Breathing Easy: Healing the horse’s body by letting go…

 

Breathing easy… We take it for granted.

Yet, when a horse holds their back with tension, they also hold their breath. In the same way, a horse whose breathing is not so easy, cannot help but hold their back. In both cases, physical and emotional bracing become intertwined.

To begin untangling the resulting patterns of tension so that we can heal the body, we must first restore the breath.

As my colleague Georgia Lillie from Wolbunya Equine so eloquently puts it:

 

“Sometimes I meet horses and immediately I know I have many layers to work, that their pain is deep and is tied up with anxiety and tension. When the owner and I can work together to make changes, lightness and calmness start appearing. They are softer, more responsive, more sensitive and more forward. They are willing and giving. These are physical and emotional changes.”

 

When I come across such horses, my analytical side sizes up the restrictions in movement and breath; the lines of physical tension and bracing; the change in posture. But that is only a small part of the picture.

My intuitive side empathises with the look in the horse’s eye; their facial expressions and responses; the emotional barrier they have erected around their bodies. I acknowledge my objective observations, still my mind, and listen to what the horse is telling me through the feel of the tissue under my hands and their response to my touch.

With my hands on the horse, I ask them to breathe deeply into their body, by breathing deeply into my own. The horse lets their energy flow, and as they breathe easier, the tension melts away.

A photo posted by Cat Walker (@foundationsofsoundness) on Nov 10, 2015 at 4:40pm PST

As so often happens in the life of a therapist, the experience of these problems in my own body gave me a new understanding and empathy for the horses who were teaching me about the importance of the breath.

Several years ago, I was kicked in the sternum. In hindsight, this quiet, well-mannered horse had been trying to communicate his pain to me with subtle messages, but his kind temperament had hidden the problem. He had always been a little girthy, but by tightening the girth slowly, he had become much calmer about the process. This time, despite going as slowly as normal, he exploded. The only thing I recall before flying head-first into the fence, is the image of his hooves retracting from my chest. Needless to say, I got the message that time and pursued answers on his behalf.

I didn’t appear to have sustained any fractures, and after the initial bruising dissipated, I seemed to be fine. Yet, over the last couple of years, the chest pain flared up again, with the stiffness spreading from front to back, until my thoracic spine and rib joints became so stiff and restricted, that I stopped breathing properly. My chest could no longer expand, and my diaphragm and abdominal muscles had been recruited in compensation. With the abnormal stress placed on all of these structures involved in breathing, the shape of my torso and abdomen changed, each inhalation highlighting the resulting lines of tension and torsion. I felt trapped in a myofascial straitjacket.

This development wasn’t for any lack of bodywork; I’d had plenty of treatment, seeking out massage therapists, physios, chiropractors and osteopaths to try and help me reverse, or at least halt, the damage that was occurring. Looking back, I can’t help but feel that what was lacking was attention to the habitual and emotional bracing that had resulted from trying to push through and continue on with life. The treatment had been purely manual, only addressing the physical side. I didn’t know how to breathe with relaxation anymore.

The therapists I have seen since have understood the importance of this, despite their different backgrounds. I was encouraged to breathe into the areas of restriction; to, when they reached areas that triggered feelings of pain, tension or anxiety, breathe deeply, and let the tension disappear as I exhaled. As I gained more mobility in my back, I was able to extend the amount of time before the joints would try to return to their frozen position again, simply by remembering to breathe; let go. I learned to manage the physical side of the tension by dealing with the habitual bracing in an almost meditative way.

Horses are better at this than we are. They live in the moment. When they do get stuck in a pattern of bracing, they often let go and move on more easily than we do. In this situation, we are simply facilitating the release and allowing them to do what comes naturally when they experience trauma – to shake it out, let it go, move, and continue on in the freedom of living in the moment.

Three horses come to mind immediately when I consider those who have demonstrated the importance of restoring the breath to me.

 

The Free Spirit

Knowing that the abdominal musculature is often compromised in horses with restricted breathing, I addressed the space between the last rib and pelvis with myofascial release, pausing each time I hit a barrier and altering my own breath to encourage the horse to breath into the area of restriction.

Returning to the position where I could “cradle” the diaphragm, I tried to encourage a gentle swaying movement through his body with my hands, and consciously breathed deeply while visualising his breath expanding the space between my hands. Following my lead, he inhaled deeply, exhaled, stretched, and when he returned to a normal rhythm, breathed with more freedom around that clock face.

I was puzzled by the shape of his breathing at first – but then I recalled a passing comment by his owner when discussing his history. Years ago, the horse had struggled with a low grade, but persistent respiratory infection for some time. Suddenly, the restriction made sense.

 

The Extrovert

Horse #2, as the title might suggest, is an outgoing and opinionated fellow, and one of my own. After an injury in his early days left him with impaired breathing, his training and management as a mature horse has been a sharp learning curve for me. I don’t believe the veterinary diagnosis I received gives a full picture of the internal damage, as under pressure his breathing is far more severely impaired than it should be. However, it has allowed me to view my extroverted little horse’s responses and behaviour as a barometer for what he can cope with at different stages of fitness, and what I need to avoid altogether.

Having spent much of his life with me as a paddock ornament and companion horse, his training has been sporadic. After one big break, during which my own riding had shifted to a much more anatomically correct approach, my inner bodyworker was horrified to see excessive tension and sensitivity developing through his abdominal muscles, with a very deep “heave line” appearing. I couldn’t understand why he was so sore, when I was keeping our sessions short and sweet with respect to his athletic capacity.

The only difference was the change in my riding. Due to his restricted breathing at the best of times, his body tended to compensate, recruiting the now-tender muscles to help move air in and out of his lungs more effectively. And here I was, working him more “correctly”, and asking him to engage his abdominal muscles, while relaxing his back.

For most other horses, this work would have been easy enough; I was not asking for much. But for him, it was a double whammy; the muscles doing twice the amount of work in order to cater to his laboured breathing while carrying himself in a balanced manner.

My extrovert had spoken; I needed to do things differently. Now, I am conscious of keeping his underline supple and relaxed, and spend a lot of time working on the muscles that aid in respiration when he is in work. At the first sign of tension, I back off. I increase the load in tiny increments; we can plod along at walk to build cardiovascular fitness providing I avoid the slopes that tip him over the edge, and I am cautious not to be greedy when starting to work in trot, and then canter. Sometimes he offers more than I think his body can handle, but ultimately, his willingness and forwardness tell me what I need to know when combined with what I can feel in the muscles under my hand.

He has other physical problems that require special attention in training, but his breathing is my highest priority. When I take care of his breath, his back is more mobile, he can carry himself comfortably without compromising on balance, and the other problems become less apparent.

 

The Survivor

Horse #3 is a true survivor; a stoic mare who pulled through rehabilitation for a serious episode of laminitis in impressive form. Outwardly, there was little to raise concern. Some residual bracing, some generalised tension over the topline and hindquarters that was easily addressed. Yet, I couldn’t shake the feeling that there was something stagnating under the surface. Drawn to a particular hand position on her face, I asked the owner if she had spent a lot of time lying down during her recovery. She confirmed my suspicions.

Laminitis rehabilitation shows us just how stoic horses can be. These days, many horses do recover, and go on to lead full lives, but not without a huge mental effort to survive. Those who work in this field understand this, and provide as healthy an emotional environment as possible for their charges. But when a horse is recumbent or immobile for a long time, they are unable to deal with stress and trauma in the instinctive way. It becomes frozen into their bodies, because they cannot dissipate it, shake it out, and let it go. It stagnates.

Shortly after I asked the question, the mare suddenly began sneezing, snorting and clearing her airways. When she seemed to have expelled whatever it was that had been hiding inside, she yawned, chewed, and stretched out her neck for several minutes. She seemed softer all over, her ribcage was expanding more, and there was little else to do. Soon, she snapped out of it and began eating, as if to say, “I’m done now.”

 

In closing…

These horses are only three of many, but they each tell us a little about how losing the freedom to breathe easily can affect our horses – not just physically, and not just emotionally, but in a complex web woven between the body and the mind.

As both Denoix and my colleague Georgia described above, it isn’t just the breath that is affected; it can be any aspect of the body/mind relationship. As riders, it is often the effects on the back that we can feel when we are in the saddle.

But my starting point as a therapist always remains the same.

I wait for the breath; the REAL breath. Then, we can begin.

 

© Cat Walker 2014