Five field notes so far, each one pairing nervous system research with something I actually watched happen in the paddock. What horses do when they regulate, when they don't, when they're figuring out which one they're doing.
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Most people feel something shift in their body around a horse before they understand it.
What happens in the nervous system when a horse and a human share the same space?
Paddock Research Note #1 explores the physiology of co-regulation, examining how breathing, heart rate, and attention begin to shift through interaction and what current neuroscience helps us understand about these changes.
You may have heard that horses can detect your heartbeat from five feet away. This note examines what the published research actually shows — and why the real science of equine perception is more nuanced, and more compelling, than the claim it replaces.
You may have heard that a horse's electromagnetic field is five times larger than a human's — a claim widely attributed to the HeartMath Institute. This note examines where that claim actually came from, what the published research does and does not support, and why the real science of horse-human physiological coupling is more demanding, and more compelling, than the claim it replaces.
A woman walked into a ground-based program with a cane and walked out without one — having never sat on a horse. This note examines what the research tells us about why that is possible. Movement isn't just muscle. Movement is the visible result of an invisible conversation between many systems, and horses are uniquely positioned to support that conversation at every layer.
Before a race begins, many Thoroughbreds already show measurable changes in
circulating red-cell concentration. In humans, psychological pressure can alter
muscle co-contraction and skilled movement. This note asks what arousal
changes in a moving body—horse or human—and why visible effort is not always
the same as coordinated control.