Hi my name is Ronnie from equine voices and we have Bern Easterford who is a Masterson Method practitioner, he also works with Emmett for horses and acupoint therapy but he has many more skills, so I'm good to let Bern explain How he got into horses, what he did prior to horses and what drew him to work with these different modules, different methods.
So without further ado, I'm going to bring in Bern Just introduce yourself first and just say what it is that you actually do and then we'll talk about how you got into horses in the first place and why you decided to work with them.
Okay, so I'm Bern and I'm essentially a equine body worker so I massage arch horses or I try and make them more comfortable and release their muscles and re-energize their nervous system and just generally try to make them feel a lot better than they were feeling earlier.
How am I got into horses, I've been a bodyworker for eight to nine years and I'm certified in Masterson method and Emmett for horses and I've done April Battles was skeleton unwinding, completed acupressure course and I just been given approval for McLaughlin scar tissue release, so it's all sorts of good stuff So what can I tell you about.
Did you have horses before you started working with them.
The answer and that one is, I got into horses quite late in life. Hadn't got a horse but a friend at work when I was working those days, said come along to the stables and ride with me so I did and I liked it a lot and then just rode off and on for a couple of years. Then when Nicole and I got together we went down to Wales I think it was and she had never ridden a horse before and wanted to ride.
We went along to this farm house, were there was a was a farmer with a couple of horses and he took us onto the beach and I was okay. Nicola was screaming, I came back and said, oh, I'd really liked to ride more horses, so wouldn't had some lessons and went on holiday to Ireland. Nick went by herself on one occasion that I went with her and we did a bit of jumping, oh before that actually I was on the phone.
I used to work in computers, designing computer systems and developing them and I got stuck on the telephone during the holiday. Afterwards I went to meet Nicola and she rushed up to me in tears saying, I love this horse, I want this horse ,so that's when we acquired a first horse that was Autumn, who is an Irish drive cross and a really lovely go couldn't ask for a nicer horse.
But that story had a sort of happy ending and that we got autumn but it was a bit of a mishap in between because Nick had to jumping lesson on Autumn and I was also jumping on a much bigger boy and Nick said to me, would you like to just try autumn over the jumps, just to make sure everything was okay, so we swapped horses and I went over the jumps quite nicely but because the horse that I'd been riding that Nicola was now, riding was all about, just had a hand in a half bigger than autumn.
So when she went to do the jump, she missalined it completely and sat down as this other horses back came up and it dumped her and she fell on her tailbone. She was in absolute agony and the next day we had a plan to go and ride out on the beach and she wanted to try autumn on the road. So she wrote the entire ride in a half seat because she couldn't sit down.
We decided that as autumn was so good and well-behaved, and let her do that, then we'd buy her and I had to go and see the owner of the stables who is a Irishman and he made me go into the parlor and sit down and it was like asking for his hand in marriage all over again. So then we had Nick with a horse and me without a horse.
A year later it was decided that I could have a horse I got my boy Yolo and we been like that for a while which was good so that's how basically I got into riding We did some distance riding for a while so once a fortnight we did a ride, which was maybe between 12 and 20 miles. It was like proper endurance competitions, except we were riding in a club, it was practice for endurance competitions.
So we were all very competitive and riding to times and it was all very serious, but very good fun so where did we go from there? Nick's horse autumn that we brought back from Ireland basically had DJ D of the coffin bone joints and the vet came out and said, oh she'd only ever ride in a straight line on soft ground and that's when we actually took her shoes off, did a lot of research on the internet in those days.
And we decided to go the other route, which was to take the shoes off and rehab her.
Which we did and she came really good because she was then doing insurance, getting first and second prize or places in local dressage tests, so that worked really well but she started tripping a bit and we decided to retire her and we had a tested for all sorts because she wasn't quite right and she developed Cushing's I got very close she developed a lot of abscesses in the feet and one occasion she got, when I'm abscess the left four and an abscess in the left hind at the same and I said to
her, okay, I'm with you and I'll be with you through to the end but during this period when she had Cushings We had a charted physio th the horses and she was very open-minded and had been to Japan and studied in Japan energy type massage techniques and always interested in watching her and she showed me a few moves.
I said I'd really like to be able to do this and she said well I'll teach you, so I had a year's one-on-one tuition with the physio, which was absolutely brilliant and I really loved it.
That's amazing and that's an opportunity that doesn't always come along. No, I know she's very, very good physio, human as well as horses and I said, I really like doing this but I'm stuck because I can only do this on our horses, can't do it on anyone else's horses and she said well I'll teach you, maybe we'll construct a training course but in the end she was always so busy.
That she never got around to it so I needed to do something because I now wanted to work with horses because I could see the results and the reactions of the horses. So that's when I started looking on the internet, stop me if I'm being incredibly boring. No, I'm just writing little notes so I can ask you questions as we go along the person, I don't want interrupt you, go ahead.
I started looking on the internet for what I could do in terms of a massage therapy and came across some pretty weird science come and join people with a like-mindedness and some pretty weird stuff going on and I thought no I can't do this and then by chance, I happened upon the masters and sight and Jim is a pretty normal guy, so I went along to the standard weekend, thought this is good and quite liked it and like the reactions of the horses and particularly liked how straightforward it
seemed, so decided to go down the certification route, which was quite hard because I had the world's best mentor, Diane and she was so hard, it was untrue.
I sent a case study to her and she was in Switzerland and she would send me my case study back with all sorts of red lines through it and questions, have you looked at this on the internet, have you looked up this word, what would you do in these situations and it was brilliant because it was really tough and I was so scared about it but it taught me a lot.
They're usually the best teachers aren't, they're the ones that push you, the ones that stretch you and make you think more and look into it a bit deeper, not just scratching the surface, you're working for it, yeah they can be the best teachers.
So I certified as a masters and practitioner and worked primarily in Masterson for a long time actually but during that time I happened upon a lady called April battles who now on Facebook is April Love What attracted me to April was that she really focuses on posture rather than confirmation. A lot of people look at a horse and say it's got to have confirmation.
Whereas in fact, that horse has just got bad posture, so you can use various techniques to realign the posture of the horse and what was thought to be bad confirmation is actually not and she's actually a very lovely lady because if I see one of her posts and share it across to my Facebook page, Bless her, she actually drops me aline and says, thank you for sharing that and that's really nice to hear you, aren't many people that do that not many professionals.
Lots of very useful techniques and very unusual techniques, so I would recommend that people should actually look her up and look at her, she will also YouTube videos.
We met when you were doing your training down at Sam's, my dear friend Sam where I keep my horse and you did some practice on Toots so that's how we first met and then you had a weekend, I don't know how many years later that was, with Jean Whitbread and she did a sacred weekend or a day?
I can't remember now, I met Jean and it came down to see you in Nick and I remember Nicholas cooking is amazing and that's still stays with me, years later, her cooking was like, oh wow it's just, it's right up there.
I'll tell her that you,
oh, it's lovely and Jane McCloud, who was on the same weekend, we're back in touch and it's funny how things go around. Cause I didn't know it before then, but we sort of said hello on Facebook and we've just. Got in touch. I think synchronicities, we both needed some support for lots of reasons and we just got in touch with each other and we've just been a boost we've been pushing each other, which is brilliant.
It's because of her actually, and other people that I'm doing this because she pushed me take it out and say what I do and stop hiding about it, I don't hide to my clients but just stop hiding. Yeah, that's another subject anyway, so getting back to the masses and so you did the Masterson
In that vein, I bumped in to Jean on the final module of my Emmett for horses, she was just doing a refresher day. She walked in and I said, hello Jean.
The whole world is a small world, even to the point of the, this side of the world I've discovered and it's a, quite a small world. So now you're a qualified Masterson in method practitioner and then you started to do Emmett.
No before that I did April Battles course. Actually that was an interesting thing because during that course, that's the first and only time ever that I've been upset working on a horse and I physically felt sick as I approached this horse and subsequently, we believe that horse got a broken leg but that's the only time I've actually felt physically really bad and that was before I laid hands on the horse, was just the vibe coming off.
After that I wanted to do something okay with most isn't you lay hands on and you do the bladder Meridian and you're placing your hands in appropriate positions but I always felt that actually I could have just laid my hands on the horse in a lot of places and got reaction, nicola will go and stand next to a horse and put hand on horse and the horse will release and whatever, so I wanted to do something that was a little bit more focused in terms of my movements, does that make sense?
Yes, I think so yeah.
Many years ago I did Akedo over as a martial art and so you're working with pressure points and nerve centers from whatever and if you had it wrong it's disastrous because you get beaten to a pulp that you have to be accurate and when you're going okay.
So I wanted a degree of accuracy in terms of where I was placing my hands so I was interested in traditional Chinese medicine and well I like to do acupuncture but you can't do acupuncture in this country on horses, unless you're qualified for that.
You can do acupuncture on humans without any qualifications, So the next best thing was to do a course of acupressure but horses and did it cause a business called Joe Rose and the lady who Lucy Yeomans taught me the basics of acupressure and also onto an advanced course and I still use bits and pieces of that now where I'm working with horses, because it was interesting to know which points on the meridians affected which organs, so I sort of settled on that for a few more years and in the last
I don't know, a year or so 18 months, two years, I was getting itchy feet again and wanting to learn something else but I wasn't sure what I wanted to learn. I looked at stress point therapies, that kind of stuff and in looking at that I happened across upon Emmett the horses and well, you know, I can go along to a taster day, a one day course or two day course can't remember now and just see what it's about.
So I want as long and I'm quite skeptical about things because I like to know that things work rather than just seeing releases
There's nothing wrong with that, everybody's different and that's not a negative, it's a positive because that's how your mind works and that's how you work, so this there's nothing wrong with that at all.
So I went along and Emmet it's quite interesting because in all of the modules, all of the practicals, you're taught two human and eight horse moves. The philosophy behind that is most of the problems with the horses are caused by imbalances in the rider so if you can correct the rider's balance and muscular alignment, then you're doing the horse a great service.
In the session that I was having with Tony we got to do a human move and he said grip my hand and I did and he said, is that all you've got because my grid was not very good because I call it lost the arthritis in the hands and I said, yeah that's all I can do, he said don't worry I can fix that so he then treated me for about five minutes at the end of the five minutes I was able to make a fist with both hands, which I hadn't been able to do for about three years.
I kind of thought, ah, there's got to be something to this because if I feel better after the treatment and it's improved the state of my hands, then maybe it's doing the same thing for the horses.
So you felt the benefit and you saw the benefit.
Yeah, we went outside actually to treat some horses and there was a guy there that had dislocated his shoulder and had physio for two or three weeks with no improvement and could only raise his arm up to his shoulder and Tony went oh, I can fix that as well, I did a couple of quick moves and the guy could raise his arm up above his head, basically.
I thought, yeah, there must be something to this, just pick up random people and solve their problems, then there's got to be something to it after all for the horses.
So that grabs your attention big time.
It did and then did the certification course and certified, between a year and two years ago, something like and all this time that I was training in Emmett, which was was very friendly and very relaxed and we focused on the horses who actually responded incredibly well but I always said, I really liked working with horses, but I don't think I'd want to work with people because horses, what you see is what you get basically with people like carry quite a lot of baggage. Yeah oh yeah, we all do.
Over the course of certified for horses and doing the human moves in each module as part of it I began to think actually, I quite like doing this and I got to practice on a few neighbors and friends and the results seem to be very good so various people that I met doing emmet were instructing me and whatever convinced me that I should do the Emmet for people, the Emtek course. So I'm now halfway through Emtek not changing my lesions from horses to people but just expanding it.
That'll be brilliant, if you go to see a client and their horse, you can use that skill and say, if I just have a little quick look at you and then you could help them out and explain a view, point is out and then you've got two clients for the price one.
The horse will be very pleased that you've done that for the human and the human will be very pleased that you've done that for the horse and there'll be both hopefully in a similar place, which will be, that's a lovely place to start with somebody.
Yeah I re I'm really enjoying it, it's actually quite hard work for me working with people, not the mental side but it's actually the physical side. The latest thing is McGlocklin which is also very interesting.
You've just qualified in that haven't you.
Yes.
Congratulations, well to deserved
The ultimate aim is assuming I qualify on humans with Emmett is then to do scar tissue release on humans. Scar tissue can cause all sorts of problems physically and mentally so being able to release the scar tissue can do all sorts of things including literally, release pent up emotions that people have been carrying around that goes with the scars also you can improve the appearance of a scar by up to 20%.
So you can do a lot for people's self esteem so it's a nice thing to do but that lies in the future because I've got to qualify on people on bodies first before I can do scar tissue.
Have no doubt that you will Bern, when you set out to do something, you put your heart and soul into it and your determination. I don't think that we're led down these avenues for no reason. So I'm positive that the rest will come. Except that I'm finding it so much harder to study now that I'm older. When you're working somebody's said, oh, can you come and see my horse please and you go along and you approach the horse what's in your mindset when you approach the horse.
The answer is very little, it's like doing an mot you know despite what people might tell you is wrong with their horse, you don't know until you actually look at and touch the horse. As a bodyworker, my function in life is not to diagnose but to make the horses comfortable as I can on that day, the horse that I treat is the horse that's there in front of me on that day
Very good way of putting it.
Thank you. I was working with some of the horses two days ago yeah two days ago and sometimes horses can be a bit nervous, I tend to use Emmett moves to start with, neurological they tend to reinvigorate the nervous system. They're very good for pain relief and they're very, very soft touch.
I use Masterson a lot for mobilization, to extend the range of movement, things like that, and to make the movement more free but when I'm dealing with a horse for the first time, I like to introduce myself to the horse and let the horse feel comfortable and relaxed with me.
So very soft techniques, which actually ease pain, reduce tension and just very quietly let you create a rapport with the horse, I tend to like the Emmet moves for that and then when I want to actually improve a horses performance or way of going, that's when I tend to introduce more of the Masterson.
Now sometimes a case on point was on Tuesday, I actually added in some acupressure down at the team points in the who's because I knew that they would affect the whole system of the horse without interfering with that horse, in terms of touching places on the body that might sore or tense, I could work around the Coronet band and achieve the same result.
It's like anything like people, if they're tense, nervous then it makes your job harder to try and get past that, so whatever you can do to achieve, relaxation in any form, that's the start and then you can start going to work.
The little Shetland down on Tuesday was actually very good when I saw him, he responded to me quite quickly but was carrying a lot of tension and then laid down went to sleep, head on the ground for about two and a half hours. Yeah I tend to use a whole variety, mix and match, well, sometimes horses prefer one set of moves to another set of moves and to be honest I don't think there is one special suit premium discipline.
Most of these things, if you look all tend to center around the areas of, points on meridians, what would be a traditional Chinese medicine. Basically the disciplines are pretty much all the same but just different ways of doing the same thing around the same areas, so a lot of the time it's what works best with that horse and what that horse is more prepared to engage with.
So when you learn a new skill, you learn it and you have a qualification but it's the going out and doing it is the real learning because you're learning what that feel is what that movement is and each person, each animal acts slightly different, to whatever you're applying, so the next time you try that if a similar thing happens, you know how to work with it or try something else.
You start to develop your own deeper understanding and more self aware skills, as you're practicing, on your clients and your animals and it's that, that gives you the biggest feedback and the biggest understanding and then the end results, the Shetland falling asleep for two hours, you've done what was needed.
Liking to know how it works and why it works is to do with the training, when you're working with a horse it's whatever works
If you've got a carrot in your pocket in that works, that's brilliant.
Teabags in your pocket really attract horses, I remember this goes back to when I was doing martial arts and one of the sensor, the teachers was in the dojo and he got four 16 stone men to hang on to his arm and he skipped down the gym with them.
Literally he skipped and they were being dragged along and he said to me afterwards, what do you think that was Bern do you think that was mind over matter, do you think it was physical attributes, do you think it was magic and I said I don't I really, I said well it doesn't matter, if it works, it doesn't matter what you believe.
That's kind of the way I guess I am with working with horses yeah, I've got a library of moves to do for various things but actually when you get there and you touch them, that's what decides it for you.
Early on you said to me oh, what's in your mind when you're working with a horse and the answer really is nothing because number one, I'm trying to keep my adrenaline in as low as possible and actually focusing on that horse in the moment to work with that horse and read that horse body language and reactions, so really my mind isn't thinking oh I should now do this move or I should now do that move, the moves following as a natural consequences of what you're doing and what you're feeling.
It's quite funny cause when I first used to, so I've got a horse as a, you knew I got a horse, but I've never been somebody we that can just go out on any horse, I have to know them. So when I used to go out to clients, it's almost like a switch that flips and I go into a different mode and it's automatic, I don't think about it at all now.
I go in and it's whatever comes, so similar to you but I'm doing the communication in your you're doing the physical but you are actually tapping into your own intuitive, you're following your gut. You're you're following your instinct. So I totally get that and then when you come out, I go back into Ronnie mode but while I'm with the horse, sometimes it just different.
Not with my own, I care for her and I love her to bits and that's a different relationship, although I still can communicate with her but it is different, there's more emotional involved. Not as much as it used to be, I've managed to, I be detached now cause I've had to learn to be detached, which is good.
It's really hard working with our horses basically because they know me, so they know all my faults and they know how bad the mood I'm in on the day and stuff like that, working with other people's horses, you really do become very, very detached but working with our horses here, because I'm thinking I need to go and do that job or I need to go and do this job or does this bill that's come in, working with other people's horses because you've made a definite time place to work with this horse,
then your whole focus is on this particular horse. Sometimes Nicola will actually send me an email and make an appointment for me to work with the horses.
I think that's normal Bern, I'm sure Sam would say the same thing, she squeezes them many between a thing else bless her. I've had situations when I've been to see clients and I, I never know what it is until I get that.
And especially if it's something like, it's time to say goodbye and they just want to know if they're doing the right thing you know, I don't know but I have a feeling like a can put the radio on and there'll be a song and it's like, okay, it's just, I can't explain what it is, but there's just a feeling and I get little clues.
Sometimes it's out of the blue, I saw one client and she was talking about, what she'd been doing and hopes and I was thinking, okay, I'm not sure why I'm here, so I was relaying the information that I was getting and I kept thinking, there's something not quite clicking, I don't know what it is and then as I talked to the lady, she's a lovely lady Besser she just said something and I went okay now I get it and I won't go into details because it's personal but she was guided by the vet to make a
decision and she was saying all the things what she was hoping for and she just wanted confirmation and I didn't know anything about what the vet said that, what was needed, it was needed.
So as soon as she say something I said, okay and I passed on the rest of the message and then that was it, it was okay, I know what I need to do now but up to then I, I think can, well, what I'm getting and what she's saying is not quite it doesn't tally, but as soon as she said, the next bit thought, now we understand and if I see this, no emotion, there is empathy and compassion but when I first used to start, I would get such emotion because I was told that if you're going to give me this, I
need to be absolutely sure this is what you're relaying to me, so give me in feelings and they would um straight to the heart. This emotion would come out and I would know that that's what they're relaying, whereas it's not quite as it doesn't have to be that way now, but I needed that to understand for sure, I needed to tell my brain this is right, this is what I'm getting and it's about trust in that because what you had tells you is not always what your intuitive guidance is telling you.
When I was being taught by the chartered physio she did try and teach me to start with I think who visceral listening, which is where you place your hands on a horse and you go wherever your hands are attracted. Yeah, yeah, so you don't do the move, what you do is you go with your gut instinct to go to that place then each treatment and I was rubbish at it but it takes a long time practicing, these days I'm a lot better.
If I'm with a client and I'm talking to them, I'll be stroking the horse and talking to the client and then I'm very much aware that my hand it's almost like my atention is going into my hand and I'll stop and I'll just say the client, I just need to stay here for a moment and I'll do whatever and then sometimes the horse relax and drop the head and then once the horse has had enough, they'll move away or my hand almost like a magnet it just pulls off, it's like that's enough.
I often say to clients, I'm really sorry this must be really boring for you because a session can last between an hour and two hours and they will tell me that it isn't boring it's all because they're watching their horses reactions and they're actually taking the time to look at the subtle reactions, like everybody else you don't stop to look, you just get on with what you're doing.
There's some interesting things I talk about having very low adrenaline and no names here, but I was talking to a young lady on one occasion, who had been working with horses but wasn't having very good results. The horses were backing off or being aggressive towards her and we were talking about and she said every time I go into a horse, I just have a couple of red bulls before I got in, so she likes supper charged with energy.
So getting back to your horses, autumn was a big push for you to start.
This is a sad bit, I kind of promised her that I'd be with her to the end because she wasn't well. I actually had gone away for a weekend to Jillian Higgins conference meanwhile what I didn't know was that autumn had some kind of fit at home and it was possibly colic and she had to be put to sleep and Nicola blesser was with her the whole time but she didn't contact me at the conference, I mean she did she spoke to me but she didn't tell me about autumn.
She didn't want me to get upset at the conference, which would have been really lovely other than a friend phoned and a half and said, I'm really sorry about Autum so I kind of heard halfway through and I really felt a degree of unnaturally and not sensibly, felt really upset that I hadn't been with her having made the promise that I would be.
But then that's because you made that promise to her and that's, there's somebody that the way that you work, as you explained early in the interview, for you to say to her I'm going to be with you to the end, you made a promise, that's a big statement to say and the fact that you you wasn't there, part of you would have felt that you let her down but you didn't, you certainly didn't.
A big influence that made me want to continue this?
Yes I totally get that
I guess really three of our horses out of the four well two of them in particular, one a hundred percent right, there's a long history of stuff with Buffy and she'd had glandular ulcers and recovered from those and that sort of long story anyway but she still wasn't quite right and Nicola thought that Sylvan who's our dales pony wasn't quite right, so, Nick, who's very good at investigating things on diet had come across the equie bio site and we had the horses tested to see what pathogens they
got in good and bad bacteria and Buffy and Sylvan in particular came back with Bartonella and limes back pathogens. So we invested in a protocol of Chinese herbs, which took about seven months to go through different herps of different things and that's where we met Linda on that group, the Facebook group through the protocol.
Okay, so tell us more about these herbs.
I'm just going to say most to say this probably.
Oh, okay don't say things that you're not supposed to say.
Oh no it's all right, it's too late now anyway a group of this select number decided that we would follow the same protocol that the horses were on.
So you were taking horse herbs basically
and that was quite interesting, in fact did have we won't go into the medical things. Men of my age I had a few waterworks problems, too much information, yes instead of getting up five times a night, it went down to about once a night or not at all, so apart from that the horses all alot better, which was the point little it but again that's the connection with Linda again?
So what is your next plan, what is the next thing.
Completing the human Emmet course as a body worker on human and then ultimately if I'm still alive and still kicking and still able to remember things, is to do scar tissue on humans.
When you do scar tissue with the horses, just explain a little bit for people that don't know about it, what is it that your looking for and how does it work?
Okay, you've got two types of scarring, you've got direct scarring and indirect scarring. Direct scars are easy to see because they're anything that breaks the skin okay, so it can be kicks bites vets, operations. Anything that actually interferes with the tissue underneath should kind of like be in straight lines mesh again, you get this bunching up, now you can feel the scar tissue, you can feel it for example like a cord with knots in it.
Your indirect scarring can be, well the most common cause of indirect scarring is badly fitted tack, so it could be a badley fitted bridal, which is causing extreme pressure and affecting the tissues underneath the bridle, it could be badly fitted rugs, it could be saddles, any of these things which are actually causing pressure and causing the fibers to one of the good word here.
So the compress they compress and knit together.
So what you do with scar tissue release is actually open up the scarring. To apply pressure to the scar tissue to effectively open it out and stretch it out, that can have a profound effect on the way a horse moves and it can also have a profound effect on the emotions.
If I take Buffy for a moment she had some quite heavy scarring on the front of the chest and I used her as a case study and worked on that now, before working on it if I put Buffalo on a alone, she would turn in on the lunge and actually not just lunge around but she'd actually just start to launch and immediately turn in.
As you know she could be quite emotional about things and to a degree, quite aggressive about things because she has trust issues from the ulcers and all sorts of bits and pieces but having how she released the scar tissue on her chest, which probably was caused when she ran through a stable door, taking out the entire doorframe.
A fair bit of trauma but she'd been carrying all sorts of emotions with that and having released that scar tissue on the chest, she no longer turns in and she's actually been a lot happier in herself and a lot more affectionate.
So for people that are just watching this, I had a little communication with Buffy and some of that came through, the work that you did with her, I'm not going to go into details but so what you've just said was confirmed in our communication before I realized what you done anyway which is good, it confirms what you thought, what you know about Buffy so that's good.
Scarring is very common and all geldings have got scars.
If you've got a scar obviously you wont but I had a cesection, so my son is I have to think, hang on, they're out my son and I, sometimes I can still feel that scar tissue but internally, I know exactly where it is
I qualify i I'll come over.
Good. No, that there's a promise. You don't get every
day she was pulling everything.
Yeah, it is. It's tight and you can treat it.
And, um, and I know which side it is worse where, where the, the, the tissue is stronger and less pliable, so yeah, it has huge effects and it's not a few tiny scar because I used to nurse so I saw the scars when the heal, I know it goes further than that, a lot further than that but the actual visual part yeah, I know exactly where it pulls and as I'm saying that, so I'm getting communication now about my own body, I say I'm saying that I, where there's a sensation in my body and I'm getting,
which is it's actually go in underneath and up my back, which is bizarre and I'm getting told that explains a few things that's been happening with me.
You think about a gelding poor boy, it's going to affect or possibly going to affect the way that gelding moves because the tissue surrounding the scar is going to be pulled tight, so there's quite a lot going on there, you can get indirect scarring, which is where there's no broken skin yeah from just a concussion, so a horse trotting too much on a hard surface for too long is going to have a situation where the muscles are actually getting tighter and tighter and the muscle fibers or
effectively scarring. There's a lot that goes on there.
Do you ever do any talks, so somebody just ask do you use the April battles?
Yeah, I still use some of her moves, there's a very good move from April which is first rib release okay I don't know of anyone else that doesn't finish, we release, so that's worth looking at.
You would have to give Tinks sessions, she is a scare queen, when she impaled herself on the gate, Sam did an amazing job up to the amazing cause that was a big hole, you could get your fist in nearly and basically how to swell it out every day, she did an amazing job, with Tinkerbell about, I think it was summertime so flies and things that could have got in there and made it a whole lot worse but she just stuck with that and did a really good job
People don't realize that whether there's a visual scar, could be quite a large area around that, if you want to take it to extremes but branding. First came across each other because we both went out to Spain to holiday horse-riding establishment to teach a course, I did a course on bodywork and Tracy did one on confidence June actually June Wolf move who owns the place, she does walk rides these days.
But she's got a whole load of I've got a rescue horses, she does a lot of confidence riding now, she takes people out on walk rides more than anything else and it's a lovely place with a hot tub in the swimming pool and it's worth a visit.
I remember you posting, you're going to go out and do another one wasn't you.
Yeah, it just didn't work in the end and since then really we've had the pandemic We've got a holiday cottage and we did have shepherds huts but the holiday cottages is pretty booked up now.
Do you still have your Shepherd's huts
No back in November of last year over the summer it was great, except we could only use one Shepherd's hut because of the showers We thought, october, November time actually you know, I'm knocking on in years, so I've got pensions coming in and we thought, okay we'll sell one of the huts and so we put one up for sale and so in the space of a fortnight I think it was, we had five sets of people wanting to buy the hub and because we had so many people, we thought, well we keep the cottage going
but let's think about selling both huts rather than just the one because we done it for five years, six years There's a lot that goes on behind the scenes, like all the cleaning, COVID added 50% time and there's all the admin that goes on behind the scenes and no one ever sees and it's meeting and greeting people, people that leave London and say, we'll be with you at five o'clock and they turn up at 10 o'clock because they don't realize what the traffic is going to be like and all that kind of
stuff. So we said to the people who bought the first hut, we know you've got kiddies so would you like the other hut which has got a bunk bed as well as the double and we'll then sell the other hut and they went no can we have both please, so they're gone. With regard to the cottage it's is open currently but next year we might just restrict it to friends, family and people who've stayed with us before and just continue to retire
Anything else that you'd like to talk about Bern. Why don't you share the experience about a little lamb that was born that couldn't walk, do you want to just share that story?
I've got a very good friend Allen who's just down the road from us and for a farmer he's unusually open-minded, so whenever he's got an animal that's not quite right or he's not feeling quite right with muscular aches and pains he'll just pop in and go Hey Bern could you fix this for me.
So worked on me a calf a couple of years ago that was dragged out of his mum and it got malformed hind legs, they weren't right, his hind legs crossed and he couldn't walk very well at all, so I did quite a lot of work on him using and basically he survived and went on to live for another three years before Alan than had to dispose of him because that's what happens if you're a farmer but he was called variously, hippy, happy hoppy, so that was good and we were over there helping him vaccinate
some sheep the other day and he's got very old sheep and this old girl lay down and we can get out and another event I have is John was up there with us and John and I tried to lift this sheep up and there was no way of being able to pick her up.
So I thought well can I'll do a couple of them it moves on and I did and she sprang up and John was quite impressed but Allan it, so it was just our less Bern and the little lamb poor soul couldn't walk and we got him walking around but there's a sad ending to this, a very sad ending. He was starting to walk around as you saw in the video but Allen decided to take him to the vet and the vet went, this is a welfare case, you've got to put the lamb down.
So sometimes vets don't give animals long enough, especially if they're farming vets. It was a shame because this little lamb had the will to live but the thing is, I guess that the vet was working from a commercial viewpoint. My friend is a wonderfully open-minded farmer because there aren't many farmers that would say okay could you come and have a look at this, that or the other because you're like my only hope
I think there's probably a few more than, than we realized because the sort of work that people are doing with animals and people now is different and it's going in a different way and I think it's educating people, isn't it, you don't have to do all the answers but be open to start looking at, you know, the directions. The point of call would always obvioussly that's what you have to do, that's what you'd rely on, but there's so many other things that you can incorporate with that now.
What I would say is that Alan is really good but then all of my clients are really good at and what I tend to do is to show people how to do various moves on their horses because my feeling is I'm here for two hours, you're with your horse in between any visits that I make, I should teach you some basic moves that I know will help your horse and you can do those moves when I'm not here.
People have said to me yeah but you spent all that money being trained but that's not the point, the point is you're in it to make the horses more comfortable, so why would you not pass on that information.
I know Sam there was some does that with her clients, she'll show them certain things they can do to help and it's nice because you're creating more of a rapart and it's a joint thing, I'm coming to help your horse but actually you can help too in doing certain things and they feel more involved.
Really nice the other day when I posted about the scar tissue, someone when I was down south, I worked with her horse a couple of times doing Masterson isn't and she liked it so much that she then got I think the masters in book and videos and whatever and then she signed up on massage course, the body working course not, not Masterson and she did another course instead but it was just doing those things and reading the book that got her into it and she's now a qualified bodyworker and is doing
a couple of other courses as well, it's got really hooked into it. I just felt it was really nice that I've done the work she'd liked, it loved doing it and then got into it.
It's about sharing, isn't it, we all have skills but we don't own them, we develop them to our individual specifications but anybody can learn things, It's what you do with it and if you're sharing, it's such a lovely thing to do to share.
You've seen her have an interest, you showed us some techniques and she's gone on to quantify and it doesn't have to be the same module that you're doing or anybody else is doing because people will be drawn to whatever they're drawn to and like you said there's crossovers, there's always crossovers and that's a lovely thing to do for somebody.
I'll have to say that I'll bet you say it's rare but I've got one client who's absolutely lovely and I set her homework and she does it religiously. I go back for another session and that horses so much better, the work that she's done you know, when I started working with this young lady's horse it was totally closed down, it took 20 minutes for her to get the horse to move 20 feet.
Okay totally closed down and scared of people, one of the joyous moments were seeing that horse cantering around the field for the first time just sheer joy but it's the work that she and her mum had done more than anything I can do in two hours, I can start the process off, I can teach people what to do but to have someone actually do that, you know if you're injured and you go to the doctor and then you're sent to a physio, how many people do the physio exercises for more than two days.
To have the client actually goes at it assiduously and just works out is wonderful.
So you could definitely tell when you went back that she'd been doing that, so yeah, I can see that would be lovely. Here we go Sams on a roll.
I thought I talked a lot.
You find it just some to do an interview should have said no, she might
If i can do this same you can,
It's different when it's your friends, it's easier to actually do with things with strangers sometimes. Quite a few years ago I think, I went out with Sam to watch your work, she was with a client and I love watching her work.
So when I go see a client I'm like a different person, it's like something else takes over, when I see Sam work, she's a different person, she's in her element, you can see there's a glow about her, I love watching her work, I love watching her work and I was lucky enough actually to go on a weekend Masterson for owners, I went with Sam.
So I got to have a experience where it's like for you guys and it was lovely and I really enjoyed it but what was nice as well is when I was talking earlier about the hand positions, when I'm talking to clients, my hands naturally fall in a certain position, I don't consciously think about it.
When we was doing the Masterson, there were similar placements, which actually there could be quite a few modules that would be same thing but there were similar placements and I thought, ah okay, so that was giving me something else to think about internally where I was working but I wasn't consciously aware of what I was doing, it's just, I go to wherever the horses would say, I need you to stay here, I need you to go there because they would walk off and eat the hay, they do the relaxation
and then they'd wake up and go off. Had one mare and she literally hadn't had a season for, I think it was like a whole year or year, a couple of years and there was just finishing off and she wanted me to work, around her overies it, so I says I've just got to see you before I go, I know I was working and she literally came to season and I said oh she's coming to seasons, she went she didn't have seasons, I said well she is now, so she knew what she needed.
I just needed to give her, I call it plug it into the universal socket, I was just there to facilitate what ever need to happen but she knew what needed to happen and she needed a season it and then when I left, I got a really nice message saying, oh my God she's gone out in the field and she's trotted in cantered up the field she's really happy because she was a little bit depressed before then.
Right Bern, unless there's any more questions or you want to mention anything else, thank you so much for agreeing for coming on tonight and I know you was really nervous and I get nervous as I said to you before we go live, I get nervous because I want it to be a nice experience for you and for anybody that's watching and if somebody watches this and thinks I'd like to experience that or maybe get somebody out to do my horse and it doesn't have to be you, but it could be somebody that does
semester Masterson or emmet, there's lots of different qualifications out there, lots of different skillsets, so that's what these interviews are about is just telling your story but from a different perspective and I think yours is interesting because you were not that horse orientated and you've gone from working with computers to totally immersion yourself.
And that was initiated by autumn and your promise to take care of that, which you're carrying on for the horses, so I think that's really special Bern and it's a lovely thing that you do.
Thank you very much for having me and I hope people enjoyed it.
You just spoke from the heart and that's lovely, that's lovely. So once again, thank you very much for everybody that joined this evening, so if you want to get in touch with Bern and ask him any questions, I'm sure it'll get back to you and he'll point you in the right direction. Have a lovely weekend wherever you are in the world and look after your horses, look after yourself and stay tuned for the next interview because I've got quite a few people lined up, I'm really excited about.
Thank you very much for tuning in as always, I really appreciate your time, does it matter if it's one person watching or 10, you're all very welcome. Take care, thank you and bye for now, bye.