Bodywork!

The Red Queen herself had some bodywork yesterday! Since we've been unable to find anything wrong with her via chiro, dental, and craniosacral work, but that she still gets all twisted up and belligerent under saddle, I figured we needed to see if some of that couldn't be ironed out with some bodywork.

I'm very happy with my bodyworker. She is a new transplant to the area and we've been bouncing clients back and forth to one another. I decided it was high time for her to come give O the once-over!

Not surprisingly, she found lots going on with O, all of which didn't surprise me. She had a lot of tightness in her chest, and tightness through all of her SI area - you could see the muscles along her back spasming as she worked on those areas (pictured). She worked on her for almost two hours, just slowly ironing everything out of her. O was a very good girl for this entire procedure, even holding still for the really intensive work, and downright going to sleep for things like her herbal rub, her red light therapy, and her TMJ massage. She does have some mild TMJ stuff going on, which I knew, but it was really funny to see just how much she enjoyed her massage there... she closed her eyes and was OUT for that part!

I have some homework to do, namely some turning and backing exercises, along with carrot stretches to help unlock her neck and stretch out the spaces between her vertebrae. (Interestingly, I do the same decompression exercises myself when I am feeling all locked up, and they really help me!). She walked off from her massage looking great, but looked a little tight today (which we expected), so she's going to have a few days off to just be able to walk around and clear her body out. I might take her for a light hack tomorrow, but we should be back to work mid-week. She was not particularly good last week, and was being generally evasive and tough, so we'll see how she is feeling post-massage. We'll have her seen again in two weeks for a follow-up session!



In other news, remember my running joke of how Texas has four seasons (Hot, Wind, Fire, and Tarantulas)? Well, it is officially tarantula season.... you're welcome for the nightmares:

They are funny little critters. They just sit there and clean their feet and look at you with their beady little eyes. They also walk around like they own the place, with no interest in anything but their quest for lady spiders. It's pretty alarming the first time you see a bunch of big hairy spiders going for a stroll, but you get used to them.