Equine Bodyworks By Mary Sargeant

Equine Bodyworks By Mary Sargeant Musculoskeletal, Myofascial Therapist, Whole Horse Therapist
Releasing Tension Improving Performance
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Over the years I have incorporated many modalities to my original qualifications which offers you a unique way of bodywork for your horse
Masterson Method Practitioner MMCP since 2013
Equine Touch level 1 and 2
Saddle fit4life cpd
Mobilization techniques
Rehab (Classical training)
Anatomy and palpation
Veterinarian assessment and biomechanics
Kinesio taping
Myo-Fascial
Cranio-Sacral
Equine Massage
3 Whole Horse Dissections and Limb dissections
Tucker bio kinetics
Dr Kerry ridgeway acupressure
Many cpd hours with various webinars

All this with the added bonus of watching the horses responses while I work so your horse is getting the benefit of movement within the joint while in a relaxed state. I am fully insured and a member of IAAT

I NOW OFFER ONE DAY HORSE OWNERS COURSES AND DEMOS ARE ALSO AVAILABLE

12/11/2025

Archies first outing after his vaccs, he is only nearly 4 months old, lots of praise for moving forward, he is such a good puppy xx

What about those that dont fit in.We often think if a horse does not fall into a traditional standard, timeline, must be...
12/11/2025

What about those that dont fit in.

We often think if a horse does not fall into a traditional standard, timeline, must be at this stage by this age that there is something wrong with them yet never question if what we are doing may be the wrong approach for them x

I want to ask everyone what made you change the way you work with horses ??
Because often the answer was "that one horse", the horse that made you question the path you were on, the horse that still wasnt right after you had exhausted all the tools in your toolbox, the horse that had not read the memo, "we do things this way". The horse that made you seek a different answer to the same questions.

I grew up in a time where traditional made you a success or failure, never was the question asked why you couldn't do something it was simply rinse and repeat of the same ways of learning and if you didnt fit in you had failed, not the system. Your path already set for you from an early age, if you played ball your skills were nutured if you asked questions you were chastised and put in the pile of wont amount to anything 🤔 ps we still had the cane for "naughty" children back in my day 🫣, how can a place of education be the same place for corporal punishment ???

I meet many horses in my work that are deemed failures, and in turn their owners are the tag team in that category. Yet all I ever see is a horse struggling and often the owner to, we cant keep asking the same questions and expect a different answer we must find new more easier questions and in turn wait maybe a little longer for the answer
We must first ask why, why does this horse seem unable to do the ask, is it a case of can't rather than wont, whichever one we must find out the reason. For cant and wont often have different responses, and then we have to question wether continuing the same path is right for that horse.

Mostly I see the cannot answer as.pain, restriction, misunderstanding, or maybe they just dont like what you are asking after all they can have an opinion on the questions you ask

I resonate with those horses, discarded by traditional often not asked any other questions, deemed a failure by a standard which they cant uphold.

I mean I wanted to be a zooolgist yet my dreams were crushed by teachers who told me to go and work in a factory and a society who had two standards academia or labourer you could only be one or the other yet what if I met the teacher who thought outside the box when I was 15, we all go on different journies yet often reach somewhere which is relative to what we wanted to be.

Horses still face archaic systems, they fail or they succeed yet there is many who only need that one person to see beyond the way it should be and simply ask the why and then maybe ask a different question xx

A horse does not begin at the poll.For a long time the head was often missed out as part of the horses therapy session a...
11/11/2025

A horse does not begin at the poll.

For a long time the head was often missed out as part of the horses therapy session and only then maybe the TMJ was considered and the odd tongue mobilisation in fact probably to this day those two areas are only addressed as the mainstream when addressing the head yet there is so much more and we can't forget the head houses the brain which will interpret what we do before we even begin touching the horse. So even before we touch the horse they may already be on alert and preparing to block us out. How we introduce ourselves matters, in fact it will probably dictate how the whole session will go.

How many videos do we see with the person poking behind the ears, the horse reacting yet maybe has to endure another 5 or 6 pokes to get that sensational video??? Is this horse first thinking?? Only to see in the next video a quiet no responsive horse, well my cynical view if the horse cant get away it will check out and you can only be poked so much before the area becomes unresponsive but still just as uncomfortable for the poked.

We often forget the the muscles that work together we see a hypertrophied temporalis yet forget they belong in the group of mastication muscles so do we work on one?? Do we address the group or is it the teeth or chewing that is the issue? Or something else, as it could always be something else

We place fingers in the mouth to mobilise the tongue to mobilise the hyoid without ever thinking how does the brain feel about the foreign object in the mouth, is the sensory system now on high alert to protect the horse from the danger of swallowing a foreign object, are your hands clean?? Are the taste receptors also putting a warning sign out??
If the hyoid is connected to the root of the tongue it would make sense to start at the connection from the outside.

How are the eyes, if the horse has one eye buying alcohol and the other buying cigs then how can the rest of body get that balance that we work hard for.

What about the teeth?? The masseter muscle can tell us how the horse teeth were floated. The incisors if they have a hook on the corner then how can the horse be flexible on both reins if one side is restricted, how can the jaw have freedom of movement if restricted in one of many directions, I can do all the bodywork in the world but I cant do a thorough job if the horse doesn't have good dental care, I will be just addressing the same issue over and over again.
Is the jaw clenched through stress, worry about what you are going to do or is their personality having a part to play everytime a jaw is clenched restriction sets in we need to work out have we which one it is and adjust our work to suit the horse.
Cheek sucked in?? Or is the buccinator nice and plump?? Does anyone even notice?? It is all information that tells us a story

We can begin at the head without beginning at the head, huh???
Many muscles and structures continue and connect past the poll, past the hyoid so why would we begin at a place of stress for the horse we can work our way up, heads are continually controlled by human hands so if the horse is wary then we can work our way towards the head from another place but we must check our work to make sure we have been affective

Look forward past the poll for you may get another chapter in the story of the horses body and some answers to the questions you ask.

Again i try my best with the pics but do get some things wrong sometimes as my head ends up spinning with all the names
I may need to unclench my jaw after doing this one 😃

What about the physical body???Standing next to a horse that is in pain saying you are resetting the nervous system does...
10/11/2025

What about the physical body???

Standing next to a horse that is in pain saying you are resetting the nervous system does not mean pain eases with a lowered head and a lick and chew !!!

Waiting for a horse to lower the head to put in a more "neutral" posture and not addressing the physical issues is not giving the horse a choice as often its on the end of a leadrope which in itself is taking away the choice we may think we are giving the horse a choice yet stepping back only often gives a small reprieve which is often to much time for the human and not enough for the horse

If the behaviour declines while it is "resetting" or "processing" and we are taught that behaviour is the communication then what are we really listening to what they are telling us, if we were to put a saddle on, get on to ride and they showed a decline in behaviour then we would stop and ask why yet then we are told its normal when stood next to them??

Why do I write this ???
Because a horse that was clearly in pain, was in big trouble and needed referring to a vet was visited by someone who stood 2 foot away holding onto a leadrope for 30 mins waiting for the horse to lower its head and the only issue that the blind could see was a nervous system that was unregulated!!! No s**t sherlock maybe because the body was in a chronic state and while brain may send the pain signal the body feels, protects, and hyperfocuses on it and in turn we need to address the body not just the brain!!!

I often do not say anything in fact for the last few years staying silent and allowing the nervous system reset runaway train has probably done the horses a disservice i mean everyone is a neurological guru nowadays yet the rest of the body seems to be forgotten

I want to merge brain and body not one or the other thats why the title whole horse has been my go to for over 10 years.

As I have said we are never an innocent bystander when working with horses, generations of a relationship means we are always doing something let it be the right thing.

I am for the horse yet I feel we are slipping backwards in an effort to be "kind" we can cause harm if we do not listen to the horse however subtle they are asking do not ignore the one thing that let's us know they are in trouble and wether climbing on board to ride or standing next to the horse if their behaviour escalates or takes a drastic downturn into silence then that is the engine warning light flashing telling us we must stop, reasses, and self reflect to ask is this what the horse needs.

Is the equine industry that I work in all doom and gloom??I have two worlds that i take part in in my job there is the r...
10/11/2025

Is the equine industry that I work in all doom and gloom??

I have two worlds that i take part in in my job there is the real world that takes me to meet in person many horses and their owners i step into that world and feel a sense of purpose and see horses doing ok and owners being kind, I then enter the world of social media where I write my thoughts about what I see out in that world yet I also scroll and see the downside pop up in my reels and posts.

The real world inspires me the social media side can often make me feel like what is the point as sometimes it feels hopeless for the horse so how can two worlds be so conflicted??

The headline posts pointing out all the wrongs often leave owners wondering if anything is right, what does right look like???, the perfect textbook body we all know how unacheivable that is with our own bodies yet often if your horse is not perfect its a fail.

What is perfect?? An angle, a plum line from shoulder to hoof, a degree of measurement, we all know how selective breeding to find "perfect" often results in imperfection yet we tweak to find what is pleasing to our eye without often asking the question can the horse cope with the fine tuning we do.

Perfect to me is simply a body that can move without causing a breakdown in one area to cope with the movment if another.

If your horses hocks are fused then dont look for perfection look for function with freedom from pain

If your horse has had kissing spine then dont look for perfection look for function with freedom from pain

If your horse has an added load of anything else than it is supposed to have then look for perfection in imperfection

Dont compare, for the next horse will not show the same pain response, rehabilitation timeline, healing properties, the end result as the next horse with the exact same issues, for each horse is unique in recovery and final outcome.

I dont compare my traditional mini cobs to my other horse as their conformation means they move differently they have beautiful extension with their hindlimbs yet less flexion, their stifles move further out to compensate yet they are not broken they are just built differently.

Look around when out if you see 10 people then will all walk differently, yet we are all designed the same, the variation in the same is what makes each of us unique and same with the horse, in fact try to walk like each of the 10 people and see how difficult it is to change your own pattern because simply you are not them

My real world is full of horses that often I would not put a picture up of as they would fail the perfect social media world standards but maybe thats where we are going wrong, we are not bringing reality so therefore begin to become unrelatable to the average owner who like me sits scrolling thinking this is not what I am seeing in real life.

We cant be part of a change if we expect perfect from horses and their owners especially if we as professionals find it difficult to grasp.

09/11/2025

I have been quite busy and forgot any pup updates.
He still thinks he is a landshark, he now sits and can give his paw, Thor steals all his stuff even though I buy two of everything 😃 and his paws are massive and only 3 months old he has had his second vacs and can go out for walks tomorrow yippee
Thor is so tolerant but does tell him off if he pushes his luck 😃

There is no magic pill Patience, repetition, time, relax and change is usually what is needed. Patience, because healin...
09/11/2025

There is no magic pill

Patience, repetition, time, relax and change is usually what is needed.

Patience, because healing takes time, the body has to adjust Aswell as the mind. Everything is time dependent as to how long the recovery will take. If we are working on a horse that has spent years in a compensation or training pattern that leads to the reason, we are there then it makes sense the time will vary on when the horse has reached the goal of being comfortable to do what you ask.

Repetition, it is so important when we are asking a horse to now maintain a new pattern of movement that once we have done the bodywork the horse builds on the repeated exercises to continue the ease of the transition the horse will store this new information and the more, we do it the easier it will become and more importantly you will enhance ever changing progression. This doesn't have to be a huge array of exercises for hours a day but just a few good moves for 10 mins can be more effective and also, we then go back to patience as we must allow time for the horse to process the new information, we are giving it.

Time, there is no clock when it concerns horses you could have 10 horses with the same injury and they will all take different times to heal, adjust, return to work. Just because the horse down the road had the same problem and is now in work doesn't means yours is ready. Every horse has a different environment, management, routine and this is what makes horses so hard to put in a box of when or where they should be at a certain time of rehab.

Relax, take the pressure off yourself and your horse, everyone has an opinion and everyone is an expert when it comes to telling you what to do with your horse, remember we all work for you you can say no, carry the philosophy if your name is not on the passport then it's not your business.

Change, this can mean a lot of things like environment, feed or routine but mainly YOU may have to change, your horse may never be back to what they once were but that doesn't mean you can't have a new relationship with your horse, we have to make those horses best better, we often look at the end goal of competing etc and then lose out on the fun we could be having because at that moment in time the end goal can seem unachievable or so far away so if we just lower our expectations then everything becomes a bonus.

Today is a new dayDon’t bring what happened yesterday into your new day.You know what s**t happens things go wrong, does...
08/11/2025

Today is a new day
Don’t bring what happened yesterday into your new day.

You know what s**t happens things go wrong, does that mean the mistake we did yesterday has to be relived over and over again do you think your horse is sitting there with a glass of wine at night musing how crap his day has been or why he just didn't see that stride or why he jumped sideways because a bird jumped out at him.

No of course not, as every day is a new day yeah of course they may spook at the same spot they did yesterday but that’s just survival kicking in same as why you mull over all the negatives it's just our bodies making sure we remember a situation which may have put us in danger.

You know when I meet people their negative experiences will always override their positive, we will talk for days about how things went wrong and then we lose focus of the small positives that were achieved.
If we break down each emotion and stay focused on the positive, we will make a difference. Ever remember having to ride that fresh horse and the dread before yet we would come back exhilarated from the ride yet the very next day we would be back to the dread of getting on, I always say if we could bottle that feeling of a great hack I would be a millionaire, I often looked in awe at the people out there just getting on with it and are they nervous of course but they logically weigh
up the fact that they probably won't die that day and go out and do it, but if you are like me one of the people who for the same reason you won't go on a rollercoaster ride (erm why scare yourself) then that’s ok as well just do different things, you know there isn't any rules of what you should be doing with your horse no matter what the breeding, expense etc....always do what you are ready to do and every now and then try something new you never know you may like it

My job as a professional is not to feed into your fears and hold you captive there while I keep making money it's to listen when you are talking and pick up on every positive word and turn that into a much bigger word than the negative, and sometimes that comes with honesty we are never told anymore we have over horsed ourselves we are kept in a cycle of you can do it and sometimes you can't sometimes your horse and you may take separate paths, does that mean you have failed of course not it means that you recognise there is something which your horse needs which at this moment in time you can't offer but you may have another just waiting to be needed by you.

If we approach every day with trying to build a positive memory bank for both us and our horses it will be much more productive, but also allowing ourselves to recognise the off days without micromanaging them into the most dominating factor of how we spend the next day

Every day horses enrich my life I have learned to appreciate the moments and let go of the things I cannot control.

05/11/2025

PSSM
Marshmallow and rocks

So there is loads of information out there about PSSM the different variants, how to proceed to test your horse, what does getting the diagnosis mean but I thought I would give you my perspective of working out in the field with horses who have it and how wide the range is when it comes to work, behaviour etc.

We are often told this is a new thing and we didn't see this years ago but if anyone has been around horses a while you will at some point heard the vet when exhausting all other avenues to get an answer to your horses issues send off for the quarter horse gene test !!!

Like alot of things it has been around for a while but I find our breeding of horses has shifted the focus from functional to pretty and with that comes alot of breeding that we just would of not considered years ago when a horse was bred to work rather than be a pastime

So why do I call it marshmallows and rocks??? Because that is exactly how the tissue feels beneath my hands parts are to soft and squishy other parts are like rock but it just does not even feel right almost like a stretch mark on a human where we feel that vacuous trenches in between the "normal".

Behaviour can vary depending on the varient but mostly they are intolerant to not being listened to, if they say don't touch there do not push it because escalation can often come quicker than you can react

And for some touch is just to much and it is best to get that issue addressed before we lay hands on them because to work on a horse that is intolerant to touch will only frustrate both the horse and handler

Like most issues PSSM can be one of many that the horse is coping with ulcers, postural changes that overload other areas, mental health of the horse as often horses not only recoil at human encounters but often they can be quite lonely in a herd as they have the same unpredictability around their equine friends.
We often just think of it as horses who have episodes of tying up (aztoria) or what we used to call Monday morning sickness as the work horses had a Sunday off and would tye up Monday morning and why a bran mash was fed on a Sunday, yet often it's not the classic aztoria which we see and there are other major issues to consider, some horses simply are to fatigued to work while others display a wider range of dysfunction. I must note that most of the horses I work on have been diagnosed within the varients of PSSM2

Traditionally your vet would perform a blood test for PSSM1 or a muscle biopsy for PSSM2 there are other tests aswell,

Behaviour and association ;
This is so hard when you have a horse that sometimes can take a few years to get a diagnosis because often their behaviour has become so ingrained that judging wether it's memory or still a physical issue becomes a fine line that you have to walk, I often find the horse is fine with me when working yet will then turn and pin ears at the owner yet both me and the owner represent two different aspects of the horses life and a horse that has maybe something from birth may always be less tolerant of what it thinks is going to happen so you may treat everything yet the memory could last much longer and that can be soul destroying for the owner to walk that line for guilt of not doing something earlier may make you always question your next move.

Are the horses that I work on ridden?? Again it is so important to treat every horse as an individual two horses could have the exact same varient yet that is where the similarity ends, some are still ridden others are retired and for some life as they were was just to much but I always say take advice from the many offers but the final say has to come from your horse.

If your horse has been diagnosed join groups as they often have the latest research or great tips to help with diet and exercise but still treat your horse as an individual and stop if something isn't working

I will say one thing if your horse is young and is what i call a young angry horse then something is going on wether it be any amount of issues and not just PSSM because for me they haven't had enough life experience with humans to get any hangups so often that intolerant youngster is often intolerant of their own bodies, and i don't mean normal young horse behaviour which people get scared of i mean those that you think may harm you xx

Like I say I just wanted to give you a different angle than the generic descriptive post but get your hands on the horse feel the muscle, healthy muscle should be smooth with a little bounce to it
not the marshmallow and rock feel x

Thank you to for videoing hopefully when she is not so camera shy we will have a chat about the ups and downs xx

Time.These pictures are from 2015 when still in the infancy of my therapy career and stepping into the world of myofasci...
05/11/2025

Time.

These pictures are from 2015 when still in the infancy of my therapy career and stepping into the world of myofascial work, you could look at me now in the way I work and it looks similar yet everything has changed, from the application to the understanding I am on the surface the same therapist but deeper down completely different.

If I was struggling to figure stuff out, I would study further, I wanted to know what lay beneath my hands so I could understand what my hands were feeling, affecting and what felt good and what felt not so good, I attended a whole horse dissection which literally changed me as a working therapist not because of the structures I was looking at it just made me become aware of how much can go on on the inside and how little we can see from the outside.

The dissection made me a therapist that connected the dots, the horse struggling to pick up a forelimb may have a hindlimb issue, the hoof shape may tell a story of the hock, that fascia adapts to outside force, that how a check ligament problem is not isolated as it is the scaffolding for the tendons, and an anchor to the carpus. How melanomas are not just an unsightly bump from the outside but a deep internal issue aswell. But that didnt come from one dissection it came from 3 as the more my knowledge grew the more I understood when returning to the horse. If I was doubting my horse first approach before it solidified my the path I had chosen.

I remember the first time I felt a nuchal ligament flip and thought WTF is that 😃 its ok to not know for we can read and learn yet to feel is to understand, if we have never felt something before its ok to think jeez what was that.

I suppose time was easy but hard to learn for one you cant rush myofascial release so I had to learn patience and yes I felt like an idiot just standing there waiting for something because honestly in the beginning you are waiting for something you dont understand yet because it takes many horses and many hours to develope and I am not going to say feel I am going to say recognition because working with many horses brings a pattern you see and can start to develope a mental map of similarity between each horse.

When things got tough I didnt move on to another way of working I stuck with it, figured it out and often that is where I found new answers to old questions.

We can be mollycoddled when learning with horses that are used to many hands and stepping out into the real world dealing with horses who may object to helping hand is hard and can cast doubt on the feeling of confidence, none of us feel ecstatic when the horse is waving its front legs at you, and yes it happens to us all, those are the horses that make you think because how are we going to approach them.

The horse in the pic met me with pinned ears, was known to rear and yes I was like oh f**k, yet i never have a plan my go to is let's see what we can do and we will stop if they say no, yet she didnt and she changed my preconceived ideas about her and I changed hers about me.

Dont jump ship when it gets a little tough dont jump from modality to modality to early, learn your craft then build on that for we cannot be a forever student to the horse they need someone who is going to say to them I can help, also if you offer one way of working to the horse then next time you see them you have changed you may just be letting them down as you promised you were something one day then changed your mind the next they often when horses are in pain they need to know you are going to be predictable in the way you work

So give things time as that is the true way to develope as a therapist and let the change come naturally as your experience grows as then the horse will know where it stands when you next visit.
I never follow trends or popular I follow predictable xx

Dont get to riled up about what you see on social media for often thats where it stays 😃Ever read a post and sat with st...
04/11/2025

Dont get to riled up about what you see on social media for often thats where it stays 😃

Ever read a post and sat with steam blowing out your ears??, ever read a post and thought what are they on about?? ever read a post and just that that just isnt true??. Then welcome to the world of people you would never meet yet everyday they are part of your downtime 😉

I used to get angry all the time reading stuff about horses on social media, my poor hubby would have to sit and listen to me ranting away about somebody neither him or me knew I would endlessly just be annoyed all the time yet nothing changed except my blood pressure.

But then when I stepped out into the real world where nobody had heard, were doing or had a clue about the stuff that I was seeing, so where could I make a difference?? In the huge pool of social media where often common sense is drowned out or in the real world where I had the horse and owner right there in front of me, well for me its a no brainer.

Alot of pages have become a bit of a bar brawl especially when rage baiting brings in the audience, interaction, and money if you keep looking you are building their algorithm, the more you dislike the more you see, yet if something doesn't resonate with you, annoys you, makes you feel frustrated or angry then my question has always been what would you do in real life?? You would simply not associate with them and the block button gives you a chance of peace from the things you would never have a common ground on

It just isnt worth it, honestly it isnt because seeing a reel or reading a post that stirs you up does not just affect you in that moment it can fester long after you have scrolled on or had your say, nobody is immune from a reactive post we have all done it yet I always say write the post wait 24hrs and see if you still want to publish it when your anger or frustration has died down because often nothing seems so bad 24 hrs later😃

If something filters down into real life then often speaking to the person face to face and putting your side of why you believe different is much more effective, your client trusts you to speak the truth and that is where explanation and clarity can come into a conversation.

Education will always be a better argument, and private conversations are good to get things off your chest like in the good old days 😃.

Our pages should be about promoting what we do, like a shop window letting potential clients have a peak into our world, if all they see when they peak in is us scrapping with the shop next door they may just walk on by, in fact often we are to busy arguing we miss the owner asking for help because often the owner and the horse are simply forgotten when we think its all about us.

We all love to read drama but we dont want to be part of it for then we lose focus about the very thing we are so passionate about.

And if its all to much go and see your horses, take a breath, and see what truly matters. Xx For time spent arguing means less time to be productive

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https://www.equinebodyworksbymarysargeant.com/challenges, https://www.eq

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ABOUT ME

I first qualified as a Masterson Method practitioner in 2013 and Over the years I have incorporated many modalities to my original qualification which offers you a unique way of bodywork for your horse Equine Touch level 1 and 2 Saddle fit4life cpd Mobilization techniques Anatomy and palpation Veterinarian assessment and biomechanics Kinesio taping Myo-Fascial Level 1 Cranio-Sacral Equine Massage and stretching Whole Horse Dissections and Limb dissections.

Biokinetics and acupressure

All this with the added bonus of watching the horses responses while I work so your horse is getting the benefit of movement within the joint while in a relaxed state.

You can be effective without great movement, a treatment where your horse is a partner