Mia Cara Coaching

17/11/2025

Body doesn’t want to work today. My differences were showing up a lot today and I couldn’t mask, I am fortunate not to any more- and taught my yoga class regardless.

If you are masking a lot, if you are in pain, if you feel like you need to hide yourself, if you feel like you have to be someone else…. My classes are one of the places I invite you and encourage you to be.

Whatever your ability, however you are showing up ok that day, you are invited, and you are welcome.

This is your place. Your space.

No expectations, no judgement.

Much love ❤️

09/11/2025

Remembering the fallen men, women, children and animals that fell…. And continue to fall in the name of war.

Painting “Goodbye Old Man” commissioned by the in 1916 to help raise awareness, and money for the lives of (a million) horses killed in the First World War.

08/11/2025

Just a Damson Day.

She’s waiting for the rest of her pack chilling in the 17 degrees and beautiful sunshine on this awesome sunny November day in Lytham.

The lovely thing….she knows they will come back for her…..always.

Love you old girl.

07/11/2025

The garden is changing. Time to tidy and plant some new pops of winter colour.

Love to look out and see the changes in colour and the beautiful cyclamen 🌸

How do you manage the changes and transitions? The places and spaces in-between ?

Do this moment fill you will ancipatoon or trepidation or perhaps a mixture of both ?

If change is a place of discomfort for you - how do you find a place of resource, rest and recovery in these times ?

26/10/2025

This is lovely Lytham Hall

05/09/2025

No matter how much you believe in your intention to be with your horse or your ability… we all have the capacity to be the chimp here are described by Dr Shelley Appleton Calm Willing Confident Horses

I was chimp yesterday with my mare Kyra.

I sat on very tired, exhausted and disconnected…. The result, a very disengaged and disconnected ride nearly ending up in ditch. 😬

I shouldn’t have got on yesterday and my lovely girl did her best to try and listen to what I was saying to her/ even though I struggled to listen to her.

I’m so very grateful for the strength and foundation of our relationship years ago that could have ended very differently……

Not Naughty. Not Stubborn. Just Threatened.

The way I like to explain horse behaviour is simple: most of the “difficulties” people face with horses don’t come from some deep equine conspiracy against you. They come from one thing: the horse feels threatened.

I found this image of an ape riding a horse. The horse looks horrified - as if Godzilla just mounted up. And the tragic punchline? That’s often exactly what your horse sees when you climb aboard.

We humans love to overcomplicate things. We write essays about "stress releases" and "calming herbs", we argue over whether our horse is "sensitive" or just a "chestnut", and we spend small fortunes on gadgets designed by people with more marketing flair than horsemanship. But when you strip it all back, horses are embarrassingly simple: if they feel safe, they’ll try. If they feel threatened, they’ll try to survive.

Let me explain - and yes, I’ll use this image to do it.

This is the hardest thing for people to swallow: we can make the horse feel threatened.

The behaviour you call “naughty,” “stubborn,” or “difficult” is just your horse reacting to the primate clamped on its back like a panicked cat on a rollercoaster.

- Sit like a sack of potatoes and grip like a crab? Threatening.
- Move in the saddle like you’re auditioning for Riverdance? Threatening.
- Sn**ch, pull, or hang on the reins? Threatening.
- Force their neck into a yoga pose they didn’t sign up for? Threatening.
- Strap on tack that pinches, rubs, or restricts? Threatening.
- Demand pirouettes while they’re already internally screaming? Very threatening.

Before long, your horse isn’t just threatened under saddle - they’re threatened at the mounting block, when the saddle appears, or when you walk into the paddock with that “today’s the day we nail it!” look in your eye.

When horses feel threatened…
- They become hypervigilant, nervous, spooky.
- They turn resistant, anxious, reactive.
- They buck, rear, pig-root, strike, or charge—because when you’re a prey animal and someone feels like a predator, the natural solution is to make them regret that life choice.
- And the chronic fallout of being regularly threatened? That’s a story for another day—but let’s just say it isn’t solved with a new bit and a tub of magnesium powder.

So what can we do?

It’s not rocket science. (Or pseudoscience, for that matter. 😎)
- We teach.
- We train.
- We manage their health.

Above all, we help the horse understand, feel comfortable, and feel secure. That’s it.

Horses are ridiculously easy to train. We love to say they’re “prey animals” as if that excuses everything, but really, so are we. Their gift is being wired to notice threats - and their brilliance is that they learn faster than you can scroll through Facebook. Honestly, they’re easier to train than dogs. You just have to know how.

And that’s why I’m here. Not because horses are complicated mystical unicorns - but because they’re simple, and humans are the ones who make it complicated. Once you learn how not to feel like Godzilla on their back, you unlock the part where they are brave, trusting, and extraordinary.

We’re all just primates doing our best. The shift comes when you learn how not to be the monster in the saddle. And that’s easier than you think.

👉 Check the first comment - I’ll point you toward some resources that actually work.

This is totally counting as Day 15/365 of my notebook challenge—where I spill good ideas straight from my obsessive notebook collection. Collect them, share them, scribble them in the margins of your own life. Just don’t copy-paste (plagiarism is so last season).

⚠️And if the satire stings a little—don’t be offended. It’s meant to both sting and be funny. That’s how we crack things open enough to actually see them. ❤

01/09/2025

As an owner of a very Mare mare…. This is fascinating reading.

Stop Calling Her Mare-ish: It’s Not Attitude, It’s Endocrinology (and You Could Be Messing With It)

📝Collectable Advice - Entry 12/365

When a mare is stressed, her body doesn’t just tense up in the moment - stress hormones ripple through every system. And when that stress is day in, day out, cortisol stays high, oestrogen and progesterone wobble, and the fallout isn’t just hormonal imbalance. It’s stiff muscles, sore joints, gut discomfort, broken sleep, low resilience, poor learning… the list goes on. You can’t see the biology, but you can see the behaviour.

So we slap on the label “mare-ish” and joke we should’ve bought a gelding. But that behaviour isn’t attitude - it’s her body telling the truth about stress.

And it’s rarely one big drama. More often it’s death by a thousand paper cuts: a saddle that pinches, training that confuses, a gut that’s sore, turnout that’s too short, broken sleep, paddock politics, sore feet or handling that changes with the weather.

On their own, they look small, or worse - invisible. But together they stack up until her hormones, body, and mood are carrying more than they can cope with. And then? Doing anything with you becomes a battle - she either reacts or she resists.

This is why exercise matters. Consistent, thoughtful work lowers cortisol, teaches the body to recover, and rebuilds muscles, joints, structures of suspension through her body and more all impacted by chronic stress.

Diet matters too - the gut is the foundation of comfort, immunity, and hormonal balance, and what you choose to feed makes all the difference. Add in comfort feet, routine, proper rest, and interactions free from poison and conflict, and suddenly you’re chipping away at stress from every side.

And here’s the bit most people miss: you. Nothing drives stress higher than insecure interactions. Horses crave clarity. Clear rules of engagement and consistent communication mean she doesn’t have to live in conflict and defensiveness every time you show up.

So if your mare is showing “mare-ish” behaviour, it’s not her personality. It’s feedback. It’s your checklist. Go through her life and reduce the stress points one by one: feet, soundness, tack, training, diet, rest, routine - and yes, your own interactions. That’s how you build harmony. Not by blaming the mare, but by setting her up to feel good in her body and secure in her world.

👉 Have you got a "mare-ish" mare? See if you can see this as feedback because if you reduce the stress, you can change the story!

📓Remember: this is part of my 365-day notebook challenge - short, sharp advice you can collect and keep. Hit save or share or add it to your "interesting horse stuff" folder.

IMAGE📸: My mighty golden mare - Aureo ❤

Share for the mares! Many people have only met "mare-ish" mares and that can be changed ❤

13/08/2025

Thank you gorgeous folks for the last couple of weeks of yoga. 🧘

After a very tough few weeks of grief coming back to you has been very special.

From my heart to yours ❤️

A reminder that everyone is welcome in our little class - regardless of where you are at in your yoga journey.

We strive to build a community of peaceful, nourishing practice for all.

Take what you need from session.

Leave behind what you don’t.

27/07/2025

A new scientific study co-authored by Animalweb’s own Dr David Marlin in conjuction with Anglia Ruskin University students Emily Hopkins and Stacie Whitrod and ARU Writtle Associate Professor of Animal Biomechanics and Sports Medicine and School Research Lead Dr Roberta Blake, has found that tight...