Yesterday we talked about how trying to copy someone else’s way of being good with horses – no matter how good they are – will so often lead us to struggle and failure and to the experience of not feeling good enough.
If you haven’t seen that blog yet, here’s the link so that you can make sense of this one! 🙂
And I promised that I would share how each of the “teachers” on staff here experienced their connection with their horses so that you can get begin to get an idea of how it is possible to use the different kinds of feel and connection with your own horse.
We ALL – you and me – ALL, experience our connection with a horse in our own unique combination of the five Feels for a horse.
If you’ve not come across anything like this before, bear with me, because I’m going to lead you through noticing your OWN natural strengths tomorrow. Just getting your head around the fact that there ARE these different ways of feeling for your horse, in the context of the ladies on staff here is all that we’re doing today.
We are also a great example of how, as we focus on our own strengths, we become all rounders who are competent and confident in ALL the different ways of feeling for our horse…
… and get great results… more gently… more sensitively… and more effectively.
Caroline
Caroline has natural Heart Feel strongly in her unique mixture of Feels for a horse. She also brings her qualifications and extensive training and skills as an Equine Behaviorist to this natural ability to see what is REALLY going on behind a problem or behavior.
People with a strong heart feel AUTOMATICALLY look for what’s going on, without blame or judgement and without making the horse or person wrong. The gentleness of this way of experiencing feel and connection with a horse or human is particularly lovely to watch in action.
Her Heart Feel enables her to nail what’s REALLY going on with a horse – BEHIND the behavior or problem and come up with solutions. Horses turn over to people with Heart Feel really easily – they feel confident enough to communicate, faster.
I can tell from conversations I have had with Caroline over the years that I have known her, that the sheer gift that she has with horses has been in evidence since she was a child and went into a stable with an incredibly dangerous stallion and “tamed” that horse that everyone else was so afraid of. That’s typical of people with a strong heart feel, animals positively respond to them very quickly. But because her type of natural skills and talents are not routinely celebrated in our scientifically based society, she was left feeling in her gentle ways, that she was “not enough”.
Please notice the important thing here. While Caroline was looking OUTSIDE her extraordinary gentleness for the answers to horses’ issues, she was feeling that she was not enough.
These days, Caroline knows the usefulness of that incredible gentleness of her heart feel, all the way to her bones. She knows how to feel it and how to best use it – and that knowing gives her an incredible all round competence.
She is certainly more than enough now and brings the skills that she had learned in that journey to help people here find strength and satisfaction in their natural talent.
Narel
One of Narel’s natural strengths is Energetic Feel, which she has extended with her experience in shamanic healing and animal communication. She is also an astrologer. She brings these energetic gifts and talents and experiences and training and combines those with a deep commitment to our approach to horsemanship and to empowering people.
To get an idea of how energetic feel works with horses, think of the way that a school of fish move together in absolute harmony – fast or slow, whoosh… they just all turn in the same direction at the same time – it seems with one mind. Using energetic feel ultimately brings that same ability to flow together, horse and rider together as one in a beautiful harmony.
The great riding master/teachers are describing energetic feel when they talk about the circuit of energy or the circuit of power between horse and rider. That’s pretty much a great description of what energy Feel feels like when it’s in balance. When it’s NOT in balance, it can feel pent up, stuck, stagnant or even explosive.
Energetic feel can be difficult to describe to those who do not experience it routinely. Narel says “Who on earth would believe it possible that our atmosphere was “full” of sound and pictures if they didn’t have a radio or television or phone to turn on? You prove the existence of those frequencies by tuning in and receiving those images and sound so that you can actually see them and hear them. Those frequencies are still there, even though we can’t see them or hear them with our ears unless the machine is turned on”.
People too, can have natural talent to pick up different frequencies like a radio and television can and that is Narel’s particular area of expertise.
Holly
In her unique mixture of Feeling for a horse, Holly has a strength in physical feel – an ability to kinesthetically feel the harmony (or not) between a horse and their human, i.e. to physically feel in her own body what’s going on in her horse. When Physical Feel is in balance, it enables us to feel the horse’s stuck spots and resistances – even to know their aches and pains in our own body and to be able use that knowing to support a horse’s athleticism.
Those with physical feel as a natural talent are often very athletic and well coordinated when they are young, but later in life can be overwhelmed with aches and pains and discomfort and wonder where all that feeling good stuff went.
When Physical Feel is one of our natural talents, we can pick up a rein and Feel what’s happening in the horses body in our own body. We can use it to help our horse to release physical braces and resistances and help them to regain or even find a new level of athleticism and health and strength and balance and beauty in movement. When it’s NOT in balance, we can get stuck in aches and pains and body resistance.
Even if you’ve lost your own athleticism, you can get rid of most, if not all of those aches and pains and find your athleticism again when you learn how to use this talent as the gift that it is.
Jenny
I have become very comfortable with the practicality of my strengths in mental, emotional and physical feel, although I work in all five feels these days.
I think it is my background as a widely trained alternative therapist that is responsible for me discovering how to teach Feel, when most people consider that you have to be born with good feel for a horse. Well we ARE born with good feel for a horse really, it’s just that most of us weren’t taught how to use it.
We’ve already talked about Heart Feel and Energetic Feel and Physical Feel with the other ladies, so I’ll focus on the ones of mine that we haven’t already talked about.
Mental feel, is a wonderful natural problem solving ability when we know how to use it. When we learn how to LISTEN to it, instead of trying to shut it up, the mind quietens down so much more easily – then the ideas and thoughts for solving a problem flow easily and usefully and often with great joyfulness. Most people with good mental feel enjoy the more intellectual problem solving approach. You will often find us taking notes at clinics and really enjoying lecture type presentations.
When we have a natural talent in mental feel but haven’t been taught to use it like the gift that it is, we can just about worry ourselves into an early grave. I learned young how to shut my mind up by reading myself to sleep, otherwise I doubt that I would have slept much at all. In my healing work I have met a lot of people who had trouble sleeping from their minds running at 100 miles an hour.
Believe it or not … yet… 🙂 the answer to every problem that we worry about, is already in our lives. Worrying becomes a thing of the past when we learn how to find that answer easily and learning to be gentle on ourselves becomes sooo… much easier when we learn to use this feel for the gift that it is.
Then there is Emotional Feel. Horses are excellent emotional communicators, so this is a big one. We all experience emotions, but those of us who have a strong natural talent in Emotional Feel can sometimes be easily overwhelmed by the force of our emotions, especially when we haven’t learned to use that sensitivity as the gift that it is.
Horses and humans both – our emotional well being is an absolutely fundamental foundation for physical well being. You will not have physical well being for either horse or human for too long – indeed you cannot have long term physical well-being unless you have emotional well-being.
Tomorrow is the day for that freebie I promised you. I’ll lead you to notice and experience how YOU experience feel and connection to your horse in the context of these different ways of feeling and then I’ll give you a way to support that journey to discovery and mastery of the uniqueness that is you.
Please tell me on the comments below… Is this opening up new possibilities for you? Can you see the possibilities of feeling confident and competent in YOUR OWN UNIQUE WAY of feeling for your horse? Which of those natural talents resonates with you so far?
This “feeling not good enough” is so pervasive in our society as well as in the horse industry and is the cause of so many social problems. Just look around and notice what would be solved with everyone secure and confident in their own way of feeling for others. Please help me to make a difference in the world and share this link with your friends and on Facebook.
And of course, comment below!
I have been sensitive my whole life. As a child and young adult, I was very quiet. People called me shy, but I had a hard time with people saying one thing while I was picking up something different from them. The ‘other feelings’ I had were invalidated and I was taught to ignore them. I have always been able to pick up others’ people feelings and have spent my life learning to manage this gift.
My animals, particularly horses and dogs, have been my safe space, my sanctuary. With them, I could be myself and I loved/love their ‘clean’ congruent energy. There is not ulterior agenda with them.
Reading this blog and the comments made me realize that my ‘worrying’ about horses, like when the dentist comes, isn’t *me* worrying, I’m picking up the horse’s worrying and concern and fear.
I also come from the Parelli system and find that my best times with my horses are when I do use my own feel (didn’t know that’s what it was). SO I’m currently straddling the two worlds.
Looking forward to really owning MY feel and hopefully being more of an advocate for not only my horses, but the other ones I’m around and work with.
Thank you Jenny and all!!!
Ahhh Lauren, thank God for animals hey? I loved the bravery Lauren, the authenticity of your comment – thankyou for sharing that with us. Others will understand more about themselves from reading this.
Those poor beggars who were saying one thing and and you were picking up something else from them – that used to be me! 🙂 I thought I was being polite and a good friend/daughter/mother/co-worker. I didn’t realize that my feelings were for BOTH our benefits and that I was supposed to pay attention to them and even more, once I understood them clearly, ACT on them. Life is MUCH more peaceful now!
Sorry about this naive question, though I am not familiar about the different types of humanbeings. How can we know, which type we are ??
Not naive at all Haruko, others have asked the same question! 🙂 We are all a unique blend of all the different types of feel I think. The biggest reason for labeling it like I have, is to get us to realize that other people have different experiences from us and to help us to develop the confidence in OUR unique experience, rather than to try and copy others and then feel like a failure. Does that make sense? As for figuring out which are your unique strengths, the blog after this one gives you a quiet mind session to help you notice your unique way of feeling. Enjoy that session!
This blog is one that has really really got me listening! For years I have been an emotional being and have spent most of my life trying to tame it. (Overwhelm is not pretty!) However, I have in the last few years realised that it can help me be comfortable with others expressing big emotions and encourage them to do so. I also realised that if I could become more aware of what comes form me-I would then realise the rest is coming from them. Now this is the stumbling block…..how I can influence another horse or being to deal with the emotion, not be overwhelmed? Take my emotional lead?.
I am also definitely a ‘mind person’ and always found that being physically coordinated in a precise manner is a conscious effort for a long time. What it does mean is that once the ‘basics’ are cracked and I have been long left behind…I catch up and overtake rapidly. I can also teach the required detail to someone else. For years though I have been sick of being the one who is ‘slower’ and all brains and not quick enough with my reactions in my body. I can not muti task literally (unless one task requires no conscious thought). I am considering playing computer games to speed this up. Pilates and putting this into all aspects of my day to day life has certainly helped my body become more in the flow and coordinated. That energy moving around thing and has helped my riding no end. Takes me a while to hit this ‘flow’ though sometimes. I had to make drastic changes in my life to get rid of the stress causing mental, emotional and physical blocks. So now I feel like I would like to be able to use this feel. Just not sure how? Also, wandering if it is possible to improve my feel in other areas or if this is a no go? For instance lately been looking into energy type work a lot….but feel there is something wrong with me that while the practioner says ‘you just feel it’ -I don’t! Perhaps ‘they’ just feel it? I was left thinking that I just don’t have the natural talent for feel that I need to be a decent horsewoman. This blog has inspired me to realise that I need to hone in and develop MY natural types of feel and stop trying to get good at the ones I don’t. I had lost my way so much in last few months and only just stopped giving myself an emotional beating over it. Now today I feel truly inspired. Thank you Jenny. The million dollar question is-what to do now?
As I read your comment and questions Emma, I noticed that you answered yourself beautifully – as we do so often with mental feel when we write like this. So yes… Your feel will expand into the energetic feel you are looking for, gently, without any special effort, when you get really good at your strength. And you can chat to Holly about that in your lesson with her.
Hi Everyone, I hope you’re all enjoying the blogs and the lessons.
A little insert here from me, talking about ‘not feeling good enough’, which has been with me for…. about forever. I can remember back to when I was very little, and getting in the most enormous rages about what I considered was cruel and unkind treatment of animals.
The ‘gentleness’ that I now know as a gift, was then a massive problem, and I was constantly told that I was too sensitive, and “don’t be ridiculous”, when I talked of how the animal on the receiving end was feeling. I was often in tears, as if feeling the pain and fear that the animal was feeling (I now know that I was in fact feeling what they were feeling).
The feeling of not being enough came in many guises, and this sensitivity for animals was just one of them… I was not strong enough emotionally, I was not smart enough and should know better, I was not sensible enough thinking about animals in this way, I was not clever enough… “I suppose you think you’re clever, well you’re not” and I was often told “no one wants to hear what you’ve got to say” after I tried to speak up… that one was always a reminder for me to be quiet. It seemed that my little voice trying to speak out for the animals was drowned out every time…. and that lead me to believe that I was not even enough for the animals.
This may ring some bells for some of you, I’m sure I’m not alone with this, and over time and with the help of brilliant people, I now know I am not the only one who feels a gentleness and sensitivity towards animals, there are thousands and thousands, (millions :)) of us out there. It is our strength in this that contributes towards a changing world, which Jenny writes about in her blog “Seriously coming out of the closet”, and I’d like to step out of that closet with her, and say “Hi” to you all.
Ahhh Caroline, that’s lovely. It’s dark in that closet hey?
Hi Valezka 🙂 lovely to see you here x
While commenting I will reply back in response to Jenny’s prompt in the article. The rough time she talks about for me was as an adult and it was after I “opened right up” energetically after a bout of illness (even though I was what they call “sensitive” my entire life). At that time in 2007 I literally felt like I was going rather insane! It was a very hard time until I learnt through much research that what I was experiencing was completely ok, in fact – a gift, and it was just a different way of “being”.
Thanks Jenny for supporting each and every one of us to bring out our natural talents with equal importance and most of all for empowering us as individuals 🙂
You’re very welcome – you did all the work! 🙂 What was it like to be sensitive to energy like that when you were younger, Narel? I remember the frustration and feeling of fighting against my feelings, because good girls weren’t supposed to get angry and when we were sad or depressed we were supposed to “pull our socks up” and “get on with it” – which I did, until the burden of all that undealt with emotional stuff just got too much for me and I ended up with no energy to get out of bed for days on end and in depression. Funny, that is so gone now, that I can’t even remember doing that – my memory is of others telling me it happened.
Thank God for a different way of dealing with things now! 🙂
Jenny, back when I was a younger child I was very shy and remember having “imaginary friends” and a huge love of animals which was supported by us having quite a few animals at home :)… and from memory I think I was quite emotional which was never a problem for anyone from my perspective – my family may say otherwise :)!
I remember my grandfather taking me to see Dr Doolittle when I was a little girl and thinking “I sooo…. want to talk to animals too.” I ached for it – I couldn’t believe that it wasn’t possible and more than 30 years later – voila… Some things take a life time to come to fruition when you have to figure it out for yourself! 🙂
Thanks for providing some awsome people to help in so many ways and in such a broad range of talents. Powerful group of women and horses.
You are right Valezka, it’s not coincidence that all the staff photos have the horses in there too! 🙂