I found this article in the back end of my website when I was getting the new website ready. Enjoy!
I thought some of you might be interested in knowing a bit about my combination horse/personal growth journey to see where I am coming from and some of what you might be able to expect for yourself from a horsemanship course with me.
Man, I used to do things the hard way – such a struggle.
By 1998, I had started my training and worked as a “healer” and knew the power of emotional healing.
I was in the Parelli instructor program and staying a Parelli instructor depended on getting my Level 3. (From what I gather now, that is Level 4 in the new levels program.) Even though I have moved quite some long distance away from the Parelli program, I bless Pat and Linda for setting me on the path of personal growth that brought me to where I am today. Thanks to both of you!)
I was really struggling with Bobby – yep, the same Bobby that is still helping me out all these years later!
I remember going to Rhonda, my kinesiology teacher to work on the emotional aspects of getting good with him in an attempt to get my level 3. I went to Rhonda to work on my fear of falling. I went to Rhonda to work on my fear of exams. I went to Rhonda to work on my fear of failure. (By this time I had literally tens of thousands of dollars invested in being a Parelli instructor and we were all, as a family, financially committed to that outcome.
At one stage I remember Rhonda questioning the amount of time, effort and money that I was putting into the horse side of my life journey. It is not so surprising that she should have questioned that, because logically, I had a lot more serious things to worry about. (My husband’s complete incapacitation from a truck accident being one of them!)
When I look back in hind sight, I see how blessed I have been to have had the possibility of personal growth through the grace of The Horse and I see how much further I have come than if I had been struggling without their support.
As well as working on myself, I took Bobby to Rhonda too, to work on his tendency to break down every time I went to video my exams. I had his genetic pre-dispositions worked on. I had his muscles massaged, his emotions cleared, his hormones tweaked, his chakras balanced and his spine re-aligned.
He had acupuncture, iridology, Bowen therapy, homeopathic medicine, herbal medicine, Bach flowers, kinesiology and whatever else he tested up for. He was even genetically blueprinted to the tune of hundreds of dollars. (That’s a technique where we reduce the vulnerability to adverse genetic pre-dispositions.)
I jumped out of a perfectly good aeroplane in an attempt to beat my fear of falling. (There’s a whole other story there for another day… 🙂
And I made a complete and dangerous fool out of myself trying to learn to ride a unicycle to improve my balance. That darned thing is still out in the shed! Anyone else want it?
I must have gone to more clinics here and in America than any other person I know. I went to America in 1996 for the very first summer of clinics at the new ranch in Pagosa Springs with Pat and Linda Parelli. I traipsed all over Victoria chasing learning and went as far inter-state as I could reach. Many times I drove for over two days taking Bobby interstate for yet another clinic week or two.
With all that learning, I had horsemanship techniques coming out the wazoo. Still do…
And Bobby STILL wasn’t giving me what I wanted and he STILL broke down in ten different ways at the drop of a hat. In fact, not only wasn’t he giving me what I wanted (except in his liberty work, which was magnificent) he was an utter pig of a horse who resisted me at every turn. (yeah you don’t have to grab the keyboard to scold me about my attitude – I get that now!)
In frustrated fury, I eventually threw him out into the paddock and told him he was lucky that I didn’t believe in putting horses into pet food or some dog would be eating him. (I’m cringing here now, but it gets worse…)
I told him to keep out of my way because I didn’t even want to look at him.
I have thanked God many, many times for Bobby’s courage and conviction to make a stand for this “dumb” human. And I am not talking about dumb as in stupid (but hey if that cap fitted back then…) but dumb as in can’t speak, can’t hear.
It was two years later of barely looking at him – I couldn’t bear the look in his eyes – before I sat on his back again.
And that was the day of the very first entries in the notebooks that I ended up calling Bobby’s Diaries – that two years later became the book of the same name.
That story is in Bobby’s Diaries so I won’t go into it again here. Oh man, the forgivingness of him… I still cry with gratitude now even thinking of it. Waiting all that time for me… Did he wait for me to grow enough to find my way back to him?
Breathe jen…
The combination of my continuing development as a “healer” and my work with Bobby writing Bobby’s Diaries, led me to a big dummy spit some years later. And I mean a real dummy spit. The only thing missing was the actual dummy hitting the ground as I stamped on it in temper. I actually went through all the actions –foot on ground – stamping.
I was sooo… over doing things the hard way. Sooo… over struggling. I no longer believed that we had to struggle to get somewhere. Our old Prime Minister’s “life wasn’t meant to be easy” quote was firmly relegated to the garbage bin where it belonged. (For you Aussie’s reading this, that was Malcolm Fraser. Can you believe that? He actually had a whole generation of people thinking life wasn’t meant to be easy!)
Life WAS meant to be easy… It CAN be easy… Horses can be easy and we ALL can be happy.
Within 6 weeks of that dummy spit, all the people and circumstances and insights had flowed that became the book Pathway to Heaven. And then hot on its heels came Zen Connection with Horses, which combined the horses and the personal growth.
Then I got the chance to put that personal growth to practice when suddenly every avenue of income turned off like someone had turned a tap off. And we went bust. Well not quite bust as it turned out, we managed to stop the bank foreclosure 1/2 an hour before it was due to happen (1/2 an hour, can you believe the luck of that?) and sold the farm at a considerable profit before it even went officially on the market.
That six months of getting our beautiful farm ready for the new people and packing, was another time of enormous personal growth for me. I grieved for the loss of a dream and found my centre, grieved some more and found my centre again and at the same time went through full blown menopause with more serenity than I’ve ever experienced in my life.
I have this theory that hormones out of whack, like they are with teenagers and in menopause, don’t actually CAUSE the emotional upsets, that it LIFTS them to the surface and gives us the opportunity to step into the next phase of our lives lighter and freer from old emotional baggage. Certainly my own experience validated that.
I’m not saying it was a piece of cake, I had to keep re-balancing myself, but oh my goodness always being able to find peace of mind again was SUCH a blessing.
We landed on our feet here, in a fabulous place that turned out to be and have everything that manifested in those tough times.
Life still has its ups and downs, but the gifts that horses have brought me created the opportunity for that to be a happy journey, with the ability to find peace of mind no matter what’s going on in my life. Mannn… do you get how BIG that is? The ability to find peace of mind and feel good, no matter what is going on in my life.
May your horses bring you the same gift…
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