Touch Your Horse
Touch your horse to connect, to detect, to release, to reward, to assist to unfold, to remind, to facilitate, to bring peace or energy to make whole and to make well. Touch. This is a theme that comes back again and again in Manolo’s work and in the future weeks we will be sharing some of his insights on why it is important to take the time to learn to read the bodies of our horses like a roadmap to wellness – become aware of what the body tell us because bones and muscles do not lie and like braille, we can learn to read our horses as openly as a book, if we choose to take the time and make the effort to do so.
Learn to touch and learn to feel, to wait, to be with your horse quietly, in the moment, un-hurried so that his body may process and wind and unwind as it chooses and needs.
Listen. To what your fingers tell you, to the horse’s breath and yours, to the pinch of his nostrils slowly widening as he inhales, the slackening of his lip, the slight chewing motion, the rapid blink or deep rapture of heavy eyelids. The poll is a place fertile with signals and information, what does it tell your fingers as they rest or probe gently the horse’s occiput, his atlas and axis, the space where the forlock springs from? These are questions who yield answers to a horse’s behavior or performance.
This is a photo from a series of images we took yesterday for an article in Baroque Horse Magazine. We thought you would enjoy a preview.
