In delving a little more into the background of TTouch (or Tellington TTouch), I was interested to find out how intuition played a role in the development of this modality for both people and animals.
TTouch includes a system of bodywork and groundwork. The TTouch bodywork consists of circular touches and lifts performed on the body to stimulate cells, activate healing, and relax the nervous system.
The Feldenkrais Influence
TTouch was created by Linda Tellington-Jones, a teacher and trainer in the horse world. Tellington-Jones was an avid student of the Feldenkrais Method, bodywork which used gentle, non-habitual movements to activate unused neural pathways to the brain. It was a sensory method which helped people gain function after injuries and improved one’s learning ability and potential. Her initial intent was to use this information to improve the riding ability of her students but discovered it could be applied on the horses as well. Soon, she was fine-tuning her skills using the Feldenkrais Method on both people and horses throughout the U.S. and Germany.
The Birth of TTouch
On a summer day in 1983, Linda Tellington-Jones was teaching an equine clinic in Delaware. After the class, she was asked to work on a problem horse owned by one of the veterinarians from the clinic. After applying gentle movements based on Feldenkrais’ “Functional Integration”, she noticed the mare become quiet and accepting of the touches. The owner was stunned that a normally threatening and cranky horse became so placid after light and imperceptible hand movements. The mare’s eyes softened, her head lowered, and within minutes she sighed deeply.
The owner wanted to know her secret. She wondered if Tellington-Jones was using energy healing. Without thinking…intuitively…Tellington-Jones responded, “Don’t worry about what I’m doing. Just place your hand lightly on the shoulder and push the skin in a circle.”
Now, this circular movement was not related the the Feldenkrais Method, but nonetheless, the mare became just as accepting of this touch as she had for the Feldenkrais movements.
Tellington-Jones knew one of the disadvantages of the Feldenkrais Method was that it took years to become skilled at it. But the moment she saw similar results from the simple circular touches, she knew this was something special.
She also learned she could trust her intuition.
Intuition. A key ingredient of TTouch.
From that day forward, Linda Tellington-Jones experimented with a variety of circular movements, developing over 20 hand positions integrated with varying tempos and pressures.
She also researched the idea of intuition, acknowledging the role that both left and right brain (or logical and intuitive) thinking has in the process.
“Every time we imagine the face of a clock as we push the skin from 6 o’clock once around and stop at 9 o’clock, imagining the face of the clock activates the intuitive part of the brain, as does the movement involved in pushing the skin in the circle. The logical process is activated by thinking of the numbers 6, 9, 12, 3 as we pass those portions of the imaginary clock….With the act of holding the hand in a specific position and pushing the skin in one and a quarter circles we have the numbers and the logical sequence that activates the logical process.” – Linda Tellington-Jones
Two studies on the effects of TTouch were conducted by the Biofeedback Institute of Boulder, Colorado by Anna Wise. The results confirmed that both the person receiving TTouch and the person performing TTouch experienced left and right brain activation or an “awakened mind state” (as coined by researcher Maxwell Cade).
The intent of TTouch is to “enhance the body, mind, and spirit of animals and their people.” Positive reports of stress and pain reduction, increased mobility, and an elevated sense of well-being have been documented over the years.
For more information about TTouch, visit ttouch.ca (in Canada) and ttouch.com (in the U.S.).
So what does intuition, horses, and TTouch have to do with dogs? Check out these tutorials:
(Photo Credit: Ivan Grlic)
