On this cute liberty video, I talk about HOW movement for horses can be so very healing, even when they are dog lame (funny expression that, I wonder where it came from?) and what prompted me to do something so unusual as you’ll see in this video.
OK, back to this feet receptor thing I was talking about on the video.
There is no doubt in my mind that the healing that took place in Bobby’s feet and in his body was BECAUSE he was getting lots of movement and BECAUSE it was barefoot movement with a barefoot trim that allowed the feet to contact the ground properly. The bare feet allowed the feet receptors, these sensory nerves, to feed back information to his body. He was moving for long enough to bring those feet receptors back to life.
His lameness was from feet falling apart with massive seedy toe and bad feet abcesses causing quite a bit of structural damage to the feet. He also had stiff joints and the muscular problems that go with that.
What we were doing in the video, we did out in the bush at liberty for 7 kms at a time, 3 or 4 times a week for a few weeks. It was so much fun that we did it every now and again fairly regularly after that until we moved away.
The “lots of movement” that he got during this time fixed all those physical problems – his feet were strong again and as you can see in the video, even with a little bit of lameness and a bit more toughening up of the feet needed – he was moving spectacularly again.
Now here’s the parallel with us humans.
My friend Ian Wilson (staffer Narel’s husband) put me on to feet exercises and barefoot walking when I was just about crippled last December. I was hobbling along for quite a while when I first got out of bed and had a lot feet and knee and back pain that wasn’t staying resolved with my healing sessions – it just kept coming back, driving me nuts, because as a “healer” myself, I KNEW that this joint and muscular pain was fixable.
Ian is a barefoot trimmer for horses and thought he should look into it for humans too. He got phenomenal benefits in terms of healing his own very sore and aching body and is now running 1/2 marathons in barefoot shoes.
The arch supports and high heels of modern sports shoes completely change our natural movement. I started to wear very good arch supported runners because of knee and back pain years ago and they fixed it. The trouble is, they may have fixed the problem in the short term, but over time they actually CAUSED a worse version of the problem they are designed to fix.
Wearing feet arch supports and the shoes that build arch support into them, is like wearing a wrist brace all the time – it supports at the beginning but eventually makes your wrist weaker, because it’s not getting the movement it needs to make it stronger. The arch supports supported my feet and made me feel better temporarily, but then the muscles that count got little to no exercise so they gradually withered away and got weaker and weaker until all the muscles in my feet were collapsing and painful.
Well I followed Ian’s exercise and barefoot suggestions and we ran together at the Southern Highlands Marathon a few weeks ago – him in the 25km, me in the smaller 7km. Very cool… I was proud of very myself. We both of us wore what we call barefoot shoes – just to protect our feet on rough stony ground. They are very flexible and soft, they contour the shape of the foot, they allow the toes to spread out and contact the ground – they are protective rather than supportive.
But still… there has been something else to know or do. I have been searching for the missing something about feet, searching for something else that will take away the niggling injuries, not bad injuries, just uncomfortable, that were plaguing me while I was training. Discussions with Ian when I was up at Nowra with the family and this old video of Bobby, gave me a theory that I wanted to check out.
And so I set off to see if TRULY barefoot – no shoes at all – would solve the remaining problems.
And here’s where Bobby’s health and well being from activating HIS feet receptors in that video above, applies to me.
I am only a couple of weeks into checking out this theory. I started walking out on the prickly road outside our house in absolutely bare feet. At first I could only go about 100 metres and then had to put my shoes on to walk back to the house. Now I am up to about a kilometre at a time.
I feel for the ground with my feet as I am walking – I gently feel for all the sensations in my feet and my body as I am walking. I look up and around me and enjoy the view and use the effortlessly engaged and very powerful core that we teach in Foundation for Riding Excellence that allows such effortless movement. I allow my body to “roll” with any stones that I tread on and consciously allow my spine and pelvis to move and adjust to every stone that my feet feel.
The results are freaking amazing! I am getting more and more flexibility in my body in movement over rough ground and feeling better and better.
I took Lily Bär out for a long walk yesterday and had no signs whatsoever of the slightly niggling discomforts that had been there only a week earlier.
It’s still a theory as far as humans go, but hey… it’s looking like it might be a good one!
Not without proper preparation please!
You know those dangerous things you see people doing on TV and your heart is in your mouth and you pray your kid doesn’t go and do the same dangerous thing and get hurt?
Please remember that, if you may want to try the horse and the car at liberty thing – there were a bunch of keys to success that meant that what I did was very unlikely to end in tears:
1. Bobby was a SPECTACULAR liberty horse and even though we don’t do much now, he still is. Once in a clinic, he was galloping with a whole bunch of crazy acting loose horses in a five acre paddock and on hearing me yell “Bobbbbyyyy!” he peeled off from that herd of crazily galloping horses and came to me at a flat gallop himself .
Another time a three year old visitor opened the horse gate and let all of my horses out onto a 100 km an hour road that had two blind corners not too far away. By the time I got to the front gate, the last of the herd was disappearing around one of those blind corners at a flat gallop.
I have a VERY loud farm voice from years of projecting my voice down the valley to call the cows and put every ounce of that power into my “Bobbbyyyyyy!!!!”. And he wheeled around at a flat gallop and brought the whole herd safely back to me.
So I KNEW that no matter what happened out in the bush, no matter what distractions or what frights, that he would always come back to me. I would never have done it otherwise.
2. Bobby was well trained and incredibly safe in traffic generally and we trained at leading from the car window in the paddocks at home.
3. He could drag a lead rope happily so that I could drop it if I needed to, safely.
4. We had even trained at liberty from the car window at home. Again, without all of that training I would never have even thought of doing this – a car is a big machine that has the capacity to break horses bones, so he had to be both comfortable with the car AND yet paying attention to me at the same time.
Important note about lameness
There are two types of lameness:
1. The sort where a horse is in pain all the time,
2. and the sort where they limp to AVOID the pain.
Bobby’s lameness was the last type. You can tell by their eyes if you know your horse well. You can see the bigger pain in their eyes. So use your common sense and if in doubt consult your veterinarian.
Lesley Taylor says
I “lived” in my farm boots (yes, even indoors), but i know that the body is truly capable of heeling itself, and the article made a lot of sense. I have a bit of trouble with my right hip, so do my stretches religiously every night. After 4 days of going barefoot (as much as possible), my stretches suddenly became easy and i was able to stretch much further. Then 2 days later, I suddenly felt taller on my horse. And I mean “suddenly”. I generally ride every day, and was not even aware that I needed to sit taller. WOW! My legs also stretched down and I didn’t need to “push” my heels down. There they were, and my riding was so relaxed. Perhaps my tight hamstrings were affecting my pelvis. Who knows? I highly recommend people do try going barefoot. We do it for our horses, so why not for ourselves?
jennya says
Wooohooo Leslie! I knew it was doing fabulous things for me. It’s lovely to hear it’s doing fabulous things for someone else too! It makes sense actually when we think of all the acupressure and reflexology points in the feet.
Sandra says
Love the video, and completely agree with your comments. Our new horse (had her 18mths now) is from the wild New Zealand herd “Kaimanua” and she foundered last September. This is the first time I have had a horse founder and was completely shocked as our property is just scrub, great for horses, no lush grass here. It was obvious she had foundered before by the way she handled the pain. So I set about researching Laminitis. Boy the different opinions out there !!! I finally stumbled on a book “Founder Cure & Prevention” what a great book, the author is a natural foot guy and after following his advice she was well on the mend. One of the things he advocates is exercise (if your horse is happy to do so) if not, wait until he is. Barefoot trimming is amazing for Lamini horses, low heels and toes, which allows the foot to stretch sideways and alleviate some of the pain. Only feed meadow hay NOT Lucerne/Alfalfa. Up until this point I was feeding Lucerne Chaff (no problem to the other other horses or donkeys). There is nothing like a sick horse to broaden your horizons.
jennya says
“Nothing like a sick horse to broaden your horizons.” Ain’t THAT the truth! And yes too, to the concept of happy movement. It was the bit that I missed out talking about on the video and slipped in instead into the written part. There is a lameness that needs to be still to heal, where the pain is a signal to stay still and another one where they are OK to limp and it seems to me like they are limping to avoid the pain. The barefoot people generally know how to treat laminitis hey?
Peta Naake says
Love the video Jenny. I am not living in a place where I can even
lead a horse from a vehicle. I suppose doing a lot of circling on a long line would not have the same effect of a lot of movement. Very interesting about the human as well. I will have to try it.
jennya says
You’re right Peta, the circling definitely wouldn’t do the same thing. The stresses on the body of the circle, at anything less than a completely happy horse for that kind of distance would damage their body and even for a happy horse at that kind of distance it doesn’t feel right to me. Still… it gets the mind thinking doesn’t it and since happy movement is the key – a horse in their comfort zone and in self carriage because of that, with a rider with an effortlessly engaged core in self carriage themselves, would achieve the same objective would it not?
Sophie says
Very interesting 🙂 I’m especially intrigued by your barefoot in the driveway experiences – I’ll going to have a go myself.
I have ‘barefoot runners’ that I wear often but I’m hardly ever truely out of shoes.
jennya says
That was me too…
Caroline says
I love watching this video, time and again. Some doctors are starting to get this too, understanding the positive impact on the rest of our bodies for healing. Only wish I had some flat surfaces for both me and the horses, to play with this exercise 🙂
jennya says
Are you talking about flat as in not hills? Because I would cheerfully do this exercise on hills. At the beginning when they were a bit sore with their muscles etc I would feel into when to drop down to a walk and when to trot. And I guess it would depend how steep the hills were too, but generally speaking I LOVE hills for horses and people, they really get our core muscles firmly engaged and working beautifully when we are in the right posture. But that would be the key hey, going up and down from walk to trot for a split second or even just a few strides and dropping back to walk again, to get self carriage on that terrain, kind of in that “just kidding” exercise from Bobby’s Diaries.
Caroline says
Yes I yearn for some flat surfaces 🙂 The hills here are great for the horses and they (all but one), effortlessly walk, trot and canter up and down, and keep wonderfully fit. But just for a little bit of flat… 🙂
jennya says
Yes I am lucky here – I have both!
Barbara says
Thank you for this great information. I too have painful feet problems which seemed to come about after I retired. Went from small heals, enclosed shoes to a lot of barefoot in the house and flats. Now a year later my feet, I thought were telling me, had had enough of past pain that they were just “out of sorts”. But what you say makes sense. The false supports and contortions are gone and the strength and receptors no longer work. Funny to my inclination was to go barefoot, but the smallest rocks hurt so bad I don’t my horses are all barefoot, I’ve watched how they manage sore feet but never put the two togeather. I’m getting the toe protectors first and will work on walking out my drive this week I’ll report again next Wednesday. Keep up the inspiration, Barbara
jennya says
Funny how our instincts are so often right hey? That was your intuition working excellently! In the old days I just wasn’t used to nutting my instincts out and following them. Toe protectors? Re walking out on your drive – walk very slowly focusing on feeling into the whole of your body. If the driveway has lots of stones on it and they hurt, you could just stand there on them and feel into tiny movements of your body until there was a positive change and you felt ready to move into a few steps. That no pain no gain stuff is crap. You can do things without struggle and that’s the way I like to do things!