Linda Tellington-Jones

Linda Tellington Jones (born June 30, 1937) is the founder and director of the Tellington TTouch Method, a form of bodywork and movement exercises for enhancing learning, behavior, performance and health in animals and people. Her corporate center for Tellington TTouch Training Method is located in Santa Fe, New Mexico, U.S.A., The center organizes worldwide demonstrations and courses for students of TTouch for companion animals, horses and humans. She also runs a non-profit organization, Animal Ambassadors, which supports international projects in which children work with animals.

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Biography

Early life

The eldest of 7 children raised in Yellowknife, Northwest Territories, rural Gibbons, Alberta, and later in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada, Tellington-Jones rode to school on horseback for the first six years. She began teaching riding at Briarcrest Stables at the age of thirteen, and was successful in many equestrian competition. As an adult, she competed extensively in three-day eventing, dressage, hunters and jumpers, and English and western pleasure and introduced trail horse and endurance competition to Germany. Tellington-Jones was a judge for the North American Trail Ride Conference and the American Horse Show Association.

Tellington-Jones' grandfather, Will Caywood, whose credentials included training racehorses for Czar Nicholas II in Russia, influenced her greatly. In 1905, Caywood was awarded the title of Leading Trainer at the Moscow Hippodrome racetrack. Caywood taught his granddaughter a system of equine massage he had learned from Russian Gypsies, introduced her to the concept of animal communication, and imbued in her the importance of treating horses with gentleness.

Early career

Together the Tellingtons taught at Chadwick School, in Rolling Hills, California. Tellington-Jones also trained horses and students using the U.S. Cavalry Horsemanship training methods. The principle objective of the cavalry training methods was to train riders and horses to travel great distances over difficult terrain for long periods of time.

In 1961, Tellington-Jones and Bint Gulida were the first to compete in two 100-mile-in-one-day races in a single year: Tellington-Jones, on an Arabian mare, placed sixth in the Western States 100 Mile-One Day Ride and won the First Place and Best Condition trophies for the Oklahoma Jim Shoulders 100 Mile-One Day Ride. She set a record that stood for 7 years, finishing in 13 hours, 36 minutes, six and a half hours ahead of the second place team.

Later in 1969, Tellington-Jones led the first group of four riders to start and finish 100-mile Tevis Cup ride; Jo Stanchfield and California Senator S. I. Hayakawa wrote a California school textbook AbOUT the group's endeavors, The Hundred Milers. Throughout the 1960's, the Tellingtons wrote a monthly syndicated column published in eight equestrian magazines, in addition to their monthly column "Let’s Go" in Western Horseman.

In 1960 the Tellingtons moved to Hemet, California, where they developed Hemet Thoroughbred Farm with 90 mares and two stallions, in addition to operating the Banat Ar-Rih Arabian Horse Ranch.

Early research and publications

The Tellingtons moved to Los Osos, California to establish the Pacific Coast Equestrian Research Farm in 1961. The mission of the Pacific Coast Equestrian Research Farm was to explore technology and tradition as it applied to horses through clinical research. Experimental subjects included: the development of new and experimental equipment and feeds; natural vitamin and mineral supplements; free-choice feeding of kelp and comfrey; the production and distribution of "Little Red Wonders," worms used in composting hot horse manure; methods of equine transportation, leather care, wound care, training, detection of physical ailments; and peaking for endurance, three-day eventing and horse show competition. They reported their findings in a monthly newsletter published in twenty-two countries.

At the Los Osos Research Farm, The Tellingtons also hosted the first North American Endurance Ride Conference for judges, managers, and riders. Among the horsemen present were endurance veterinarians Dr. Mathew Mackay-Smith and Dr. George Cardinet. The Tellingtons also established a four-week residential equestrian summer camp at Los Osos. Gwen Stockebrand, 1978 bronze medal winner in dressage at the World Championship at Goodwood, England and U.S. Olympic team rider, was among the teen campers who later went on to become equestrian professionals.

In 1964, the Tellingtons moved the Pacific Coast Equestrian Research Farm to central California and founded the Pacific Coast School of Horsemanship, a nine-month residential program for riding instructors and trainers, centered in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada Mountains at Badger, 30 miles east of Visalia. The school attracted students from 9 countries and 36 states in its ten years of existence. A key concept for students was “observe,” with an emphasis on respecting both people and their animals, an unusual attitude at the time.

In 1965, the Tellingtons published Massage and Physical Therapy for the Athletic Horse and the Endurance and Competitive Trail Riding Manual. In 1979 Doubleday and Company combined the two manuscripts into a single title, Endurance and Competitive Trail Riding, often referred to as the bible of endurance riding.

Early development of the Tellington TTouch Method

In 1970, the Tellingtons divorced; Linda Tellington-Jones bought the Pacific Coast School of Horsemanship and Equestrian Research Farm and moved it to Los Altos Hills, California. Shortly thereafter, she married Birchell Jones and became Linda Tellington-Jones. In 1972 she and her husband, Birchell Jones, riding the Countess Bessenyey’s Hungarian horses, won both the lightweight and heavyweight championships at the 100-Mile Old Dominion Endurance Ride in a three-day endurance competition. In 1972 Tellington-Jones organized and taught, along with Kerry Ridgway, DVM, the first eight-evening equine adult education course for the University of California at Santa Cruz.

Tellington-Jones defines her mission

Although Linda Tellington-Jones found considerable success as an equestrian, she grew increasingly disturbed by the lack of respect shown to the horse in traditional training and riding.

In 1974, she sold 60 horses, closed her School of Horsemanship, and traveled to Europe, planning a 2-year sabbatical. Ursula Bruns, publisher of the German horse magazine, Freizeit im Sattel, invited her to train a group of horses and riders to perform in Essen at Equitana,the world’s largest equine trade show. Tellington-Jones led a group of students in a demonstration of bareback and bridleless riding which attracted much press attention, resulting in invitations to hold clinics for training problem horses in Austria, Germany and Switzerland. Over the next five years, riders and trainers began to seek out Tellington-Jones for her gentle, non-dominant approach to horsemanship. The developing method found success with the relatively inexperienced horse person, who could use it safely and effectively, as well as with seasoned riders seeking a safe, mindful approach to the training of horses. The Tellington TTouch Method was beginning to take shape.

In the summer of 1975, Tellington-Jones enrolled in the first four-summer Feldenkrais Method Professional Training program taught personally by Israeli physicist Dr. Moshe Feldenkrais at the Humanistic Psychology Institute in San Francisco, California. This method of human bodywork is designed to improve human functioning by increasing self-awareness through non-habitual movement, and along with the Russian horse massage she had been practicing for a decade, formed the basis of what she originally called TEAM - Tellington Equine Awareness Movements and later TTEAM –Tellington TTouch Equine Awareness Method.

One of Tellington-Jones’ major tenets in the development of the Tellington TTouch Equine Awareness Method resulted from what she viewed as the prevalent lack of understanding and respect for horses. She believed that soreness, pain, or fear of pain is often the cause of undesirable behavior in horses. Her theory that behavior in horses could be related to stress or pain was revolutionary. To address this issue, she combined the Functional Integration™ of Feldenkrais bodywork with a series of ground exercises called the Playground for Higher Learning. She designed the Playground for Higher Learning to work a horse through non-habitual movements in a stress-free environment without negative reinforcement. These exercises aimed to allow horses to move beyond their initial, instinctive reactions to stimuli of fight or flight, which can pose a danger to inexperienced riders and handlers.

After seeing the results of Tellington-Jones’ work, Ursula Bruns, who sought new and safer ways of training and caring for horses, insisted that Tellington-Jones develop a system that any horse person could replicate. To this end, in 1978, at her FS Reit-Zentrumin Reken, Germany, Bruns organized a five-week research study led by Tellington-Jones with 20 problem horses sent by veterinarians, trainers and owners. Four amateur horse owners were chosen to take the horses through the ground exercises and apply the body work. The results of this study were published in the 1995 book, "Die Tellington Metode: So erseit man sein Pferd", by Ursula Bruns and Linda Tellington-Jones, re-published in English in 1985 as "An Introduction to The Tellington-Jones Equine Awareness Method". This was the first book on the Tellington Method in the English language.

Trademark Touch Circle

In 1983, Tellington-Jones added touch to the Tellington Method, in the form of a circular rubbing of the horse's shoulders. In 1985, she visited the Soviet Union as a part of the Esalen Institute's Soviet-American Exchange Program, along with her own 501c(3) non-profit organization, Animal Ambassadors. There she hosted a ten-day training clinic in Tellington TTouch for Russian veterinarians at the Bitza Olympic Center in Moscow. This was to be the first of ten visits to the Soviet Union as a Citizen Diplomat.

Over 1300 certified Tellington TTouch practitioners work with horses, companion animals, rescued wildlife, exotic animals, and people in twenty-eight countries. There are Tellington TTouch Method Training programs in Canada, Germany, Austria, Australia, Switzerland, the Netherlands, South Africa, the UK, Japan, Slovenia, and the U.S.A.

Accomplishments

  • Together with her team, did TTouch bodywork on all dressage horses competing in the 1996 Paralympic Games in Atlanta, GA 1
  • 2004-2004 Visiting faculty member the University of Manitoba’s Center for Spirituality and Healing, teaching Tellington TTouch as a part of minor in Complementary Therapies and Healing Practices, where there is a fund for TTouch research and education
  • United States Pony Club Instructor at Rolling Hills, CA under District Commissioner Col. W.R. "Pinky" Brown
  • 1994 North American Horsemen's Association Horsewoman of the Year
  • 1993 Recipient of the Lifetime Achievement Award for the Art and Science of the Teaching of Riding by the American Riding Instructors' Association
  • Citizen Ambassador to the former Soviet Union for the Esalen Institute 2 from 1984-1987. See Citizen Diplomats: Pathfinders in Soviet-American Relations by Gale Warner and Michael Schulman.
  • Recipient of the 1969 State of California Award for Creative Citizenship
  • Completed in five Tevis Cup Endurance Rides, finishing twice in the top ten: 1961, 1963, 1968, 1970, and 1972