– Is it lunging?
– No.
– Is it long reining?
– No
– What is it then?
– It’s Equibodybalance! Or if you like, active physiotherapy or yoga for your horse. But let me explain…
First and foremost, Equibodybalance™ is not ment to be looked upon as a bunch of isolated excercises. It’s a method and like long lining, or other groundwork methods, you adapt it to your horse’s age, needs, educational level or rehab process. To really understand the purpose and grasp the concept I suggest you read ALL the texts and look at ALL the movies in the app before you try it with your horse. It can be a good idea to acutally pay more attention to what I’m doing than the horse. Look carefully at how I hold and use the tools, my body language, my position and the distance between me and the horse. In Equibodybalance™ it’s all about the details to make it work and instead of telling the horse what to do we encourage him to try new ways of carrying himself and reward him when he finds the proper way.
The goal with Equibodybalance™ is to learn the horse to use functional biomechanics for carrying himself and a rider on a circle. This way of using his body is far, far away from the horse’s natural functional biomechanics and the discrepancy is one of the reasons why so many horses have problems with pain and injuries.
In addition to the mental and physical gains your horse can get from Equibodybalance™ there are also gains for you as a owner or therapist. Personally I absolutely love to work horses in this system! It is so much fun and I learn new things every day when I assess new horses or work with familiar horses in active physiotherapy. The close proximity really makes you feel like you are dancing and the horses seems to love it too.
In Equibodybalance™ we focus on five elements. These five keystones are in my opinion essential for our horses’ long term health and performance. When the horse can use his body in a relaxed manner with mobility, stability, balance and unbroken topline the rider can focus on details and teach the horse the technical skills he needs to perform in his discipline.
The app also contains fitting instructions for Equiband™ on healthy, sound horses. I have also added some comments about its benefits correlated with each element. I do want to emphazise though that you don’t have to use Equiband™ to do Equibodybalance™ with your horse. On the other hand, if you are using Equiband™ it’s very valuable to use Equibodybalance as your groudwork method to gain the most of your Equiband™. If you lunge with side reins at high speed the horse has to adjust his posture to the demands of the side reins and in addition to that also tense his back to cope with the forces that comes with high speed on a circle. Instead, take off the side reins and help the horse to slow down and the stimuli from the bands will come into its own and really help your horse in long term.
On horses with problems in their neck, back or stifles we have had amazing results with Equibodybalance and Equiband. When we learn the horse to stabilize himself with the right muscle chains and positions the conditions for healing improve tremendously. This kind of stabilization can not be done mechanically (side reins) or with speed, it has to come from learned, functional muscle engagement and body control. In thousands of horses we have seen this be achived with our system.
In october 2022 we launched an update with more content. We have added in chapters with, Training program, Fascia and Posture, and 32 additional exercises for thorasic sling, core and pelvis.
The app is a one-off fee of 20 USD and it contains texts, pictures and movies to explain the method in general. Of course there is noting like one size fits all so it’s impossible to explain exactly how YOU should do it. Every horse is unique, every human is unique and every combination horse – human is unique. As I mentioned in the beginning you need to grasp the concept (and you will NOT do that by just give the films a quick look) and then try to find the right keys in your communication to make your horse relax, listen and dance with you.
Wanna try? Download our app, start your journey and trust the process…
Photo and video: Natalie Greppi