OH OH OH!!! Me too!! He sent me a couple of messages through FB threatening legal action for linking to videos that he himself had made public right on FB and was being excoriated for whatever the hell he was inflicting on a horse. I felt so very special. I also said…“bring it!!” and that resulted in no more messages.
We are not triggered by the impulse to learn new things.
We are appalled on behalf of the clients who were and are being taken for a ride by a charming but incompetent fraud who is wasting the clients time, money and horses.
The basic idea of dressage gymnastic in hand work is fantastic. It’s core to the method I ride in. It works. As the spinoff thread about $15O resources makes clear, there is a lot of material out there. Celeste has invented nothing just borrowed and misinterpreted, and dumbed down beyond belief.
I realize that some ammie owners make repeated bad choices and don’t do basic research. If you spend 3 years having your horses destroyed by bad trainers with badly fitting saddles and gadgets, then you flip to Celeste, that’s on you.
Yeah - explain the bolded part to my vet… who was trying to help a couple of horses that CLL had been working on and are not anything like CLL is/was claiming. The vet is frustrated and dropping said client who she has had for years… while feeling uneasy about those horses who have long-standing issues that are just getting worse - one with suspected EPM. She is not “willfully misunderstanding” any damn thing. She has hands-on experience with those horses and with their besotted owner.
Again, did not call you a fool, simply said it is easier to fool someone than it is to convince them they have been fooled. Big difference between calling someone a fool directly. Look, I get it, I was fooled too and will be the first to admit it, and was actually with my very first post in this group.
For me, if I take something very personal when it is said in a generalized context, it’s usually a good time for self reflection to determine why that specific statement is so triggering.
Well that was a singularly uninformative video with no details, just an advertising pitch. Which is OK. He looks fine from the video.
I have competent body workers on my horse care team. They do make a difference. I had RMT on myself monthly for years too. For horse and person I prefer a body workers who gets in and does the hard physical massage. My hands won’t hold up to doing much horse massage on my own.
There are a lot of competent equine body workers around that do an honest job for a reasonable fee and explain it all as they work. They know you are unlikely to start trying to do an hour long massage by stealing their secrets. It’s obvious to me they have more knowledge and physical skills than I ever will.
Short answer: not exactly. She claims to solve lameness issues the “veterinarians cannot solve,” all by herself. NOTE: she never mentions ANY vet by name, you can’t find ANY veterinarian that “endorses her” or who sends people to her for treatment. She just. Says they like her. (She DID meet a veterinarian here near me while doing a clinic. Not sure how that came about).
At the risk of annoying people who said I “should move on,” I will take a crack at answering. I was introduced to TTW work by my trainer who had seen her work with another trainer friend. In 2021. Basically how to ask the horse to “abduct a forelimb while moving on a circle”. (In the world of dressage: shoulder in on a circle, but in the TTW world: majick). I joined the master class after contacting Katherine Lowry, TTW’s “sister,” about coming to my facility for a clinic in 2023. I never brought CLL to my facility and told Katherine I didn’t want her here. I was satisfied with Katherine: a real degree, owned her own farm and training facility, had a family history of dressage and, when here, primarily taught methods she’d learned from James Shaw and credited him as well as TTW “pillars,” which she claimed to have developed WITH TTW, meaning joint ownership of the pillar method with TTW, to me. (In TTW interview with Felicity Davies on the Equestrian Perspective Podcast, CLL claims SOLE ownership of the method; said she told people to stop associating the method with Katherine Lowry (It is MINE said TTW). The MC went from “30-40” small group to over 3000 paying members. The majick was promoted, posts had to be “approved,” no one could share UNLESS SHE WAS GIVEN CREDIT FOR HER DISCOVERY.
She claimed: her method was “new” because she did not own a book by any master and hadn’t learned anything from anyone, just herself.
You could not share any information from anyone doing anything close to her work, (Manolo Mendez, Gerd Heuschmann etc).
She quickly changed rules to having to have “posts approved” in her class.
You cannot disagree or question her. On pain of dismissal from the group and bullying.
Her “rules” extend to all of social media, not just in her group page.
By June 2022, after joining the MC in January, I stopped following the page because it has gone from innocuous Pillar 1,2,3 to much woo and narcissism by the owner of the group. I was disgusted and my last post was that month.
I did a background check. Her LLC has been defunct since 2021 for nonpayment and that was the second time. She has multiple aliases. She claims to have a “degree in neuropsychology,” alternatively she told her “sister” she has a degree in “psychology.” Yet she claims on a business page to have a “degree in animal science”, alternatively: “pre vet”. And “pre med”. There is no concrete evidence she has matriculated anywhere in anything. She does not have licenses in animal or human massage under her name or under her business name. She has studied massage for humans and animals. She says.
She offers “certificates of completion” in her “trademarked nerve release techniques” (solely discovered by her) to anyone with $3333- $5000; knowledge of equine anatomy, veterinary training or bodywork is “NOT required.” The class is all online. All this without having any accreditation or verification to offer possibly harmful training to any slo Joe out there. Only requirement: money. Perk: recommendation as a “nerve release” practitioner on her website. (Meaning she’ll take the fall with you, no worries)
She was combative with several page owners who were actual PhDs or DVMs or other trainers offering “thoracic sling work.” She claimed to have that “degree in neuropsychology,” to a PhD in animal behavior that I happened to follow. I immediately questioned where she got that “degree.” Within seconds I was personally blocked and then banned from the class I’d paid for. After repeated emails, I have yet to receive a screenshot of the “rule [i] broke” that had earned my ejection. She proceeded to call her flying monkeys out on me who called for “doxxing me” and something else (what’s her name —- oh. He doesn’t f€<# around)
Her administrative assistant posted screen shots of my farm page which had my address and phone number on it. Okay. Since. I have “moved on. Built a new page. Scheduled a couple clinics.
YESTERDAY: someone said: “also ——— has never been banned or blacklisted from master groups for being rude or harmful to the horse community.” To ME. in the town I live in.
So her “reach” is far and utterly hateful. She is a complete fiction of her own imagination. I am an educated, generally discerning individual. I was taken in by the original seemingly harmless exercises, as were MANY. Because I pissed her off, my experience was a little different than others that just walked away. And her behavior was so egregious towards me I went into battle. It got me nothing. She is a fraud and people should report her, run from her, etc. She is the “darling” of the moment and will make bank as long as she can.
I do specifically remember CLL stating numerous times that she had developed BTMM and the Pillars with her “sister” Katherine Lowry.
Actually, it was Katherine who had created the earliest Pillar demonstration videos in the facebook group, not CLL. CLL didn’t actually post any footage of herself at all until several months later.
She used her pregnancy as an excuse for not having footage, yet spoke frequently about how she had just come in from the barn and the Pillars are so easy she could do them while 9 months pregnant. When asked for footage of her own horses, she always claimed it was too difficult to get a photographer out, all the while posting half nude pregnancy photoshoots with her husband.
I still can’t wrap my head around how it was possible to schedule a pregnancy photo shoot and all the time that entails, and yet, the Pillars which apparently are so easy and only take a few minutes and can be done at anytime… somehow… it was absolutely impossible to get any footage at all of that?
Hmm… sorry, not buying it.
I will say, I have suspected for some time now that THW has not actually created anything at all herself, but rather teams up with knowledgeable equestrians who will allow her to smooze her way in… she picks their brain, grabs whatever sounds good and is easy to dumb down and replicate. At first gives co-credit, only to turn on her supposed “best friend of the moment” and claim sole credit for all of it. I really hope I’m wrong on that, but the way things continue to unfold, that suspicion seems more likely.
Has Katherine Lowry said anything, are they still associated? I could see a legitimate trainer just going silent on the topic, not wanting to be the focus of the cray cray
Since the Pillars are just dumbed down very first step in hand dressage work that many many trainers and ammies already know and use there is no trademarked technique just the name.
I am far from an expert, but it appears you’re right. From what I can find on the topic, a technique cannot be trademarked.
Ironic, so her claim about discovering it on her own, from a legal standpoint, ensures the method certainly cannot ever be patented or trademarked due to the nature of patents and the requirements involved. Dug herself into a corner with that one, will be interesting to see how she explains that one away.
“Patents require absolute novelty. No one can ever have patented the same invention . Patents also cannot be obvious, this means, in legal terms, that a reasonable expert in the field could not have simply figured out how to create the invention.”
Pretty cowardly on top of smug. Just own your words—and again, I’m waiting for the receipts regarding any statements CL made about PSSM and ECVM not being real diseases, and disparaging vets. Those are pretty bold things to lie about someone saying.
Unfortunately, as I said earlier on in the thread, I am limited to the screenshots I can share because they were shared with me in confidence. Due to the revealing nature of the screenshots, it would be too easy to identify who is behind them, and I will not allow another poor soul to become a scapegoat for this group.
That said, I do have a few screenshots of a BTMM acolyte attacking a Veterinary post outside of the group. This one has no identifying information so I am able to share it. The PSSM and ECVM claims are far too revealing, but there are enough of us who have witnessed these earlier claims that I don’t feel the need to risk exposure in order to prove anything to one very rude stranger on the internet.
And I just realized I have no idea how to share images on this forum, can anyone help me out? TIA