This Ninth Key to Happiness with Your Horse is one of those many practical ways that horses can lead us to a bigger truth in life generally, with more peace of mind and a deeper sense of contentment and happiness and well being as a result.
Ask me for the story about how this particular Key became such a big deal in my life, in a live seminar one day – it’s hilarious!
Sandra’s horse Milly in the photo here, brought us the impact of this Key to Happiness in one of our online clinics. These are her before and after the clinic photos. Even her metabolism changed. If 40 odd people hadn’t watched that happening it would have been hard to believe it was the same horse.
There’s a written version of this audio below.
If you have any trouble with the audio player, then click here to listen to The Ninth Key to Happiness with Your Horse If your internet is really slow, you can download it and listen at your leisure. To download, right click here and save).
If this key appeals to your soul, then our on line program 21 Days to a Quiet Mind is a PRACTICAL way to find that special “something” in ourselves that changes the way that horses think about us, that almost indefinable, magical something that all the great horsemen talk about – Klaus Ferdinand Hempfling, Frederic Pignon, Tom Dorrance, Linda Kohanov, Carolyn Resnick, Noora Ehnqvist to name just a few.
Written Version of the Audio
I had a big think about whether to include this in the Keys to Happiness with Your Horse in this introduction to our work, because it’s pretty advanced. I’ve decided to go with it because it definitely IS one of the keys to happiness with your horse.
If you are yearning for a depth to your connection to your horse, if you’re looking for the kind of poetry that you see some people get, that you might even have had glimpses of yourself sometimes, then I think this Key will be right up there amongst the most powerful things you will ever do.
Back all those years ago that I wrote Zen Connection with Horses, I wrote that adding pressure to fear and confusion, making or forcing a horse to do something, no matter what pretty words you dressed that up in, LOST you leadership.
In fact, it’s even bigger than that. Adding pressure to fear and confusion, making or forcing a horse to do something, causes resistance and tension in your horse – which is still there even if they are doing what you want.
Even if that tension is not reflected in health issues yet – YET… – it will be very likely getting in the way of what you are looking for from your horse.
Think of all those lovely things that we want from our horse – confidence, softness, responsiveness, calmness, willingness, cooperation. Think about it – you can’t get any of those things by force. You can’t get any of those things by pulling or pushing, or with kicking or using spurs to drive them on or sticks to smack them with. You can’t get any of those beautiful things that we are looking for, with gadgets that are designed to MAKE a horse do something either.
You can make a horse COMPLY with what you want – you can make a horse DO it with “make” or force – but you can’t make them LIKE it.
You can’t MAKE a horse be calm.
You can’t MAKE a horse be confident.
You can’t MAKE a horse be willing to turn themselves inside out to do what you want.
You can’t MAKE a horse be soft – I’ve seen lots of people try, but it will always be lacking.
So how the heck CAN we get these 4 – 600 kilo animals to do what we want?
I’m glad you asked.
Once you’ve got a handle on those earlier Keys to Happiness – understanding and using your connection to them, specially understanding their fear and helping them to be and feel safe, then add this Key. You can get your horse to do what you want by BEING the change that you want your horse to be.
BE the change that you want your horse to be.
It’s BIG and it has many layers.
BE the change that you wish to see in your horse has become both a foundation philosophy of our work here and a practical technique that produces excellent results. It actually SPEEDS up practical change to BE the change that we want our horse to be.
So HOW can changing ourselves get a result with our horse?
When we want our horse to have more confidence, then we simply address every cause of fear or anxiety in ourselves.
“So what good is THAT?” I hear some of you ask.
If you’ve had a chance to apply the Third Key to Happiness with Your Horse, then you are beginning to notice that some of the niggles of fear or anxiety or nervousness that you feel when you’re around your horse actually belong to your horse.
So when we are confident, when we are truly aware and authentically confident in that awareness, then our horse can take their cue from us with confidence. This is real leadership stuff here.
When we want our horse to release resistance, we can simply notice any resistance in ourselves and then allow that resistance to release. When our horse is at peace enough in themselves – when they feel safe enough to be listening to what we do in our own body – then they WILL release the tension of that resistance in their own bodies. I’ve seen it happen consistently.
Can it really be THAT simple? Yes! A big resounding YES!
You want self carriage? Then embody self carriage in yourself – clean up the nooks and crannies of poor posture that are in the way of your own self carriage and get it for yourself first and allow your horse to mirror that.
There’s also the fact that it is extremely difficult for our horses to give us poetry in motion when we’re sitting on them crooked with our own body problems. Our rider training here does a brilliant job at helping people straighten up and clean up their own body resistances and braces and crookednesses.
We can get soft and fluid in the way we ask our horse to do things when our OWN bodies are in self carriage.
You want collection from your horse? Then find the ability for your own body to collect and wowwww… feel the change in your horse.
You want your horse to pay more attention to you – then you pay more attention to them.
You may have noticed that this “BE the change that you want to see in your horse” has many levels – a spiritual level where you are taking ultimate responsibility for your part in the relationship, knowing that you cannot make them change, but you CAN help them by truly looking into and changing yourself. I’ve seen it over and over and over again, how people change themselves and their horse just melts…
Then there’s a more practical level to this – where because of this wonderful connection to your horse that you will develop on this path – you can feel into your own body, do whatever needs doing in yourself to fix what’s going on in your own body and see the practical result in your horse – where no matter what the problem is that you are having with your horse – you can FEEL into yourself, FEEL into your own body for the source of the problem.
Oh yeah I hear you, the REAL source of the problem may well be in your horse – he or she may have a tension or a weakness somewhere – but it’s in your connection to your horse – in the way that you feel your connection to your horse, that you will be able to feel that problem in your own body – in whatever way is your unique sense of feel.
Developing this kind of feel is not just for that world class rider that you admire so much – it’s in the grasp of normal everyday people like you and me. This kind of Feel, this kind of BEing the change that you want your horse to be, at whatever level you want to work at, will give you the keys to the kingdom of horses and with that, the keys to a deep sense of contentment and happiness.
For an extra dose of contentment and happiness OUTSIDE of horses, you might like to notice how “BEING the change that you wish to see” might apply in other areas of your life too. I look forward to your feedback around that! 🙂
Horses are magnificent…