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Free to Be Equine Services

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Ladysmith, BC
Free to Be Equine Services

Kaiti Elliott is a Multi-Certified Equine Therapist based in the Cowichan Valley on Vancouver Island. More info at kaiti.com 🐎 Contact [email protected]

She specializes in myofascial & craniosacral therapies to facilitate whole being equine wellness.

11/23/2025

Being a therapist is one of the hardest jobs on the planet.

It’s like being wedged between a rock and a hard place—trying to help within the limits of a system few people truly understand.

On one hand, evidence-based therapy exists because research validates its efficacy. But here’s the catch: no therapist is a doctor. We can’t diagnose conditions. We can only evaluate, interpret, and form a working hypothesis based on years of study, experience, and evidence.

On the other hand, most doctors aren’t trained in soft-tissue dysfunction from a manual therapy perspective. They may not see what we see—or approach it the way your own massage therapist or osteopath would.

A skilled therapist assesses, evaluates, and treats within the scope of their license. In human therapy, we’re legally required to assess and treat—but also legally forbidden to diagnose what we’re treating.

Do you see the conundrum?

Now add the layer of working with animals. No verbal feedback. Limited data. Owners who mean well but often filter observations through emotion and bias.

We read patterns, posture, movement, tone, and expression—and somehow form a coherent clinical picture from that.

And while we do all that, we’re asked for answers. For immediate results. For certainty.

It’s hard enough to find the root cause in a human who can talk to us—never mind a horse who can’t.

So please, be kind to your therapists.

Most of us are burning the candle at both ends—researching late at night, reviewing notes, refining treatment plans, and making ethical, evidence-informed decisions for you and your horse.

This isn’t an easy job. It’s an act of service that demands intellect, intuition, and an enormous heart.

If it was easy, everyone would be a licensed therapist. But the reality is—it’s not.

I’ve been in school and practice for over 25 years and I’m still learning and growing.

Getting a license is just the first step. Dedicating oneself fully to evolving research and practice is a lifelong pursuit—one many of us have sacrificed homes, holidays, and sleep for.

This is our passion. Please, treat us with kindness.

11/21/2025

When you work in an industry for a long time - especially in a caretaking capacity that requires your blood, sweat, and tears - you run a high risk of eventually feeling disenchanted, unappreciated, and burned out. We all know how common this is for many career paths, and within the horse industry is no different. I have written before about burnout in equine professionals, and how important it is to find ways to mitigate the risk. Our industry loses so many talented people to these issues.

I wish I had the answers, but the truth is that I struggle like everyone else to work enough to make the money I need without destroying my body, to set boundaries and respect my own time and mental health, to advocate for equine wellness and welfare when I feel like I'm just screaming into the void, to remain relevant and stand by my skills and credentials when the newest and shiniest trends hit the industry, to perservere with what I know is right when people want a quick fix, and everything else that comes along with working as an equine professional.

I know I won't be able to hang in there forever doing the job that I do. But what keeps me going when I'm feeling tired, sore, and discouraged is this:
If I am my authentic self, and I live an authentic life, the people or animals who need my work - whatever it may look like in the future - will find me. Doing things that are not congruent with our authentic selves may seem like the right direction when we are faced with scarcity, competition, or pressure, but it never serves us in the end, and it often pushes us further away from our true purpose and what we bring to the table from our unique knowledge, perspective, and experience.

I hope that if you are feeling the same way, that this post finds you today. 💜

Art by as seen in Uppercase magazine.

11/20/2025

Just a little note to my clients that I recommend booking any 2025 appointments as soon as you can. I will be on holidays starting December 20th & returning January 5th. This means that there are only 4 weeks left for booking sessions this year - so especially if you need specific days or times, please reach out to book. Thanks for reading & have a wonderful week! 🥰 ✨️
Thank you Sandra for the adorable photo!

11/19/2025

Don't underestimate the importance of time. Something I have observed about many horse stewards - not excluding myself! - is that we have difficulty giving anything enough time.
Particularly when it comes to our horses and their welfare, we want things to improve immediately and if they don't, we are tempted to switch things up. This rarely serves us well because most problems that we encounter in minds and bodies require lots of time to change or heal.

Integration of change - whether it be something we've done to a horse's training, feeding, lifestyle, or physical body - takes time, there is no way around that. If we are constantly changing what we're doing, adding things and taking other things away, we are never allowing for that integration to occur, and therefore lose any long term positive benefit. Novelty and variation is incredibly important for both physical and emotional wellness, but we can incorporate diversity into our equine training and management without giving up on concepts, remedies, or modalities altogether simply because we haven't given them enough time to work.

I have also observed that we all have vastly different ideas of what is considered "enough time". Many people only give things a few months, or even as little as a few weeks, before they give up on them. I see this most often with changes like moving to free-feeding hay, improving hoof balance, giving horses more turnout, improving the quality of the feed, moving to better riding/training practices, and healing trauma (physical or emotional). Sometimes you see immediate improvement with these changes and that is awesome! But usually it takes many months - or more - for horses to let go of old practices and relearn new ones, or for their nervous system to recalibrate, or for new tissues to develop or injured tissues to heal.

Patience is hard but it is necessary.

11/12/2025

Who are we doing this for?

My entire career has been built upon the foundations of helping the horse to be different in their bodies -

Seeing all of the "flaws" and "imperfections"

Observing all of the ways their body wasn't functioning well, all of the possible paths for injury, all of the explanations for *that* diagnosis.

And then curating a path of improvement - dealing out the exercises to make your horse better so you can do the thing you want to do with them.

It's endemic in training - "if your horse is [insert desired posture here], then they will be moving well and that will be good for them."

But at no point is the horse considered beyond a vessel to be manipulated for the human experience.

The appropriateness of the exercise is not considered beyond it being the next thing to do in the formula for "getting horse to do the thing."

And this formula becomes the stick that's repetitively jabbed in the bicycle spokes of horse health -

Because when we consider the body and the mind as one unit, working in synchrony, then we do actually need to consider the horse's mind -

And that consideration needs to go a little further than "if we do this exercise enough, the horse will find it easier, they will feel good in their body and that makes them happy"

Because if the road to get there is difficult, the associations to the work wont be good ones. And whilst the body might come along for the ride, the mind certainly wont.

And here we see the very precarious house of cards we have built. How little our horses are truly okay with. How far we have to back track.

The infinite regression.

But rather than see this as a failure, I want to reframe this as an invitation:

How much joy and fulfilment can be gleaned from doing less?

And doing less is not to be confused with doing nothing.

It's not throwing your toolkit out of the window, it's recognising your horse as a horse.

Instead of sports equipment with fur.

https://www.yasminstuartequinephysio.com/the-horse-posture-blueprint

11/03/2025

This has been a hot topic again recently, and I understand why, because I find it hard to make sense of too. I wrote a blog post on this earlier this year and I'd love for you to read it - I hope the steps I've outlined can help you as it has helped me to navigate the horse world and all of the conflicting opinions we are presented with.

https://www.kaiti.com/whats-new/how-to-make-sense-of-conflicting-information-about-horse-care-and-welfare

10/29/2025

As a follow up to my recent post about breathwork for horses, here is a little more information about the diaphragm and its vital role in the body.

Horse bodies - like our bodies - require oxygen for life. Every cell in the body requires it, and it is vital for our bodies to function. The respiratory system works to move fresh air into the body while removing waste gases. Once in the lungs, oxygen is moved into the bloodstream and carried throughout the body. The opposite occurs to remove waste gases from the blood and expell them through exhalation.

The diaphragm is a muscle that aids inhalation and exhalation. This thin, dome-shaped muscle sits below the lungs and heart and separates the chest from the abdominal cavity. It’s attachments include the sternum, ribcage, and spine.

In addition to aiding with breathing, the diaphragm increases pressure inside the abdomen, which supports other important functions such as organ function and digestion. The esophagus and several nerves and blood vessels run through openings in the diaphragm.

The ribcage, while acting as protection of vital organs and an attachment site for soft tissue, is also a highly mobile structure to allow for respiration. Horses have 18 pairs of ribs and each pair articulates with the spine. 8 pairs of these ribs join to the sternum.

The respiratory system function is profoundly affected by both the autonomic nervous system - the sympathic and parasympathetic responses - as well as cranial and cervical nerves which govern the function of the heart, lungs, diaphragm, pharynx, trachea, etc.

Are we beginning to see the connections?

10/28/2025

We recently had our first frost here in the Cowichan Valley on Vancouver Island - the temperature changes so quickly in the fall! These swings come with metabolic changes, behaviour changes, and routine/lifestyle changes for our horses. It's important that they are supported through seasonal transitions with close attention paid to diet and digestion, water consumption, temperature regulation (this also means being too hot - make sure your horses aren't sweating under their blankets during daytime temperatures!), and movement. Handwalks and little tricks like spreading out the hay between multiple locations in their turnout areas are great ways to ensure your horse is getting enough movement in the cooler and wetter weather. Fall is also a great time for a bodywork session to check up on how your horse's body is feeling and prepare them for the seasonal changes ahead.

10/25/2025

Breathwork is likely not something most people think about when they imagine equine bodywork, but it has become an important part of my work and a vital step towards holistic well-being for my horse clients. Many horses - again, like us - develop restrictions that lead to reduced function of the ribcage and diaphragm.

Those restrictions may be due to dysfunctions within structure, posture, movement patterns, soft tissue, or within the nervous system - often a combination.

If horses can't draw in full, regular breaths utilizing the full range of their ribcage and diaphragm, they are not receiving the optimal amount of oxygenation to their tissues and cells (which affects health and performance), nor are they receiving the other benefits of deep diaphragmatic breathing such as relaxation and improved digestion.

Through multiple lenses such as myofascial, craniosacral, nerve release, and somatic work, I have developed my own combination of methods to practice breathwork with horses and I have been so pleased with how much they benefit. It is also an easy thing to teach to horse stewards, so you can continue to help your horse along the journey to improve their respiratory function after my visit. Because of the nature of these soft and slow methods, and thanks to mirror neurons, the humans' breathing also benefits greatly from working with their horses in this way.

Address

Ladysmith, BC

Opening Hours

Monday	8am - 8pm
Tuesday	8am - 8pm
Wednesday	8am - 8pm
Thursday	8am - 8pm
Friday	8am - 8pm

Telephone

+17788350854

Website

http://www.kaiti.com/

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