Asking Questions with Your Hands #159

There's a phrase Mary uses constantly in her hands-on animal work: "We ask questions with our hands. We don't make demands."

In this episode, she breaks down what that actually means, using two real examples: a senior dog struggling with stiffness and a horse with tight shoulders. You'll hear how following what feels easy, rather than pushing against what's hard, can open up movement in ways that forcing simply can't.

Whether you work with horses, dogs, or both, this one will shift how you think about every touch.

Longer:

There's a phrase at the heart of Mary Debono's hands-on work with animals: "We ask questions with our hands. We don't make demands."

In this episode, Mary explains what that principle looks like in practice, using two clear, real-world examples. First, a senior dog whose hind legs had been getting stiff.

Rather than gently forcing that movement or targeting the restriction directly, Mary guided her student to find what the dog could do easily, which was bring the legs forward, and build on that. The result? The dog began to access the restricted direction naturally, without strain.

The second example looks at horses, specifically how picking up a leg becomes an opportunity to ask a question rather than impose a direction. By following the easy range of motion and supporting the whole connected system, including the pelvis, spine, ribs, and sternum, tension releases and new movement becomes available.

This is not about recipes or formulas. It's about presence, listening through your senses, and letting what you feel under your hands guide what comes next.

KEY TAKEAWAYS:

• Your hands ask questions by following what the animal can do easily, not by targeting what they can't do.
• When you support ease, the nervous system releases habitual tension, and restricted movement often becomes available on its own.
• Nothing moves in isolation. A hind leg connects to the pelvis and spine. A front leg connects to the rib cage and thoracic spine. Working the whole system matters.
• Listening means more than sound. You're reading breath, facial expressions, what you feel under your hands, and your own nervous system's sense of whether the contact feels right to the animal.
• Forcing movement, even gently, can trigger the nervous system to brace rather than release. Following ease sidesteps that entirely.

Resources:

Grab your FREE video training to help your dog. 🐕 https://www.marydebono.com/lovedog 💥

Get Mary’s bestselling, award-winning book, “Grow Young with Your Dog,” for a super low price at: https://tinyurl.com/growyoungwithyourdog. Demonstration videos are included at no extra cost. ⬅️⬅️⬅️

💥Learn how the Feldenkrais MethodⓇ can help improve your seat, position, and balance on your horse! Free rider videos masterclass: https://www.marydebono.com/rider 💥

All information is for general educational purposes ONLY and does not constitute medical, veterinary, or training advice. Please consult a qualified healthcare provider if you, your horse, or dog are unwell or injured.  Always use caution when interacting with horses and dogs.

About the Host:

Mary Debono is a pioneer in animal and human wellness, blending her expertise as an international clinician, best-selling author, and certified Feldenkrais Method® practitioner. With over three decades of experience, Mary developed Debono Moves, a groundbreaking approach that enhances the performance, well-being, and partnership of animals and their humans.

Mary's innovative approach draws from the Feldenkrais Method®, tailored specifically for horse and dog enthusiasts.  Her methods have helped animals and humans:

• Improve athletic ability and performance
• Enhance confidence and reduce anxiety
• Reduce physical limitations and discomfort
• Deepen the human-animal bond

Mary's flagship online programs, "Move with Your Horse" and "Easier Movement, Happier Dogs," provide animal enthusiasts with an innovative approach that combines the concepts of Feldenkrais® with her signature hands-on work for horses and dogs (Debono Moves). Through this transformative approach, both people and their animal companions discover greater harmony, ease, and connection.

TRANSCRIPT:

Hi. There's an expression I use a lot with my hands on work for animals, and it's. We ask questions with our hands. We don't make demands. We ask questions. So what do I mean by that? Well, I'm going to give you two examples. One about a dog, an elderly dog, and one about a horse. And they're quite similar, actually, in. In the whole, you know, the way that the work works is very similar across species.

So I'll give you the example with a dog first. So I was working with a woman recently with a dog who's a senior, and she was noticing that her dog has gotten a little stiff, can't always jump up on the couch anymore, things like that. You know, there's just a stiffness there. And what we noticed was the dog has difficulty extending the legs back backwards, right? So that extension.

Now what some people would do, maybe in other approaches, they would maybe very gently, but they would, they would fixate on that and they would try maybe gently stretching or doing things like that, or maybe manipulating the tissue in such a way to kind of get the dog to extend the legs differently, maybe work around the hip joint, something like that. But instead, what we do in De Bono moves is we say, okay, so we're asking a question, can you do this easily?

The answer to extension was, nope, not now. I can't. Can't extend, you know, that leg backwards. However, the dog could extend it forward, right? So I directed the student to take the leg forward and to support that. So it's what we're saying is, okay, what can you do easily? And let me help you do that even better. And then as we did that, we were watching what happens in the pelvis, what happens in the spine, and it was similar to what happens in the legs.

So in other words, the directions that were easy for the dog with the legs were also the directions that the pelvis and the spine went more easily. So I had her support those directions. And by doing that, suddenly the opposite direction started becoming easy. It started becoming available. It was something that the dog could start to do. So again, we're asking questions. With all the work we're doing, we're were asking questions.

So then the dog could do both directions. The dog could bring the legs forward underneath them. The dog could take the legs, the hind legs backwards into extension. Same with the way the dog was using the pelvis and the, you know, the spine, they were getting more like the fuller use, which allows the legs then to go in the both directions more easily, takes away strain it's much more comfortable for the dog, reduces wear and tear, all those good things.

So again, that's an example of asking questions with your hands. Now, maybe you have a horse. When you pick up a leg, you can ask a question. You can say, what direction does this leg move in? Easily. And it's really important to say easily because you could probably force the leg to go into different directions. But that's not what we're after. We're saying, what is. What feels easy to you, and then we build on that.

So just like with the. With the dog, you. And I've done this many, many times with teaching my students and. And in private work I do with horses is I then follow that easy direction, and I look at all, all the parts that support that easy direction, and it's like, we emphasize them. We say, okay, what can you do easily? Let's do more of that, more of that, more of that.

And then a lot of times what happens is then that the musculature that's kind of guiding the animal in that direction can let go and allow then, other directions to be available, to be accessible, to feel easy. And we build on that. But we make sure that it's not just, for example, the leg acting in isolation. But if it's a hind leg, we're thinking, you know, pelvis and spine and all of that, even a front leg, even though we know that the shoulders aren't attached, you know, with a bony connection to the thorax, to the trunk of the horse or the dog.

They don't have clavicles, for example. But we know that the free movement of the shoulders is dependent on the free movement of the rib cage, which includes the spine, right? The thoracic spine, as well as the ribs and the sternum, et cetera. So we do all these things with our hands to say, okay, what can you do easily now, how can I support you to do that even more easily?

Right? Use some of your own effort to take the strain away from the animal. And now suddenly, the other directions become easier. So the horse or the dog starts to feel so much more comfortable and have so many more options in their movement. But it boils down to this. You're asking questions with your hands. You're not making demands. You're not saying, okay, this leg will move this way.

Like, for example, if you're, you know, some people, what they're doing, say they're working with a horse, and they. The shoulders are tight, they might put some traction on that leg, and they think they're freeing up the shoulder. The way I look at it is if that doesn't feel safe to the horse, then the nervous system is going to raise all kinds of red flags and that can really backfire.

So you need to be really careful about that kind of work. I mean, there is a way to lengthen the leg once you get all the parts worked, working in harmony. And it feels like it's an easy thing to lengthen the leg, but to do it despite the animal's restriction, that to me is not the best approach. It's not the way I work, it's not the way I teach.

So again, you're always asking questions and then you listen for the answers, right? It's not like you just ask the question. You do what you had planned to do, you ask the question and you let that guide you. Can you move here easily? How or how does this even feel? For example, I talk a lot in my work about support, providing support. So again, whether you're working with a dog or a horse, you use your hands to provide support in very specific ways.

And then that often allows the nervous system to let go of habitual tension and holding. And so it's like, well, so the question becomes, where can I offer you support, right? And you listen for the answer. And I don't mean like you listen with your ears only, you're listening with your senses. You're letting your nervous system take in that information, say, yeah, this feels good to the horse, this feels relieving to the dog, right?

Because you're judging by their responses, what you feel under your hands, but also all the responses, their breath, their facial expressions, right? All the information. So you, you, you allow yourself to really be present, not to be fixated on a specific path or a formula or recipe or a step by step, you want to, you know, do with your dog, but you think about asking questions with your hands, with your horse or your dog or your cat, whoever you're working with.

It's always about asking questions, listening, listening for the response and using all your senses, letting your whole nervous system process the response and then modifying what you're doing in response so you know appropriate to what you've listen to. So that is how we ask questions with our hands. So I hope this gives you some food for thought. Thank you so much for listening. I love sharing this work with you and let me know how you listen to your animal.

How do you listen to your horse or your dog? How do you ask questions?