EMHH Episode 0: Introduction to Easier Movement, Happier Horses

Are you or your horse stiff, crooked or tense? Are you dealing with aging, injury, arthritis or anxiety? Do you want more flexibility, balance or confidence?

In this introductory episode, learn how international Feldenkrais® teacher, NLP Practitioner and bestselling author Mary Debono will help you discover happier joints, freer movement and a clear path to your goals and dreams.

If you’re a horse lover who’d like to learn simple, powerful body/mind strategies to feel connected, vibrant and empowered, this show is for you.

This is the podcast your horse wants you to listen to!
Learn more at MaryDebono.com.

💥 For a SEARCHABLE audio file, click here.💥

 Welcome to Easier Movement, Happier Horses. I'm Mary Debono, your movement and mindset coach. If you'd like to have flexible, balanced movement, a relaxed, confident mindset, and a joyful connection with your horse, you're in the right place. I can't wait to share what I've learned over the past 30 years of helping improve the performance and partnership of horses and their humans.

Thank you so much for being here. Now. Let's dive in. Are you or your horse stiff, crooked or tense? Well, my name is Mary Debono and I have a new podcast called "Easier Movement, Happier Horses." And my mission is to help you and your horse feel more flexible, balanced, and confident at any age. So I'm so excited.

you're here. I want to tell you about what's coming up in this podcast. So, you know, I'm a Feldenkrais Practitioner and an NLP Practitioner. So I work with the body and I work with the mind and I've been helping improve the athletic performance and the partnership of horses and riders for about 30 years. So, you know, I teach clinics or at least I used to all over the place prior to the pandemic.

And I just, I'm so driven. I'm so passionate about helping people feel that they can, they can tap into what I call their inner power. They can learn how to rewire their brain so that they can improve both physically and mentally at any age. And they can learn how to help their horse as well. So, you know, it's, it's really this whole body mind strategy.

And I actually have a third pillar in there, not just body, not just mind, but also connection, meaning the connection with your horse, because let's think about it. You have a horse, you have a horse, you have a human, right? They are two separate beings, but when you put them together, you have something else. You have what I call a horse human system or H squared as I call it.

And that can be magical. So the more you work with yourself, the more you improve, how you feel, how you move, you know, where your thoughts are leading you to all that good stuff. The more you can be in tune in, in physical and emotional harmony with your horse and the deeper and more joyful, your connection will be with your horse.

Basically you can really tune into each other. You can listen to each other, you can have a true partnership, right? So I'll give you, I'll give you an example. So we're going to be talking about a lot of different things on this podcast. I'm going to be sharing with you all kinds of strategies. Like I said, to improve,

you know, your physical abilities or your, you know, your mindset and also your horse's physical abilities and your horse's emotional state as well. And the connection between you two. So I'll give you an example, this gal, Kay she's she was a dressage rider. She had a very big warmblood. She was riding her horse and, you know,

she was always complaining that he was lazy and the trainer thought he was lazy and everybody thought he was lazy. And they were always quote unquote "getting after him." So, you know, she would use a whip. She would, you know, kick him and all those things. And he just, he was not enthusiastic about working, put it that way.

And she, just like most of us had some, you know, some things she could improve physically, you know, her balance, her coordination, her posture, you know, her position on the horse. And I was working with her one day and I started giving her this hands-on strategy she could do with her horse and showing her how it took so little pressure to move this big.

He was over 17 hands horse and that she could start initiating the movement. She was on the ground next to him. And we were doing little rocking movements with her horse. And finally, you know, I, I kept helping her refine it and refine it and refine it until she was just basically breathing in a way that encouraged her horse to have a little bit of movement in his body.

And she was so excited. And so was I actually, because, you know, it takes so little to move a horse when you're in harmony with them. And so then, then, you know, she tacked up her horse and she got in the saddle and we took that same nuance, subtlety that seemed communication into the saddle. And suddenly our horse wasn't lazy anymore.

Suddenly she could breathe and invite movement and it was really fun. So we're going to talk about stuff like that, how you can really come from a different place when you're communicating with your horse. And I'll share with you, you know, my more than 30 years experience of doing this hands-on work where I'm helping, you know, horses move more athletically and feel better mentally and physically,

and how that just deepens the relationship with the human. So I want to share all that I want to, I want you to be able to do that, to help your horse and to help your connection with your horse. And it'll also at the same time, the way I designed this is that your body awareness will improve as you're helping your horse improve his or her body awareness too.

So it's pretty, it's pretty fun stuff. So give you a little bit, a little bit of a teaser about what's coming up is, you know, I'll share with you stories about how I've helped horses, for example, overcome chronic suspensory injuries and why, you know, the thinking is really outside the box. It's all about, you know, rewiring the brain,

believe it or not. And helping, you know, the horse, you know, stand and move in a more balanced way and to really recognize where the horse is holding themselves, you know, like chronically contracted in areas where it's become a habit. So things like that, we'll talk about how to help your horse overcome which that is, believe it or not.

That's one of my big passions is helping horses to not only we tolerate saddling cause that's, who wants to just live. You don't have to tolerate something, but to actually enjoy it and to teach you how to saddle your horse in a way that actually improves their athletic ability believer or not. So, yeah, that's again, really fun stuff and it doesn't take a long time to do,

and it just takes your commitment and, you know, to being attentive to your horse and doing things in a very particular way. So all kinds of things we're going to be diving into, you know, addressing, you know, your back health and your horse's back health, you know, helping you, as a rider or a non-rider, have freer hips.

Okay. It's a very common complaint I hear from people is that they have tight hips, you know, being more balanced in the saddle. So we'll, we'll, we'll dive. into that - how you can recognize whether you're balanced in the saddle, because that not only hurts your back and neck and shoulders and all kinds of places, but also hurts your horse and makes riding much more difficult for both of you.

So again, my goal is to make the relationship between the horse and the human something so wonderful and healthy and joyful for both of you and to help improve your, your flexibility, balance and confidence as well as your horses. So all kinds of good stuff in store, you know, you know, if you're dealing with stiffness, no matter how old you are,

no matter how injured you've been, and again, this also applies to your work, you know, we can help. So we're going to talk about all kinds of fun stuff and explain you too. I want to really get into this in one of the episodes that's coming up about how this work is so different than so much of what's out there. So much of what's out there is more of the traditional stretching and strengthening programs.

This isn't like that, that I do, which is based on the Feldenkrais Method is about rewiring your brain, recognizing what you habitually do and giving you some better options. So it's super different, you know, very different. It's very much about, you know, learning to associate ease and pleasure with movement, okay. Not stressing and straining,

and that can carry over into all the aspects of your life too. So thank you so much for being here. I can't wait to start sharing these episodes with you, so I hope you please subscribe. If you have any questions, please give me a shout-out at Mary at Mary Debono dot com. So thank you for listening to this introduction, to my new podcast,

"Easier Movement, Happier Horses." I can't wait to talk to you again. Bye for now.

Thank you for joining me for this episode of Easier Movement, Happier Horses. Remember to grab your free video masterclass for riders at MaryDebono.com/rider. You get three easy, effective exercises to improve your back, hips, position and posture. People love these videos! It's important for riders and non-riders alike. I'm Mary Debono. Go have fun with your horses!

Bye for now.