Magical Equine Science

EoR has previously looked at Equine Assisted Therapy (a belief that hanging around horses will act as a powerful form of psychiatry) as well as Quantum Savvy (natural horsemanship that has nothing to do with quantum mechanics other than the name). But what about Holistequine? Billed as "The Horse as a catalyst for Healing and Personal Development", Holistequine takes working with horses further than before into the depths of woo.

Holistequine represents a study of whole bio-energy fields, the subtle energy fields that connect all kingdoms in Nature. The findings of this extensive research have now been formulated into a method called "Whole Body Intelligence". [...] During our investigations we found that once we started working with the horses to integrate the clients "whole" body (or energy field) it not only had a positive effect at the emotional and spiritual level but it also had domino effect on the intelligence and the healing capacity within the physical body. [...] The technique can also be applied to improve children's learning, to improve communication (i.e. relationship problems and parenting), in vibrational healing and also in programs to promote personal development and Business and Life Coaching. The gift of the animals is to open humanity to the next evolutionary step on our journey. The animals will help us to explore and to trust our 6th sense and to gain insight into claiming our higher perception and intuition.

"Study"! "Extensive research"! "Findings"! There's a whole mix of weirdness there, and that's just the front page. Further on there are articles where you can discover such information as:

When we look at life as a whole we see that every living thing is made up of Energy. Animals, like humans are just another expression of that Energy reflecting back to us qualities that we need to integrate into our lives (ie. unconditional love, loyalty, and trust). We often project onto our pets the love we cannot give to ourselves. The Astrological symbols give us clues to the importance of this mirroring effect. [...] How it works- You choose a horse which reads your energy and reacts to it (he usually will not follow a simple request). We then use muscle testing to interpret his reaction and correct the thought pattern causing the problem ( re-wire the neurological pathways). The horse then sees your lighter energy field and treats you positively. During our sessions we focus on the solar plexus chakra.

How the horse's reaction is interpreted is not clear, nor how the "thought pattern" is corrected. Nor are we told what evidence shows that horses see "energy fields".

The Articles page goes on and on (including, for some strange reason, a cut and paste copy of a "Well Being Manifesto" which is a left-wing political tract. These guys certainly don't leave anything out.

They also do Holistic Horsemanship which is the next level up from "the male oriented Natural Horsemanship programs of the past" (actually, anyone who's been to a natural horsemanship show will notice the preponderance of females there though the sellers are usually male).

Holistequine represents horsemanship from a higher perspective, it is the next level of understanding from being either too forceful and dominant with our horse or being too soft, gentle or ineffective. By learning the W.B.I. method we become "the iron fist in the kid glove" thereby gaining a natural hierarchy. We now have a third way.

Well, it worked for Tony Blair...

For a view of the therapists behind this magic, meet the staff.

This might just seem like more mystical madness floating around on the internet, but EoR was led to it by a story at Eques ("When you are listening to your horse magic happens every day").