How Unnecessary Tension Causes Health and Soundness Issues In order for us to know how to create and maintain health and soundness in our horses, and to understand how and why The BIG Eraser (BE) and The Triple R (TR) work, it is important to understand where health and soundness issues originate. First and most importantly is the understanding that the body and mind are more than just connected. They are interconnected. What that means is, any action in one creates a result in the other. These interactions are occurring constantly, and at lightening speed, throughout the life of the horse. When a horse experiences a stress response such as fear, anger, confusion, frustration, worry and so on, this creates tension in the mind. Because the mind and body are interconnected, this tension in the mind sooner or later creates unnecessary tension in the body. Refer to “Necessary vs Unnecessary Tension”. This occurs in both horses and humans. An example of this is the human who experiences tension in the mind due to a stress response. We call this “being under stress”. This in turn causes tension in the neck muscles. Many times this tension in the neck sooner or later manifests as a tension headache. This is an obvious example of how tension in the mind creates tension in the body and then becomes a health issue. There are many areas in the body where this can happen without being obvious or even noticeable. Tension causes constriction and constriction creates restriction. To one extent or another, restriction reduces the flow of vital life forces such as oxygen, blood and the removal of toxins. In addition, tense muscles can actually pull the skeleton out of alignment over time. Most people think that trauma caused by injury is the main reason for skeletal misalignments. However, skeletal misalignments caused by injuries only occur once in a great while, whereas stress induced tension is a much more common cause. Misalignments in the vertebral column can cause constriction in the nervous system, and this can restrict vital information from the brain to the body which travels via the nervous system. The body depends on this information from the brain in order to function properly. If this vital information is restricted in any way, sooner or later bodily functions will be affected to one extent or another. Since the skeleton is attached to and hangs beneath the vertebral column, misalignments in the vertebral column will cause a corresponding misalignment in the skeleton. Sooner or later, skeletal misalignments combined with repetitive motion (any form of riding) and/or extreme stress (such as jumping or reining) will cause damage to misaligned skeletal joints. As anyone who has ever had a stiff neck or tightness and stiffness anywhere in the body knows, tension also equals discomfort. Since domesticated horses tend to accumulate quite a bit of tension in their bodies (refer to “Why Domesticated Horses Accumulate Tension”), many horses experience discomfort on a daily basis. Just as stress creates tension in the mind which then creates tension in the body, release of tension in the mind creates relaxation in both the mind and the body. Tension in the jaw causes tension in the poll and through the neck. Tension in the neck causes tension in the shoulders and in the back. Tension in the back causes tension in the hindquarters. Sooner or later, working a horse while she holds unnecessary tension will lead to soundness issues. Therefore, teaching a horse how to relax her body begins by teaching the horse to relax her jaw. Helping a horse to release and relax her jaw, poll, neck and topline is accomplished by utilizing The BIG Eraser first, and then by introducing The Triple R. Both The BIG Eraser and The Triple R teach the horse to access and release tension from her mind and body. In the first BE session, most horses only access and release recent “surface” tension. As the sessions are continued, the horse begins to “peel the layers of the onion”. By the second or third session, most horses begin to access and release deep, old, residual tension from their mind and body. Once the horse has become comfortable with this process, The TR should slowly and gradually be introduced. This usually occurs after the horse has received several good “erasings”.
Posted on: Sat, 17 Aug 2013 16:20:14 +0000
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