How to feel good with our horses and in the rest of our lives too

Simple words in that photo, but HOW do we do that is the big question hey? HOW can we consistently feel good with our horses and with life?  HOW can we stop feeling nervous, frustrated or even angry?  How can we change something big like depression for example?

Understanding our feelings, understanding that our feelings are just communication from our inner selves, part of our Inner Guidance system and then taking action on those feelings where necessary, is what creates the opportunity for a deep feeling of well being – mentally, emotionally and physically – for ourselves and for our horses too.

In fact, horses (bless them!) make it so much easier for us to successfully find an ease with our emotions and then to transfer that ease to the rest of our lives.

This is the first of a series of articles about finding happiness, solving depression and other such subjects where horses can be so valuable in helping us to feel good – when we help them to feel good too.

Here is an excerpt from the book Zen Connection with Horses that talks about the oh so magical Magic Questions that are such a simple foundation for HOW to feel good with our horses and with the rest of our lives as well.

And I would love it if some of you who are familiar with this work, would share with us some of your stories about what it meant to you to understand that emotions are just our Inner Guidance system at work and that when we listen and take action on them, pfft!  the crappy feelings are just gone. I’ll kick off the comments with one of my own stories!  🙂

WE ARE SO CONNECTED TO OUR HORSES THAT WE FEEL THEIR FEAR AS IF IT IS OUR OWN.

There is something so special about the “being” that is the horse.  Many of us experience a connection to them so profound, that we feel their emotion as if it is our own.

Yep, read that again, that IS what I meant!  As if it is our own….

For many of you who are experiencing fear with your horse – you are feeling your horse’s fear as if it were your own.

For many of those who are experiencing anger – you are experiencing your horse’s anger as if it were your own.

And for those experiencing frustration – you are experiencing your horse’s frustration as if it were your own.

Some of you are experiencing your horse’s sadness as if it were your own.

And you are not on your own either!

I have written a whole book about this subject and the beautiful stories and insights that led me to these conclusions, so there’s no point in trying to go over all of it again here.  If the subject intrigues you, you can get Pathway to Heaven on Earth at the Book Store.

I guess that you are wondering, if this profound connection is really the case, then how the heck do you know whether your fear or frustration belongs to your horse or to you?  And how do you get rid of those feelings, no matter whose they are, because who wants to feel like that all the time?

It’s quite simple.  (Don’t you hate it when someone says that something really big is quite simple?)

First of all, we need to understand that our so-called negative emotions are not negative at all.  They are just messages from our souls and when we understand what that message is, all the emotion just falls away – it just doesn’t exist any more!  (When I talk about the soul, it is not necessarily in a religious sense, but about that deep inner part that is at the core of us.)

Read that again if you haven’t got how HUGE that is.  Now you’re probably thinking the same as I did …   I also wondered if that could possibly be true – life couldn’t possibly be that simple.  And if it was, how come nobody ever taught me this before?

I’m here to tell you though, that it  IS  that simple.  When I started to deliberately pay attention and work at understanding and acting on each of these messages from my soul, when I started deliberately acting on these so-called negative emotions, my life became dramatically and instantly less stressful.  I live my whole life acting like this now, not just with horses and oh the wonder and ease of it!  Well (smile), nearly always anyway!

Let’s look at an example of a negative emotion that most of us have experienced with our horse – fear.  Fear comes in many disguises – uneasiness, anxiety, dread, feeling petrified, sudden fright, panic, pure terror, anger and even rage is one of fear’s disguises (more about that later too!).

Humor me for a while, until you’ve had a chance to experience the wonder of this for yourself.

Now draw the two threads together.

•       Fear is just a message from your soul and when you get the message and act on it, the fear just goes away.
•       And you can be so profoundly connected to your horse that you experience their fear as if it is your own.

Thus a significant amount of the fear that you experience when you are around your horse is their fear and when you understand the message of that fear and act on it, it just goes away.

Even as I am sitting here at my computer, drawing these threads together for you, I could stamp my feet on the floor with excitement – in fact, I just did!  I’ve felt moments where it felt like the world just shifted for me.  And it just shifted for so many of you, sitting there reading this book.  It shifted as you started to understand what this might mean for you.

Stop for a moment and go and make yourself a cup of tea or walk around the room for a bit and think about the freedom from all kinds of stresses that this will mean for you.

…..

Woo hooo!  That was BIG, hey?

Staying with the fear example, the next big part of the puzzle is figuring out whose fear it is – yours or your horse’s?  You need to know whose fear it is so that you can decide what action to take about it.

You can figure out whether the fear belongs to you or your horse by asking yourself these simple Four Magic Questions that will take you straight to The Stress Free Zone.

THE  FOUR  MAGIC  QUESTIONS
1.     WHOSE  IS  IT?

Whose uneasiness /anxiety / fear is it?

Is it mine?

Is it my horse’s?

Maybe even somebody else’s?

All of the above?

When the answer is right, the uneasiness /anxiety / fear will get noticeably less or even go away completely.

 

2.     WHAT  IS  IT  THAT  I  NEED  TO  KNOW

OR  DO  ABOUT  IT?

What is it that I need to know or do for this uneasiness /anxiety / fear to go away? What is my soul trying to tell me?

And again, when you get the right answer, the uneasiness /anxiety / fear will get noticeably less or go away completely.

 

3.     HAS  IT  ALL  GONE  YET ?

Has the uneasiness /anxiety / fear ALL gone yet?

And keep asking the first two questions until it HAS all gone.  Is there any tiny bit of faint feeling left that feels “not quite right” to you?

Keep asking the first two questions until every little bit of “not quite right” has gone.

Much more about “not quite right” later.

 

Oh, you noticed that there are only three questions here?  I bet some of you didn’t!  Well, there’s only three questions written here because the fourth question is so big that it needs its own chapter to explain it.  So … Coming up soon …

We don’t want to get sidetracked though from these incredibly important magical questions.  So here’s the next important bit.  Explore the answer that flicks into your mind first, no matter how weird that might seem.

It’s your first instant response to The Four Magic Questions that’s most important.  Once you start dwelling on it, it is way too easy for your fears and old traumas and behavior patterns to produce an answer.  But even if you do bring old fears and traumas in by mistake, you’ll know, because the feeling will only go away when you get the right answer, when you get the real communication from your soul.

That bit is reee…ally important, so I’ll say it in a different way.  You can’t kid yourself, because if you get the answer wrong – either the feeling stays the same or it gets even bigger.  If you get it right, if you get that deep message from the inner part of your self, the fear just goes away, it just disappears.  And you’re instantly in The Stress Free Zone.

And if you don’t get the answer straight away, then just set your intention that you WILL get the information that you need to get those insights and make that change and then that information will start coming to you.  There is no point in struggling to get the answer.  The struggle itself gets in the way of getting the right answer.

When you set your intention to understand what an emotion is about, it is like a promise to yourself that you will pay attention to the things that happen around you until you understand that message.  If this is the right way of going about it, the emotion will go away as you set your intention.

It may be that you’ll see something in a movie that might prompt an insight, or a line in a song, or something that you read or something that kid down the road tells you.  You need to pay attention, because the information can come from anywhere after you’ve set your intention.

When I don’t get the answers to my Magic Questions straight away, I  keep a notebook to keep track of the insights as they unfold.

I’m going to say it again, because it is so important.  Struggling to get the answer is counter-productive.  It rarely works.  The answer will come easily or it won’t.  And if it doesn’t come easily, then just set your intention to understand the message as soon as possible.

There’s other ways of getting the answers to the Four Magic Questions if they don’t come easily, that we discuss in the next chapter.

Here’s another BIG point.  It also possible when you are so connected to your horse, to experience their physical pain as if it was your own.   If you are pain free before you connect to your horse, and then experience pain when you connect, then it’s most likely a message from your horse.

 

So ask the Four Magic Questions about the pain too:

1.     “Whose pain is this?”

2.     “What is it that I need to know or do about this pain?”

3.     “Has all the pain gone yet?”

Until all the pain has gone.

End of today’s excerpt from the book Zen Connection with Horses.  You can find it in the Book Store here.

Does this give you a new perspective on how our mental, emotional and physical well being is so closely linked to our horse’s?  And are you starting to see how how easy it might be, with a bit of practice, to live life feeling good?

 

UP NEXT:

Streamlining the Magic Questions, the importance of ACTION and how horses and the understanding of our emotions can solve even depression.

AND AFTER THAT:

Some physical causes of depression.