03/20/2024
Thank you, Hilary Schneider Women who Run with Horses for so clearly stating what I struggle to express. I know the concept of the horse as teacher and mentor is foreign to many and I agree, you have to experience it to appreciate how the horses can support you if you are curious and open to self-discovery.
It’s especially difficult when well-meaning people ask “How’s the horse whispering going?” That’s when I have to use my tools to pause, check my reactions and discern if they are truly interested or just being polite.
Your post reinforced that I’m not alone and has made me feel more courageous and confident talking about the work we do and how the horses continue to step up as masterful teachers and mentors.
Just last week, a young man went into the round pen for the first time with a new addition to our herd, a pony named Meatball. We worked with him on boundaries. When we were done and watching the pony go back to grazing, the boy turned to me and said he wanted to talk about bullying. He told me about a couple of situations that had arisen at school, what he had done and who he asked for help. This conversation most likely would not have occurred at the dinner table.
Being with the horses gave that young person a safe place to be vulnerable and speak honestly and openly about his feelings without fear of judgment. That’s the magic the horses bring to the moment. And that’s what keeps me moving forward every day to continually find ways to tap into their wisdom.
I have been sitting on this post for about a week…
How do I eloquently speak to this and share something I feel really passionate about without ranting.
So here we are… and this is long so bear with me.
The horse work is not woo woo.
I listened to something last week that triggered me, a dismissal of this work with horses, an apology almost for someone speaking about this work that I am sorry if this is too woo for some of you.
They were in truth trying to share an impactful experience they had about me and my herd to their audience who is more corporate in nature and instead of being or feeling grateful for their share about the impact of their time here, I was enraged.
There is a whole other journey to talk about why “woo” gets a bad rap and what is true about that word but that is for another time.
Today I want to share about the dismissal of this path and work with horses to just simply place it under the “woo” or “spiritual” umbrella.
Before I dive in, why do I think I can speak to this.
I have been facilitating with the horses for 12 years.
8 years out of my retreat center that we currently run our programs through.
I have developed and run programs and retreats and trainings for hundreds of people ranging from women’s retreat, leadership and corporate experiences to recently in the last few years having the privilege of supporting first nations community with creating some retreats for them.
I also teach others to become equine guided facilitators and feel passionate about this work.
So I do know what I have witnessed and what I am talking about when I speak to this.
I am also not trying to sell anyone on this work, the people who come here are not people I have to sell too and I am not interested in having to sell this to anyone.
It is rather that I am exhausted of the dismissal of this work and what horses bring into the lives of humans as we try to work on ourselves, and tend to our trauma and dysfunction of being in a human body.
There is a physiological impact to the space of horses, that tends to our nervous system, creating new pathways in our brain beyond our conditioning that is limiting to us.
It allows us to receive a different way of seeing and existing in the world, which what I have witnessed allows us to move away from a place of internal pain and even the pain we cause to one another.
A couple of years ago I sat across the table from an incredibly brave woman, who had been coming to a few reatreats to work through her grief when she shared this with me. You know that you have changed my life, and not just mine but of my family.
That is not woo.
When we learn how to become better humans to ourselves and also others, when we learn how to treat ourselves differently, to self regulate, to be responsible of our impact to the world around us, this is not woo. This is lasting, changing, chemical response that we feel in our bones, in our cells, in our bodies that creates a ripple effect in our world.
With horses we are given a pure mirror that forces us in some ways to face our own dysfunction, to be honest with ourselves, to take responsibility for our trauma and conditioning in ways that we haven’t been able to before, because the message is being delivered by a horse and not another dysfunctional human.
Our world is as chaotic as it is because of our dysfunction and trauma and horses give us a space to learn where that dysfunction does not exist, this is not woo, this is facts and science.
At the core I believe most of us are walking a journey of trying to improve ourselves, to heal our own and collective pain and to pass something different on towards our future generations.
We are wanting to become more fulfilled, we are searching for happiness, for regulation, for healing and a sense of purpose and sometimes hope that we can become something different than what we were taught.
This is not woo woo work, this is not fluff, this is really hard stuff to walk through, where we have to bear witness to ourselves, where we have to reconcile our pain and the collective pain and sometimes that is simply impossible to do for one another and so we seek out other places sometimes that being a horse.
Horses are neutral, they don’t live in ego, they don’t care about our back story, our history or where we come from.
They don’t care about where we were born, what class system we exist in, what trauma we have lived, they simply see us, at the essence of who we are, because as prey animals this is how they see the world.
I have witnessed some incredible intuitive and unexplainable moments with the horses, how they just simply know who needs them, where I have seen a horse stand for a hours with a human as they navigate what they need to heal and they walk away lighter and I can’t explain that completely, so yes there is an intuitive nature to this work.
And by nature as a prey animal horses read the energy that comes into their environment and respond to it, they are both creatures of instinct and also beings of consciousness as are we.
To say and call this work simply woo, is a disservice and insult to what happens with horses, it is neglectful and disrespectful to what happens when we are brave enough to ask a horse what they see in us.
There is nothing wrong with being woo, this is not a post of putting that space down, but that is not a true encompassing of this horse work at all.
It is impossible to language this as much as I want to, and I always have people say when they come here, you could never really explain this work until you experience it and I won’t try to other than what I have shared.
For the people that are walking this path with horses, it is more than woo, don’t let that word or discounting of this space take away from this is.
For those that are curious about this, or want to be open about this work, it is life changing, and healing and transformative, and I know in some ways those words don’t mean anything, and I might be biased of course and in the realm of when we are serious about our own navigating around what it means to be human, to tend to our own wounds and the collective.
When we are wanting to invest and commit to becoming someone that embraces who they are, is bettering themselves, finding fulfillment and learning how to walk in the world where we can at minimum do our best to be aware of and own our dysfunction.
There is nothing that compares to what we receive in the field with a horse, who is above anything else one of the greatest forms of teachers on this planet.
And this is not a post for today, but for those that do not see what your horses can teach you, and help you to become, you are wasting your time with them, and your are wasting their precious wisdom.
If nothing else, perhaps next time you see a horse, or you see someone talk about this work, you will stop and think and be open before you dismiss it just simply as some woo woo.
