20/04/2026
Might need a coffee for this one 🤣
An incredibly detailed post with some valuable information.
This dude has some valuable insights 💕
Closed loops, the autonomic system and the brain.
Recently someone made these comments about my post about closed loops.
They suggested that the model was over simplified, that it had “forgotten the brain,” that proprioception can only influence the system if the brain is capable of receiving and processing the information, that the autonomic nervous system is more foundational than hoof care, and that rather than a loop, the system is better understood as a spiral. They also raised the point that many horses show profound differences in resilience, that some perform despite pain, and that in their experience interventions often fail unless the nervous system, particularly autonomic dysfunction, is addressed first.
It is a thoughtful response, it is pointing toward something real. But it is also a misrepresentation of my wider body of work as a response to a very small extracted piece of a much larger framework. Because I completely agree with the sentiment and teach as such….
A Facebook post cannot be a 100,000 word textbook. It cannot hold every interacting variable at once. It has to isolate one mechanism clearly enough that it can be seen. That is what that post was doing. It was not attempting to describe the entire system. It was describing one reinforcing pathway within it.
When you step into the full model presented in the book, the picture becomes very different.
Posture is not treated as a muscular habit. It is not treated as a mechanical shape. It is defined as the observable output of a coupled system.
That system includes mechanical inputs, proprioceptive inputs, central processing, autonomic regulation, environmental constraints, and behavioural adaptation.
The “loop” described in the post was one pathway within that system, not the system itself.
The role of the brain is not absent. It is distributed.
One of the most common misunderstandings in these discussions is the assumption that the brain operates as a single, conscious processor that must interpret and approve incoming information before anything changes. That is not how biological systems function. Much of the organisation of posture, tone, and limb orientation occurs below conscious awareness, through spinal reflexes, subcortical processing, and autonomic regulation. The system is already adapting before what most people would call “processing” has even occurred. The hoof does not send information up to be debated. It participates in a continuous exchange of signals that shape the system in real time.
This is where the autonomic nervous system becomes central, and this is explicitly addressed in my wider book. Which completely agrees with the sentiments from Heart Equine.
In the chapter on posture, environment, autonomic state, and pathology, the autonomic system is described not as something separate from mechanics, but as a driver within a two way loop. Autonomic state alters muscle tone and fascial tension. That altered tone changes posture. That posture changes how the limb meets the ground. That changes loading. That loading alters proprioceptive input. That input feeds back into both central and autonomic systems. This is not a one way pathway. It is continuous coupling.
Now add the effect of domestication.
My book makes a very deliberate move here. It identifies that the horse we are treating is not a neutral organism. It is an organism whose input systems have been systematically altered by human management. The hoof is often confined, shod, or exposed to artificial surfaces. The head and neck are constrained by tack and riding. The stomatognathic system is influenced by bits and feeding practices. Movement is restricted compared to natural conditions. Social and environmental stressors are altered. All of these factors feed directly into autonomic tone.
So when we talk about autonomic dysfunction, we are not talking about an isolated neurological issue. We are talking about the cumulative effect of altered inputs across multiple systems. The autonomic system is responding to the environment the horse is living in. It is not independent of it.
This is where the idea of visceral and cognitive dysfunction becomes important.
Visceral systems are tightly linked to autonomic regulation. Gastrointestinal stress, chronic inflammation, pain, and metabolic disturbance all feed into sympathetic and parasympathetic balance. That altered balance changes baseline tone, alters vascular dynamics, shifts tissue perfusion, and changes how the body distributes load. A horse with visceral discomfort does not stand the same way as a horse without it. It cannot. The system reorganises to reduce perceived threat and maintain internal stability.
This then feeds into a sympathetic loop between posture and visceral function.
Cognitive state sits on top of this. Learning, expectation, fear, training history, and behavioural adaptation all shape how the horse interprets incoming information. Two horses can receive the same mechanical input and respond differently because their prior experiences and internal states are different. One may tolerate and adapt. Another may protect and resist. This is not a failure of the mechanical model. It is the inclusion of a higher level of organisation within it.
So when the comment raises the point that horses can perform at a high level despite pain, that there is variability in resilience, and that some do not respond to intervention as expected, that is entirely consistent with the model. It is exactly what you would predict in a system where multiple layers are interacting.
Resilience is not a single property. It is the combined effect of mechanical capacity, tissue adaptation, autonomic regulation, metabolic health, behavioural tolerance, and environmental conditioning. A racehorse can tolerate immense load because the system has adapted, sometimes at cost, to maintain performance within those constraints. Another horse may fail under lower loads because one or more parts of that system are already compromised.
This is why my book does not present a single entry point for intervention.
You can enter the system through the hoof. You can change loading, alter proprioceptive input, and allow the system to reorganise around a different mechanical signal.
You can enter through the autonomic system. You can reduce stress, improve regulation, and allow tone and posture to normalise.
You can enter through the visceral system. You can improve internal health and change the baseline state of the organism.
You can enter through training and behaviour. You can reshape expectation and movement patterns.
In practice, the most effective outcomes often come from addressing multiple layers simultaneously! This includes the brain and cognitive processes! I agree!
So when the original post says you cannot sustainably change posture without changing the input, it is not claiming that the hoof is the only input. It is making a very specific point. If the hoof is part of the compensatory loop and you ignore it, you are asking the system to maintain a new output while the original driver is still present. The system will revert. The same logic applies in reverse. If autonomic dysfunction is a primary driver and you ignore it, the system will also revert.
These are not competing models. They are the same principle expressed at different points in a coupled system.
Finally, the idea that this is better understood as a spiral rather than a loop is not a contradiction. Over time, these loops do not simply repeat. They accumulate. They drift. They stabilise or destabilise. They move toward health or pathology depending on the dominant influences. That temporal progression is already built into the framework through concepts like cumulative loading, viscoelastic creep, mechanotransduction, and adaptive limits. The system evolves through time. But at any given moment, it is still governed by interacting loops.
So the broader point is this.
The original post was never intended to be the whole model. It was a window into one part of it. The full framework already includes the brain, the autonomic nervous system, visceral function, cognitive influence, environmental stress, and the variability in resilience that we all see in practice.
What looks like an omission at the level of a single post is actually a matter of scale.
When you zoom out, the system is not simpler than described in the comment. It is more integrated than either position on its own.
Thank you Heart equine for engaging with my post and elevating the conversation 🥰
