The science behind joy and a clear path to it for you and your horse

Mannn this is so big that I went down 50 rabbit holes just bringing this to you and could have gone down 100 more. If you enjoy spending hours in rabbit holes, google the vagus nerve, there’s some fabulous detail out there. In the meantime, let’s see if I can simplify the beautiful possibilities in this topic. Forgive what seems like waffling, it WILL make sense!

I’m sure that some people are surprised when I talk about joy and healing and One’ness with a horse being available to everyone. It’s the kind of thing that really has to be experienced to be understood and in my experience it comes in layers. Even now, more layers are unfolding for me too.

The joyful possibilities in a healthy vagus nerve are one such wonderful layer.

Scientific validation almost always comes second to inspired thought and informed intuition. The scientists who “discovered” and “proved” the healing properties of honey is just one example of science catching up. I laughed because healers before me had been using it successfully to treat really bad wounds for aeons.

Scientific discovery of the wonders of the vagus nerve is another such miracle that we’ve already known, that science has come to define and prove.

I’m using a picture of a human’s vagus nerve and its branches to start our explanation because the horse diagrams aren’t as detailed. While you’re looking at this, think “this is just one nerve and its branches!”

The vagus nerve affects the quality of our rest, our heart rate and our breathing. Through the heart and the breath it affects the way oxygen rich blood is delivered around the body for the routine repair work that we call healing.

Yes, pause on that, it’s big. Healing is not something esoteric or only accessible for others, healing is our natural state. It would be miraculous if it wasn’t happening all the time.

This powerful nerve and its branches weaves its way through all the digestive organs – think metabolism, insulin production, the action of enzymes and acids on food in the stomach, fat and toxins processed in the liver, kidneys processing and flushing what our body doesn’t need or want, intestines extracting nutrients and gradually expelling what we don’t need. With horses think colic problems when this nerve isn’t working properly.

The vagus nerve plays a crucial role in the gut-brain axis – think feel good hormones and brain chemicals. It has a direct role in our ability to recover from stress – think performance recovery and building muscle. It also impacts our ability to regulate emotions and is impacted by and impacts our connectedness to others – think about the glorious possibilities in the horse-human relationship and the wonders of understanding other humans too. Think the joy of deep soul connection to another!

Here’s that picture again.

Look at those facial nerves branching off from it. That’s our smile giving the nerve a bit of a happy workout. No wonder a smile feels good. And no wonder horses in our work here change the shape of their face, going from a kind of pinched look to lovely open planes. Just look at Oliver.

Far left he was newly arrived. Centre photo about a week later. Far right after he’d done his trauma release. He even grew into his ears! You can see how his face has opened up and imagine how those facial nerves and thus the vagus were affected by that. I wonder how much the healing of his sarcoid had to do with releasing of his vagus nerve.

A smile for a human and the opening up of the horse’s face is such a simple but far reaching thing. But this vagus nerve thing is much, much bigger than that. For our horse, look at the way the nerve runs just under the chin and think about the pressure on and restriction of the vagus nerve when a horse is forced into a position beyond the vertical. Pause a moment and feel it for yourself. Pull your chin in and lower your head a bit at the same time and if you can hold that position for a little without hurting, you’ll start feeling crappy.

It’s not just being held in beyond the vertical that adversely affects the vagus nerve. Force or make, that old fashioned way of training without consideration for the horse – even if that took place long before we got them – drops our horse on their front end in a kind of “defeated” posture that restricts the vagus nerve as it winds its way past the heart and lungs.. It puts our horse onto a downhill slide into feeling crappy, less than optimum health and all kinds of sticky behavior and training problems.

The same thing happens when a horse feels the need to defend themselves with resistance. They’ve got their jaw kind of clenched and that causes a restriction of the vagus nerve too.

The good news is that getting our horse’s co-operation is the easy alternative to force and make – they sooo want to co-operate! And all that old stress and tension, even trauma and the adverse health effects of all of that – is reversible.

You can see in this diagram the organs impacted by restriction of the vagus nerve. I couldn’t find one as detailed as the human picture, but it gives you the idea. Release the vagus nerve and unleash the healing too, as well as the joy.

Heart, lungs, diaphragm, stomach, spleen, pancreas, kidneys, ovaries, small intestines are all listed on that diagram as being directly affected by the vagus nerve. If you look at the human diagram I think they might have missed a few though.

Restriction of the vagus nerve plays a role in just about every horse health and behavior problem. Releasing the vagus nerve from its cage of tension, it can then play its recovery role in solving just about health or behavior or even training problem.

Yes training problems too. When it comes to you and your horse training together – learning how to do things together and having fun while you’re doing it – then the vagus nerve plays a central role in the joy that’s possible together.

Restriction of the vagus nerve = crappy outcomes in health, behavior and training together.

Releasing the vagus nerve = joyfulness, healing and the confidence folks around here keep talking about.

There’s 100’s of ways of alleviating the pressure on the vagus nerve, most of them excellent. That’s some of the rabbit holes I was talking about in my introduction. It turns out we’ve been using many of them around here for 20 plus years – smiling, paying attention to our outward breath, the easy form of meditation that I call a Quiet Mind, using our Feel – all of these things help our vagus nerve.

But here’s the thing. There’s one thing above all others that doesn’t just alleviate the pressure on the vagus nerve, it takes it off.

Feeling safe releases the vagus nerve.

It doesn’t matter whether you’re doing dressage together, chasing cows like Ghabbie is in the photo above, or peacefully strolling down the trail – happy horses all have the same look about them. They have lifted their back which means they can carry their rider without hurting themselves. They’ve lifted up in front, their chests are open, their wither bones are lifted and open. Their ribs are open – you wouldn’t believe how different a horse’s back looks when they’ve released their ribs.

If you’re riding them their spine feels like a string of pearls underneath you, with each spinal bone individually available for movement with each lovely breath. They’re sitting slightly on their butts – maybe they’re collected and are sitting even more powerfully on their butts. They’re lightly and rhythmically stepping through, their joints are smoothly acting with their body as a giant spring.

They start driving their power from the “engine” behind and they dance into their body with joyfulness.

We escalate each other into joyfulness and well being by adding our own magnetic riding seat to the mix.

When the human feels safe in our lovely magnetic riding seat, when you’ve freed up your old stress and tension too, when your vagus nerve is released, when your joy is unleashed, when you and your horse can FEEL the One’ness together that already exists…

Just imagine what you can do with that…

Here’s the thing folks. You don’t need to already be a world class rider for you and your horse to achieve this kind of outcome.

You just need Fast Track to Brilliant Riding.

The Fast Track to Brilliant Riding

Today’s picture credits:

This is Anna-karin’s herd in Sweden. It was her question about her horse’s aggressive behavior with the other horses in our last free seminar that led to the vagus nerve subject and me realizing that I’d never explained this very well.

The picture of the human vagus nerve came from The National Library of Medicine.

The picture of the horse vagus nerve came from AI with no attribution. By that time I’d looked for over an hour for a visual of the path of a horses vagus nerve as good as that human picture and couldn’t find one.

Ghabbie is an off the track thoroughbred captured campdrafting with Sandra Hagan. Photo taken by Sally Jane Photography.

A montage of three photos of our dear Oliver, taken by me.