Poop Scooping Meditations

RIP Kelsey Grae 
a good mare

After nearly 50 years of scooping horse poop I've come to realize it's no longer the chore it was.  Scooping poop has become a core part of my life. Essential, even -- and not just for the horses' sake, but for my own.  

When I'm scooping my worrying mind is shunted to the background, creating space for all kinds of interesting stuff to bubble to the foreground.  Granted, there's a certain amount of useless babble, but I've learned to gently nudge that aside to let those golden bits of insight pop into my mind.

Yes, I call those bubbles insights.  They're little nuggets of stuff that, through personal experience and repetition, I don't usually think to share and that most people don't even talk about.  Usually that's because the information seems small.  Too insignificant to bother with.  And yet even so, this knowledge is the fabric that is the human-horse relationship.  

I've decided it's time to share these bubbles so that you might become more aware of them yourself. I'm doing it for me, for you, and most especially for all the horses we love.

💜

My mare Kelsey Grae was buried in August. What started out as a scraped knee somehow escalated to a broken bone and death. It was one more thing in a week of tough things. I don't want to dwell  on it here, but if you want to read more, I posted it on my main blog.

Thank you Grace for the heart plaque that sits on my desks and reminds me of the love I've had for Kelsey and all the horses that have passed on from my life.

Hurry Up and Wait - Part 2

In the real world...

I have a horse named Sophie who has been severely sway-backed since she was one year old.  The condition, "early-onset lordosis", involves deformities in the vertebrae.  While some vets say it's not congenital, others feel it is.  We decided to err on the side of safety and not only never bred this mare, but at 20 years old, Sophie has never done anything other than be a pet horse.  She has ended up with essentially no training at all.

The area I am in New Mexico has a lot of volcanic rock, and the horses literally wear their feet down naturally, requiring no foot care at all unless they have conformation issues or are inactive. Even though lordosis supposedly doesn't impact a horse's health or performance, in the last year or so I've noticed Sophie wearing her feet differently, or more accurately not wearing them down like she had been. Sophie's right forefoot was starting to grow much longer than the other feet, and the others were beginning to lose the wonderful balance that they'd been exhibiting for the last 19 years.  Trouble was, Sophie had never had her feet handled, much less trimmed.  In fact, she was pretty sure that my bending over and even touching her lower leg was an act of predation.

Either Spiritual Horsemanship works on the ground, or it's just another crackpot horsemanship approach that amounts to one more way to bilk money out of the frustrated horse owner.  (Not that there is any charge for what I'm sharing, but you know what I mean.) I'm here to tell you that Spiritual Horsemanship works with real horses in the real world just fine.


An aside...

My relationship with my horses has always been along the lines of what I'm talking about in this blog.  Although it wasn't maybe quite at the level of what it is today, from day one my horses have been given a lot of options - so as dubious as Sophie was about my touching her feet, she wasn't unused to me doing things without restraint.  (This is my way of saying that if you do this at home, your results may vary.)

Let me also say that I have nothing against rewards, and I'm using treats as positive feedback for Sophie in the form of alfalfa pellets.  One positive response gets rewarded with one pellet.  Yes, that's not much of a reward, but Sophie doesn't get any pellets otherwise so she thinks it's pretty special.  The idea here is not to feed her, but to provide a spurt of pleasure that quickly and strongly connects her actions to that pleasure.  I could do it with a pat on the shoulder or even saying "good girl", but Sophie hasn't been handled enough for either to be as meaningful to her as the pellet.

And back to the process...

I started out by bending over and simply touching one shoulder, then walking to the other side and touching the other (front legs only at this time).  One pellet for each touch that Sophie allowed.  Two pellets each session, twice a day.

Sophie was free to walk away from me if she wanted to - a very clear communication!  This meant that I had to learn to never cause Sophie to want to say no.  I was the one being taught, I was the one altering my behavior, and Sophie the teacher.  My reward:  Sophie doing what I wanted.

Over the days I worked my way down each leg, a few inches more each session, till I got to the feet.  Total time invested each session: About 2 seconds of actual training and maybe two minutes of preparation (grabbing two pellets and walking over to Sophie, plus moving around her body).

When I got to the point where I could rest my fingers anywhere on each foot without Sophie even shifting her weight, I was ready to proceed to the next stage.  Everyone has their own preferred way of signaling a horse to pick up its foot, and mine is to gently squeeze the soft part of the fetlock behind the cannon bone.  Gently and briefly - and I release immediately and wait for a result.  The waiting part is as important as the squeezing part.

I started this process with Sophie about a month ago.  Today I can pick up each foot and hold it for a full second. Every time I do this I can hold the foot marginally longer than before, and each time the increase in time is by a larger margin.  Still, we're talking a whole month to get to this point, which may seem like a very long time.  And I haven't even introduced rasp or nippers.

What's the rush?

Most of the time we work with horses as we would with human children:  We drill, we repeat, we spend chunks of time going over the same thing.  Horses' muscles may benefit from repetition and increasing stress, but I'm not convinced their minds do.  I have found that when it comes to learning (training the mind vs. conditioning the body) what horses benefit from more than repetition is time to process - time for an incident to be stored in long-term memory rather than being lost in short-term memory that is constantly overlaid with input. The sheer uneventfulness of my one second foot handling combined with the little spike of pleasure, followed by sufficient time for that event to move into long-term memory, means that each time I do this with Sophie she's going a little bit further forward from the last time, making progress that needs no backtracking or correcting.

And that means steady progress, no matter how slow it might seem.

Walk away

Equally important as taking it slow is the removal of pressure.  A big part of how I work with Sophie is moving away from her immediately after giving her the pellet.  Body location is significant to horses.  We use it all the time when we free-lunge horses to get them to move, but keep in mind that it works the other way as well.  In another post I'll talk about how to use moving away from your horse as an inducement for the horse to come to you, but for now just remember that it's important to immediately reduce the pressure of you to give your horse the mental space to process what you really want him to process.  For now, the point is that when you're teaching your horse something new, moving away and reducing the pressure of your body location is an important tool to use.

This is the beginning of applied Spiritual Horsemanship

You don't have to start with a horse's feet.  You can start with anything you want as long as there is one clear, discrete thing for a horse to learn, and as long as you are willing to break the learning into tiny increments well spread apart.  The point here is to establish - to yourself as much as with your horse - that a partnership like this can really work, and to actually experience how it works.

Most of us find it very easy to either up the pressure or push the horse in some other way if the horse offers an opinion the human doesn't want.  But a horse's response doesn't always have to be yes when the human understands the value of a no.

Spiritual Horsemanship is who you are, not what you do

When you let the principles of Spiritual Horsemanship guide you - in your relationship with your horse as well as in your personal life - you will find that the slower you go, the faster you get where you want to be.

Hurry Up and Wait

Long associated with the military, where the grunts are mobilized in double-time to get ready for action and then end up cooling their heels for hours or days until being deployed, "hurry up and wait" applies to horsemanship as well - with a twist.  Giving up the hurry and being willing to wait gets you to your goal faster than you'd think.

I think we all know by now that quitting on a positive note is a good idea, but even so it seems that horses all too often still end up doing things the human doesn't have in mind.  Almost always that is what you get when you push a horse - when you hurry the process along on human time rather than horse time and end up having to backtrack to an earlier stage in the training or, worse, give in to the use of "remedial" training - punishment as a way of gaining "respect", force as a way of getting obedience.  In other words, forget the partnership.

"Longeing for respect"
Seriously - I didn't make that up
Hover over image for link

With Spiritual Horsemanship, partnership is not optional and is not a part-time relationship.  It's not the kind of phony deal where the human makes it "hard for the horse to do the wrong thing and easy for the horse to do the right thing" - a popular "natural horsemanship" sound byte that seems like a good idea but amounts to the horse having no say in the matter.

The partnership of Spiritual Horsemanship is a true one in which a horse can say no and the human accepts that response.

Which is not to say that the partnership can't bring about results the human wants.

A horse is content to go along with what the human wants because horses are herd animals and they are hard-wired to go with what the herd leader has in mind. Thus, if a horse says no, it means that either the horse doesn't believe the human is herd leader (a position mistakenly confused with forced dominance), there is fear involved, or the horse just doesn't understand the issue.

Part of the responsibility of the human member of the horse/human partnership is to recognize even the most subtle of communications from a horse. The trouble is, it's not quite as easy to tell when - or why - a horse is saying no as you'd think, particularly when you're holding a lead rope or reins or the horse is confined.  Is a hesitation and then a continuing a true no?  Is a shifting of weight to another leg a no or is it nothing?  If your horse turns his attention from you for a moment, is that a no or is it something else?

No or not no?

From the Spiritual Horsemanship perspective, the most unequivocal way to know what your horse is saying is to get rid of the reins, get rid of the halter rope, get rid of the fence.  Interact with your horse without anything restricting him and you will learn immediately what he is thinking.  If he's okay with what's going on, he'll stick with you.  If he's not okay, he'll leave. That's what would happen in a herd, that's what a horse understands, and if you are communicating with your horse on a level he understands you don't need anything more than that to get where you want to go.

Everything comes from you giving your horse true choice.  Without the freedom to leave, any interpretation you may have of what your horse wants is going to be shaded by what you want.  Trust your horse to voluntarily partner with you and allow your horse to come to your goals on his own. If you cannot trust your horse enough to do this, then what can you trust in yourself or the world?

Dive in.  Immerse yourself in true partnership.  Change yourself and the world will change for you.  Spiritual Horsemanship is about more than you and your horse - but this is where it starts.


Next week (March 6, 2013 or thereabouts):  Real world application - Sophie

Creating a vacuum for the Universe to fill

This Abraham quote puts a really interesting twist on how LOA works with Spiritual Horsemanship.

Every time you say, "I appreciate that. I really like that. I applaud that.  I acknowledge the value in that." Every time you do that, you spend some of your Energy, and it is the spending of the Energy that creates a vacuum, so to speak, or an attraction, so to speak, that draws more and more and more and more.

Every time you say “I appreciate that” to your horse, you create little energy vacuum that the Universe – and your horse – fills in with more of what you appreciate.

Every time you say “I really like that” to your horse, your horse receives a message of your liking and is encouraged to give you more of it.

Every time you applaud your horse’s performance, you attract more of that performance.

It’s so easy to focus on the negative behavior your horse exhibits, but the result is that you draw more of that to you from the Universe via your horse.  Then you look at the horse’s continued unwanted behavior and you blame the behavior on the horse when, ironically, the behavior is originating with you.

Horses, after all, obey the same laws of the Universe we do – the only difference between them and us is we have full choice and they have limited choice.  So when you create a vacuum in yourself by what you focus on – good or bad – you invite more of that into your experience from your horse.

When you purposefully spend the preferred quality of energy to create a vacuum that attracts more of the same kind of energy back to you, you create a space in your experience for the exact kind of behavior you want from your horse.  “Spend” more and more positive energy with your horse to give your horse the opportunity to give back to you the behavior you’re dreaming of.  Not only does it work, but it’s a whole lot of fun.

Easy Does It: The three states of being

Copyright © 2010 Lif C. Strand
www.spiritualhorsemanship.com

Three states of being in Spiritual Horsemanship

• Soft eyes
  
• Relaxed body
  
• Peaceful mind
  

Your point of view

Spiritual Horsemanship is about choice and partnership with horses, as opposed to the historical use of force and hierarchy/dominance. It is about softness, allowing and pleasure – for yourself and your horse – rather than hardness, pushing and unhappiness. Softness, relaxation and peacefulness are attractive, not just to horses but to other humans.

Spiritual Horsemanship involves both your inner and your outer life experience, as each affects the other. It is based on the idea that when you make positive changes in your inner experience, your outer experience will change. It is also based on a supporting idea that changing any one area of your life will affect all other areas of your life. Thus, improving your relationship with your horse will have broad results in other areas of your life.

When you experience pleasurable states you feel good, and when you feel good, you are vibrating at (in a state of harmony with) a level like that of Source energy, the energy of the Universe (or God, Goddess, Great Spirit, your choice of terms). Vibrating at this level is energizing, because Source energy is infinite. The stronger your positive emotions, the better you feel and the more energy you have, because the energy comes from outside you. In such a state you are open to the world, generating energy, able to receive information and process it on many levels. The highest levels of positive energy are experienced as transcendent bliss.

When you experience negative emotions such as anger or fear - when you generate such emotions through pushing, dominating, forcing - you don’t feel good. Your Reptile Mind puts you in a self-protective state of being: Hormones are released into your system, your heart rate increases, your muscles tense as your body prepares itself for action on both the physical and emotional levels. A sort of shell of imperviousness protects you – you don’t feel much pain, you have a surge of energy. But the cost is high – you are closed off to the world. You can’t receive much information, you can’t think – your ability to process information is limited to what the Reptile Mind can deal with, and you become a hard shell of self-protection.

In such a state you are vibrating at the level of physical matter. Vibrating at this level is tiring because the energy comes from your own body and physical energy is finite. The stronger your negative emotions, the more quickly you use up your own personal energy. The lowest levels of negative energy are experienced as depression and despair.


Your horse’s point of view

Horses, like all prey animals, are of necessity masters of reading body language – not only that of their own species but of other species as well. This is what allows zebras to assess the risk from a nearby pride of lions – accurate reading of the body language of a hungry lion versus a lazy, satiated one is the difference between living to another day and becoming lion dinner.

Horses can immediately tell the difference in your emotional states and react to them. Your negative states of being can elicit fear in a horse - anger is interpreted by a horse as aggressive, predatory behavior. Predatory body language raises flight or fight behavior reaction and can lead to unwanted responses when a horse is not allowed escape from your negative states.

On the other hand, your positive states of being reassure your horse and are attractive to him. Like with a good lead mare in a wild herd, it is in the nature of your horse to want to do what you want if you exhibit the positive body language of positive emotion such as contentment, relaxation or happiness. Being able to get yourself in a state of positive emotion will bring you positive results with your horse.

Your relationship with your horse reflects who you are as a human being in general as well as your relationship with everything in your life. As you achieve success with the lessons of Spiritual Horsemanship, you will find your whole life responding. Learning to change your level of vibration with horses is the foundation for Spiritual Horsemanship.

The three states of being

The three states of being in Spiritual Horsemanship are soft eyes, relaxed body and peaceful mind. Being able to on-purpose generate any of them will lead to success with all three, and will allow you to become an open, non-threatening, spiritual partner with your horse. Practice with achieving the three states will make it easier to create them in yourself at any time – when working with your horse, when dealing with your family or your work or any circumstance in your life. Achieving the three states of soft eyes, relaxed body and peaceful mind is not only calming to yourself, but it attracts more of that same calm, higher, pleasurable vibration into your life and into the world around you. When working with your horse, you become non-threatening and attractive (in the sense of being an entity that your horse wants to pay attention to and be near). In such a state your desires for your horse’s response to you are more easily communicated, and you become open and sensitive to your horse’s physical and non-physical communication.

When you change yourself so that achieving the three states becomes natural and habitual behavior for you, then your relationships with other humans and your whole physical environment similarly change. Spiritual Horsemanship can become a way to resolve issues throughout your life, not simply with your horse.

Using “soft eyes” is the first step in creating a higher vibrational state of being. Soft eyes enable you to see a whole picture rather than just the details, to look at nothing specifically but see everything. This is right-brain functioning. Using the right brain can put you in a timeless place where you can dream of goals and end results yet you can get there working on many things simultaneously (rather than focused and sequentially). On-purpose use of soft eyes is a way to achieve a relaxed body and peaceful mind.

A relaxed body drains tension from the mind, which allows the shell of self-protection to dissolve. Having a relaxed body signals to a horse a lack of aggressive purpose. A relaxed body also feels more pleasurable than a tense body. It is more balanced, and allows for faster and greater sensitivity in response to your horse.

A peaceful mind is a mind connected to Source energy and is the result of soft eyes and a relaxed body. When connected to Source energy, you are most attractive to your horse and most open to communication from him.

When the three states of being are all positive, it puts you fully in the world, allows you to become a holistic part of everything, and allows what you are inside to manifest outside. In such a state, your horse can become part of you and together you become more than two beings working together, more than the sum of the parts. You become the Centaur, one being with one goal, joyfully achieved together.


Next: Practice makes perfect – soft eyes.

Sonetta report - 11 weeks

At almost three months, Sonetta is not as well "trained" as many other foals of her age, but I don't care. When she's out running on 70 acres, if she can see me she will come to me if I give her the signal. She doesn't freak out at anything new, but rather is merely cautious as she approaches something she's never encountered before. She is calm but having fun, examining everything, charging at dogs and chickens, galloping in big circles at top speed farther and farther away until her mother, Su, whinnies in distress.

This is one mentally and physically healthy little horse, and I know she's going to be something special when she grows up. As for her "training", she'll catch up in the next few months. Much more important to me to lay a solid foundation now for her future partnership with humans than for her to meet up to the expectations of the world.

Real Choice Part 2

Copyright © 2010 Lif C. Strand
www.spiritualhorsemanship.com

At this stage of working with the filly, I’m mostly introducing the different kinds of touch she might expect from me, by rubbing her or scratching her with my hands, brushing her, sliding a rope over her body. I don’t believe in “imprinting” – horses are not ducklings or chicks, so they don’t have the physiological ability to actually imprint – and besides, I don’t feel my mares appreciate my messing with their newborns. Additionally, imprinting removes any possibility of choice with a newborn foal. Offering real choice is what Spritirual Horsemanship is about. This means that I wait till the new mother is ready to share her baby with me. SE Redhill Sonetta’s mother, Suletta HCC, has always taken a few days till she’s not protecting her baby when I approach, and even though she’s had quite a few foals by now (she’s 27!) she’s still a protective mother with her newborns.

With Sonetta, Su was okay with me focusing on her filly after about five days. Of course I was in and out of the pen with them both during that time, but I didn’t attempt to approach the filly other than absolutely necessary during that time. I watched carefully to make sure Su was relaxed with me working with her foal before ever beginning to work with the filly.

Of course, five days is a long time in the life of a newborn horse, so when Su finally was okay with me messing with her baby, the baby was not okay with my messing with her. This wasn’t a problem for me as I have found that taking it very, very slowly in the beginning makes it end up faster in the end (less mistakes made along the way!), so I don’t worry about having a halter broke baby in a day.

I have set up my life with my horses so that I can work with them on their time, not mine. When I was more “in the business” than I am now, things were different – I was more impatient, less likely to give horses real choices. While it never caused serious, permanent damage to them – after all, horses have been subject to human force and whim for millennia and survived it – the feedback these days is that as nice as the horses were before, the horses that leave my property now are much calmer and easier to teach.

The big reward is how eager Sonetta is to learn. I’ve reached the point with where she so enjoys what we are doing that if I give her my hand signal to come to me, she comes at an enthusiastic run. She is open, she is ready, and she has never had her Reptile Mind engaged, so she holds nothing back.


Starting out with Sonetta

Because I’ve rearranged fencing panels recently, Su and Sonetta live in a crescent-shaped pen. It's big enough to allow the filly to get into a gallop (she’s funny when she does it, because she often whinnies while running – I’ve never had one of my horses do that). At its thickest in the middle, the pen is about 60 feet across. If the filly runs along the outer fence line, she can cover something like 150 feet before she has to change direction. The crescent shape means that a horse could get cornered if I wanted to do so, but I never approach the corners – I always stand in the middle and let the filly come to me.

On the first day with the filly, once Su decided it was ok to share her, my intent was to get the baby to notice me. I do this by a) not doing anything that creates fear and thereby engages her Reptile Mind, b) using the filly’s natural curiosity to get her to make the contact, and c) trusting in herd learning, which is that if all the other herd members say something is okay, then it’s okay for all (and I’m going to become a senior member of this filly’s herd).

I avoid creating fear by resisting the normal human tendency to walk or even reach towards what I want. My goal is to get the filly to want me. My actions are gentle yet clear and simple: I just walk into the middle of the pen – not looking at the filly – not fast, not slow, but with a very relaxed body and soft eyes. I then just stand there, thinking nothing, listening to the sounds of the horses nearby, the birds in the trees, the chickens clucking and chatting with each other; I feel the breeze on my cheek and the sun warming my body. I’m being and breathing and no more – my mind is blank. It’s my favorite sort of meditation: Putting out nothing, mind passively receiving and absorbing the world around me.

I allow myself to include the filly in my unfocused gaze, but never look at her directly. After a while, she looks in my direction. The moment she does so, I casually move my center of gravity back just a little – just a small movement, maybe not even noticeable to a human who wasn’t looking for it. This is an invitation for the filly to approach. It is a statement that I am not a danger. Slight as it is, the filly registers that movement. She takes a hesitant step towards me.

I’m still breathing deeply and effortlessly; I’m still relaxed; I’m still enjoying the sounds around me, the smells of fresh air, juniper, horse. I’m not attempting to hold my body still, but neither am I doing more than standing relaxed in a moment of time with no expectation, no desire. I am simply being an invitation. What happens here today, no matter what it is, is the perfect, most wonderful and joyful thing that could happen. Whatever the filly does is wonderful. I am willing to accept whatever she is willing to give to me - or withhold

Without focusing my eyes on any part of the filly above her knees, I use my peripheral vision to watch her body and head very closely. If she even as much as shifts her center of gravity away from me or looks away from me, I sway back away from her. If she moves a foot in preparation to turn away, I turn away first, unhurriedly, casually, and I leave the pen. That’s it for today.

It’s a subtle dance, but very, very powerful.


Pressure is force, and force is no choice at all

In the olden days, horses were given no choices – they did what humans wanted and that was it. Pain was the usual method to get horses to respond as humans required. Even today, although natural horsemanship talks about making requests of horses, most of the time by ‘request’ we actually mean that if a horse doesn’t do what we say we will find a way to make the horse do it anyway, generally through increasing the pressure. Haven’t you heard the phrase “make the right choice easy, the wrong choice hard”? There can be no true choice offered when the options do not include “no”.

A horse doesn’t refuse to do something because he is being willful or contrary; he refuses because he is afraid or just doesn’t know any better. He really wants to do what you want him to; as a herd animal, he’s hardwired to do so. However, when a horse is afraid, he is subject to that Reptile Mind and he can’t think. When his Reptile Mind engages, his conscious mind is inoperative and he can’t remember things like training, or even that he knows and likes you. All he can do is follow the imperatives of “fight or flight” – and too often we humans cut off the flight option, leaving fight as the only ugly possible response.


Flight or fight.

Believe me, it’s not that your horse wants to fight you; it’s that you’re not giving your horse any choice. We all do it – we are predators by nature and can’t help it. We stalk, we have hard eyes, we have tense bodies – we just naturally look like we want to eat our horses, not work with them as partners. And if we have the least bit of fear or anger in us, then that message is only magnified.

Horses (all animals) are masters at body language. We humans aren’t so hot at it, although we can be good at it if we work on it. Meanwhile, even if we do, even if we become less predator and more with the herd/partner concept, even if we stroll instead of stalk, use soft eyes instead of hard, have relaxed bodies instead of tense, we still have a big failing in that we are still unconsciously end up trapping our horses. We push them into their Reptile Minds and we lose them. Oh, we end up teaching, but we are doing it through fear and force – and we may not be teaching what we had in mind.

Being trapped is not a good feeling for a horse. No matter how good a trainer you are, or how good a partner you are with your horse, if your horse feels trapped the pressure will tip him over into fear and thus Reptile Mind. You just never are going to be able to overcome millions of years of equine evolution. Horses do not run to when they’re afraid, they run from. They are not like puppies that can be held in your arms and comforted, because to a horse confinement and restriction feels too much like the prelude to the claws and fangs of a predator.

The big mistake most of us make when we are working with our horses is that we push our horses over the limits of what they can tolerate (that limit is very low when confronted with something new or fearful) without providing sufficient space for them to get away. Pushing and pressure, forward motion and entrapment are all moves a predator makes; they are aggressive movements. These are all natural movements for a human and they can easily evoke fear in a horse. When a horse feels fear, the Reptile Mind engages, the thinking mind disengages, and Reptile Mind only offers a horse the choices of flight and fight. However, if the pressure can be reduced by flight - once a horse feels it has moved to a point where he is safe - his Reptile Mind can disengage and his conscious mind reengages: Your horse can think again.


Going away and coming to: The horse’s choice

The Spiritual Horsemanship approach to working horses is twofold:

First: big space, no restraint. Allow horses enough space to get far enough away so if they feel pressured, they have the room to move off until they are comfortable (that is, far enough that they can move till they want to stop moving on their own, rather than being forced to stop by restraint of a rope or a fence). With horses that are not particularly fearful and a human who is sensitive, that space can be inches (just swaying the body away like I did with Sonetta). With more fearful horses, with less sensitive humans, it might take acres of space. If you use no restraint – no halter, no lead rope - a horse has less reason to feel trapped.

Secondly, allow horses to choose to engage with you; to freely accept what you’re offering - and trust that they will accept if given true choice. A horse’s curiosity is a wonderful thing, yet so often we fail to use that curiosity as a proactive tool. I always allow my horses – even the adults I’ve had all their lives – to smell me over thoroughly before we do anything new, and every so often let them do so just so they are reminded who I am. I give them the opportunity to learn about new equipment by leaving it for them to sniff, touch, nibble and lick on their own time, at their own pace, with no pressure. I’d rather have a tooth mark on leather than a fearful horse.

The whole point is to not create pressure on a horse, but if it occurs anyway, to immediately reduce the pressure before it can build to fear. Giving a horse the true freedom of choice – to say no by leaving, to participate voluntarily - is how true partnership with a horse is born. This is Spiritual Horsemanship.

Real Choice Part 1

Copyright © 2010 Lif C. Strand
www.spiritualhorsemanship.com

Part 1: Life, The Universe and Everything

Today my filly, SE Redhill Sonetta, is two months old. I am spending a little time with her every day, just a few minutes or so – never long enough for her to get bored. What Sonetta and I do each time is really a microcosm of the big picture of Spiritual Horsemanship, which is in itself a microcosm of the way the Universe works. Big concepts can come in little, furry packages!

As above, so below; as below, so above. The concepts of micro- and macrocosm are pretty old – they’re from the Greek neo-Platonic system, which says that the patterns of life are the same everywhere; life’s patterns are reproduced in all levels of the cosmos from the tiniest to the largest scale.

The modern concept of “holographic universe” originated with the work of British physicist David Bohm and neurophysiologist Karl Pribram, who each independently developed a theory of the holographic nature of the universe. This concept is explained in the book The Holographic Universe by Michael Talbot, in which Talbot examines the work of Bohm and Pribram and explores the metaphysic implications underlining quantum mechanics supersymmetry.

A hologram is a three-dimensional image created using a laser. If a hologram of is cut in half and then illuminated by a laser, each half will still be found to contain the entire image of the original. No matter how often divided, each piece of the hologram will always produce the original image. This is possible because of the behavior of subatomic particles (see Zero Point Field).

A holographic universe is a universe in which everything, from the tiniest to the largest, is of the same pattern, just like the Greeks said. You can find examples everywhere: Images of brain cells that look just like galaxies , images of atoms that look like solar systems that look like galaxies.



In the Greek macro-microcosm system the mid-point is Man, who summarizes the cosmos. And why not? The human body is composed of the same matter as anything else in the universe, the only difference being that the matter is in different magnitude than, say, a star. A difference of quantity, not quality: At the smallest level of matter that a human body is made of, the same electromagnetic energy fills the void between the body’s smallest particles as fills the void between the rest of matter in the universe. Living beings like humans are pretty much in the middle of this scale of the subatomic to the universe. The only thing the Greeks had wrong is that it isn’t Man alone at the mid-point, but all living beings. In the Big Picture scheme of things, my filly Sonetta is more like me than a single atom or a galaxy is.

A little science. All living tissues have an electric charge and are capable of transmitting such charges. Signals to and from our brains, our very thoughts, produce electric signals which travel along nerves as waves of electrically charged ions. The electromagnetic energy of our brains is measurable, and according to quantum physics, at the subatomic particle level, the electromagnetic energy of our very thoughts will affect all subatomic particles nearby.

If everything is responsive to and influenced by everything on the subatomic level, creating a holographic universe, then in essence, everything is not only made of everything else, everything in some sense is everything else.

This means that that difference between me and Sonetta I mentioned above is truly insignificant in any scheme of things, big or small.

Choice matters when working with horses. Remember the good old Golden Rule, “do unto others as you’d have them do unto you”? In a holographic universe, the Golden Rule is not so much good advice as a statement of how it all works. In a holographic universe, what you do unto others actually is doing unto yourself. And this brings us to the issue of choice – real choice.

Next: Real Choice Part 2


Real choice, for a horse, is often different than what a human thinks it is. With Natural Horsemanship, we talk about making requests or our horse, however most of the time, by ‘request,’ we actually mean that if a horse doesn’t do what we say we will find a way to make the horse wish it had. Haven’t you heard the phrase “make the right choice easy, the wrong choice hard”?

That’s not real choice, it is force in disguise...

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