By Megan Gesell
Owner at Megan Elaine, Inc.
My husband and I have been on a natural health journey for over 20 years. We live in one of the sickest countries (US) on Earth and spend the most money on healthcare & prescription drugs. Something is wrong with how we’ve been conditioned to take care of ourselves.
We’ve made a conscious decision to spend our money on HEALTH care vs SICK care. We created a 'healing home' which basically means we stopped giving our money to companies that were knowingly poisoning us.
We need to get rid of toxic products that are known to cause disease. We can do ‘all the things’ right but if we're poisoning ourselves daily that will negate all the good, we are trying to do.
Why wouldn't the same logic apply to our barn and our horse’s health?
The good news is that we can create a HEALING BARN in 3 Easy Steps!
1) Become Aware: Become aware of how toxins affect our horse's vitality. Identify and remove toxic products.
Most disease comes by what we put on our in our bodies - same goes for our pets.
A lot of horse owners are feeding sugar, GMO's, synthetics, feeding grass/hay designed to fatten up cattle for slaughter with high sugar content - sugar feeds disease, vaccinating to the hilt - all vaccines have toxic ingredients that can cause disease, using drugs - all drugs have side effects, over deworming, using toxic horse care products, etc.
2) Eliminate The Risks: We must take action by changing our buying habits. In other words, we must start purchasing healthier alternatives.
Reduce the toxic load on their bodies (bioaccumulation)
Become more responsible consumers. Purchase products that are safe for us, them, and our environment.
Vote with your dollars. Stop giving your money to companies that are knowingly poisoning our horses!
3) Flood With Nutrients: Choose products with additional health supportive benefits, going BEYOND GREEN.
We are seeing companies advertising their products as 'green', 'natural', some even say they have essential oils in them because that industry is exploding.
Profit driven companies are trying to get their piece of the buying pie without actually providing safe products.
In order for a company to slap an 'organic' label on a product they only need ONE organic compound, and the rest can be filled with toxins!
'Organic' standards only mean the fields haven't had toxins in them for 3-5 years. Round Up can stay in the soil for up to TWENTY years!
Greenwashing is when a company makes one product that is safe and then once their brand is recognized as 'organic' 'natural' etc. they make other products that have toxins in them.
So, we need to go BEYOND GREEN. We need to raise our standards.
Supporting our horses’ immune systems doesn’t have to be complicated or expensive. We noticed big changes in our horses’ immune systems and ability to heal themselves when we stopped putting the before mentioned ‘bad’ things into their bodies. Which makes sense, when we put only GOOD things in, their bodies no longer had to work so hard at detoxing – they could just focus on healing which they were designed to do!
I want to share our favorites and what has worked tremendously for us over the years. These are the SAME things we use for us to keep us living above the wellness line which is fun. I love knowing that what we use is safe enough for them and powerful enough for them, too. If we run out of something in the house, I go to the barn to ‘borrow’ it from the horses until I can replace it. Ha!
The top 3 things we all use for immune support are Ningxia Red, Sulfurzyme & Raindrop Therapy. Ningxia Red & Sulfurzyme are daily supplements. For maintenance, we get one Raindrop per month (I go to my chiro and get an adjustment and a Raindrop every month) and I give the horses one per month. For targeted support, I increase as needed. When Joey had Lyme, my holistic vet recommended 3 per week. When we’re hauling and on the road all winter, we all get a Raindrop every couple of weeks.
Oils such as Thieves, citrus oils, or spice oils are added to daily rations to keep the immune system healthy or to help balance other body systems such as the endocrine, eliminative, and more.
In many oily barns, essential oils make up fly sprays, helping to avoid the toxic buildup of daily chemical sprays. Enclosed barns can economically diffuse oils and work on an entire herd at once. Think of using oils such as R.C., Raven, or Purification to combat the indoor ammonia smell in the winter, while helping the respiratory and immune systems as well.
Other things to consider – our gut is the hub of our immune system so taking care of that is important. We take Life 9 daily and I give to our horses as needed. It’s a powerful probiotic. Sulfurzyme powder contains a prebiotic.
Our emotions play a part, so I love using oils that make us all feel happy, safe, etc. (Valor, Peace & Calming, Lavender, Stress Away, Release, Raindrop, etc.)
“There are so many safe & effective ways to help our horses without doing any harm. In a healthy world, horses naturally come into contact with essential oils. This happens every day by grazing on live plants, scratching on bark, or eating herbs and grasses. Many flavourings in horse feed such as anise, fennel, peppermint, etc. come from essential oils as well. For millennia, nature has offered those oils to horses as a wonderful way to stay healthy.
These days, more and more equines are kept in unnatural surroundings due to space and time considerations. Being kept in stalls many hours of the day due to lack of pasture space in crowded cities and suburbs without turnout on grass or kept in small pens due to growing heath issues involving metabolic diseases and/or Cushing’s, horses welcome the benefits of essential oils to help them stay connected to the plant world and the healing it may offer.” - Essential Oils Animal Desk Reference
“It is your responsibility to be responsible for yourself. It is your God-given right to search, read, study, and decide how you will feed and take care of your own body. Be independent and be wise.” – Mary Young
To learn more, visit www.healingbarnmovement.com. This is a holistic resource centre for creating a healing barn and includes our barefoot horse testimonials as well as many others.
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Megan Gesell, December 2021
The Healing Barn Movement
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