Becoming Horse Conscious is an exciting journey. It is the process of liberating ourselves from old rules that no longer have any value. We are only following them still because we are stuck in old patterns of thought. It is not only about our equine management practices becoming more holistic, there is a whole new world of communication to discover.

Start by considering how often you sense your horse’s energy field when you approach. Can you feel your gelding’s mood, do you ever decide what you might introduce that day because he indicated what he might enjoy? When you groom do you listen to the sensitivity of your stallion, how he is experiencing the brushes? How do you respond if your mare resists, do you ask her how she is feeling in that moment?

Starting Within

This is an awakening that starts within your own bodymind. When you can understand how you are truly feeling in this moment. Perhaps you can sense what might be blocking you. When you become sensitive to how your body feels within, and when you can describe your emotions and engage with your own energy. Then you simply extend that towards your horse. 

Horses have always helped humans in their journey. Whether we wanted to plough fields or get from A to B.

Now they help us fulfil our ambitions in competition and simply give us pleasure in looking after them and enjoying how it feels to ride a powerful animal so different from ourselves.

We are always evolving , and although it may seem that we struggle to learn from our mistakes (we still start wars, steal from and murder each other) as a whole we are moving forward. Slowly but surely moving away from practices and cultures which reflect putting our fears first. Fear creates prejudice, and prejudice against different cultures, genders and species are bit by bit being acknowledged for what they are.

The Shift in Perspective

It is difficult to see the wave when we are in it because it moves slowly relative to us, and we only have a small personal influence. We can feel it however, and know that we are in the midst of a significant shift.  It is not only a shift in practice, but a parallel step, a dimensional leap in our consciousness. This time it is not about doing things differently, but about being.

This changes how we relate to horses by changing the entire foundation of the relationship. Whatever we have asked from horses up until now, we still always wanted something from them. How would it be if instead of needing something from them, we concerned or even impassioned ourselves with asking them their opinion. We could ask ourselves why, through centuries of our wars, our struggle to survive and our desires, they have chosen to follow us. 

In the greater picture, I don’t believe that horses have only been there because we forced them and abused them and even bribed them. Although we have done those things. I believe that they have been in our lives to help us become horse conscious and remember who we are .

To bring us back from self imposed separation and all of the suffering that goes along with that. Horses know that we are whole within ourselves, that our consciousness is perfect and that we need nothing to support it or make it whole.

What Matters Most

We don’t need a family or money or possessions to feel whole, and it is only when we can tap into that wholeness within ourselves that we can truly enjoy our families, our money and our possessions. How many of us don’t believe we deserve to have a loving relationship or all the money we need or any possession we might want?

Although horses have different desires to humans, and they appreciate different things, we share the fact that we are experiencing being alive. Giving them a chance to be more for us than a vehicle, how ever lovingly cared for, can transform our desires and bring them into alignment with those of the horses. In the end what matters most to us all are the connections in-between, feeling that we are understood, and no-one can do that better than a horse.