A light touch for your biggest friend.
Muscle & Joint Health
enhances flexibility
improves performance
shortens recovery time
reduces inflamation
eases joint pain
relieves muscle tension
maintains muscle tone
minimizes atrophy of muscle tissue
Systemic Health
improves blood circulation
improves lymph circulation
supports the immune system
highlights structural imbalances
relieves pain
enhances respiratory function
develops body awareness
Emotional Health
promotes endorphin release
builds trust
improves mood
supports environmental transitions
calms
In other words, bodywork offers a wide range of benefits that support your horse’s performance, recovery, and overall well-being. It’s about loosening restrictions and facilitating balanced and comfortable movement, naturally helping athletes, seniors, trail horses, and companion pets to feel their best. Paired with a healthy diet, regular exercise, routine farrier visits, and thoughtful veterinary care, it’s one of the many ways you can pour love into your horse. Equine massage is a complementary modality, and we would love to be a part of your team.
Our flavor of massage
Just like human masseuses, every equine bodyworker brings their own flavor to the table. Firefly Equine Massage offers sessions that are grounded in therapeutic massage, incorporate elements of myofascial release, and are tailored to the needs of your horse. Each session lasts approximately 45-60 min, based on the horse’s needs and engagement. It typically takes about 45 min to work through the therapeutic massage sequence. The remaining time is an opportunity to return to tension that may need extra work, or sweet spots that spark joy for your horse.
Equine therapeutic massage is the manipulation of soft tissue to support the horse’s overall health. These sessions include a whole body massage that is loosely structured around a sequence of strokes that address major muscles, common tension patterns, improve circulation, and generally relax the horse. Strokes include effleurage (light, soothing strokes), petrissage (kneading, rolling, and squeezing that increases circulation and loosens fatigued muscles), friction (pressure that helps break up adhesions, loosens muscle fibers, and increases blood flow to tissue), and tapotement (fast percussions that stimulate atrophying muscle and releases muscle tension).
Myofascial release is a specific massage technique that relaxes tension held in fascia, bringing fluidity and balanced movement back to entire muscle groups. In contrast to a therapeutic massage session which is a whole body massage, a myofascial session focuses on a specific area and uses sustained gentle pressure to dissolve fascial adhesions. Techniques include gliding with gentle traction or cross handed stretching (lengthening and stretching), decompression (making space for tight tissue), scar tissue release (to minimize adhesions and improve mobility), direct pressure (eliminating pain and improving mobility), and myofascial spreading (spreading adhesions between muscle groups so that they glide more fluidly). [If you’re interested in a deeper dive, you can book a five session myofascial series, in which each session focuses on a different fascial line and builds on the work from prior sessions]
And a little bit on fascia because it’s fascia-nating
Once dismissed simply as connective tissue, fascia has become increasingly recognized as an integral part of how bodies function. Fascia is thin, fibrous, web-like connective tissue that is woven throughout the body and encases muscles, bones, veins, nerves, arteries, and organs. This connective tissue is made of tiny tubules of collagen and elastin. In its healthy form it is fluid, helping muscles glide and stabilizing body structures. When damaged or stressed by injury, age, imbalanced body mechanics, or even natural crookedness, the fascia tightens and binds together, causing restrictions that can be painful, inhibit movement, and lead to unsustainable compensation patterns. Dissection studies have revealed how fascial lines- chains of fascia that wrap around muscle groups, muscles, muscle fibers, and bones- work together to support different functions. These include front limb lines, dorsal lines, ventral lines, the lateral line line, the functional line, and the spiral line. Due to the connected nature of fascia, a restriction in one area can lead to issues elsewhere along a fascial line. Think, a snag in your sweater that causes a run along the entire sleeve or a knot in a rope that impacts how far it can reach.
