I'm Judith, and this is the Starline Equine Bodywork podcast. This is a podcast about all of the things that I've learned and continue to learn in my career with horses. For the better part of a decade, I've been a full time equine bodywork practitioner, educator, and author. My obsession how horses really work and how to get the most from our relationship with them in training and in sport. My passion helping horse owners and body workers and aspiring body workers get going.
Unpack the latest science, research and experiences behind what we do with horses to support their potential and optimize their performance. When I was in my early teens, I went to this little tiny school and we had to wear school uniforms to attend. And part of that uniform were these polyester cardigan sweaters. And we had these large, school assemblies and they'd line up, all the kids from the classes and we'd sit in rows and stand in rows, depending on what they were doing in the assembly.
And so, you know, you'd have people in front of you, people behind you. And, one of these occasions unlocked a serious life time fear for me. So there was this girl who a few rows in front of me. She had clearly run out of the house, grabbed her sweater out of the dryer as one does, whipped it on and run to catch the school bus taking off her coat when she got to school, lined up, walked into the assembly and there she had a pair of underwear. Static cling. Static clung.
I don't even know what that word is. It's just mortifying. Whatever it is stuck to her back. And, this unlocked a whole new level of fear for me in my life that has stuck with me. There she was, the poor girl in the gym with underwear stuck to her back. So why am I telling you this? Well, I had a really interesting experience at a body work clinic, that I was demonstrating at recently, and I wanted to share it with you. So at this clinic, there are about 20 people at this clinic.
And they were working two people per horse, and I was in the front with a demo horse. So I began, by, you know, talking about what I saw and I began to palpate the horse's back. And I'm not going to lie. The horse was extremely reactive on both sides of his back, and he was hollowing, hollowing away from my touch.
And he even hopped once and kind of made a little squeal, and I wasn't touching hard or doing it to sort of prove a point, but he acted like he kind of humped his back and hollowed his back and just really wanted away. And he almost tried to kick out at me when I touched him. Now, I wasn't surprised by this, based on how he was standing before I did my palpation. Just based on, you know, his muscle development pattern, his stance, all of this stuff.
So I went to work as one does when they're in a clinic demonstrating what they would do in this situation. And I was talking to the crowd, and I was talking through the moves that I was doing on the horse. And really and truly, this was just, you know, a couple of minutes in total. And then I re palpated. So I, you know, my focus is on the horse, my eyeline is on the horse, and I re palpated the horse and he didn't even flinch.
So I look up at the crowd because, you know, then they're going to be doing this on their practice horses. And not one of them moved. I you know, I'm looking up and they're just staring at me. And at first I wondered, you know, was I standing in the way so they couldn't see what I was doing?
You know, when, when a professor finishes teaching something, everybody, you know, goes, scurries off and goes to do it, or, you know, when the plane lands, you know, everybody gets up out of their seat to, to deplane. I'm like, nobody's moving. You know, what did I do wrong? And, you know, I went right back to that gym and thought, I have underwear on my back. Like, what is going on here? But no, they were actually all a little stunned.
They were standing in silence, staring at me because the horse didn't move in the after palpation. And it was actually so dramatic. And the one brave girl put up her hand and she said, do you might choose another body worker? And she said, do you mind if I come and I palpate that horse's back? I think she wanted to see if it was an illusion or, you know, if I had done something to make it look super duper and magical, which I hadn't, I said, of course, come on up.
And then one by one, all of these people wanted to come up and palpate this horse's back in the horse. Very lovely horse, very, willing participant in this. Let everyone touch its back and nobody could really believe it. They thought it was quite outstanding. So what's the point here? Use dryer sheets? No. Not that. My point is, you know, I'm not a hero. Trust me. And I'm certainly not a better practitioner than anyone else that was in that room.
Not by a long shot, but I do have a very different approach when I do bodywork. Now, this is an approach that I have developed over the past over a decade of being, an equine body worker full time. And, one of the things that's always been in the forefront of my mind. I don't like leaving horses on the cross ties for a long period of time. First of all, you're just going to be in the way in a barn. That's just a practical consideration.
You're going to be disrupting your session to let horses pass, to let things happen. It's, you know, it's not conducive to a soft and healing environment. So, I don't like it. Number two, and probably more importantly, is I think you just begin to frustrate the horse and overload its system, and you're putting in all of these unnecessary inputs that, quite frankly, are just wasting the horse's time. So we have to remember that not all touch is good touch for the horses.
So when you think of yourself getting, let's say you have a little bit of stiffness in your neck and your shoulders, and you always have that one really lovely person in your life that will say, let me come and rub your shoulder. So may they come over and they begin to rub your shoulders. And at a certain point, you absolutely want them to stop touching you. It becomes an overwhelming need not to have them touch you.
And when they're done, you'll likely still have sore shoulders, sore neck, whatever it is they were touching. Now, horses are different. They have that same sense. And then there's the efficacy of the inputs. Now, if you're a manual therapist or a body worker and you have a horse in front of you with, let's say, a sore low back of the lumbar region, what do you do?
Now you could go ahead and massage the back and it might in fact, be doing the wrong thing, or at least an incredibly time capsule thing that can eventually irritate the horse. And it's not going to yield big or impactful results necessarily. Likely, if you have a horse that has that lumbar back issue. It's very likely that it has related issues or issues stemming from the function of the pelvic limb.
So this would include things like lumbar limbo, sacral junction issues, glute issues, hip flexor issues. And they can cause things like roaches in the lumbar spine, issues with the adductors. And add abductors in the hind limb that actually cause gait changes. And it can cause issues through the rib cage. They can all stem from this. And now it's important to know that the back can't move the way it's supposed to.
When these issues exist, and if the back can't move a certain way, it certainly can't train that way. And the reality is that range of motion, that way of moving is likely the way it's supposed to work under attack. To have the most optimal performance and health of its spine and all of its joints is a whole musculoskeletal system. So restoring mobility and the freedom to use itself correctly, to use its body correctly, that has to be considered in important. And this is where most systems fail.
So they address each and every single body part one by one that has tension. So, you know, the hamstrings were tense. So I rubbed them. The glutes were tense. So I addressed them. The back is sore. So I rubbed debt. And this is what is over stimulating to the horse and potentially causing pain and in some cases even removing what is needed tension or protective neurological tension. So there's different types of tension. There is mechanical tension, I'll call it.
So this is I worked really hard and now I'm stiff and sore and have tense muscles. And then there's an intelligent type of tension which is far more common in the body. And I'm going to call it neurological tension. So this is where the body is very protective. So if you have a sore joint or a sore area in the body, it's going to have a reflexive muscle tension in order to protect that joint. Or if it doesn't have good workspace, you'll get the same nerves causing reflexive muscle spasm.
So it's important that when we're dealing with neurological tension, we have to resolve the issue causing that tension. It's not enough just to touch the muscle individually. We need to have a broader approach. I know it sounds counter intuitive, but hear me out. It targets what the horse knows it needs to target. And you as the practitioner are just support. So the practitioner is not inflicting themself on the horse as much. Yeah, so it's like a horse led session. So why I like this better?
There is no guesswork. We tend not to push the horse past what it can handle in its nervous system and physiologically. And you get instantaneous or almost instantaneous palpable results. So you can ensure that you're on the right track with that issue. Sounds good. Right? So recently I decided that I wanted to teach this system to help more horses, and I'm doing it in the form of skill accelerators.
So what these are, these are super pinpointed, ultra deep dive, ultra focused looks at very specific areas in a horse's body so that body workers and hands on horse owners. This is for you. So I'm going to go through in all of these skill accelerator programs. What it is that, I see a lot of in my practice, both physically and symptomatically, and I'm going to show you what you are targeting with these moves, with these techniques from my Starline method and why you are targeting.
We're going to look at which of these techniques to use and in what sequence to address some of the most common issues we see in horses. And then and this is really important. We're going to look at homework exercises to use to progressively increase control strength and correct range of motion in these horses. Now, the first one of these skill accelerators that we are releasing is called tackling Lumbar Pain in Horses.
And it's the exact techniques I taught at that clinic where I thought I had underwear on my back. Plus, we're going to go through a few bonus techniques. They're professional moves that I use, protocols that I use to ensure that you have the tools in your kit for whatever the horses throw at us. Now it's online so you can access it for life or from wherever you are located. There's no travel required. And, it's as easy as the protocols that I'm going to show you.
Literally all you have to do is sign up at Starline dot think effect com forward slash courses, forward slash lumbar. I'm going to put that in the show notes. So don't worry about that. It will be in the show notes. You click on that and you can sign up and learn these skill. Accelerate data moves from our Starline Equine bodywork method that will help you transform the lives of horses. In just a few moments, you can add them to your toolkit.