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. If you've ever had the sensation when you're riding your horse that it sort of sits in one hand more than the other or feels like it doesn't want to step through into the bridle, into a correct frame, or maybe it just it's not turning its head correctly. It wants to sort of tilt its head and pop it shoulder wide.
When you go to turn a tighter turn, or even if it starts to refuse at jumps. These are all signs that your horse could have tension in the pole. Now I know a lot of people, are concerned about pole tension, and I think that's a legitimate concern. And I don't want to talk about it from sort of a trauma based. I banged my head. Type of perspective. I want to talk about it from, a musculoskeletal idea.
So of course, there are several muscles that, are in the neck that, help to control the way the head moves in relation to the neck in that pole region. Now, one of the most important areas when you palpate in sort of behind the ears and you touch and you can feel the semi spineless capitis is the muscle that attaches in there. You can feel sort of increase neural drive sensitivity, or even reactivity or what if we'll call it you're shy.
A lot of horses become Earthshine has nothing really to do with the ears. It's more the pull. And this is the area we're talking about, and it's basically the rectus capitis muscle group. And, so it's either side of the horse's neck and it's behind the ears. And this area can run into problems for several reasons. So, like I said, you may experience just basic sensitivity in the horse.
You may be picking it up in writing or skill set issues at the very basic level, but it can be caused by a number of things. Some horses, if they're hay nuts, are hung too high and they habitually eat from one side and you don't move that hay nut around in their stall, they can basically overload the tissues, in their pull. So it's not necessarily, the, the hay net itself, but it's the habitual eating from the same height and the same direction that can cause tension.
Or maybe your horse, you do a lot of lunging with your horse, and they tend to tip their head to the outside to maintain their balance and drop their shoulder in naturally. And they've just been going in the wrong shape. So being aware of your horses shape as it turns corners, this is a really important way to, prevent that pull tension. I mean, there's obvious trauma. I banged my head, I had a pull back injury.
Those things, or equipment, you know, horses that are ridden, in very tight draw lines or, aids to hold their head down will often because it becomes, or it ridden in too deep of a frame. This also becomes an issue, like a rock or a horse will call them. This becomes an issue in that area because they don't have dynamic use of the area. They are being passively held into a frame, which puts obvious strain on those muscle attachments.
It can also come from a rider with a very active hand or choppy hand, or dental imbalances in horses.
So if you have these issues going on with your horse, the very first thing, I love to get a vet in and just do a speculum exam and see what's going on in that horse's mouth, make sure that its bite is correct and that it can move its head well, even if you have had the horse's teeth done very recently, it's worth double checking that they haven't cracked tooth or don't have something stuck, in their mouth because believe it or not, that is an extremely common occurrence.
And then as far as bodywork, when we've ruled out a veterinary issue as far as body work goes, there are lots of different things we can do. We can actually decompress the area with, kinesiology tape. So putting, you know, quite a bit of stretch from directly above the pole, down onto those tissues and making it so that it basically lifts the hair and the skin and allows for blood flow.
And that works as a natural anti-inflammatory type of agent and gives quite a sense of relief through the nociceptors and through the mechanoreceptors that are present superficially in the skin. Now, the other thing we can do with our hands, if the horse will allow you to put your hands up on their head, is to do some mild traction.
So you would have one hand, closer to the ears and the other hand almost touching your first hand, and you'd be pulling in opposite directions very lightly as the horse's comfort will allow. And you're watching for, of course, the licking, chewing, blinking, the lowering of the head and the acceptance of that mild traction. Now, you can also decompress the area with your hand. Our Starline method uses a decompression style.
Hand movement in order to do, basically what the kinesiology tape would be doing.
In a very brief period of time, there's also the ability to if you look at where the main is, and then you see the muscle of the horse's neck, there's basically a dip, and you're going to follow that dip back, and you're going to go about a third of the way down the horse's neck and then begin to do light touch circles, working either clockwise or counterclockwise, whatever makes you more comfortable about 4 to 5mm into the tissue.
And it should feel like your hand is sinking into the tissue as if a hot knife sinks into butter. So it's very slow, it's very rhythmic, and you'd work, from closer to the horse's shoulder, up to the pole, gradually using these circles, and you repeat it on the opposite side of the horse's neck. So you're going to do both sides using that technique. Pole pressure of course, is an extremely, and pull discomfort is an extremely common thing.
And people are very surprised when it results in a horse stopping, when it results in, not wanting to be in a correct frame either over flexion, flexing or not wanting to flex at all. And that's because it actually affects the, extension and flexion of the horse's nose in relationship, to its cervical spine. So taking care of this area and making sure that we, are really diligent about what's going on in that area will save us all a lot of problems down the road.