Over 90 percent of the US population seeks help for back pain at one point or another during the course of their life. If you're a horseperson, back pain is of particular concern as it not only robs you of the joys of riding—it threatens your livelihood, as well. From grooming and tacking up, to performing a flawless reining pattern or jumping a clean round, to stacking hay bales or pushing a wheelbarrow, everything we do on and around horses demands a supple, strong, healthy back. Now, in...

Your mood, thoughts, and emotions can affect your perception of pain and even your ability to heal. In fact, your past life experiences influence your current physical challenges: “your biography influences your biology.” While treatments like medication and physical therapy can be enormously beneficial to the body, to maximize pain relief, it’s necessary to take advantage of the mind’s healing abilities. This book offers a revolutionary new treatment approach, mindfulness-based chronic pa...

In this book Dr. Mike provides numerous training exercises so that riders will gain a better feel of the horse. Each exercise is well described and shares with you the benefit of performing the exercise. The book includes multiple warm-up exercises for getting better directional control and the proper use of your legs when riding. Advanced exercises are included for enhanced responsiveness. The basics of dressage and proper biomechanics are presented to help you improve your body language ...

A simple eight-week program of mindfulness-based practices that can help relieve suffering, developed by two authors who have struggled with severe pain after sustaining serious injuries."This book provides and extremely effective and elegant mind-body approach to healing for people dealing with the potentially hugely-eroding effects of chronic pain and illness in their lives." ―Jon Kabat-Zinn, PhD, author of Full Catastrophe Living

An evocative portrait of the Triple Crown–winning racehorse trainer: "sportswriting as good as it could ever possibly be" ( New York Daily News).At seventy-seven, James "Sunny Jim" Fitzsimmons should have been considering retirement. His six-decade career stretched back to 1885, when, as an eleven year-old, he began working as a stable boy. After failing as a jockey, Fitzsimmons—or Mr. Fitz to those in the know—started training horses, eventually winning t...

75% of pain is caused by trigger points (areas of contracted cells in muscle tissue), but they are drastically under-diagnosed as the source of pain. Trigger points may refer pain and other symptoms both in the local area and/or to other areas of the body, but since over 74% of trigger points are not located in the area where you feel pain, treating the local area does not resolve the problem most of the time. The most common "referral patterns" have been well documented and diagrammed ove...

Every morning, more than 50 million Americans wake up to another day in pain. If you are one of them, you know the way chronic pain can take over your life: the lost work and missed pleasures, the harsh drugs or surgeries, the feelings of anger and frustration, the endless search from doctor to doctor. It doesn’t have to be that way.This remarkable book, by one of the leading pain specialists in America, puts in your hands the resources usually available only at the most sophistica...

Horse Speak is not a training method or technique—it is a practical system for "listening" and "talking" to horses in their language, instead of expecting them to comprehend ours. Horse Speak can be used by anyone who works with horses, whether riding instructor, colt starter, recreational rider, or avid competitor. It promises improved understanding of what a horse is telling you, and provides simple replies you can use to tell him that you "hear" him, you "get it," and you have ideas you...

An expert explores the biological and emotional nature of pain: why it hurts and why some pain is good and some pain is bad.If you touch something hot, it hurts. You snatch your hand away from the hot thing immediately. Obviously. But what is really happening, biologically—and emotionally? In Understanding Pain, Fernando Cervero explores the mechanisms and the meaning of pain. When you touch something hot, your brain triggers a reflex action that causes yo...

Back pain gets in the way of everything we want to do, and it can stop us sleeping too. It can be difficult to find the right treatment, and expensive to keep visiting a chiropractor, physiotherapist, osteopath or massage therapist.If you are looking for long-lasting relief from your back pain, or trying to avoid back problems, it's essential to treat the cause, not just the symptom. Research shows building your core muscle stability is the most effective way to deal with most form...

Good horsemanship is not about domination, but leadership and having the horse volunteer for a partnership with the handler. That summarizes the focus of trainer and author Mark Bolender. In Bolenders Guide to Mastering Mountain and Extreme Trail Riding, he spells out his philosophy and training regimen that works to build mutual trust between a horse and rider.Bolenders training methoddeveloped to incorporate the horses natural instinctsis appropriate for riders of any sk...

The Howell Equestrian Library is a distinguished collection of books on all aspects of horsemanship and horsemastership. The nearly fifty books in print offer readers in all disciplines and at all levels of competition sound instruction and guidance by some of the most celebrated riders, trainers, judges and veterinarians in the horse world today. Whether your interest is dressage, show jumping or Western riding, or whether it's breeding, grooming or health care, Howell has a book to answe...