Below I have reviewed for you many of the books that I have bought & read over the last 20 years, to point you in the right direction & get you started. There are some fantastic books that can provide a great overview of the many complimentary therapies that are on offer and how you can start using them at home on yourself and your animals. I have also included several books which focus on self-treatment & development, as I believe that whilst it is important to strive to offer the best to our animals, we often overlook ourselves & the problems & issues we may be facing (I know I do!! – my horse always gets his 6 weekly shiatsu session & I’m lucky if I get a massage once a year). This can be detrimental to our animals who are very sensitive & can often mirror our own problems.
I hope you enjoy the reviews, where possible I’ve included links in the pictures to sites where you can buy the books too. If there are any books I haven’t included yet, that you have found particularly useful, please get in touch & I’ll put it up with a credit to you for recommending it.
- RIDING BETWEEN THE WORLDS: LINDA KOHANOV
Wow, a little difficult to know where to start to describe it, it was such a fascinating book, completely thought provoking. There were moments while I was reading that memories of my own experiences over the years were triggered & a sort of eureka moment occurred. It offers up a sort of collection of case studies or short stories, from Linda’s own experiences with what she terms Equine experiential learning or equine facilitated therapy, from her own Epona centre in the USA. I’d never heard of this before & found her whole book a revelation, I literally couldn’t put it down & I am inspired to go out & learn more.
Riding Between the worlds is the follow up to her first book “The tao of Equus” which I have still to read, Linda describes Riding Between the worlds as “an opportunity to delve more deeply into the equine mind & spirit to discover more of what these amazing creatures have to teach us about the untapped potential of our own species.”
At her Epona centre, Linda harnesses her horses highly refined ability to sense the feelings of herd members & predators even at a distance, even our suppressed feeling particularly of fear, anger & sadness will be detected by the horses. To survive in the wild horses had to be sensitive to emotional energy & the intention behind it. The horses act like a huge receiver & applifyier for our emotional viberations, so no matter how good you are at hiding & suppressing your emotions even from yourself the horses will pick up on your true feelings. At the epona centre Linda & her herd have helped a wide range of people from abuse survivors, addicts, individuals suffering from post-traumatic stress & depression, even children with attention deficit disorder, and many of these examples are covered through the various short stories in the book.
Equine experiential learning first & foremost expands nonverbal awareness, interacting with horses encourages a fluidity of human thought, emotion & behaviour that sedentary 21st century life makes almost impossible. Horses favour cooperation over competition, responsiveness over strategy, emotion & intuition over logic & the creative approach to life that these qualities engender. We as people have become dependent on language to express our emotions, despite the fact that studies have shown that as little as 10% of communication is dependent on language. Horses enable us to tap back into the 90% that is lost, offering us better understanding of not just ourselves but the world around us.
A truely great read, I would definitely recommend having a read, if for no other reason then to open your mind to other possibilities. She has two other books which may also be of interest.
2) CORRECT MOVEMENT IN HORSES: improving straightness and balance, KLAUS SCHONEICH.
I have attended one of Klaus training clinics which really helped me to understand the principles he was looking at and what he hopes to achieve when he trains a horse with the intention of straightening it. Klaus has now worked with over 6000 horses and through this experience he has come to recognise that a huge number of the problems that are experienced with our horses in fact have their roots in the fact that the horse is crooked.
3) HOW YOUR HORSE MOVES: a unique visual guide to improving performance GILLIAN HIGGINS
