Re-balancing the horse’s nervous system with the Masterson Method ®
The “Yin and Yang” of the nervous system.
The nervous system has two “sides” -The sympathetic nervous system triggers the “flight or fight” response which keeps the horse safe from immediate danger.
The parasympathetic nervous system is responsible for the “rest and digest” state and controls bodily functions needed to stay alive such as breathing, heart rate, and digestion. These states can become out of balance in both people and horses because of the demands and stresses of daily modern life.
What is the Vagus nerve?
The vagus nerve, often called “the wandering nerve” is the only cranial nerve to extend past the horse’s neck. As the vagus nerve travels down the neck it has branches that come off to innervate the larynx, esophagus, and trachea. Once it reaches the bottom of the neck it goes through the chest and has branches that innervate the cardiac plexus/lungs, after this, it further branches off to the other internal organs. It is responsible for rest and relaxation and keeps all the vital organs working properly.
The vagus nerve directly transmits information about the state of the horse’s vital organs to the brain and in turn transmits instructions to the organs from the brain. This nerve is sometimes referred to as the “master of inflammation” as it has the ability to switch inflammation on and off within the body. Soothe this nerve and it will soothe the rest of the horse, a kind of mind-body feedback loop.
What happens in Vagus, doesn’t stay in Vagus.
Research has shown that the vegas nerve can transmit the effects of anti-inflammatory drugs in the brain, to other organs even though the drug is only present in the brain. An anti-inflammatory drug was injected into a rats brain, and inflammation was blocked in the spleen and other organs despite no traces of the drug reaching these organs. It was also found that this effect could be recreated, by electrically stimulating the vegas nerve, without using drugs at all.
Some people in these trials who could hardly put their own socks on because of severe arthritis found themselves in remission and able to lead a normal life. There are also strong indications from animal trials that the horses gut bacteria communicate with the brain and via the vagus nerve. Weird!
Hacking the vagus nerve.
The vagus nerve can be “toned up” to work better. This is known as increasing the “vagal tone”. Studies suggest there a lot of way of doing this, these including-
- Massage and bodywork
• Humming and singing
• Meditation & relaxation
• Deep breathing
• Splashing the face with cold water
• Yoga & Tai Chi
• Laughter
• Exercise
• Gargling
• Acupuncture
We can’t make a horse laugh or gargle,(although I can make mine yawn…)but some of these methods can be used on horses. One of these is equine bodywork.
The Masterson Method ®
When I’m working with horses using the Masterson Method of equine bodywork, the horses become very relaxed and show signs of releasing endorphins such as licking and chewing and yawning.
They often go into a trance-like state, where they become very still, with relaxed, deep breathing and lowered heart rate. Sometimes they look as if they have been sedated, astonishing the owner and can look like some sort of magic, it’s not.
It is a multi-modality method of equine body-work which uses the responses of the horse to touch, to release tension held in key areas of the horse which most affect performance. This can bring a huge improvement in the horse’s movement and health when used regularly.
As a Masterson Method ® practitioner, we are trained to stay under the radar of the sympathetic nervous system. Working on a prey animal is like avoiding the lasers of an alarm system, do the wrong thing and you will trigger the horses “flight or fight” response. Instead, we work with the horse’s responses to turn on the “rest and digest” state.
I believe that this is a similar state to when we meditate and will improve the vagal tone of the horses, switching them to the “rest and digest” parasympathetic state of the nervous system.
This lets the body concentrate on the “business of living”. For example, a stressed horse who never seems to relax, will more often than not have digestive troubles- such as ulcers, bouts of colic etc.
This is because their nervous system is switched to “run away and survive!” (sympathetic nervous system) state for far too long, and they need to balance it out by relaxing and letting the parasympathetic nervous system increase blood flow to the digestive organs which allows the correct enzymes to be produced in the correct quantities to allow proper digestion.
Daily stress is a hungry tiger.
If the nervous system thinks the horse is constantly in danger of being eaten, it is not going to put digestion and other bodily functions as a priority, the priority will be to run away or fight if necessary to survive.
This is also true for stressed-out people- have you ever been so nervous about an exam or interview that you didn’t feel like eating and/or you had an upset stomach/were sick?
This is because your nervous system can’t understand the difference between the nerves of a driving test and the stress of a large hungry tiger eyeing you up for his dinner. The horse’s nervous system is the same, I would say it is even more sensitive than our own is to stress, as they are prey animals and we are predators.
Your horse doesn’t have to be in danger of actually being eaten to make their nervous system think so. Just like we feel stress from modern day life, so do our horses. Muscles and tissues will hold onto tension for longer than it is useful to do so, this can affect the way the horse moves, in the same way, that a stressed-out person will feel constantly stiff and achy.
The stress of competition, traveling, confinement/isolation from the herd, lack of grazing behavior/forage or constant stimulation on a busy yard can keep the sympathetic nervous system on high alert, which dampens down the parasympathetic nervous system and doesn’t allow them to relax. Just like people some horses are born “stress heads” too and have less vagal tone than others.
The more often the horses (and people!) enter this relaxed state which happens during bodywork, the better their vagal tone will be and in turn, they will receive many health benefits, including better digestion and less inflammation. A low vagal tone is associated with many symptoms of poor health in humans and animals.
Pressing the reset button
I think of the bodywork as a sort of “body hack” via the vagus nerve and parasympathetic nervous system. This is sort of like pressing the reset button and allows the nervous system to release unwanted muscles tension which is being held throughout the body,(yes-the nervous system is also in charge of muscle tone and tension!) boosts digestion and allows the body to “recover” from the stresses of modern day life.
I find that horses which are described as “stress heads” usually show more relaxation than others during the sessions, some of them actually looking sedated and “wobbly” or actually lying down during the session I think this is because they are unused to this state and their body welcomes it. These horses can also usually be described as having regular bouts of colic or constant diarrhea, which can improve as a result of a regular bodywork “reset”.
I would suggest bodywork for every domestic horse, on a varying regular schedule depending on the horse and the job they do. A good time to have bodywork on your horse is just after they’ve had the farrier/trimmer.
Nicola Beech MMCP