True Nature Equine Bodywork & Wellness

Here is my wish for every horse owner, trainer, horse professional or just anyone who works with horses:

Read. This. (new) Book.

No really. Invest the $23 in something that will change your perspective, change your mind, set off some lightbulbs over your head.

Through a range of case study stories, you’ll learn not only how your horse sees and responds to the world and you, but why - and what you can do to be a better horseperson.

It’s not a hard read, the science is served up in bite size pieces in the context of each story - stories about real horses that we can all relate to. I read it in two sittings.

Read it. Gift it to a friend. Keep it handy. Read it with your students and talk about it. Let it change how you train, see, are with your horse.

A Horse's Life: The Neuroscience of Equine Welfare A Horse's Life: The Neuroscience of Equine Welfare

Believe what your horse tells you.

Whether they are shouting or whispering or somewhere in between.

I am half way through a two day dissection and this really struck me. It might seem like a given, a no- brainer. But for many it is not. 

Can you train/correct an issue away with relative ease? Great. Does it take concerted effort and does that issue keep slipping back in? It is not a training issue. Or a behavior issue.

If we are going to partake in the incredible privilege of sitting on our horses backs, I do believe that we need to help them carry themselves in the most biomechanically correct way that will help ensure their long-term health.

Horses are simply not built to carry us. I think we forget this. A lot.

Part of that process is allowing them to carry themselves in such a way that works for each individual horse. There are no cookie cutters in true horsemanship. There are no guarantees that your lovely fill-in-the-blank prospect actually has the ability to fulfill that particular purpose.

We have to listen and allow. Be willing to pivot, be willing to substitute our personal goals with, when they don’t align, what our horse actually needs, what our horse is actually capable of doing without being crammed into a frame, drilled into the ground, strapped into place.

Mostly, we need to slow down and just listen and let the horses truth be our truth, too.



I was working on a similar post, then I read this one and thought well she said it just as well as I could have.

Not too long ago I had a client tell me that her trainer, who said that she could see the changes in the horses that I worked with, still just didn’t get it because it looked like I “wasn’t doing anything.”

I could go on about cognitive dissonance, or about how we are so adhered to our old beliefs that we can’t accept something new even when we see it with our own eyes, but I’ll just leave you with this: quiet and gentle can be very potent, focus on the results and not the need to be impressed by performance.

I would never have thought that such quiet work would have such impressive results. He’s been amazing since you were here last.” - K.K.

Where’s the “Wow”?

A trainer I work with recently reached out about a horse that had been feeling stiff and reactive during training. He wasn’t moving comfortably, and it was starting to affect their rides.

We scheduled a session, and from the start, the horse responded really well to soft tissue work. He softened, relaxed, and began to let go of tension in a way that felt positive and productive. We finished the session and scheduled a follow-up.

Later, the trainer shared something with me.

After I left, she and the owner talked about the session—as they should. The owner said:

“I wasn’t very impressed. I don’t see how such gentle work can make any significant difference. I just wasn’t ‘wowed’ by it.”

The trainer simply replied:

“Okay… let’s see how he responds.”

The Real Results

About a week later, the trainer returned for their next lesson and asked how the horse had been.

The owner said:

“Excellent. He’s been so good—I’m so happy with him.”

And the trainer replied:

“And there’s your WOW.”

Why It Doesn’t Always Look Impressive

In the equestrian world, there’s often an expectation that effective work should look dramatic.

Big reactions, something you can clearly see, maybe even hear happening. And to be fair, many horsemen incorporate a bit of showmanship into their work as part of how they present and sell what they do. My old coach used to call it “smoke and mirrors”, techniques used by magicians to entertain and draw the eye.

And there’s another idea at play—many of us have been taught, directly or indirectly, that for something to work, it needs to be intense.

“No pain, no gain.”
“Go hard or go home.”

So when we see quiet, gentle work, it can feel like not enough is happening.

But horses don’t live in that mindset. In fact, many of them tell us the opposite—they ask for less.

And when we listen, when we soften, when we do less… we often get more.

But massage and myofascial therapy are different.

When done well, they are:
• Quiet
• Subtle
• Gradual
• Responsive to the horse

There’s no forcing, no wrenching, no sudden impacts.

And while the changes may not always appear dramatic, they are immediate and significant—seen in improved tissue texture, posture, ease of movement and emotional state.

These are meaningful shifts within the nervous system and musculoskeletal tissue, even if they go unnoticed by the untrained eye.

The goal of this type of bodywork isn’t to override the body, but to work with it—safely, effectively, and in a way that supports lasting change.

These changes don’t need to be dramatic to be effective. In fact, they’re often more lasting because they’re not forced.

A Different Way of Looking at Results

It’s completely understandable that some people expect to feel “wowed” during a session—you’re investing in your horse, you want to see that reflected, and many people are used to that being combined with a sort of entertainment experience.

But sometimes, the most effective work doesn’t perform for the human audience.

It allows the horse to process, adjust, and improve in a way that sticks.

In the end, that quiet session—that didn’t seem like much had happened—resulted in a horse that felt great after and was able to safely, kindly and comfortably do his job.

And that’s the kind of “wow” that truly matters.

https://koperequine.com/exploring-fascia-in-equine-myofascial-pain-an-integrative-view-of-mechanisms-and-healing/

Do you remember the first time you ever sat on or interacted with a horse?

I can. I was nine. That combination of fear, thrill and awe is still palpable inside that memory. It was that first experience of connecting to something so true, so real, so primal that I had never felt before.

Horse are perhaps the most tangible, living, breathing connection in our domesticated world that we have back to our own truest nature. These 1,000 pound prey animals are whispering to us to remember. I think it's why we crave being with them, whether we realize it or not.

The reality is that no matter how hard we try in this modern life, we can not (much, perhaps, to our chagrin) completely obliterate this connection to our wild, a deeper knowing and connection developed over eons. The harder we try to do this, the sicker we become – of body, of mind – just look around at what is happening today at pretty much every level of society. We suffer deeply from this disconnection from nature and thus from self.

My gelding likes to really look me in the eye, up close. I feel like he is letting me, for just a brief moment, see our commonality. He also likes to share breath – you know, when a horse raises their head and gets close to breathe you in. It strikes me as one of the most intimate things a horse can volunteer to do with us. I feel like it is a reminder of a basic, primal connection. This sharing of not just oxygen but the rhythm of breathing together, the syncopation that is everywhere in around us, in nature. It is not just a cute, awe-shucks moment, if feels like an invitation to align at a beautiful, basic level. For a fleeting moment, I feel a shift (if I am present), any semblance of hierarchy or control or intellectualizing or anthropomorphizing dissolves. Then p**f, the moment has passed, and I am back at the surface of things, where most of us spend 99.9% of our day.

As much as we might try to extinguish that wild light in them, and so in us, it still burns at least on low, no matter how hell bent we are to douse the flame. They reflect our wildness, and in so doing put us in direct conflict with a culture that values control, compliance, appearance, performance, success.

These days when I watch most “upper level” riders what I see are humans that are so disconnected from themselves, so desperately in need of conquering any scintilla of the wild within that they are doing everything they can think of to impose that same clamped down control over their horses, sometimes with pretty harsh results.

I got the same feeling listening to a recent podcast in which the concept of respect in relation to horses was discussed. This is such a loaded word. Sometimes it is about semantics, “respect” gets conflated with “boundaries”. But just as often, I think the word carries the weight of the person’s need to be seen as dominant, to be revered as the superior being who must be complied with, no questions asked or answered. And when the horse does not adhere (because their brains are not capable of the nuance of respect by this definition), the person takes it personally, becomes angry or frustrated or shamed – how dare my horse not respect me!

It also brings to mind a clinic I went to audit a few years ago. Women, all of a certain age, as they say, were being taught by a man how to be the center of their horse’s attention – or else. Fairly aggressively getting after their horses to “focus on me!”

We bring the weight of our own internal disconnection from our true essence, our own wounding, into our interactions with our horses. And it gets in the way. If we are constantly running from ourselves, no one, not even the horses, can catch us.

How to begin to excavate the lost path back to the nothing-less-than splendor that is our true selves? It will be different for each of us. Perhaps it starts with presence, with breath, with a willingness to slow down. It is the invitation the horses are issuing to us, every day, in every interaction.

I believe it is their greatest gift to us, if we can accept it.

"It means we rule out discomfort before we assign character." I need to put that on a tee shirt.

And yes, it is likely that your horse has had, currently has or will have ulcers at some point in their ridden life.

“It seems like every behaviour issue now has a medical explanation. They’re not just bad… they all just ‘have ulcers.’”

This was said in response to someone suggesting that a very girthy horse might warrant medical attention.

It’s almost like research has found that gastric ulcers are extremely common in horses in work, with some groups reporting rates as high as 80–90%.

When a horse shows significant sensitivity to girthing, that is information.

When a condition is statistically common, considering it is not coddling. It is due diligence.

Acknowledging pain does not mean horses are fragile.
It does not erase training.
It does not eliminate boundaries.

It means we rule out discomfort before we assign character.

When discomfort is common in working horses, it deserves to be considered.

Ruling it out is not over-medicalizing behaviour.

It is part of responsible training.

A tale of two ulcers

I worked with a horse who was recently diagnosed with grade four ulcers and put on meds to heal. I saw him about four weeks into treatment and was told that his owner wanted to start riding again. The trainer and I talked it through and agreed that that he needed at least two months off. We communicated this suggestion to the owner together, and after some push back about being disappointed that their teenager couldn’t ride for a bit, they agreed. Victory for the horse, and maybe some education for a young owner/rider about what putting the horse first looks like.

On a previous visit to this barn, I had seen another gelding who was in poor shape. At the time I did some ground work to help him settle as hands on bodywork was out of the question. The trainer and I both thought it very likely that he had ulcers. When I returned several weeks later, the vet had seen him and the amount of scarring and current bleeding ulcers told the story of years of untreated pain. I declined to work with him as I felt that he just needed to be given time to let the meds do their work. Frankly, this horse needed to never have anyone sit on him again. The trainer agreed, and was already laying the path for that to happen.

The first horse looked pretty good to the untrained eye - he would do his job (under duress given the severity of his ulcers), trying his hardest to comply with riding and training like so many do, moving a bit stiffly and stoically. The second horse, well, you needed to be blind to miss the fact that he was suffering. He was 200 pounds underweight, severely wasp-waisted, unable to stand still, and bucked off anyone who tried to ride him. In “horse”, he was screaming. But he was used up by a trainer at his previous barn in a lesson program until he’d bucked one too many kids off and then sold (don’t ask me about who would buy a horse in this condition, I don’t know the particulars).

Horses tell us time and time again who we really are. But do we want to listen?

What makes me saddest about the second horse’s story (in addition to his pain) are all the kids that were taught that it was okay to see a horse in that kind of horrible body condition and (attempt to) ride him - until he made that impossible. And then he was sold on without treatment or zero thought to his well-being or the safety of the next person that would own him.

If we are teaching kids that this is okay, what are we expecting they will be like as adult riders or professionals - or humans, for that matter? Instead of teaching young/new equestrians how to tune into the horses, sometimes we are actually teaching them to tune out.

Are you nodding your head thinking, yep, happens all the time. Maybe you’re thinking I need to get over it because it’s “just the way it is.” Can we please just stop. Stop and consider what we are normalizing? And let me be clear as we think “I’d never do that”: we are all complicit. Silence is complicity. Ignorance is complicity. Laziness is complicity. Sacrificing values to money, to winning, is complicity.

The trainer/barn manager mentioned above that I work with has a thriving lesson and competition program. Her kids learn groundwork and horse care. They created an actual charter together, an expression of their collective values that guides the work they do every day. They read it out loud together at the start of every competition and more importantly, they live it. She’s created a supportive barn culture of learning AND fun that supports the horse, first and foremost. Is it easy? Hell no. But the kids in her program give me hope, she gives me hope.

So don’t tell me it’s not possible. Don’t tell me that it’s just the way it is. The bad seeds are sown at the local every-day level - and so are the good ones. The change the horses need starts with us, not with the big names who are too cowardly to change because they think they have too much to lose - or they believe that they are insulated from accountability thanks to the false validation of fame and money.

Look around you. Start with your own horse. What do you need to learn, do differently, get curious about? Do something about that feeling that something in your training/barn culture/horse keeping isn’t quite right. Ask some questions. Get some answers - and if your vet/farrier/bodyworker/trainer/barn manager won’t have a conversation because they must always be right, stop being made to feel like an idiot or stepping on egg shells and find a new one.

We all have the ability to choose to be the person your horse really needs, backed by intention, commitment and action. Every day.

Drawing credit: from an equestrian affirmation deck developed by Katherine Lowry of Biomechanics

What if we just did it for the joy?

Someone told me recently that I smile a lot when I’m riding my newer horse, Ticket and that when I used to ride Lila, I didn’t smile much. This observation came as no real surprise given my mindset with Lila the past few years. I’m working on shifting that these days to a place of more ease, less expectation, less push. She had some physical issues and has healed nicely. In that time, I’ve discovered that my mind doesn’t need to be “set” in a certain way with her. In fact, I’m asking my brain more often to take a backseat to my heart.

Watching Alysa Liu win the women’s Olympic figure skating competition brought tears to my eyes because I could actually feel her joy, her freedom and her relaxation that resulted in a gorgeously fluid performance. Of course it takes a ton of hard work and commitment to get to that level. But this 20-year-old had already retired from a sport that wore her down, and decided that she’d come back to it on her terms, with joy and freedom and living a more balanced life at the forefront.

Well, it showed. And she won.

I think we take joy for granted. I think we assume that, well, of course joy is important to us with our horses, but then we neglect it. And it kind of dies on the vine. Yes, some things are hard and need focus and even a bit of tension, risk and fear to get to the other side. Maybe your horse is troubled and you are working together to help him/her through it. Maybe you’re going through a rough patch in your life, it happens. Maybe you just don’t emote much, that’s fine. But what is your factory setting with your horse?

If it’s not in close proximity to joy, I just think we’ve gone astray. I don’t care what “level” you are at - as Alysa has shown, joy is her not-so-secret sauce at the highest of competitions. Don’t we often desire a state of flow with our horses? Well, I believe that joy is a critical component of that flow. 

We’re working with sentient beings who can feel our energy, our “settings” before we even touch them. Imagine if, more often than not, they felt more lightness and less heaviness, more openness and less correction and control? Here’s the catch: we have to authentically let ourselves, yes allow ourselves, to feel the goodness, not fake it. Because the horses feel our internal-external disconnection, and they want no part of it. 

Maybe we’ve had it drilled in too deeply that this is hard, serious work, so be about it. No pain no gain. Push that envelope. Conquer your fear. Control that animal. Maybe we’ve been questioned, ostracized, or worse, shamed when we try a different path. Maybe performance has become too much about the tension of chasing perfect ex*****on and not enough about actually feeling the happiness of being in it with your horse, not just on your horse.

Anyway, Alysa is my hero this week. Because this young woman did a very extraordinary thing - she got herself to the very top of her sport and didn’t care about winning, she cared about just having made it there, to revel in being there, enjoying the supreme moment. The rest was gravy. And that was really beautiful to watch.

If you are a professional working in the equine world, I cannot imagine at this moment in time a better investment in yourself. Helen and Ellen are a dream team, I know and have worked with both. If you are feeling the need to find a space with peers to get real about powering up not just your business, but your own personal potential within your work with the horses, this is for you. These 15 people will be very lucky and they will be transformed at the end of this experience. 🔥

The Awakening 🐎🔥

Today, the cycle shifts.

It’s February 17th—the start of the Year of the Fire Horse. In the Chinese Zodiac, this is a 1-in-60-year alignment. It represents a rare surge of independence, passion, and natural leadership.

But for those of us in the equestrian industry, "leadership" is often a word we only use for the horse. We rarely apply it to ourselves, our businesses, or our boundaries.

I’m looking for 15 people who want to change that.

I’m opening the doors to the EquiClarity Collaborative. This isn't a "course" you watch in the dark. It’s a 10-week, LIVE professional cohort modeled after the most rigorous leadership programs in the world.

This is for the professional who is ready for:

The Rigor: A curated reading list that challenges how you think about money, psychology, and systems.

The Peer Group: A small, high-level cohort where you give and receive feedback in real-time. No "business as usual."

The Expert Guidance: Weekly 90-minute sessions with myself and Ellen Stroud (equestrian AND licensed therapist).

The Celebration: A formal completion of the work. Because professionals finish what they start.

We aren't fixing "difficult clients." We are mastering ourselves. We’ll be breaking "poverty vows," building sustainable business models, and applying Maslow’s Hierarchy to professional development.

The Details:
📅 Starts: April 1st (Live on Wednesdays at 7pm EST)
👥 Capacity: Strictly limited to 15 professionals
🎓 Investment: $2,497 (Payment plans available)

The Fire Horse doesn't wait for "the right time." It recognizes an opening and it runs. I have no other sessions on the calendar for 2026. This is the work we are doing NOW.

Are you one of the 15?

https://app.heartbeat.chat/equiclaritycollaborative/invitation?code=BC7473

This is beautiful. Ive already shared it on my personal page but wanted to help as many of us as possible feel these words as we face the very hardest part of loving and caring for horses.

The response I received to my post about saying goodbye to my heart-horse Chi was not only heart-warming, but inspiring. Tears ran down my cheeks as I read the comments and private messages from fellow horse-owners who have stood in the same place - and from those who are on the path to standing there.

I felt compelled to write again. So I guess this is an open letter addressed to anyone who needs to hear this right now...

Sometimes the kindest decision we make for a horse is to end their life before the choice is no longer ours to make. Sometimes the right time is simply the time that you choose.

Before the emergency vet call.
Before the day they cannot rise.
Before pain and fear enters their final moments.

Horses are extraordinarily stoic. They will keep eating. Keep walking. Keep meeting us at the gate. They will try long after comfort has begun to fade.

Their desire to please us, along with their evolutionary drive to compensate for physical issues can hide a lot.

In the wild, if you're wobbly on your feet, or lagging behind - there's a good chance you're on the menu. Thanks to Mother Nature, suffering due to injury, illness or old age, is often short-lived. The weakest are picked off - spared from an on-going, slow, suffering decline.

When we domesticated horses, we interrupted Nature's course. In doing so we inherited the power to decrease suffering and prolong life, but also the responsibility to prevent suffering and to decide when life ends.

As owners, we often wait for something obvious - something that proves it’s “bad enough.” We want certainty. We don’t want to feel like we acted too soon. What if we are robbing them of "good days" that won't be lived?

But are we waiting for their suffering to become visible - to wave a white flag of surrender - so we can feel more justification and less guilt?

There is a quiet window - sometimes brief - where they are still themselves, still “ok”. They are declining, yes. Managing. Compensating. But not yet distressed.

That window is a gift.

Choosing to let them go in that space, on a calm day with no pain or panic, is not too early. It is preemptive.

It is one of the heaviest responsibilities we carry as custodians of another being’s physical and emotional well-being.

The equestrian industry talks a lot about listening to the horse when we train.
We talk about identifying tension, subtle imbalance and asymmetry, early signs of discomfort. This is no different.

If you are in tune and experienced enough to recognise decline, and brave enough to look at it honestly, you may realise that waiting for a crisis isn’t necessarily a kindness.

Calling time before it’s forced upon you can be the final act of good horsemanship.

It will hurt.
You will question yourself.

You will wonder if you could have had “just one more month.”
But a peaceful planned ending is something we can give them with certainty.

Sometimes love looks like choosing a good day and absorbing the grief so they never have to absorb the suffering.

If you’re standing in that space right now - I feel you.
If you’re asking the questions, you are already listening.
If you’re noticing the subtle changes, trust them.
If you’re afraid of waiting too long, more than you’re afraid of acting too soon, pay attention to that.

You don’t have to wait for obvious suffering to make the decision.
You don’t have to justify euthanasia with catastrophe.

Trust in your love for your horse, and your inner wisdom. It’s one of the toughest decisions you will ever make.

You won't know how you're going to get through it, but you will. Deep love rallies immense strength. I decided to transform my fear of loss, into my most compassionate gift.

Take solace in knowing they will remain in your heart and will always be walking softly beside you.

Sending hugs and strength.
Sarah ❤️‍🩹xx

I’m tired of mares getting a bum rap. I’m tired of people calling them bitchy, nasty, moody, over-reactive, too opinionated - sound familiar, ladies?

It’s another way that we shirk off responsibility, blaming the horse for their behavior and not taking a moment to question why it might actually be happening - because there is always an actual (not mythical or anthropomorphized) reason.

Yes, mares can be more expressive than geldings, they are generally more vigilant and they often take longer to trust a situation (who can blame them? Oh, we do). None of these are reasons to ignore escalating/aggressive/reactive behaviors.

“Marish” is a cop out. Easier to blame the bitch than to be the boss bitch who does something about it.

A quick google reveals that up to 25% of women report having regular lower back and pelvic pain that is attributed to menstrual cycles, ovarian endometriosis, and other issues connected to the reproductive organs. That’s one in four of us, to be clear.

Do we not think that mares deal with many of the same issues - with the added (literal) burden of dealing with a human sitting on her back only slightly in front of her ovaries?

Another google revealed that:

❗️Approximately 10% of mature mares suffer from pain, aggression, or reduced willingness to work ("marish" behavior) directly related to their estrus cycle. (Honestly, based on my bodywork experience, this sounds low)
❗️Around 64–86% of mares with chronic behavior issues (such as kicking at the leg or resistance to work) showed significant improvement after undergoing ovarian surgery to remove tumors or manage ovarian issues, indicating that a high percentage of "behavioral" issues in certain populations are rooted in ovarian pain.
❗️Persistent breeding-induced endometritis (PBIE), an inflammatory condition causing pain, affects roughly 15% of all broodmares.
❗️Infectious endometritis affects approximately 25–60% of barren mares.
❗️Pain is common during the periovulatory period (when the follicle is developing and releasing), and in some cases, it can be severe enough to cause temporary lameness in the hind limb corresponding to the o***y.

How about that last one - pain during certain times in the mare’s cycle is common and can cause lameness. And the reverse can happen as well - body lameness and even limb lameness can cause disruptions in the fascia and in turn the visceral landscape that ends up putting direct or indirect pressure on the ovaries and/or other elements of the reproductive system (same goes for gelding scars, by the way). Because most often things are more connected than you think. Because more often than not your mare is actually trying to tell you that she needs help - and if she has gotten to the point that her “bad” behavior is “normal” then you can be pretty sure that she is in pain. No horse wants to show pain (and they are masters at hiding it for survival purposes), so by the time the behavior/s appear, the horse is getting desperate.

So, instead of writing her off as “bitchy" or worse, punishing her or drugging her into submission for expressing pain, call your vet and/or bodyworker and have them help you assess what might be going on. And no, raspberry leaf likely won’t solve all these problems - I often see this as the easy go-to, one and done.

Most of you are women reading this. How do you feel when you are uncomfortable or in pain due to your female body and people roll their eyes, tell you to get over it, tell you you're imagining it or get impatient with you?

Yeah, I thought so.