Reflections on Shadowing Nahshon Cook In Wisconsin May 2025

Every time I have gone to see Nahshon Cook has changed my life in some profound way. The first time was at the Best Horse Practices Summit in 2021 at a time in my life when I was still getting hurt taking on clients who weren’t interested in listening to the horses. I was filled with both awe and self-doubt watching Nahshon work, and talking to him, but I saw my own inner and outer work in front of me. 

Then I brought my horse and a client’s horse to a clinic in 2024 and had what was, at that time, the most beautiful ride of my life. Manchego wasn’t previously able to engage his thoracic sling because his shoulders were locked in a shrugging position, and I asked for help with that. Within 5 mins Nahshon leading me to heat up the stuck parts of his body and my own, his shoulders had their full range of motion, his thoracic sling could engage properly, and his hind end was sitting and reaching underneath us. I came to this clinic with so much fear about riding in front of others— I’d come to see myself as a skilled groundwork trainer and rehabilitator, but only a mediocre rider. This clinic empowered me that I didn’t have to hide, and that there are others who can see and hear the horses for who they are, and know that it takes a good rider to let them shine with their whole selves when being ridden.

Current photo of Manchego, May 2025 continuing to build on what Nahshon has taught us at home.

Click the link below to read my reflections after this first clinic with Nahshon (combined with ruminations from a clinic I taught with mounted archer, gaited horse, and bridleless trainer Heather Lomax)

Then I followed Nahshon to Ohio where I had a magical experience auditing clinic sessions during the day and camping in Strouds Run State Forest with my foxhound at night. I was coming out of a summer of a terrifying breakdown of my body and no answers as to what was happening. Severe blistering on my toes that looked and felt like burns and left me unable to walk, and would disappear overnight as if nothing had happened… crippling fatigue, red itchy eyes, joint pain, muscle weakness, and so much more…

Morning hike around the lake at Strouds Run with my foxhound, Zephyr

I was on the beginning of a journey of learning to listen to my body. Knowing when to rest and how to work in a way that is sustainable and not just compassionate to horses and their people, but self-compassionate too.

See a previous post for more reflections on pain and fear.

A stop through Indiana Dunes National Forest with my foxhound, Zephyr, on our way to see Nahshon this May, 2025.

Usually the deep wisdom came during and after my encounters with Nahshon, but this time, on the road to Wisconsin to spend the weekend shadowing Nahshon’s training, the reflections hit me early.

I spoke these poems into my phone:

1.

The answer 

doesn’t need to

make the question 

go away. 

My frustration, sadness and fear 

of my pain 

coming back, 

even when I am doing 

all 

of the right things, 

come from a space of being 

afraid of continuing to ask the questions:

Am I on the right path?

Am I caring for my body 

the way I care for horses’ bodies?

Am I letting my mind rest?

Am I putting others’ needs before my own?

Am I being my authentic self?

This pain is information. 

Just because I am giving my body 

what it needs in one moment 

doesn’t mean it’s necessary

for my body to stop 

asking me for something more 

for something else 

in the next moment. 

The answer is not the ending. 

The answer is the beginning 

of a new question. 

If the answer were the end,

where else would there be to go? I think 

that’s what death is. 

When the answer is 

the ending. 

And that’s OK too, 

I’m not afraid 

of death, but 

I’m not looking for it either. 

I still have more questions. 

I think it must be 

the questions 

that keep me alive. And 

it’s being alive 

in this uncertainty 

that makes life worth living. 

Pain becomes 

new words for 

new questions and 

new answers lead

me somewhere new. 

It’s how I keep going. 

Trusting 

myself in the question. And 

what if my eyes turn

red and itchy in the evening 

because I am using them too much?

Maybe it is because they are 

tired and I am living 

through my eyes instead 

of living through 

my heart. 

Am I sometimes living 

through my iPhone or 

living through my muscles

while trying to learn how to ride

in my bones?

And sometimes 

when those tissues tire too, 

maybe that’s when I need 

to go to another system and 

let the hurting one rest. 

Otherwise our compensations become

their own pathologies, 

just like with the horses.

And when we consider pain 

as a message, 

we stop 

wanting the pain to go away.

Because 

how could I ever 

want the messages to go away?

Messages from me,

messages from the universe,

messages from the Horse. 

I want guidance from myself 

and the beings I connect with, 

and what I really want 

to go away 

is fear.

–

2.

I’ve been thinking about how two things 

that can look or sound so similar can be the opposite. 

The thing that damages the horse 

can be the same that heals him 

and it’s all about the energy and timing and spacing

with which these things are applied. 

Today, one of my students told me about going to a clinic 

with a man she felt was very similar to me as a trainer. 

She talked about how he spoke about working to get the Horse 

emotionally, mentally, and physically prepared to do the job. 

She talked about how he addressed both the Horse and the rider

to get both on the same page. Then she told me 

how the trainer said he tries to make the Horse 

a little bit afraid 

so that he could lead the Horse out of it. 

And I couldn’t help but think 

that this is what colonialism is. 

Going into someone else’s world, 

or forcing them to be a part of yours, 

and then making them feel afraid like 

they need you 

and then convincing them 

that you have helped them

in order to get what you want. 

This is not who I am. 

This is not how I teach or how I train. 

I teach horses how not 

to be afraid. 

Once when I was working on isolating 

the mobilization of the horses’ shoulders and haunches 

a client compared me to another trainer that I did not know yet. 

I later learned 

that this trainer likes to aggressively disengage 

parts of the horse’s body to make him submissive. 

To cause the Horse to lose control of himself 

so that the trainer could be in control. 

That for some reason,

the trainer felt 

that he needed control. 

And what I am doing 

is teaching the horse how to control and engage his own body. 

I am giving him agency. I am giving 

up control over him. And for some reason, 

this looks the same to some people, 

but it is not the same. 

And then I thought about how 

with one of the ponies I helped train,

in the beginning, he was so tight with anxiety 

that we needed to start going sideways 

in a leg yield to unlock him and get things moving, 

and how soon as he felt that it was safe 

to move with us, we stopped doing that motion, 

And I taught about how the leg yield could disrupt

a Horse’s balance by sending the weight to the opposite side

of the bend, and how it can look like shoulder in to the untrained eye

but the balance is totally different,

and then we just taught the pony how to go straight 

balance laterally  and then we started using shoulder-in. And 

once he could go straight and balance his body

around the inside front like a pillar, and the inside hock could

reach under and carry his weight, 

we went back to doing deep 

bending and sideways reaching movement to lengthen

one side of his body at a time 

so that when he went straight, 

he could go with even more fluidity and cadence and 

feel that he had ownership over all of his own energy and 

that it was safe to access the full range of motion 

in front of us. 

And this made me think 

about discovering my knees 

were hypermobile and how I was afraid 

that if I went into hyperextension, 

I might hurt myself and my physical therapist told me 

I had to get strong in the full range of motion. And how 

that to me now means that I need 

to not be afraid of everywhere my body is able 

to go 

so I don’t get hurt 

going there. I learned 

more and I do 

more and 

I am more

than the fear of my pain.

What would it be like to not fear dysfunction?

-

Well, I found out that weekend, watching Nahshon work these magical horses at Wildrose Farm in Wisconsin. I watched a horse with both DSLD and PSSM2 in his early 20s who not that long ago had hind fetlocks dropped to the ground and a team of veterinarians with no hope– I watched this horse jubilantly Spanish walk around the arena with a Nahshon gently guiding him from his back. I saw Xodo’s eyes sparkling with pure joy and his body moving and working with strength, suppleness, and relaxation. His pasterns had lifted when he learned to use his tongue to cradle a bit, and they held. Such a brave, happy soul.

I saw a horse with one front leg that looked to me to be about 6” longer in the forearm than the other. And when Ilustre strutted around the arena like he was in a beauty pageant and piaffed before me, no one would ever know he had a handicap.

“It’s not a handicap if you don’t treat it like one”, Nahshon said.

He was happy and sound, and learning how to collect literally saved his life. I was told he couldn’t bend his knees and he waddled before he started this work with Nahshon. 

I also saw a powerful, athletic horse working at the Olympic level who still ground his teeth, presumably as a remnant of the abuse he had sustained from the previous people in his life who either couldn’t hear him or weren’t afforded the freedom to listen and respond or both. But I watched Inca thrive in his work– his piaffe and passage– learning that leg on means legs under. 1 time changes and canter pirouettes on a dinner plate, and walking and trotting with his neck extended and back swinging. He had joy and softness and gratitude in his gaits. The sound of his teeth grinding filled me with fear and questions if he was ok and if what he was being asked was fair. It thought about how I’d start over with him and not allow him to do any of these high school maneuvers until he could maintain a greater feeling of safety and relaxation, with no teeth grinding. But then I saw how grateful Inca was for the work, and how proud he was. And I thought of how unkind it would be for someone to take away a horse’s power and make him start all over again when he had so much to offer. And I saw how relaxed his jaw and poll were at the beginning and the end of each session. I needed to learn not to judge physical tensions so harshly and to honor what the whole being is offering and enjoying.

Our old habits do not define us– why should we let them define our horses?

And there was a young mare who I was told was aggressive and explosive and dangerous when she first came to the farm. It didn’t show up at all the first day of my stay. The second day, as Nahshon was lunging her, I started to wonder why she wasn’t going in a cavesson– I fixated on the slight counter-rotation at her atlanto-occipital joint. Each time these questions popped into my head, Via briefly exploded on the lunge– sudden rushing and twisting on the end of the line, and then coming in to connect with Nahshon. I knew Via was responding to what felt like judgement in my mind. And it gave me a sense of how she must have gotten to such a troubled mental space in the first place– people judging her, picking her apart, never satisfied, and never knowing how much was enough.

I held onto my question for a while, turning the mare’s feedback over on my tongue, wondering where the line of curiosity combined with knowledge vs judgement was.

I asked, and was answered, but the answer isn’t important here. What matters is that I’m learning that my own work ahead of me is to find a way to look at horses' bodies with my questions and have them feel unweighted by judgement.

Because our judgements are just another form of pressure, and for sensitive, powerful horses like these, that pressure could easily become too much.

I couldn’t let my overworked eyes impede the magnificence of a Horse, but I knew it was possible if I wasn’t careful. 

I thought about some recent bodywork my horse had received, and how I wanted to celebrate how far he had come in being able to open his throat latch. The practitioner put her hands on him and proclaimed that he couldn’t do it, and asked me if I’d ever x-rayed his skull. I asked if I should. My horse said we wouldn’t find anything if we did. I felt deeply saddened that it seemed as if some professionals have to look for problems to solve, and that the horses are under such scrutiny while being asked to heal.

All this problem-hunting left me doubting myself, and the self-doubt left the horses with nowhere to anchor themselves.

How easy it was to float in meaningless jargon and become a self-fulfilling prophecy of dysfunction when in fact anything and everything is possible if we’re willing to let it be possible. I think that’s what Nahshon means when he talks about horses being possible. 

I have eyes full of sensitivity to nuance and ability to observe and make sense of movement, using my mind full of knowledge of biomechanics and neurophysiology and behavior…

But I also have a heart that’s been broken enough times to know better than to live in my knowledge. 

When Nahshon speaks of the myofascial system as the mental body, I recognize that pull from my jaw down my neck into my first ribs, across to my hip, across to my knee, and down to my toe as a chain of thoughts too dense and too tight, and a mind that mistakes itself for me. 

I am not my mind.

Nahshon described learning to observe the body. And then observing the mind observing the body. 

There comes a point where the things we know are so limiting– limiting to ourselves, our horses, and our world, and we have to let go of the knowing and reach into the feeling, and then that feeling can take us to an answer which begs another question and how the answering and the asking is the process of healing.

For anyone who has read this far, I invite you to join me for a weekend of watching Nahshon and these horses in Wisconsin next year (2026). I am currently assembling my group, so please reach out to me if you’re interested in being a part of it. It’s an experience you won’t want to miss. It was the first time I’d ever seen horses performing the high school correctly and joyfully in person. It’s a rare and holy encounter. Since I’ve been home, the horses and humans in my circle have benefited and healed from what I came back with– knowledge, feel, wisdom, and bravery to feel what’s inside and ask questions without judgement.