RESIDUAL TENSIONS RELEASE THERAPY: LONG REINS

“I want a light and a forward horse. The kind of horsemanship I do is based on Conscious Muscle Relaxation and leads to total ease of the whole horse. At this ultimate ease, the horse finds energy and impulse to act. He rebuilds. Mentally and physically. He finds beauty. It’s the most moving thing to witness. It is like watching a piece of wood sculpting itself into an outstanding piece of art in front of your eyes. You just observe and breathe this beauty in. This beauty changes you, it strips you away from any want and any need to add force, tension, friction, contraction. You feel that it would only disturb the process, that it would only slow it down. You feel that it doesn’t belong here. On the contrary to that, you want to follow the horse in the release, you open, you learn how to create space for change.

The kind of horsemanship I do is based on beauty. Because anything done in ultimate relaxation leads to beauty, and anything done with force and tension leads to the absence of beauty.

At the depths of our hearts, we all want to surround ourselves with beauty and create it. On this quest Calmness is the goal, the means, and the reason.”

– Anna Marciniak, OneHorseLife.com: Residual Tensions Release Therapy with the Bit.

What Residual Tensions Release Therapy stands for?

Residual Tensions are unaware yet present tensions in the muscle fibers which haven’t ceased after the conscious or unconscious activity of the muscle stopped. It’s a phenomenon widely researched in 1920 by doctor Edmund Jacobson from USA. Doctor Jacobson was using his techniques, which were very difficult and not suitable for self-study purposes, with his patients to heal illnesses and mental issues like anxiety, panic attacks, and depression.

Around 10 years ago I and my husband developed our own residual tensions release techniques to support horse riders and trainers to work with their horses and not overload them with the tensions, which are intuitive and suitable for self-study. After several years of teaching our techniques to nearly a thousand of people worldwide (during clinics and online classes), and qualifying over 30 persons around the world (including medical doctors, human physiotherapists, and osteopaths) we started to work towards translating these techniques to horses and making them available for sports horses to improve their performance, behavior and movement patterns.

This is how Optimal Performance Program & Residual Tensions Release Therapy with the bit were developed.

Residual Tensions Release Therapy is a technique of work on the bit that is focused on releasing residual tensions that appear in the body of the horse in different phases of the movement. It’s a non-invasive technique (no jaw flexions or manipulations with the bit in the horse’s mouth) which is focused on 100% on releasing tensions by feeling them and moving them onto the trainer’s body to release them from there through a 4-Steps RTRT technique.

When I work on the bit I distinguish (feel) through the bit SEVEN PRIMARY JUNCTIONS that I can go through and release through RTRT:

✅ Tongue,

✅ Poll,

✅ C7-T1 connection,

✅ Lumbar area,

✅ Pelvis,

✅ Both Hocks,

✅ Both hind hooves.

By learning how to go through these connections, and getting a clear feel of them you can start to release tensions from them with RTRT Technique. When I do it, I literally start to feel how the horse’s spine turns into a giant flexible SPRING that starts to dance under my fingers and flows through the whole body of the horse. The trainer feels every vertebrae and how they sit and connect to one another, and instantly knows where is stiffness, and where is wobbliness. It’s a very detailed and precise feeling. You start to feel how the horse’s steps not only push him forward but also lift him upwards, and engage the whole body while keeping it extremely soft, flexible and relaxed at the same time. The energy flows, it’s real, it’s vibrant. You feel it on your fingers, and you start to feel it in your spine, too. From this moment on you are connected.

SCHWUNG is the most beautiful experience of the supple forward movement full of ENERGY AND DRIVE yet realized in 100% in the Rest and Digest mode in which the horse is not running away. All organs are relaxed and well-oxygenated, and the stomach stays relaxed, mind active and calm, and body totally engaged.

RTRT Training is about PLUGGING-IN to the muscle system of the horse with your muscle system:

Residual Tensions Release Therapy IS A REAL REINVENTION of the work on the bit.

In the series of STEP-BY-STEP videos tailor-made especially for YOU and YOUR HORSE, I will help you to face the issues you face every day and turn them into A DREAM.

You are going to learn how to connect the bit through RTRT Technique with the skeletal and smooth muscle system of the horse. In the next step, you are going to learn how to plug it into your muscle system and release tensions of the horse for him while he is in the movement. This course gives horses WINGS.

• If you ever had a DREAM about a horse who floats above the ground, who offers movement by himself…
• If you ever looked for ways to achieve instant flexibility boost, lightness in all the joints of the body,
• If you look for ways to build up your horse’s muscles in a beautiful, and harmonious way…
• If you ever dreamed to be connected to the horse’s whole body, and literally “feel him in your brain waves”…

— Then, this course is FOR YOU.

RTRT LONG REINS COURSE IS SUITABLE FOR:

🔥 ALL YOUNG & MATURE CHAMPIONS: For all young and mature horses who are healthy, agile and want to have lots of fun! You are going to ser your horse on the highway to the best sports results. We are going to focus especially on maximizing your horse’s potential and achieve ultimate balance, flexibility, lightness, and responsiveness to the aids. It is especially profitable for young horses who will be ridden soon, and for adult horses who need a very gentle “awakening” of their STAR-SPARKLE in order to shine under the saddle!

🔥 ALL WHO WANT THEIR HEALTH BACK: For all horses who started to show early signs of stiffness, movement range limitations, muscle atrophy at the back. For horses with Sacroiliac issues and Arthritis in the joints. To restore freedom and joy of movement and to become eager to move and flexible once again! Welcome second youth!

🔥 ALL TICKING-BOMBS: For all explosive and spooky horses, who give their riders the feeling of sitting on a ticking bomb when ridden. In this version of the program, your horse is going to learn how to NOT COLLECT TENSIONS as he moves, even if the Heart Rate goes up!

🔥 ALL IN NEED OF ENERGY BOOST: For all horses labeled as “lazy” and “disengaged”, or for those who just have this heavier kind of built and way they move. We will focus especially on replacing heavy movement based on pushing through the tensions with new movement patterns based on muscle relaxation. Bye-Bye lazy & heavy horses! Welcome Energy Champion!

For me, the RTRT: Long Reins Course is the ultimate answer to the question: “Why would someone work on the bit?” – Because he LOVES horses.

RTRT Practitioners TESTIMONIALS:

“(…) The class is not about using or not using a bit..it REINVENTS the bit…it totally gives it a new purpose. The bit becomes a tool for a therapeutic technique, a simple yet rich in-depth technique.
Tibet relaxed a lot with the technique and what I liked most was the fact that, after releasing more residual tensions with this therapy, he showed that he loves to move. In 9 years with him, he rarely walked or trotted with energy. I am talking about that type of energy that comes from within, that inner motivation that makes everything look easy.
This is what he started to show now, that, without the friction of tensions, he loves to move his body, this becomes easy. He is NOT lazy, he loves to engage all his body in the movement, to transition to trot, to enjoy the bigger, energetic movements.
From what I saw, real energetic movement is not only possible after liberating the body from the tensions that were making the movement “rusty”, but is actually desired by the horse. This theory of “horses saving energy” doesn’t have meaning, in this new light.
But, like I told Anna today, don’t believe me. Try it! See what your horse is really like, if only given the chance to be more relaxed.”
— Nicoleta Dobrin, Spain

RTRT VISUAL TESTIMONIES:

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

Anna Marciniak, the founder of OneHorseLife.com is a world-renown horse trainer with a dressage background, which took a classical curve under the guidance and supervision of Mr. Fritz Stahlecker, trainer of Olympic horses and an advocate of riding horses in Lightness, with whom she trained in Germany with his own stallion, and with two of her personal horses. In her search for lightness, beauty, flexibility, connection, and ease of the horse’s behavior, attitude, and gaits Anna — together with her husband Pawel Marciniak — focused on the impact of physical tensions on the body, movement, emotions, and behaviors of the horse.

During over 10-year research and practice, Anna took a bold turn and focused on releasing Residual Tensions, which were until then over-looked and not-addressed at all by the other horse trainers, past and present. From there on Anna and Pawel developed their own unique ways of teaching Conscious Muscle Relaxation to horses (Optimal Performance Program and RTRT) and People (BodyMarc) — leading thousands of humans and horses worldwide to improvements in their athletic performance, health, and to behavioral changes, and total horse-personalities turnabouts.

In her everyday practice, Anna deals both online and in-person with horses with poor performance issues, shyness, fear and anxiety attacks, anger and panic attacks. All these horses come with different backgrounds and pasts and come from different living conditions and continents. Thanks to that, Anna managed to develop a unique way of approaching such horses which is not focused on changing the WAY THE HORSE WAS TRAINED, but the way the horse’s central nervous system is being re-programmed from feeling, reading, storing and following the tensions to feeling, reading and releasing tensions.

Anna describes herself as someone fully oriented onto MAKING THINGS HAPPEN in a way that adds most to her and the horses’ being. Anna’s students emphasize the uniqueness, innovation, and reliability of her training techniques, and the level of personal support and engagement Anna offers to all her students and horses she guides via the Internet and at home:

Anna in her own words:

“I am especially interested in making things happen. A LOT. But not in any way. I want to do them in the most optimal way, the way that adds to my and my horse’s being. For me, the path that leads to that is focused on releasing physical and psychological tensions from horses and humans.

I do dressage, liberty, long reins… but most importantly thanks to horses I REALLY AM, and then I translate it into actions.

This makes my life and the life of my horses filled with a purpose that sets its roots beyond who we are and what we do. I am very excited to be able to share my unique way of training horses suffering from Panic and Anxiety Attacks with you, but most importantly to share my understanding of the language of tensions and relaxation that is ruling what horses are, do, think and feel.

See you in the Class!”