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.

Seriously -- where's Lif?

Is there something fishy going on?  Seriously, what happened to this blog? 

It's just me -- I am so bad!  So many pans in the fire.  Or is it fingers?  Can you believe I totally forgot about this project?  Well, not totally... but might as well have been.  It's my intention to get back to it.  Seriously.  

Where's Lif?

I haven't posted here in a long time, but that's not because I haven't been writing.  I've been putting my time into another of my blogs, Mage Music.

Some of the content there might not be of interest to you as it is about specific aspects of the music of guitarist Jimmy Page. Most of the blog, however, uses the context of music to talk about Magick, a process of deliberately creating the changes in your own reality that lead to the satisfaction of your desires. I urge you to poke through the blog from the first posts a little over two years ago, because the basic premises of Magick apply to Spiritual Horsemanship.

Read Mage Music with an open mind. The blog isn't about the occult, black magic or the stuff of wizards that you read about in fantasy novels.  The blog is about becoming who you are meant to be. Magick is just another word for changing your reality on purpose by making choices that will lead to where you want to go in life.  If where you want to go includes doing so with your horse I think much of Mage Music's content will be useful for you. The word Magick describes a process as well as the result: the wonderful feeling that arises from your life becoming just what you truly want it to be. When you create a relationship with your horse in which both  ofyou are happy, relaxed and achieving your mutual goals, that surely feels like magic.

And of course, becoming who you are meant to be is all your horse wants from you. When you are fully in yourself and living a centered, balanced life, your horse can relax and become fully himself. This in turn gives birth to a happy and mutually beneficial relationship in which anything becomes possible - and isn't that what Spiritual Horsemanship is all about?

Land of Enchantment

Horses are magical, and when you combine them with a spectacular New Mexico sunset, it's clear why New Mexico is the Land of Enchantment.

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

Paean to a Good Mare

In memory of Suletta HCC (*Sukuris x HCC Rusletta)  1983-2013

Spiritual Horsemanship is so much more than a mere horse-human partnership. Even the best of partnerships are limited to a joining of entities with defined and separate roles that allow unequal entities to work together. Spiritual Horsemanship, however, is a much bigger concept. It is based on embracing and opening to all forms of contact on all possible planes of existence, as well as maintaining flexible and goal oriented roles through actively seeking some kind of basic equality. With Spiritual Horsemanship it doesn't matter on some levels that there is a human and a horse involved - it's much more important that there are two souls involved.

Think of it as bonding - a relationship where there's no true line between where one entity begins and the other ends, where the two (or more) bonded entities are One. There can be no inequality in a bond of souls.

Spiritual Horsemanship means an acceptance by the human in the relationship that all things are created of god-stuff, and that while all things may not be precisely equal on the physical level, they are equivalent - and One - on the spiritual level.

Learning by Doing

Suletta HCC was an interesting mare who taught me a tremendous amount about horses and Spiritual Horsemanship. When my husband and I set out for a Hyannis Cattle Company sale in Scottsdale AZ, way back in the mid 1980s, we didn't know that this particular mare would be joining our herd in California. We had checked the pedigrees of all the horses in the sale and had decided on her younger sister, a two year old that would work well with our own bloodlines and would be in our price range. That didn't happen - Su was meant to be our horse and so her sister went elsewhere and we ended up paying the maximum we had budgeted for a half-broke mare with a scarred hind fetlock and an attitude.

It was the attitude that taught me the most, of course. Attitude - meaning something other than a docile willingness to go along with the human program - is what can teach the most about horsemanship, since it's the biggest and clearest communication of the existence of a problem, a lack of communication, a block in the flow.

Su had been broke to saddle for the sale - more or less. We could see as she was trotted back and forth across the stage that she was barely under control, but we figured we'd work it out down the line. We didn't ask Su about that idea at the time, which would have been a good idea since she had a very different idea of what she wanted for her future than we did.

Hyannis Cattle Company horses were bred to be working athletes, so it wasn't surprising that Su was powerful and swift under saddle. Unfortunately, she also was a great candidate for rodeos - not as a roping or cutting horse, but as a bucking bronc. You never knew when she'd decide she'd had enough - it could be a few minutes or an hour or more under saddle, and it wouldn't be every time she was ridden. Su was clever about that - she had perfect timing, which is to say she was totally unpredictable in when she'd dump her rider. And dump them she would, no matter who was on her.

It took a while for we humans to figure it out.  We had enough horses under saddle right then (we were actively competing in endurance in those days) and since we had little enough hours as it was for all the conditioning we needed to put in, we decided there was little point in spending the time with the bucking issue if we could breed this mare.

What a great decision that was. Su was a spectacular broodmare. Her foals were athletic and well conformed, and we made money finding them good, competitive homes. But ultimately for me, the best and most valuable thing about Su was that she was a strong lead mare for our herd and as long as I listened to her, she would do whatever I wanted in that capacity.

Listening and Hearing 

Su wasn't the only horse teaching this lesson about Spiritual Horsemanship - we had dozens of horses at that point. But she was the most stubborn in getting the lessons through my own thick human head.  She was one of them that helped me understand what horses really were:  Fellow travelers along the spiritual path, souls temporarily manifesting in physical form.

Su helped me learn that listening, and then hearing, are an essential part of Spiritual Horsemanship. Both are acts of choice, particularly necessary when what is being listened to isn't offered in the usual human spoken language.

Listening is setting the intention to hear a message in whatever form it is delivered. Hearing is the act of receiving of the message. But it is the acceptance of the message as valid and meaningful that opens the door to Spiritual Horsemanship.

Honor and respect

Although they seem to be fading from our world these days in too many areas, the concepts of honor and respect aren't gone yet. They mean something very similar: Approval, pleasure and even wonder for another being (or object) for their abilities, qualities, or achievements; and to hold a being (or object) in high esteem.

Spiritual Horsemanship is about hearing a horse's message and following up with honor and respect.  It took many years before I realized how important it was to act on honor and respect. On the physical plane, actions are the true expression choice. Promises are empty words and honor and respect are meaningless concepts if not accompanied by actions.

Su's message to me always involved both what she didn't want to do and what she did. She was playing the same game we humans aim at our horses: She made doing the thing she didn't want to do (being ridden) unpleasant, while she rewarded the steps we took towards what she did want (being a broodmare). Being bucked off and hitting the ground hard while your horse runs off with her tail in the air is so much more dramatic than clicker training - yet we persisted for probably long enough that Su must have thought we were really dense.  We did get it eventually, though, and then we took the next step:  We honored and respected that message.  She became a broodmare and eventually the lead mare of our herd, and wow, what a great job she did of it.

Su is gone now, but she not only lives on in her foals, but also in me - the person I became through who she was.  For this is the ultimate reward and point of Spiritual Horsemanship:  Not to make a horse do what you want, but for you to become a better person.  A better person is a better horseman.  Your horse knows that already and patiently waits for you to learn this, too.

"...so in a poignant moment of awareness of another person's undesirable situation,give your undivided attention to the idea of improvement that has hatched from your interaction/observation. And as you learn to do that, not only will you be of increasing value to others, but you will see how your relationships with others adds immeasurably to your own becoming." ~ The Vortex: Where the Law of Attraction Assembles All Cooperative Relationships, by Esther and Jerry Hicks (an Abraham book)

2013 - Beginning and Renewal

New Years' resolutions are OK, but they so often get broken.  I want to resolve to write more to this blog - and to write regularly - but I'm not going to tempt fate.  I will say that I have lots to tell you about Spiritual Horsemanship that I've been taking notes on that I just haven't been posting, and you WILL see that stuff in the (hopefully) near future.

Meanwhile, here is a thought for you:  The ideal human/horse relationship would be a psychic connection, and that would entail there being no separation between minds.  What one knows and feels, the other knows and feels.  When one hurts, fears, is angry, sad, the other feels that as if it was her own emotion.

Normal, healthy living beings are attracted to feeling good and repelled by negative feelings.  The attraction of security, familiarity, trust and friendship is a big part of what keeps a herd together.  The bond is fluid, changing from moment to moment but always with a place for each horse that satisfies.  A human who wants to create the strongest bond with a horse needs to set up and participate in an attractive relationship where the horse feels the safety, familiarity, trust and friendship of a herd - something that is not achieved through force or pain.

With such a relationship, a human would have to work fully with a horse, as opposed to being in control.  It would mean opening oneself to the horse, not just wanting the horse to open to the human.  The goal of a true psychic sharing of minds, with each seeking the positive emotions and feeling what both feel, and thus experiencing when the action results in positive emotion as opposed to guessing or deciding for the other, will create a bond whether or not the goal is achieved.

The measure of success for the best human/horse relationship is not what the horse does for the human, but how satisfied both human and horse are.

I wish you a very satisfying and spiritual 2013.

The goal is the fun is the journey is the goal

Copyright © 2011 Lif C. Strand
www.spiritualhorsemanship.com

I subscribe to the Abraham Daily Quotes and this is what came today. It so perfectly describes Spiritual Horsemanship!

Abraham Daily Quote - 07/03/2011: You think that the goal is to be over there, and we say the goal is the journey over there; the goal is the fun you have along the way on your way to over there.

If your goal is to use a horse to get to some future point in time or space, please stop reading. This information isn't for you, because when your relationship with your horse is end-goal oriented, you block possibility of a partnership and enter into a master/slave or owner/object relationship. Spiritual Horsemanship is partnership, where each party has input that is respected and taken into consideration when choosing next steps, and where the input is not simply physical interaction but communication on intellectual, emotional and spiritual levels.

Living in the future is not what horses do – it’s a human skill, or maybe curse. So to be end-goal oriented with a horse is to deny a horse its essential nature to live in the moment. Further, for you to focus on an end-goal is to live in and for the future, and therein lies the cause of many problems with human/horse relationships.

Whenever you are there mentally (focused on your end-goal) and your horse is here (living in the moment, focused on you), your communication is confused. You’re talking about then, your horse is talking about now. You’re talking about something that doesn’t exist and your horse is talking about what is. You aren’t talking about the same thing but you think you are – and from this comes frustration and as it continues, the negative emotion escalates until it triggers your horse’s limbic response: flight or fight.

To communicate effectively, you and your horse need to be in the same place. Your horse isn’t capable of dreaming with you about the future and you are the only one who has the choice, the one in the partnership who can decide to be with the other or somewhere else. 

This is not to say that the desire to reach a future point in time or space is not possible, but that such goals should rather be icing on the cake rather than the whole meal.

What is important is the whole meal. Which brings up the point of fun: If your goal is pleasure at this moment – not a deferred (and by no means assured) pleasure in the future - then the whole meal is enjoyable.  The end-goal becomes a natural outcome, just more pleasure in an ongoing span of pleasure for both you and your horse. Your horse will be happy and so will you.

What works best with horses is the whole relationship, which can only be accessed in the moment you are living in. What is important in Spiritual Horsemanship is positive moment-to-moment living in partnership with your horse – it is this relationship that not only can get you to some future time and space of your mutual agreement, but it can enhance both your lives right now.

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.

Focus On The Essence

www.spiritualhorsemanship.com
Lif Strand 12/08/10

When you want one thing and someone (including your horse) wants another... "if you will focus upon the essence of what you want and the other will focus upon the essence of what they want … and if either one of you doesn't get too involved in the details of how you think you want your desire to play out, then both of you can be satisfied. The Universe has the facility to orchestrate circumstances and events to accommodate everyone.”

- From Abraham Daily Quote - 12/08/2010

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The essence of a horse: A being with a soul, with preferences, with the intelligence to make choices, and with the grace to bless humans with a partnership when that partnership is offered with respect and sensitivity.

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SE Foxylation - SE Kokopelli Kid - Lif Strand
(photo copyright (c) 2010 spiritualhorsemanship.com)

We always intended that SE Kokopelli Kid, son of my beloved stallion Ben Nasrif, would be our next breeding stallion. Our breeding program considerations included not only conformation and athletic ability, but personality – all three being of equal importance. With a stallion his base personality can be overlaid by testosterone – nevertheless, we only wanted to use a stallion whose temperament was such that even with a mare right next to him, he would be able to still pay attention to a human.

That’s actually quite a big request of a stallion, but it is a reasonable one. Even in the wild, a stallion needs to be able to ignore the imperatives of hormones – otherwise predators could simply have dinner every time a stallion and mare were breeding.

Had we focused on details of how we wanted Koko to turn out rather than the essence of what we wanted him to be, we would have handled him in the traditional way. We would have introduced him to nose chains, to special breeding halters, we would have spent lots of time working on his approach to mares – likely in the process frustrating him and ending up somewhere other than we had in mind.

What we did instead was focus on the essence of who we hoped he would be and always acted on our intentions of having a deep and mutually respectful relationship with this young stallion, one in which he trusted that we would not needlessly interfere with his life so that when we did make a request, it was meaningful and worthy of response.

We focused on the essence of Koko as a gentle yet powerful horse, with dignity and intelligence, with the ability to make meaningful choices and – if we guided him correctly and with the right intentions, focusing on his essence rather than micromanaging his behavior - with the assumption that he would always make the right choice if we offered him the right options.

From day one we trusted Koko to always respond in the way we desired. From day one we gave him the option to choose – true choice, meaning he had the right to refuse. Because we very carefully only offered choices that would lead to the outcomes we had in mind, and because the choices were well within Koko’s ability and did not stir his Reptile Mind, step by step we led Koko – fully of his own volition – to a place where he became the breeding stallion we had in mind.

This meant that we did not offer choices that weren’t really choices, i.e. do the right thing or you will suffer. No, we offered only choices that were simple: follow the path we offer or walk way.

This meant that, like with our other youngsters, we worked with Koko without a halter, and in a large enough space that he could always get away when he didn’t want to do something. Horses truly do love to work in partnerships, and truly will do what you ask when you ask them the right way and trust them.  A measure of your ability to offer the right choices is how often your horse chooses to stay with you and try, rather than to walk away.

Sarai & Koko
(copyright (c) 2010 spiritualhorsemanship.com)

Trust is a big factor in handling a horse this way. You must work up to the big things – you don’t walk into a pen with a strange stallion and mare in heat and expect either to pay any attention to you. As you work up to those big things, every day in every way you must trust that your horse will work with you to achieve the desired end, and that the Universe will deliver what you want when you are focused on the essence of what it is. In other words, desired behavior in a horse has just as much to do with your own state of mind as it does the horse’s.

It is up to you to focus on the essence and leave the details to the Universe.  This is Spiritual Horsemanship - where the essence of the horse and the essence of the human join together to make something bigger than the sum of the parts:  A true partnership where each party has equal weight.  Giving your trust and true choices to your horse is what builds the partnership.  Recognizing the essence of what you want your horse to be like and focusing on that, letting the Universe take care of the details, is Spiritual Horsemanship.

Focusing on the essence of what we desired in a breeding stallion got us where we are today with Koko. He is a stallion and still subject to testosterone, of course, but he is also a partner who is gentle and willing. This is what I want in a horse – doesn’t everyone?

Thriving is what is good for you

Wordle for "Thriving is what is good for you"

New Reality Transmission 11/11/10

"A growing body of scientific studies from around the world confirms that these spiritual ideas [that your consciousness changes reality] may have a theoretical ground in physics"

You might be interested in the November 11, 2010 New Reality Transmission to send a "pulse of belief into the Reality Matrix", in which you join a website at specific times and project your beliefs for 11 minutes.  There will be 11 days in a row of group reality transmissions.  The experiment is to see how group consciousness might change the world.

For more info and to sign up:  http://www.newrealitytransmission.com/   Note that the site is based on Flash - slower internet connections (like mine) may have trouble signing up, as I did - just be persistent!

Thriving is what is natural to you

This Abraham quote just can't be repeated enough:  "Thriving is what is natural to you."

Physical bodies are made to thrive.  They have systems hard-wired in to self-correct and keep the body in a state of thriving.  There are systems for protection, repair and replacement, and systems for growth, and when you think about it, it's all pretty miraculous.

Most of us live our days unconsciously, relying on our bodies to keep us going without even giving it a moment's thought.  If our bodies are lucky, we at least fuel them with good food and we keep them toned with exercise.  Even so, most of us enjoy bodies that work pretty well.  Is that the same as thriving, though?

Thriving is more than surviving.  Google "thrive" and you'll find the following:  make steady progress; to grow vigorously or luxuriantly, to flourish.

If our physical bodies are to do more than just survive, we have to look to more than just fueling and exercising them.  Our minds are the interface between the physical and the spiritual, the spiritual is Source - the place that the spark comes that is life.  If the interface between Source and the physical isn't clear, then the physical suffers.

It's kind of like having fingerprints on your glasses or dust on your monitor - the light just can't get through and the result is dulled or blurred.

Thriving is natural to you, but it takes a healthy mind to thrive, not just a healthy body.  The mind/body relationship is inseparable; change one and the other necessarily changes.  Most of the functions of the body are automatic and you have no control over them, but you can affect your body by taking more control over your mind.

It works the other direction, too:  the mind/spirit relationship is inseparable; change one and the other necessarily changes.  You have no direct control over Source but you can affect it and be affected by it – you can let in the light – by taking conscious control over your mind.

The mind is key to thriving, since it is the interface between the physical and spiritual, and each affects the other. 

If you have a horse, you have a tool that can help you in your quest to open up to Source.   

When you are feeling negative (angry, afraid, stressed) and you’re with your horse, he reacts.  If you are open to doing what it takes to thrive, you will see that reaction in your horse for what it is:  A response to your own negative state, not that the horse got up on the wrong side of the bed (horses never do!).  You can use that feedback to work on changing your state of mind from the negative to the positive, rather than simply reflect the horse’s reaction back and thereby amplify the negativity.  The end of the negativity feedback path is that the horse reaches an overwhelm point and acts out – too often the horse is blamed for that when it was all the time you.

When you are feeling positive (happy, joyous, silly) and you’re with your horse, he reacts to that, too.  You generally fail to even notice how well your horse reflects that – but he does, he reflects all the emotional states you bring to him.  The days you bring positive emotions to your horse are the days when he seems to be just perfect, when it’s magical.  On such days you can take the opportunity to pay attention, to open up to how that positive place feels and solidify that memory in your mind, so that you can use that to change your state of emotion when your horse reflects negativity to you.

Here’s a little exercise for you.  Read the next two paragraphs, then shut your eyes and imagine you and your horse in these scenes.  While you’re picturing the scenes in your mind (or recalling them – we’ve all been there!) try to feel the difference in how you feel inside as you experience the two scenes. 

1. You just had an argument with a fellow boarder at the stable.  You enter your horse’s stall with his halter but his ears go back and he looks away.  You try to halter him and he raises his head.  You slap him and he pulls back.  You finally wrestle the halter on him and lead him to the horse trailer and he balks. 
2. You just had an argument with a fellow boarder at the stable.  You enter your horse’s stall with his halter but his ears go back and he looks away.  You laugh at him and scratch him at the withers.  He brings his muzzle around to you and you pat him and tell him how wonderful a horse he is.  You halter him and lead him to the trailer to load him.

If you could find the “feel” in yourself that was different when you imagined yourself in each of the above two scenes, you can learn to use your horse as a way to check yourself for your emotions and change them in real life. 

Using Spiritual Horsemanship to deliberately live in a positive state of mind is a very natural way to thrive in your life – and your horse will love you for it. 

It's alway a good time...

The elections are over and hopefully the antagonism and anger stirred up will also be over - but that will only happen if people decide to leave habitual negative behaviors behind, and purposefully live their lives in a positive manner.

There's never a better time than the current moment to decide to live a positive life.  In fact, there's never any other possible time to make that decision.  Every moment you experience is the perfect time to be positive.

Your horse will alway reflect who you are.  When your own life is vibrating positively you will find that you and your horse are really connecting, acting as one.  When you're having a good time, you know you are living positively in your moment.  Encourage those positive experiences with your horse by choosing the positive in the rest of your live.  Use how your horse reflects you as a measure of your success in raising your own vibrations throughout your life.  This is the essence of Spiritual Horsemanship:  The synergy between you and your horse is a living, organic and real-time guide to creating the life you want.

It's always a good time to have a good time!

The Black Stallion movie

I love the movie, The Black Stallion - I bet I've seen it 20 times. I loved Walter Farley's books, too, but the movie has some scenes in it that are really special, that provide great examples of what YOU can do within a human/horse partnership.



I love the scenes when Alec is on the beach playing with The Black. The kid runs, the horse runs. The kid stops, the horse stops. The Black mirrors Alec's every move, no halter required. What a dance - what beauty, what perfection! It's one of the things that inspired me and formed my idea of what a human/horse relationship was supposed to be like, when I was a kid. It still reflects what I believe about human/horse partnerships.



Yes, I know that there was a trainer off-screen in the movie, but so what - YOU can do these things with your horse, too, no trainer required! It's a lot of fun, it's great ground-work and an incredible tool for building a human/horse partnership relationship.

Allowance/resistance

Negative emotion is your indicator of resistance, while positive emotion is your indicator of allowance. And they are on the same meter: allowance; resistance. Allowance; resistance. --- Abraham; Excerpted from the workshop in Monterey, CA on Tuesday, March 20th, 2001

A goal of Spiritual Horsemanship is to learn how to be aware of your emotional choices, to be aware of where the needle is on your personal emotional meter. Horses (all animals) are very sensitive to the inner states of emotion of the humans they have relationships with. (There have been earlier blogs on this topic, but briefly the sensitivity is a result of horses' being herd animals; it is a survival ability).

Your horse's sensitivity to your emotional states can be a blessing and a gift - or a curse - depending on the choices you make. Your own anger is reflected back to you from your horse first in the form of resistance and then in the form of fear and anger. Your own joy is reflected back to you from your horse as acceptance and cooperation and then in the form of shared joy as you become as one.

Your horse is a full partner in your human/horse relationship, but as a human, you have the ability to make choices that your horse doesn't have. You set the tone, you choose the outcome - if you consciously choose positive emotions, your horse will reflect that back at you. Your horse offers you a chance to train yourself to choose your emotional state rather than be ruled by it. You can choose happiness in your life (making no choice at all is also a choice). Become sensitive to your horse's state and let your horse be your partner as you learn how to live on purpose.

What a beautiful living biofeedback system your horse offers you - use it well and don't forget to express the gratitude your horse deserves for providing this for you.

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.