Equine Focus Ltd

24/11/2025

13/11/2025

Mmmm this made me chuckle … why hadn’t I thought of this before 😆

yep!

03/11/2025

Great few days working with clients in Canterbury. It is good to see the care, dedication and skill that owners and riders put in to produce their horses.
Next Canterbury dates - early Jan 2026

26/10/2025

Amanda Taylor BSc, ITEC, EBW, BHSAI

Equine Musculoskeletal Assessment Rehabilitation exercises and work plans
Body work
Range of therapeutic treatments
Podiatry assessment
Saddle, bridle and bit assessment
Nutrition and diet assessment

I am heading up to Christchurch early November for existing clients and will be making Christchurch a regular clinic area this year to support them.
I will be working with a Sport Med Vet based in Canterbury for diagnostics and treatment as required.

Half day workshops on anatomy and biomechanics for riding groups, pony clubs and body workers need to be pre booked so I can organise time, skeletons etc so please get in early.

www.equinefocus.co.nz

11/10/2025

I am away next week until Monday 20th. Taking a wee holiday 😍
Back to business Tuesday 21st
Amanda

29/09/2025

You see if they are all bay you can sneak another one in, no problem 😆

27/09/2025

⚡️NEWS ⚡️

🐎 EQUINE SPORT THERAPIST 🐎
Amanda Taylor BSc, ITEC, EBW, BHSAI

Treatment Clinic Day QUEENSTOWN
Tuesday 30th September
Limited spaces

🐴 poor performance
🐴 stiffness
🐴 recovery from injury
🐴 return to work plan
🐴 strength and conditioning exercises
🐴 discipline specific training
🐴 myofascial dysfunction
🐴 weakness and asymmetries
🐴 gait analysis
🐴 muscle dysfunction
🐴 back pain
🐴 old horse well being checks
🐴 rider assessment, training and lessons
🐴 vet referrals

Equine Focus Ltd. Equine rehabilitation centre and physical therapy for horses. Facilities include managed yard, all weather arena with Treadlite Surface, safe and sheltered paddocks, jump paddock. Qualified Equine Sport Therapist - massage, PEMF, Equissage, TP therapy, saddle fit, training, retur

27/09/2025

🐎 EQUINE SPORT THERAPIST 🐎
Amanda Taylor BSc, ITEC, EBW, BHSAI

I work with a range of equine professionals to enhance horse health and performance including Sport Med Vets, Orthopaedic Vets, Osteopaths, Farriers, Trainers and Nutritionists.

Areas of scope:
🐴 poor performance
🐴 stiffness
🐴 recovery from injury
🐴 return to work plan
🐴 strength and conditioning exercises
🐴 discipline specific training
🐴 myofascial dysfunction
🐴 weakness and asymmetries
🐴 gait analysis
🐴 muscle dysfunction
🐴 back pain
🐴 old horse well being checks
🐴 rider assessment, training and lessons

📆 2025 / 2026 Season Schedule 📆
Queenstown - Wednesday
Alexandra - Thursday
Dunedin - Friday

www.equinefocus.co.nz

25/09/2025

👀➡️🐴 Did you know your horse’s eyes play a huge role in how polework improves their posture?

When a horse approaches poles, their oculomotor system (the way the eyes track, focus and guide movement) is activated. To safely place their feet, the horse has to:
🔹 Visually scan the poles ahead
🔹 Adjust stride length and rhythm
🔹 Coordinate head, neck, and limb movement with what their eyes are telling them

This “eye-body connection” sharpens proprioception (awareness of where the body is in space). The horse learns to balance their body better, engage the core, and lift through the thoracic sling instead of collapsing on the forehand.

Over time, the repeated oculomotor + postural response builds:
✨ Improved spinal alignment
✨ More lifted, balanced, elastic movement
✨ Stronger topline and core stability

Now - the key here is BALANCED movement, as having improved proprioception means that the horse can coordinate their limbs and body over, around and through obstacles, changes in surface, undulations and speed with ease.

When you’re doing polework, you’re not just training muscles and joints, you’re training the nervous system too!! That’s why it’s such a powerful tool for posture, coordination, and overall wellbeing 👀

22/09/2025

Over the years whilst coaching and mentoring riders the most common debilitating factors for learning, for progress and for producing confident horses has been fear and anxiety. The what ifs. It’s real. It’s normal. It’s our bodies alarm
system to keep us safe. To move forward and resolve fear, the first step is to resolve the why? Once the why is exposed, the fear trigger can be unpacked and replaced with positive experiences to override the fear. Choose your coach, team wisely. “You’ll be right” should not be your mantra. If you are not clear, confident and happy to put your foot in the stirrup, don’t.
Take a moment. Is this fear real? If you can’t settle that heart rate, fill up those lungs with air. Ask yourself “What is your horse getting out of this experience with you?“
Remember why you ride. It should be your happy place 🐴

A common theme I see when coaching riders of every age and stage is the challenge of dealing with nerves and self-doubt. Horses, perhaps more than any other teachers, have a way of drawing out those hidden threads of uncertainty, whether on the ground or in the saddle.

For me, courage did not arrive as a natural gift. It is something I have had to cultivate, and continue to cultivate, especially in moments where the stakes feel high, when the pressure to perform builds, or when my foundations feel shaky and I feel like I have lost control.

As a child I was a very nervous rider. Sensitive by nature, I was hyper-aware, over-analytical, and endlessly imaginative about what could go wrong. I worried about what people might think, how mistakes might follow me, how failure might shape my future. That kind of overthinking left deep impressions on me, and in many ways, those fears have continued to influence how I live my adult life.

For years I battled that inner voice of fear, the one that always seemed to rise up at the worst possible times; before entering a competition arena, mounting a young horse, or stepping into something new. My first strategy was to suppress it; through dissociation, through ego, through plastered-on positivity. When that no longer worked, I turned toward self-help, trauma work, and deeper reflection, and that journey has changed me immeasurably. Still, the thread of fear never vanished completely, and I often wondered why it lingered, and how to be rid of it so I could meet every moment with the conviction and boldness that others seemed to possess.

In recent years, I’ve come to a few realisations that have shifted my relationship with fear. One of the most important is understanding the difference between stress and anxiety, the two main precursors to nervousness. Both are nervous system responses, releasing adrenaline, cortisol, and other survival chemicals into our body when we become triggered or have lost control. Yet they serve different roles.

Stress arises when we encounter something beyond our current skill set, when we lack the tools to manage a situation safely. In that sense, stress is a gift; an alarm system reminding us we need to expand our toolbox. Anxiety, by contrast, is the echo of old wounds, unprocessed traumas resurfacing in the present moment, convincing us we are unsafe even when we have all the tools needed to protect ourself.

Learning to discern between the two is powerful. To pause and ask: Am I safe right now? If the answer is yes, then perhaps the discomfort is not about the present, but about the past asking to be acknowledged. If the answer is no, then the question becomes: What do I need to learn, practise, or acquire to make this situation safe?

These questions change the way we relate to our nerves. The answer is not always to “just get back on the horse.” Sometimes the answer is to step back, understand why we fell, strengthen the gaps, or tend to the unresolved pain that still shapes us.

Through this lens, nervousness itself becomes a kind of teacher. It is not an enemy to be scorned or a flaw to be hidden, but a voice worth listening to with grace. It points to our growing edges, to places where we need more knowledge, more practice, or more healing. It reminds us of our humanness, of the incredible survival system working tirelessly within us to keep us safe, even if it sometimes makes mistakes.

And at times, nervousness is also the voice that reminds us it is okay to pause, to step back when our mind is not in the right headspace. It is okay to soften our expectations, to rest, and to return when we are stronger. Our survival brain is not trying to make our life difficult, it is trying to tell us that it needs support and the only way to give it that support is to listen to what it is trying to say.