Jayne Roberts - Equijay

My body of work has been slowly emerging from my own ride home to myself.

The last 10 years have been about questioning everything the first 40 or so taught me. Quite the messy mud-puddle to sit with.

From Making Sense of Horse Sense, through Forage-Friendship-Freedom to Spirit-Soma-Science… it’s been a wild ride and there’s still so much left to explore.

What I ‘do’ is a difficult one to articulate but if I had to sum it up, it’s this:

I help people become the kind of human horses would want in their herd. Because that’s truly who I want to be and all I feel they’ve ever really asked from us.

What I’ve come to realise is that while we long for change around us, nothing changes until something changes. And the only thing any of us can truly change is ourselves.

What I’ve also come to realise, often with great introverted, independent reluctance, is that we all have our own pony to ride but we were never meant to do it alone.

And so the Equijay barn doors officially re-open with this short somatic practice I made as a gift for those called to ride alongside (link below). It reminds me of where I began and where I return to, over and over.

I do hope you come along for the ride x

https://preview.mailerlite.io/forms/2224081/185640308489323625/share

This is me. Georgia, 🇺🇸 2010. The day before I became a mother. The day before the real mucking out began.

Younger she had no idea what was composting.

Neither did I.

What follows is the first in the series of The Ride Home- dispatches from the archive and the woman who lived them.

A return to what was, to re-claim and re-member what is.

https://equijay.substack.com/p/the-ride-home-dispatches-from-the?r=wpb2l

Link in comments to Substack- The Sanctity of Equus - it's just a a more intimate space to spiral into that the AI slop on here. Trot on over if you fancy

Jx

Laminitis season again… and the focus is the same

Weight
Grass
Restriction

And yes—those things matter.

But I think we’re still missing a big part of the picture.

Because I can take two groups of native ponies—both good doers, both theoretically high risk—and get very different outcomes depending on how they live.

My own ponies are on marginal land—mountain pasture, heathland, woodland.
They move, they browse, they forage, and in winter they fend for themselves unless conditions are extreme.

On paper, they should be laminitis-prone.

In reality, they’re far more stable than many horses kept on improved pasture with controlled grazing.

So I started looking at what’s different.

When we test the microbiome, one of the clearest patterns is fibre-digesting bacteria—particularly Fibrobacteres.

In more managed systems, it’s not unusual to see levels around 3%.

In my herd—and in the Carneddau ponies nearby—it’s consistently much higher, often 10–15%.

That’s not a small difference.

These bacteria are central to fibre breakdown and hind gut stability.

So the question becomes:

If the microbiome is shaped by environment…
and the microbiome influences how the horse handles fibre, sugar and inflammation…

are we looking in the wrong place when we focus only on restriction?

There’s a growing move toward regenerative grazing and more biodiverse systems—and I don’t think that’s a coincidence.

Because the more diverse the environment, the more resilient the system tends to be.

Laminitis is complex. It’s never one thing.

But environment → microbiome → metabolism is a link that’s getting harder to ignore.

If you’re dealing with a horse that is “managed carefully” but still not quite right, this is often the layer I start looking at.

Have you seen differences between horses in different environments?

You don’t need more.

More trainings.
More certifications.
More clinics.
More coaches.
More courses.
More retreats.
More modalities.
More breathwork.
More healers.
More medicine you already own.

You need s p a c e.

To sense your way back.

To feel without making meaning.

To follow your breath…
where does it end? Where does it want to go?

And you don’t need to be told any of this.

Your body already knows.

She’s just been waiting for you to get quiet enough to hear her.

Jx

The other day, Pluto gave himself a shock at the yard gates.

Early spring.
Cold air.
Wind up.
Horses galloping.
System stacked.

His headcollar clanked on the gate and he responded with a space-hopper move the Spanish Riding School would have applauded.

Full. Fast. Clean. Honest. Agile as hell.

And then… he came straight back down to earth alongside me.

Not because I calmed him.

Because I didn't meet his activation with more activation.

I stayed.
Witnessing without want.

Calm isn't the goal. Capacity is.

A healthy nervous system will startle, mobilise, orient… and then return... without getting stuck in the surge or collapsing because of it.

That's range.
That's response.
That's resilience.
And it's no different for us.

If you've ever been on a livery yard and felt the quiet pressure to rein it in tighter... in yourself and in your horse... this one's for you.

Your full expression was never the problem.

Full piece on Substack https://open.substack.com/pub/equijay/p/from-spook-to-sanctuary?utm_campaign=post-expanded-share&utm_medium=web

So what is it I offer?

Coherence.

Not performance.
Not perfection.
Not fixing.
Not “healing.”
Not transcendence.
Not training.
Not teaching.

Just a woman landing in her actual body.
And a horse finally meeting someone who’s home.

Barn changer 🐴

Rethinking Horse Welfare: Beyond the Basics

Ever wondered if we are truly seeing what matters to our horses? A new framework called the Teleonome invites us to do just that. It is not just about counting behaviors or measuring stress. It is about understanding the whole adaptive system of the animal, how feelings, motivations, and environment interact to shape wellbeing.

Key insights:

* Welfare is not just what we can measure. It is what matters to the horse’s own system
* Emotions and motivations are meaningful indicators, not side notes
* Physical signs make sense when seen through the lens of survival and flourishing
* Helps us rethink welfare in contexts where traditional measures fall short

This approach encourages us to ask: Are our horses simply surviving, or are they thriving within their evolutionary design? This is a key concept in embodying the emergent Five Domains model of welfare assessment, which will guide our practice moving forward.

Over to you:
What welfare signals do you think we have been overlooking? How might this perspective change the way we train, care for, or rehabilitate horses?

Frontiers | The teleonome: a framework for understanding animal welfare integrating adaptive capabilities, affective regulation, agency, and environmental affordances This paper introduces the teleonome as a unifying biological construct that clarifies the goal-directed organised system by which organisms engage in adaptiv...

I do not seek the limelight
Nor do I yearn for the spotlight.

I am a tender of thresholds
Most alive where opposites touch.

Dawn & dusk
Death & birth
Shadow & light
Blood & bone
Silence & scream
Veil & vision

I hold the reins in these liminal spaces,
with an open, reverent wonder
for what awakens when senses re-emerge & converge.

I’ve been here before.

I’ve held them many times.

And I’ve learned how to unbridle, untether & untame.

Not from dripping bare in wild performative abandon

But from slowing…
sensing…
spiralling…
& feeling my way back into the sacred cosmology of my own body.

And you can do that too.

If you’re ready to take back your own reins, this space was crafted especially for you…

To Re-claim

To Re-member

To Re-wild.

Are you ready to ride?

Jx

I DO NOT SEEK THE LIMELIGHT I do not seek the limelight