Trimming

I just had to tell you what a difference just working on my own breathing has done in just a short while. I have been working on the tips in your article and this morning I needed to trim Carrick's hooves and normally she needs to keep taking her feet back many times during the trimming but today she did not - in fact I needed more rests than she did! I kept my mouth shut the whole time. It made it so easy - I can only assume the difference was my breathing and the effect it has had on me already. Then I did some Equine Breathing with her and she was very happy and relaxed throughout. A really lovely morning. I feel it was such a success for really such a simple basic thing to do.

First of all thank you very much for your extremely interesting lecture. It all makes so much sense to me. You see, I have been practicing Hatha yoga since almost 20 years now, and have also been doing pranayama - breathing techniques. This morning I trimmed a couple of customer horses . One of them, a six months old filly has really been a problem - very insecure, hopping and fiddling around all the time.  After almost giving up I thought that I'll try 1N on her. And it worked! I am so impressed!  She immediately became relaxed, almost fell asleep, and for the first time I could lift her hooves and trim them in peace. She did not once pull them away from me.  I did it on the other horses as well, and they reacted with lots of snorting, runny noses, yawning and, well, actually farting! I would like to learn everything about the technique, as soon as possible. Do you give courses?

Mike Hollingworth is a barefoot trimmer in Yorkshire, UK with 200 horses on his books. He is also an equine Bowen therapist.

I have just started using the breathing technique in conjunction with my trim clients on some horses that would rather play come dancing when they are having there feet trimmed, I have to say that the results so far are very favourable as I know you would expect. I would rather spend 10 minutes calming the horses down prior to trimming than may be spend an hour or so struggling with the horses during trimming. I will let you know how I do with this as I work on it more, but it is looking good.