Mulberry Aromatics

As I blithely wandered into the equine world of aromatics, I had no idea what an amazing place I’d entered – it’s fascinating, but primarily because horses are such wonderful teachers.

I’ve been moved and humbled so many times by helping a horse self-select it’s aromatic remedies, each animal individually understanding and recognising the exact remedy that it needs and how much it needs to take. Sometimes the remedy could be one that it wouldn’t naturally come across, but, it is still able to identify the compound within the substance that it needs. Bergamot, an essential oil extracted from the citrus fruit is one such oil. It is an essential oil that horses frequently select when they have sarcoids, an emotional imbalance or travel sickness, however Supply, an ex-racehorse recently selected it because he had a problem with balance – especially so when travelling. Supply was puzzling me – I’d been asked to help him because he had a long journey ahead of him and he was a notoriously bad traveller and was petrified at the prospect of travel. I offered the usual oils of Frankincense for fear and Linden Blossom in case he’d had had a bad experience travelling (little was known of his history) and whilst there was a little interest, there wasn’t enough to convince me I had the right remedy for him. Horses can very quickly overcome their fear of travelling or loading into trailers with aromatic therapy and therefore I knew that I wasn’t on quite the right tracks. Somewhere along the line, the idea that Supply suffered from travel sickness came into my mind and as I was considering this idea, Supply looked me in the eye and then started to gently rock his head from side to side – then I understood. He had trouble balancing. I offered him Bergamot and Supply couldn’t get enough, but more amazingly he lowered his head and I put a drop on his poll and massaged it round his ears, he knew exactly what he wanted. The ears play an important part in our ability to balance; it was indeed a humbling experience to work with this animal, so in tune to its’ body and needs and find the way to help me understand what he was suffering in a language we could both understand.

I have always believed that animals are just as emotional as humans and as a practitioner have had this proved to me many times over. In fact now, I always work on the emotional aspect of any problem that a horse may be experiencing. As my interest grew I started to study the emotions in more detail and learnt that every action within the body is carried to it’s destination by a series of informational messengers via the nervous, lympathic and endocrine systems, such as the need to move, to digest and to relax. These messengers, which can be hormones, or a protein structure (peptides) will, on arrival at their destination point, attach to a cell at a specific receptor and then transfer its chemical message into the cell. This exchange of information results in a reaction that alters the structure of the cell and, this in turn, produces another reaction, for example, a muscle contraction. The information messengers will then carry the result of the reaction back to the brain, linking the mind and body as one. It is the association of a memory of an incident, combined with the sensation of the physical response that then becomes an emotion.

At the moment of a trauma or stressful situation, the nervous system is firing off lots of messages to the brain and visa versa and the information system becomes overloaded. At this point, the messengers have no where to go and, as a consequence, are stored in the surrounding tissues, be it skin, muscle or organ cells. This is why it is always beneficial to treat the emotional aspect of an illness as well as the physical, because they are both closely interlinked and most illnesses or dis-eases can usually be associated with a stressful time.

Mother Nature has produced her own pharmaceutical drug equivalents, in the form of essential oils and aromatic materials, which are able to offer the perfect remedy to a horses’ ailment. These extremely complex organic compounds which contain hundreds of chemical combinations, are able to attach to the cell’s receptors and bring about a change in the cell structure – the simple key effect. Drugs work in exactly the same way, though on many occasions, because they are not as complex as a naturally occurring organic compound, they are unable to provide the perfect key and unwelcome side effects may result. As an ailment may quite possibly have an emotional cause at its root, then it is more likely that the aromatics, due to their natural sophistication, will be able to unlock both the physical and emotional aspect to an ailment, bringing a speedier and complete return to health.

The diversity of the aromatics is demonstrated time and time again with the number of ailments that have been helped and over a wide spectrum of animals. More people have started to recognise the benefits of incorporating aromatics into their animals’ lives and one such person, whom I’ve had the pleasure of working with is Pip Unwin, a natural, spiritual horsemanship instructor and trainer, based in Wiveliscombe. Pip has incorporated herbs and essential oils into her daily care regimes and her horses are routinely able to select the remedies that they need. On several occasions, we have jointly been able to help various horses overcome their emotional problems more quickly to enable them to move forward with their training. A little mare that came into her care recently was severely lame and on investigation it turned out that she’d fractured one of the sesquimoid bones in one of her front legs and that she’d also torn every tendon and ligament around the joint as well. As time usually is the main healer in this type of event, Pip called me to see if there was anything that may speed the healing time up and reduce the swelling as after 3 months she was still unable to put any weight on her leg. Mica, knew exactly what she needed - though it was slightly different from the way that Pip and I had envisaged. Having allowed Mica to select the remedies that she needed; I blended them into a topical gel to be applied to the joint area, however Mica refused the application to her leg and just wanted to eat the gel instead, so that’s what she was allowed to do. For those that are interested Mica selected rosehip for scar tissue and comfrey, a traditional remedy for bone repair, yarrow; an anti-inflammatory and wintergreen, a powerful painkiller. As a slightly nervous pony she also selected Violet Leaf and Linden Blossom, which is always chosen when an animal has experienced emotional or physical abuse at sometime in it’s past. By incorporating the both aspects; physical and emotional into the remedy, Mica returned to near soundness in a couple of weeks with very little swelling and is no longer the nervous pony that she once was.

I’ve also been helping another horse from a distance for a while now, though being honest, hadn’t practiced my usual approach of emotional, as well as physical. Gilby’s owner called me asking for a muscular aches gel and from her description I was able to send her diluted oils and a base gel for her to blend them into once Gilby had chosen the ones that he needed. There was a noticeable improvement in Gilby’s condition and Gilby enjoyed having the gel applied to his sacral area. Lorraine had rescued Gilby and he’d suffered a traumatic injury and had been in an appalling state, so she’d never expected him to make a dramatic recovery – she just wanted to improve his quality of life. I made a couple of repeat prescriptions for Gilby and then it was decided to try and improve on the remedy. This time I considered the emotional history of Gilby and sent a selection of oils to help with the abuse in his past and also the physical trauma he’d experienced with his injury. I got a call from Lorraine a few days later, he couldn’t get enough of the new remedies and he was so much happier in himself, so a week later when she called again sounding very serious, I was quite worried that Gilby had taken a down turn, but no, there had been a major weather change something that always bought about a deterioration in soundness and this time he’d not been affected and had even been able to manage canter transitions that had usually been impossible in the past!
As my work and experience in the world of animal aromatics grows I have continued to learn so much, much of it is taught to me by the horses and every time I meet a new client I am humbled by the animals innate knowledge and fascinated a little bit more by this amazing area – animal self selection.

I would like to clarify at this point that aromatics and conventional veterinary medicine do work side by side and all times I advocate veterinary diagnosis and supervision.

If you would be interested in learning more about aromatics, then please give me a ring on 07850 640972.