How Novelty Can Transform Your Horse’s Movement and Mindset #90

In this episode, Mary Debono continues her discussion on how to work with your horse's existing habits to encourage ease and comfort. Building on concepts from previous episodes, Mary explains the importance of introducing novel, non-habitual movements that engage the horse's nervous system in a positive way.

These movements do more than just improve your horse's athletic abilities—they also enhance their emotional resilience and foster a deeper bond between horse and human.

Mary delves into the science behind the use of gentle, slow touch, including the role of C-tactile afferents (CLTMs) in building trust and reducing stress. 

She offers practical tips for incorporating novelty and variations into your daily routine, such as tacking up from the opposite side or leading from the offside. 

By focusing on gentle, safe variations, you can help your horse feel more confident and connected, ensuring that both you and your horse thrive together.

Key Takeaways:

• Start with Ease: Begin by supporting your horse's current movement habits, building a foundation of comfort and trust.
• Introduce Novel Movements: Gradually incorporate non-habitual movements to stimulate the horse's nervous system and promote learning.
• Enhance Emotional Resilience: Novel movements can help your horse become more confident and less fearful of change.
• Strengthen the Bond: Gentle, slow touch can deepen the connection between you and your horse by activating an emotional area of the horse's brain.
• Practical Applications: Simple changes, like tacking up from a different side, can be powerful tools for introducing novelty while maintaining a sense of ease.

Resources:

💥Learn how the Feldenkrais Method can help improve your seat, position, and balance on your horse! Free rider videos masterclass: https://www.marydebono.com/rider 💥

Email [email protected]

All information is for general educational purposes ONLY and doesn't constitute medical, veterinary, or professional training advice. Always use extreme caution when interacting with horses.  

TRANSCRIPT:

Hello. So, in the last two episodes, we actually focused on this idea that starting where the horse finds a sense of ease, in other words, starting with something that the horse already does, can improve their performance, their behavior, all kinds of wonderful things in a really simple, easy, elegant way. So, in case we're meeting for the first time, my name is Mary Dibono. This is the easier movement, happier Horses podcast.

And, yeah, today we're talking about how we address this idea that horses have habits of movement, habits of feeling, even the same way we do. So whether they have a habit they developed of dropping their back, maybe they have a habit of being stiff on one side. Those are movement habits. They are habits of how they move and feel, and there are ways we can address them. And in the previous two episodes, which I hope you go back and listen to, we had first talked about why we don't contradict what the horse is doing.

We don't go in there and say, oh, you bend easily on this side, but not on this side. Here, let me bend you, or let me get you to bend. Right. We don't do that. Instead, we support what the horse is already doing. Right. We go into that even more. So the horse gets a sense of it being familiar, being comfortable, having us not contradict what the nervous system is doing to keep the horse feeling safe.

So, again, we went over that in more detail in the previous two episodes. So, I think that was episode 88 is where I talked about why we support the direction of ease is what we call it. In other words, what's easy for the horse already we start there, right? But we don't then leave it there. So, in the next episode, episode 89, I talked about how we then start to introduce new options to the horse in a way that respects and supports this feeling of ease, because that's how the horse will then be able to take that information, integrate it into themselves, and have it become, like, organic.

In other words, the horse then participates in this. This is something you're doing with the horse, not to the horse. Okay? So today, what I want to talk about is, again, piggybacking on those other two ideas, and now talking about why we use novel movements and we use variations and how it does more than just improve the horse's movement. So in our work, in our hands on work, it's very gentle.

It's informed a lot by the work of Doctor Moshe Feldenkrais, the creator of the Feldenkrais method for people. And what we do is we help the horse feel how different parts of them can participate in movement. We're actually communicating with the horse's nervous system through our hands, through the vehicle of movement. And movement can be something as small as lifting a little bit of the tissue of the muscle on the horse.

Right. It could be something as bigger as supporting the rib cage or the sternum in a different way. I mean, there's many different degrees of this, different ways we do it. But what I wanted to talk about, again, is this idea that we do things in ways that are novel for the nervous system, so they maintain a sense of safety. That's important. We talked about that earlier. And they get the attention of the nervous system in a way that stimulates learning.

Right. That you're getting the horse's curiosity, if you will, engaged, and you're curious about it, too. Okay. And what this can do, these are bringing in very gradually these different, novel, you know, non habitual movements, these different variations that we do. Yes. They improve the movement. They improve your horse's athletic performance. Right. All those good things. So whether your horse is young or. Or really geriatric, but helps the horse get around the pasture a little more easily, all those things.

But it does even more than that, because when you're providing this new sensory input to the nervous system, again, has to be done in a safe way, safe for the nervous system. The nervous system starts to recognize that change doesn't have to be scary. Right? Doesn't have to fear change. So I think this is one reason, one of the reasons, anyway, why so many horses get, like, more confident, like horses that have been, you know, get stressed more easily, they get more confident in different situations.

Now, it doesn't mean that every horse that's super spooky is immediately not going to be spooky. So don't. I'm not trying to say that by any means, but it starts to prepare the nervous system for that. For this idea that change doesn't have to be something to be feared, that change can be safe, and it can actually feel good. Right. This is also how it works with. With you as well.

When you do the Feldenkrais method, for example, for yourself, and you're experiencing these different variations in movement, you're doing the same thing for your own nervous system. You're helping your nervous system recognize that change can be good. Change can feel good, and it can be beneficial. So you become much more resilient to stress. And this is what we find anecdotally with the horses, that they become more resilient from this work.

And again, the lines of communication are open. The other thing that happens is your horse can start to trust you more because you're recognizing their feelings of fear, for example, or safety. So, in other words, when you're doing the hands on work, we're always recognizing and supporting. Okay, this is where you are now. Let's see if we can easily explore these other things. So you're not, again, you're not trying to get the horse to do something.

You're working with the horse, and you're co creating these new movement possibilities and new feeling possibilities. Okay? So you build a much deeper connection with your horse, with that. The other thing is the work that we do, the work that I teach in my programs, we use, you know, the neuroscience of different things. So if you think about, I've talked about this a lot. If you look up any of my episodes about what I call rhythm circles, we talk about this particular set of receptors called CLTMs.

And they're receptors found all over the body, except on the, there aren't on the bottoms of the horse's feet. They're not on the bottoms of your feet or your hands either, but they're everywhere else, basically, on mammals. Okay, so all mammals have them. And when you touched another mammal with a light, slow contact, and that's done at room temperature. So if you touch somebody with an ice cube or something very hot, it won't stimulate those receptors, it'll stimulate other ones, trust me.

But not those. But the reason those receptors, the CLTMs, are so important is that they go directly to the limbic part of the brain where other, unlike other sensory input, okay? So they start to stimulate the brain in a very different way. What they found, what researchers have found is that they actually help the receiver, the one who's being touched, bond more with the person or with the individual touching them.

So, for example, they theorize, scientists have theorized that this is an evolutionary adaptation because moms, right, mammal mamas will, like, lick and otherwise touch their animals, their offspring, in a way that is gentle, slow, and their body temperature, like, kind of like room temperature type of thing, right? It's neither hot nor cold, and it stimulates those receptors so that now the offspring want to cooperate and want to bond with mama.

And from an evolutionary point of view, that's really important, isn't it? That's really important because we want the offspring to stay safe. Cause evolution is all about propagating the species. So the more they're kind of bonding with mama, the more they're cooperating with mamade, the better. So this is another way that we utilize something that feels good to the horse, feels good to us, to strengthen our bond and to strengthen our avenues of communication.

And they found that when you stimulate these cltms, the animals are also more resilient to stress. So again, this kind of goes along with what I was saying earlier, that even by using the variations themselves, can help us be more resilient to stress. And now we can kind of, we can turbo charge that, we can get kind of like a synergistic effect if we think about both the CLTMs coming into play, if our movement is slow and gentle as well as, you know, our novel movements are stimulating another part of the nervous system, which helps the animal be more resilient to stress.

So that's just a little brief, you know, indication of what's possible. So how would you take this? So, if you're not in my program, I wish you were number one. But if you're not, thank you for listening to the podcast and to give you some actionable things. You know, we go into this in detail in my, in my programs, but you can think of just even starting to introduce things non habitually to your horse.

I mean, something as simple as, oh, I always tack up from this side, you know, start doing it from the other side, you know, maybe you have a certain kind of routine, kind of get out of that routine, start mixing it up, go down different trails, use a different arena, you know, do things a little differently, add more variety to your horse's life and to your own. Maybe, you know, teach your horse to lead from the other side.

You can teach your horse to be mounted and dismounted from the offside. Now, only do that if it's really safe for you and have expert guidance to help you with that, because some horses will startle when you first do that. So don't take it for granted and think your horse will be fine. Your horse may not be, but I have successfully helped many, many people teach their horse that.

And that's really good for both of you, right? To mount and dismount from the offside, but even start with leading from the offside if you don't normally do that. But start to bring this idea of novelty and non habituation into your everyday life with your horse, so that the nervous system is stimulated, but keep it, you know, under thresholds, keep it so that where it feels easy and fun to your horse, and it's just a little bit different, a little bit curious, right?

But there's no sense of, ah, you know, no sense of anxiety. Okay, so that's really important. We talked about this a lot in the other two episodes, the two before this one, about keeping that sense of ease throughout the process. So please continue to do that. Right. Keep that sense of ease. But remember that when you bring in novelty, when you bring in new variations. Again with the underpinnings of a sense of ease, you're doing so much to improve your horse's physical well being.

As far as they can move more easily. All that good stuff, but also their emotional well being. The same is true for you as well. Again, what do I always say? It's because you and your horse deserve to feel great together. Thank you so much for joining me, and I look forward to seeing you on the next episode. Bye for now.