Questions, Answers & Discernment
Returning to the horse world as an adult with a fresh set of eyes after a short college induced hiatus was shocking - to say the least.
Almost instantaneously, this bewilderment changed my life by catapulting me into the study of anything horse related. Health, behavior, psychology, herd dynamics, living environments, nutrition, training, rider biomechanics, equine biomechanics and anatomy.
Prior experience with human bodywork quickly led me to discovering the many different modalities of equine bodywork, techniques and theory.
Albert Einstein once said “The more I learn, the more I realize how much I don't know.”
For years I was observing, palpating, and questioned things in horses bodies, minds, and behaviors that I’ve always thought to be unusual and concerning. Discussing these findings with numerous people including other bodyworkers, veterinarians, farriers, trainers, owners, and others almost always got me nowhere.
It started to feel like these ‘findings’ of mine lacked importance to anyone else but they continued to nag at me. I always found myself thinking just because it’s common, doesn’t mean it’s normal, doesn’t mean it’s comfortable, doesn’t mean it’s sustainable. Just because it looks pretty, doesn’t mean it feels pretty.
These abnormalities are so common that they are just widely accepted as normal variations of conformation, musculoskeletal health, biomechanics, movement, overall health and wellness, behavior, and so on, and so on.
The questions, and concerns, began piling up.
And for far too long I gave into the pressures and demands to fit into the equestrian world,
while silently questioning,
and resisting a lot of it.
This landed me in a place of uncertainty, that used to feel a bit lonely. But honestly, that doesn’t bother me anymore. I’ve always been the outlier at the barn, the horse owner who cares too much about the weird things, and not enough about the “normal” things.
And let me tell you, it’s just getting worse the longer I own horses, work with horses, and learn about horses bodies and brains, inside and out.
Then I learned about a little thing called ‘discernment’.
And that it is perfectly acceptable to question anyone, anything and everything.
And the truth is… the deeper I dive, the more I find to question.
Studying a variety of equine bodywork modalities helped me to further explore and explain some of what I was seeing… but osteopathy school is what has given me the ability to finally make sense of these things. The first day of school greeted me with such intense and overwhelming feelings of validation. Answers! To so many of those questions. There have been moments during class where I literally feel tears welling in my eyes, because I finally feel heard, even though I’m not the one doing any talking at that moment. Looking at things from every possible angle, on such a deep level, has left me baffled - and in awe - in so many ways. The interconnection between all systems of the body is so blatantly obvious once you break it down.
It’s given me the ability to discern between what is normal and what is not normal, especially for an individual horse.
And so here I am,
relentlessly questioning, searching for answers, and advocating for horses,
discerning between what does and doesn’t work for me and my personal horses,
and trekking on -
despite the blatantly obvious resistance and f*ckery,
in this niche world of ours.
