Horsemanship for Health

youtu.be/F5K_tWumjSI

Some mornings we arrive and the horses are busy grazing and barely acknowledge us. Other mornings, they are waiting by the gate. And on rare, magical mornings, they are both lying down and allow us to spend moments of wonder and stillness in their presence.

I arrived at the meadow yesterday to find Jo settled between the two horses. Returning with my camera, I captured this special moment on film. As you will see, the horses have very different styles of interaction. Dragonfly is calm, relaxed and grounded throughout. Even when Sheranni goes through his attention-seeking comedy routine, Dragonfly remains unruffled. They are aware of each other, but not drawn into the other. Each horse makes space for the other horse to be as he is in the moment. This doesn’t seem like much, but making space for another, especially someone you know very well, is an art.

As humans, we find this extraordinarily difficult. Imagine that you’re having a quiet morning sleep-in and your companion suddenly decides to get up and put on some loud music and start dancing around the bedroom or practising their juggling moves. How would you react? Would you allow your companion some space to do their thing, or would you tell them to ‘get lost’ as you burrow under the duvet in a clenched bundle of righteous annoyance?

As humans, we are very adept at being still and serene when things are going our way, when our companions are tiptoeing around us, holding our space and keeping our peace, but what happens when they are not? What happens when they do their thing at full volume? The tendency then is to accuse them of being selfish, of having no consideration, of being insensitive. Who hasn’t thought this when confronted with noisy neighbours?

The horses show us how we might hold space regardless of what is happening around us. We might not enjoy the intrusion – and let’s face it most of us would prefer to lie-in undisturbed – but when disturbances come, as they will and do, we might choose to remain in a state of presence, as Dragonfly is demonstrating here; we might choose to stay in our space and breathe more deeply into it, knowing that the present contains everything we need, expanding our awareness to include the annoying little clown in the background. It won’t make him go away, but it might make it easier for us to live with him.

Something to start practising anyway…