“The History Of Tellington TTouch” - Alex Wilson

Introduction:

Over fifteen years ago, I first came across the Tellington TTouch® method (TTouch). At the time, I was working for a company selling herbs for dogs and horses, and we were exhibiting at a holistic event. The stand next to us was TTouch. I had been working in the Thoroughbred horse world, and the idea of touching horses and dogs seemed a bit alien to me, but after four days, I began to understand how this amazing method could benefit my two puppies. I invited one of their practitioners to come for a home visit, which opened up an amazing new world: the world of Tellington TTouch®.

Alex Wilson receives his Senior Practitioner Status from founder Linda Tellington-Jones

For many people, the first question they ask is, what is TTouch? Is it a training method or a therapy? This diagram, drawn by Lindy Dekker, a TTouch Instructor in South Africa, explains the work. Firstly, our ethos is based on the philosophy of respect. TTouch is a permission-based training, and if the dog is not comfortable with what we are doing, we listen to them. We always say we do TTouch for our animals, not to our animals. That brings me to the components of the work. First, we have observations - looking at the dog’s body language, how they interact with the environment, the people they are with, what is being asked of them, and so on. We then think about what we can change to make things easier for the dog using the tools in our TTouch toolbox. We call this "observations and possible solutions."

The next part is the bodywork. This involves light-pressure touch, not massage. We have circular touches (moving the skin in a circle and a quarter, we will discuss how the circle developed later in this article), slides, lifts, and extremity touches. There are over thirty touches, all named after animals. Then we have the leading exercises, using two-point harnesses, double-ended leads and connectors, etc., to help dogs walk in their natural balance, which in turn influences their mental and emotional balance. TTouch recognised the link between posture and behaviour. Finally, there is the equipment we use and different groundwork exercises, plus textured surfaces (which help give dogs sensory experiences through their paws).

Bodywork is one of the key elements of TTouch. Many people immediately think of bodywork when they hear the term TTouch. It started in 1960. At the time, Linda Tellington-Jones, the founder of TTouch, owned a Thoroughbred stud with 90 broodmares. That year, her 80-year-old grandfather, Will Caywood, visited Linda from Moscow. He had been a sucessful jockey and, afterwards, a leading trainer. Caywood attributed much of his success to two things. Every horse in his stable was rubbed with short strokes all over their body. This was a form of gypsy massage because, at that time, most of the grooms in Russian racing stables were gypsies who had great empathy with horses. Caywood also developed an extraordinary relationship with the horses in his care. He explained to Linda that he never entered a horse in a race unless it told him it was feeling fit enough to win.

Linda started using this form of massage and wrote the first book in English, Physical Therapy for the Athletic Horse, in 1965. She found it very helpful for her horses to recover after 100-mile endurance rides and horse shows. It never crossed Linda’s mind at that time that it was possible to change an animal’s behaviour by working on the body.

In 1975, Linda enrolled at the Humanistic Psychology Institute in San Francisco, taught by the renowned Israeli physicist Dr. 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 in helping people recover function after injury, improving athletic ability, increasing physical and mental function, and expanding one’s capacity and potential for learning.

At the time, Linda ran a residential riding school, which is featured in her book Strike Along Trot. She enrolled with Feldenkrais to help her students. On the second day of the training, Feldenkrais made a statement that changed her life. He said that it was possible for a human to learn in one experience by using non-habitual, gentle movements that activate new neural pathways in the brain, which in turn activate new brain cells. These new brain cells then support enhanced learning.

Linda wondered, if this were true for humans, could it work for animals? What could she do with a horse that involved movements they couldn’t make themselves, but which would enhance their ability to learn? Linda wanted to understand whether they could learn something in one experience rather than through the multi-repetition method traditionally used in the horse and dog worlds.

After the class, Linda approached a friend who had lots of horses to see if he had a horse with issues she could work with. He had a 16-year-old mare who had never been ridden and was almost impossible to catch in her field.

Linda started moving the mare's body in different ways and directions. She took the ear and moved it differently, took the leg, and so on. She was just exploring. When she finished, after about 30 minutes, the owner thought she had hypnotised the horse because she was so calm. She never did anything difficult, just explored the mare's movement. The next morning, Linda received a call from her friend explaining that, when he went to catch the mare, she came to the gate for the first time. When he put her in the stable, instead of diving for the hay in the corner, she stood there wanting attention.

In 1976, there was another milestone in the development of TTouch. Linda read a book called Man On His Nature by Nobel Prize winner Sir Charles Sherrington, who developed the study of protons and lights in the cell. In this book, he wrote about how every cell in the body knows its function. This became the basis for the one-and-a-quarter basic circle that we still use in TTouch today. Sherrington gave wonderful examples, such as how, when we receive a cut, the cells know how to heal. Linda started to see the human body as a collection of cells.

In 1983, TTouch began with the circle. Linda was working on a difficult horse in a veterinary clinic. The mare belonged to one of the vets, and they couldn’t determine what was wrong with her. In those days, they didn’t have chiropractic, osteopathy, cranial sacral work, homeopathy, or even acupuncture. The mare appeared to be in pain everywhere she was touched. Linda put her hands on her very gently just to give her a sense of herself, and she became calm. The owner couldn’t understand why the horse wasn’t trying to bite or kick. Linda invited the owner to move the skin in a circle (the circle and a quarter came later). It is important to remember in TTouch that we move the skin; we don’t stroke over it. When she did this, the horse became as calm for the owner as she had for Linda. That was the moment when Linda left the Feldenkrais work behind and started following the track of the circle.

Another important book Linda read was The Biology of Belief by Dr. Bruce Lipton (the father of stem cell treatments). He wrote about the hundred billion cells in the body, how they communicate with each other, and how they know their function - just as Sir Charles Sherrington had written. Lipton explained that DNA does not control us, but we can shift the DNA in our bodies. This was when Linda realised the importance of the circular touches, which had evolved into a circle and a quarter.

When Linda teaches the touches on a dog, a horse or a person, she tells you to imagine a traditional clock face (with numbers, not digital). On that clock, you put imaginary numbers with six o’clock towards the ground as if you are looking at it from the outside, then add six, nine, etc. Adding the numbers activates the logical part of our brain (the right side). One of the reasons this work is so easy to learn is that we use these logical ways of learning. This also applies to learning the pressure and tempo of the touches. This is the core of the Tellington TTouch® Method.

Creativity also comes from the right side of the brain, along with intuition, having a sense, learning to listen and feel, and compassion. We wouldn’t be reading this magazine if we didn’t love dogs.

The one thing that has kept Linda’s passion alive all these years happened in 1983. She was asked to be in a study by Anna Wise from the Boulder Institute of Biofeedback because Wise had observed Linda working with a horse. She believed Linda was in what is called the awakened mind state, which was first identified by Maxwell Cade in measuring states of consciousness. She watched Linda work and measured her brainwaves, discovering that Linda was in this awakened mind state when moving the circular touches. This meant she had activation in both hemispheres of her brain, including beta brainwaves, which are usually associated with left-brain activity.

It’s really fascinating to understand what happens to us when we start doing the one-and-a-quarter circle on the body. It generates more creativity and a deeper understanding of the world around us.

Over the years, this work has developed. With the help of Linda’s sister, Robyn Hood, anyone can learn to use TTouch with their own dogs. You can take online or livestream courses, attend in-person workshops, or arrange one-to-one sessions with practitioners. In the UK, there are practitioners, including myself, teaching this work, and there is a practitioner training programme. To start your journey I teach an online course that can be found at www.ttouch.dog and I offer in-person help in the Midlands and worldwide on Zoom, visit https://www.xtradog.training.