reading

Foreword I

Maren Diehl lured me with a simple as well as true sentence: "The horses are not the problem". I owe it to the title of her first book and the prospect of looking at fascia training from the perspective of this refreshingly different-thinking woman that I set off for southern Germany in November 2014. I have achieved knowledge that enlightens and liberates me.

I look back on ten years of professional life as an equine osteopath. The perception of pain is part of my mission, but the fact that it has come more and more to the fore over the years was not planned. Let's be honest: My profession does not treat the consequences of unfortunate falls and the often cited stones on the ground, over which a horse has rolled awkwardly. Our riding horses are ill. By the way, the unridden ones too. They suffer from the living conditions that we create as owners and riders.

It is upsetting to realize in how many horses the natural flow of movement is disturbed. Regardless of great teachers and beliefs, schools and riding styles, we should realize that the greatest teacher is nature herself. In my mind I carry a picture of the archetypal horse full of strength and pride, with elastic, dance-like movements. The reality in stables shows a completely different truth. I thank all those horses, who show me their limitations and their pain and yet surprisingly when free of human control on the pasture or in free play can find their way back to a decidedly different strength of expression. They give me the humility to realize that our prime aim should be preserving the natural intelligence of motion undisturbed, rather than limiting and hindering it with our ideas.

For me, perceiving the horse's body as a biotensegral structure is a new dimension of causative research in pathological movements, patterns and disruptions of the overall system. Biomechanical considerations of individual structures and their behavior towards each other is certainly indispensable in therapeutic work, but living movement is much more than that. The holistic therapy approach of osteopathic work can be wonderfully described with a statement from A.T. Stills: "Keep the image of the healthy body in your mind all the time as you treat the sick." We can correlate to this holistic thought when biotensegral insights shape our inner picture of healthy and health-sustaining movement.

I am certainly not the only therapist and rider who, seeing the consequences of riding, has asked himself what the healthy solution is. Maren Diehl gives an answer which is well worth thinking about. She does with her readers what she proposes we should do during our daily encounters with horses: She invites us to try out, triggers our resistance and provides the ground on which we can re-sort our knowledge. Treat yourself to an excursion to a different understanding of the healthy body – your question marks will turn into exclamation marks. Best wishes on your way.

Cornelia Klarholz

Lage, 2016-02-22

Cornelia Klarholz works as an equine osteopath in Germany in Ostwestfalen/Lippe and as a lecturer for the "Dry Needling Centre".

Foreword II

A short while ago I spent a day at an equestrian jumping competition trying to understand what I had been preaching about for 40 years, that all creatures, large or small, used biotensegrity mechanics for structure and function.

In my heart I believed it, but in my experience with the human body and anything else was assumed by my very anthropomorphic view of the world. My preliminary reading of Maren’s book had raised awareness in me of the challenges of applying biotensegrity principles to other-than-human creatures that I had not yet seriously considered.

I needed to do some fieldwork to better understand the horse and ask questions of my own. In a biotensegrity model, walking upright on two feet is a cinch, tensegrity mechanics make you stable and adaptable, but quadrupeds are different and the horse is BIG. I didn’t realize how big until I stood next to one and thought about it.

A horse weighs over 500k, its center of mass is high off the ground, and it stands on four remarkably delicate looking legs. It can leap horse and rider more than 1.5 meters over a hurdle. How does it even get itself off the ground? As Maren explains, it is by deformation of internal structure that store energy and then release it and not in the forces of the push and pull elements. This is biotensegrity at its core. I was able to see just what Maren wrote about and how biotensegrity provided the best insights into horse biomechanics.

In her delightful and beautifully illustrated book, Maren ventures into unexplored territory. She dares to ask questions that challenge long established beliefs about horse biomechanics and, using biotensegrity, offers alternative solutions to previously unquestioned answers that badly needed to be confronted.

Maren doesn’t profess to know all the answers but she recognizes that the horse knows itself better than we can ever know it and we should trust the horse’s instincts more and trust less of our preconceived ideas about how a horse functions.

By studying the natural movements of horses when left to their own devices, she releases us from the confines of the mechanics of man made machinery and into the world of biomechanics as envisioned in the biotensegrity model. There are still many questions to be answered and lots of work to be done but that is not unexpected, I have been working on the biotensegrity mechanics of humans for over 40 years and I am just scratching the surface of the problem. I am delighted that Maren has added dimension to biotensegrity theory that needed some increased horse sense.

Stephen M. Levin

14 November 2018

Introduction

It is all simpler than you think, while more complex than you can understand.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Two years have passed since I wrote the book "The Horses are not the Problem – Not a riding Doctrine". Two exciting years in which I received much unexpectedly positive feedback, answered questions in seminars, explained relationships and above all worked with horses on a shared journey. I am still impressed with how many readers have worked their way through this book several times and have embarked so completely on their journey. I saw their books at my seminars. Tattered and dog-eared, with markings, scribbled notes, coffee stains - carrying signs of real life. Even the cheap black-and-white prints that Amazon ordered in England to maximize profits in Germany, and which not only lacked color but also some information, have mostly not been returned. These specimens are now hand colored and the wider margin around the text left a lot of room for personal remarks. Great!

Another book was never planned. Originally, I wanted to put everything on paper once and then start something different. But then the term "biotensegrity" crossed my path.

Why Biotensegrity?

The topic grabbed me and never let me go. Since you can only talk about biotensegrity and its meaning with others, if they know at least approximately what it is about, but these other people barely exist, this book is intended to remedy the situation. In my first book, I described my own perception and my ideas about force alignment as "Biomechanics from the horse’s view", and the chapter on pressure and resistance without knowing that biotensegrity provides the exact overriding concept. Biotensegrity is a science that deals with the movement of living beings as well as their special structure and function. It can replace the perspective of classical biomechanics founded on a lever system, as a basis for training and above all, as an explanatory model. Everything I have already written about biomechanics from the horse's point of view and about the functions of fascia can easily be categorized here.

In his book "Biotensegrity" in which he describes his findings from working with corresponding primary literature, Graham Scarr very convincingly justifies why classical biomechanics three hundred years after its invention (and long after its sell-by date) continue to be drawn on as a basis for working and treatment: Simply because no one came up with a better explanation for what takes place. The explanation has now arrived, and it is time to review all training and treatment methods, all riding styles, all equipment, and above all, our concepts of movement.

When training and treating horses many common interpretations of biomechanics and its laws are propagated as truths, even though they result in carriage and movement patterns which lead to illness. We are not talking about "opinions" or "different ways", but often (and rarely consciously) about the fact of cruelty to animals. Therefore, I cannot rely on the fact that many roads lead to Rome and different people have different opinions. Biotensegrity has the potential to establish comprehensive, healthy movement patterns. Biotensegrity itself is not a method or a treatment. It's a science that has evolved over the last forty years.

Since existing systems show a certain sluggishness (taking about 30 years, before a change occurs) and the idea of tensegrity has a hard time even in professional circles, I consider it important to live according to “Choosing to disagree”. It is exhausting to express this “Choosing to disagree” over and over again, refusing to accept certain facts as normal, and most of all to pass on the information needed to be able to consciously “Choose to disagree”. For all those who want to know more and want to delve even deeper into various subject areas, references to all statements and information in this book are attached (p.168), which facilitate further research.

Choosing to disagree

On the basis of “Choosing to disagree”, you can consciously decide your own way and your own values and goals. I personally feel that the "higher, faster and farther" we see in equestrian sports is just as undesirable a purpose in life as is shaping horses in the old masters’ name or pure clicker drill. The superficial success, dependent on external evaluation, the mastery of techniques and time or form requirements, distracts from the qualities necessary for real growth.

Perhaps it is my task - and that of many others - to do guided tours to areas we don´t know much about ourselves by a long way. But we have the nerve to go ahead, we have the fire and the will, along with the attitude that something has to change and the dim suspicion that this is our job - and just start. Without pretension to perfection. At this point, I would like to thank all those who have taken the trouble to bring scientific findings into a generally understandable form and to have them published, giving me and other scientific lay people the opportunity to transfer this knowledge in our respective fields and link it anew.

Unless otherwise stated, the graphics in this book were done by me and represent my personal view of things and my interpretation of the available information. They are not anatomically absolutely correct representations.

Brain Research

The chapters on the brain and how it works, on the development of potential and on cognitive ability, are based on the work of Prof. Dr. rer. nat. Dr. Med. habil. Gerald Hüther, neurobiologist at the University of Göttingen (see bibliography), whose desire is to make the current status of knowledge available to the widest possible audience. I hope I have made myself useful with regard to transferring his work in the area of equines.

Fascia, brain and society work to the same rules. They develop according to what has been demanded of them and to how they have been used, whereby "used" does not mean "exploited": it stands for "aiming for a goal". These parallels are, in my opinion, so essential that they just had to have a place in this book. So that our entire world can become an "Academy of Potential Development", such as Gerald Hüther founded.

I do not remember who said or wrote: “The outer world is largely conquered and explored, the last unknown areas are in ourselves.” If we really seek to grow collectively - and not just grow our egos at the expense of the horse - then I think horses and people can find the freedom that is missing in their surroundings in themselves and in each other - and in the range of possibilities that opens up, if we only allow it and in which man and horse find both the freedom and the bond they need to develop their potential.

For me this range of possibilities has undergone a tremendous expansion through the experience of tensegral thinking and feeling. The idea of tensegral connections, at first only a faint idea, has developed into a superordinate system in which all previous insights are integrated in order to merge into a larger whole.

This includes the knowledge of fascia as well as how cognitive processes work. It is about learning movement in a holistic manner, about communication within the body as well as the interaction with the outside world and above all the possibilities of mutual striving for connection with other living beings granting individual freedom.

Being a Horse

One of my key questions in recent years has been: "Where would I like to be a horse?" (straight after: "Would I like to be a horse right now?"). And the honest answer was that there are hardly any places in our country (Germany) where it is good to be a horse in the original sense. There really is no species-appropriate husbandry, because then it would not be husbandry. For me being a horse means being free. Living in freedom. Far beyond the horizon. Man plays no role in this freedom, except maybe as a threat to it.

However, freedom in this spirit in most cases means humans and horses would be better off keeping away from each other. But, this cannot be what it’s all about, because horses seem to have an affinity to humans. If they had been as bitchy as zebras are a long time ago, world history would have been different. So there is a reasonable suspicion that the horse ancestors, for general fun and joy, decided to start a large-scale project for the development of humanity.

My encounter with a raw, wild Mustang mare in South Dakota showed me the presence and clarity of a horse grown up far away from human influence. And yet, this mare was at least as interested in me as I was in her, and we had a long conversation, during which we physically and psychologically got near enough to touch each other. It would have been very interesting to continue the work with this mare and a real challenge in terms of potential development for both of us. (Later, they set her free, because they did not want to break her spirit.) And that is exactly where, in my opinion, the interface of welfare lies between horses and humans. The opportunity for potential development of body, mind and soul can compensate many inadequacies of situations in life.

For about a year now I have had a personal four-legged training partner who has chosen to work with me (having successfully frightened off all other people). Through all the highs and lows and quite a few doubts we have developed mutual trust, tolerance and a certain suppleness in body and mind. We juggle fascia lines and tensegrity, cognitive processes and push and pull. Carrying and staying on are our core topics, straight after an appropriate culture of debate.

What goes around goes around

After forty years and an interesting path from "whizzing through the forest on a Shetty bare back" as a child, to a cattle drove in Australia, from riding gaiting horses to dressage up to two-tempi, from countless training lessons with horses of countless breeds and riding styles to strolling through the Badlands of South Dakota, I finally returned to square one. Bitless and bareback, back to the roots, we are finding our way.

This book is even less about form and techniques than the last one, there are even fewer answers to the usual questions, it is much more about the holistic development of body, mind and soul in horses and humans. The idea of biotensegrity opens up new visions, new possibilities.

I cordially invite all readers to join me on this journey!

Juli 2018

And now another two and a half years have passed. To satisfy the needs of the piebald hero (my aforementioned four-legged sparring partner), I bought a saddle and according to my need to be perceived in the heat of the moment a bit as well. This horse wants to experience the whole range of possibilities, and we prevent each other from surrendering to the force of habit. This horse questions every dogma, every belief system and me as consequently as I do. He doesn’t give a damn about harmony at the cost of action. Harmony is for pansies (his words) and worth striving for only in very hot weather. Again and again I nearly gave up - to find a new idea some days later, sticking to the principles of biotensegrity and using the range of possibilities.

I’ll try to fit some of these thoughts into the original book text, possibly driving my translator, Lesley Osborne as well as my corrector and test reader Curtis Clark mad. Luckily, I do the layout myself, so there is a good chance I will survive this.

Probably it is a hard job to translate this German book into another language, due to the puns and ficticious words in the German version. Nevertheless I wish you a thoughtful and joyful time with this book and during the journey you booked with it.