There is a tendency in some schools of thought, to make listening and communicating with horses a bit “woowooo”, but nothing could be further from the truth. These are skills that all great horse people have – even if their ability and the way that they communicate is so automatic that they aren’t aware of it.
If you’ve had a chance to do the connection exercise, then you may have started to notice how you uniquely feel for your horse. Don’t worry if you’ve only felt the first glimmers of it and don’t feel expert at that yet, or if you’re not even sure – it’s usually subtle to start off with, getting really comfortable and knowledgeable in it, is a practice thing and oh my goodness it is worth practicing and we’ll be doing a LOT more work around this to get you really good at it.
This Lesson is about the five different ways of feeling, so as to help you start turning those glimmers into something a bit more noticeable.
5 Different Ways of Feeling for Your Horse
There are five basic ways of feeling for our horse and each of us has our own unique combination of those ways of feeling. When we use our own unique “feel” in a very practical way, we can do anything with it.
Just focus on that for a moment folks. When we use our own unique feel in a practical way, we can do anything – we can achieve just about anything.
My problem was, because I wasn’t taught this “feel” thing, that I tried to find it by copying the great horse people that I admired. And that actually drew me AWAY from my own natural strength and talent. Copying them was a recipe for struggling and doing the whole journey much, MUCH harder than it needed to be.
These two videos are going to get you thinking about where your natural talents may lie. Don’t get hung up on defining yourself though, because you will have a mixture of feels. Sometimes the one we struggle with the most is actually an innate strength that no one taught us how to use. I have noticed since understanding this subject more, that some of my natural talent was so automatic that I didn’t even notice it.
Even if you’ve seen them before, it will be worth watching again, with this renewed commitment to yourself and your horse, to notice what ways of Feeling are YOUR unique natural talent.
Now we’ll talk specifically about what Dawn was Feeling inside herself and how I coached her to use that to achieve these incredible results so quickly. Don’t forget, she was a novice horse person then, though she certainly isn’t any more.
So, have you recognized any of your innate natural talents yet? Don’t get tangled up into trying to define yourself, just notice each element of these feels as they arise in your journey.
Does this description of the feels help you recognize more of what could be going on in your own body, with your own unique experience of connection with your horse?
Recognizing and working from your STRENGTHS, rather than trying to copy someone else’s way of feeling is very satisfying to the soul and a very useful guide to inner peace and happiness.
Tomorrow’s lesson looks as if it is about catching your horse – but that’s not all it’s about folks! It’s about learning how to use a feeling that I call Not Quite Right that is the foundation for world class feel for your horse and the foundation for brilliant riding too.
We use catching your horse to show you how YOU experience this Not Quite Right feeling and how you can use it to get really good results with your horse. And for those of you who do have trouble catching your horse – relax, those times are just about over.