A Horse Trainer With a Gentle Touch
It begins with just a touch.
Juan, a gray Arabian-Lippizan cross, faces the stable’s breezeway with ears pinned, head raised high and legs braced--flight reflex in full gear.
Jayne Stewart reaches up, speaks softly to the horse and makes tiny, light pressure circles along the crest of his neck.
First his eyelids get droopy, then his mouth softens and then comes the telltale sign of relaxation: He lowers his head and lets out a big sigh.
Stewart, 41, has been a horse trainer all of her adult life, but it wasn’t until two years ago that she learned a method that can reach problem horses--those most often destined for abuse, neglect or a trip to the slaughterhouse.
Juan’s life before Stewart was uncertain. He had four homes in five years of life, and something along the way had made the breezeway seem insurmountable.
Until Stewart used TTeam training, or the Tellington-Touch Equine Awareness Method. It includes body work called TTouch, ground exercises and riding.
Linda Tellington-Jones, 60, who lives in Santa Fe and Kailua-Kona, Hawaii, has been developing the method for 23 years, inspired by her education in the 1970s with Moshe Feldenkrais, a physicist who developed a method for optimizing human movement.
“There isn’t any magic. Anyone with good intent can do this work,” Stewart said. “There are many people who read one of Linda’s books, see a video or read a newsletter and they can go out and make a lasting difference in their horse.”
And you don’t have to whisper, Stewart said, referring to the current trend popularized by the movie “The Horse Whisperer,” starring Robert Redford. The movie is based on horsemen who have learned to read horses’ body language and then use the information to train them.
“I consider Linda’s work separate and in addition to that,” Stewart said.
So does Tellington-Jones, who is a picture of Santa Fe with her American Indian silver concha belts, turquoise jewelry and denim skirts. Her TTouch, a series of light to deep circular touches meant to further deeper communication and understanding between horse and trainer, reduces stress in horses and gives them a new awareness of their bodies.
“The beauty is, anybody can do it. It’s about teaching the horse how to think and go beyond instinct,” Tellington-Jones said.
It is neither massage nor magic.
“It goes beyond massage. Because we incorporate the ground exercises, they learn a new way of moving. It gets them to move in different ways,” she said by telephone from her clinic in Vernon, British Columbia.
Tellington-Jones has been riding all of her life and competing in nearly all equine disciplines. Since 1975, she has traveled constantly, teaching her methods worldwide. She has worked on Olympic-level horses from nearly every country that competes, and her method is used by zookeepers and veterinarians on other animals as well.
Keiko, the Orca whale from the movie “Free Willy”; Louie, a baby orangutan at the San Diego Zoo; and Joyce, a Burmese python, are among the animals with which Tellington-Jones has worked.
She has published five books and 18 videos demonstrating TTouch and her TTeam methods. There are 135 certified TTeam clinicians around the United States and 100 in Europe. They all have been trained by Tellington-Jones; her sister; Robyn Hood of Canada; or another three instructors.
Tellington-Jones’ clinics are filled with people eager to see her work with the horses before her. People talk about her in magical terms, but they quickly add that it isn’t unique to her--that they can do it too.
Instructor Carol Lang said she first met Tellington-Jones in 1983 at a 4-H event attended by 1,500 people.
“I’ve never heard an audience so quiet and in awe. She has a gift and a charisma. But I went home and tried the things I learned at the clinic, and it works. She is totally amazing, but it is not a gift unique to her,” Lang said.
Tellington-Jones doesn’t want it to be. “Who cares if I can do it?” she asked. “That’s not important. People can get it from just reading the book or a magazine article.”