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.