Cavanagh Physical Therapy and Wellness

12/17/2025

Sometimes you need more than your trainer saying “Relax your leg”. Now is the time to work on yourself out of the saddle. I love helping riders correct this issue with simple exercises you can do at home. Scheduling now for 2026

👀When your boots are quietly telling you you’re not as symmetrical as you think you are 🙈😂

Different wear on boots (or different areas of wear) is really common in asymmetrical riders. One leg often has to work harder to stabilise when weight isn’t equal through the seat bones.

This is why telling someone to “just relax a leg” usually doesn’t work - they’re doing it for a reason (they don’t want to fall off!)

And it’s not always the side the weight is on, or the leg that feels “strongest” to the rider.

Have a good look at your boots and see what they’re telling you!

12/14/2025

Wow, this is amazing insight and information about the connection between riders and their horses.

People often think they stay calm around their horses. Or that they should. Or that staying calm is simply a matter of choosing to relax. But your body is not wired that simply. Your nervous system reacts to a horse’s activation long before you form a conscious thought about what is happening.

Two nervous systems meet each time you interact with a horse. Both constantly read, adjust, and respond to each other. This is not emotional weakness. This is biology. This is relationship. This is the foundation of everything we do in the Whole Horse Journey.

Here is what is happening inside your system when your horse activates, from a scientific, somatic, and trauma informed perspective.

1. Neuroception begins scanning before you have time to think

The moment your horse lifts their head, stops moving, braces, flares their nostrils, or freezes, your neuroception activates. Neuroception is the body’s built-in surveillance system described in Polyvagal Theory. It works below conscious awareness and evaluates cues of safety, danger, and life threat.

Your body reads the horse’s posture, speed of movement, breath, tone, and even tiny shifts in facial expression. You feel something before you understand something. This is your biology doing its job.

2. Sympathetic activation prepares your system

If something feels uncertain, your nervous system mobilises. This is not panic. This is preparation.

Heart rate rises. Breath becomes shallow or faster. Muscles co contract. Vision narrows slightly. The gut slows. The body reallocates energy to the limbs. The fascia and surrounding tissues begin to ready themselves for movement, although how fascia participates is still being researched.

This is the body saying be ready. It is normal. It is functional. It is not a sign of weakness or incompetence.

3. Old implicit patterns try to take the wheel

Humans carry history in their bodies. Not as conscious memories, but as implicit patterns. Times you felt unsafe. Times you felt responsible for keeping things together. Times you were punished for mistakes. Times you learned that activation meant danger or conflict.

When your horse activates, those patterns can reappear. You may tense, snap into control mode, shut down, dissociate, over focus, over correct, or feel the urge to do something immediately.

This is not the present moment. This is your past trying to steer the present. It is a normal expression of a system protecting itself.

4. Co regulation becomes more complex when both systems rise

A horse in activation influences your system. Your system in activation influences the horse. Co regulation is a biological process, not a personality trait. It is not all or nothing. Even partially regulated humans can offer stabilising signals. But the more activation rises in either system, the harder it becomes to share regulation clearly.

This is not failure. It is simply two autonomic systems doing what they were designed to do. It is why regulation cannot be forced and why presence is a moving, living process rather than a fixed state.

5. The body expresses stress through somatic patterns

Humans have ancient patterns for threat response. Breath holding. Tightened pelvic floor. Locked knees. Braced shoulders. Jaw tension. Over stillness. Over activity. Hyper focus on reins or lead ropes. Excessive talking. Going silent.

These patterns are not flaws. They are strategies. They were shaped long before you ever touched a horse. They reveal how your system creates stability when the world feels uncertain.

6. Trauma history shapes your threshold but does not define your capacity

If you have lived through chronic stress, inconsistent environments, emotional neglect, relational tension, or trauma, your system may reach activation more quickly. This does not always mean your balloon is full. It means your system learned to stay alert in order to survive.

This does not mean you cannot work with horses. Many of the most intuitive, sensitive, capable horse people have lived through exactly these histories. It simply means you need compassion for yourself as much as for the horse. It means your body may need different types of support to return to baseline.

7. Resolution and completion follow the event

Once the moment passes and your horse settles, your system seeks completion. You may sigh, tremble, yawn, tear up, shake out your hands, feel tired, or feel uniquely clear. These are normal somatic signs of the nervous system restoring balance.

Your body is reorganising itself. It is integrating what happened. It is not overreacting. It is repairing.

Why this matters for horsemanship

Because your horse does not only read your behaviour. They read your biology. They feel your breath, your heart rhythm, your fascia tension, your subtle postural responses, and the energy that rises or settles inside you. They feel the story your body is telling even when you are trying to project calm.

This is not about striving for perfection. It is about understanding the hidden conversation between two systems. When you know what is happening inside you, you can separate your story from your horse’s story. You can respond instead of react. You can offer clarity instead of pressure. You can meet the horse in a grounded way even when activation rises.

A regulated human is not one who never activates. A regulated human is one who understands what is happening inside their body and can return themselves to connection.

That is the heart of this work. The Whole Horse Journey is not only about the horse. It is about the human who steps into the field with an entire history, an entire biology, and an entire nervous system of their own.

And when both systems feel understood, everything changes.

11/01/2025

10/26/2025

Yes! Riders need physical therapy as much as their horses!!

Physical Therapists are the most underrated profession when it comes to physical health.

As humans, most of us spend our lives in cars, at desks, carrying kids on our hips, and doing things that constantly make us one-side dominant. Many of us have been crooked for so long that we don’t even know we are crooked, and we transfer that crookedness to our horses.

Physical therapy is more than just stretching or injury recovery after an accident — it is a valuable modality that creates balance between the two halves of our body through movement. It alters our proprioception so we can recognize when we are crooked, and gives us simple exercises that we can do (at home!) to get our bodies back to symmetry. It breaks habitual movement patterns slowly, so the body can gradually adapt.

Veterinary and bodywork interventions (injections, laser, chiropractic, massage, etc) are excellent for reducing pain and getting the body to a place where the horse can move correctly — but they do not alter movement patterns or proprioception. Until the horses are taught to move differently, the cycle will continue.

As a rider, do you go to physical therapy regularly? If no, why not?

Do you have a physical therapist for your horse, who gives you exercises to do regularly to alter compensation/asymmetry in their movement? If so, who are they?

08/21/2025

Don’t ride with anything in your back pockets, especially your phone!

𝗥𝗜𝗗𝗜𝗡𝗚 𝗪𝗜𝗧𝗛 𝗣𝗛𝗢𝗡𝗘𝗦 𝗜𝗡 𝗥𝗘𝗔𝗥 𝗣𝗢𝗖𝗞𝗘𝗧

While on a clinic some time ago, and again at a competition yesterday, I noticed a rider carrying their phone in their rear (right) pocket while riding.

This should be avoided at all levels.

Placing a phone in the rear pocket is likely too:

1) Significantly affect the function of the rider’s seat
2) Compromise the effectiveness of the rider’s seat aid
3) Induce/create rider asymmetry
4) Lead to uneven loading of the saddle and horse
5) Compromise rider-horse interaction

Although carrying a phone while riding can be useful for safety and other purposes (apps), alternative locations should be considered.

Image of a rider sitting on a pressure mat with their phone in their right back pocket.

Note: sharing as an observation. We have not shown this experimentally (yet).