The interrelatedness of bones to muscles to organs is fascinating. This will help you understand WHY your Reiki energy is going to one place, while the symptoms may be in another, so that you can explain that to someone else – specially if you’re going to work as a Reiki practitioner.
If you’re not a person who’s deeply interested in all the technical information, just read this bit down to the heading “Today’s lesson” and then skip down to the Summary towards the end of the page to read about how your Reiki applies to all this interrelatedness.
The most important thing for you to know is that our minds, bodies and spirits – the mental, emotional, physical and even spiritual aspects of us are interrelated in such a way that the mind affects the body and emotions, the emotions affect the body and the mind, the body affects the mind and the emotions and our spiritual aspects – specially our beliefs – affect all of everything else.
Human and horse and any other animal – ALL of us…
This understanding does not change the simple fact that you use the symbols that you are drawn to use for this session, put your hands on and allow the Reiki energy to run where it is needed, use your intuition as it comes up in a session and turn the rest over to them and God or The Universe.
I thought that we would start off by talking specifically HOW all that interrelatedness fits together before we go on to talking about HOW we can use this knowledge to our advantage, in order to help our horse to heal – and incidentally, ourselves too! 🙂
Each of the spinal bones is related to an organ, i.e. when that bone is stressed or out of place, the related organ is affected too – AND vice versa – when the organ is stressed, then the spinal bone is stressed too.
Each of the organs – i.e. heart, liver, spleen, kidneys, pancreas etc has muscles that are linked with them, so that when an organ is stressed, those particular muscles are stressed too.
The inter-related nature of things in the body means that you can have a problem with the heart for example and have pain down the arm (to use one of the better known examples) or you can have a problem with the kidneys and have pain across the top of the shoulders and in the lower back in a human and from the front of the withers and pelvic problems in a horse.
All kinds of remote cultures around the world that are too far apart to have known each other in ancient times, describe the emotions as affecting organs in the same way. (So there’s no coincidence there! )
In this session, we’re going to talk specifically about the bones and their inter-related affects with the organs and we’ll get to the relation of the muscles to the emotions in the next session.
Today’s Lesson
This diagram of the horse’s skeleton is to show you where the Thoracic and Lumbar vertebrae are, so that you can see where they are when I am describing what organs are affected by these bones a bit further down the page. I have put a human spine diagram below too, so that you can make sense of this in relation to yourself as well.
The horse might look very different to a human, but the basic bones, muscles and organs are almost the same. In my healing practice over more than twenty years, with the exception of the emotions around the gall bladder, (I’ll talk about that when we talk more about the emotions) I have experienced the same/similar causal relationship between the bones, the muscles and the organs in both humans and horses.
Some of this may be more technical than some of you are interested in, but have a quick read anyway, because getting an idea of where colic symptoms may REALLY be coming from for example or how far away pain can be from the actual source of the problem is quite fascinating and will explain why your Reiki is being drawn to one place when the symptoms are in another.
This is a list of the spinal bones through the Thoracic area (spinal bones T1 – T12 in a human) and the Lumbar area (L1 to L5 in a human) – the symptoms and pains they can cause and the organs that they are attached to and can cause problems with.
I suggest that you read about each bone for the human and notice how that relates to any back problems that you may have and then look at where that bone is in the horse and think about that from the perspective of your own horse.
T1 is the heart
Located just in front of the withers in the horse and can cause pain on the edge of the eyebrow, throat restriction, pain at the back of the shoulder blades, the left shoulder, the costal arch (arch at the bottom of the ribs), the thenar (the fleshy part at the base of the thumb – for the horse read heel of the foot), and pain below the umbilicus that radiates to the lower back.
T2 are the myocardial heart valves
Problems with this bone causes difficulty breathing, with all kinds of affects on the diaphragm, asthma type symptoms in people, can cause pain near the xyphoid (that soft spongey little spot just below our sternum), a low back nagging pain from the mid back to the buttocks, and can cause swelling of both ankles (read fetlocks in the horse on the front legs and maybe even the hock on the hind legs ).
T3 Lung
Problems with this bone can bring sinus headaches, severe pain around the shoulder girdle, a tightness in the sternum that can cause a chronic cough, diaphragm restrictions with shortness of breath and asthma, rib fixations – i.e. the ribs cannot expand and contract with the lungs like they are designed to, collar bone restrictions, can’t raise arms over the head or put hands in hip pockets (the horse doesn’t have a collar bone, but you could interpret this to mean that the front legs wouldn’t have the same reach forwards.)
T4 Gall bladder bile duct
The horse doesn’t have a proper gall bladder, just a tiny little remnant. Remember that resentment affects the gall bladder? That may explain why horses are the most forgiving animals on the planet! But horses DO have a gallbladder meridian (the energy lines described by the Chinese) and they DO have muscles affected by that meridian and by this bone.
Issues involved with this bone are headache in the back of the head, the tissues beside the third vertebrae in the neck can be tender and or painful, the elbow can be tender to being touched, you can get a pulling pain between the xyphoid process and a point at the side of the pelvis (Mcburney’s point for those who are interested), you can have pain with the lower side of your knees (in the horse that means the stifles in the hind legs.)
T5 Stomach
The stomach can be intensely painful to firm touch, this bone affects the left shoulder and can give pain in the left kidney region that can be very sharp to touch. Look where T5 is on the horse, folks – in under the withers – that part that LIFTS UP in self carriage, when the horse is in their comfort zone and this bone out of place can cause colic type pain in the stomach.
T6 Pancreas Enzymes, Insulin
Problems with this bone can cause blurring eyesight, ear problems and vertigo, collar bone fixation (not moving like they should do – remember that horses don’t have a collar bone but they do have shoulder problems coming from that general area), there can be pain around the tips and top parts of some of the ribs, you can get flatulence and discomfort from the enzyme imbalance and skin can feel irritated or itching, the right thumb mound can be painful (read heel bulb in a horse).
T7 Spleen
Problems with this bone can cause a painful neck with swollen lymph nodes, a pulling pain in the third lumbar, painful lumps in the abdomen, pulling pains in the shoulder and upper backache.
T8 Liver
The cheek bones can be sensitive when this spinal bone is in trouble, the right side of the third rib can be painful to touch, there can be pain over the back side of the right shoulder blade, there can be a painful line from under the right rib cage from the Xyphoid process diagonally across to that Mcburneys Point again, near the point of hip. The xyphoid process is underneath the belly, just behind the horse’s front legs where the sternum finishes – be VERY gentle touching there, it could get you kicked!) And this pain line is right in the path of the girth on a horse.
T9 Adrenal
You can get chest pain with this bone out of balance and pain in the sartorius muscle, which would adversely affect the rotation of the hip joint and flexion of the stifle in a horse. The ribs ability to flex comfortably is affected by this bone too. The adrenals of course are stimulated by fear or excitement and are often in chronic overload on horses.
T10 Iliem
The ilium is in the small intestine, so problems with this spinal bone can give all kinds of pain related to the small intestine area – colic possibilities in horses again.
T11 Duodenum Jejunum
The duodenum and Jejunum are both part of the small intestine. Problems with T11 can cause pain at the top of the sacrum (the croup, the highest point of the hindquarter on a horse), pain in the abdomen (colic symptom possibilities again) and interestingly in the knee of the front leg and the stifle of the hind leg in a horse.
T12 Kidney
Ahhh the kidneys, one of my major focuses whenever we are talking about muscular skeletal and postural problems in both horses and people and where we bury un-acted on fear, i.e. when either we or the horse are unable to act to have ourselves feel safe. Problems with T12 will give you a backache, problems with proper expansion of the ribs AND … wait for it… the bottom surface of the foot – the very part of the horse’s hoof that collapses in laminitis.
Well well well… THAT explains why every laminitic horse I work on, gets to the stage where they want comfort zone work – wants to be moved but ONLY in their comfort zone, i.e. with no fear or anxiety and this work always has great positive effect on relieving the symptoms of laminitis quite quickly.
Now into the Lumbar area with
L1 Ileo-cecal valve
The Ileocecal Valve controls the flow of digested food when it is time for it to leave the Small Intestine, and go into the Large Intestine to start to become feces. It should stay open and close at appropriate times. If it stays open too long, or not long enough, problems occur – and it is adversely affected by problems with the vertebrae L1.
A small example of these are – Abdominal pain, “grumbling appendix”, groin pain, Acne. Allergies are aggravated by the immune system weakening. “Arthritic” type aches and pains. Bad breath. Bloating. Blurred vision. Body Odour. Bowel Gas, distension of belly. Burping habitually. Candida Albicans persistent problems, open Ileo-ceal valve creates alkalinity. Carpal Tunnel Syndrome. Catarrh (a build up of mucous in the nose, throat or chest). Chest pains that the person might think feels like heart pains. Chronic Fatigue. Colds or mucous to clear toxins. Colitis, diverticulitis, “sludging up” of the bowel. Right shoulder pain, nausea, respiratory problems – specially with blowing out, inflamed joints of the big toes and much more ( .
So here’s some context for the horse. L1, the first of the Lumbar bones in a horse, is one of those bones VERY commonly displaced in a horse when their pelvis and sacro-iliac joint are out of whack (do you like the technical term? 🙂 ) So L1 out of place can cause ALL THOSE SYMPTOMS of unwellness in both a human AND and a horse.
You will have noticed that bump on Oliver’s hindquarters, that is his sacro-iliac joint damaged and out of place and the arrow closest to his head is pointing at L2. L1 is just on the head side of that arrow – can you see where that bone is displaced?
This damage through the whole Lumbar region is a VERY, very common injury in horses.
L2 Cecum
The Cecum is the first part of the large intestine, where food is processed into feces. Problems with L2 can cause frontal headaches with neck aches, high up chest pain specially on the right hand side, shoulder pain and restriction, low back pain, the calves of the legs can ache and you can get even quite severe muscle cramps in the calf muscles.
L3 Ovaries, Testes
Problems with this bone can cause thyroid issues, neck pain around the collar in a human, sensitive to touch being painful around the pubic bone, shoulder blade pains that would translate to the horse as around the withers, lower back pain, pain in the lower part of the butt in the human and that part of the pelvic bone that you can feel sticking out below the tail in a horse. Heel pains – note that for our horses! Wrist pains are less common. And you can get joint pains all over the body from the hormone imbalance.
L4 Colon
Headaches on the side of the head, collar bone pains (remember horses don’t have collar bones but that will translate into shoulder pain up around the withers I expect, pains and restrictions in different areas of the hip joint and pelvis generally, pains in the last rib, the one closest to the hind end in a horse, a painful spot mid sternum – so that’s going to have at least a small effect on the movement of the ribs in expansion.
L5 Prostate, Uterus
Problems with this vertebrae can cause breast pain even in men, or breast irritation in women, a triangle reflex of pain from the belly button to both sides of the thigh, and painful touch between the knee and the ankle (on the horse’s hind leg that would be from the stifle to the hock).
In summary
So, have you noticed that certain out of place or stressed spinal bones can cause everything from digestive issues in all parts of the digestive system from the stomach to the large intestine, to breathing issues, to allergies, to problems with the immune system, to irritated skin, to chronic over stimulation of the adrenal glands, to colic attacks, to kidney problems, to lameness somewhere else in the body far away from the bone itself.
Clearly from the list above, I could go on and on…
The very important point that I would like to make, is that out of place spinal bones can cause all these problems, so fixing those spinal bones can alleviate those problems too.
Problems that start with the organs themselves, can also cause the bones to be stressed and go out of alignment.
We’ll talk more in our next session about how emotional stresses can cause problems with the organs, including the process of how that happens. What it means though, is that we can take care of our horse’s emotional stresses and have a physical effect on both the organ and the spinal bones.
Even more importantly, it means that we can “attack” our horses back problems from both the physical posture point of view and from helping them relieve their emotional stresses and that these things are so interrelated that it is pretty hard to decide where the horses original back problem originally started – the emotions, the organs, the muscles or the bones.
Applying your Reiki to this interrelatedness
As Level 2 Reiki practitioners, you can help a horse or a person to Release old emotional stress and the tension that comes from that. You can also have a direct physical effect on the bones with your healing energy. We talked in Reiki Level One about some dramatic bone healing stories. Other factors important to the horse’s or person’s ongoing healing are:
Posture – releasing emotional stress automatically improves posture and that automatically creates an opportunity for the physical healing of muscles and bones (and thus organs as well). Arthritis for example cannot heal without posture changes.
Breathing – when you’re dealing with a horse, the RIDER’S breathing affects the horses breathing – which also means the RIDERS stress that affects their own breathing, also affects the horses breathing and the horse’s stress. As riders, we can help our horse by “right” breathing ourselves and attending to any sources of our own emotional stress and the tension that comes from that.
Ongoing emotional stress – Whether it’s a person or a horse, supporting someone for long term healing is difficult unless we address any on-going sources of emotional stress. And for a horse, it will often be the horse-human relationship that is causing that on-going stress. Bobby said to me many years ago that it was my job to “Connect the horses and people and give the horse a voice”. We did that with the free lessons here called The 9 Keys to Happiness with Your Horse. Please help Bobby reach HIS dream too by referring horse clients to these lessons. 🙂
Please feel free to come back to me if you wish to refer anyone to some of my resources on this website. Lots of times I can just provide a page or a lesson to help you support them, at no charge – other times you may wish to refer them to a whole program. Not that this would be why you would refer someone to one of my programs here, but I like to express my appreciation with a commission in those instances.
“Be the change that we want to see in the world” – this has so many practical effects on so many levels – from healing with our horses, (we can literally feel into our own bodies and do things with our own bodies that will have a positive effect on our horse), to supporting healing for our clients when we place our Reiki symbols and run the Reiki energy – “Being the change that we want to see” helps others too, to find the understanding they need and amplifies the healing energy.
Up Next:
How emotions physically effect the body is the subject of our next lesson. You can skip on ahead, flapping your little angel wings or wait for your email. 🙂
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