Massaged back to good health

The Dilmun Stables will be hosting its sixth of this season’s Show Jumping League events on Friday. Starting at 10am, it will include the usual classes, Green Horse/Rider, followed by Junior and Adult 1 and 2.

Hussain Al Boosta will be creating the course this week and promises a few surprises. All are welcome to come along and to watch the morning’s action.

Shakhoora Riding Centre is also set to hold two more events this month. The fourth of its dressage shows will take place on February 17, with the third in its show jumping events taking place on the following Friday. Both events are part of Shakhoora’s current In-House League for this season.

It is also ‘all go’ at Twin Palms Riding Centre at the moment, as its legion of loyal workers are currently busily building and constructing the Cross Country Course for the TWIXSTEAD event on February 17. 

This event is the talk of the stable and will certainly prove a challenge for riders, particularly those who usually only stay within the security of their own chosen discipline. In this event they have to take to the arena in three different disciplines, dressage, show jumping and something different, cross-country.

This course has been designed and produced within the grounds of Twin Palms which may seem somewhat mundane to the hardened riding pros out there, but when your horses have been confined to barracks for so long, even the journey to a new paddock can be a totally terrifying ordeal.

They will be encountering goats and sheep as well as many various other obstacles placed to complete the course, objects that simply don’t exist in the comfort of their own stables and paddocks.

It will certainly put these horses and riders through their paces and seriously catapult them out of their comfort zones. This is going to be a fantastic event, to which spectators are welcome to attend.

There were no local events held last weekend, so I have brought you something a little different for my column this week, a lady new to Bahrain who brings with her expertise in human and horse massage, Lucia Lloyd.
 
Lucia became a massage therapist 10 years ago. Tired of being given the same prescription for different symptoms – from a common cold to a skin rash – she believed there had to be an alternative.

Reflexology caught Lucia’s interest, so whilst continuing to work full-time, she studied, gaining qualifications in the zone therapy, the alternative medicine involving the physical act of applying pressure to the feet, hands, or ears with specific thumb, finger, and hand techniques without the use of oil or lotion.

It is based on what reflexologists claim to be a system of reflex areas that they say reflect an image of the body on the feet and hands, with the premise that such work effects a physical change to the body.
 
Following on from reflexology, Lucia studied Swedish massage. At the end of her second course she decided to start her own business as a mobile therapist and later became the resident therapist at an exclusive boutique hotel in Altea.

With an insatiable appetite to learn, she added more treatments to her repertoire, though not sat at home or in a college classroom – she took to the Himalayan foothills to study thermal therapy (hot and cool stones) and Indian head massage!

After her Himalayan adventure Lucia returned to her native home in the Costa Blanca continuing her now thriving business. A few years later she made another life-changing decision to sell her business in order to start a family, though continuing to work at a local chiropractic clinic. 

In September 2008, her husband was offered a job in Dubai. Wondering how she could utilise her skills in the Gulf she soon discovered just how much people loved their horses in the region, inspiring her to apply for the Equine Sports Massage Diploma Course.
 
She spent most of 2009 juggling a family, coursework, case studies and flights to and from the UK for one-to-one tuition and eventually qualified in January 2012.
 
Lucia, who has ridden horses all her life, started massaging them back to fitness three years ago.

She said: "It felt like a very natural transition to start massaging them. I find it very rewarding when I see the effects the massage has on the horse, it has a positive result on their whole demeanour. 

"To witness the progress a horse makes from appearing stiff and uncomfortable, even in pain, to fluid and relaxed movements is immensely satisfying. It basically makes them more flexible and enables them to move and work in the correct manner."

Moving to Bahrain last September, Lucia started riding at some of the local stables and it soon became apparent there was a need for a skilled equine sports massage therapist, especially due to the Glanders situation and the ban restricting the movements of horses. As a result ponies and horses may not be getting as much exercise as they were used to, and like people, they get stiff!

Lucia has also diversified to move with the constant changes in her life, for human clients, alongside her reflexology, Swedish massage, thermal therapy and head massage, she is also a practitioner of Trigger Point Therapy offering massage therapy for sports injuries, back and joint pain and restricted movement injuries Ö and what makes her unique is that she offers the same treatments to horses.

For advice and more information she can be contacted by emailing lucia.lloyd1@gmail.com

All that remains for this week is to wish a massive ‘Good Luck’ to everyone competing this weekend.