There is Magic in the air today

How do I describe the magic of what we learned in this Heal Your Horse’s Back clinic? It’s sooo… BIG.

We learned how to deal with conflict with confidence, with what we’re calling The Third Way. We learned how that translated into a new open-ness in our bodies that directly translated to a new open-ness in the horse’s bodies.

Pause and have a feel into what that’s going to mean for healing of horses and riders both!

Our willingness to do conflict differently, to meet a horse’s “can’t, won’t, don’t want to”, to meet any resistance from this new place of OUR OWN openness, brought us to understand the horse differently.  THAT’s the key to The Third Way.

And that led to experiencing and understanding collection differently – real collection – soft and easy and joyous collection that starts from a horse already in self carriage, in a way that I am absolutely sure would have the old classical dressage masters smiling with approval.

And doing it oh so easily…

THIS is the stuff that our dreams with our horses are made of.

My hat goes off to Sandra and Joyce and Mel, for their willingness to be so open and share their lessons with everyone on the clinic, for the head shaking progress that each of them made because of that openness and for the beautiful progress that they made with their horses. Each of these wonderful ladies had a very individual journey of unfolding and discovery during the clinic, although we had a central theme weaving its way through.

Mel has made such personal transformation in understanding her own incredible natural talent of connection to horses and in that space she has transformed Pye’s life too. Mel does horse rescue work and rescued Pye a while back. She started off with Pye wanting to attack her and ended her clinic with both of them laying down together, mirroring each other in confidence and connection. That video brought tears to my eyes – I must ask her if it’s OK to share it with our wider community here.  (Later addition – see the link below…)

Joyce started with her much loved but retired 18 year old horse Safar, who had a badly damaged back and thanks to her wonderful willingness to share some deeply personal stuff, triggered a cascade of insights for all of us that was such an integral part of the clinics success. Safar has found a new lease on life, noticeable improvement in his back and a new youthfulness even though it’s deep winter in the U.S. We look forward to seeing his progress when we get together again in a months time to review progress.

And Sandra – Sandra and Milly – bless both of you to bits. Sandra brought Milly to this clinic because Milly was suffering from a series of deadly colic attacks over months – that culminated with the vet wanting to put her down.  In a healing session that I did with Milly by distance during a colic attack, I had identified they were triggered by her spinal bones not being in quite the right place. This often happens, as there are some vertebrae that are directly linked to the stomach and other bones to the small and large intestines, so that when there is tension around the bones, there is tension around the organs, which can often cause recurring, unexplained colicking.

Clearing up Milly’s spinal problems involved understanding a whole new way to ask for collection – not from the mouth or by softening the jaw or poll or driving from behind, but from lifting up the withers and hey I reckon you guessed it – you cannot FORCE a horse to lift up their withers.  They do it from mirroring the genuine and soft and joyous opening in the rider. Beautiful stuff.

And lifting up the withers and stretching and helping the horse to release their stuck spots and resistances and even their spinal problems, along with whatever else is in the way, makes it possible for the beginnings of collection to be a very healing thing to do with a horse.

Pause and have a feel into the bigness of that!

Your staff here and the fence sitters had a big contribution too. From Caroline we learned a new depth of  welcoming and even embracing mistakes as the wonderful opportunities for positive change that they are and then we took that into conflict as well – recognizing that conflict – when we know how to deal with it – has beautiful seeds for change.

I had been a person who avoids conflict like the plague and yet now I am quietly and confidently open to The Third Way that makes conflict a positive experience. With our horses, this means that each conflict between what the horse wants or what they can or can’t do – and what we want and what we can or can’t do – becomes a lovely opportunity for the next step of beautiful progress together.

This … THIS is why I wanted a horse all those years ago.

And yet all of this wonderful wonderful stuff was grounded in the practical results of Pye finding a new confidence in Mel, Pye experiencing the most gobsmacking healing of a horse’s back, Mel finding a new confidence in her own unique and wonderful ability, Joyce and Safar both getting younger and more flexible and confident in a new way of looking at things, Milly’s back healing under our eyes, Sandra’s break through into All That Is and me – MY life will never be the same either.

Thankyou, thankyou, thankyou all of you. And bless you from the bottom of my heart…

Here’s the blog I wrote about The Healing of Pye Well done Mel – the transformation is priceless.