Bodywork Case Study Lola

Horses have an amazing ability to reveal humbling truths that lead to a feeling of liberation and freedom (when embraced), sometimes in uncanny and surprising ways.  Victoria and I had developed a method to approach bodywork through developing a system of assessment, treatment, and groundwork that was getting some great results for her clients, at the time a mix of reining and cutting amateurs as well as a collection of performance horses Victoria was training full time.  Vet’s liked us, horses were getting treatments weekly and monthly, and we felt we were onto something pretty special.  Then a spunky mare named Lola came along and made me doubt everything I was doing.  

Lola was what we might call a ‘tough case’.  She was twitchy and fidgety to approach, wouldn’t stand still, had a lot of systemic muscle tension, seemed to be in pain, and as any horse (or human for that matter) with that mix of symptoms might, she was pretty irritable, cranky, and unpredictable.  At this point I was pretty good at getting through horses bracing responses, but nothing I tried worked with Lola.  It was a little embarrassing for me because my job is to help horses relax and release tension, but with Lola, I couldn’t even get my hands on her, let alone get her to stand still.  We usually drew an audience working on horses, and Lola was making me look bad.  So I tried all my trickiest techniques, researched all kinds of possible solutions and remedies, and dove deep into her history so I could get through her walls of tension and get the results the horse owners were accustomed to seeing in my work.  Nothing I did worked.  

The harder I tried, the worse it got.  I started to lose confidence in my abilities, I wondered if something more serious was wrong with her.  She’d already had multiple vets try every test in the book.  It stressed me out and made me anxious.  I started thinking my method wasn’t good and I should stop working on horses.  I felt like I was reaching in the dark.  Thankfully, it was Lola herself that turned on the lights.  

Suddenly it became clear to me that nothing was working because I was approaching it all wrong.  I was working from my frontal lobe basically, trying to rationalize as a clinician, trying to technique my way through it, and in the process, I lost touch with the ‘feel’ that is only present in the moment.  I had tried doing more, trying harder, pushing harder, I hadn’t tried doing LESS.  It occurred to me that I can approach Lola with a brush and free hand, and that I could let my agenda to fix and release her go.  I had to approach her with no goal, and no hurry.  My intention had to be just to meet her where she was.  

I focused on her breathing and if she was holding her breath, which she usually was at this point, I softened my approach and slowed way, way down.  I focused on my own breathing, and exhaling slowly and calmly.  Her exhales were affirming.  I could rest my hand on her body and feel her ribs expand a little and move toward the head on inhale, and a decompression and slight rotation to the tail on exhale.  Instead of increasing pressure, I played with seeing how light I could keep my hands on her and feel her breathing in and out, but not so light it became ticklish.  In order to do this I had to do something I didn’t usually do, stop thinking.  When I stopped trying so hard, my hands relaxed, my breathing naturally relaxed, and guess who else relaxed…. 

Lola took big sighs and made the most outrageous expressions with her face and jaw we had ever seen on any horse we worked on.  Words from a master massage teacher came back to me: ‘you can never go too deep, only too fast.’  With horses, going slow and doing less is akin to a Jedi technique.   So many other powerful lessons too were learned by doing less:  as long as I focused my intention on Lola, not on my performance or techniques, my hands intuitively knew what to do.  Service over ego.  Focus and intention was the language of the horse.  Less is more.  The key to working with horses is feel, and this means really feeling the horse under my hands, feeling their breath, feeling the energy they are putting off.  I realized, we as humans can plug into our horses forcefield in this way; let’s call it horsefield!  

We have to use less of our frontal lobe and follow the horse, and we can access the horse's brain through the horse's body, IF we approach it this way.  The technical assessments and techniques work physiologically.   A muscle knot affects the ability for a muscle to fully flex and relax, it affects circulation, it can impinge nerves, it creates pain, and you can manually release those to great results.  The lessons Lola taught were not to replace those lessons, but to add to them.  Horses are all about harmony:  feel and technique, intention and improvisation, tension and release.  

Once I approached Lola in this way, she loved her bodywork, and she loved me!  She’d see me coming and her eyes would soften, she would start stretching her body without prompts, her owner felt she was softer and in less pain.  They were able to stop all the other treatments like acupuncture and chiropractic, and just stick with massage.  Eventually I could space our sessions out more and more.  My experience with humans is they need to come in weekly, once you reach horses on their level and release tension, they stay loose a lot longer.  

In our culture, hustling and working as hard as possible are so emphasized, that going slower and doing less sometimes has negative connotations.  The truth horses teach us, is that when you go slower you cultivate mindfulness, and learn how to focus with positive intention, it’s a wonderful practice for horse and human.  It reminds me of the ‘slow food’ movement that took off in response to fast food, hustle culture, and microwave dinners a while back; we think it’s time for the ‘slow horse’ movement to take off.  Horses require integrity and presence, we have to release our own tension so we can release our horses.  Maybe it’s another way we have developed a beautiful partnership for millenia, one in which we are better together.     

- Josh Williams