A peaceful connection is fundamental to the kind of relationship that you need for horse and rider to ride together as one. THIS is where enjoying your horse journey starts – right at the beginning in the connection and whatever we need to do to accomplish that will be well worth the time and effort. We want enjoyment of the connection together to be NORMAL.
There can be all kinds of reasons for the connection to not feel peaceful at the beginning including a horse who is seriously trying to tell you something or a horse who has been traumatized and needs a bit of time to be prepared to reach out again.
Whatever the reason, it’s important that we have a peaceful and relaxed connection, so that then we can expand that comfort zone to include everything that you routinely do with your horse. Do you want to review the Comfort Zone lesson? Click here to review that.
Feelings of peacefulness or happiness or warmth and love or excitement when we are connecting, are all indications that we and our horse are in our comfort zone with the connection itself.
It’s funny, funny sad – I have heard people say that horses don’t feel love and all I can say is that they have been seriously missing out on what’s possible in the horse-human relationship.
This lesson is about helping you to find the peacefulness that comes from you and your horse being in your comfort zone together.
And if you are already happy with your connection then this Lesson is about you finding deeper and deeper places of comfort. There are many layers, so take this opportunity to go even deeper.
You can do this lesson within sight of your horse – I suggest that you sit outside the paddock or field or stable where you can focus completely on what you’re feeling – or you can do this lesson for the first time from inside the house.
Click here if you need an alternative audio of this lesson
If you’re still having trouble finding a peaceful connection after this, then email me so we can put more support in place and make sure that it happens as it should. 🙂
Written Version of the Audio
Having a Comfort Zone in connection before we move on, is a critical part of our foundation. It sounds simple, but you need that Comfort Zone in the first place, BEFORE you can make it bigger.
There can be all kinds of good reasons not to be feeling good with the connection itself – but like all other feelings that something is Not Quite Right, it’s no big deal, we just need to make some sort of change for us or for our horse before we move on.
The change that is needed could be a practical one, like your horse letting you know that something is wrong – or it could be some kind of insight for peacefulness for yourself that you are looking for – or that you are needing.
Whatever the change, if you have something that is getting in the way of your peaceful connection with your horse this early in your course – then you are in for a wonderful time!
For this lesson, go back to the connection lesson in The First Key to Happiness with Your Horse and double check that there is a feeling of peacefulness or joyfulness or excitement in the connection with your horse. I have put the link for that at the top of this lesson in case you need it.
For those of you who already have a peaceful connection with your horse, you could use this exercise to go even deeper.
Last lesson you got to practise getting a quiet mind through a breathing exercise. But THIS time you are going to start using that quiet mind on purpose to get an understanding about you or your horse.
So here’s what you can do if you have a Not Quite Right about the connection or if you want to go deeper into the connection itself.
Back away from your horse as far as you have to – walk away far enough until you feel OK. One lady in a clinic had to go all the way out to the road on a very long driveway before her horse could relax and she felt OK. He had had a bad time with humans and I guess he needed to know that she was really serious about helping him.
Then take a moment to think about what you are looking for. In this case, you want to understand what it is that you need to know or do to feel happy in your connection.
Then notice everything about your breathing like we did in the last lesson. I have put the link further up the page in case you want to go through that lesson again.
Don’t think about what you are looking for, you have already set your intention to do that. Just breathe and allow the insight to come floating up from your sub-conscious when you’re ready. Even if you don’t get the insight itself straight away – you will feel more relaxed and that will be part of the process.
And you can sit with your horse – at whatever distance is comfortable, breathing for a Quiet Mind as in the previous lesson – until you DO have a feeling of peaceful connection with them.
However long that takes…
For some horses who have had a particularly hard time with humans, it may take days. For some people who have had particularly tough stuff in their lives, it may take days.
But whatever amount of time it takes – whether it’s for you or for your horse, this time spent developing a Quiet Mind and a Comfort Zone with the connection, will be right up there amongst the most important time you ever spend with your horse.
Enjoy your practice and see you next time.