Equitouch Bodywork & Rehab, LLC

I LOVE getting updates from my client’s on how their horse’s are afterwards, here are some updates from two this week 🤩

Why Hands-On Massage Is the Best Way to Care for Sore Muscles

I often see people posting about horses with sore muscles, tight backs, muscle knots or restricted movement. They’ve had the chiropractor out, tried PEMF, red light, KT tape and other therapies—and the horse is still sore.

My question is: why are we doing everything we can think of to help the horse feel better except the one thing that directly puts skilled hands on those sore, tight muscles?

Other therapies are not stand-ins or substitutes for massage. They do different things and provide different types of input to the body.

Massage works directly with the skin, fascia and muscles. An equine massage therapist uses their hands to feel differences in tissue tone, tension, tenderness, mobility and response, and then adjusts the work according to what they find.

That ability to feel and respond to the tissue in real time is one of the things that makes hands-on massage so valuable.

Massage applies compression, stretch, shear and movement to soft tissue. These mechanical forces affect circulation and fluid movement, tissue mobility, muscle tone, sensory receptors and the nervous system.

And fascia is an important part of this.

Fascia isn’t simply wrapping around the muscles. It is a continuous, highly innervated connective-tissue system that surrounds, connects and runs through muscles and other structures throughout the body. Its cells and sensory receptors respond to mechanical input.

When we compress, stretch and shear these tissues, that mechanical information is detected by the tissue and the nervous system. At the cellular level, mechanical forces are converted into biological signals through mechanotransduction, influencing how cells respond to their environment.

So massage isn’t simply “rubbing out knots.”

It is mechanical, neurological and biological input.

Massage helps restore comfortable movement

Muscles don’t work independently. They function as part of an interconnected system involving fascia, tendons, joints, nerves and the rest of the body.

When an area becomes sore, tight, fatigued or restricted, the horse changes how they use their body. Other muscles begin doing more work, movement patterns change and compensation develops.

Massage reduces excessive muscular tension, improves soft-tissue mobility and range of motion, and helps restore more comfortable, efficient movement.

Massage supports recovery from exercise

Exercise places normal stress on muscle and connective tissue. Recovery is when the body repairs, adapts and becomes stronger.

Massage supports that recovery by reducing soreness and excessive muscle tension, improving circulation and tissue mobility, and helping restore comfortable movement.

Regular hands-on work also gives us an opportunity to notice changes in the horse’s tissues before they become obvious movement problems. A therapist who knows a horse well can often feel that something has changed long before it becomes dramatic enough to see.

Healthy muscles matter to healthy tendons

Muscles and tendons work together.

Tendons transmit the force generated by muscles to bone. If a muscle is fatigued, painful, excessively tense or functioning poorly, the way force travels through the limb changes.

Massage doesn’t make a horse injury-proof, but maintaining healthy, functional muscles and normal movement helps the entire musculoskeletal system handle load more effectively.

Massage communicates with the nervous system

This is a huge part of massage that was often overlooked in older explanations of how it works.

Skin, fascia, muscles, tendons and joints are packed with sensory receptors constantly sending information to the nervous system about pressure, stretch, tension, position and movement.

Every time we put our hands on a horse, we are providing sensory information.

Different pressures, speeds, directions and techniques create different input. That input affects muscle tone, proprioception, body awareness, movement and pain processing.

We aren’t just working on tissue. We’re communicating with the nervous system through tissue.

This is also why harder isn’t necessarily better. Effective massage isn’t about using enough force to overpower a tight muscle. It’s about giving the body the right input to change its response.

Massage improves circulation and fluid movement

Compression and release physically affect local circulation and the movement of fluid through soft tissues.

Blood flow delivers oxygen and nutrients. Normal fluid exchange is essential to the environment in which cells live and function.

Massage doesn’t need outdated explanations about “flushing toxins” to explain why this matters. Living tissues depend on circulation, hydration and fluid exchange, and mechanical pressure influences all three.

Massage also affects the horse’s state

Massage isn’t only about muscles.

Touch and pressure provide continuous sensory input to the nervous system and can shift autonomic activity toward the parasympathetic state associated with rest, digestion and recovery.

You can often watch this happen during a massage session.

Breathing slows. The head lowers. Muscle tone changes. The eyes soften. Gut sounds increase. The horse begins to settle.

For horses that are anxious, reactive, heavily worked or recovering, helping the nervous system move out of a constantly heightened state is an important part of supporting the whole body.

And this is why hands matter

We have more therapeutic technology available to us than ever before, and many of those tools are extremely useful.

But they don’t replace skilled hands.

Hands can feel the tissue. They can detect subtle differences from one side of the body to the other. They can feel how one area responds and immediately change pressure, direction, speed or technique. They can follow tension from one structure into another and recognize when the horse’s response says to continue, change approach or stop.

Massage is one of the most effective muscle and myofascial therapies available, and it can be adapted to the individual horse and what their body needs that day.

It isn’t the answer to every problem. Persistent or unexplained soreness can be a sign of an underlying veterinary, dental, hoof, saddle, training or biomechanical problem that needs to be addressed.

But when a horse has sore, tight, fatigued or poorly functioning muscles, it makes very little sense to do everything except work directly with those tissues.

Massage isn’t something we should think about only after a horse becomes sore.

Hands-on soft-tissue care deserves to be a regular part of keeping horses comfortable, functional and performing at their best.

https://koperequine.com/better-muscle-balance-supports-better-tendon-health/

We may have the same “I’m a chestnut mare” expression in our before & after photo, but we also have a much less hollow face afterwards and less wrinkling above the eyes!
Booking January!

Clients! I am now booking January, please reach out in advance for appointments and please cancel within 48 hours before an appointment to avoid a fee!
I’m trying my best to keep everyone on a schedule but it doesn’t work if people reach out a week before wanting an appointment 😅

This 🙌🙌🙌

⚠️ This post may ruffle a few feathers, but it needs to be said.

I was talking with one of my students this morning about something that I think frustrates a lot of equine bodyworkers.

We can work with a horse multiple times. The owner sees the changes, praises the results, and tells us how much better the horse is moving or behaving.

Then suddenly, the horse presents with something new.

And instead of calling the bodyworker who already knows that horse’s body, movement patterns, restrictions, compensation patterns, and history, sometimes the bodyworker is completely left out of the conversation.

Why?

Let me make something VERY clear: I am not saying don't call your veterinarian.

⭐️ Veterinarians are absolutely necessary. They diagnose, treat disease and injury, prescribe medications, perform procedures, and handle things that are completely outside a bodyworker's scope of practice.⭐️

⭐️There are also veterinarians who have pursued extensive additional education in sports medicine, rehabilitation, and lameness, and I have tremendous respect for professionals who continue expanding their knowledge.⭐️

But different professionals bring different pieces to the puzzle.

You call your farrier for the feet.

You call your veterinarian for medical diagnosis and treatment.

You call your chiropractor for chiropractic care.

So why wouldn't you also call your qualified bodyworker when something changes in the horse's movement or body?

‼️A knowledgeable bodyworker isn't there to replace your veterinarian or diagnose a medical condition.‼️

‼️We ARE there to recognize changes in movement, muscle tension, asymmetry, compensation patterns, and how the horse's body feels compared with previous visits‼️

Sometimes what we see tells us, "I can work with this."

Sometimes it tells us, "This horse needs a veterinarian."

Sometimes it tells us, "We need the vet, farrier, trainer, and bodyworker communicating with each other."

THAT is how it should work.

The conversation this morning came from a situation involving one of my student's clients. The horse received an SI injection. Later, I was sent a video, and there were still movement concerns that appeared to involve the stifle area. Yet the owner didn't want the bodyworker involved because they had been told the horse was fine.

And that's what bothers me.

Not because I believe a bodyworker's opinion should override a veterinarian's diagnosis—it shouldn't.

It's because "the horse has been medically evaluated" and "the horse is moving normally" aren't necessarily the same conversation.

Bodywork is not just fluffy relaxation and making a horse feel good for an afternoon.

When properly trained and working within our scope, bodyworkers can be an important part of the horse's team.

We watch movement.

We feel changes.

We recognize compensation.

We follow patterns over time.

And because we may see the same horse repeatedly, sometimes we notice when something simply isn't moving or feeling the way it normally does.

I've spent years teaching my students to ask WHY.

🐎 Why is the horse compensating?

🐎 Why did this muscle change?

🐎 Why did the movement change?

🐎 What changed somewhere else in the body?

And most importantly—when is this something we can appropriately address, and when does this horse need to be referred to another professional?

So my question isn't, "Why call the vet?"
My question is:

Why do we call the vet for every little concern? When you can call the farrier for feet, chiropractic for adjustments and Massage Therapist/bodyworker for body compensation?

Why aren't we using the entire team?
Your veterinarian, farrier, bodyworker, chiropractor, trainer, saddle fitter, and other qualified professionals shouldn't have to compete with one another.

We should be communicating and putting the HORSE first.

FYI, most of my clients even they tell me that they rather do or communicate with me firat, because I safe them money from the vet coming out all the time ( when it pretains to biomechanics) . If I don't think I can help , guess what I tell them to contact the vet.

Hopefully, this makes sense. It's hard to put into words .

And yes... we'll talk about SI injections another day. 😉🐴

Today was a busy day working at the CT Dressage Academy with a student shadowing me! Here are some before and afters of today!
For those who weren’t done today, I am coming back don’t worry! I’m limited on the amount I can do in one day at the moment!

Catching up on some before & after photos! Featuring Suzy who became quite longer after her session and we worked on her posture to help with her negatively angled spine.

With the welcomed addition of Dr Carol Shwetz DVM to this work I’ve been very quiet on the pelvic collapse front….not because there hasn’t been work happening but because joining all the dots together with the breadcrumbs horses bodies leave us has become a recognisable pattern. One that has formed quite the data set for collecting information and recognising patterns. With the formation of Etica Equine Charitable Trust to under take this mammoth task in collating the data. We are lucky to have two academics on the board of trustees to oversee this study.

Organising all the data points and understanding what might be happening at what point is a massive task! The changes we are seeing from hooves to lumbar and up the connections of soft tissues is truely quiet the chain of action and reaction. Compensation seems to play a huge role in the way the body adapts to such a mechanical failure of the skeletal system. The changes to soft tissues are notable and obvious in dissection.

I value working as part of a team so much because this work is truely overwhelming at times. If you follow me on patreon, I’ve been very honest about the toll of the work. This is going to take a community of collaboration. For more information on our pelvic study, check out the Etica website www.eticaequine.com

I have done an updated video on patreon discussing some of the new discussions happening around what the bones are recording and how dissections are leading the conversations.

https://www.patreon.com/Becks_nairn/posts/pelvic-collapse-169186730

Clients, I’m officially on maternity leave 🤱🏻! Please give me extra time to get back to you, but don’t hesitate to reach out if you need anything!
I’m currently booking November and on for equines and as of now all June canine appointments are staying as is!