Horses are masters of being in the moment. They have much to teach people about relaxing, playing, and enjoying life…if we let them. Often, our relationships with horses are about performing, practicing, perfecting, and meeting well-defined goals, and while that is part of the arrangement of the human-equine relationship, it’s not the whole story.
Busy, frantic horse owners will arrange care for their horses – massage, chiropractors, vet visits, and allow pasture time, and play time, and feed time…all while denying themselves these same comforts, and necessities. They will often forego lunches with friends to check on their animals, put off seeing their own doctor or practitioner, grab something quick to eat with little thought even while putting together a gourmet mash for their equine friend.
Often the equine-human relationship becomes tainted with self-recrimination, self-criticism, and other negative self-assessments because the owners/riders/trainers fall short of a perfectionist goal. A horse person will admit that some of the best times had with a horse are outside of the usual performing/practicing/training, but will continue to minimize those experiences instead of building on them.
Lessons from the horses about self-care, happiness, peacefulness, and being truly centered usually take place when the horses are setting good examples, loose in a pasture or pen where they are free to frolic, play, and/or graze. There is a deep contentment, and lazy enjoyment as they swish a tail and move from one tasty clump of grass to the next. Then there is a time of free movement akin to jumping for joy, as they take off at a gallop and stretch themselves into a race for no reason in particular, or circle each other and engage with each other. Horses will stand and groom each other, or stand in the shade with eyes half closed, their thoughts still as they remain in comfortable silence and communion with each other.
Horses are curious, and will explore new things in an approach and-retreat manner, testing the waters, so to speak, and assessing the risk of a new place or new experience. Humans who love them can learn so much from this, as our tendency is to charge into a new situation with our neatly defined goals and plans.
We are uncomfortable in the free form taking-one-day-at-a-time state of mind. We tend to not linger over meals, always rushing to the next experience, setting aside our needs for quiet time, and space for our thoughts to drift away, and time for allowing contentment to overtake us.
Recently, I took out the stress calculator and calculated the stress I’ve been through and the number fell into the category: Enough stress to make you physically ill. However, the lessons I’ve learned from the horses at our farm, and the time I spent observing them, has taught me much. I have more time on my hands than I’m used to having.
I wanted to fill that time with new plans, goals, and get busy doing something, anything to fill that time. The school year began with us still behind, not quite unpacked, not settled into our new place, and it was off and running before we knew it. Things that might have been easily resolved have taken longer, and expectations we had of how our situation might turn out were based on lack of full disclosure and information. This meant adjusting our sails quickly, and finding ourselves a little lost.
So, in the interim, I took a few pages from the horse’s human handbook, and have learned a few new things about myself, and about my life, and about building something new one small step at a time. Like horse training, learning to meet a new goal, means meeting smaller goals one at a time, each building upon the previous one until it is met.
Balancing greater goals with fun and relaxation, friendship and food, family and obligations is a juggling act. This is not a time in my life to focus exclusively on one thing, and go after the goal tenaciously at the expense of everything else, but to meditatively, and mindfully graze, nap, frolic and do a reasonable amount of work determined by my natural conformation, personality, and physical fitness. In this way, the stressors which can threaten to overwhelm me will be offset, and my life can be full, rich, and adaptable.
I am grateful for the lessons taught to me by the horses. Even with their absence, I am still learning and assimilating what I have learned from them. The biggest, and best lesson is love and peace, which comes from being in that present and soaking in the light of the sun, and warmth of living. Gratitude, patience, good timing…all these things and the blessings of family and friends, laughter and sharing, these things that the horses can teach us if we watch, if we listen, if we are willing to learn.
