Equine Bodyhelp                                     &  Ortho-Bionomy® UK

Gentle Holistic Bodywork Therapy
helps horses and their riders!

Dr. Anna Hayes, Ph.D., is a physical therapist and equine bodyworker, and has become an expert in the field of pain and stress relief for equines as well as people. She works with the gently bodywork method, orthobionomy, that helps ease dis-ease, releasing stress, pain and tension within the body. She is the only fully qualified Ortho-Bionomy practitioner in the UK and has run a successful practice since 2012, first in Germany and since 2017 in Ellesmere, North Shropshire. Anna provides individual solutions in a loving, caring and professional manner. 

By realigning the body, orthobionomy helps to ease physical pain in muscles, tendons and joints whilst also releasing stress and emotional tensions. Realigning the body in this gentle way allows the structure, the musculoskeletal system, to rebalance, thus also releasing restrictions within the nervous and circulatory systems and enabling energy to flow freely and the body to function again as it should. The body, the mind and the soul will respond. 

Horses and people enjoy orthobionomy and relax quickly in the treatment. Indeed, horses whom had already experienced orthobionomy would not let Anna work with structural osteopathy techniques. Orthobionomy is a very gentle therapy with no painful positions or manipulations. Gentle touches and carefully selected positions encourage the body to find its own position of comfort and natural balance. Nothing will be “corrected”, but the body will be animated to find its own solutions. And because the body continues to heal itself there is usually no need for a lot of continuous ongoing treatment. 

From experience, 2 or 3 treatments on a once-a-week basis are usually important in order to consolidate the initial work and this will often suffice for issues involving acute pain. However, problems that have been around for a longer period of time will need more regular treatment and a longer time to heal. After the full treatment session many clients rebook every 6-8 weeks just to make sure that their horses' body remains in balance. It is important to remember that healing, in a holistic sense, is a process, a life-long process. Orthobionomy can accompany the body to find its own position of ease in its own time, during this process.

Orthobionomy techniques can be learnt by anybody and utilising years of teaching experience Anna provides workshops and online courses where riders can learn simple techniques to treat their own horses and therapists can learn effective detailed techniques to treat common symptoms of pain, either for horses or for people.

If you should be interested in finding out more about the courses or how orthobionomy may be able to help, contact Anna here.