Yasmin Stuart Equine Physio

25/04/2025

A question of boundaries -

(Because it's been a while since I put my two cents forward)

I don't think we need any introduction to the obvious size difference between humans and horses, nor the obvious risk imposed when a flight animal takes flight(!)

I think it's fair to say we have all seen it happen and a lot of us have experienced it first hand.

When it comes to the discussion around boundaries, increasingly I feel the word boundaries is becoming synonymous with the trope of [asserting your] dominance -

Yet another expression of the human viewpoint where the human is always the protagonist seeking to show the horse "how to be"

But the question I wish to pose is this -

When we find ourselves in the situation where the horse is displaying undesirable behaviours, how appropriate is it for the horse to have been put in that situation in the first place?

My experience when it comes to boundaries are, it's not that you need to assert your boundaries, it's more that you have exceeded your horse's capabilities to deal with the given situation.

And I think the misunderstanding I see so regularly in the horse world isn't doing too much vs doing too little or

"Real horsemanship vs fantasy horsemanship"

It's that if we really truly are wanting to push forward with ethical training, in line with an honest assessment of behavioural indicators,

Then we have to get very comfortable with regressing the expectation in line with what the horse is capable of in that moment, and then building from there.

This is not passive - it's not doing nothing.

But it also isn't wealding a whip or a flag or chasing your horse round in circles until they stand still, lick and chew.

It's being objective with where your horse is at, where you want to be and finding a reasonable path through to that point.

That there is a whole spectrum available to you and all of it matters, even if you enjoy some elements more than others -

Practicing when to be still, grounding yourself and communing with the horse.

Letting your horse move and moving with them.

Positioning your body to be effective.

Finding timing - when to use a cue, when to wait, when to reduce your ask.

And something that's overlooked: practicing, getting it wrong, forgiving yourself and moving on and equally, doing a little less and seeing where it gets you.

For me, the skill isn't in getting there, the skill is doing it in such a way that the horse actually wants to be there too.

Where you aren't discussing 'boundaries' because your horse is so far under threshold that there really is nothing to talk about.

📸 Olivia Rose Photography

14/04/2025

I don't think there's anything more soul-quenchingly fulfilling than sharing my passion with other people to help them help their horses - I can't believe this is my life ❤️

21/03/2025

I've listened to this conversation with Guided Voice more than a couple of times now and each time I gather a little more wisdom from it ✨️

Shayleigh's insight into animals and their people is other worldly and what an honour it is to be able to grow under the guidance of other people who are always seeking truth too.

I hope you love this episode as much as I do ❤️

Ps. Shayleigh and I are doing a webinar together this Monday 24.03.2025 1pm CST/6pm GMT where we look at the relationship between your horse's physical body relative to the energetics between you both ✨️❤️‍🔥

Train Your Eye, Attune Your Heart, Ask Your Horse:https://www.guided-voice.com/event-details/webinar-with-yasmin-stuartWebsite:https://www.guided-voice.com/T...

18/03/2025

I am SO EXCITED FOR THIS WEBINAR 😍😍

It neatly ties a bow around everything I have been exploring lately - the culmination of observation and intuition for you and your horse ❤️

> Imagine falling in love with the process of becoming.

Becoming who you want to be, for you, with your horse.

> Imagine falling in love with your horse’s body.

Rather than weighed down by worries or fear of what you think you should know, do, or learn.

> Imagine falling in deep love and trust with your intuition

Knowing that you can marry your knowledge with inner knowing and always make a decision for the highest and best good for you and your horse.
Yasmin Stuart Equine Physio and I will be hosting a webinar next Monday, March 24th at 1pm CST (Recording Avail) to help you tune into your heart, train your eye, and ask your horse what the story behind the story is in your partnership.

We would love for you to join us. This event is like nothing I’ve done before. We will be working with one human-horse duo to intimately speak about the mind, body, spirit connection in the *journey of becoming* two hearts, one mind.

So looking forward to this!
Please click this link to sign up for the webinar: https://www.guided-voice.com/event-details/webinar-with-yasmin-stuart

06/03/2025

PSA we are meant to slow down in winter -

Our circadian rhythm is designed to follow the receding daylight.

We are designed to do less, batten down the hatches and retreat, weather the storm and wait for spring.

It is simply not sustainable to grow and grow and grow.

So please, whilst the weather is beautiful and suddenly you have the motivation to be outside doing all the things you didn't want to do in the 400th storm of this winter;

I'd like to invite you to not feel guilty for having done less with your horse -

Because lets be honest and say that the success was in the survival.

Instead I'd like to invite you gently limber up and welcome the possibilities for the year ahead...

(...until winter comes back for round 27485 and then we all hunker down until summer 😂)

📸 Olivia Rose Photography

05/03/2025

I'm beyond excited to be doing a webinar with Shayleigh this month on a topic which I find fascinating and is a huge feature of my day to day practice ❤️

A beautiful example from a conversation I had today about how important it is not to create a story around one piece of information.

The person I was talking with told me that her horse had gotten a PEMF treatment and the practitioner had noted that there was significant activity in the lumbar area which might need to be addressed.

It is easy for our human minds to take this bit of information and think; Is it my saddle, is it the weather, is it the stomach… All of which are all valid questions when considering the health and wellbeing of our horses.

What the horse said:

“I had to p*e.

My bladder was full, my kidneys were full, the fluid was bouncing, creating spasms. I am not in pain currently in that area.”

His person told me that they turned him out immediately after bodywork and he walked about 10 steps into his field and p*ed.

Horses are always reminding us to look at the big picture, their entire bodies, the essence of who they are…always… but especially when we are presented with one stand-out piece of information.

As a side note, this is exactly the type of conversation Yasmin Stuart Equine Physio and I will be having in our webinar on March 24th! It’s going to be so thought provoking, and dynamic and like nothing I’ve ever done before!! I am SO EXCITED and have been manifesting working with her for a while now! To sign up for that webinar you can check out this link: https://www.guided-voice.com/event-details/webinar-with-yasmin-stuart

03/03/2025

Never ending, heart blistering awe ❤️‍🔥✨️

27/02/2025

A couple of weeks ago I had this conversation with one of my most favourites, Holly Barnett.

We talked about:

Burnout and recovery
Boundary setting
How you can be better for your horse by showing up for yourself
Improving your relationship with your horse without learning a new training method
And so much more.

The respect I have for this lady is ENDLESS and the way she gives a piece of herself to the world is just a generosity that I cannot comprehend.

❤️‍🔥✨️

Show Notes:Bridging the Horse Human Relationship Through Breathhttps://www.yasminstuartequinephysio.com/bridging-the-horse-human-connection-through-breathInt...

24/02/2025

The Beauty of Moving Slowly Part 2

Ritual: A routine studded with meaning. Ceremonial, possibly relating to religion.

I think the world is becoming unceremoniously de-ritualised.

We have so much exposure to so many things - we pack so much into a day under the guise of productivity. And we always have someone to compare to, who is doing it better (whatever that means), on the highlight reel that is social media.

It creates this ambient anxiety that you're late to an appointment that doesn't exist.

And it seeps into every aspect of your life.

Suddenly you find yourself not taking a moment to savour the experience, because there is quite simply too much to do.

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At practically every clinic I have delivered, I have said that the thing I want most in the world is to sit and have a cup of tea with my horse and -perhaps- they might appreciate spending time with me too; the parting gift that Falcon left me with an appreciation of.

The time came - Cat arrived and suddenly I could live that dream.

And then I noticed the wave of not enoughness lapping at my feet...

"I should be doing..."

Landmarks that actually don't align with my values, that horses don't care for either.

And the fear of opinions that weren't asked for, proferred by people that don't matter.

And so when those voices creep in, I find myself circling back to the stillness.

Reminding myself that I finally have the thing that I was longing for:

A horse that I can have a cup of tea with.

But better still: she actually wants to hang out with me when I do.

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On the run up to this photoshoot I caught myself feeling stressed -

All the what ifs.

What about the weather?

What if Cat gets bored?

What if my face looks like *that*?

(And other trivial materialisms)

And so, like normal, I arrived early and I sat - needing a little bit of a guide to channel my thoughts, I listened to an InteroBreath replay.

When I blinked my eyes open after I had finished the replay, Cat was a few metres away, snoozing in the sun.

I felt that feeling bubble in my chest - gratitude, overwhelming love and "as if this gets to be my life?!"

I nurtured that feeling while I groomed her - every brush stroke carrying gratitude for her presence in my life:

A ritual.

It was a perfect afternoon -

The pictures were just the cherry on the cake ❤️

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This evening I am thrilled to have Holly Barnett host a webinar on Bridging the Horse Human Connection Through Breath.

Holly is a Breathwork Facilitator with a background in Applied Neuroscience and her work is like no other.

This is a webinar I have been manifesting for MONTHS. I cannot tell you have excited I am for this.

24.02.2025 19:00 GMT

Recording available if you can't make the live ❤️‍🔥✨️

📸 Olivia Rose Photography

22/02/2025

The Beauty in Moving Slowly Part 1

"I am going to make everything around me beautiful - that will be my life" - Elsie de Wolfe

I recently read an article about how the human contribution to the world is becoming increasingly less beautiful.

It compared historic architecture to work produced now; how we have gone from ornate woodwork and stonework to plain, stark and ugly.

The author described their commitment to continuing to contribute to beauty, to create and find joy & pride in that creation. They inferred that the time and attention to detail was the beautiful thing here, alongside the aesthetic result.

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What strikes me in modern equestrianism is the misplaced sense of beauty -

Horses adorned with matching boots and pads and diamante and patent leather, whilst being contorted into anatomy-defying frames.

The beauty of the spirit of the horse stolen, only to be replaced with a performance of degrading acts designed to bolster the human ego.

Horsemanship becoming "fast fashion", where people look down on those that are kind to their horses because kindness = incompetence.

Where people have to justify themselves for moving slowly and selecting welfare-orientated management and training.

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My last clinic of 2024 was in Wales, on the backdrop of some beautiful hills.

Each morning and evening I would walk Tokyo, surrounded by sheep, cows and feral horses.

One morning he and I were followed by the most beautiful feral horse - they had the most beautiful silver eyes that looked into the depths of your soul.

What struck me about the beauty of that horse wasn't so much their looks, but more the fact they were wild.

They were wild and they chose to accompany Tokyo and I for our morning walk.

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My horse is 2.5 years old. To me she is the most perfect creature in existence.

I marvel at her kindness, her curiosity and her naivety.

I want nothing more than for her to live a happy, healthy life both physically and emotionally.

I find it a completely abstract idea that modern horsemanship would see her being prepared to be ridden at 3 years old.

Aside from the physical ramifications:

That her skeleton wont finish developing until she is at least 7 years old

That she needs to have appropriately developed posture before we progressively load by adding a human on top,

There is so much of the world that she needs to experience prior to it even being appropriate to think about riding her?

And that the moving slowly and the mundane, and the enjoying sharing the joys of all of the firsts and her ever developing confidence in the human world...
..is nothing short of exceptionally beautiful?

How can the essence of the horse, in their barest form, not be enough? ❤️

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This month I am thrilled to have Holly Barnett host a webinar on Bridging the Horse Human Connection Through Breath.

Holly is a Breathwork Facilitator with a background in Applied Neuroscience and her work is like no other.

This is a webinar I have been manifesting for MONTHS. I cannot tell you have excited I am for this.

24.02.2025 19:00 GMT

Recording available if you can't make the live ❤️‍🔥✨️

📸 Olivia Rose Photography

19/02/2025

In a time where we are increasingly paying attention to a horse's facial expressions and behaviour, I think it's really important to highlight that context is key -

Behaviours have the potential to mean different things in different contexts and so we need to develop our observational skills to work out what our horses are trying to tell us.

An example of this would be a yawn which indicates, for the want of a better expression, a step down in nervous system state: a step towards homeostasis.

This is obviously perceived as a good thing. However, we need to think about if the nervous system was 'upregulated', what was causing that? And as such, why was the step towards homeostasis triggered?

Of course, seeing a horse in a lovely snoozy bodywork situation doing lovely dreamy yawns is likely to be self evident in context - releasing neuromuscular restriction, leading to the letting go of tension = step towards homeostasis.

But, if that horse has a hard time receiving touch or has a lot of pain, maybe bodywork is stressful and maybe that yawn might come around after some tooing and froing as a way to calm themselves down.

The tone of these two events are different and oftentimes you will be able to see it.

Some horses yawn when presented with the bridle. This may have initially occured because they associated the bridle with discomfort - whether overt because the bridle didn't fit, or because the bridle became a predictor for uncomfortable training.

Then perhaps that became a learned behaviour because the horse practiced that every time the bridle was presented.

If a horse is exposed to a stressful training situation (e.g. high pressure exerted on the line or being asked to do things their body doesn't have the capacity to do or not understanding the ask), the horse might yawn when the pressure is taken away.

Equally some horses, after considerate and systematic training steps, might yawn when they are given space to process. This might go with positive changes in posture - indicating a reduction in neuromuscular tension.

I have seen some horses learn that the pressure goes away when they yawn and so they might offer yawns more readily, to reduce the pressure.

In all of these scenarios, the yawn in and of itself isn't a bad or good thing. It's a healthy mechanism.

We just need to look at the events that occured before the yawn to determine the reason and adjust our behaviour accordingly.

This is not an exhaustive list of why your horse might yawn, but it is an invitation to be more observant ❤️

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This month I am thrilled to have Holly Barnett host a webinar on Bridging the Horse Human Connection Through Breath.

Holly is a Breathwork Facilitator with a background in Applied Neuroscience and her work is like no other.

This is a webinar I have been manifesting for MONTHS. I cannot tell you have excited I am for this.

24.02.2025 19:00 GMT

Recording available if you can't make the live ❤️‍🔥✨️

17/02/2025

The energetics of what I offer to the world are different when I start my day well.

I thrive off being able to have a morning coffee whilst I read in bed, followed by a long walk with Tokyo and then some yoga.

(The voice at the back of my head that I'm still negotiating with eye-rolled at that entire opening line but life does continue)

It carves out a gap between the stimulus and the response - giving me space to breathe.

And then, life is so very irregular that compromises need to be made - there is always a lot to do and rarely the time and space to complete all of it.

This looks like determining absolute necessities (walking Tokyo) vs 'in an ideal world' (yoga), all whilst running an in-person and online business.

And these ebb and flow depending on the day.

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We're having a lot of work done on the house - lots of people coming and going, loud noises, inconsistent routines.

I noticed that Tokyo was getting increasingly anxious - following me from one room to another, not settling, excessively panting...

I love him, and it upsets me that he's not okay, and then also the work on the house needs to be done. Not an easy situation to navigate.

So we made a plan - we created a safe space in the house where the variables didnt change, gave him things to do that overshadowed the noise (usually some chew time) and tried to make it so he could be out of the house when particularly loud things were happening.

But I also took a look at myself -

How was I contributing to the struggle, outside of the obvious?

And it occured to me - he was always worse when I was frenetic...

On the days where lots of things were happening, perhaps I hadn't made time for the things that set me up for the day. Maybe I guzzled my coffee and skipped the yoga.

My mind secretly hopping to the next job on the to do list, before finishing the current task.

Creating an ambient anxiety - too much to do, not enough hours to do it.

I reconciled that some days I couldnt do the things that gave me my space, could I still go through that to do list with more mindfulness?

Less frenzy?

And lo and behold, he settled down...

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I know that for most of us, we give our animals everything they need -

Veterinary care? Yep.
Hoof care? Yep.
Bodywork? Yep.
The list is exhaustive.

But how many of us actually give to ourselves, to show up better for them?

Giving yourself the room to be a person your horse feels safe to be around?

Its a conversation I have with myself daily ❤️

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This month I am thrilled to have Holly Barnett host a webinar on Bridging the Horse Human Connection Through Breath.

Holly is a Breathwork Facilitator with a background in Applied Neuroscience and her work is like no other.

This is a webinar I have been manifesting for MONTHS. I cannot tell you have excited I am for this.

24.02.2025 19:00 GMT

Recording available if you can't make the live ❤️‍🔥✨️

10/02/2025

There is an indescribable feeling when you take ownership of your breath and feel the world come into sync around you. For me, the most profound thing about this is how our horses respond - a sense of welcoming - and suddenly everything feels still.

Breathwork has changed my relationship with myself and the life that happens around me.

It's created the gap between the stimulus and the response, giving me time to read around myself, organise my thoughts and act accordingly.

But not only that, breathwork has transformed the way I show up with the horses, the way I connect to them, the way I work and the way I ride.

It's given me the power to see and feel - a rich and beautiful landscape full of bewildering possibilities and honestly, I think everyone should do it.

She has been described as the Queen of Breathwork and my goodness I think that is true, this month I am thrilled to have Holly Barnett host a webinar on Bridging the Horse Human Connection Through Breath.

Holly is a Breathwork Facilitator with a background in Applied Neuroscience and her work is like no other.

This is a webinar I have been manifesting for MONTHS. I cannot tell you have excited I am for this.

24.02.2025 19:00 GMT ❤️‍🔥✨️

05/02/2025

"We never really encounter the world, all we experience is our own nervous system" - Connor Beaton via Chris Williamson

I read this statement the other week and it's been on my mind ever since -

We are the product of our lived experiences and our lived experiences adapt our physiology.

But then our physiology goes on to influence our lived experiences -

Both in the moment, via sensory neurons and a cascade of hormones & neurotransmitters, and after the moment - through memory and association, which triggers emotion...

Which influences our physiology -

A never ending cycle.

The exact same can be said for horses and, for me, this is the complicated bit around rehabilitation.

More and more, I struggle to separate physical rehabilitation and emotional rehabilitation - because I haven't met a horse with a physical problem that hasn't also manifested emotionally.

So when we have a diagnosis, it's not simply the pain issue we are looking at - it is the cascade of events that unfolded to build the pain issue.

It's the mental exhaustion after being repetitively asked to do something you don't quite understand.

It's the feeling when your muscles start to ache, but no one can see that you're fatiguing.

It's the realisation that, no matter how many conflict behaviours you have displayed, no one is listening to what you have to say.

And whilst we can do things to modulate pain, and we can work through movement plans to alleviate the physical conflict in the body, we can't click our fingers and take away the horse's association.

It's this that I find to be the most difficult thing about rehabilitation - because you're working with the nervous system and you're rewriting everything that came before the diagnosis.

It's why I don't do '12 week rehab plans' and it's why I teach people to read their horse's behaviour before we look at biomechanics.

Because if you can catch the behaviour, you can catch the issue before it becomes an issue - both mentally and physically ❤️

📸 Olivia Rose Photography

03/02/2025

Your horse's head and neck position directly influences their ability to breathe(!)

I appreciate that sounds obvious, but I think there are a lot of people who don't realise that this doesn't just refer to hyperflexion -

It refers to head and neck positions that a lot of training methods adopt, whether intentionally or not.

Cehak et al. (2010) found that the diameter of the horse's pharynx decreases when their head is in a flexed position, maximally so when their head is flexed and neck elevated.

They found that their pharyngeal diameter was at its largest when their head was extended and at a midway height.

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You can try this yourself -

Drop your chin to your chest and inhale - how easy do you find it? Not very, I expect.

Now keep your chin tucked while you raise your eyes to the sky and inhale - I bet that feels even more difficult?

And then bring your nose to centre, look straight forward and inhale - notice how this feels the easiest?

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I don't want to demonise movement, because healthy movement is access to all of it;

We have elasticity in these structures for a purpose; to support range of motion and adapt to locomotion. So decreasing and increasing pharyngeal diameter is an important function as part of this.

But prolonged periods of time spent with reduced pharyngeal diameter is going to be making life very difficult for your horse.

I'd really like to think that we are at the point where we can acknowledge that rollkur and their respective variants are not in any way appropriate methods of training.

But there are frames that fly under the radar, where perhaps the horse is more flexed at the poll than the rider appreciates -

Rather than shame, maybe what we can do is use the images as a guide - what one does your horse mostly look like when you train?

Then you can pair that with recognising their muscular development,

And then with that you can determine whether you are helping your horse... or not.

And if you realise you aren't helping, now you can choose to do something different!

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Cehak, A., Rohn, K., Barton, A. K., Stadler, P., & Ohnesorge, B. (2010). Effect of head and neck position on pharyngeal diameter in horses. Veterinary Radiology & Ultrasound, 51(5), 491-497.

29/01/2025

Modern Centaurian ✨️

A horse partnership built upon a combination of evidence, intuition and feel to cultivate a horse's physical and emotional wellbeing.

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I've wanted to do this for such a long time and the reason behind it isn't actually horse-related.

A number of years ago, I suddenly found myself to be freed of a not very healthy relationship. I was sat in the ashes of what once was, and I had absolutely no idea of who I was anymore.

I didn’t know what I liked or disliked. I no longer had any sense of self.

Thankfully, we lived in a time where social media was blossoming and I had the fortune of stumbling across some pages that left a bread crumb trail for me to find myself again - starting with appreciating the small things, curating healthier daily habits and trying new things on a very small, sustainable scale.

I would say that this changed my life and I am very grateful.

This also trickled over to my work with the horses - unconditional permission to explore everywhere and find what resonated for me and most importantly, what resonated with the horse.

I also observed the - forgive me - toxic side of horsemanship. Where people had lost their sense of self and lost their north star, no longer being able to see their own horse -

Creating a stifling cycle of frustration because the horse's wellbeing and the horse/human partnership where being compromised at the hands of aspirations decided by dogmatic practices.

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Ultimately for me, whilst I care about people, I really care about the horse.

And with this I want to empower you - to filter in research, in a way which grows corn, and also to help you navigate that appropriately for your own horse whilst developing your own feel and trusting your intuition.

And I wanted this resource to be free.

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But what to call it??

Not to be disrespectful, but the term 'equestrian' didn't really encapsulate what I was feeling. It felt clinical and performance based.

I wanted to capture that feeling where you are truly at one with your horse, transcending performance and prizes, becoming one entity.

The thing that I think a lot of people are searching for.

And I happened across 'centaur' and then 'centaurian', first seen through Emily Frost's work: Centaurian Artistry.

Centaurian felt right.

But I also wanted to capture progression - both in our scientific understanding of the horse and our ability to apply this knowledge.

Signing the contract that if we are to do right by ourselves and our horses, the learning never stops but that learning is irrelevant if we don't apply it.

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And so here it is - a free weekly email with small 'how to' videos, so you can go on to explore the fringes of your relationship with your horse and find out who you are.

You also get an insight into what I've been reading, watching and listening to - with no other meaning behind it than to simply fuel your eternal exploration.

You can sign up via my website ❤️