Borders Equine bodywork

21/07/2025

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Most horses aren’t resistant, lazy, or unwilling.
They’re confused. Misunderstood. Moving in ways that feel off , but they don’t have the language to say so.
And neither do we, unless we’ve trained our feel to hear it.

Their bodies, just like ours, are built to survive, not to perform in perfect, efficient movement.
So when we ask for engagement, bend, lift, softness, collection…
They often give us tension, compensation, or collapse. Not because they’re “wrong,” but because they don’t know what right feels like.

Their experience of their own body is shaped by pain, pattern, habit, and how we ride them.
Muscles take over where bones don’t align.
Stability vanishes when joints don’t load properly.
A hollow back is just as often a lack of clarity as it is a lack of strength.

That’s where biomechanics comes in.

Biomechanics is about teaching the feel of correctness.
It’s about helping your horse discover how to move in a way that feels good, feels easy, feels right, so that they want to keep doing it.

And that starts with your body.
Because your seat tells the story.
If your pelvis is locked, your horse’s back will be too.
If your shoulders collapse, your horse’s ribcage can’t lift.
If your aids are noise, your horse can’t hear your whisper.

This isn’t about riding “better.” It’s about riding true.
True to how your horse’s body is meant to function.
True to your own alignment, nervous system, and influence.

Because when biomechanics is in place:
You and your horse stop fighting against each other’s imbalances
And start dancing in each other’s freedom.

This is what I teach.
Not quick fixes. Not shortcuts. Not “feel-good” bandaids.
But the actual roadmap from misunderstanding to mastery for both horse and rider.

17/07/2025

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The most common riding flaw I see among today's riders, including pros, is that they look down. To maintain correct balance, we need to ride with our head up and our eyes forward. I see riders posting images all over the internet of them riding that show they are looking down. This might seem a minor issue, but it is not.

When your eyes are down, your horse can feel that your balance is more forward to varying degrees over their horse's forehand. This might seem like a minor issue, but it will put your horse onto their forehand. When your eyes go down, your head that weighs 15 pounds (7 kg) goes down and forward, and usually your shoulders begin to close. All of this together causes a horse to fall forward onto their forehand. The fact that your head is up high at the end of an effective lever, that is your upper body, multiplies the forward weight of your head and shoulders significantly affecting your horse's balance.

The negative effects this has on your horse show up in several ways. It makes both upward and downward transitions more difficult for your horse because this imbalance interferes with your horse's need to engage their hind to reach under themselves. Simply said, when you shift your weight forward in this manner it becomes more difficult for your horse to use its hind. The same is true in lead changes. Rider weight over the forehand, even a little bit, makes all movements that depend on hind engagement more difficult for your horse.

This common riding flaw also affects the rider. Looking down makes it more difficult to develop "feel". To develop "feel" a rider must be centered in unity with their horse's balance. Being forward, ahead of the horse's center of balance creates an obstacle to feeling the horse's balance.

If you look down when riding, just stop it. If you have to look down for a reason, move your eyeballs, not your head. If you keep your eyes and head up and your shoulders open, many improvements will follow. You will sit the canter better because your head and neck position will no longer interfere with your hips swinging to the beats of the canter. "Eyes up". It's simple and fixes a lot of things.

14/07/2025

13/07/2025

So here i am, explaining how to do the scissors from the ground!
We laughed so hard when we realised it had been caught on video 🤣🤣

13/07/2025

Our successful attempt at stopping 4 horses raid the open hay barn without having to use electricity!
Only taken 5 years lol
When you know you know lol

09/07/2025

Taken from a comment on another page. Very insightful and food for thought

Equi-libriam hestipraksis Aps wrote:

I work full time with lameness, and I am realising that injury and pain is not correlated to degree of lameness, especially not in multiple-limb lameness.
My thoughts are, that to show visual lameness, the horse needs to have a few prerequisites in place:
1. There has to be another leg that is less painful for it to make sense for the horse to use energy redistributing it's bodyweight more over that other limb.
2. The horse needs to be sufficient mobile and pain free through it's whole body (thorax, loins), for it to make sense tensing/lifting/hopping/shifting weight from a painful limb through the body to another less painful limb.

Horses will OFTEN instead chose to avoid pain in another way, as limping is too straining in the long run: they will reduce or increase speed, avoid turning in a specific direction (eg unwilling on one rein), and also just show sign of pain - swishing tail, headshaking, pinned ears, bucking, rearing, panicking, being disobedient.

Often, horses with quite large lameness can seem quite ok moving around. A colleague of mine once said : as long as it's limping, the sound limbs are taking the weight, and the horse might actually be totally pain free. But when mentioned issues makes it impossible or too painful to limp/ redistribute - that is when the horse stops limping, but is actually more painful...

07/07/2025

For anybody who is reading this meet George I got George as a five year-old he was a total stress head we couldn’t go anywhere without him booking and being very silly there was times when I felt I needed to sell him as I thought I had over Horse myself someone suggested Borders equine bodywork. I laughed and thought don’t be silly. I’m not into all this fluffing about but the spookiness got worse after a few falls not just me but other people who rode him for me as I had lost my confidence I decided to give it a goal nothing ventured nothing gained. It was a slow process and to be honest I didn’t think it was really working at First and then all of a sudden wow what a difference with proper maintenance it keeps him calm less spooky we still have our moments but nothing is bad and we did our first ridden show yesterday and he got two first and a second and behaved unbelievably good and I think he actually enjoyed his day before I got George. He was like a say a five-year-old he had had seven homes. I have had them three years now, the first 2 1/2 years was totally and honestly I can say regretful but I stuck with it as there was something about this little horse that just needed my help and attention and hard work determination and the right team helping you pays off so all I can say anybody who is having doubts about trying this type of work on your horse, don’t be a fool like I was just get on and do it. I can guarantee you will reap the benefits. Or your horse well and in time you will see a totally different animal. Good luck.

06/07/2025

What an awesome session with this chap. The last session was a bit difficult for him, so we approached this one much softer, no head collar! I wanted a no agenda approach to keep him nice and relaxed, worked a treat.( I would not generally do this for safety reasons. However, I work regularly on this chap and we know how to dance together. Thank you to his lovely owner for trusting me with him he's so precious x

06/07/2025

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Surround yourself with people who love your horse as much as you do 🫶🏻

Tonight we have had ANOTHER breakthrough moment in our Masterson journey - Buie seemed really relaxed this evening so Lorna opted to carry out the session without his headcollar, and amazingly he then relaxed even further into this practice and himself ✨

There is nothing not to love about this practice 💙

01/07/2025

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Today's long read is all about herbs. Even if you’ve never fed your horse herbal supplements, you’re likely to encounter them at feed stores and on the internet, so it’s wise to learn a bit about them. To spare you the effort of sorting through the volumes of information available about herbs, we’ve pulled together some key facts about those most commonly fed to horses.
>>>https://bit.ly/EQGuideToHerbs

01/07/2025

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