00:08:12 [Lori  Perez, LAc]

OK, so we’re starting with seasonal activity.  We do have five seasons in traditional Chinese medicine.  We have a late summer season, which is our transitional season, going into August and  September into the fall.  Living here in Colorado, we always have a perfect example of that fifth season.  But in starting with getting ready to take us on this journey, we’re talking about seasonal activities and we’re talking about winter warming.  And it had been brought up during the week that, well, is it too late?  And of course, it’s not too late.  We’re in the middle of winter.  And so we want to be keeping those horses warm and the dogs as well.  But the key to Chinese medicine and its foundation really is a preventative medicine.  So I was laughing as I was getting ready to start tonight because I thought, I wonder how many times I’m going to say that word preventative or prevention tonight.  It’ll be a lot, but it’s really important.  And as I’ve been thinking about the winter and reviewing some cases that have come my way this season, boy, I sure wish there would have been more prevention awareness, to be honest with you, because winter is a hard time to recover from if we get weak or we get ill, because it’s a time of contraction and it’s a time of interflection and it’s the time of going within.  So we’re going to talk more about that energy as we move through the presentation, but it’s not too late to start.  We’re going to be talking about warming right now when we need it, but we’re going to also be talking about the benefits of doing that and why it’s going to be important for our coming season into the spring and how that’s going to relate to our prevention role.  And we all get so excited for the spring, but if we, you know, if we don’t come into the spring well-seasoned through the winter, we’re going to have problems.  And we certainly know how illnesses and injuries can end a season, especially when, you  know, some parts of our country and all of the world, those seasons are very short for being warm. So we’ll start to move in to a little bit more on the next slide with our acupressure for all seasons.  I’m going to do that.  All right. Yeah.

00:10:45 [Anne Angelo Webb]

I’m going to see if I can lower myself.  I’m like way too high.  I have this like there.

00:10:51 [Lori  Perez, LAc]

So I talked about that.  We do have five seasons in Chinese medicine, and then we will talk to you a little bit more about some of the aspects of those seasons.  We’re going to talk about Chinese medicine for a moment and how that system of medicine has evolved.  Many times now it will be known as we’ll heal terms like classical Chinese medicine,  traditional Chinese medicine, the acronym being TCM.  That’s the most common.  The traditional and classical forms are what we’re mostly working with, with our acupressure protocols, because it is keeping the integrity of the medicine whole and natural and looking at the well-being of the animals, complete well-being, their  environment, their physical condition, their emotional condition.  So that is the classical and traditional form.  Many times, especially in our acupuncture world, we’ll hear terms like modern, modern  Chinese medicine or modern acupuncture, modern acupressure, and those models just focus on what they say, a little bit more of a medical model, a little bit more of a  westernized model.  We use this often with animals as well.  An example of that might be that we have an injury, we know where it’s coming from, and  we’re just focused on that local problem, like the hock injury or like the stifle  injury.

But we’re not looking at that systemic piece of why did that happen?  How do we treat it and prevent it from happening?  Is there a tendency here towards that?  Or how do we move forward and get it healing more quickly with more holistic and integrated whole body techniques?  So I think it’s just important as we’re getting more popularity, actually, with these modalities for animals, I found people are very interested.  But I think it is important to separate a little bit the modern, more westernized thinking of this classical traditional medicine.  And we will hold the integrity of the traditional form, but that means that we still have a model that allows us to be able to get down to work and make a difference right  away. And it’s a medicine that anybody can start, like I mentioned before, you don’t  have to have a lot of training to start.  You will do no harm.  We talk about good intention.  And as you gain more skills, then we can start to move into what we call more specific point work or specific protocols. 

But we all start with the same place.  And that’s just looking at our animal, observing how that animal is functioning.  I mentioned in the traditional form of Chinese medicine, they were always most concerned with function and how the being and in this case, our animal is functioning in  their environment.  The traditional Chinese medicine doctors, many people don’t know this, but traditional  Chinese medicine started with husbandry.  It was important for the ancient cultures to be able to maintain their herds and their animal health because they were their tools, their transportation, their companions.  They relied upon them, and they had great value in those cultures.  So the doctors of traditional Chinese medicine, they did not separate treatment of human  and treatment of animal.  They were all treated equally and all treated with the same type of medicine, which would  be our acupressure techniques, our toena massage techniques, herbal medicine,  nutritional medicine, exercise, diet, mindfulness, all of those type of things.  So those are the things we’re going to get a little deeper into as we move along. 

So I mentioned already that the traditional Chinese medicine doctors were really focused  on function in the environment.  And as we start to look at our equines, our canines or our felines for that matter, one  of the first things that we talk about and teach is what we call the four examinations.  And the first one in this presentation is really going to be our most important because  that first one is observation and observation of all of the things we already talked  about. The physical condition, the environment, the the surrounding environment even.  Right. We can sometimes have a nice piece of property with a horse on it, but maybe  there’s a lot of stimulus or a lot of stress nearby.  We want to be aware of all of those things.  We want to look at their feed, their supplements, what other complementary medicines  and modalities they might be doing.  That is something to be very mindful of as well, because we always want to be supportive  of complementary modalities that the animals already receiving. 

And we also, of course, want to be supportive of proper veterinary care and procedures and  not, you know, be having any interference there.  So with our first of our four exams observation, we can look at all of these things.  Our other our other gathering pieces are pretty self-explanatory with the asking, getting  the history, listening, smelling, tasting if appropriate.  But we will talk. We use all of our senses in Chinese medicine.  So you can just think of it as that.  We have our eyes, our ears, our nose and our mouth.  And so we’re going to use all of those.  We have a saying in the equine assisted coaching world, and it’s a matter of fact, the  certification I did, it’s named for this, but we talk about it being OK and that if we  focus on OK, we have a great starting point.  And what OK stands for actually is observation and knowledge. 

If you observe, you can do a lot of good.  And if you slowly build your knowledge base, you’re going to be doing even better.  So we’ll end today with both of those things, hopefully all of us taking a step forward  in both our observation and knowledge.  And so we we have OK, that makes everything better.  I always like that one.  Yeah. So we’re looking at that environment.  We’re using our observations.  And then what we’re going to start to think about on our next slide is the the  individual. So even though we will be giving a nice generalized treatment protocol that  will be safe to do on any animal, what we prefer as we start to move forward with our  knowledge base is that we can start to individualize those of those sessions and those  protocols that we’re doing to be more individualized and doing more prevention and  enhancement, if you will.  But we can always just meet the animal where they are in the moment and meet them where  we are in the moment. And that’s going to have a positive impact on everybody.  Sorry, I’m making noise because I got tangled up in my wire with my glasses. 

So as we look at this slide and I have just see.  As we go on to daily routine, so we’ve talked about, well, we’ll go back into that looking at that more from the observation and are asking our owners, what do those  situations look like? The feeding time, the training regimen, the exercise turnout, stable and shelter. And as we start to think about our season, we’re going to want to really think about are those things appropriate for the season that possibly adjustments might need to be made in any one of these items as we adjust to the seasonal needs of the  animal. I mean, it would just be obvious that in the winter and in the heat of the summer, the shelter is going to be more important than it might be at other times of the year. And our turnout in our exercise training, those three in the middle, boy, are they important. Because as we talk, start going into deeper pieces of talking about winter, one of our challenges is those can be very limiting, right?  Like, you know, how do how do we keep up with our training regimen and our exercise and  our turnout and do it safely?  A lot of us have had a pretty solid frozen ground already for quite a few weeks right  now. So that certainly can get some motivation going, I think, for some of the  techniques that we might share with you and how you might take them into your exercise  training and turnout programs as well so that we’re still connecting with our horses and  our animals and we’re still building that relationship even through the winter if  we’re not able to train the way we think of classical training.  So we’re going to look at all of those things and what might need to be adjusted. 

And then as we move on to the individual horse on the next slide, we’ll start to get a  little bit more of an in-depth history, looking at age, of course, that’s going to play  a very important role as we start to think about winter.  Again, we talked about contraction of energy, slowing down of energy.  So inherently, winter is the end stage of life cycle.  It’s the end stage of life cycle in just a season as well as one’s lifetime.  But it’s all about that inner reflection.  Sometimes that can sound kind of dark and cold as it truly is in its nature.  But let’s remember that seeds are germinated in the dark and we’re planting the seeds in the  winter for expansion going into spring. 

And the age, the weight, these things over here on this side are really going to help us  determine our animals’ ability to withstand some of the stresses of a season change or their  ability to withstand the transitional changes moving into a new season.  So being able to look at supporting that individual horse or cat or dog, same system applies.  We’re just giving the horse example, but you would go through the exact same process with your  small animals as we’re going through today with the horse. 

And each one of these issues, if you’re going through them with your animal and you start to  check off a concern, then we will also start to plug that in to what season we would look at  treating that imbalance to prevent it.  Again, looking to try to treat ahead of the curve and make sure that those problems don’t  come up when we’re having seasonal stresses accompanying the environment or adding into the  environment.

00:23:07 [Anne Angelo Webb]

And Lori MelMac had a good point.  Yeah, she’s asking, winter is a restorative season.

00:23:15 [Lori  Perez, LAc]

Yes. Yes, it is.  It is the time to rebuild energies as they go inward.  And so as we get into deeper into the winter part of the demonstration, we start to talk about  the kidney energy, which is the organ that is ruled by winter and what it does.  And that when we talk about that restorative energy, that is what our kidney energy does.  And so that is absolutely true.  And if we don’t help to build and support those reserves during this time, we might suffer going  into spring and summer and not have the type of vitality and energy that we want.  You know, spring fever, right?  We want to get out there. We want to move, be able to just be joyful and have full expression in the  summer. And we need to support those processes by focusing on our restorative practices for  ourselves and our animals now in the winter.  Then we’ll have full expression of those wonderful spring and summer months.  Yeah. So we’re just going to, yeah, go ahead.

00:24:33 [Anne Angelo Webb]

No, I was just going to say, I’ve been noting because it is so dark, I can’t stand it here in the  Northeast. And we’re finally at a five o’clock sunset and we’re seven weeks as of Sunday away from  daylight savings switching over.  So it’s kind of it comes quicker than it seems so dark and long, but it’s seven weeks.

00:24:52 [Lori  Perez, LAc]

And it’s a good point because we can tend to not be well aligned with the natural rhythms of  seasons. The animals are very well aligned with the natural changes of the season, even though many times as  their caretakers, we put them in environments that don’t align with the natural rhythms that a perfect  example of that would be to clip them and put them under light all winter so that they don’t grow a coat for  show season. But that would not be their natural tendency whatsoever.  We all know that our horses start growing their winter coat, right, in like September.  And why is that? Well, it’s because we’re getting darker.  And so their their brains, their hormones know, and actually there’s a connection to the kidney in the winter  right then that adrenal gland connection to the pituitary gland that starts to tell them the days are getting  shorter. And that means winter is coming.  That means you need to store your reserve and we will start seeing them getting fuzzier, eating more, sleeping  more, resting more.  They will naturally tend to go there if we can just really help support them in that process. 

And hopefully maybe we can start to learn a little bit more about that as well.  I really encourage my human clientele to try to stop their day as much as they can when the sun goes down in  the wintertime so that they can go till nine or 10 or 11 o’clock at night in the summertime when it’s appropriate,  because many times that doesn’t happen.  You get off work at five, six, and you run two, three errands.  You’re not home till eight or nine.  And that’s not a good alignment.  And most of the time that they’re happy that they’ve made those adjustments and started to get more in alignment  and feel this is the time.  This is the time for us to take that restorative break.  Nature is giving it to us.  And I love this for the horses, actually.  I’m going to talk a little bit more about it when we get into the kidney energies. 

But for my rescue horses, especially my horses who have trust issues, which are winter and kidney, who have fear-based  issues, boy, is this a perfect time to connect with them in a quieter, more maybe it’s a more secluded or secure  environment. Maybe it’s in the stall, in the barn.  Maybe it’s in their shelter that we’re connecting with them.  They’re not out running around as much either, right?  There’s not as much forage for them.  They’re maybe seeking shelter.  So we can take this opportunity, most certainly, to bond with any of our pets that have connection issues.  And there’s a lot of great information out there about practices you can do besides acupressure and tuina.  We encourage acupressure and tuina because how better to connect than through intentional touch, right?  But we can teach, you know, great time to teach tricks, great time to do that type of training that doesn’t need a lot of  space. You just get creative, but make that connection because you and your animals will both benefit from that  mutual exchange of energies.

00:28:24 [Anne Angelo Webb]

Yeah. Good time for some telepathic animal communication, too.

00:28:28 [Lori  Perez, LAc]

Absolutely right.  I think that the animals have a lot to say in the winter, in my experience as well, because they are in order, right?  And they’re more introspective, as we all should be.  They’re probably not as concerned with connecting with us when it’s springtime and those hormones kick up and they’re  kicking their heels up, right?  And they’re out playing and running and, you know, expressing that spring energy.

00:28:57 [Anne Angelo Webb]

Yeah, I find mine are trying to nudge me now, like reminding me to slow down, like they’re trying to kind of, we just have to pay  attention because they will do that.

00:29:08 [Lori  Perez, LAc]

It’s a wonderful time when we’re talking about this connection to get into some, I’m not going to give an opinion on the  subjects of stabling or blanketing and those kind of things, because we all have to do what’s right for us and our  animal in the moment.  We, of course, like animals to be as free and live as close to nature as they can, that still allows us to take proper care of  them as well, right?  But I think it’s like it’s also a great opportunity in that connectedness I found to start to communicate with them.  I mean, blanketing choices is a great example.  You know, take the blankets out there, right?  Who chooses one?  Who doesn’t? Who leaves?  So, you know, if you’re questioning those kind of things, should I blanket, should I not blanket, should I shut them in, should I  not shut them in? 

We, as you know, and we all know that they probably already have an opinion about that.  So we can be quiet enough, introspective enough in our own selves that we might be able to hear those messages or what we talk  about through observation is being able to read what we see.  And trust it. Right.  And read their nonverbal responses to us, too.  So I love that part about winter.  There’s a lot of fun things we can do and and hopefully we’ll all just be more connected after this winter with our animals.  So as we look at just health issues in general, we on the next slide, we have a list of them here that are common. 

And if you’ve studied any Chinese medicine previously, you’ll know that these common health issues do have a tendency to show up  during certain seasons.  And that is due to the connection between the meridian pathways and the internal organ systems or what we call the Zongfu  organ systems in acupressure.  We are able to influence and influence both the pathway, which is the meridian, where it goes and what it feeds, the chi, the  blood, all what we call the vital substances that it brings to either the surface of the body where that pathway travels or the  energy and the vital substances that that meridian is carrying into the internal organ system.  So that is where we have the ability to influence some of the internal mechanism of the body in looking at some of these health  issues. I’ll run down them briefly, kind of tell you where they fall. 

But these are the things that, again, as we’re looking at our horses tendencies, looking at their temperaments, looking at their adaptability to different seasons, if we can check these off and start to think about what does this usually happen or when might the tendency be for it to happen?  So the tendency will be the season.  If the horse has that temperament type as well, they might tend to have predisposition to certain illnesses or health imbalances. And so therefore, again, we can move into the preventative model.  So typically, when we look at allergies, those can both be spring and fall.  So if we were treating spring allergies, a horse or an animal that goes out and starts to get exposed to new grasses and has high reactions or things like that, we would want to be starting to work on that in their session now, supporting their winter energies and getting those winter energies so that they can nourish the tendency to have a spring imbalance.  So allergies can go spring or fall, our respiratory system. 

Typically, we put that in the category of fall because that is the time for the lungs.  And of course, we see a lot of respiratory issues in the winter and we relate that to the previous season, the weakness going in to winter from fall, the dryness that’s there, all the things that are floating around in the air and the wind that’s coming up and just the transition. Transitional seasons tend to be hard on our animals as well.  So when we’re, you know, especially especially we find as we all are in it right now, the transition from fall to winter, you know, if we don’t go in healthy, we could struggle all winter to stay well.  And then the transition from winter into spring because of the ability to nourish and recharge and rebuild in the winter, if that’s not there, then our muscles, our tendons, our ligaments, and the things that we need for exuberant movement in the spring and even the reproductive system that will be called upon with some of our animals in the spring are all supported by properly nurturing the kidneys in the wintertime. 

So we go down colic and digestion belongs to spleen and stomach, which is a late summer season.  However, we know that weak digestion certainly has an ability to express itself in the winter with colic just due to stress and the cold and the contraction, potentially lack of drinking enough water, potentially lack of movement can all lead to, of course, colic risk in the winter.  One of the things that a lot of horse owners are worried about hoof issues belong to, they can really go into the spring and winter both because we have components of the hoof that are ruled by the by the kidney, but also some of those issues that we will look at the structure and the structure and the  foundation of the hoof would belong to the bony, bony connections to the kidney.  But certainly the mobility issues would be involved with with springtime in the liver and hoof issues are interesting because we can actually, that’s one  area that we could take the hoof and really break that down into probably five seasons in and of itself.  As as we study further, we can find that what type of issues might be happening can be addressed through different seasonal connections.  Thrush, for example, would be different than laminitis or different than cracked hooves or, you know, lacking of soul and things like that.  So so the hoof issues, of course, be treated all year long. 

And definitely we have lots of points around that coronary band and that hoof that can support hoof health and function.  We all know the saying no hoof, no horse.  So that’s an important one that we want to be looking at all year long.  But certainly look at the tendencies and then look at the connection to those seasons for prevention.  Gait and mobility, again, all seasons, of course, but winter into spring, one of our most important times, because if the muscles, the tendons and the  ligaments after coming out of cold and contraction and immobility aren’t nourished well, then we’re going to be prone to injuries there. 

And one of the main things for prevention is early season injuries, right, because then there’s no season.  Circulation really belongs to our heart energy in the summer.  So, again, if we’ve supported everything through winter and our adrenal glands are strong, we’re going to move into the spring and get that fire energy going  throughout the body and we’ll have circulation out to all the tissues.  Nourishing all the tissues and then emotional behavior.  Those again, there’s one for every season.  So we can look at emotions, traumas, how to support the animal through those changes and also support the animal through their temperament.  They have to, you know, have a certain temperament that they’re going to be more susceptible to the energies of a certain seasonal change.  Like we mentioned already, fear and trust in the water element that connects us into winter.  So any questions on our health issues?  They all have the five seasons connected into them.  And then some of them, like I said, have all five seasons connected into those conditions.

00:38:29 [Anne Angelo Webb]

I don’t see anybody, but feel free if anybody is in the chat and questions as we’re going along.  Feel free to put them in there and we’ll definitely get those answers.

00:38:40 [Lori  Perez, LAc]

All right.  So we’re just following up with what we just covered and really just anticipating what our seasonal health is going to look like.  So you see here we have some outline for what we can be thinking about to treat in each season, looking to treat in the winter and into the springtime allergies.  I talked about mobility issues and making sure that we’re ready to get active winter.  We talked about colic prevention, of course, the cold and also mobility.  But really what we’re trying to get across with the importance of these last couple of slides is the anticipation, the prevention and then the support in the moment.  We’re almost probably always looking at three seasons when you really think about it, the before, the during and the after.  And then it’s just cyclical and we just keep moving and evolving and adapting with the animal and with their needs based on their environment.  So we want to promote the full expression of all of the seasons.

00:39:58 [Anne Angelo Webb]

And oh, yes, I just somebody was asking, does this apply to doggies, too?  Yes, this applies to.  Yeah.

00:40:06 [Lori  Perez, LAc]

And even though, yeah, even though we’re doing an equine presentation, everything we’re discussing has the same approach with a smaller animal.  Of course, you know, they aren’t living out in a herd in a stable, but we still need to be thinking about their environment.  They’re probably going to be needing to be inside more often.  There might be issues with, you know, checking their feet for cold and exposure.  There might be grooming issues, feed issues that need to to be looked at with the canines and the felines as well.  And certainly when we get to our protocol, it’s exactly the same.  So it’s exactly the same whether it’s the human, the dog, the cat or the horse.  When we get ready to do our protocols and our actual sessions, we can do it on any species.  And we have a vet that treats we have a vet that studied with us recently and she is a goat specialist.  So, yeah, very, very cool.  Neat.

00:41:13 [Anne Angelo Webb]

And Danelle, I hope I’m saying that right.  Thoughts on horse long term abscesses, I think you’re saying, not absences.  And I’m at first I read it and I was like absence.  But I think you’re saying abscesses.  Yeah.

00:41:27 [Lori  Perez, LAc]

OK, so that’s an issue.  So, again, not to get into specific protocols because our point specific protocols take a little bit more study and in-depth evaluation that what we’re going into today.  But we would look at the season, first of all, just when are the abscesses happening?  Are they happening when it’s dry?  Are they happening when it’s wet?  Most of the times there’s some type of extreme other than, you know, an actual stone bruise or something like that that caused it.  Usually it’s just some type of extreme.  And then, of course, we’re also looking at if a horse is prone to abscesses, then the internal balance is not there.  And we can go further into how is that manifesting?  What part of the hoof is there?  Is there a tendency to a certain part of the hoof so we can go much deeper?  But all of your acupressure work around the coronary bands will help because that will just move energy through the hoof and help bring down inflammation and help restore balance. 

So don’t hesitate to be doing your acupressure chewing not just on the coronary band and down the leg to help if you don’t have the training to go into the specific points yet that would be for that individualized condition.  Does that make sense?  We really want to look a little deeper into the abscess and that history.  Okay, so just looking at, you know, the example of the different seasons and what we might be looking at, looking at the animal’s tendency, the hoof abscess was a great example because I would really look at what type of conditions are happening when the horse is getting abscesses, wet, dry, hard, cold, those type of things, and that’ll help us be able to address it better.  So should we get into our actual season?  Yeah, okay, I think we’re ready.  All right.  So as we move into the water element.

00:43:44 [Lori  Perez, LAc]

So winter is ruled by the element of water.  We’ve already talked about the organs that belong to the element of water in Chinese medicine are the kidney and the urinary bladder.  And they are sister organs, and we will be talking about the bladder’s pathway, we use it a lot in our treatment because it is part of our more advanced work when we use it for assessment work, but it is a meridian that you’ll see in a lot of modalities as an opening and closing protocol because it runs the length of the spine, basically, and we have what are called our association points, which are part of our assessment process.  And our session process in advanced acupressure work, but those points all have a connection into the internal body, into the meridian, and into the direct organ systems.  So that’s why we use the bladder meridian for most all work with animals, because it gives us an ability to connect with the whole body just from connecting through the bladder meridian, we will touch every organ, and every meridian that the animal has on their body through the bladder points down the spine.  So our water element has to do with winter, cold, contraction, restorative energies.  The water element rules our bones, our joints.  So we want to think about the spine, the low back, especially because where the kidneys and the bladder house, right in the lower lumbar region, we think about especially the lower extremities, the knees, the ankles, so hock, stifles, any joint disorder, any adrenal disorder.  So even looking at some of our chronic imbalances, potentially,

Cushing’s related things, looking at, you know, adrenal and other endocrine connections in the, you know, the brain, and the pituitary gland.  And so we just think about what are the nature, what is the nature of water, and what does water do when it’s exposed to cold.  And that’s going to give you a pretty good idea of what winter energy is like, right, just looking at nature.  And so our counterbalance to that or our support for that is, of course, warming techniques.  So we talked about the kidney and bladder.  What does it mean that it’s the root of life or original chi, the gate of vitality, ming men, the essence? 

That is, I’ve mentioned several times, that kidney is equivalent to our adrenal, if we think of that in the Western world, the kidney and the adrenal gland are one and the same.  I always like the joke, it’s not my joke, the teacher sometime along the way told me that they just didn’t know back then that the kidneys wore a hat called the adrenal glands, so they’re pretty connected.  The spleen and the pancreas are a similar connection.  But I want us to be thinking about kidney as adrenal and kidney, and then the bladder, we can think about what it does is just a, you know, elimination organ.  But really, the bladder, I’ve mentioned just a few minutes ago, that the bladder is really important for its pathway.  Because it is that pathway that runs along our spinal cord.  And so it has the connection along every vertebral body to our internal organ system, they would be known as the dermatomes or the nerve roots in a Western thinking model. 

That’s why it’s such a powerful meridian, and why we use it for session work and assessment workflow.  So, okay, so we’re in winter, and we’re really thinking about warming techniques, we’re thinking about connecting with our animal, trying to balance the tendency for cold and damp and wind to potentially settle into the body.  We’re going to be thinking about what types of things we can do to warm the animal besides our chewing on acupressure.  So if appropriate, we might be making some, are you there?

00:48:34 [Anne Angelo Webb]

I have a double screen, let me see.  Oh, okay.  I’ve got two things going on at the same time.

00:48:38 [Lori  Perez, LAc]

Yeah, well, we already talked about winter and its nature, right, with water.  So I think we can go past the contraction, the stiffness of winter where we had the cold and the damp.  And yet we’ll get into the kidney young, because here we go, here’s our fire that lives down in our low back in our kidney adrenal area.  And we need to support this during the wintertime so that we have a good generator system and lots of energy moving up through the body and nourishing all of our systems.  So we talk about young energy being warm. 

That’s the more masculine energy.  It tends to rise.  It tends to circulate, go out to the extremities.  And so that is the type of energy that we’re going to want to promote in the wintertime.  We’re promoting that kidney yang chi, the warming part of the kidney.  It will send energy out to the entire body.  One of the things that we can look at in the warming system of the kidney, too, is how it is able to transform and transport other substances.  So right, if we’re not warm, we can’t really digest.  Our digesting is based on cooking food, whether it’s the animal or the human.  Our digestive system is a cooking pot that needs to be able to be warm enough to cook food.  So we can certainly look at adding warming foods, potentially, if it’s appropriate for the animal, warming substances into the diet.  Just look at that.  We’ve talked already about some of our activities.  Keep the animal moving, even if we have snow and ice, we can keep them moving by doing some work inside, some connected work. 

We can help them move their energy by doing our Tui Na and active pressure.  All right, here we go.  We are finally on a place to where we can do some work.  So Tui Na is a growing occupation, I would say.  Us practitioners of Chinese medicine, we’ve known about Tui Na because it is acupressure massage and it really has multiple hand modalities, multiple strokes involved in it.  But with acupressure, we are typically point specifically stimulating a certain point that has a certain connection into the body.  With Tui Na, we can certainly cover a broader area.  We can certainly cover a whole meridian, a whole extremity.  And we’re still using the model of acupressure and adding more movement and circulatory type strokes into that.  So it’s part of our opening and closing with most acupressure sessions as well.  We open tracing the bladder meridian and that stroking movement would be a Tui Na movement.  So acupressure massage, Tui Na, predates acupuncture. 

They’ve been doing it since the beginning of history.  We all do it. If we bump our leg, if we bump our arm, what’s the first thing we do?  We rub it. So we’re just naturally drawn to Tui Na.  And of course, we see our animals do it all the time, too.  Right. We just talk about bathing themselves or my horses will reach down and see them working on their own meridians, whether they’re itching it or rubbing it or scratching it.  So, again, through our observation, sometimes they can tell us where they might need some help. 

So let’s get ready to look at what we can do on any creature, any animal to warm them up, to support their kidney and adrenal glands during these winter cold months.  When we start a Tui Na session in our work, we always start with the Bladder meridian and we call that our opening.  The bladder meridian starts at the inner corner of the eye.  It runs back on the horse to between the ears.  That’s a very common known point called Bladder 10.  And then, of course, it runs down, as you can see, onto the top of the wither.  And when we get to the top of the wither, we drop down a little bit about one and see where my hand is in the screen.  About one hand’s width down off the spine is the line you’re going to be tracing along that bladder line.  So you will start wherever you’re comfortable.

If you can, with your animal, start at Bladder 1 at the inner canthus, that’s fine.  If you feel comfortable starting behind the ears at Bladder 10, that’s fine as well.  If that animal is not comfortable having you touch their eyes or their ears, just start where you’re comfortable.  The wither is a great place to start.  Right at the start of the wither is where we start to have our associated points.  So the points right at that shoulder blade will start to connect into the organ systems.  And our first one that we start to work with in the acupressure world is Bladder 13, which is our lung point.  But if you just start at the wither, you’re fine, too.  So wherever you can reach, wherever you’re comfortable, we’re going to run or open the bladder meridian three times on each side.  And we’re going to do that with a flat hand stroke so that we’re not creating too much pressure.  And in acupressure, we always keep one hand on the animal for support. 

So whether you’re moving with both hands or just holding the shoulder and that hand can move with you, but we always keep two hands on so that we’re creating a safe environment for both the horse with the dog supporting them.  But also, you will be able to feel more likely if your animal is to create a movement.  You won’t be surprised.  So I want to have you guys definitely, if you’re not experienced with this work yet, just start here.  And start with just getting your hand connected and tracing down that bladder meridian with a nice flat palm.  So it just literally will look like this.  And as you get to the heel of your hand, you can create a little bit more pressure.  And we’re just going to trace the entire meridian all the way down three times each side.  One of the things I didn’t mention yet as we get ready to start our session is we always talk about starting our session with intention and permission.  So the intention is just whatever you make of it, right?  It can just be that my intention is to warm this animal and support their adrenal kidney function during the winter.  You might have more precise intention if you have that training.  And that’s great, too.  And then permission, it’s just approaching the animal, making that connection.  We have what’s called a horseman’s handshake, right, where we just reach our hand out and let them touch it with their nose and get a horseman’s handshake. 

Or just, you know, just really just intuitively and intentionally making some type of mental connection with the animals that you’re going to work on them for their for their betterment.  So we will we will trace that bladder meridian all the way down in Chinese medicine.  We actually have two bladder lines that gets into deeper work.  So as we come across the hip, the meridian actually dives back into the body and comes back out on the wither again.  And so we have two lines down the bladder meridian.  The reason I want to bring that up is if you’re using your flat hand and you’re about a hand’s width off their spine.  You don’t need to worry if you’re not exactly right because you have two lines there.  You have the first bladder line, you have the second Bladder line, and they both have great, powerful functions to them.  You’re just going to follow that all the way down.  Just come down the back of the hip towards the tail, right down the midline, right down the back of the leg.  As you get down to the top, you will come laterally to the end of the foot.  As I’m going to show you in the next slide, you’re going to use both hands as we get down the extremities.  And the cool thing about that is you’ll be able to affect these affecting multiple meridians with that technique.  So while you are doing the bladder meridian opening flat hand with connection three times on each side.  We want it to be slow enough that you can feel or perceive changes. 

So don’t just rush through it.  Take enough time to feel if there’s change in the fur, change in the temperature, dips, bumps, anything like that because that can help you in your future work.  Then we’re going to just go down the hind end, and we’re going to be feeling for any cold or anything there as well.  So after we’ve opened the bladder meridian, any areas that you have found that are cold along that pathway,  we can move to our MOFA, which is a circular rubbing.  So the flat palm, circular rubbing.  We have an energy center at the palm of our hand called pericardium eight.  That’s one of the fire meridians.  And this is where the heat comes from our hands. 

And so if we want to test it out, it’s super simple.  All you literally have to do, rub your hands together.  You’re going to feel that heat coming right off pericardium eight.  And that is the point that we are sending energy through during this technique for warming.  So both through the bladder meridian tracing and now through our circular movement with MOFA, flat hand, both hands on the anvil.  Wherever you found was cold, wherever you found might have a change, you’re going to do some circular motions.  Typically we’ll do warming techniques clockwise.  You can do that circular up to three to eight times to warm that area.  Do we have a question?  I thought something popped up.  Okay.  So that is our MOFA.  We can do that along the bladder line.  We can do that on any of the points we found on the extremities.  And in our next slide, we’re going to move to a movement called SOFA.  Even though it’s spelled with a C, it’s pronounced like it has an S.  And SOFA is friction.  So it’s just as I showed you, rubbing the hands together.  But this time we’re going to have the animal’s part in between our hands.  So we’re going to just rub down the extremity.  Just like the video is showing, or just like the slide is showing us, just rub down with those warming techniques.  The really nice thing about this technique, you can use it wherever you feel cold.  You can use it wherever you feel a change that might need warming. 

But as you do this technique down the extremity, you’re going to hit two important points as you move down to the stifle and the hock.  And that is one of the Kidney source points, Kidney 3.  And one of the main pain relieving analgesic points for the body, Bladder 60.  You’ll be connecting with those, one on your inside hand and one on your outside hand.  So we will be balancing two specific points that are really important in our winter warming protocols.  Just by doing the SOFA technique down the extremity.  We’re not giving point specific protocols during this session because it’s just a warming session.  If we knew we had certain conditions that needed more addressing, then of course we would get into our point specific acupressure work.  But for warming the bladder meridian opening with flat hand, you’re going to warm and open that whole meridian.  Send circulation to every place in the body.  Coming down these extremities, both with the MOFA and the SOFA, you’re going to warm multiple meridians coming down through the leg.  Including a really important point called stomach 36, which is one of the master points for digestion and preventing colic.  So we’re going to be warming all of those points that will have direct effect in sending energy back up to the kidneys.  Back up to the spleen and stomach and the organ systems and keeping them warm.  There’s a really great example that we can use to demonstrate both in our massage techniques.  But just to understand what cold looks like or feels like in the body.  And that is what we call white knuckles. 

So if you just take your fist and you clench it for a little bit.  Take a look at what’s happening to your bones and your joints, which we’ve already established are more susceptible to cold in winter.  Because this is their season, the Kidney season.  Kidney rules the joints. Kidney rules the bone.  You look at those white knuckles, well that is lack of chi, lack of blood, lack of energy flow.  Due to constriction.  So you can imagine if we just kept our fist clenched like that for a long time.  That white energy, that white color that we’re seeing on the white knuckles would start to become even more stagnant.  Potentially purple or blue and get really cold.  So white knuckles gives you an idea of what the body’s energy is like in those joints around the animal’s vertebrae, their hocks, their stifles.  And we start to move that energy through these simple warming techniques that we’ve taught you today.  It’s like boom.  You open up that blood flow and you’ll see that pink color return right away to your tissues.  And that’s what we’re doing.  And it’s as simple as that.  You just start.  You can study and dive deeper. 

And I know I’ve already taken you over five minutes.  So I can take us through the slides and finish them up real quick.  We’re going to close our session the same way we opened it.  With three runs down the bladder meridian.  Both sides.  I want you to just observe what you found after you warmed the animal.  After you’ve opened up the kidney bladder meridian and sent circulation through those systems for winter warming.  And you’ve completed a really great session for your animal.  Not only have you supported their winter wellness, but you’ve started to move that energy to support their movement towards spring.  The nourishment of their tendons and ligaments.  And so we just keep that up.  We’ll move into springtime healthy.  And hopefully be back here talking about a little bit more on what to do during springtime.  To get ready to move into summer.

01:05:13 [Anne Angelo Webb]

Yeah, and a good point. Good point Melmac is saying.  Or asking the question.  Is that why rheumatoid arthritis attacks our joints, I suppose.

01:05:26 [Lori  Perez, LAc]

Rheumatoid is interesting because it’s an autoimmune disease.  It will sometimes actually have a heat component to it.  So rheumatoid, we tend to look at a little bit more differently in TCM than say osteo.  So our cold type of arthritis is because kidney adrenal rules bone.  We tend to think of the arthritis more as the osteoarthritis.  The degenerative arthritis.  Because the winter is the end stage.  The pulling in stage.  We’ll see more impact on our senior horses.  So if we were looking at RA.  I would probably be looking at some kidney because it’s in the joints.  But also looking at different mechanisms of why there’s inflammation.  There and why the body has a miscue.  And is attacking itself basically.  So a little different mechanism.  A little more heat involved already.  So with those kind of conditions.  Again, individualized.  But we might be doing more dredging and cooling techniques potentially.  Versus warming techniques.  Depending on if the joint was red hot or swollen or actually cold.  So yeah.  Just think of arthritis like white knuckles.  The great way to look at winter arthritis.  It’s going to tend to be more degenerative.  Old injuries.  Senior animals.  Cold.  Worse with cold.  Better with movement.  Better with warmth.  Okay?

01:07:13 [Anne Angelo Webb]

All right.  And such great techniques that are so easy to do really.

01:07:17 [Lori  Perez, LAc]

So easy.  Safe to do.  You don’t need more training than what we’re helping you with right now.  Of course we have a great program that can take you into much deeper studies.  Whether it’s just for your own animals.  Or whether you want to make a profession out of this work.  We have programs that are designed for all of that.  But you just start.  And just trust what you feel.  I’ve been in practice for over 30 years.  And every time I work with these animals with touch, I’m surprised.  At what I feel.  And the body doesn’t lie.  We call it the law of integrity.  It’s a foundation of Chinese medicine.  And that is what is inside will manifest outside.  It will show us.  So one of the takeaways that I will definitely tell our practitioners and our owners and guardians of these animals is just start.  Just connect.  Just touch.  You can’t go wrong running the bladder meridian on any animal.  It’s going to give you feedback and insight to your animal that maybe you didn’t have previously.  Maybe you’ll get a better understanding of what’s going on with them.  Just taking that time to see.  Is there an area that’s cold?  Is there an area that’s too warm?  Potentially.  Right?  So really good stuff there.

01:08:42 [Anne Angelo Webb]

The animals love it.  And they receive it.  And they’ll start to guide you.

01:08:51 [Lori  Perez, LAc]

Right?  For us that have done this before.  We know they will move into you where they need it.  They’ll show you where they need more work.  So just be intuitive.  Connect with your animal through intentional touch.  Do prevention.  So that we don’t have to do crisis management.  Because that’s hard when you have an animal that’s struggling and suffering.  And they’re not coming out of whatever happened quick enough.  So think about those things.  And be mindful of your animals that are winter animals.  That are the seniors.  Your horses that have the temperament to maybe be more sensitive in the winter time.  We want to be thinking about all of those things.  Check with your veterinarian about adding warming.  Herbs and nutrients.  There’s some good ones.  J

ust make sure it’s appropriate for your individual animal.  Changes in diet.  One thing about the winter is we always recommend that when things are extreme that we don’t make extreme changes.  So we get stressed out because we just had an arctic blast here.  Minus 20 degrees for two days.  And one of the things that was going around in the equine world is just keep doing more of what you’re already doing.  Don’t make extreme changes in your horse’s care during an extreme event.  Because that could be a tipping point of stress.  So just more food.  More shelter.  More warmth.  More touch.  More connectedness.  But try to avoid extremes.  Keep things stable for them.

01:10:27 [Anne Angelo Webb]

Absolutely.  And I know this is just a little bit of an example of people learning here.

01:10:37 [Lori  Perez, LAc]

Yes.  And we have our TuiNa prep course online.  That’s a great course that will take you into a deeper dive study on the practice of Tuina.  And all the different hand modalities that we use.  The hand movement.  There’s many of them.  We don’t practice all of them.  But we do on our hand line class give you a dive into just about all of the hand techniques and what they’re used for.  There’s certainly some that we use much more often than others.  But they’re all appropriate.  And you can incorporate, of course, any of your acupressure work as well into the Tui Na.  So we have our hands-on Tui Na class scheduled for October 4th and 5th.  That class is fun because that class is very interactive.  We get to do some different things with our modality.  Beyond just the acupressure stimulation of points.  But it’s a dynamic class.  It was really fun in July.  We all had a great time working with dogs and horses together.  So that’s a really fun class.  And the point I was trying to get to with it is that it is a substitute for our intro class as well.  So we have our intro acupressure class.  But you can do the Tuina class too.  Both of those serve as a really nice introduction class into getting your hands on animals.  And really getting the TCM model into your repertoire.  Into your vocabulary.

01:12:17 [Anne Angelo Webb]

Absolutely.  And it’s just another picture of some graduates here.

01:12:23 [Lori  Perez, LAc]

All the dogs.

01:12:25 [Anne Angelo Webb]

Okay, this is a doggy one.

01:12:28 [Lori  Perez, LAc]

Well, just because we didn’t bring the horses out for the photos.

01:12:34 [Anne Angelo Webb]

I think you guys have a YouTube channel for Tallgrass.

01:12:41 [Lori  Perez, LAc]

And on the Tallgrass animal resources website, there’s a link to webinars there as well.  So there’s lots of great snippets there that are even shorter than what I put you guys through today.  You know, 20 minute long little clips.  Yeah, just check out the website.  It is loaded with lots of information.  Besides books and charts and class schedules.  There’s just a lot of resources that Amy and Nancy, they write many articles for almost any animal publication.  And so those articles can be found there as resources as well too.

01:13:24 [Anne Angelo Webb]

And as I mentioned before, there will be a link.  I think I didn’t put it there yet.  But there will be one in the description soon.  But it’s https://www.animalacupressure.com/ (affiliate link – please use Use coupon code or 5% off products: ANNEWEBB)

01:13:50 [Lori  Perez, LAc]

There’s a link to the hands-on class schedule.  There’s a link to, like I said, other resources plus the coursework on that website.

01:14:00 [Anne Angelo Webb]

Yep.  Everything’s there.  And let me go back to.  Oh, where’s Lori?  I’m done.  This is so bizarre, the way this has been going tonight with these.  I don’t know why it’s doing three sometimes here.  Let me get rid of you.  Blank one.  There we go.  Okay.  And then also, Lori, you have two.  If you just wanted to mention, you have your own website too for your private human and animal.

01:14:32 [Lori  Perez, LAc]

Yes.  You can link to my website also.  It’s a schedule.  Link is there on the animal resources website.  My website is.  I have two, actually.  CThealingcenter.com is just my acupuncture practice website in my office in Perth.  CTattheranch.com is our black forest clinic.  And that’s a nice website if you guys want to check it out.  We talk about animal acupressure.  We talk about some other modalities that we practice, both the electroecoscope and acupressure.  And I also do practitioner and guardian guidance sessions.  So you can link to me through that.  If you need help with a case study.  If you need help with your own animal.  If you need help with your practice.  I’ve really been enjoying the one-on-one guidance sessions.  And I will keep doing them as long as I have the availability to do that.  And it’s a great way to connect with our students.  And sometimes work through individualized protocols.  If you’re stuck with anything.  So you can always reach out to me there.  As a support group.  We want to make sure that those support systems are there for you.

01:15:57 [Anne Angelo Webb]

It’s wonderful.  And also if you feel like checking out.  I have a free class.  That little QR code will take you there.  For animal communication.  They all go together.  You can learn to communicate with animals.  And do that while you’re doing your acupressure.  It will improve your work.  With the body work that you’re doing with your animals.  And you can use that.  As I said.  That QR code.  And that’s on my website.  IntuitiveTouchAnimalCare.com  And so I just want to thank you Lori.  Because this is a wealth of information.  This is really.  We are really blessed to have this information.  I mean anything that you’ve heard here tonight.  You can just immediately start working with your animals.

01:16:36 [Lori  Perez, LAc]

I hope so.  I hope that was the goal.  Is that you could end tonight.  And feel totally comfortable.  Putting your hands on your animal.  Whether you’ve been formally trained or not.  And we have a lot of support systems out there again.  Like I said.  Whether you want to do it just for your own prevention.  And care of your own animal.  Or whether you want to do it to help other animals.  Either way.

01:16:59 [Anne Angelo Webb]

And thank you to Tallgrass Animal Acupressure Resources.  For sharing Lori with us tonight.  And we hope to have you back.  If it works out for you.  And Tallgrass in the future.  Thank you.

01:17:12 [Lori  Perez, LAc]

And you guys all stay warm.  Keep warming your animals.  Yes definitely.

01:17:18 [Anne Angelo Webb]

Thank you everybody for being here. Thank you.  God bless