And leaky gut, that’s the other big one, because so many of our horses are living on diets that are not always species appropriate, right? So I refine sugar. Processed grains just too high calorically depending on what the output is, etcetera. So you’ll see this a lot of horses lower backs too as their lower backs are sore, they are dealing with this digestive inflammation that’s chronic and there’s no amount of massaging that or mobilizing that is going to restore mobility there until that underlying visceral issue is addressed. Wow.

So it’s like processing? Yeah, well. I’m like, that’s so interesting because actually today I was currying this off the truck thoroughbred that I have in training and like ran the Curry over his lower back and he totally flinched away. And I freelance rides. So these aren’t horses kept at my barn.

And this horse in particular lives very species inappropriately. And yeah, as a trainer, I’m always bumping my head up against the wall, like, what can I do to supple this horse more? I go back to the groundwork, I go to the pole work. I, you know, I I try to do a lot, but it’s, it just never seems to get better. And I’m also a very, you seem to be the type of person that really likes systems and like understanding how all of the systems interconnect with each other.

And I think horse training is exactly the same way, right? Like if a horse is getting too hot off of the alfalfa or they’re getting not enough turn out or whatever. These are all things that show up in the training and. I think trainers have it just as hard as therapist because it it, yeah, a lot of the time you’re going to be. Bumping up against physiological issues that are out of your scope.

Right, so like the best thing you can. Do is recognize it as you are? But then, you know, taking the active steps towards changing it, that’s a whole thing, right? And that’s a whole process too. So I don’t.

Think you’re wrong, I think you’re probably are encountering what I’ve described like for that one example spinal facilitation like I’m sure you are seeing that in practice quite frequently and hopefully that helps guide your understanding better too or just like OK, if this is an internal visceral issue and that comes down to just. Good observation. And evaluation, right. So this part you don’t have to be a therapist or is that? You have to put the signs and symptoms.

Together with what the presentation is so if the horse’s lower. Back is always sore and we’ve had the tack fit checked and we’ve had their hoofs and we’ve had we’ve ruled out kissing, spa, etcetera, but they’re still sore. It’s like, OK, well then this is the question for to dig deeper, right? Why? OK, let’s look at their diet.

Let’s look at. When it’s sore, is it in a cyclical pattern? Or is it? Chronic like every single day and you have to start looking bigger. Picture right and not just.

Zeroing in on like he doesn’t like it on this. One side it’s like, OK. OK. Great. And again, like we agree, we all agree that there’s an issue here, but but what’s driving it right?

And it’s a process of elimination as an owner. By looking at those big picture things like tac feet, environment, turn out, diet, etcetera. Yeah. And one of the things that I, I definitely wanted to touch on was feet because even recently on the Internet there’s been scandal of does laminitis come from hoof trimming versus nutrition and. I started.

Thinking. Couldn’t it? Be both, right? Like, couldn’t a horse get so far out of balance that there’s nothing left for the cough and bones to do but rotate? And we, we all know that high sugar and bad seed can give a horse laminitis.

But there’s also this huge connection between horses with high low and things like ECVM or you know, stuff like that, which to me screams, you know, these things are, are connected. But I think so many people will look at a horse with. Different. Feet, you know, I, I get horses off the track. I have horses with club, a clubbed foot or whatever, but.

1. If it’s not the feet, you know what comes first, the chicken or the egg in terms of of poor hoof angles and stuff like that. But then also from your experience, do these things ever get better? OK, I’m going to answer. That, but I’m going to keep it in line with what I did want to talk about today is one of the things that sets Osteo.

Apart is that it has some guiding principles and these principles are the absolute foundation of like who we are, what we do, why we do it. And the one that you’re touching on right now is a principle and it’s called structure governs function. And this principle means that structure, so bones, joints. Et cetera will influence function, right? So how something is built is going to affect how it moves.

When you look in the horse’s body, we’ve got tons of different types of joints. We’ve got hinge joints in the distal them right like the knee, the fat block, the coffin. They all predominantly just open closed black sacs. Then we have big ball and socket joints like the shoulder and the hip that can do all types of rotational movement now. With those two examples, if we have what you’re describing, let’s take the high low example where.

We’ve changed the structure now. Right. And we’ve jammed up some joints on one side, the whole chain will get jammed up on the high side and then we have stretching or lengthening on the opposite side. What is that going to do to the function, right. We need to understand that structure will always govern function.

And it goes both ways, because function like you’re describing with the internal factors like diet can influence structure. So our job is to figure out which thing is driving. This more they can both of course, like you’re saying. We can have dietary issues as well as less than ideal trimming. And that’s just like the perfect storm, right?

But we need to determine by process evaluation is which thing is the bigger factor here? Is it the trim or is it the diet? So you you need to get the diet on point to be able to remove that variable right but structure. Governs function is something that’s always in the back of our mind. And then what I talked about with the Physiology of the brain and how the brain prioritizes visceral stuff over muscular stuff.

If there’s competing inputs, yeah, it’s just. Really, it’s just really, but I just wish everyone could understand this, to be honest, because it’ll I’ll see a lot of horses with it’s not even high, low, just imbalanced feet. And then there is a lot of confusion sometimes from the owners or the trainers like, well, he can’t pick up the right lead. I’m like, well, yeah, because structure governments function like those feet are imbalanced, right. And that’s the.

Base of support of the horse. So when we’re going. At speed on circles, there’s going to be variation if the feet are not balanced. Right. It’s just like.

Us like if you were to wear a wedge on one side of your and you didn’t need that wedge, let’s say like you had a high heel, but you don’t need that, then what’s that going to do to your ability to lunge, squat, run right like yeah. It’s not going to be well and you’re probably. Going to say, oh that hurts. I can’t actually do it well that way. I can go the other way, but I can’t really go this way because it’s too high.

So I think keeping. That in mind is like anytime you see structural changes just it is going to alter the function of that, right And so. What do you do next? It depends on the situation, but first you need to understand that like they go together, you are correct. There’s no time when a structure doesn’t govern a function or when a function is not affected by structure.

So yeah. I hope that helps a bit. And like another thing is just there’s. So much focus again put on muscles like well, it’s really tight right, but I just. Want you guys to remember that tight doesn’t always.

Mean short, it often means protective reactive, right? So it’s like Pylo horse again within the osteopathic approach. We wouldn’t want to be removing compensatory tightness just for them because they need that right at that moment, right, because they have structure that is not physiologically normal at that point. So we don’t want to go in and release everything on the short side, right, because they are actually using that for stability race. OK, that’s kind.

Of how to use that one, yeah. I’ll let you input. I have more principles, but let’s see if we can. Yeah, No, I. Mean that.

The structure governs function you would think is very kind of self-explanatory, but I think a lot of people are going to have a light bulb moment to be like, oh OK, well that’s why this horse does this thing on when I do this and you know you might always know Oh well my horses heel is low this direction. That’s why they don’t pick up the canner. But. To. Almost feel.

Empowered of like oh, but that actually doesn’t mean that the heel is the problem. There could be this organ or, or this thing that that is actually causing this to happen, which I think on its own is, is great for people to understand. It’s yeah. And. Also done it like you’re not going crazy sometimes when you’re trying to work on a solution and it’s just it’s not working.

You’re not going. Crazy. You just haven’t hit the causative factor right. It’s good that you tried all that. So.

Then you can differential that out and say OK, well that didn’t actually create any change, So what are these other I’m looking? At my list here, like I said they wanted to do, they’re very important and it is. It’s what guides like my treatment. Decision. So when I assess a horse full body assessment, I take a hierarchical approach using these principles to decide what is primary versus secondary the.

Second principle is that the. Body is capable of auto regulation and self healing. We don’t know what auto regulation is. It’s a function of the nervous system that allows us to breathe and be alive without having to think about it. So it’s auto right?

Meaning it does it on its own. So auto regulation is happening every minute of every day in all of us, but I think. What a. Lot of people often forget or get away from is that the body actually has like an internal pharmacy of its own. It’s self healing.

The body will always be trying to maintain homeostasis and balance. That’s innate. And you know, us too. I know we’re not horses, but. If you go back.

Hundreds of thousands of years we are. Also in green for survival, our systems are in green for survival. Our body, our nervous system is trying to get through. Each day, just like horse, right? They focused on the now as well.

Right, like our nervous system go how can I get from minute A to minute B? How do I get from this morning to this evening? It’s not thinking about the long term effects of whatever decision it makes for us. But I go off. Track.

So with self healing, I think that’s a big one that gets forgotten. And with osteo, that’s why we don’t say like we’re not healing anything. We’re just trying to actually set up the conditions where the healing can occur or remove obstructions in the form of scar tissue. Restricted joint visceral issues to. Allow.

The. Body to restore its own health because it can do most things right. When we’re talking just about normal physiological injuries, illness or specific diseases, that’s a different conversation, but that’s not what we’re dealing. With every single day we’re dealing with these chronic compensatory issues, right? So.

I just want to. Understand that but the body actually produces like endorphins which are for pain modulation. It can produce all types of neuro chemicals that help regulate tissue. Healing right, blood flow. So that’s another one too.

Well, that’s another principle is that. Blood flow is supreme. The rule of the artery is absolute. Meaning that. Our number one goal is always.

To think about the fluids, OK, because fluids. Are what preserve. Life in the tissue. So if we. Think about.

Should we go back? To high, low, maybe we should because it’s a good example and we’re looking at that through an osteopathic lens. We are concerned about the tissues not receiving the fluid they need and fluids being blood. Venous return. So wasted blood, like blood that is no longer needed, that needs to be recycled.

Lymph. OK, lymphatic. System and cerebral spinal fluid now. Why? Fluids are important is because they sustain the tissue they feed.

So if we don’t have the food going to the tissue, then how can we heal right? And this is. A. Part of the reason why a lot of my prior result didn’t stick is because I’d be restoring some blood flow in the moment to a site, but I didn’t take away the obstruction that was 7 vertebrae upstream. So there was.

Still no additional blood. Getting there daily, right? I can make some blood in the moment. But I can’t get it to sustain if there’s a blockage upstream so. That’s sort of the same.

Idea as that the rule of the artery is supreme. We always make sure that fluids can get from A to B before we worry about other things. That’s at the top of the priority, remembering. Structure, governance functions, so we always want to look at what the horse is presenting with. And the auto regulation again goes with the rule of the artery.

Because when those. Fluids can reach their destination. The body can regulate and heal. Right, anything. Like even for you?

Or human example to is like when you sprain your ankle, what happens so initially within the 1st? 24 to 72 hours. It’s probably going to swell up, right? Everything’s blow up and it might. Turn purple and blue and this is good.

This is the body healing means it’s going to send all those inflammatory chemical messengers that need to be there. In order to. Repair it and then clear out the waste products later. That is auto regulation happening in real time. But what happens if you’ve got an additional scar or something just above the site?

Now those fluids had to get. Out. And that’s when you’ll see those. Chronic sort of pitted edema or like swellings that don’t go away, right? Or.

That it just. Never quite heals. And the people say this, well, it just, it just doesn’t actually. It just still feels off, right. Even years later.

I’m like, yeah. That tells me that there’s something still not. Reaching its terminus there, and it’s our job to figure out what it is. Is it the fluids? Right.

Or is it a motor? Control issue that we didn’t reorganize your brains firing around this. Sorry, no, it’s a lot. It’s really interesting because I, one of the first sessions my horses osteopath did, I had a horse that would get really tight right behind the weather and she would just sort of place her hand there and you know, she’s kind of, if you would look at her, she’s just like standing there and she’s chatting with us. And then she like notices something and steps away.

And I was like, what are you doing? And she was like, I’m just reminding her body that this is here. She is doing all. The rest of the work and in my head, I actually because I was going through, I was really obsessed with biohacking at this time and blood flow restrictive therapy was kind of blowing up the time. So to me if it made sense that OK maybe by just touching it the body, I don’t know if I thought increases blood flow but I was like it might open something up to help the blood flow but I never actually thought of blood flow as.

Healing. More so just this thing that kind of happens within us and. No, it’s so. Critical. Right.

And like I do try to post a lot of these before and after when I have the cases that respond like this because it looks like so when you remove an obstruction that’s fluidic, it will look like the horse gained 200 lbs. In 30 minutes like within the session right and and that’s obviously not possible that they put on all this muscle within a session time I. Have these before and after that show and people are saying, oh, that’s not the same horse. I’m like, no, it is like I have, I have no time to lie. But yeah, like, that’s sort of what’s happening is like the blood flow was now reaching all of the tissues, not just some of them are not getting pinched off when they’re trying to get somewhere.

And then the owners will say, oh, my gosh, they can counter depart so much easier now. Like, I’m like, yeah, because they actually have like, full oxygen. Supplied to the Hind right when you’re operating at 50. Percent like you’re. Going to get a 50% force output because you just simply don’t have the the oxygen.

Blood carries oxygen and muscles need oxygen. Yeah, you have a compressed artery or a compressed vein somewhere due to some structure that’s not functioning. Yeah, you’re going to see things like strength deficits or horses that looks they always look tight, but maybe it’s just dehydration, right, Not fluid it. Yeah, I think that’s. With the light touch that you’re describing, we can get into that, I think.

I mean, I can’t speak for your osteopath. But I’m going to guess that she was utilizing the cranial sacral system in that moment. Which is what? Looks like very light touch. The reason it looks like that, like a cold note version of craniosacral, is that it’s its own system.

So the craniosacral system include all of the vertebrae, the cranium and the sacrum as it says cranial to sacrum and these bones. Actually have an inherent. Motion in them, but it is very, very subtle. So in order to palpate this inherent motion, we have to be very. Quiet and light with our hands, because if we press too hard, we’ll actually just miss the palpation because it’s that subtle, this motion.

Is what pumps the fluids. So it pumps cerebral spinal fluid and all of the other fluids we’ve talked about every single minute of the day. So we have this inherent motion happening from the brain to the spinal cord, which is helping hum the fluids. Each. Minute, so endocraniosacral, we try to sync up to that because it can give us that deeper information about exactly where the primary lesion might be.

Yeah. When she actually, I was a cranial sacral person, she worked on me and that was my first experience with it because I was laying personally, because I was laying on this bed and I’d injured my neck. And so she’s just kind of supporting my neck. And then she moves up to my head and like she was like immediately goes back down to the neck and she was like, it’s just not travelling, you know. And and so to hear you describe it, you know, because I was in the zone and yeah, well, I’m.

Glad that you’ve experienced this. I’m actually like beaming over here because it’s a very hard thing to describe. To somebody who has not experienced this type of palpation, yeah, No, that’s what it is. Funny, because after I had it done, my fiance, who is a tech guy, I was like, Oh my God, you have to get this thing done. And then he’s like, well, what is it?

And I’m like. I have no. Idea I’m like she just touches. Me This is why people think it’s woo witch magic. Like it’s not right, but it can look and feel like magical because it’s like, oh, they barely touched me and all of a sudden like my headache went away or my whatever, my concussive symptoms are reduced like, and they feel like nothing has happened.

But then they stand up and they’re like, Oh my God, yeah, that’s why. Yeah, it, it was so fun. Cause, you know, I think the difference between humans and horses is that horses are present. Almost 100. Percent of the time, humans can go off and think they can go in and out of their.

Body exactly, but. Usually, yeah. So when I see things work on horses, I you’re almost forced to believe it works. Like I’ve seen an osteopath extend my horses back 6 inches like. And and that’s.

Not even hyperbole, it maybe was even more than that. And you know, and then, but then when I go to to suggest an osteopath to someone and they want to know what it is, I just never quite know what to say because I’m like the, you know, it’s not that they don’t do massage because it’s something. Yeah, you know, and. And I didn’t even realize that. I thought that it was just.

You know, even going. Into this chat I thought it was just its own thing. I didn’t even realize it actually did utilize all of Oh yeah. Like. In human osteo, we got thousands of techniques given or taught to us, and it’s like they’re lumped into categories like, hey, here’s your massage technique.

I was already a massage. I was like, I don’t need those, but they gave them to people that were not. Massage background, right And then they’re like here’s your joint mobilization techniques, here’s your facial techniques, here’s your visceral, here’s your craniosacral techniques, right. So we have a really large. Tool kit to draw from.

Which is amazing, but they really put that focus on. Understanding the framework because you can have 1000 techniques, but if you don’t know when and why, it’s not as useful, right? And I think that. Is. One of those big like for me was like a light bulb moment again.

I’m just like, oh. Because I had a lot of techniques before, right? But I would be throwing them the wall like, well, I’ll try this, I’ll try that, I’ll try this, I’ll try that. Because I wasn’t sure what was. Driving the presentations I was seeing and now I don’t have to do that because now I understand how to assess better and go, no, I’m picking AB and C today and I’m going to do 1-2 and three.

And I’m going to leave the. Body and let it take that and heal from that, right And then I’m going to come back and see what stuck, what didn’t and then I have more answers, right? So yeah, I know. Osteos are like, that’s why I love it, because it’s very. Technique rich, which is nice for people that like.

Techniques like you got thousands, but you need to know how to apply them and why, otherwise it’s not useful, right? Yeah. And, and you kind of mentioned it, I mean, I want to be conscientious of your time, but there’s a couple more things that I definitely want to dig into a little bit. But one of them is you mentioned that when you come to evaluate a horse, there’s sort of this hierarchy that you go through. What is that like?

What are you when you’re approaching a horse for the first time? Where do you? Start OK. I’m a systems person as you know, but it is important to you to have a systematic. Approach, right?

Because then we’re doing the exact same thing every time we step on to whatever site you’re at. It creates consistency with the charting as well and it’s easier for me to navigate mentally so stepping on the. Scene. They’ve already filled out a case history form that for me is quite extensive because I want as much information about the horses history. Prior to me showing up so that I can know that coming in, so that I have my follow up questions ready for them, right?

So first we have their history and based on that, I’m going to ask them a bunch more questions probably. And then we head to. Observation, where we’re just doing static observation of the course from all four views, so we’ll look at them. I take photos side, front, back, other side and the cranium. I always take a photo of their face do to look for massive asymmetries because it can point to cranial lesion after.

Observation because that’s only. One piece right like observation is. Helpful to give you information. About posture and preferred sort of ways of standing, right? But it doesn’t tell us anything about the nervous system and what happens when it’s turned on and removing.

So then we do gait evaluation and that’s watching the horse walk out. I also video all of this now, like I’ve just learned the hard way that you want that footage. You don’t might not always need to refer back to it. But you have it. So I.

Video them from behind. Side walking towards me and then we do a backup test as well because that gives a ton of information about what could be going on for the horse in the lumbosacral region. So the lower. Back to pelvis connection as well as the pelvis itself. Like how does the horse choose to load it?

Because that will tell me what I need to pay attention deeper to when I go into my palpation. And then we redo all of those views at a trot if the horse is OK to do the trot and again take videos everything at the trot as well. Now I do everything on a straight line. Because the reason is when we put a circle into the mix, there’s 101 compensations that can occur. But when the horse is on the straight line, we can see symmetry imbalance much easier, right?

And much more, I think true. That’s the problem is that honest circle. So if the horse has like a pelvic dysfunction. Where one side of their. Pelvis is stuck.

I’m using air quotes. Because I don’t like that word but stuck. Right. And so and then we throw the horse on a circle. Well, you’re going to see a lot of compensations.

You’re going to see the neck doing something fine. You see the head doing something funny. You’re going to see the forelimb doing the shoulders probably going to drop, the spine might do whatever it has to do. And so there’s too many compensations that can occur to get a really rational like read on it. So I do.

Everything straight so that I know in normal Physiology straight the pelvis should be relatively neutral. In normal Physiology straight the limbs should be landing relatively neutral. I know where they should be tracking. Do in the straight and then yes, whatever we find in the. Gait evaluation usually matches the owner reports at that time.

I say, yeah, your horse looks like it’s restricted on the right side of the pelvis and we’ve got some spinal things going on. And they say, oh, is that? Why it’s hard going to the left on my yeah. Because we’re going away from lesion, which is challenging then. So after gait then I go and do joint by joint palpation of range of motion.

And this part is purely orthopedic. This is my orthopedic training coming into play because ortho as I started this conversation. With you is still extremely valuable. It’s not unvaluable. It’s just not the whole picture, right?

But we still need to do it because it’s going to give us. Tons of information about joint health, range of motion, pain, nerves, like if any nerves are compressed in the region, etcetera. So then I go. Joint by joint, limb by limb, and then we. Started the pelvis.

And head up the pelvis towards the cranium. And the very last thing I do once I’ve gathered all the orthopedic information is I will. Go back to the parts of the spine that didn’t move well and I will sink in and check the cranial sacral rhythm because. That’s. Going to give.

Me what is primary information? That will help. Direct me right SO. Does that make sense? Yeah, yeah.

I was just because I know as a horse trainer I have a system, right? So like I show up before I even get on. I do this OK, cool, that was good. Can move on to the mounting block and and so I have this set thing and part of it is it helps keep me safe but it also kind of what you were saying it helps keep everything organized in a way that I can work through it and. I also like because of the video I’m going to say like this is a tip for anyone who else who wants video is like when you do it the exact same way and you go back to try to make comparisons.

Everything’s always in the same right. So I’m like, I need a front and a front the back. And you know that they, they order that they’ll be in your phone or on your computer screen, which makes life really easy because when you’re trying to sip through like 20 videos looking for. The side view to the right. Yeah, it’s so.

Frustrating, right. So just like a time or thing do yeah and but I also know that I can get into my eye will get drawn to something immediately, you know immediately. And so I was wondering if because some people will show up and they’ll be like immediately. Oh OK, maybe they’ll watch the horse walk to confirm they’re saying, but then they kind of just get into it. So I think just from listening to you talk about all of the interconnected ways that the horse just lives that as a professional, how are you approaching that to to kind of check all the systems versus yeah, well that.

Is like through the assessment, like I said, like the the final check of the cranial rhythm gives me that information about the viscera in the region, the rhythm itself. Because if there is no rhythm that jumps to the top of the. Priority, that’s what we call a compaction and compaction mean there is no there is no flow happening at that site and flow is primary. So we need to go OK. Why is this compacted?

Right. And is this primary? Yeah, well, it has no rhythm and it’s not moving. So that jumps to the top of my list, right? As far as like I think you just mentioned something.

Important and I want to say something on it is yeah, it can be really easy to get derailed by the obvious sign and symptom, right? I really do not encourage my clients and I do not focus on only. One thing because you. Have to get. All of the information.

Absolutely. It. Can be hard sometimes because I know the owners will come to the session. It’s there’s something in his talk. There’s something in his talk.

It’s this talk. It’s this talk. It’s like, yes, yes, that’s probably true, but again, we need to ask why. And I can’t do that if I only look at the hawk, which we already agree is not functional. Yeah, right.

So it’s like it’s hard, but I’m like, you know, got to zoom back out. We have to check the whole body because more times than not, where the issue shows up is not the cause. It is just the the compensation or the symptom. And that’s very true for humans like you described it. Yeah.

It’s like 90% of the time the person comes. In and it’s like it hurts here. And then we checked them like same thing. I’m like, well this is rotated and your neck is doing this and this and that so let’s work on that. And your shoulder that hurts.

We’ll still address that. I just know that it’s not the primary, right? Yeah. Yeah. And then?

Usually we do that and they’re like, oh, yeah, that feels way better, Thanks. Right. And it’s like, yeah, because we need. To look at everything. So I guess the next thing is how do owners know or when?

What does? A horse present for an owner to know. OK, I think it’s time to call an osteopath if I don’t already have a regular one. Number one thing is just recurring. Issues, right?

Same issue over and over and over and over. Like, oh, everything. Gets better and then it just comes back. It’s like that’s. Your red flag moment, I’m like, OK, we’re doing the things and it’s still not resolving.

And that may end up meaning that you need further diagnostics, right? That’s always on. The table, and that’s something that happens lots at my appointment is I get called because of usually chronic stuff that they’ve been having trouble resolving and sometimes I say I need further diagnostics on XYZ. I send a lot of horses for ultrasounds for the mirrors right to find out about uterine sisters. Ovarian cyst because when you have a.

Presentation that isn’t resolving despite extensive manual or body work. It’s still yeah, it’s a flag, right? So it may mean getting more. Diagnostics. So yeah.

Number one, you’re seeing the same thing over and over. You don’t see it resolving like actually resolving or it does get better after the appointment and then it just comes back. Yeah, it’s like, OK, we need to dig a bit deeper and and it’s OK. Like I don’t want to make any owners or body workers feel as if they’re not. Valuable part of the team because they are and I can.

Say this from my experience, like I said, massage is still valuable. There’s nothing wrong with it, right? Hey, like, yeah, yeah, it still holds a huge value in my heart. It’s my foundation. But I just now understand that there is a lot more to it.

And if it’s outside of my scope then refer out. Right. It’s like it’s. OK, so chronic issues I would say I’m looking at my list too. Behavior is.

Communication, so that’s a big one, is that when there’s a behavior or a behavior change even more. Importantly. That is a flag. Right. So.

I never. Want my clients to write off. Their horses behavior changes or just behaviors in general. Like I’ve trained them pretty well now. Like because they know me, I’m like, you know, anytime.

If there’s an aversive change to behavior that is important. We need to listen to the horse because they’re speaking and this is the only way that they can speak. Yeah, but we need to listen. And. Like, I find especially when it’s new, right, like person like, oh, no, all of a sudden she’s doesn’t want to go to the mounting block or all of a sudden he’s kicking out when I pick up his left time.

I’m like, OK, so that we need, yes, we need to investigate that. Yeah. And listen to your gut, horse owners. Don’t listen to your intuition on this. Like, do you feel like something’s wrong?

There’s probably something wrong, or there’s something that you could be doing right, so. I find that the big one too is like that. They get people. Sometimes get. Uncomfortable, right?

Like speaking up about that depending on the environments that they find themselves. The other one for horse owners too is about. Creating the. Conditions where like healing can occur and I know this is a loaded one because many horse owners are going to. Not be in full control of the environments that their horses live in.

But. There are still so. Many ways that we can support the Physiology or the biology of the horse even in less than optimal environments, right so. Creating the conditions means having an environment for your horse that. Allows some kind of ambulation daily right?

Like joints need to move in order to maintain health. That’s not my opinion, that’s just science they need. Joints need friction to produce fluid, and fluid, as we talked about, is life. And if we don’t get friction and fluid, that’s when you’ll start. To see the joint pathologies like arthritis piling up, so.

Some kind of? Ambulation. Even like some of my clients that have their horses in like smaller. Setups because that’s where they board and that’s what they have they’ve. Done the things of like.

Putting hay Nets at opposite ends of the paddock. Putting water. At, you know another. End so that that creates like little steps per day in the horses just trying to get their needs met right Like that’s an. Easy one.

I’ve had other. Clients asked to have the electric wiring turned off for portions of the day so that the horses can actually mutual groom and touch because that helps with producing oxytocin, which is like your feel good of hormones. Very important for horses. What else? Well.

And then obstacle stuff like again with people who are having horses in small environments, like throw a log down or throw 1 singular fence line in the middle of the paddocks, they have to go around it, right? So those are things. Where I’m like you got to create the environments that is appropriate to the species. Even in these less than ideal conditions you can. There are things that you can do to promote that and to prevent a lot of this stuff from getting worse.

Interesting. Yeah, and I think we’re, I’ve kind of, I’ve said it on the podcast before, if I’m lucky, all of my horses get to live outside, even if they’re competition horses. Some of them even get to live in herds, right, which is tricky to manage, but we make it happen. And you know, but I’ve also never been in a position where I own a 300,000 or $3,000,000 horse where like, you know, maybe I would also bubble wrap that thing. I don’t know, Probably not because I know too much now, but it is so tricky to navigate.

How do we balance what the horses physiologically need, emotionally need, physically need, And also they’re in this position because of us and our goals and, and these things and we pay a lot of money for them. But I think a lot of what you’re saying is you may actually need less XY and Z if your horse has more ABC. I will like. Yeah, definitely. I mean, I am not or I’m very cognizant of the fact that I am lucky to be able to keep my horses in a herd.

And like I made a track system on, I only rent 2 acres and I was like, no, I need to do this. It was very important to me. But I have to say, like I’ve talked about this so many times in different places, like all of my horses at the time that I made my track system were already in their 30s and their arthritis like stopped. It’s just stopped getting. Worse, right?

And not only that, they actually improved their. Mobility like it was. Insane. Just to, you know, I wouldn’t have believed it unless I lived it. Yeah.

I was like, this is this is insane. Like they have no business at 35 getting more mobile than not, right. And so it’s like one of the reasons I’m just such a strong advocate for. Species specific. Living a biology specific here, because it is, it took away so many problems for me, right?

Like I didn’t have to have them on cover cocks anymore. I didn’t have to worry about getting them out every single day because I felt bad because they were in a paddock. Like now I take them out for the joy of it, right? But I’m not confined to the schedule around. It and same thing with the free.

Flow hey like I was very worried about that for the same reasons other people are like weight gain or like difficulty with certain horses regulating and all that but I I navigated that right like I got smaller hole Nets I put them further apart and like now Fast forward 12 years in I’m like oh I could never go back because I don’t have to feed them like there’s no schedule right yeah yeah no if I wake up late they’re fine they’ve got 10 hay Nets hung around the property and so I think a lot of time too is people don’t realize it actually makes your life easier right it’s hard in the beginning to wrap your brain around like oh I’m going to do this but. In the long. Term my hay bill went down my stress. Has gone way down because I know that they’re happy right and that they’re OK if I can’t be there every minute of the day yeah yeah and the truck system thing is is interesting to me the more I’m learning about it the more interested I am and in that whole thing because I’m like a typical like I see a big field and I go off my horses would just love to eat that grass so you know that which they would but also in terms of one of my big passions is how can we keep sport horses sounder longer and you put logs out and your horse you know I know picking up and like Yep there’s which. In my normal.

Life. If a tree falls down, I’m going to get a chainsaw and chop it up and get it on to there. But now I go, oh absolutely we can. Position that, yeah, so. Yeah, I was going to say.

I know we’re like almost out of time, but I think it’s worth mentioning like one of the local trainers I work with and she’s a high level trainer. She, I’ve known her for a while and she’s got I think 30 or 40 horses. Like all performance horses at her barn and had the traditional setup before where we’re just like a small in out. And about 5-6 years ago she made the shift and she was really scared, but she transitioned them all to free flow. Hey, with the small Nets.

And she started pairing them up in turnouts and. Giving them turn out like with a friend and then based on that if they got along, she now actually blew out the walls of the paddocks and those horses permanently get to live in pairs and what? I noticed because I worked with her. Horses prior to these shifts. And I worked with them after and the the difference in their ability to like regulate with me, do their job, their bodies, their body issues are way down, right.

I was like this is. Astronomical. They are so much calmer in their skin when we work with them now. They are like. Way more willing to do whatever, right?

And we just chatted on it and I said, like, I’m really impressed with you because she is one of the people in our area that’s like going against the norm and doing this thing that a lot of other people are like, oh, shouldn’t do that, right? He has very expensive horses there too. So this is not like, these are not pleasure horses. And I see it working and it makes me feel like there is hope. Because she’s setting an amazing example, right?

Yeah, No. And that’s, that’s great to hear. And and I do think that there’s just a shift happening in the horse world, especially with professionals. You know, they want their horses to be happy. No one gets into this because they hate horses, right.

Like, no, not enough money in it for that to be the case. So it’s just about getting the information out there and giving people the opportunity to learn and then come to their own decisions. Like the fact that you said 12 years ago you switched to this truck system, but I learned. About the truck system. Like a year and a half ago, so you know.

This wasn’t even. Something that was in my wheelhouse at all, yeah. No SO. Like I was. Like I’m so lucky because a friend.

Actually, she was my barefoot trimmer that time, she said. Hey, you have. 2 acres you should build a track system. And I was like what the heck is that? And then she gave me.

The book The Paddock. Paradise, like a Jamie Jackson book. And I was like, OK, and I read it. I was like, and like, I was like, this is so amazing. I could totally do this.

It’s like, it’s not even that hard. Yeah. Yeah, it was, it was my barefoot trimmer for my young horses. And it’s like, oh, have you ever heard of this paddock paradise? I’m like, no.

And then I started training a horse and the neighbor had a they have a whole truck system and they have, they have laminitic horses and they have this whole truck system and, and the horses get around grade and they all stay relatively fit. And she doesn’t, you know, she doesn’t really do anything with them, but you look at them and you go, they’re good looking horses. They don’t look, you know, whatever those old horses look like. And. And so I was like, oh, this is interesting.

And yeah, you know, so I think I was like. I credit my track system to my horse’s longevity because I had my last two horses that passed were 42 and 40. And I currently have my pony turning 40 next month and he’s still with us on our track and I’m like this it it’s amazing. Like it has prolonged so many things for me. Wow.

Well, this has been such a great conversation. I feel like we really got to understand more of what osteopathy is and also just kind of more about a horse’s world. How do people find you, follow along with what you do? All of that good stuff. Oh yeah.

I have an Instagram and a Facebook which are at EQ Therapeutics. And if you want to spend a little more time with me, you can head to my website and that’s at equilibriatherapeutics.com. Really a mouthful, and I apologize for that. Hindsight is 2020. When you’re creating a website, buying a.

Domain. Yes, and. So I have a ton of free content on my free pages because. I am a huge advocate for getting like giving information where it’s needed. So I have free webinars on dissection because that’s something I’m also training in free webinars on the orthopedics that we talked.

About on Craniosacral. And then there’s. A lot of collaborative ones as well that I’ve done that you can see other professionals with me talking on various subjects. Cool. I also have a how I created my track.

System whole one hour video. If anyone wants to learn how to do that, I have. That so yeah, you can head. To my site go to the free stuff. Page and see if there’s any that would help.

Cool. Well, thanks. So much for joining me. This was great. Yeah, thank.

You again.