By Deneen Peckinpah CESMT

This is awesome beauty of muscle and movement, high voltage energy, vital force. The needle on my trust meter moves rapidly from one extreme to the other as I reach out to touch Cherokee. I flash on the words of a friend, "You're doing what? Do you know how big a horse is? Do you have any idea how much muscle there is? What are you smoking and can I have some?"

Maybe he has a point. If you're 62 years old, out of shape, haven't been near a horse since the age of 18 and are scared of almost any horse in the world, equine massage does seem a strange choice for a new career. Perhaps I should have paid more attention to my horrified friends. When I said to one woman who loves horses that equine massage would be a great thing for her to do, she looked appalled. "No way! I'm not interested in getting kicked to death."

After twenty years as a Reiki therapist, I decided to study equine sports massage in order to become more at ease with the power of horses and with my own power as well. Enduring a period of flipping back and forth between extremes of comfort and fear seems to be part of the bargain. Fortunately, the horses and those who are truly attuned to them are helping me overcome my fear. As they teach me their language, I feel more trusting of my ability to understand what a horse is saying through movement. A flick of the ears no longer flicks my panic button.

Fortunately, I found a school that was just perfect for me: the Geary Whiting School of Equine Massage. Geary reassured me right away by telling me that he hadn't gotten over his own fear of horses until he'd been working with them for a couple of months. He became a highly successful equine massage practitioner and then went on to start his own school. By the time Geary's interest turned to horses, he was already a master of Shiatsu. Geary worked with human athletes for forty years as a personal trainer, twenty-two of those years as a massage therapist. He and double amputee Bob Wieland were featured in the February 1989 cover story of Massage Magazine. Always a high achiever, Geary's goals for the equine massage school reflect both his professionalism and his holistic approach to teaching. He teaches a way of life. Geary emphasizes character building, fitness, laws of success, laws of health, and getting results as a massage therapist.

In addition to everything else, Geary is a musician and motorcycle aficionado. He loves freedom and playfulness, so school is an unforgettable experience. Geary's wife Kathy is a vibrant and beautiful woman who lived on her sailboat for twenty years before she and Geary met. Now, the two of them model a healthy, joyous relationship and simple living style. I was impressed that in a world where so many have a "24/7" attitude toward work, these two people value their freedom and time together enough to limit class size to six students and to have classes only every other week and ten months out of the year. When we first spoke, Geary told me that he and Kathy want to give as much to the students as they possibly can during the weeklong training. They have certainly succeeded in fulfilling that desire.

The whole five days was like a vacation. Each student had a private cabin, with fresh flowers, fruit, nuts, and a comfortable bunk. The Whiting ranch, located in one of the most pristine, beautiful mountain areas of Northern California, includes woods and a swimming hole. Geary and his wife Kathy bring everyone into their family. Kathy is a fabulous cook and much of the learning takes place in the context of enjoying meals at "Picnic Rock", outdoor barbeques, and around their dining room table. One night they take all the students out for dinner at a wonderful restaurant called the La Grange in nearby Weaverville. Each class also gets a chance to go "downriver" for treats and an experience of the countryside on the way to the coast. They provide all these experiences for almost the same tuition as schools that don't provide room and board. Geary told me that it wasn't until he married Kathy and moved the school from Atascadero to Douglas City that the school became everything he had envisioned.

We were so relaxed and having so much fun every day, learning was easy. Even the anatomy basics were taught in a playful way and we still got all the information necessary to create a foundation for competence. Geary's attitude toward this work is one of the things I found most appealing. He's a very loving man and encouraged us to approach our work as an opportunity to bond with the horses through this intimate, sensual art of healing touch. His teaching methods are such that even an inexperienced person can give a good equine sports massage after only one week of intensive training. Not only did I learn how to give the massage, I also learned how to assess probable needs of an equine athlete, how to develop the upper body strength one needs for this work, how to demonstrate some massage basics for groups of owners and trainers, and how to get started in business.

One of the many "perks" offered by the Whiting School is that each student receives a videotape to take home at the end of the training. Each tape includes a step-by-step demonstration (by Geary) of a complete equine massage, also a demonstration of the bodybuilding techniques he teaches, and each student doing a presentation as though speaking in front of a group. This last includes Geary's thorough going critique of each presentation. In addition to this training, he lists all graduates of the school on his website.

Geary's school bases its curriculum on Shiatsu, which works along the lines of the acupressure meridians. As most readers of this magazine know, Shiatsu opens all energy pathways, releasing blockages and re-establishing a free flow of energy. This induces whole-body relaxation, increasing vitality and mobility, as well as stimulating and nourishing the various glandular and organ systems of the body. Although we learned a variety of techniques for working with and relaxing the muscles, the pressure point therapy served as the foundation for every massage.

The mainstay of this program is hands-on practice. Before going out to work with the horses, we learned the basic techniques we'd be using: rotation/sedation, cross-fiber, percussion, and kneading. First Geary demonstrated the various techniques on a student. As each of us copied his technique on that same student, we received feedback on how our touch compared with the standard Geary had set. Everyone got to be on the table to experience the way a particular technique should feel. Then we practiced on Geary. Geary's rule of thumb is, "Apply as much pressure as a horse will allow."

Once we had practiced the techniques, we adjourned to the barn. We led Cherokee, a twenty-five year old appaloosa gelding, out into the open where we would work. Geary started by showing us how to relax a horse before beginning the massage. He then went on to trace the lines we were to follow as we worked with the acupressure techniques. By the time the sun was low in the sky, each of us knew how to do the front half of the horse, practicing all the techniques under Geary's alert supervision. Fortunately for Cherokee, we finished the job on Tuesday. Cherokee grew more beautiful every day. He'd been pretty swaybacked. I was amazed at the technique that actually lifts a horse's back. You know when you're doing it right, because you can see the change as you do it. Each day Cherokee's back grew flatter. By the end of the week, he looked like a much younger horse.

Because the field of equine massage is a relatively new (and very lucrative) profession, there is controversy over the amount of training needed for a practitioner to be qualified to work on a horse. Does a student have to have hundreds of hours of training in order to be a trustworthy equine massage therapist? Geary Whiting has a very high degree of integrity and so many years of success in the field of massage therapy I tend to listen to the man when he says that a sixty-hour training is quite adequate for someone entering this field. Geary makes sure each student has a solid grasp of essentials, and then leaves it up to the individual student to continue learning at home and with experience.

Fortunately, the field of equine massage is still relatively free of governmental interference. There are those, however, who favor regulation. Geary is not one of them. "Massage is something that should not be regulated, because it's an art form. Just like music, massage is an art. It preceded veterinarians. It preceded schools. It's an art and it has to come from within the individual. We're going to regulate ourselves to the point where we're a bunch of robots and automatons. Art is wide open. It's a form of expression. When you start regulating people, saying, 'You've got to learn it this way', it's not a healing art anymore. The bottom line at my school in order to graduate and get a certificate is: students have to demonstrate that they know how to massage a horse. And the horse is generally the one who critiques them."

Geary suggests that students fine-tune their skills before putting themselves forward as professionals. "I tell my students, you only get one chance to make a first impression, so don't go out until you feel confident that you can do the job. Results should be the determining factor in whether or not to have someone back again to work with a horse.

"To regulate something, you need to prove that the public is in danger. You've got to regulate veterinarians because they diagnose, and dispense volatile drugs that can be dangerous if misused. In twenty-two years of massage practice, I've never heard of a horse being injured from a massage. I have heard of therapists being injured by horses. A horse isn't familiar with 'no pain, no gain' and will not allow a person to use more pressure than is comfortable. With a horse, regulation is intrinsic to the process. When you regulate something through legislation, you often require a lot of unnecessary subjects. I've seen people who'd had 500 hours of massage training and still couldn't give a decent treatment. They had quantity, but no substance. Their lack of business showed this, as well. Our system of free enterprise allows the customer to determine whether or not someone is providing a satisfactory product or service.

The benefits of massage for equine athletes (in fact, for horses of all kinds) are well documented. The following letter from two health professionals shows how simple and effective an art this is. The work they refer to in the letter was done entirely by students, all as new to massage as this particular horse was! (Letters of amazed appreciation are frequent in this business.)

When I first heard about equine massage, I had not a clue a relatively brief training could enable one to accomplish such seemingly miraculous results as these beginning students achieved with Billy. I thought it would be a great career because it would allow. me to travel anywhere in the world and open up a whole new realm of adventure. The field is still wide open and a good CESMT can make an excellent living. I did get a new career out of the training; only it's more than I'd expected.

One mild evening while we sat outside enjoying the fire and waiting for the coals to be right, Geary taught us some techniques for helping people get rid of headaches in three minutes or less. Another day one of the students asked Geary what she could do to help her father, who had problems with his lower back and legs. Geary showed us how to treat such a condition with Shiatsu. As soon as I left school, I started working with friends who were having headaches, as well as neck, back and leg problems. I enjoyed the work so much and the results were so spectacular it wasn't long before people began paying me for bodywork. Fortunately, I live in a county where I can practice without a certificate. Now I intend to learn even more skills. This way I can travel, go to horse shows and do Shiatsu sports massage for horse and rider. I've also incorporated the Shiatsu into my 'Bright Body" rejuvenation program. All this and a return to professional writing, after a hiatus of nearly twenty-five years, has come out of my one week with Geary and Kathy Whiting. I'd say the Geary Whiting Equine Massage School was a life-changing experience for me, just as I'd been told it would be. Just as Geary intends it to be for everyone (including the horses).