Helen Choma, Equine Touch Practitioner & Instructor

03/09/2025

One very special horse! Such a privilege to work closely with over the 10 years she has been with Bert. ❤️

01/09/2025

Some changes to our course dates for the remainder of 2025! We have limited spaces still available so get in touch early if you want to book. 🙂

22/08/2025

A fantastic interview with one of the founders of Equine Touch about fascia, the thing we work with when we do bodywork. But also about so much more, the interconnection between all parts of the body and effect of everything we do with or to the horse, on the entire body. Well worth a listen whether you work with horses, own a horse or are just interested in understanding more.

It's crucial to bring this perspective with us: we must remain humble and remember that horses expressing pain, discomfort, or uncertainty should always be taken seriously. Just because we don't always understand what triggers a horse's behaviour, doesn't mean it originates from nothing. It never...

16/08/2025

New Course Dates for the remainder of 2025! Please get in touch soon if you are interested as places are filling up already. 🙂

10/08/2025

A wonderful warm weekend for our Equine Touch Intermediate course with some fantastic students and very happy horses. It was most enjoyable all round.

01/08/2025

There are many debates about fascia—what it is, what it includes, and what its function truly is. Many definitions are used to describe and categorise this tissue, which I believe is impossible. It is a continuous tissue that is everywhere and manifests in many forms, from loose areolar tissue to highly organised tendons; from continuous tissue that connects parts, allows for force transmission, to areas where it disconnects and allows gliding and sliding.
The picture shows what I observe during my equine dissections.
I see the fibrillary network, filmed by J. C. Guimberteau.
And I see the ‘matrix’ described, I believe, by Stephen Lewin – “Fascia is the fabric of the body; not the vestments covering the corpus but material that gives it the form: the warp and the weft. Muscles and bone, liver, lung, gut, urinary, brain and endocrine are all embroidered in the fascial web.

The 2025 Fascial Congress will start in a few days. Will it bring clarification or more confusion?

Links to my work:
Patreon page that supports my work
https://www.patreon.com/equineanatomyinlayers

Whole Horse Dissection online (12 months access)
https://ivanaruddock.podia.com/the-equine-anatomy-in-layers

Atlas of the Equine Musculoskeletal system
https://ivanaruddock-lange.com/equine-atlas/

05/07/2025

*** IT IS A LEGAL REQUIREMENT TO REMOVE RAGWORT FROM ALL LAND USED FOR GRAZING HORSES AND LIVESTOCK ***

I have, once again, been shocked at the amount of ragwort I’ve seen left in paddocks with horses in. Even the most clueless of horse owners can normally tell you that ragwort is poisonous to horses, so why are so many owners not pulling it?!

It is actually an OFFENCE to leave ragwort in any field intended for grazing or hay making, AND an offence to allow it to seed and spread onto neighbouring land, if that neighbouring land is used for the same. That neighbour is within their rights to take LEGAL ACTION against you, if you allow ragwort to flower and seed on your land. I cannot fathom why you wouldn’t want to clear your own paddocks of ragwort, as it is both chronically and acutely POISONOUS to horses. It is absolutely not safe to just assume that horses won’t eat it. There is hardly any grass in any paddocks at the moment, and these are normally the paddocks that you see full of ragwort.

Under the Weeds Act 1959, you can be FINED for leaving ragwort to flower and seed on your land, if it is used for, or adjacent to, grazing livestock.

Don’t be complacent and lazy; pull that ragwort TODAY! We are all caught out by the odd bit of ragwort here and there, that has seemingly appeared overnight, but I’m talking about the crops of the stuff that should have been pulled weeks ago.

11/05/2025

New Dates added, spaces available on most of the dates listed. Please contact me to book your space! 🙂

26/04/2025

Having the horses at home for a couple of weeks has given us chance to ride some of our old routes daily and go a bit further today - then bath time and play time. Plenty of energy left in Whoop (22 years old next month) after his 10km ride!

08/04/2025

There are so many of Bert’s posts which contain real gems but I can’t share everything - have a look for yourselves.
This however is very close to our hearts as Equine Touch practitioners. We work with the horses to help to give them the voice they have locked away and work with them to return towards what they could and should be.

🪞🐴 A difficult truth, rarely spoken out loud -

👊❤The (Subtle) Emotional Punchbag Relationship❤👊

Some people don’t realise they’ve chosen horses not for real partnership, but to have something to release their deeper feelings on.

The horse becomes the one they can constantly correct, control, pick at, tell off. A living target for all the frustration, helplessness, fear, insecurity, or pain that they don’t feel safe expressing elsewhere. It's not obvious — it never looks like abuse. But it’s a pattern. A quiet, persistent drip of disapproval. A constant ni**le. An incessant chorus of clicking and clucking. A need to always win the conversation. They may even call it love.

But somehow, the horse is always wrong.
Too slow. Too reactive. Too stubborn. Too much.

It’s the age-old story of “kicking the dog” — except now it wears the latest matchy-matchy, made to measure boots and a designer saddle, and calls itself horsemanship.

The tragedy is that these people often believe they’re doing things “right.” They follow the techniques. They say the right words. But their energy tells a different story — one the horse hears loud and clear. Underneath the cues is a constant pressure: be better, be less, behave, shut down, sleep walk into a zombie state of learned helplessness.

But this isn’t partnership.
It’s projection.
It’s a power play, disguised as training.
It’s using a horse to soothe something unspoken — an ache, a wound, a need, a deep dissatisfaction they haven’t dared to meet in themselves.

And the horse becomes their emotional punchbag.

But here’s the thing: horses don’t exist to absorb what we don’t want to feel.
They aren’t here to regulate our chaos, prove our worth, or make us feel in control of a life that isn’t working.

They are sentient beings with their own stories. Their own thresholds.
They feel it all — especially what we won’t name.

So if we really care about our horses, maybe we need to ask:
Am I showing up to connect… or to offload?
To build something… or to dominate?
To relate… or to offload what I can’t stand in myself?

Because they know the difference.
And deep down — so do we. We owe it to our horses (and ourselves) to put these things aside when we arrive at the barn.

16/03/2025

A very enjoyable weekend spent with great students here for the Equine Touch Foundation class, joined today by Judith Winters for her CPD. Very relaxed and happy horses.

24/02/2025

There is still space available on the Equine Touch Foundation Course here in Lincolnshire next month on Friday 14th to Sunday 16th March.
Please PM me if you are interested in joining us to learn a gentle, effective full body balance to be able to give to your horses.