EMHH Episode 44: Help Your Horse Feel Better About Anything

Whether you want to improve your horse's athletic performance, confidence or comfort,  there's a KEY step that needs to happen.  And I'll tell you all about it in this episode. 

This key step has benefits for you too. It refines your communication, enhances your feel and helps you connect more deeply with your horse.

What's really cool is that when you help your horse improve their movement, it opens improvement in other areas as well. Your horse can begin to experience greater ease and comfort in other activities, such as being groomed, tacked up, ridden, etc. In other words, they can feel better about these experiences too!

All of this equine improvement takes involvement on your part, of course. And in this episode, I describe how I help horses feel better. And how you can too.     

💥Want to get expert coaching on putting this into practice?💥

Go to https://www.marydebono.com/joinhorse to join the waitlist for our online group coaching program, Move with Your Horse.

Be among the first to know when we open our doors again. And qualify for valuable bonuses!

Mentioned in the podcast:

Popular previous episode: Using Everyday Situations to Build Trust with Your Horse https://www.marydebono.com/blog/h43

https://www.marydebono.com/blog/girthy%20horse - Girthy Horse? Simple Steps Make Saddling a Pleasure (Our most popular blog post!) 

FREE resources:
Easily improve your movement and position in our FREE rider masterclass.
Feldenkrais® for Riders videos: https://www.marydebono.com/rider 

TRANSCRIPT:

Hello, would you like to know the key to helping your horse improve? Well, I'm so glad cuz that's what we're going to be talking about today. We're going to talk about something you can do to help your horse improve, to transform whatever you wanna say. And it, it's about really, you can apply this to so many different things. Maybe you,

you can definitely apply it to your relationship with your horse, your horse's athletic performance, your horse's emotional state, how, you know, how calm or tense they feel. So the key to improvement, right? That's what we're going to talk about today. It's a, a really essential, essential piece of the puzzle. So I'm gonna give it to you right off the top.

Hey, it, it's, I have a whole bunch of notes here cuz I have tons of stuff I wanna share with you to dive into how to do this. But right off the top, I'm gonna tell you what it is. The key to helping your horse improve is to give them the experience that they can feel differently. Now, what does that mean?

Okay, let me explain. So I do a, a, an approach that I created called Debono Moves, right? I teach it to people around the world. It's been really successful. It helps horses feel better in body and mind. That's a simple way of putting it. They, you know, their movement gets freer. They're, they're more connected with you,

they're calmer. They have that like res relaxed readiness, if you will. It's all really good stuff. And it can help horses at any age, any level of fitness, any level of training, whether you're, you know, doing Grand Prix dressage or your horse is very elderly or a baby or whatever can be helpful. Okay? So, but when you boil it down,

the purpose of this approach Debono moves, is to help your horse experience something different. To recognize that change is not only possible, but it feels better. It's a, a better option if you will. So, so just like you, you know, you have certain habits. You have habits about how you sit every day, how you drive your car,

how you, you know, sit at your desk if you ha if you have a desk, how you stand, how you ride your horse. I mean, how you pick up the reins. I mean, they're, they're neuromuscular habits that you spontaneously invoke. And those habits usually had a solid foundation. In other words, you did them because they solved a problem for you.

But a lot of those habits have become harmful to you. They've become unhealthy, they've become maladaptive. And the same is true with your horse. Your horse has habits of movement, right? That started out probably to solve a problem. A simple Example is maybe your horse experienced a time when he was dealing with an unbalanced rider or tack that didn't fit.

And so we had to do things to compensate. So even after the rider got balanced, the saddle now fits properly and the bridal fits and the, you know, all the things were taken care of. Your horse's nervous system is still holding on to, at the very least remnants of that habit. Whether it's a drop back, you know, tightness in the extensor muscles,

you know, the neck held up, you know, in a head held up, things like that. You know, moving with a, with a restricted limbs, right? Those were designed to protect the horse, to keep the horse safe. Now they're not necessary, but the horse, because they solved a problem, is still holding onto them. Again,

the horse's nervous system, just like your nervous system, controls everything. That's why my approach Debono moves works with the whole system. We don't focus on parts. So lemme give you another example. Just say you have a horse that has hawk problems. Now of course you always do all the medical intervention that's appropriate, but I've helped a lot of horses with hawk problems and I'm not a vet and I don't do anything that's considered veterinary medicine.

So how would I help a horse with hawk problems? Well, I do it by helping the horse feel that new movement habits, new movement patterns are possible. So again, it goes back to I help the horse feel something different, right? I help the horse feel how moving through the ribs can help distribute the work of walking, trotting, caning,

all that stuff. So it relieves pressure from the hawks. It stops loading up the hawks in such a way that's damaging. A lot of times this is true for humans as well as horses. You develop problems with joints because the force isn't going through the joint in a healthy way. Maybe it's a kind of off to the side. So it's creating,

you know, much greater stress on the joint, creates a lot of damage both to soft tissue as well as the joint itself. All kinds of harmful things. And then a lot of compensation has to take place so other parts of the body get damaged over time. So what we wanna do is, but the horse, that's a habit that the horse has.

Same way you might have a habit like that, maybe using your foot in a way that is creating sheer stress on your, you know, unhealthy stress on your knee and up into your hip and back. So this is very common. So what we want to do is to help the horse feel that there are options. Now, you don't have to stay stuck in that habit.

So again, we go back to helping the horse experience something different, giving the horse's brain evidence that they can feel differently, right? They, they have the saddle placed on them, they don't have to brace, right? We can teach them, you know, we can show them with our hands how that's possible. Okay? So let me give you another example.

Sometime ago a woman contacted me. She had found me on the internet and she said, I really, I really want you to help my horse. He has all these neurological symptoms and trust me, she had taken the horse to all kinds of vets. She had taken the horse to a veterinary hospital to get checked out, done all kinds of diagnostics.

And so she was doing everything appropriate from a veterinary point of view. And that's essential in, in my work, okay? That that has to be done. But the horse still had all these problems. Could I, how, how could I, you know, what could I, where could she get resources? She didn't know where I lived. I didn't know where she lived.

So I said to her, well, where are you? Turns out she wasn't far away. She was like 40 minutes away or something like that. It was crazy. It was great. And she, you know, she, again, she's found me on the internet. She could have been on the other side of the world. Well, it just so happens that I was teaching an in-person workshop again,

not that far from, from her. So I said to her, how about we do this? If, if you can trail your horse to my workshop, I'll, I'll use your horse as a demo and we'll, you know, give you the horse a session. So she was very happy about that. She said, okay, that's perfect. So she brought the horse.

I didn't know really much at all. I didn't really know much at all. That's true about the horse. She just said that he's having these problems and the vets were doing X, Y, and Z, but they were like scratching their heads and all that. So the horse, so I have my whole group of students watching. The horse comes off the trailer and right away you can see that this horse is problems just walking,

just walk, just coming off the trailer and just walking towards us. And I had set up just a few ground poles, just not, not elevated, just ground poles. And I asked her to walk the horse over them. And the horse couldn't even navigate simple ground poles with plenty of, you know, I had different distances between them and stuff.

It just, just, he couldn't, he couldn't navigate. So my students were all looking at me like, what are you gonna do? Like this is, what are you gonna do? And I'll be honest with you, I had no idea what I was going to do. I didn't have a game plan. I didn't know at all what I was going to do.

And the fact is, we don't go in with a predetermined game plan because then you're not listening to your horse If you do, but I really didn't have the slightest idea what I was gonna do. What I did know was then I could somehow help this horse that if I could connect that, you know, if I took my time and I didn't put pressure on myself or the horse,

that We could come to start to talk to each other. Okay? And by talking, I don't mean like telepathic communication, I mean through our nervous system I could connect my nervous system to his nervous system and give him a sense that things could be, feel okay, that there was a sense of safety. So this is crucial. Okay? So if you're multitasking,

please come back to me cuz this is crucial. When I work with a horse or, or anyone, a, a h a human, a dog, a cat, whoever, I want them to experience a sense of safety. Okay? That's how that's at that state. Then the nervous system can listen and the nervous system can listen to this new input and say,

Hmm, maybe I can try that. Maybe that would be okay, maybe I don't have to be so defensive and protective and I could let this habit go. Maybe there's a better option. So the feeling of safety is crucial. That's what we don't force things in this work. It's very gentle. It's very much, we're constantly listening to the horse for feedback and adjusting what we're doing.

So this horse, so, so the woman's name is Janice, amazing woman by the way. And her horse's name was easy, which the vet was one of her vets was teasing her saying, don't ever name a horse easy cuz this was like the, not like, so the, his, his medical issues were not easy, let's put it that way.

So, lovely horse. He was a, an Arabian, gray Arabian. So, so I start just putting my hands on the horse again, just to let him feel that, you know, there could be a sense of safety. I could use very small gentle movements on his skin. You know, just, you know, supporting his muscles in very gentle ways.

Kind of a rhythmic motion to it so that he starts to feel safe. Now I wanna say something. This horse did not appear to feel unsafe, like to, if you were just watching him stand there, he wasn't, he, he wasn't obviously tense, he wasn't spooky, you know, any of the things you would say, oh, that horse feels unsafe.

He was standing there. He didn't mind the crowd of people looking at him. He, he was okay in the new situation, you know, he had trailered a lot with, with Janice. So he was comfortable, you know, going to new places and things like that. So on the outside it didn't look like his nervous system felt unsafe, but I knew it did.

I knew it was unsafe because he couldn't even coordinate his movement. Okay? So my intent there was to give him a sense of safety. And I do that through the language of movement. Moshe Feldenkrais, the man whose work I've, you know, informs my work so deeply, used to say movement is the first language of the brain. And so with this idea,

you know, I could do these small gentle movements with him very small and, and feeling and watching his responses, all the different ways we, we notice responses in the horse. Not just was he moving away. Big responses like that. It's like, you know, how is his breathing? What, what does his eye look like? Are there wrinkles around the eyes or the nose?

Or what are his ears doing? Or his tail, you know, the tone is of the muscles. Like all the subtle things I was paying close attention to. And so this way we were talking, cuz you have to remember that again, the nervous system controls everything. If the nervous system is worried, if it's feeling unsafe, cuz its job is to keep the individual safe,

whether that's you or your horse, right? Who's ever nervous system, it is the job is to keep the individual safe. So I wanted to make sure I kept him feeling safe and then gradually the movements could get a little bit larger and I could bring more parts into it. So in other words, I could start thinking about what would it be like to move his ribs gently,

his ribcage gently in coordination with tiny movements of his pelvis or his ribs and shoulders, you know? And I started doing just tiny coordinated. And they were, there wasn't willy-nilly, I wasn't just this part here in this part here and just like kind of a smorgasbord of of movement. I was very intentional. I was like, what would be functionally appropriate?

How would this part, like in walking for example, how would the ribcage have to move in relation to the shoulder? How would the pelvis move in relation to the ribs? How would the spine work? How would the sternum move? And I started just piecing together, not overwhelming him, just little bits and very gradually, very slowly piecing together this idea of functional movement patterns,

functional movement, you know, combinations if you will, in a very coordinated way. And this is important, helping him stay safe as you know, experience that feeling of safety as I did it. So this is where I was giving him that sensation of feeling differently. Now all of a sudden, oh wow, it's safe to move my shoulder and my ribs.

It's safe to move my ribs and my pelvis and my spine and my sternum. He started to experience himself differently. He could feel differently, right? So it's a a, this is, this is, this is important. Okay? So bottom line is, you know, so the session went on for, I don't know how long, I'm gonna guess maybe it was like an hour.

And it was just, I have to say my students and they were very new students. It was like maybe the first or second day, something like that of the class because it was, it was either a week or two weeks long. The class, I can't remember, I'm gonna say a week. I think it was five days, something like that.

And so this is towards the beginning of it, I believe. And it was just, they were just like really soaking it up. But it was like these tiny little movements that I'm sure were boring if you don't know what I'm doing. But the best part was when we had Janice walk him again, he walked with this beautiful movement totally free, totally coordinated.

She even took him over the ground poles. He never hit one. He just was able to adjust his stride. It was amazing. I'm not saying that I was amazing cuz I did very little. My job was merely to help him facilitate. It was his nervous system. He was, he was the one who did the brilliant work cuz this is work that we do with a horse.

We we're not doing something too, I wasn't doing something too easy to that horse. I was just doing something with him. I was like, hmm, can I support you here? Can I suggest this? What would this feel like? So it's, it's all his brilliance. He learned something, he learned something very powerful. He took that and ran with it,

so to speak. And the change was really dramatic. I mean, so, so sorry that that wasn't filmed because was such a good example of he was a horse that was just all over the place. Could not be, you know, couldn't move in a coordinated manner and suddenly he had this ability, right? Because I got in touch with his nervous system.

I got in touch with his nervous system and helped him realize that change was possible. And not only was it possible, it felt better. That's key, right? Because the nervous system wants to hold on to what it knows, right? That's safe, right? The familiar is safe to us. But if you can give the horse or the human a better option,

something that feels better. So they first have to, to know that it's possible to feel different, that there's a, you can feel you can experience yourself differently. And then I take that into different arenas, so to speak. Sometimes literally ar different arenas, you know, different environments, but also different activities. You know, tacking up, again,

I'm gonna go back to that. It's a big mission of mine is to make that pleasurable for horses. So we, we add in different parts, attacking up. I have a whole article about that. I touched on that in the last episode as well. And at some point, we'll, we'll take a deeper dive into that. I, and I definitely take a deeper dive into it in my program.

Move with your horse. So if you're interested in that, there's gonna be information at the end, cuz we're gonna start a new cohort this spring. Very excited. But you can take this into different activities. So you want to give the horse a feeling of safety when she's picking up her feet. So say whether you're cleaning out the hooves or you're trimming the hooves,

right? You want the horse to feel safe when that's done. Again, the most placid bomb-proof horse can have a feeling of feeling unsafe when you do that. They may not show it on the outside, but if there's any degree of holding, you know, that tension in the muscles where they're really not relaxing into it, that means that there's a,

a sense of feeling unsafe about it. So there's ways that you can help them feel safe as you're doing that. Where then they realize I can just let the leg go. I can just not go in a way that they're leaning on you, but in a way that's appropriate to the activity, right? So it's that feeling of safety. So again,

I'm going back to what the key element is, right? Is to help your horse experience that you know, they can feel differently, right? They can experience an activity in a different way, they can have a different sense of themselves, they can experience themselves differently. They can feel relaxed and ready to move, but in a relaxed way when they're doing something.

Okay? So this is really, really important. So for example, you know, your horse can feel, oh this is a big one, I'm gonna say this about a lot of horses that have restrictions in their body, they might feel anxious because they know they can't get away on some level, on some instinctive level, they know that they can't get away from danger as quickly as they'd like to,

right? Because it's the whole, right? They horses tend to want to flee if there's a problem. So they feel vulnerable. But when you give them the experience, right, that movement through their whole body can be pleasurable. Suddenly they don't feel so vulnerable anymore. And there's been massive changes in behavior from something like that that seems so a lot of people think there's a disconnect cause they're like,

how could changing the movement change the behavior? But it does. Oh, that reminds me, let me give you like a full circle moment with Janice. So Janice is the hor is the, was the horse's person for easy, right? She was the Easy's owner, I guess I don't like to use the word owner, but she brought easy to me,

wonderful person. Well, she was so impressed with the improvement in her horse that she then started studying with me and she joined another program I was doing after that one. And she studied with me for quite a while. She's phenomenal by the way. So during one of the classes, which was coincidentally held in the same location as the one where we helped her horse,

so she was assigned to work with this horse named Rio. Nice horse. He was, it was a, it was a therapeutic riding place. So he was a nice school horse and we didn't know much about him. They, they didn't tell us much about him, but she noticed something really interesting in his ribcage. And he had, and I've seen this in a number of horses,

he had like these like divots if you will, in between some ribs. And so she gently and very skillfully worked with him the way I taught her with really freeing up his ribcage and coordinating other parts of his body to work with the ribcage. Did this magnificent work and at the end those divots were gone. It was really, really cool because when I talked to the manager of the place later,

he had had them for at least as long as they knew him, which was a number, quite a number of years. But I didn't even talk to the manager at that point. So anyway, she did this amazing session. He just looked so happy. His movement was better. It was just awesome, right? We put him back, well the next morning,

the person who did the blanketing and un blanketing, cuz those horses, it was winter and those horses were blanketed at night, came up to me and said, w did you guys do anything with Rio yesterday? And I said, yeah. I said, why? You know, I'm thinking, whoa, what's going on? And she said, it's so weird.

He was a completely different horse today. She said, I've been working with the horse for years and he always tries to bite me. He always tries to bite me when I'm taking his blanket off, putting his blanket on, doing anything with him. He always tries to bite me. She said he was so friendly today. She said it was amazing.

She said, it was like she, I was like, is this the same horse? And I thought that was really, really significant. So I was, I couldn't wait to tell Janice that because it was so fun to see that, you know, he or she, she learned this way to help him in such a, a way that not only did his movement improve and you could just see how relaxed he was,

but his whole way he, he interacted with the humans changed after that. So he had always been like a solid horse. Like he'd maybe snark at his handler, but he would never turn and bite the rider or anything like that. You know, he was a solid therapeutic horse. But that was amazing to me. And it just shows you the power when you really listen to the horse and when you're able,

when you have the tools, the skills to help the horse feel differently in body and mind, just amazing results can happen. So stuff like that really warms my heart. So I wanted to share that. But I loved it because the problem that Janice had with her horse led her to this work. And then, like I said, she got really into it and she's amazing.

So that was really Fun. So remember we always work with the whole horse. You could think we work with the system, not the parts. So let me give you another example. You know, the whole idea of, you know, certain parts of the horse, we tend to focus, like in our culture we tend to focus on, oh the horse has a stifle problem.

So we do things to help the stifle and that that could be appropriate. Not saying it's not right, the hor the horse may need appropriate support from a veterinarian to, for the stifle. But then you wanna look at why is that stifle being overworked? Like what is going on there, right? So the more parts that can participate in movement, that can be kind of woken up,

if you will, the less strain they will be on the stifle or the hawk or whatever part, right? So this is important. It's like you can think about it if you were moving, like moving your house like so you know how hard much work that is, right? Right. To like physically move your stuff. It's a lot of work.

So what if you were doing it yourself or just with one other person, right? Furniture is heavy most of the time. So unless you only have bean bags, which you know, that's, that's easy. But like if you have a big dresser or anything like that, it's heavy. So the more people, maybe a bunch of your strong friends come over and say,

I wanna help you move. And they're super enthusiastic about it, how much easier would that be? How much lighter would that be? They would be even like a sense of joy, right? Playfulness with it. It's the same thing with movement. When you have habits, whether it's you or your horse, that you're overusing some parts of yourself and underusing others,

which is very, very common, right? It's going to feel like an effort, a slog, right? Movements will be more difficult. There'll be greater strain, you know, more wear and tear, greater fatigue. But when the parts are working in a companionable way, in a way that they're each supporting the other right now it's like, oh,

work is easier. There's a lightness, there's a fluidity to movement. This, this is important. So to get to that state, right? Cuz we want that state, that easy, elegant fluid movement for ourselves and our horses. To get to that, you have to know it's possible. How do you know it's possible? By giving the horse the experience of feeling differently,

of experiencing that. Ooh, I don't have to be stuck in this tight pattern, right? I can experience it differently and it has to be done in a safe way. If you try to force it. You know, some people do forceful methods where, you know, they're focused on structure and they're doing things in a forceful way that often backfires because the horse isn't prepared to accept that and it could lead the horse,

leave the horse vulnerable to injury. So I've seen this and it, it, it bothers me when I see it. Like sometimes people will, back when people read magazines, it'd be a magazine article on like how to massage your horse's neck and they would like be showing like, you know, this deep tissue massage and this is what you should do if your horse has a stiff neck.

And I always think, oh no, because that would leave the horse potentially with a freer neck briefly, but without the structure, right? To support that without the, the buy-in of the rest of the body, without the participation of the rest of the horse to support that. So that could leave that horse actually very vulnerable to injury. Same as true with people.

If you just did, you know, something very localized and you didn't have the support of the trunk and the pelvis and the legs and all that, right? The nervous system is going to say, wait a minute, we've gotta shut that down cuz that feels unsafe. So things like that where they're just focused on parts is, is not my approach,

I'll put it that way. And I'm, I'm, I'm very, you know, careful about things like that. Like I would warn people be careful with that because that can really backfire. And again, if the nervous system isn't feeling safe, it's not going to listen to what you have to say. It's not gonna say, oh that's a better option.

It's gonna say, okay, like that's being forced but I don't like it. Right? And so the defenses will come up. Okay? So I hope that makes sense. So I'm just gonna quickly go through my notes cause you know me, I always have tons of notes cuz I have so much to share with you. Okay? I think I have a lot of stuff here.

So anyway, how do you get started in this? Well this is what I would say. First thing you wanna do is you wanna experience it yourself. Okay? So we have a number of feld in Christ movement lessons that we do for people. And I wanna say why I do that. Number one, I want you to feel better. I don't only want your horse to feel better and move easier,

I want you to as well. And when you think about it, the way you move, the way you breathe, even the way you think all affects your horse, right? You, your, you shape your interactions with your horse based on, you know, your movement, right? The way you breathe, the way you hold yourself, all those things where you direct your attention,

you know what you're thinking about, right? That all of you know shapes your experience with your horse and your horse's experience with you. Cuz your horse takes that all in. They're much more sensitive than we are. They're, they're like constantly reading us. And that affects very strongly how you interact with each other. It, it, it basically creates the experience,

you know, it gives it a container if you will, and really impacts it. So you want to be more aware of how you move, how you hold yourself, how you're breathing, how you're thinking. So we go through deep dive in my move with your horse program about your movement and thoughts and all that kind of good stuff. And the reason is,

so there's a number of reasons and I actually wrote them down cause I didn't wanna forget any of them. Okay? Number one is I want you to improve your awareness, okay? People talk about body awareness, coordination, all that stuff. That's super important, right? You're gonna ride better, you're gonna do groundwork better, you're gonna do all those things that your horse is going to have a better experience with you,

a clearer experience. You're gonna be more congruent. So in other words, your body is going to be congruent with what your mind wants. So, so your actions will line up with your intentions. You're not gonna be giving conflicting signals to your horse horses really feel that incongruency. So you're going to be clearer, right? You're going to be more sensitive,

you'll have better feel. All that is wonderful for equestrians, right? It's super, super important. So that's a huge benefit to you and to your horse. Okay? And the other thing is, when you do the Feldenkrais work yourself. So when you go through this process of improving your movement that I teach in my program, right? You get the experience of change,

you get to experience that transformation. So you get, you guessed it to feel differently, to experience yourself differently. Suddenly you may find that you're more creative, like new things open up for you. Because once your brain gets evidence that change is not only possible, but it feels better right? Then, now you've created like a new precedent. So you are more likely to be able to change more easily.

Change doesn't have to take 66 days that people talk about changing a habit and all that stuff change can happen in a pleasurable instant, okay? If it's done the right way. And we have all kinds of strategies for that. Okay? So this is really, really important. So to me, I would be doing a disservice if I didn't include the human aspect in the work that I teach the hands-on horse work if I didn't include that.

Because also when you, when your nervous system feels that change is not only possible but feels better now you can transmit that sense of ease to your horse, you can transmit that sense of new possibilities to your horse. You can't do that if you've never experienced it. So you literally get the experience yourself and Now you're, you're able to help your horse much more effectively and then physically you're able to help your horse more effectively.

I had one of the gals in my program was really kind of funny. I was doing a spotlight session with her and that's where I do a one-on-one over. This is all on Zoom and it's awesome, it work. I work with people all over the world and we were doing a one-on-one with her and it was so great and she was just amazing.

And she was so, she had one hand on the horse's sternum, one hand on the back, and you have to do it on each side. So there's a different way. We tend to have a habit of how we bend more easily to one side. Almost everybody has an easier way, but that can be improved. And she said, now I know why you have us do the Feldenkrais work for ourselves.

She said, cuz look how easy this is for me to do in either way. She said, I wouldn't have been able to do this before if I hadn't done the work for my, with myself. So that's really important. So just remember that all these things influence your interactions with your horse, how you move, you know, how you hold yourself,

how you direct your attention, how you breathe. So these are all things we we dive into in the move with your horse program, okay? Because a lot of people, they inadvertently are transmitting a sense of anxiety, restriction, limitation to their horses. They don't know it, but they're, that's what they're feeling inside themselves physically and or emotionally. It's often both that they're feeling,

you know, some level of tension, even if they feel like, okay, but there, there is, there they have their own habits, right? That they haven't addressed. So that's what they're kind of transmitting to their horse and their everyday interactions with their horse. We don't wanna do that. We wanna give our horse a sense of ease, of pleasure,

of movement, of new possibilities, right? So it's a great journey. It's such a fun journey to go on with your horse that you both can improve. You both can embrace this idea that, you know, life can feel easy and pleasurable and fun and that there's new possibilities that change can happen, right? And that it feels better. So it's really your choice.

You know, the last episode, episode 43, which I really encourage you to listen to if you haven't already. I mean, the positive feedback I got was like off the chart. It was the most positively received episode I've done so far. People really loved it and shared their wonderful stories themselves. But this is all about choice. And right now there is a choice.

So you have a choice of are you relating to your horse with giving your horse this sense of safety? Would you like to learn more about that? Would you like to learn how to communicate with your horse's nervous system so that they can experience themselves differently? You can experience yourselves differently. And then the two of you, what I call the horse Human system,

right, can experience life together differently and in a much higher level, or have richer, deeper experiences, greater connection, and really develop your relationship with your horse as well as having a lot more fun, you know, in the, with the activities that you enjoy doing together. So if you're interested in this, please go over to marydebono.com/joinhorse.

It's all one word. There's no hyphen or space or anything. MaryDebono.com/joinhorse. And I'll put it, I'll put a link in the show notes and I'd really encourage you to sign up. There's no obligation, but you'll get on. I'm gonna be giving away free things before we open the program. Again, I've, I've had the program closed for,

for like a year now and I've been loving working with the students and I'm gonna continue working with my current students, but we're gonna open up to a new cohort as well in the spring. It's going to be limited cuz I get in there and I know all of you, I don't, it's not a mass program where there's tons and tons of people in that we don't know each other.

We get to be real good friends in this program and you get the support of the community. It's really pretty cool. So, okay, MaryDebono.com/joinhorse. And again, no obligation, but you'll get all the free stuff. I'll be doing like free classes and things like that to let you know more about it. So thank you so much for listening.

I love sharing this work. I'm on such a mission to help help you and your horse feel that there's such great new possibilities out there for both of you. So thank you again. I can't wait to talk to you soon. Bye for now.