What We Mean When We Talk About Tension

Tension is the story underneath the behaviour — and it starts long before the horse does anything we’d describe as ‘reactive.’ It begins in the nervous system, often hidden from plain sight. And unless we learn to see it, feel it, and respond to it, we’ll always be training over the top of something unresolved.

When a horse encounters something unfamiliar or stressful, their nervous system prepares them to survive. That’s biology, not behaviour. The sympathetic branch of the nervous system takes over, triggering the familiar fight, flight, or freeze responses. We’re used to seeing the flight response — the horse that spins, bolts, or explodes — but just as often, the reaction is a kind of stillness that isn’t truly calm. That’s freeze.

Freeze is deeply misunderstood. It can look like a horse standing quietly, doing what’s asked, showing no visible signs of fear. But if you look closely — or more importantly, feel — you’ll often find tension layered through the body: shallow breathing, a braced neck, a rigid poll, a dragging step. The horse might not be misbehaving, but they’re not okay. They’re tolerating. They’re coping. And a horse that’s coping isn’t learning, trusting, or exploring. They’re just getting through.

One of the most important reasons to pay attention to tension is because it builds. Not usually in a big, dramatic moment — but in dozens of small ones that seem insignificant until they’re not.

This is what we call trigger stacking. A horse leaves the yard a little worried, but it’s manageable. Then a gate bangs. A dog barks. A gust of wind rattles the trees. The rider shifts their weight. Each one of those things alone is tolerable. But the nervous system doesn’t reset fully between them, and the load gets heavier. Eventually, the horse hits a point where something tips the scales — and then you see the explosion. But the explosion isn’t the problem. It’s just the point where the horse couldn’t hold it in anymore.

Triggers can take many forms: unexpected touch, sudden environmental changes, uneven footing, pressure on the rein, another horse moving too close, or even the internal state of the human they’re with. The list is long, and the stacking is real. And that’s why our work focuses on catching it early — before the horse hits their threshold.

There’s a trend online — particularly on social media — of showing horses in highly reactive states. Big rears, wild bucks, dramatic bolts. And while it’s tempting to frame that as transformation or training brilliance, it’s often a sign that the work has come too late.

We don’t aim to meet the horse in the explosion. We aim to meet them before it — in the breath they don’t take, in the neck that doesn’t soften, in the movement that loses fluidity. Because if we can notice tension when it whispers, we don’t have to wait for it to scream.

This is where somatic work becomes invaluable. Somatics means “of the body” — and in practice, it’s about reconnecting movement with awareness. Rather than focusing purely on mechanics or behaviour, we use somatic exercises to help the horse tune into their own body, to feel again, and ultimately to release the tension they’ve learned to carry.

We don’t rush through this work. It’s quiet, deliberate, and deeply powerful. We move through the body in a way that mirrors how tension accumulates — gently, layer by layer. We start with the hind leg, where many horses hold bracing patterns through the hip and stifle. Then we work into the ribs, helping them expand the breath and unlock the spine. From there, we move into the shoulders, releasing patterns of guardedness that often tie into forward resistance. Finally, we focus on the neck and poll — the last stronghold for horses in freeze. You can’t unlock that with pressure. It has to be felt. It has to be allowed.

And here’s the paradox: before a horse can truly let go, they have to feel. The freeze state numbs sensation, and as we begin to unwind that, emotion often rises. It might be anxiety, confusion, or grief. It’s real. And in that moment, our job isn’t to fix it. It’s to hold space for it. To be steady, present, and soft enough that the horse’s nervous system begins to believe that they are safe enough to process.

When horses finally do let go, it doesn’t always look like much from the outside. Sometimes it’s a deep exhale, a long yawn, a lick and chew. Sometimes the breath comes back into the belly. Sometimes they shake through the whole body like a dog shaking off water.

And sometimes — they lie down and sleep.

We’ve seen this time and again in the barn. Harley, a young horse who arrived braced and uncertain, lay down and slept for 45 minutes after just two somatic sessions. It wasn’t exhaustion — it was relief. For the first time, his nervous system dropped into a parasympathetic state in the presence of a human. That’s not a training outcome — that’s healing.

Costeño had a similar journey. He looked fine on the surface. But under the surface, he was holding. As we worked through the ribs and poll, his body softened. His mind quietened. He dropped into the earth and slept. The release wasn’t just physical — it was emotional. It often is.

We’ve worked with hundreds of horses who were labelled as difficult, spooky, or “quirky,” only to uncover underlying pain that was never addressed. When the pain was treated — and the nervous system given time to unwind — the behaviours disappeared.

This is why we don’t rush. We don’t override. We don’t label horses as naughty. We look, we listen, and we give them space to show us the truth.

They start to move with lightness, without having to be made light. They become more curious, more forward, more present. The stillness becomes soft instead of guarded. The connection becomes a choice, not a demand.

And from that place — that clean slate — you can build something real: confidence, strength, responsiveness, joy. Not because the horse has been forced into it, but because they’ve been freed into it.

Tension is not the enemy. It’s a message. It tells us where the horse is holding, what they’re afraid of, where they’ve been misunderstood or overwhelmed. And when we learn to see it early — to address it before it escalates — we create space for something much more profound than control.

We create the conditions for trust.

Letting go of tension isn’t a trick. It’s a conversation. And it’s one of the most honest, beautiful ones we get to have with a horse.