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WELLNESS
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8 TIPS for staying healthy in COLD WEATHER
Going
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Why many are switching
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Great holiday gift ideas & recipes NOV/DEC. 2006 Display until Dec 22, 2006 $5.95 USA/Canada
VOLUME 1 ISSUE 3
Insulin
resistance:
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equine wellness
contents 21
Photo: James Shaw
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Photo: The Cloud Foundation
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equine wellness
features
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Every breath you take
21
8 considerations for cold weather
How breathwork can improve your riding
Helpful hints for a worry-free winter
30
The eyes have it
34
What a treat!
An intro to iridology for horses
Fast and easy holiday recipes your horse will love
52
Click on this icon to visit featured links
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Going barefoot
45
Forever free
Why natural hoof care is fast coming the new standard
The fight to preserve Cloud’s wild herd
55
Insulin resistance
59
Rider essentials
Why it’s looking more like diabetes all the time
What every rider needs this season
equine wellness
The
eyes have it An intro to iridology
by Lisa Ross-Williams
the human iris. Although this grid The eyes are the window to the soul. toloosely correlated to the horse’s eye, it wasn’t until recently that a specialized What many people don’t realize is that the grid was developed for equines. eye – the iris, to be exact – can also mirror physical health, in both humans and How does it work? Iridology involves reading the iris (the animals. By analyzing the various spots, colored part of the eye) for imbalances the body. Essentially, the iris is a flecks, lines and discolorations in the iris in“blueprint” of the tissues and organs, can reflect areas and stages of of a person, dog, cat or horse, potential and inflammation as well as the healing health problems and imbalances can be process. Each part of the iris correlates to different areas of the body, with the left eye corresponding with the left side and determined and corrected.
Looking back The Greek physician Hippocrates was said to have looked in the eyes for signs of illness, but it wasn’t until the late 19th century that iridology was rediscovered by Hungarian physician Ignatz von Peczely and Swedish clergyman Nils Liljequist. Legend has it that as a boy, Peczely captured an owl and,
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during the commotion, the bird broke its leg. Peczely noticed that an odd mark appeared on the owl’s iris shortly afterwards, and that as the wound healed, the spot changed. In 1950, Bernard Jensen, DC, PhD, pioneered iridology in the U.S. and developed a grid which mapped out the relation of various organs and tissues
the right eye with the right. Interestingly, the iris is set up in the same order as the body. In other words, going in a clockwise direction around the pupil, issues associated with the head appear at the top of the iris, then move down and through the internal areas and organs, and back up towards the head again. Issues show up as spots, flecks, streaks, lines and texture changes in various colors and shades. Iridologists believe
Photo: Julia Borysewicz
these marks occur because of the thousands of nerve endings attached to the optic nerve as well as the base of the brain and every other tissue and organ in the body. The iridologist uses a specialized grid to correlate the markings to the related locations in the body. It should be noted that iridology is not a true diagnostic technique in that it cannot determine specific diseases. It only picks up imbalances and changes within the body.
Reading equine eyes Thanks to naturopath Mercedes Colburn and Dena Eckerdt, DVM, iridology is quickly becoming an integral part of preventative horse care. “The markings of the iris represent a detailed picture of the body’s integrity in areas such as constitutional strength, areas of congestion, toxic accumulations, digestive health and inherent strengths and weakness,” says Dr. Colburn. Using either a sophisticated camera to take a picture of the horse’s iris,
or a penlight to document the marks on an eye diagram, the iridologist compares his or her findings to the Equine Iridology Grid. This grid, developed by Drs. Colburn and Eckerdt, took almost ten years to finalize through charting hundreds of horses and using a doubleblind system of testing and follow-up veterinary exams. A dog and cat grid has also recently been developed.
mation, each with a corresponding color.
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Acute – shows up as a white mark on iris and is often a painful issue. Sub-acute – yellow and still often painful to the horse.
Chronic – presents as gray in color and often indicates a less painful, older issue.
The grid, which is shaped like Degenerative – shows up as an iris, is sectioned off and labeled dark gray or black, indicating with the corresponding areas of the body. Those who PELVIC FLEXURE study iridology can EYE not only see where UPPER JAW NOSE tissue damage or imbalLOWER JAW ance is located, but LARYNX THYROID also the degree of TRACHEA damage and whether ESOPHAGUS SCAPULA it is recent or old, CERVICAL depending on the color THORACLE LUMBAR of the sign and the BLADDER smoothness of the UTERUS iris. According to Dr. ADRENAL KIDNEY Colburn, there are Grid compliments of CECUM four stages of inflamThrough The Eye International
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