The lovely Danke
I thought I would follow up with my own observations of the experience with Danke and the massage therapist.
As you may recall (and if you missed it you can read about it here) Danke was not OK with having Heather standing on the hay bale while she worked on her croup area. This was the first time she had attempted to work with her like this. In the past if Danke needed to move Heather would just stay with her till she settled. But, since Danke is so tall (17+hands) it was [more...]
The author, Heather Davis, with Cheyenne
By Heather Davis
I am a certified equine “massage” therapist, applying principles of touch to encourage horses to release old neuromuscular strain patterns and relearn how to exist without previously held pain and resistance. Much of my work is informed by the work of Ida Rolf (known as “Rolfing” or Structural Integration), osteopathy, shiatsu, and myofascial release. Many horses, when asked to “let go” of old tension and memory stored within the body’s vastly intelligent network of innervated structural soft tissue, will take some time to relax into the willingness to release. [more...]
About a month ago I posted about a video I’d seen called Equine Massage for Performance Horses. I was so impressed with it that I decided that I needed to learn more. So this past weekend (October 17-18, 2009) I attended a 2-day clinic with Jim Masterson himself teaching his approach which he calls Integrated Equine Body Work. It is ‘integrated’ because there are elements from a variety of modalities of body work incorporated into his method.
The clinic was great! Not only did I learn a lot, but Jim and his wife Conley are just wonderfully [more...]
