Change vs. Control

Relationships change. That's the amazing beauty and wonder of them. Sometimes, we don't want them to change. Some times we like to hang onto them, cling to what they where, because we are so terrified of what they will become, or what we will become, if we allow them to change. Friendship changes. Love Changes. Conflict Changes. But what does this change look like? I don't honestly think that anyone can truly answer that. Change is so different on so many different levels that how each person precieves it affects what it looks like in their eyes. People who believe change is good will be more likely to see it in a positive light, with a positive outcome, no matter how difficult the situation is. People who 'hate' or 'dislike' change will rarely ever see it in a positive light. Their veiw and opinion will be marked by negativity, their perception always shadowed by darkness. I believe that change, and your opinion on it, goes back to control. How much control do you believe you have? How much control do you need to believe you have? Control is a funny thing, It gets people so hyped up on having it, gets them addicted, and then one moment in their lives takes it all away. They are left with nothing but this feeling of 'spiraling out of control'. (funny how that works!) So what do they do? They Grab at it, hectically. They can't let it go, but they have trouble seeing that they never had it in the first place. I believe that control is illusive. It's like the mythical Unicorn, a thing of legend. We have all these people taping horns onto their horses' forheads and then becoming dissappointed, even dangerously so, when they discover that all along it was 'just a horse'. So what happens if just allow 'horses to be horses', for lack of a better word, and stop trying to make them all into unicorns? It's the paradox of Control. You give it all up, just to gain it. Not that you gain control by giving up control, you gain something better. You gain understanding. Understanding that things work out for the best. The Understanding that if you stop trying to grab at something, and just allow it to be, it will find you. We spend so much time searching for the things that we had all along. Happiness, love, understanding. if we stop trying to control it all, stop trying to grab at it, stop fantisizing over it and making it into this huge, unobtainable concept, we just might find it. They say that all things in life are simple, perhaps they are.
Giving up control is a terrifiying concept. People are honestly afraid of it. We are taught from a small age to 'control' everything. Control your emotions, Control your thoughts, Control your words, Control your Personality, Control yourself, Control your dog, Control your horse, Control, Control, Control... You get the point...the list goes on and on and on. Giving it up, is like asking a herion addict to give up herion. You have to first allow them to discover that they need to change. You can preach and preach until the cows come home, you can show them life without it, you can allow them to glimpse a breif expereince into living with spiritual awareness, but you can not force them to change. People cannot truly accept change until they are ready to change, and change requires a release of control. It's not an easy road. Just as some drug addicts are prone to relapse, so are people who are releasing control.
Once we release control we gain the understanding that we need to allows things to be as they are. We need to live in the moment as we are, and allow other beings to do the same. In doing so, you will find the true stable ground that your former friend contorl elluded so nicely to.

Looking for Beauty

My challenge this week for all of you who read this is to take a moment to truly appreciate the beauty around you. Find something, or many things, every day that allow you to truly focus on just being alive. Apprieciate the small things, like the birds chirping, a frog singing, a moment of perfect silence. Notice the moon rising over the horizon, the way the sunlight boucnes off the clouds at the begining and again at the end of the day, allow yourself to become completely entranced in the utter beauty of a clear night sky, or the way a river rolls over rocks. When you find this moment, stop, breath deeply and take it all in. Your goal in this challenge is to truly feel the beauty of the moment. Become engrossed. Let go of the worries, pretenses, facts and fictions and just be. This is your moment, or moments, in the day to simply be alive in yourself and for yourself.
Try it on, and see how it feels. As for me, I'm off to appreiciate my life, and enjoy a nice cup of tea, under a breath-takingly beautiful night sky. Happy Being!

Active vs. Passive Meditation

In my last post I touched breifly on the two types of meditation that I have experienced while working with the horses, and a session this week with a client's new horse brought up the idea of explaining it.
What is Passive Meditation? and then of course, What is Active Meditation?
Passive Meditation is the term that I use to describe the meditation time spent with a horse that focuses on breathing and body awareness. It is the time that you take to learn how to simply 'be' in an energetic and spiritual relationship with both your horse and with your true self. It is learning that it is okay to be whoever you are and that it is okay to feel emotions. It is taking the time to realize what exactly it is you are feeling. Passive Meditation is not really passive at all, but because it is pysically non-demanding, I have chosen to call it this. In Passive Meditation it's a lot of just breathing with the horse. It's getting your's and your horses' energies in sync so that you can draw on that bond later on in the process. I usually find a quiet place where there is no distractions,  most of the time it's with another horse/owner combination. We use deep belly breathing, and just allow things to be as they are in the moment. We 'think like a horse' and take everything they, and our own selves are sending us at face value. We demean nothing, we discount nothing. Everything we experience is important in its self.
The next type of Meditation I have noticed is Active Meditation. I use this to describe the meditation form we use to 'let it all out'. That is, all the things we have brought to the surface with our passive meditation now need to be released so we can truly begin the healing process. It usually involves some form of pysical release, that is yawning, stretching, crying, laughing, whatever. In the same way as passive meditation, we can not discount anything that we feel in the process. Your horse may project on to you and you may need to help him/her release the emotion, or it can be your horse helping you to work through your own emotions. Either way it is a precious gift for both of you.
These meditation forms go hand in hand with each other and I have come to recognize that you can not have one with out the other. You can not have active mediation, or release, without realizing what it is that you need to release. In the same way, you can not truly begin the healing process in yourself, or in your horses, until you realize exactly what it is that needs to be worked through.
This can be a rocky road. Usually it envolves going deep into those shadowy, spooky closets that we closed so tightly years ago in responce to anger, greif, ect. It is the place where we supress our selves and we never want to visit. It invloves reopening festering, half-healed wounds, literally flushing out the negativity and the hurtful energy, so that they can begin to heal proporly. It's terrifying traveling down that road and not knowing where, or how, you will end up. Usually we are not willing to do this for ourselves. We like to 'leave well enough alone', even if it hampers our ability to function on an emotional and spiritual level. Thankfully, some of us are willing to do it for others, whether it be a child, a friend, or in this case, our horses, we are traveling down that road with an intent to help them and in doing so, we are unknowingly helping ourselves as well.
For me personally, it began as a journey to help my horse, until I realized that he wasn't really the one who needed the help. We needed to be on this journey together for me, to allow me to heal, to allow me to let go, and most of all to allow me to realize how to exist in the moment, how to appreciate the gifts in life, and how to be ok while at one with myself and the universe.

Allowing Yourself to Just 'be'

I had a very cool experience with a client's mare last weekend that I thought was well granted for sharing. But first, for better story apprieciation I will start at the begining with a little bit of history...
'Dream' (or 'Magic', as Cathy calls her) is an 11 year old Morgan mare who came for some rehab for physical and emotional stuff. We've got the physical stuff all sorted out, thanks to Blaine, our awesome Chiropractor, and we are now working through the emotional tangles. Once the physical pain is gone, it takes a bit of convincing on your part that things are not going to hurt any more. In most cases, and this is Dream's case as well, the pain has been around for years. It's becomes not only expected, but the responce to anything that caused pain in the first place becomes a reflex responce. So it comes down to you're not only re-programming the brain, you're also reprogramming neuro pathways of the nervous system to associate good feelings and not pain with an action. So with Dream it started with removing the source of the pain, then working through some anger and defensive issues, and then going back to showing her that it didn't hurt, it actually felt good. So how do you work through the emotional stuff? I use a combination of Liberty and on-line work, most days it really honestly to the outside eye looks like nothing, but it almost becomes a form of meditation with the horses. So far in my experiences I've noticed two kinds of this meditation that the horses are willing to offer. One is 'Passive' and one is 'active'. In 'Passive' you sit in their energy with them and just breathe. Things are as they are, you learn to live in the moment, to appreciate things, and eventually you begin being able to 'just let go'. Once you reach this stage you then move into the 'active' meditation, that is, the phase of awareness where you can actually let go of those emotions. This usually involves physical movement, most times in the horses it's licking and chewing, stretching and/or yawning, but sometimes they need to actually move their feet and take you somewhere. Sometimes we are helping them release, and sometimes they are helping us. So this meditation is step one. Sometimes this takes weeks to achieve. Sometimes horses who are already self-aware, it takes only minutes. After you've reached this stage you can then being introducing liberty work. That is, turning the horse loose in a big area, usually an arena, and working with them on their terms. This allows them to fully choose to interact with you and every interaction is on their terms, they have the power to leave you and you have the power to leave them if either of you so choose. For my liberty work I use a combination of a few techniques, mixed in with my own. Most prevalent influences would have to be Carolyn Resnick (http://www.carolynresnickblog.com/) and Carl Reil, a local horse guru from my childhood. I also use a bit of Parelli, Monty Roberts and other training greats including Tommy Dorrance and Ray Hunt. Anyways, getting into that would be an entire novel on it's own... So after the Meditation you move onto the libery work. Once you establish a relationship with the horse using these two, you can move to riding. With Dream, I've spent the last month and a half simply meditating with her and doing liberty work. Yesterday she finally allowed me to ride her and it is an experience I will never forget. We started slowly, with some liberty work, companion walking and just enjoying being in each other's energy. After a while I put the halter back on and we went over to the mounting block. Dream remained happy and relaxed through all of this, which told me that we where ready for the next step. I got on the mounting block, up and down a couple times, like we have been working on. Still she was relaxed and happy, content to just 'be' there in the moment, in the good emotion. Finally I just slid onto her back. She took a few steps forward in almost a rushed, angry energy, so I say calmly and asked her to 'woah' using my voice. We then sat in quiet content for about five minutes. Then finally, when she had brought her energy back down, we proceeded to walk around the arena a few times in each direction. Finally, we stopped, and I could feel that she was projecting something at me, although I could not tell entirely what it was. I had this odd feeling to just take the halter off, and allow her to just be there with me, in that moment, of her own free choice. I'd never had this urge before with any horse other then Arik, whom I trust completely, so I was a bit nervous. I reached down and took the halter off, and to give my panicing false self a bit of a rest, left a neck rope on her. We then proceeded to walk around the arena for another 20 mins, completely in harmony and completely happy. We where content to just 'be' as we where, and as the world went on around us.

Patience... is it really a virtue?

So I'm sure most of you know the old saying 'Patience is a Virtue'. I'm pretty sure growing up, it was one of my parent's favorites. I always wondered what it meant. What is a 'virtue'? From what I always understood it is something that you have, or don't have, that other people admire. I think the key there was you either have it, or you don't. Making something a virtue certainly makes people strive to achieve it. Like Patience, our topic of the day. You're 5 years old and bouncing off the edge of your seat... ("Are we There yet???")... and your parents reply with some version of "no, not yet, you asked me that three seconds ago. You know Johnny, Patience is a virtue."
So coming back to working with the horses, I'd have to say in my experience, patience is not a virtue. Yes, of course, some horses have it and some horses don't, but they can all learn it. For that reason I'm now defining patience as a skill and not as a virtue. From a more personal perspective, horses will teach you patience. I'm not saying it's an easy skill to learn, because some days it's not. When you're energy is moving a hundred kilometers an hour and your mind is bouncing off the wall in another time-space dimension, it's really hard to focus. Some days this is pretty typical for us ADD people. Horses experience the same thing, and usually the younger they are, the worse this is. So if patience has now become a skill, how do we teach it?
Honestly, with patience. If you are able to set the example for your horse of how you would like him/her to react then eventually they will take your lead. It's a bit of a nasty circle sometimes. Horses as herd animals are so intune to other beings around them, whether that be other horses, or us as people. They pick up on so much that we can not even being to understand. Have you ever had one of 'those days'? The days where life just comes crashing down and your world seems like it's about to fall apart? It's on those days that you think a nice relaxing ride with your equine friend will make it all better but when you get out to the barn your horse seems to be in exactly the same mood that you are? There is only one common denominator between his bad mood and yours and that is you. Chances are he's picking it all up from you. Not that horses don't have bad days, because they do, but they have this amazing ability to undertake the emotional climate around them. They are empaths on the most amazing level. They not only feel the emotions of everything around them, they usually become the eomotions. It's a deep rooted survial tactic, you see it in most herd-based prey animals with a big flight instinct. Not only are they extremely sensative to all that surrounds them pysically, the awakened horse is intune to all levels of emotional and spiritual climates as well. So linking this back to our topic of the day; Teach Patience with Patience. Understand that it may take your horse a while to get something, but all the time that you put in to 'waiting it out' will come back to you in the end, and it will come back with a stronger, more willing horse leading the way.
On the other side of things, I always have to think of what the horse feels and thinks. After all, here we have this amazing creature of beauty, power and just overall awesomeness, and we are constantly expecting them to interact on our level. It comes back to the speaking german analogy. Your horse is speaking German, in three different dialects, all at the same time, and we humans are speaking plain old english. Infact most of the time we are speaking so much english that we miss the german all together and interpret the things we do hear as something completely out of context. Fortunately, or unfortunately, for us horses are intune with our own deeply buried german speaking parts, if you will. This creates in them a willingness to try and speak english for us, if we come in with a valuable reason why they should. Most of the time, in traditional training techniques, this comes in from a discipline area. 'If you don't do this, I will let you know you did it wrong'. This is the survival instinct of the herd, which is why horses respond so well to negative training techniques. If your horse does something that is not acceptable in his society, that is; if he is rude, not paying attention to other herd members, or doing something else that could endanger the well being of the whole herd, he is reprimanded. So is the reason why he responds when we say 'NO!'. Unfortunately, with this situation it is so easy to get into a dominating way of training, and very rarely are us humans ever willing to take a step back and learn to speak German. So many times we see the horse as 'just a horse', not as an individual with emotions and feelings, spiritual awareness, ect. So what happens when we cross that brigde? when we take that step back and allow the horse to teach us? Now we are truly learning to be horse-people. We are learning how to speak three kinds of german simultaneously. Most of the time we suck at it, but the horses are patient teachers, and in being so they teach us to be patient with ourselves.

How do you Define your Spirituality?

So I'm finding myself pondering lately of what my definition of spirituality is. How do I see it? What does it mean to me?
By spirituality I do not mean religion. I am not a religious person. I have this overly exaggerated opinion that religion is the cause for most of the problems in world, but we wont get into that right now. By Spirituality I mean your beliefs, what are we, as humans, capable of. How are we interconnected to the universe? What are we capable of understanding and comprehending? Basically, What are our Limits? or maybe more appropriately, do we have any? and of course the timeless question; Is There a God?
So that's my question for the day. What is Spitituality to me?

Learning How to Draw the Line

So an experience with a client's horse today gave me the idea for this lovely blog entry. It is, when training from an emotional perspective, where do you draw the line between what you should and shouldn't do? Where is that perfect balance that allows you to give the horse a voice without losing your own?
Thats a good question. Usually I tell people to just listen to their guts, or their instincts, but sometimes this can be really difficult. So much in everyday life we repress these feelings, or rationalize them away. It takes a lot of training to get people to listen to them again. Repressing them has become a reflex, as countless times a day all of us are put into situations that we probably don't want to be in.
It's taken a lot for me to start listening to this. Usually I get into a situation that my gut will warn me about, and then end up backing out later, realizing that "hey, yeah, I guess I should have just listened to that in the first place". It's a steep learning curve because you're not only reprogramming yourself to listen to yourself, you're retraining your mind to move away from that False self, yet again. And You are the only person who can teach yourself this. That means you have no coach on the sidelines yelling at you to 'Put your heels down' so to speak. And, just like learning to ride, you need a fair few reminders on what to do, and when to do it, but after a lot of practice, it almost becomes second nature.
Anyways, back to the topic of the day. How do you draw the line? I'm talking in particularily about the line of knowing when the horse has had enough, and when you, as the rider, handler, whatever, have pushed too far. This pushing too far is what creates those 'shut down' horses I've talked about in earlier posts. These are the horses that learn to dissassociate their minds from their bodies. They learn to cope with the 'too far' usually by leaving. Then, we, as the not-so-intune handlers think that the horse has decided to co-operate. So, from an emotional perspective, what does drawing the line look like? Usually, it means just putting them back out in the feild and coming back another day. There are so many trainers, coaches, riders, what-have-you out there that believe this method creates a horse that 'figures out the system'. Honestly, I have not seen this. When we are willing to work with the horse, on the horses' terms, we are seeing equine partners that are willing to display what they are feeling, so some days, just like in us humans, they wake up on the wrong side of the bed. Wouldn't it be nice if someone was willing to just put you away when you where like this? It would sure make me want to come back more the next day. So instead of pushing, learn to step back. Create a safe environment for you and your horse, by learning simply to say ok.
I'm not saying this is easy. As riders moving into this we come with a lot of 'this is my horse, I pay for him, he should do what I want'. It takes a lot to move past that. Your Ego, it'll take a blow, so will your pride, but then again, I think the horses would probably prefer if we chose to simply not bring that around. It really is the first step of the journey, and as they say; The First Step is Always the Hardest.

Learning to Define Yourself

On yesterday's post's note, I can definately understand where Scoob is coming from. I went through the same thing, heck, most days I am still going through it. How do I define me? My first answer with the horses is always, "well, Whats their personality?" That's a good one, I did that. I came out Macho Man, that is DECA. Now when personality typing your horse, or ourselfs, we need to remember that each letter comes in different qualities. For me, my 'D', or dominance, is somewhere around a 3 or 4 out of 10. I'm not a supre high D, meaning I don't have so much of the fighting compulsions. Heck yes I still fight, but it takes a little longer to get me there. I'm the same level for 'E' or energy. I've got some get up and go, but usually I'm pretty mellow. My Curious came back as a 7/10. I can understand that. I'm a pretty high curious most days. I get into everything, I want to experience everything, I want to see, hear, touch and feel it all. My Aloof came back as a 5/10. Midway. Not bad.
So now the thing that I'm finding very interesting is deciding whether or not personality traits are born with you, or you learn them. Honestly I think it's both. I know I'm a Macho man personality, but I'm fairly certain my False self, that little voice in my head, is a Boss Personality (DEAA). What can I say, she takes after my mom. She is, after all, the woman who taught me everything. Parts of her where bound to wear off on me somewhere, right? Not to be, disrespectful, (don't get me wrong I love my mom to the ends of the earth) but she can be a little hard to deal with somethings. She's a big D and a huge A (afraid), so like all the horses with these two big traits, she gets a little over-whelming. There's a horse out a Liberty, he's 18 hh and one of the nicest horses you will meet. He's just sweet right to his core. But he's a boss with a huge Afraid, and trust me, you don't want to deal with 2000 pounds of 'Afraid' warmblood jumping into your lap. This is not a fun expereince. Dealing with the resident Boss here some days can be pretty much the same experience, really you just don't want to go there. A lot of Bosses are all about control. They have a cocky, almost egotistical air about them. They are strong, strong individuals when they know their job. And usually they're really, really, really good at their jobs. Problems arise when you have two different ideas about what their jobs should be.
So anyways, back to me. As I said, My False Self takes after my mom. She's a DEAA. She resents my curiosity. She wants to work by the book, no questions asked. She's a big Aloof as well and absolutely obcesses about the job, usually to the point where I would come home from work, and dream about work all night, then get up and go to work again. This was a problem, when I had a job I could obcess about. Right now, not so much. I have few duties, and those I do have are very very easy. There's nothing to get attached to. Plus I have to say, learning how to disempower my false self, has really helped this. Some times she gets the best of me and frets and worries, but I'm getting better at just not listening. My question is tho, like all the personalities, what does the back of the tapestry look like? The front is all glitter and gold and good things (usually) but like everything there is the back side, the darkness, the other half of the balance. So is this fretting and worrying I sometimes get caught up in a presenation of the False Self, or is it the other half of my personality? Being Aloof, I do attach to the job, and usually I don't get to feeling frettful or worrisome unless I feel like the job isn't being completed. So maybe it is just a part of the personality. a package deal.
My second question when getting to know myself is, What do I like to do? or maybe more appropriately, What do I want? My answers to this usually vary. Being a high C (and ADD) I need variety. I thrive off of it. I might try something, decide I don't like it, and drop it. But I try not to define myself by the individual activities I undertake. I like the excitement of the adventure. The rush that comes with trying something new. That's one thing I have defined about me. So what else do I like? I like being able to 'control' my life. No longer I am defining myself by the school I attend, or the people I hang out with. I am enjoying this new found freedom, so much to the point that I'll probably never give it back. I'm hitting the open road, so to speak. My D-C comes out in a little bit of resentment for people who try and dictate what I can and cannot do, or for people who try to define me. This is the part of me resents the 'cookie cutter' stereotypes, and has a high tolerance for diversity and change. I think, personally, my biggest want at this point is to simply continue on this journey with 120% of everything I have. I don't know where it will lead, but I do know that for the first time in this lifetime I feel like I am going somewhere, and that has to count for something. Finally in this big ocean I have a life raft. I may not have ors to direct it, but I have faith that the currents will eventually get me where I need to go.  So sit down and be quiet little Boss, This Macho Man's in the Driver's seat for good now.

More on Training From An Emotional Perspective.

So a continuation of Scooby's story. I mentioned in the last post how, when left to think for himself, Scooby (9year old Sporthorse) has absoultely no self confidence. Coming out of the old stuff, it's hard to convince the horses that its okay to make their own decisions. With Scooby this hesitation came with a lot of freaking out. With typical horse training you use mostly negative reinforcement, that is, leaving the horse alone when he/she is good, and correcting them when they do something wrong. Can you imagine the difficulty of knowing you could never please someone because all they can tell you is what not to do? Maybe you go through that at work, with a parent, a co-worker? Now put that into every time you are interacted with... You see where I'm getting with this. Not so pleasant is it? You wouldn't want to be around that person for long would you?
Anyways, back to Scooby. So he's a horse who was raised on negative training techniques. They are his bread and butter, or meat and potatoes if you will, of his training experience. As a result for a lot of the time he thought he was doing the right thing unless you told him not too. This meant that when sacking him out, or starting him western, he was incapable of working through a situation on his own. If he spooked at an object and you didn't correct him, he thought that's what he was suppossed to do. If he bucked when you did up the back cinch on the western saddle and you didn't correct him, he thought that's what he was suppossed to do. Now the thing you must understand with Scooby is that he's a horse that takes his job rather seriously. He's an aloof, meaning he attaches more to the job then he does to you. His personality dictates that he should attach to a job and once he gets it figured out, you'd better just leave him to do. "Don't interfere please, or I may just have to fight you!" So how do you reprogram his brain to the positive training techniques? A lot of sweat, time and tears is one option. My biggest question was how do I let this horse know that his only job right now is defining who he is? It was a lot of doing nothing. Of standing around waiting for Scooby to make a decision. Even moving his feet of his own free will while in the arena was a big hurdle. But now we are at the point where Scooby knows he can express his own opinion, and boy is he taking his job seriously.
On Monday he decided that he needed, more then anything, to switch over to the big herd. He displayed his idea by practically dragging me over to the gate to the big feild and pushing on it trying to get it to open. I told him "Okay, I get it, let's go ask Dessa." so off we went to talk to Dessa. She asked him, got a big yes, and everything was set. However, we needed to talk to Cathy the barn manager, who had already left for the day. Scooby didn't understand that he couldn't go out now, that he had to wait. Horses live in the moment, they don't comprehend our human perspective of waiting. If they need to do something, they go do it, whether it's for them, or for the good of the herd (these usually go hand in hand together). Maybe it's time we all took an example from them and stopped worrying so much about the "suppossed to"s in life and started living a little more for ourselves, and for the greater good.

Training from an Emotional Perspective

How to 'Train' from an emotional perspective. That's been the hardest thing to decide and define. What does it look like? What does it feel like? Can you even really call it training? Honestly, I don't know if I can answer any of these questions. Everytime I try to explain it, it comes out sounding mystical, illusive and sometimes cryptic. I wouldn't say there's any of those things really involved, it's just a matter of you have to experience it to get it. So how do you explain it to other people, to clients? That's the question of the day. Usually it ends up coming out as 'I work for the horse, and on their time.' To me this means taking the time to form a relationship with a horse. Taking the time to get to know him or her for who they are. Sometimes this can be somewhat difficult, especially with the horses that are coming in for 'rehabilitation', as usually they come in very emotionally surpressed. This supression comes out as anger, bad habits, buck, bolting, or even complete dissassociation with their bodies. In any case this can be a very dangerous situation. When a horse has been so supressed, they don't usually know who they are, let a lone what you as a human being can offer them. They have no idea how to define themselves. There is a similar phenominom in human abuse victims. Part of this process is allowing the horses to define themselves. In a lot of cases, especially the dominant horses, this results in the horse becoming pushy, almost over exuberent, in everything he/she does. In the submissive horses they become almost overly insecure. It's two completely opposite ends of the scale, yet all a part of the same journey.
I am going through this with one of my own horses right now. Scooby is a 9 year old Paint gelding, and he is defining who he is. We personality typed him as a Prize Fighter, but that may change as he decides who he is. He originally came to me as a rehab case for bucking issues, and after his owners decided that they could no longer afford, and had no interest in, continuing on his journey I made the decision to purchase him. It's been a very interesting road to say the least. Started late in life, He had spent the first year and a half  of his under saddle career as a dressage prospect. What one would call 'very well trained', he lived in a mental box. His world comprised of riding, he was told where to put every foot, and how to put it. It created a horse that was 'well broke'. After this he was sold to a young girl and started in hunter/jumper training. Again, he was told where to put every foot and how to put it there. Now Scooby is a very dominant horse, after all the under saddle supression he was taking out his frustration in a very agressive manner, on people and also on other horses out in the herd. He moved stables a couple times and his frustration grew. Scooby was also suffering from some fairly severe physical issues at the time and the pain only added to his anger. Shortly after, he began kicking out at people whenever the touched his sides. Now an interesting thing happened when he came to me. I gave him permission to be himself, and he had no idea how to do this. This horse that was overly dominant had absolutely no self confidence when left to think for himself in a working situation. It's a weird side effect for a dominant horse to experience.

Overcoming our 'False Self'

I'm reading Linda Kohanov's latest book called Riding Between the Worlds. In it she discusses the importance of overcoming what she calls our 'False Self', that is the part of us that discounts our feelings, emotions, instincts and intuitions. That little voice in our head that tells us we are crazy, or stupid, or dumb. It's the voice that rationalizes away our instincts and intuitions as explainable occurances. It is that little voice that keeps us in check, and in a constant state of unawareness. I don't know if its possible to completely overcome this little voice, you could say that it's just a part of consciousness, but when I look at the horses that are completely awake, they don't seem to have this little voice that tells them they are limited. Some people would argue that of course they don't, as they don't live in a high state of conciousness, they don't recognize the passing of time, they don't realize the finality of life. I would have to say that I would argue against this. You mearly have to be in the presence of an awakened horse to see that they survive not only at a highly consious level, but perhaps at a level that is even higher then our own. They can easily and readily influence energy and intuitive pathways. They influence us, both mentally and physically, every time they interact with us without our even knowing it. I believe they exist in a consciencousness that we can not even begin to understand until we start to release that inner false self. We must begin to believe in the power of our selves, and believe that just because we can not explain it away doesn't mean that it doesn't happen. They exist in a state where they realize that the finality of live is a part of the journey, there is nothing they can do about it. They know that they in time all things are given back, bodies, energy, and souls. I believe that they realize this...