"A horse performs with muscles and since performances as well as gaits are about harmonic movement, the muscular development needs to be both, strong and harmonic." Jean Luc Cornille

 

 

 

Horse Gait Stables in Dixmont Maine 

March 31st and April 1st

                    

Contact Stacia Russell 207-564-3080, Stacia@stoneridgestables.net

  

   

PA Clinic

Plum Shade Farm

April 14th-April 15th

www.PLumShadeFarm.com

610 486 0708-JoAnne Nightingale

  joanne@plumshadefarm.com

We are busy with many activities at SOM and look forward to seeing our friends and new friends at Immersion 6. This is one not to miss. 

Chazot is continuing his sale so now is the time to acquire knowledge at a very affordable price. SIJ is also on sale this is by far a must have for anyone working with horses, trainers, therapists and riders. This information is not available anywhere. It goes far beyond therapy and rehabilitation. The main point with SI problems is that prevention is much better than reeducation. The study provides an understanding of the way the SIJ is built and functions that greatly enhances one's ability to prevent Sacroiliac injury.

We hope you are enjoying wonderful weather as we are!

 

Onward this journey!

Editor Helyn Cornille
Science Of Motion

 

Friday May 25 th , Saturday May 26 th and Sunday May 27th

 

Immersion 5, (February 17, 18, 19, 2012) marked the unity and maturity of an exceptional team. Dr. Betsy Uhl, DVM, PhD, DACVP, Mike Gallagher (Farrier), Dan Burle from Equine Tec and Jean Luc Cornille. The three days turned into advanced discussions that continued to educate and delight the participants. 

 

Lucien Cary wrote, "When it is not necessary to change, it is not necessary to change." So we keep the same team but approach new subjects for Immersion 6.

Friday May 25th,

Sculpting a Beautiful Horse

The ability of the artist to express the beauty of the human form is predicated on a profound study of the science of anatomy. (Leonardo da Vinci, 1452-1519)

The horse's muscular development is an open window to the quality of the training approach. The needed knowledge is functional anatomy and not simply where the muscles are but how they function and above all how they can be developed. On a large TV screen, you will see where the main limb and back muscles are situated. We start with a picture of the horse and then peel back, layer by layer, to expose the most important muscles. In the training ring you will learn how the muscles are developed and coordinated through educated motion. Immersion is a program designed to further knowledge and efficacy of both riders and therapists. The demonstration will therefore be done mounted for the riders and working in hand for the therapists.  

Saturday May 26th, two workshops running simultaneously.,   

  (Work in Hand, Beginner to Advance)                                                                        Therapy Through Motion                                                          

   Gait Analysis for Better Shoeing.

 

Therapy Through Motion (Work in Hand)

Helyn and Jean Luc Cornille

 

Educated motion is a new form of therapy recreating, in motion, the therapeutic manipulations typically executed on standing horses. The study in the classroom explains how the Therapy Through Motion furthers the benefits of those standing therapies. A muscle never works alone. For each contraction there are compensatory contractions, muscles that stabilize the joints, others who redirect forces and so on. The same muscle can produce forces in different directions. According to the length of its fascicles or the percentage of its elastic elements a muscle may work better at the walk or at the trot. Educated motion allows proper work and coordination of a targeted muscle group but in their real context; which is in conjunction with the simultaneous work of all of the other muscles. For example, the biceps femoris is the only pelvic limb muscle with substantial elastic elements. A slow trot may target the muscle more efficiently than the walk. The semimembranosus is an adductor, therefore, a gymnastic exercise focussing on simulatenous propulsion and adduction of the hind leg should target the semimembranosus over the two other muscles of the hamstring, which, at the contrary, are abductors.

 

The practice is made on three horses, working at three different levels:

 

Beginner: Arpege, (Thoroughbred and Chazot's mother).

Intermediate: Caesar, (Selle Fran�ais).

Advanced: Manchester, (Hannovarian).

 We can also define the horses by size; small, medium and large.

 

Saturday May 26th  (and running simultaneously with above.

Gait Analysis for Better Shoeing.

Dan Burle  &  Mike Gallagher

Equine Tec (Dan Burle and his team) created a fantastic gait analysis program. Their vision was to create a program that is accurate, easy to use and affordable and they succeeded.

 

Mike Gallagher is an experienced farrier who is using the program. Together Mike and the team of Equine Tec are going to demonstrate and explain how advanced analysis of impact, brake over and push off can greatly enhance the accuracy of the farrier work and subsequently the horse's ability to perform at its utmost potential while remaining sound.

 

Participating horses will be observed and analyzed by Mike and Dan and their findings discussed.

 

Sunday May 27th 

   Building muscles: The Good, the Bad and the Ugly

Betsy Uhl, DVM, PhD, DipACVP

 

Extensive knowledge, superb presentation, outstanding illustrations are the trade mark of Betsy's discussions. Betsy is going to bring you inside the muscles, how the cells work, how they transmit forces through connective tissues, how they act on the bone structure and what happens when things can go wrong.

 

As a veterinary pathologist, she is aware of the latest discoveries about muscle structure, function and disease, and has the talent to make advanced scientific discoveries easy to understand. Her collaboration with Jean Luc has enabled the muscular skeletal changes and lesions observed on the necropsy floor to be correlated with how the horse actually moves, which has rarely been done.

 

At the end of the day, Betsy, Mike, Dan and Jean Luc will engage a conversation combining gait analysis technology, correct or corrective shoeing and the influence of hoof balance on gait kinematics, bone and muscular development and pathology.

 

Cost is $300. per day with discount if registered and paid before April 6th. 

 

Register for Immersiom 6

 

 

 

As you know, he sometimes comes into the barn or into my field to spend time with me. Often he has his laptop to work on a study or to answer E-mails. I do like this time together. He does not make me do cowboy tricks hoping to convince others that we have a friendly relationship. We have a friendly relation and there is nobody around to watch. 

 

Yesterday, he was seated next to me as I was taking a nap in my sunny field and a guy with a pickup truck stopped on the road and walked toward us asking if we were OK. He told the guy, we are fine, and we are just talking politics. The man shook his head and walked away while telling someone on the phone that he had just talked with a cuckoo who is talking with his horse.

 

Through E-mails, he regularly advises three to five people, who are having frustrating difficulties with their horse. Especially when it comes to rehabilitation, he is often contacted when everything else has failed and very often I can feel his frustration and thoughts. He is the first to encourage riders to do it themselves but there are times when the problem is overwhelming and demands experience and knowledge beyond the scope of the rider.He never pushes anyone to ship the horse to him but he quite often wishes that they would. It would be more efficient, avoid furthering the damages and finally, it would be less costly. It takes more than knowing where the muscles are and what their normal functions are to resolve abnormal problems. Yes he does use dressage movements as gymnastic exercises but the moves need to be understood for their effect on the horse's physique. Also, and I want to talk about this point, the difference between efficiency and inefficiency is the psychology of the whole approach. Us, horses, we will naturally protect our natural weaknesses, muscle imbalances or other issues and we will execute the move that protects our problem. I remember when I was on the racetrack, I experienced pain in my right stifle area and they attempted to manipulate my hind limb, placing my leg in different postures hoping to work my knee extensors muscles. I executed the move using my hip extensor muscles instead. They never noticed my escape. I understood recently why it was so easy for me to execute that particular protective move instead of working my stiff muscle. One evening, as he was dressing me with my sheet for the night, he watched my thigh muscles telling me, do you know that you can extend your hind leg at the end of the support phase using only your hip extensors muscles, or only knee extensors muscles, or a combination of both and that the movement of your limb will look absolutely identical. Success in therapeutic reeducation is not about knowing what the movement is supposed to do but how to guide our brains toward the appropriated coordination.

 

The problem often starts with the accuracy of the diagnosis. When there is a contradiction, there is a solution but the solution is not about ignoring one aspect of the contradiction, which is what most therapies tend to do. Instead, the solution is about more deeply analyzing the contradictions until the common cause is found. Often he receives horses, for rehabilitation, with a long history of treatment that was geared toward one direction only to find out, after a few days or weeks, that the solution is in a totally different direction. As you know, I almost died. I owe my survival to Helyn who did not give up, even when I was showing excruciating pain. Helyn resisted the pressure of the vet who wanted to put me to sleep because Helyn knew that there was a contradiction between my vital signs, which were not too bad, by comparison, to the level of pain that I was experiencing. The vet, who was inexperienced, only looked at the level of pain and diagnosed as impaction colic. The problem is that the treatment she gave me, based on her opinion, was the worst thing that she could have done considering the real problem. Helyn hoped that if I could survive until they could transport me to the UGA hospital, more experienced and knowledgeable vets would figure out the real problem. I survived, obviously and effectively, thanks to the professionals at the vet school where they approached the problem differently; I immediately felt better.

 

The problem with most diagnoses is that they are basically an opinion and once the opinion has been formulated, a misplaced ego distorts the whole process toward proving that one's opinion is right. Once the inexperienced young vet decided that I should be put to sleep, Helyn's questions were not treated as intelligent thought but instead as challenging the vet's opinion. In that circumstance, the vet's misplaced ego almost killed me.

 

My condition puzzled everyone including him. His field of expertise is not internal organs so he asked questions of the competent specialists, analyzed their thoughts and asked more questions until they figured that, against all appearances, my problem was as simple as ulcers, for which I was under treatment but needed a more aggressive and pertinent approach.

 

READ ON

 

Report on Immersion 5

At the close of (almost) each Olympic event, the then president of the Olympic committee declares the last event as the best Olympics ever. This does not mean that the previous Olympics were bad, but celebrates, instead, the progress made by the athletes as well as the organization of the event. We can say that Immersion 5, which was held February 17, 18 and 19, 2012, was the best ever. The choice of the subjects, the knowledge and enthusiasm of the speakers and the participation of the auditors was so great that as the event came to its end we found that everyone seemed quite reluctant to depart. Immersions are a very unique journey and so it was destined to continue.

 

Dr. Betsy Uhl, once again enlightened the group with a highly informative discussion on Navicular Syndrome.  Betsy's research on the history of this disease uncovered pertinent findings. The disease appeared in the 17th century when they started to pave the roads. Already in the 17th century, veterinarians were practicing neurectomy. Betsy and Jean Luc are currently working on a DVD about Navicular syndrome. From the causes to the cure the Navicular Syndrome video is promising to be a complete revolution on prevention and treatment.

 

Mike Gallagher was brilliant as a speaker and educator. He has extensive experience on shoeing for performance and shoeing for soundness. Mike is knowledgeable and secure enough to admit that much of what was once thought to be so is no longer correct. His knowledge and his stamina fill up the mind of each participant creating a unique atmosphere in the conference room. One of the questions involving limb kinematics obliged Mike to ask Jean Luc to enter the discussion and they bounced together from one idea to the other for the delight of the participants.

 

Jean Luc approached a very real issue, SI (sacroiliac injuries). The discussion explained in detail anatomy and function of the sacroiliac joint exposing pertinent facts. The Sacroiliac joint is stabilized by a strong system of ligaments. The ligaments are situated above, below, ahead, behind and in between the joint. On these ligaments are inserted muscles that are involved in the hind legs' decelerating and propulsive activity, as well as forward transmission of the thrust generated by the hind legs through the thoracolumbar spine. Stability or instability of the sacroiliac joint is related to proper or improper coordination of the horse's whole physique. A very detailed transcript of the lecture was given to the participants. They also had the opportunity to manipulate a pelvis and sacrum feeling how the sacroiliac joint transmit forces and can be stable or unstable. Clearly, the opportunity to manipulate the sacroiliac joint helped each auditor to fully understand how the SI J does function. This prompted Jean Luc to rewrite the whole transcript adding more pictures and details for the ones who do not have the opportunity to be here for the Immersion. The DVD "SIJ" for sacroiliac joint is now ready and has become a very large and outstanding document.    

  

There is no doubt that Immersion 6 will be the best Immersion ever. We keep the same team and approach very pertinent subjects. We have created Immersion to further the knowledge provided in the context of clinics. The program is now offering knowledge and information that cannot be found anywhere else. Instead of losing time and money in the show ring, receiving uneducated information from antiquated  judging standards, spend the weekend with us. Your horse will greatly appreciate your new knowledge.  

 

Immersion 6 Information and registration

 

 

Sale on DVD's and Books continues ! Most DVD's/Files $38. and buy all three books for $109.!!! 

 

The day commences with a conversation in the barn while tacking up the horse. The discussion is about the horse's history. Jean Luc is asking questions about the progression of discomfort or lameness, the therapies applied, etc.

 

The first riding or in hand session focus on identifying the root cause of the horse's problem and teaching to the rider how to address the horse's issue.

 

Learn More

As the horse rest after his work, the rider and Jean Luc are discussing in the class room, the physiology behind the horse's problem. The conversation is casual but eminently informative. Horses' skeletons as well as computer animations are used to provide a sound picture of the horse's problem and the body coordination likely to restore soundness.