Complementary Therapies For Horses Seminar Held on February 14 By Nancy Brannon Practitioners of “alternative healing therapies” look for signs of tightened or sore muscles, mal-aligned vertebrae, and other signs of physical pain in the horse to find solutions for their behavior and performance problems. The Women of the Horse riding group held a seminar on February 14th to learn more about two of these therapies. Trena Patterson demonstrated Bioscan light therapy and Carla Paratore demonstrated Bowen Therapy. Carla worked on Lakota, a 25-year-old mare, a rescued horse owned by Deborah Smith for her daughter Desirea, age 7. Lakota is a Quarter Horse and a former barrel racer. When the horse was rescued last fall by Michelle Gilles at Last Chance Horse Rescue, the mare’s “body had shut down, ready to die,” said Smith. “Since then, she has been getting regular feeding and care, but she has not been putting on weight or thriving,” she said. So she brought the horse for Carla’s evaluation, in hopes of finding the source of the problem and seeing some improvement in the mare. Carla uses Equine Bowen Therapy along with several types of “energy work” to assess the source of the horses’ problems. Carla explained, “Bowen therapy re-balances the autonomic nervous system. When a horse is starved, the horse is sympathetic dominant, meaning the body is stuck in the ‘fight or flight’ mode. The parasympathetic side, which governs digestive, respiratory and healing systems, shuts down, so the horse is out of balance. Bowen helps jump start the autonomic nervous system. This horse hasn’t been able to gain weight despite a good feeding program because the body can’t effectively process the nutrients.” Carla predicted that after the Bowen treatment the horse “should begin to show some positive results soon and start to gain weight.” Carla sometimes uses Healing Touch, which is “an ‘allowing energy’ therapy, meaning the body takes the energy and does what it needs with the energy. It helps balance the chakras: energies in the body,” Carla explained. Usually, soreness and chronic muscle problems “vibrate at a low energy frequency, so you want to bring up the energy frequency so healing can occur. Sometimes acute injuries have high energy frequencies, so you want to reduce the energy frequency there. Everything I do is by permission of the horse.” Trena Patterson uses Bioscan diagnostic tools to detect soreness the horse. “It is basically a scanner unit that measures electrical resistance in tissue to detect soreness,” Trena explained. Once the places are detected, Trena marks them on the horse with a piece of chalk. She then marks the problematic areas on a work sheet with diagrams of the horse’s anatomy, skeletal and musculature systems. She uses the sheet to “determine what issues the horse has, whether it be in a muscle, joint, bone, ligament, or where ever it may be.” She uses this to determine where to apply “light therapy treatment - a combination of LED and infrared lights which stimulate blood flow, collagen, joint fluids, and other body fluids. It aids in healing cuts, wounds, joint problems, and muscle injuries, and helps to relax muscles,” she said. The devices have a range of frequencies from one to seven, which treat different depths of tissue. The frequency is adjusted to the type and depth of injury. “I base treatment on the symptoms, disposition, how the horse moves, and what the scanner finds,” Trena said. There are several types of devices made for specific body areas, such as the tendon saver, spinal pad system, hoof boot, light cap, hock and knee savers. These can be viewed at http://www.bioscanlight.com/. More information about Animal Bowen and Equine Bowen Therapy can be found at: http://www.animalconnectionnetwork.com/ and http://www.equinebowentherapy.com/ For information about complimentary therapies for people, see Enriching Health: Pathways to Complementary Therapies, by Dr. Michael Betz https://web.utk.edu/~mbetz/