2005 marked the 30th Year Anniversary of TTEAM: Tellington TTouch Equine Awareness Method, a training method for horses that has spread around the world in the ensuing three decades. I began to develop the method in 1975 during a 4-summer study at the Humanistic Psychology Institute in San Francisco, taught by the renowned Israeli physicist, Moshe Feldenkrais. The Feldenkrais Method is a form of bodywork for humans using gentle, non-habitual movements with the intent of activating unused neural pathways to the brain. It is highly successful for helping people recover function after injury, for improving athletic ability, for increasing physical and mental function and for increasing one's capacity and potential for learning.

I enrolled in the program planning to use the Feldenkrais work to improve the athletic ability of my riding students. However, in the first week of the program I realized the potential for horses. I had been a successful teacher and trainer in the horse world for more than 20 years at that time. In the l960's I founded and directed an internationally recognized nine-month residential school for riding instructors and trainers, and had co-authored a syndicated column in major equine magazines as well as the first book on equine massage and physical therapy in 1965.

My grandfather, William Caywood, had been using a form of equine massage he learned from gypsies in Russia.That's a whole story in itself. My grandfather was a jockey, racing at tracks in Chicago and Florida as a young man. In 1902 he traveled to Moscow, Russia, to ride horses for an Austrian Count.The following year he switched to training horses, and in 1905 was the leading trainer at the Hippodrome Race Track in Moscow with 87 winners that season.He attributed his success to two factors.The first was all the horses in his stable were "rubbed" with short strokes all over the body 30 minutes a day. And he said he never entered a horse in a race unless it "told him" it was fit enough to win. That's particularly Interesting since animal communication is now so widely accepted.

That was when I began to see horses with new eyes.

Introducing a new idea to the world of horses was not an unusual experience, as my first husband and I had founded the Pacific Coast Equestrian School and Research Center for clinical studies of horses in the early 1960's. By 1975 I introduced the then revolutionary concept that horses who are resistant and unmanageable are usually reacting to pain, fear or stress. Integrating the theory of working with the nervous system of horses, I began to develop new ways of teaching a horse to learn without force. By 1978 I had developed the system of educating and healing horses known as Tellington Equine Awareness Method or TEAM.

From 1978 to 1983 I spent most of my time in Europe teaching TEAM 10-day workshops to people with problem horses.These workshops were a combination of bodywork, groundwork over and through obstacles we now call the Playground for Higher Learning, and work under saddle.

Tellington TTouch was "officially" birthed on a warm July day in 1983. I was back in the U.S.A. teaching a weekend workshop sponsored by veterinarians at the Delaware Equine Clinic. On an evening following the clinic I was asked to work on a very sore mare belonging to one of the veterinarians from the clinic. This mare objected fiercely to being groomed or saddled by pinning her ears, flashing her teeth and often threatening to kick when touched. I had been asked to look at this mare to see if there was a way to help her with the Feldenkrais Method, and when I placed my hands gently on her shoulder and began the slow, almost imperceptible movements of "Functional Integration"TM the mare became very quiet and accepting of my hands on her body. The owner of the mare was amazed at how her normally cantankerous horse seemed to enjoy the movements that were so gentle as to be barely visible. Within minutes the mare began to lower her head. Her eyes softened, her head lowered and after a few minutes she took a deep breath and relaxed. Her owner, Wendy, asked me in a surprised voice, "What are you doing to effect my mare in this way? Are you using energy or what is your secret?"

Without thinking I responded with the prophetic words, "Don't worry about what I'm doing. Just place your hand lightly on the shoulder and push the skin in a circle." Pushing the skin in a circle was not related to the Feldenkrais Method. However, many years ago I learned to trust my intuition, so I watched quietly as Wendy followed my minimal instructions.

To my surprise, the mare became as quiet and accepting of the light circles as she had been for the Feldenkrais movements.That moment was an epiphany for me - one of these rare "aha" moments that shifts ones path, as though into another dimension. I consider it a gift from Heaven.

From that day on I began experimenting with a variety of circular movements. What has emerged over the two ensuing decades is Tellington TTouch - an easily learned method of more than 20 hand positions combined with varying tempos and pressures that anyone can learn. The TTouches cross the species barrier and have spread around the globe for use in the world of humans as well as all animals.