Maija Liisa Luttinger of Freely Forward Bodywork attests to turning a negative into a positive. Her experience of ailments in her off-the-track Thoroughbred showed her the importance of consistent bodywork, and since she started her own business, doing just that, she has not looked back.
“We vetted this horse to the nines when we bought him,” she said of her post-racing acquisition. “But pretty soon after we got him, we realized that this horse had a lot of issues even though he was only 11. We did everything we could think of, and nothing helped until he started getting consistent bodywork.”
Luttinger was 17, and the revelation that bodywork was the key to this horse’s recovery sparked an interest in that kind of work. “That’s what first piqued my interest,” she said. “And then, as I started to learn more in a chronic massage school and more as a groom, I realized how many horses really struggle in their body.”
Always A Life With The Horses
Luttinger had always wanted a career with horses. She started out as an eventing groom and then dabbled in dressage. “I wanted to do equine massage, but I wanted to ride and get more experience through grooming and handling performance horses,” she said.
Luttinger found a grooming position on the East Coast working for a five-star eventer and while she was grooming for her, she took her first equine massage course. “When I went through that first program – even though it wasn’t good, and I didn’t learn a lot – the small amount that I did learn, I could use for the horses in my care,” she said. “It really helped them to be a whole lot better in the next days and weeks.”
The grooming job continued for about 18 months before Luttinger hit a crossroads in her mind and made a decision that set her on course for having the successful business she has created over the past four years.
“I was not going to be able to groom forever,” she said. “And I was not going to make the amount of money I would like. I wanted to be a rider like so many of us do, but I’m just not really talented, and I don’t have the family backing. I was a year into this, and I had a pretty cushy life as a groom, but I wanted to be able to travel more and do more in my life.”
Looking At The Bigger Picture
Luttinger decided to get licensed for human massage therapy – a qualification which took a year. While she was studying she was still grooming – but now at a dressage barn. In November 2020, she took the next step and launched her own business. “It took off very quickly, and I haven’t looked back,” she said.
Luttinger grew up in Iowa where the approach to fixing a horse’s physical problems was limited. “If something was wrong with the horse, it was thought to be either colic, ulcers, or they needed a joint injected,” she said. “Those were basically the three options that I grew up with. I see a lot of people who still have that mindset. As I’ve gotten further on in my career, I’ve realized that there’s a real gap in how we look at horses and their performance.”
That gap, Luttinger says, is created by not looking at the bigger picture – namely the muscles of a horse. “A lot of us are really just looking at the joints and at the bones and at their organs, but we’re missing 70 percent of the horse, and that 70 percent is muscle tissue. Because at the end of the day, muscles contracting and their ability to contract and stretch is what moves the horse.
“The joints and the bones are support structures for the muscles, not the other way around,” she added. “So if your horse has an issue with movement, why aren’t we looking at the muscles? That should be the starting point.”
Benefits to Muscular Therapy
Muscular therapy is something that grooms can do for their horses – not least it is an inexpensive and accessible treatment. “It’s good for the horse,” she said. “And it really doesn’t have any drawbacks like a lot of things we do, like medications and injections. They’re really good, and they have a place, but they have side effects. Massage is just good. It’s never going to replace veterinary medicine in a million years, but it’s an incredibly good complement as a way to preserve your horse and improve their performance and improve your relationship with them.”
Luttinger’s business launch proved timely, given that in the last four years, bodywork and massage on horses have boomed. “A lot of the things that bodyworkers have been saying for decades have always been true. And it’s just now that it’s starting to get more mainstream recognition,” Luttinger said. “The feet, the teeth – they are incredibly important as well. I just think it’s important for people to consider the muscles when they’re making choices.”
Palpate
Luttinger has some specific advice for grooms wanting to try working on their own horses at home. The word “palpate” is important – it means to “examine by touch medically,” and it is where bodywork begins.
“The first most important thing for any groom to know, and any horse owner to know, is how to palpate horses,” said Luttinger. “To me, it is the first line of defense in raising awareness of a horse’s body being in pain. If all grooms and all horse owners had the skill set to be able to recognize body pain and muscular tension in their horse and be able to palpate them, a lot of horses would get the attention they needed a lot faster.”
There are resources for grooms to access online that Luttinger has produced. She has a free training video on equine body mapping. It goes over equine muscle tension signs and how to palpate. It is a great resource for all grooms.
Be Cautious
While bodywork and massage is largely beneficial, there are a few areas where grooms need to either proceed with caution, or avoid entirely. “I would caution people against massaging or stretching if they haven’t had education on it,” Luttinger said. “And if you are going to use a tool like a massage gun, that basically makes the margin for error much smaller because you have leverage. So I recommend that beginners, like the first year or two that someone massages, use only their hands and not any tools, just because that way they get a much better understanding of tissue.”
One place on the horse is a definite no-go area for massage. “Gently massaging overall is really quite safe,” Luttinger said. “The only thing is I occasionally see people massaging the front of the neck, and that should be something that’s left to a professional. It’s sensitive, and there’s a lot of blood flow there that can be affected if someone doesn’t know what they’re doing. I’ve seen people massaging right over the jugular vein, and that’s not good.”
Not Giving Up On Her Dream
While Luttinger’s business grew quickly, it was not all smooth sailing. As any business owner knows, starting out on your own is tough, and it requires mental strength and belief to prosper, especially for Luttinger, who was pursuing an industry that was still on the outskirts of the norm.
“A couple of times, I nearly gave up on my dream of having a business in the horse industry,” she said. “Because there just weren’t a lot of good examples of people with businesses that were financially stable and where they worked reasonable hours and had a lifestyle that I actually thought was attractive to me – a lifestyle where you could have a horse and also compete on the weekends, and a lifestyle where you’re happy to go to work, and you don’t feel burnt out every six months.”
Now 26, Luttinger has the business she was hoping for and gets to travel worldwide. But looking back, she knows it was not a simple journey. Luttinger’s father gave her the encouragement she needed to not give up. “I’m really thankful that my dad was like, ‘You might be in a bad spot right now, and you might not be enjoying what you’re doing. But you’re going to figure it out,’ ” she said. “He said, ‘I believe in you. You’re going to figure it out. You need to keep struggling until you get to where you want to be.’
“Because I struggled so hard for those three years, I took a lot of time to get really educated in business and equine massage and get a lot more education than is required of me,” she added. “Because I did all of that work in the beginning, I was able to explode pretty quickly.”
Educating Others
Part of Luttinger’s mission is to educate others – to reverse the situation she had in Iowa where there was limited access to education. “I’ve set out to just educate people and provide whatever I can provide to them to create a better life for horses,” she said.
She recently launched a program called the Six Figure Equine Bodyworker Academy for anyone who either wants to start their equestrian business or has an equestrian business that they want to improve. It is a three-month program with weekly live business training, covering such angles as social media strategy, perfect working strategies, pricing and mindset shifts to other avenues to make additional income.
Courses
Equine Massage 101 was her very first course and is still her most popular to date, teaching how to be your horse’s personal massage therapist in pain location as well as highly effective equine myofascial release techniques and five-star management strategies to heal pain. “A lot of professional equine massage therapists have taken it and said that it’s better than the certification course they took that they spent thousands of dollars on,” said Luttinger. “I’m very proud of it.”
She teamed up with saddle fitters to make Saddle Fit Solutions, which is basic saddle fitting. “It’s just checking to see if your saddle fits and then massage techniques that are good for any horse that’s struggled with a bad saddle fit in the past, because there are some pretty specific ways that horses struggle when they’ve had that issue,” Luttinger said.
There is also the TMJ Masterclass and Easy Equine Massage – a mini course that teaches techniques that are the most needed. “If anyone wants to just take an hour and learn like five or six things to do with their horse really quickly, that’s a really good one,” Maija said. “And then I have Back in Balance, which is a mini course just for the horse’s back.”
(Check out the rest of her courses below.)
Joining Forces With HorseGrooms
Luttinger is joining forces with HorseGrooms and believes it is on a mission, which is long overdue. “It’s a fabulous organization. I love what it stands for,” she said. “When I was a groom, I had so much passion and pride in my work, but being a groom, especially if you’re one of the only employees, can feel really isolating.
“And it can also feel like a lot of pressure,” she added. “I was 19 and managing a multi-million-dollar farm and multi-hundred thousand dollar horses. You do make a lot of just dumb mistakes that could probably be avoided if more people had a resource like HorseGrooms. If they have a community, grooms might feel more empowered to stay in the industry longer.”
And she feels the industry – in all areas – could feel the benefit of HorseGrooms.
“The industry would be better off if HorseGrooms became more popular, so that the owners, and the riders, and the trainers had a better understanding of how to support grooms,” she said, “and the grooms had a better understanding of everything they can expect to be better and what’s reasonable for them to expect.”
Special Offer for HorseGrooms Insiders
Freely Forward Bodywork has partnered with HorseGrooms to offer HorseGrooms Insiders an exclusive 20% discount on Maija Luttinger’s courses. Whether you’re looking to deepen your understanding of equine bodywork or enhance your skills as a groom, Luttinger’s courses provide invaluable resources to help improve horse welfare and performance. Her offerings include her Six Figure Equine Bodyworker Academy (which can also be paid in installments with her monthly payment plan option), Equine Massage 101, Back in Balance, Easy Equine Massage, Saddle Fit Solutions, TMJ Masterclass and Equine Body Mapping: Pain Prevention Masterclass.
Become an Insider today to take advantage of this generous discount and many other exclusive perks! By purchasing any of the Freely Forward Bodywork courses through our affiliate link, you’re also directly supporting the mission of HorseGrooms to uplift grooms and promote better horse care worldwide.
Learn more about becoming an Insider and access Luttinger’s courses now!
Sarah Eakin has a long history of sports reporting and covering equestrian disciplines – particularly show jumping, polo, racing and dressage – for a range of international publications as writer and editor-in-chief. In 2024, Sarah launched Paper Horse – an online magazine with an eclectic mix of stories from the horse world at www.paperhorsemedia.com. Paper Horse is an official Media Partner of Wellington International. Sarah was born in England and came to the US in 1996 as Sidelines’ Polo Editor; at the time she was chief polo writer at the Horse and Hound and Polo Correspondent to The Daily Telegraph. She married US professional polo player Gary Eakin and stayed Stateside traveling throughout North America while covering equestrian events. She is also an author; Wed, White and Blue, her first novel is on Amazon.
