International Equine Touch Awareness Day

Remembering Founder Jock Ruddock’s Birthday

During my Equine Touch training I had the pleasure of watching Jock demonstrate his Equine Touch modality a number of times and he and wife Ivana were the teachers and assessors on my level three training and exam assessment. Jock had a great sense of humour and it was always amusing to see how he and Ivana would banta one another, but there was always a degree of seriousness under the humour with wanting to help horses and share this wonderful teaching with others. Jock very sadly passed away in 2011 but left a legacy he and Ivana had developed in the Equine Touch that has become a wonderful international education programme and gift to horses the world over.

On Wednesday 25th July it would have been Jocks birthday and as a way of remembering him practitioners and students were invited to remember our founder and spread the love with some ET!

Happy Birthday Jock

So What is Equine Touch?

It is a non invasive, non diagnostic gentle body work that can help break the pain spiral using a holistic address that is a series of Aikido type moves over soft tissue and energy meridian points. It rebalances the horse allowing him or her to find homeostasis for optimum functionality. It promotes wellbeing, relaxation and helps dissolve energy blocks improving flow of Ki. The individual moves send a vibration through the tissue utilising the breath and intention. The move is applied over many specific points set points which can release hypertonic and traumatised muscles, assist in detoxification and lymphatic drainage working over the fascia and underlying tissue. The relaxation promotes the autonomic nervous system to drop so that repair and renewal can take place.

Some History

Jock originally developed a bodywork modality for humans which he called Vibromuscular Harmonisation Technique ( VHT ) in 1996. This he had researched and developed over several years from his past knowledge and training combining techniques with influences from Bowen with Aikido and other martial arts. When teaching a student in Aberdeen in 1997 they decided to try the moves on her horse with amazing results and so ET was born. During his second workshop teaching ET in the Czech Republic to a team of vets he met Ivana a young veterinary surgeon interested in horses and small animals and complimentary and holistic modalities. They began working together and their skills complimented one another. Jock was an intuitive bodyworker and Ivana had a scientific back ground in veterinary medicine and a love and knowledge of holistic medicine and anatomy. She was able to apply fact and give form to Jocks insights and work, thus developing a structured system that would become a comprehensive educational programme. Their passion was initially to spread the Foundation class to enable horse owners and carers access to the practical side of ET to help the horses in their care to have a quality and pain free life and to deepen their knowledge of influential factors that can contribute to pain and disease. Taking the training further ET evolved to have several levels of training with a practitioner route. After Jock passed away Ivana has continued to spread their work. She has written several books and continues to teach and support students and practitioners of ET, VHT and Canine Touch with an International Education programme. IETA ( International Equine Touch Association of UK and Ireland ) is the professional body and regulator for the Equine Touch.