Limiting Beliefs

www.spiritual horsemanship.com
Copyright (c) 2009 Lif Strand

Here’s something to ponder: Limiting beliefs are what keep us stuck in trying mode.

What does it really take to move from trying to doing?

As has been said by many before me, the sky’s the limit when it comes to what can be done in this world. If you can imagine it, you can do it. But most of us – even though we think we’re imagining quite well (vision boards, affirmations, life scripts, even daydreaming) – never seem to be able to get to where we want to go.

That’s because we’ve got these built-in constraints called beliefs, which exist in the domain of the subconscious.

I don’t know how much time you spend thinking about elephants, but have you ever wondered how it is that those big animals can be confined by chains that they could easily snap? I’ve been told that what happens is that when elephants are babies, they’re tethered at the ankle with chains that are too strong for them at that young age to break. They learn quickly that getting free of the restraint is impossible. As elephants grow up, even though they become so powerful that they could easily snap the chain that keeps them in place, they believe that the chain is too strong, and they never try. The belief they developed as babies limits what they think they can do.

Of course, elephants do break their chains sometimes – but that only happens when they panic or become enraged. Other than those rare occasions, they don’t believe they can – and so, they can’t.

People do the same thing. How many times have you heard about the petite mom who lifts a car to save a loved one? Or maybe it’s the kid who can’t read in school, but who is a whiz at computer programming. How about the timid, shy bookish type who tackles the convenience store robber, saving lives? Each of these is an example of people who have beliefs about themselves that they, nevertheless, can and do overcome – when they stop thinking.

Here’s the key to it all: The subconscious mind has the limiting belief that governs the conscious, thinking mind and makes it impossible to act – and no matter how smart, logical or powerful that thinking mind is, it’s the only the subconscious mind that can break that belief.


No wonder you get stuck in trying, not doing.

You keep attempting, but nothing happens. You decide to do something - maybe you carefully plan your actions, you create a vision board or a mind movie or repeat affirmations – but all of this is using your thinking mind. Problem is, it’s your subconscious mind that has the belief that limits what you can achieve – and the thinking mind can’t communicate with the subconscious mind. So, no matter what you do with your conscious, thinking mind, that subconscious belief tells your conscious mind that you can’t do whatever you’re wanting to do - so you get stuck in try mode, repeating the attempt again and again. You just can’t get where you want to go if you don’t believe you can get there. Your belief limits your ability, no matter how much thinking, talent, education, planning, help or luck you have. (You say - but what about luck? Well, you’ll find that limiting beliefs will sabotage that, too.)

Limiting beliefs can be tricky things. They’re not always obviously connected to what you’re trying to do, and that makes it hard to figure out what the problem is. And sometimes there’s more than one limiting belief involved, making it even harder to get past trying and into doing. Limiting beliefs define the line between try and do, between negative emotions and positive emotions, between able and not able. Quite honestly, all beliefs are limiting beliefs – because they define the boundaries that make you who you are. The beliefs that keep you back, that keep you from doing what you want to do – these are limiting beliefs.

Limiting beliefs are those beliefs that keep you from changing. They’re what keep you trying, rather than doing. And if you’ve decided to change, but your limiting beliefs are holding you back, keeping on trying is not a good thing, because trying just feeds the limiting beliefs.

Doing the same thing over and over isn’t a bad thing. The power of feeding proof to your subconscious mind is why practice works. But doing the same thing over and over is only a good technique if you’re doing the thing well – your belief that you can do it is fed by the doing, and your belief is strengthened.

The more you try, the more power the belief gets – trying feeds proof of the validity of the belief to your subconscious mind. When your conscious thinking mind says “rise up out of the swamp, spaceship” and for the umpteenth time the spaceship doesn’t even quiver, your subconscious mind says “told you so”, and the belief that you can’t do it is even stronger.

You really don’t want to get stuck by keeping on trying.


I believe it, therefore I am

“Seeing is believing” is how the saying goes, but in fact, what you see is what your beliefs tell you you’re going to see. People look in the mirror and see fat when there isn’t any, and then starve themselves into anorexia. Perfectly great looking people think they’re ugly, or stupid, or any number of negatives, and can’t trust others who compliment them if the compliment contradicts that belief. However many witnesses there are to an accident or a crime, there will be that many different descriptions of what happened. Magic works because the magician sets you up to believe you will see something other than what is really there. People walk on coals without being burned because they believe they can.

Beliefs are extraordinarily powerful things. The limbic system is the place where those beliefs are located, because beliefs are the limbic system’s version of lessons learned, based on memories – of real things or imagined. The system is primitive, involved with survival mode – it’s still there because it works.

And then again, there are lots of times when it doesn’t work, when beliefs limit you from doing what you want or need to do. You’ve got to get around the limiting beliefs, sometimes. Full panic mode can allow you to overcome limiting beliefs – panic (or rage or any strong enough emotion) causes the limbic system to release adrenaline into the body and people can do things that would ordinarily be impossible. Elephants can pop those chains that never were very strong – but more importantly, they can break the chain of limiting beliefs.

Of course, we can’t go around getting panicked and pumping adrenaline into our systems in order to overcome our limiting beliefs. That would be pretty self-destructive in ordinary life.

There are basically just a few ways to change your limiting beliefs. One is to get rid of the belief entirely. The other is to just alter the belief.


Raising the Bar

You can’t really just get rid of your beliefs – not in a meaningful way. There is no delete and defrag for a healthy mind. Amnesia will do it, but that’s not desirable. But what you can do is change how a belief affects you. The easiest way is to raise the threshold, the point where the belief triggers the limbic system to take over, so that you have more leeway to act.

You can’t do this by thinking about it, since as I keep saying, the conscious, thinking mind can’t “converse” with the unconscious mind. There are various techniques for doing this, but the simplest and fastest and most pleasant – at least so far as I’ve discovered – is to feed new memories (of the right kind) into the old. With enough of the right new memories, you can dilute the belief system, in effect reducing its hold on you or raising the threshold where it impacts you. It’s kind of like adding white paint to black or any color – you add enough and eventually the color gets lighter and lighter until it is so close to white as makes no difference.

But you can’t do it by thinking about it, or you get stuck in try mode.

You can find advice everywhere about how to do this, but I had a hard time with it until I found the simplest way. This is really the heart of the Law of Attraction and Spiritual Horsemanship. If you think about the problem, you bump up against your limiting belief and you can’t make progress because you’ve just made that belief stronger by touching on it. And your limiting belief keeps you from thinking about the success you want in a positive way, which is what so many advise you to do (think positively, visualize success, repeat affirmations, make mind movies showing you success, etc.).

But what if you come at it the sneaky way? What if you figure out how to drum up the proper feeling of success without even touching on the limiting belief?

It can be done! Ask yourself this: What happens when you succeed? If you’re healthy, you have this great feeling of achievement, maybe of power, of being “in the zone”, of perfection. What does all that come down to?

Happiness.

Happiness is the state of mind when you’re feeling achievement, when you’ve connected with your personal power, when you’re in the zone. Yes, they may all feel different, but they all are versions of this particular state of mind. It might be called different names – bliss, harmony, peace, nirvana, pick one. For convenience’s sake, they can all be considered positive emotions, the opposite of opposite of the negative emotions (rage, panic, depression, misery, etc.), although negative emotions can be good - but let’s go on.

Emotions are what cement the memories in your limbic system. Memories form your beliefs. Negative emotions trigger the limbic system to take over, and that creates limiting beliefs. Eliciting limiting beliefs over and over just strengthens them.

But positive emotions dilute limiting beliefs. And that’s it, right there.

That’s the answer to raising the bar, to overcoming limiting beliefs, to lifting the spaceship out of the muck. Experiencing a positive emotion – the more often, the better.

Getting happy. Not through drugs, or hypnotism or any artificial means, but by truly experiencing happiness. It doesn’t make any difference whether or not you're happy because you’ve achieved success at a task that you thought you couldn’t – the limbic system isn’t about logic. You’re not likely to be doing that anyway, if you’ve got a limiting belief. What you can do is experience happiness for other reasons at the right time – when you’d ordinarily experience the negative beliefs elicited by the limiting belief.

Your limbic system can’t tell the difference, it only stores information about whether you’re experiencing a positive or negative emotion when a belief is triggered. The more happiness you can drum up in your life, the more you dilute limiting beliefs. Yoda called it connecting to The Force. Others call it connecting with your spiritual self, or the Universe, or God. Doesn’t matter. The one commonality is that it feels right. It feels authentic. It feels good.

Next: Getting Happy

Change: Do Or Do Not

Copyright © 2009 Lif C. Strand
www.spiritualhorsemanship.com


In one of the Star Wars movies, the Jedi Yoda says to Luke Skywalker: "Do, or do not - there is no try." I've always liked that statement. It's subtle and mind boggling - it is the absolute difference between progress and frustration, between happiness and stagnation.

Trying vs. doing is the difference between staying the same and becoming a new person, one that didn't exist even a moment before. It's about creating true change in your life

Doing is what makes intention become manifestation - really, it's the heart of the Law of Attraction.

As a friend once said about this whole the Law of Attraction thing (conscious, self-directed change): It’s simple, but it isn’t easy.

Of course change is simple – it happens all the time. We do it from the moment we’re conceived. Growth itself is change. We aren’t the person we were when we were born, or yesterday or even a nano-second ago, and we won’t be the same person as we are this moment ever again: cells have been created and cells have died; air has been breathed and gasses exchanged; thoughts have been thought, emotions felt; time has passed and all that is over with. However, most all of that change comes about automatically – our subconscious does almost all the directing.

What those of us who are working with Spiritual Horsemanship and the Law of Attraction are really wanting to do is bring about change in a proactive, self-determined, on-purpose manner. We are looking to become the person we decide to be, not who we just end up being.

That’s the part that’s not so easy.


Try: Another word for not changing

What Yoda was saying was that trying isn’t the same as changing, because trying is the attempt, not the change itself. The more you try, the more you are not changing. Trying is a process, a struggle to achieve change. The problem with trying is that trying is not how on-purpose change comes about, because while you keep yourself in the state of trying, you cannot become something different.

When in the state of trying, you are holding on to who you were and are – generally this is due to fear. Consider the trapeze artist who is standing on a small platform high above the ground, holding on to the pole behind him as the trapeze swings towards him. He reaches forward to grab the trapeze but it is just out of reach. He can never grab hold of that trapeze and swing out and away into the sky as long as he is holding onto the safety of the pole. He has to let go of the bar and lean forward into space to grab the trapeze in order to fly.

Fear comes in many forms – panic, rage, fear, anxiety, nervousness, uneasiness - all degrees of the same thing (negative emotion). But please, get rid of any ideas you have that fear is a bad thing, since fear can in fact be a good thing – it’s a tool the limbic system uses to keep us alive. The mind can make amazing split-second calculations that we consciously are unaware of. A trapeze artist will feel it’s either right to grab or not grab at the trapeze – and those feelings better be right when the consequences are that he could end up splatted on the ground below, after all.

But what if the trapeze artist never feels it’s the right time to grab at the trapeze? He keeps reaching and reaching, but never committing to the grab, he never acts. He gets fired because his act is dull. He can’t pay his bills, he takes up drinking, his wife leaves him and takes the BMW, and he’s reduced to taking a desk job in order to survive. (No offense to office workers).

In other words, the trapeze artist, up there on the platform high above the ground, was stuck in trying. He wasn’t doing.

What was holding the trapeze artist back? What keeps you from making the changes you want? Why couldn’t Luke Skywalker get that darned spaceship out of the swamp muck?


Next: Limiting Beliefs

Speak softly and forget the big stick

Copyright © 2009 Lif C Strand
www.spiritualhorsemanship.com

I’ve been remiss in posting to this blog for some time now – there’s been lots going on here and I’ve gotten way behind in writing. I did want to update you on a few related topics.

Our little orphan colt, Despereaux, has left the ranch and is now in Nebraska, on his way to his grown-up life. Not so little any more at 5 months, the colt dealt with being weaned from his foster mother, Jess, very well. He handled the long trailer ride with his friends just as well (he traveled with Sandy, the mini-horse mare; Rue, the colt’s aunt/full sister to the colt’s sire, SE Kokopelli Kid; and Cantor, the llama).

I’ll miss the little guy, but Su misses him more.

Su (Suletta HCC) at 26 years of age is not likely to have more foals even though she lives with Koko full time. When Jess left, I needed to put the colt in with horses that would pay attention to him. I tried him with the other mares, but while they tolerated him they didn’t seem invested his welfare - although he did hang mostly with Kelsey, who is now the lead mare of the mare herd. Good survival tactic.

I needed to be able to feed the colt supplementary food for a while, and since Koko and Su get their soaked pellets with secret supplements every morning, it seemed like a good idea to put the colt in with them. (Everyone could be put into separate feed pens, of course, but that’s not how horses naturally eat – more on that some other time).

Koko is now 12 years old – a mature stallion in the prime of his life. He looks great, he feels great, and he knows that he’s the Big Kahuna on this ranch. But he wouldn’t hurt a baby and I knew when I turned the colt out with him that Koko would be just fine.

Su pretty much ignored the baby in the beginning. She wouldn’t share her food with him like she would have her own foal – not an issue since although I feed horses together, I always make sure there’s more piles of food than there are horses - but she also didn’t drive him away if he wanted to hang with her. The colt did want to be with her, so Su got used to him being there for the short time between Jess’s going home and the colt’s leaving for his home in Nebraska. I thought that's all there was to it.

I hadn’t realized how much she wanted to be with him, though, until he left. Su had been barreling into the pen where the colt was already eating breakfast in the mornings – after the colt left, however, she just plodded in, her hooves dragging in the dust. She looked around for him hopefully each morning, of course not finding him. There was a bit of spark missing from Su’s eyes - she wasn’t truly depressed, but clearly missing the little guy.

Horses are very accepting of things when they have to be, however, and just like the colt will grow up just fine out there in the world, so, too, has Su moved on in her life.

But I think she really would like to have another foal.

About the big stick


The colt and the others had just left. I needed to move some fencing panels around and I wanted Koko and Su to get out of the pen they were in and go into another pen that was normally not open to them. I still had a dressage whip in my hands that I’d had when I was moving Cantor the llama around – I was using it properly, “as an extension of my arm”, because with that llama I like to stay just out of spitting range (he’s in rut right now and kind of crabby).

Koko and Su just wouldn’t cooperate. I waved my arms, I advanced and retreated, I swished the whip in the air, I was losing my temper and all they did was run around like they didn’t have a clue. I couldn’t figure out what I was doing wrong until I realized I still had that whip in my hands, and that the whip was making all the difference.

These weren’t llamas in rut, they were my horses, my herd. I was their leader and I was suddenly acting whacko. I wasn’t communicating what I thought I was communicating at all.

My horses and I have an excellent working relationship – there was no need for the extra emphasis of a whip in my hand, or an “extension of my arm”. No need for the threat, because that’s what a whip is - even if a horse has never been struck with one before. I was using a strange tool that we had no agreement on the meaning of, and I was waving it around in an incomprehensible manner. Of course they thought I was whacko, and they wanted nothing to do with me. Communication was not a happening thing and wasn’t going to happen as long as I was continuing to “talk” to them in gibberish.

With Cantor, to be plain about it, I was pushing him with the whip. I was using fear of that whip – whether it was fearful because he knew what a whip could do (I doubt he does) or fearful because it was totally unfamiliar (more likely) didn’t matter – I had earlier driven him in the direction I wanted using that fear.

It’s not the way I want to be with my critters. And my horses, Koko and Su, were having none of that, thank you very much.

Embarrassed, I tossed the whip over the fence. I stood still. I apologized – yes, I did, and out loud, too. We all breathed and calmed down. I walked over to the gate of the pen I wanted Koko and Su to move into and I bowed my head a little and gestured a request with my hand – really, just like a doorman would at a grand hotel. I stepped back.

And Koko and Su just ambled over into the pen like they’d wanted to do just that all along.

----

“World transformation begins with self-transformation,” says Cesar Milan. To achieve that, he says, you need a co-pilot: “My suggestion is you have somebody next to you that is willing at any time to transform the moment. That is called dog.”

Or Horse.

Whose problem – the horse’s or yours?

Copyright (c) 2009 Lif Strand

Here’s a few questions to ponder: When there’s a problem with your horse, how do you know if it’s really his problem or yours? When two entities are involved in a relationship, is it even possible for only one to be the source of problems that both experience? And just because the horse isn’t human, why does it have to be him that has to be “at fault” and therefore “fixed”?

According to the Law of Attraction approach to horsemanship, whenever there is a problem with a horse - whether it’s fear or spooking caused by an object real or imagined, or aggression or stubbornness, or even such things as your horse’s health or ability, whether it’s a new horsemanship problem or an old one – the first thing is to acknowledge is that that problems with horses start with humans.

The Law of Attraction says that everything that happens in your life is what you’ve attracted to yourself, either purposefully or unconsciously, through the choices you have made. The choices you have made create the person you are and the situation you find yourself in, no matter whoever or whatever else is involved, no matter whether you’ve been aware you even had choices or were making them.

Everything you do is the result of choices – everything. Until and unless you accept this tenet of the Law of Attraction, you can never be in control of your life, because you will be a “victim” of circumstance – things happening to you instead of because of you. This includes your being the “victim” of your horse’s own choices.

I can’t believe how strongly I fought the concept of personal responsibility in the past! I started out by arguing that random events couldn’t have any connection with my choices – the old “what if a meteor struck me on the head, how could I be responsible for that?” argument, which translates to “why am I responsible for unconsciously made choices?”. Then I argued that sometimes I’ve been forced to do things by people more powerful than I, as if somehow some other entity was inhabiting my body, making me some sort of puppet, which translates to “why should I be responsible for choices I made that maybe weren’t the best for me?”. And then I argued that I couldn’t have choice if my soul/the Universe had a Higher Purpose for my life, which was really the same argument as the previous one. And of course, there’s the “but I didn’t know better!” position to fall back on, as if I somehow shouldn’t be held responsible for choices if I didn’t already know all the possible outcomes.

The opposite side of the coin of non-responsibility is that once you accept that you are fully the chooser, the only one who directs your life and the only one who can be held responsible for everything in it, you become the conscious creator of your reality. So, if you choose to accept responsibility for your own choices and thereby to create your own reality, it follows that if you are experiencing horse/human problems, the only sure way to fix them is to fix yourself.

The Law of Attraction says that likes attract likes, that you will attract to you from the Universe that which matches who you truly are. Who you are is not just “parent, teacher, sibling, friend, enemy, boss, owner, horseman” or any of these or many more possible descriptors, because these labels are so limited – they can only identify isolated facets of you and not the most fundamental core of who you truly are. Who you are isn’t any one aspect of yourself. Who you are is not simply who you think you are, or who you want to be. Rather, who you are is the totality of your unconscious as well as conscious mind, your thoughts and beliefs, your actions, your Higher Self (soul) and your physical expression of your Higher Purpose at any given moment in your existence, all of which are the result of the accumulation of choices you have made (on this plane of existence as well as spiritually).

This is important for three reasons: One, you have be what you want to attract in all facets of your life - not just in one finite area - because you aren’t just one thing, you are all those things at every moment; and two, the choices you make affect all facets of your life, not just one aspect of yourself; and three, becoming on the “inside” what you want to attract even in one area affects everything else that is attracted to you from the Universe, including better behavior from your horse.

How does it work?

First, you’ve got to commit to change. This is so fundamental, yet so often ignored. You can’t get to a new place without leaving the old place.

Second, you’ve got to actually change. As Yoda in Star Wars said, “do, or do not – there is no try”. It is hard to actually leave the safety of the known behind to go boldly into the unknown – even when the unknown might be much, much better. This involves making choices every moment that support the new person you are becoming, and leaving behind the choices you’ve made in the past that anchor you to who you have been.

Once you’ve changed, have become a different person, then the new person you truly are will attract new things from the Universe.

The trick, of course, is that you are wanting to become a person that you’ve never been before – not an easy thing. And, unless you successfully do change (not just try, but actually change), you’ll just keep attracting the same old things you’ve been attracting all along. If the issue is horsemanship, then nothing will change in your horse, either.

Question is, if likes attract likes, just how do you become a person that attracts a better behaved horse – when you aren’t a horse (well behaved or otherwise), yourself?

Upcoming articles:
Yoda’s words – try vs. doing
Techniques for separating the symptoms from the causes of problems

New foal - update

Took 12 hours and two shots of oxytocin to get the mare to pass the placenta. Don't know if she'll need to be on antibiotics because of that, but will see tomorrow (Friday). Meanwhile, she won't let the foal nurse, so he's on milk replacer, meaning that he didn't get any colostrum - another issue to deal with. I sure hope I don't get stuck bottle feeding this baby - maybe the other colt's foster mom would be willing to take on this little one.

Too tired to think now, and will have to get up in the middle of the night to give him another bottle. Gee - I sound like the mother of a newborn - that's the mare's job!

Newest addition

Colt born sometime between 4 a.m. and dawn today. Foxy, a first time mom, won't let him nurse, won't stand still for me to milk him - her bag is full and tight and I'm sure very painful. Help is on the way. More later.

Learning and Choices: How To Charm The Snake

It’s evening and the horses are eating their dinners. The sky is gorgeous with clouds still rosy from sunset, their glow almost obscuring a thin crescent moon. The bay and chestnut and gray noses are buried in green alfalfa hay, the sounds of contented munching audible from where I stand. Suddenly all the horses’ heads rise in unison at a noise from the scraggly, stunted juniper tree nearby. Something is in there!

Foxy twirls and bolts away, snorting and wide-eyed. Koko takes a few steps towards the bush, his nostrils flared. The other horses, all well away from the action, stand like statues, watching the juniper intently.

Jess, in her pen closest to the monster, spins to run but she has nowhere to go. She heads away at full speed towards the steel fence panel and I hold my breath, but she slides to a stop and rolls back to her pile of hay, then back to the fence again. The colt, head held up high, nose in the air, runs mindlessly next to his foster mother – he’s going wherever she goes, just as fast, just as far. Jess finally slides to a stop and freezes in place, muscles quivering, her attention focused totally on the bush, to the spot where the monster will burst from.

My dog, Hobo, steps out of the bush, panting, a smile on his face. He’s missed catching the pesky ground squirrel, but I can see he thinks it was by just a whisker. I shake my head, glad I wasn’t sitting on Jess or Foxy when Hobo went hunting.

The Reptile Mind is a good thing for a horse, in that it automatically and instantly takes control of his thinking mind and his body when immediate response can literally make the difference between life and death – those times when pausing for thought can get a horse eaten. However, when working with your horse, sometimes the things his Reptile Mind reacts to may not really be a danger at all. The result can be a very bad thing, indeed.

The simplest incidents can trigger a horse’s Reptile Mind – it could be the flapping of a loose piece of plastic, putting on a raincoat, a log alongside the trail, a dog running out from under a bush. Obviously, not everything that sets off Reptile Mind is sudden – a horse can panic just from being pushed to get in a trailer, or, in the colt’s case the other week, needing to jump out of the one that he walked into himself.

The same incident can elicit different reactions in the horses. In the case of Hobo in the bush, Koko, by biology, cannot just turn and run away – it is his job as a stallion to defend the mares. Foxy, timid and reactive by nature, is the first to flee and to go the farthest. The other mares stand and wait because their lead mare, Su, is unconcerned. Jess is closest to the juniper tree where the monster is, and, new to the herd and separated from them at dinner time, can’t rely on the lead mare. She’s trapped and wants to escape, like Foxy. The colt has no choice – he is young enough that he must follow his foster mother when it comes to things like danger.

To flee or not to flee…

We all know our minds operate on the conscious as well as the unconscious level. Fear experienced on the conscious level is learned fear. For example, you fear putting your finger in a flame because you’ve learned by sorry experience that it will hurt a lot. Your conscious mind has accessed memories of the pain from being burned in the past, along with the negative emotions the pain elicited. The negative emotions elicit fear. Now your fear keeps you from putting your finger in the flame so you won’t be hurt again.

The unconscious mind is the province of the Reptile Mind (limbic system), which causes you to jerk your finger out of the flame when you feel pain - an involuntary physiological reaction. In addition to jerking your finger from the pain source, your limbic system also stores the negative emotion associated with the memory of experience you just had. Your thinking mind will use this in the future in the form of fear.

For horses, anything that is unknown or unidentifiable must be considered dangerous and therefore fearsome – this is a hard-wired survival strategy for prey animals that keeps them alive. And of course, situations that remind a horse of those that have been dangerous in the past are fearful, as well. Sufficient fear triggers the Reptile Mind, involuntarily throwing the body into immediate reaction so it will survive the danger – even when the danger is not identified (or identifiable).

Yet the same danger may not trigger a reflex survival response in different horses, or even the same horse at different times. This is because of differing fear thresholds in each horse - a kind of biological set-point beyond which a system cannot handle any further input. On one side of the set-point the conscious mind operates, on the other, the reflex or Reptile Mind. The threshold or sensitivity of the set-point is dependent upon experience/memory, hardwiring, hormones, excitatory or calming chemicals, and various other factors present in the body.

When your horse’s Reptile Mind reacts to a situation, certain physiological events occur, e.g. freezing in place, rapid heartbeat, increased respiration. Stress hormones and other chemicals flood the body and the horse is propelled, willy-nilly, to action. The set-point for initiation of flight-or-fight behavior has been triggered. It is important to remember that once the limbic system takes over, the reasoning, rational mind does not function. There is no choice when it comes to survival response.

The memory of a situation coupled with negative emotion (fear) will cause the same physical response in the body as actual danger – the same rapid heartbeat, increased respiration, etc. Reptile Mind, with no direct connection to the world (the sensory input of sight, sound, smell, taste, touch are not available to the limbic system) cannot differentiate between actual danger and the negative emotion associated with memory of danger (fear), but it will still trigger to the physical fear response, the raised heartbeat and respiration, the flood of chemicals in the body. Fear is no different to Reptile Mind than the real deal so that the end result is the same – the set-point of the fear threshold is tipped.

Charming the Reptile Mind

Ideally you want your horse to have more positive emotions (since they do not rouse the snake) and fewer unknowns to deal with in his daily experience. But in fact, you cannot guarantee that ideal environment for your horse. In real life, the snake is charmed – Reptile Mind is kept out of the picture - by raising the fear threshold, that is, changing the sensitivity of the set-point so that it takes a higher level of stress (physical or emotional input) to create the triggering fear.

The two systems – the unconscious mind (Reptile Mind) and the conscious (thinking) mind work as an efficient either-or system. The unconscious mind takes care of imminent danger, the conscious mind everything else involving voluntary actions. Although the Reptile mind cannot be contacted directly, the conscious mind can have an effect on it. If this wasn’t possible, we all would be at the mercy of the Reptile Mind at all times – we could never learn the difference between what is safe and what is truly dangerous because our Reptile Mind would be “on” most of the time, meaning we’d have no time for conscious mind to operate – to think!.

Learning is the key to keeping the Reptile Mind from taking over. A horse can learn to tolerate almost anything that would normally trigger Reptile Mind. Horses can be used reliably on the battlefield even with the smell of blood, the sounds of explosions and the pain of being wounded, and they can enthusiastically chase after a polo ball even with polo sticks swinging around their faces and occasionally smacking their bodies and legs. Buggy horses in cities ignore honking horns, squealing brakes, speeding vehicles, pedestrians that may dart in front of their faces. This is simply because familiarity, just as with positive emotion, does not cause the stress response in the body and the Reptile Mind response is not triggered.

A horse will learn from everything around it – from his mother, his immediate herd, other horses, his environment and from the humans he interacts with. He has no reason not to want to accept anything a human offers – as long as the Reptile Mind is not roused.

Early handling of foals works because a foal’s conscious mind is essentially a tabula rasa – a blank slate – that you can put anything you want in because nothing, other than instinct, is in there yet. Teach a foal early and work with him often and he is trained for life – for good or bad.

Older horses can be taught anything as well, but if they have low fear thresholds, their set-points must be raised, and this must be done while avoiding rousing the Reptile Mind. Older horses have established memories that will have been learned from all the same sources as a foal, but these memories, older and now established over time, will have more potency.

Charming the Reptile Mind involves both proactive measures and remedial ones in your horse’s life. Proactive measures keep your horse’s experiences positive and avoid the unexpected whenever possible. Remedial measures raise his set-point when the Reptile Mind has reacted, as it inevitably will. Charming the Reptile Mind is actually simple, but it isn’t necessarily easy to implement - particularly if some of the essential factors are not considered.

Next: Herd dynamics, for better or worse.

Learning and Choices: Avoiding the Reptile Mind

The “Reptile Mind” (limbic system) is a set of brain structures that support a variety of functions including emotion, behavior, long term memory, smell and automatic processes in the body. This system, which manages “fight or flight” chemicals, is considered a more primitive part of the brain, since common ancestors of both reptiles and mammals had well developed limbic systems.

The Reptile Mind makes choices for us. It provides a “no brainer” immediate response to danger – survival reflex – that automatically affects the endocrine and the autonomic nervous systems so that there is minimal lag time to the response. If you’ve ever snatched your hand back just in time to avoid being bitten by a bee, or grabbed hold of something without even realizing it was there in order to avoid falling, you have experienced the work of the Reptile Mind. It bypasses the logical part of the mind, the part that assesses and chooses.

A mother mouse will fight to defend its young from a predator that could eat the mouse in one bite. A tiny shrew will fight when backed into a corner by a giant human. Every hamster owner that has reached into a cage and been bitten by a normally friendly pet knows that the size or power of the danger source makes no difference to the Reptile Mind. This is because the Reptile Mind has no capacity for logical thought. A good thing, too, because under certain circumstances, thinking is slow compared to Reptile Mind response. A quick bite on a fox’s nose by a mouse, or on a human’s hand by a shrew (or a hamster) can provide just enough time to escape – no decision making process needed.

The Reptile Mind keeps horses alive in the wild. There is no time for cogitating on how to respond when a mountain lion leaps from a rock above or a snake hisses from the path – survival depends on lightning quick responses. The Reptile Mind – the limbic system – takes over the thinking processes.


A horse cannot make choices when Reptile Mind is in control!

Reptile Mind is the reactive mind. It takes over when stimulated to action, and it takes the place of choice. While the limbic system is engaged, the “Thinking Mind” (the mind that can analyze and make choices) is inoperable. A horse can and does make choices all the time: what it wants to eat, who it wants to stand next to in the herd, whether it wants to stand in the shade or the sun, whether it wants to come to you when you call or keep grazing. We will see in future articles that a horse’s choices include decisions about going along with the request of humans, no matter how the human presents the request. However, when the Reptile Brain is engaged, any potential for choice is lost – a horse’s body must respond to the imperatives of the limbic system hormones and chemicals that flood its body.

Even memories of emotions associated with an experience can bring about Reptile Mind behavior, since storage of emotional memories is part of the limbic system function. The memory of fear associated with an experience can cause behaviors such as freezing, rapid heartbeat, increased respiration, and stress-hormone release when a similar experience is encountered – even when the second experience would not normally be fearful. (Positive emotional memories are stored as well, however negative emotions are generally more powerful for horses as they involve survival itself).


Avoiding Reptile Mind

It is obvious that it is best to avoid causing a horse’s Reptile Mind to take over in reaction to an outside stimulus. Survival reflex can make your horse more liable to survive in a life-and-death situation, but what Reptile Mind reacts to in every day situations is not likely to be appropriate.

Horses will spook at the darndest things – but they don’t have to. Fortunately, long-term memory for a given experience is not instantaneously formed, but is instead assimilated slowly into long-term storage over a period of time – and during this time the memory can be modified. This is why – for horse and rider’s sake – it is advised to get back on the saddle right away after a fall!

Additionally, emotional input after an experience can influence the strength of the subsequent memory of that experience. Rewards for a job well done can truly cement the long-term memory of an experience. Similarly, a negative emotion, such as brought about by punishment or even by a negative reaction of another person (or horse) , can equally cement the memory of that experience – but also help trigger Reptile Mind in the future.

When the colt panicked in the trailer, his Reptile Mind took over. It flooded his body with hormones and chemicals and overrode his lack of experience with jumping down from a height. It caused him to leap out of the trailer without consideration for how far down the ground might be – thank goodness it wasn’t a cliff with a hundred foot drop, because Reptile Mind doesn’t think, it just forces action.

If the colt’s foster mother had been upset or if the colt had hurt himself landing, the emotion associated with the memory of leaping out of the trailer would be negative. This emotional memory would be stored with the trailer experience and would help trigger the Reptile Mind reaction in the future. The colt might start associating trailers with fear, and eventually could even develop a problem with loading.

But instead what happened is that Jess was unconcerned, so much so that the colt was able to just go to her and nurse. The nursing was pleasurable, thus associating that positive emotional memory with the memory of the trailer experience. Since Jess goes in and out of the trailer often, the colt does, too. His long term memory for the trailer experience is modified – positively – each time that Reptile Mind is not evoked. And in turn, this means that in the future memories of experiences with the trailer will be such that the trailer becomes an ordinary thing – no reason for Reptile Mind to be alerted.

Next: How to charm the snake

Learning and Choices

Our colt follows his foster mother, Jess, into the horse trailer (which is parked with its door tied open for access from her and the colt’s pen) because Mom does so in a matter of fact way - nothing to be alarmed about. Jess stands nonchalantly in the shade inside and snoozes. The colt takes the opportunity to sniff around and explore. Eventually he, too, begins to become tired, and he lays down at Mom’s feet.

Jess later decides to leave the trailer. Since there is nothing alarming about being in the trailer and no urgency to her leaving - maybe she’s thirsty, maybe there’s a bit of hay that she has somehow overlooked - she ambles out without waking her adopted foal. When he wakes up, however, the story is altogether different.

The colt leaps up, whinnying for Jess. He scrambles to the open door, but he stops - he cannot jump down. He has been in the flat pen for the few days of his whole life, and has no experience of such a thing. The colt has never seen his mother do it, he has nothing to compare it to, and at this tender age with so little knowledge in his repertoire, he does not know how to learn to deal with this new experience on his own.

Jess, who has wandered back to see what is wrong, is an experienced mother and doesn’t get upset when she sees there is no danger to the colt. She whickers once to him, then turns away. She cannot teach this foal how to step out of the trailer because she has never taught any of her foals anything before and has no idea how to start now, even if she wanted to. Jess, like any other mare, has only offered her foals the example of her own behavior to learn from. In this case, the example of leaving the trailer is a lesson the colt missed.

The colt is frantic. He runs around inside the trailer whinnying shrilly. His fear escalates to panic - and finally adrenaline propels him out the door to make the bold leap to the ground, 8” below. He runs to Jess and begins to nurse. All is well.

Like humans, horses learn and make choices all the time. They’re born with instinctive behaviors that guide their initial actions as human babies are, but foals are born with more physical facility than human babies. Foals have to learn how to stand, to walk, to recognize their mother, to find the teat, to get milk from nursing and then to be able to follow their mothers wherever necessary. They have to do this within minutes of birth - otherwise, rather than enjoying their first milk from Mom, they may become some predator’s meal.

While horses may have strong instincts that drive behaviors, they still are able to learn and make choices like humans do - but for a horse, learning and choosing occurs within the framework of the herd and of being a prey animal. Still, the actual process of learning is not that different.

As I said in my previous article, learning is about acquiring (accumulating, not being born with) the skills or knowledge to do something. Learning is about pushing the envelope – going past an existing state of knowledge into the unknown. Humans and horses alike do not learn what they already know, they learn something new, but this means going beyond what is known. And that can be a scary thing.

For a foal that may become a predator’s dinner if it screws up, learning quickly what is necessary is an issue of survival, not a luxury. Foals learn by the examples provided by their mothers and, when they are days and weeks old, they start learning from other herd members. In the wild, things are divided into two categories: Known/safe and all else/unsafe. When it comes to survival, the unknown may be just as risky as known dangers.

Thus, when the lead mare goes to water on a certain path, and walks around instead of over a certain clump of grass, it makes survival sense to follow in her footsteps. The lead mare is in that position because she is a survivor and, more, she uses her knowledge to thrive. Any mistakes she has made were lessons she learned from, and with the excellent memory horses are blessed with, she wouldn’t be repeating. Herd animals have evolved to follow the leader because it is a short-cut to learning crucial lessons of survival. No need for the foal to get bitten by a rattlesnake in order to learn to not step in certain grass clumps – just do what the lead mare does and rattlers aren’t an issue. (I’ll be discussing what it is that makes a mare the leader in another article). Foals are not really choosing anything in this process, but rather acquiring knowledge that contributes to the building of an internal map of its world.

Learning within the herd is a fairly risk-free thing. If they follow the leader - whether it is Mom or other horses in the herd – they likely will not get hurt. Although foals are learning (taking in new information where no information was before) they are not pushing much of an envelope. They rarely trigger the unpleasant cascade of chain reactions in brain and body brought about by stress - this in itself is a reward for following the leader. There is little in the normal process of learning for a foal to become alarmed about or to develop negative emotions about. Even when a fearful incident occurs, such as with our colt and the trailer, the calmness of the mother throughout and afterwards, allows the fear to fade into the background.

Next: Avoiding the reptile mind

Choice and learning

The Law of Attraction is clear about choice: All any living being has power over in its life is its own choices, and everything that happens to the being is a result of its own choices. I know people argue against this – heck, I’ve argued against it: Suppose a meteor falls from the sky and hit me on the head – how is that my choice? Of course, when we argue against choice, what we mostly are saying is that the choice concept should only apply if we know the potential results.

Nice thought, but irrelevant. Life doesn’t work that way.

Here’s the way life really works: If I get hit on the head by a meteor, that’s the result of every choice I made in my life up until that specific time and place. I am the one who has directed my body to take every step along the way until I reach the one spot in the whole Universe that ends up with me in the line of impact of that one meteor. No one else lives in my body or inhabits my mind and has forced me to do what it took to get me in that one spot. And the meteor is not about me at all – it isn’t aiming to hit me, it’s only following its own path. Even if someone tied me up and sat me in a chair at the point of impact, I still took every step myself to get me to the person who did that to me. I’m the one responsible, because I made every choice along the way – even though I didn’t know that it would get me crushed by a meteor. (I guess that’s why the word “oops” was invented!)

Making choices to do things without knowing what the end result will be makes it sound like everything is just about meaningless chance but it’s not, because although I don’t know what the results will be, someone (or something) does know: My soul. I’ve got a soul (so does every living thing) and my soul has a higher purpose for my life.

Although we don’t generally know much about our soul’s higher purpose for us, we can figure out some things. The Law of Attraction teaches us that if we trust to our higher purpose, we can use our emotions to make the choices in our lives. It’s like playing the game of Hot & Cold: Positive emotions are the warm and hot, and negative emotions the cold. When we choose based on positive emotions, we are on the path of higher purpose. When we choose based on negative emotions, we are not on that path.

Why do we have to play this game? Simple: Our souls are part of the infinite and we, incarnate in these bodies, are finite. Finite beings cannot comprehend infinity, we don't have the capacity for it. Our souls aren’t hiding anything from us, no more than an adult hides anything from a baby - the adult world is just not comprehensible to a baby, as babies don't have the capacity for it.

For babies, things are pretty cut and dried - they get hungry, that upsets them and they cry. They get fed, they are satisfied (after a burp) and they smile. Babies start out with instincts (to cry when hungry, to smile when satisfied) and follow them blindly. As a baby’s instinctive actions are experienced they are stored – along with the associated emotions (pleasure, pain, positive emotions, negative emotions – hot and cold). Babies soon grow from instinctive action to using stored information (emotions + experiences) to make choices of actions in order to get certain results.

The baby is learning.


Learning is about acquiring (accumulating, not being born with) the skills or knowledge to do something. When we learn, we experience something and then store that experience along with the emotions that we felt at the time. We use what we’ve learned to make our future choices. The emotions associated with the learned experiences are the guideposts for making the choices both in daily life and from the higher purposes point of view.

Next: How horses make choices and learn – and what it means for the human/horse relationship.

A foal is born - learning to learn

06/06/09
Copyright © Lif Strand for Spiritual Horsemanship





If I was really good at the Law of Attraction, I wouldn’t get frustrated and irritated by some of the garbage that is put forth about horses*, but I still do. I am getting better at catching myself, but it still happens.

I got ranting the other day about that imprinting nonsense. Imprinting is an automatic (involuntary) psycho-physiological process, not a learning process, and it is hard-wired into the brain. Imprinting is a survival mechanism for certain critters (birds are all I know of) that triggers species specific patterns of behavior. This is because critters that can imprint need to get the information they need for survival fast – they can’t afford the time to learn it.

I'm not sure any mammal can imprint. However, while equines don't acquire all their species-specific behavior patterns when they are first handled by humans or nuzzled by their mothers in the moments and hours after birth, the initial information taken in by a foal during that time period “sticks” more readily than it does at almost any other time in a horse’s life.

That’s because the slate is clean. The storehouse of experience is empty. A foal has nothing else to compare to, to judge by, in order to choose. A foal will choose most anything it experiences at that point if it doesn’t hurt – but that is not imprinting.

In the wild, of course, there are no humans around to provide input of any kind at in a foal’s first hours and days. The input the foal receives is either provided directly (mom’s presence, her smell and voice, are security and nurture; a cactus smells a certain way and hurts when your nose investigates closer; the lead mare is not to be approached or touched unless she invites you) or indirectly (the herd members all snort at and skitter away from a coiled thing that buzzes and hisses – so the foal does too; the herd runs from a pack of wolves – so the foal does too; the lead mare avoids going down that canyon, and no one else, including the foal, does either). All learning is accepted because it is provided within the frame of every-day living and is demonstrated and reinforced every moment by mom and every member of the herd. And, of course, whatever is taught within that framework is going to be “natural” behavior for the foal - it is well within the range of horse-abilities and horse-proclivities. At that point, the foal will choose whatever is given to it by its mom and the herd. There’s no reason for the foal not to.

Horses are born wanting to do the things that the rest of the horses in the herd are doing. They will of course test the boundaries as they grow – that’s the nature of a being that has free-will, and it gives rise to a changing herd dynamic and thereby ultimately to the genetic diversity that would not exist if everything was always the same.

For most domesticated horses, however, things are different. Humans don’t look like horses. They don’t sound or smell like horses. They sure don’t act like horses – and the communication most humans offer isn’t even in the language of Horse. Most horses don’t get to be born or raised in a natural environment, they don’t get to live in a herd, they only get input on how to be a proper horse from their moms for a few months, and after then from other horses over fences and in passing. Yet humans expect horses to overcome all of this to learn how to not only be good horses, but to be horses that do what humans want – and by and large, horses manage to do just that.

However good horses are at overcoming the obstacles necessary for success in the human world, it’s a measure of the faultiness of the usual approach to human/horse interaction that almost always there is a point (or a number of points) in the relationship when the horse isn’t responding the way the human wants – that is, the horse is “choosing” something “wrong”. Generally this is considered to be a problem with the horse. I submit it is always a problem with the human.

----

* Throughout my writing when I say horses, you can probably include any equines – however I want to note that I have worked very little with non-horse equines, so maybe I’m wrong in this assumption.


Next: Choice and learning

A foal is born - 15 days

Photos taken 06/04/09 at 15 days old


He's still a scrawny thing, but he's looking more like a horse and less like a bag of bones.

A foal is born, a life in our hands

Colt, Carmine and QH foster mom, Jesse


The colt is learning how to drink from a bucket - much better than trying to bottle feed him. This development makes it easier to believe that the colt will survive, but there is still worry: Worry that he won't thrive, that he'll be stunted, that there's something else wrong to deal with - that he won't make it at all.

The Law of Attraction says that what we focus on is what we create in our lives. Dwelling on what can go wrong can never create what we want to happen, it can only attract what we don't want. On the other hand, it can seem so Pollyannaish to assume that all will be well - by only focusing on a problem-free future for this colt, we could end up missing a vital clue that could make the difference between survival and death.

What to do?

The Law of Attraction also tells us about acceptance. Last post I mentioned accepting that this colt’s soul has made choices for his life in this body, and honoring that what I am seeing reflects higher purposes that I cannot know. I can accept the choices or fight them – but I cannot alter them.

How, then, does this acceptance work with respect to the responsibilities we each have to the critters in our care (and to children, for that matter)? Do we just strive to ignore the possible problems, only think happy, positive thoughts, and hope for the best?

One of the gifts – or perhaps burdens - we as humans have is that of free will. Unlike the colt, with his limited range of choice or responses to the events in his life, humans have countless choices that can be made in any situation. We can imagine anything, and what we imagine, we can potentially do. We can imagine all sorts of futures in our minds and, ideally, then examine those futures and use them to make best possible choices. When we work with our horses, we do this imagining of the future all the time: We dream of winning endurance rides or halter classes or polo matches or cutting competitions - any or all of it with the colt in front of us that is just learning how to keep his legs in the proper order.

As humans we imagine a future for this colt in front of us, but of course, the choices can only be for ourselves. We may want to make choices for this colt, but it is his soul that’s driving his existence in this life, not ourselves as we stand looking at him.

The Law of Attraction teaches acceptance, but acceptance does not mean inaction. We are here to actively live lives, not to merely sit back like voyeurs and watch the world go by. We are here to choose to do in order to maximize what we see, feel, hear, smell, taste and experience in all possible ways. It is the journey, not the goal, that is the point of living. What goals we strive to achieve are, in the big picture, not so important to our souls as how we get there. If this were not so, what would the point be of living once a goal was achieved?

We can set the goal of doing whatever we can to keep this colt alive, but our journey, how we go about doing this, is key. The act of doing for the colt - the bottle and bucket feeding and all the special care - is ultimately for ourselves, for our own life experience and for the higher purposes our souls have for us. We can grow from this, no matter the outcome, or we can struggle and suffer, torturing ourselves with focusing on negative outcomes. The choice is always ours, no matter where we find ourselves in life.

A foal is born, a life ends

SE Despree, a Desperado V daughter, had a hard time with her first foaling two years ago – the long-legged filly had one foreleg pointed backwards and needed veterinary assistance to be born. We think there’s a chance that Spree suffered some internal damage during that procedure because when she foaled last Wednesday night, even though she produced a healthy colt, there were complications - the result of which was an orphan foal.

The neighbors had recently weaned a yearling colt and that mare, Jesse, still had milk. Spree’s bay colt got a ride up to Jesse in the back seat of a pickup truck even as Spree was taking her last breaths. The foster mother mare, fortunately, accepted the foal right away. Unfortunately, while Jesse had milk, she didn't have much of it, so the foal, now a week old, still looks like a 2-day-old, all ribs & hip bones.

We brought the mare and colt down to my ranch this morning and both have settled in nicely, Jesse (much to the neighbor’s surprise) not phased at all by the llama that was in the next pen. The colt is on Foal-Lac as a supplement to Jesse’s milk, and the mare herself seems to be producing more as the foal nurses. Hopefully the colt, still nameless, will survive and thrive, but we are worried for him in the immediate future.

Over the past week I’ve had lots of time to meditate on life and death, trying to come to grips with the drama here. The only solace I can feel is when I remember to honor the souls of the horses involved. Spree’s soul chose the circumstances of the life she lived and the death she died. It is not for me to question her choices, but to honor that she had a higher purpose in making them. The soul of the colt, too, has made choices that I can honor - or that I can ignore and torture myself with. The choice to honor and accept, or reject and suffer, is my own.

The Soul of a Horse

“My horse fights with me and fasts with me because if he is to carry me into battle, he must know my heart and I must know his or we shall never become brothers.

"I have been told that the white man, who is almost a god and yet a great fool, does not believe the horse has a soul.

"This cannot be true. I have many times seen my horse’s soul in his eyes."

-Plenty Coups, Chief of the Crow”

Relationships and vibrational levels

We are each and all the product of our life experiences, which includes interaction with others, both human and horse (and all living beings). We develop beliefs based on life experiences; these beliefs affect the choices we make - whether consciously or unconsciously - and manifest as the actions we take in life. We too often cling to our beliefs without realizing that they are hindering our relationships with others and limiting our growth.

Our interactions with horses are based on existing beliefs - those of ourselves and those of our horses. When problems arise, we each are confronted with the need to make choices about how to proceed. If we, the humans, choose to “stay true to beliefs” while we are asking for change (trying to resolve the problem), what we are really doing is asking the horse to make the choice to change. However, as we so often discover, clinging to beliefs for the sake of staying true to them will not necessarily serve us best, that is, the problems aren’t resolved. This is because a fact of life - truly a Law of Universe - is that the only control we each have in life is that over our own choices, not those of others. Thus, resolving problems between ourselves and our horses means being open to change, but it is only ourselves that that we can change.

When things are going right with our horses, we have the same goals, we make the same choices to get there. From the spiritual point of view, we are vibrating at the same frequencies. When things don’t seem to be going right with our horses, when it seems we have different goals and are making different choices, what we are experiencing is the differences in vibrational levels.

The more significant the difference in vibrational level, the more uncomfortable interactions between human and horse feel and the more difficult communication and relationship will be. When anger and other negative emotions come into play, vibrational levels change, and the interactions become even more difficult. Resorting to use of forceful training methods (such as forcing response through fear or pain) simply increases the difference in vibrational levels, and leads to increased force or simply failure.

Successful training or other interactions with horses (getting our horses to do things that we humans want at any given moment) is about successful communication that encourages our horses to make choices in alignment with our own choices. When our horses fully participate in relationships with us and freely choose to accept us in the leadership (decision making) position, then they more readily respond to communication, thereby requiring fewer communication aides or amplifiers (that's what the devices such as whips, spurs, bits, or even halters are - communication amplifiers).

When the relationship is such that the horse fully accepts the human in the leadership (decision making) role, communication can be extraordinarily subtle. A sheepherder working with a sheepdog or a cutting horse working without reins are examples. Once our horses understand the "language" of training - what is being communicated - then the rest is about the human/horse relationship. The closer in vibrational levels that our horses are to us, the better the communication and the closer we are in the choices we make to achieve the same goals.

Although we have no control over the choices or vibrational levels of anyone (or any thing, such as our horses), we can change ourselves. If we are experiencing “differences”, we only have the power to choose to change our own vibrational levels - higher or lower, it is the only control we truly have over any situation. Use of force (increased communication amplifiers) is like shouting louder - it may bring about different actions in others, but has it changed their beliefs and vibrational levels for the better? More importantly, will it bring our vibrational levels into alignment?

I believe that making choices that raise our vibrational levels is why we are each here in this body at this time. When we recognize differences between ourselves and our horses, we can be thankful, because we have been given a clear signal that we now have the opportunity to make new choices for change in our own vibrational levels - and thereby also improve our relationships with our horses.

Taking responsibility for what we have power to change in human/horse relationships - ourselves - and making the appropriate choices is the basis of Spiritual Horsemanship. Fortunately, we have the best teachers possible to learn how to do this: Our horses themselves.