I asked myself, why am I so passionate about the quality of my relationship with horses? Why has it become the deepest, most precious heart of everything? The only way to answer that is to describe what it is. How we connect, the energy between us, our partnership, this is our oxygen. It is all that exists. The relationship is the place in-between us that becomes us. Without the relationship, there are no horses, because without the relationship I can’t see or feel them, and they can’t see me.

Anything and everything we do filters through our relationship… is formed by it. Without the dialogue, there is no meaningful doing. Trust, vulnerability and unconditional love, this is partnership.

The Dying of Old Patterns

My latest experiences with the herd have been transforming into what feels like a new dimension of creativity. Through the recent dying of old patterns that has felt so challenging, such colourlessness alternating with emotional suffering, a re-birth is happening.

In a way it is utterly new and unique, and yet it is simply a cleaner, brighter version of what has come before. And I feel such a compulsion to be able to put this experience into words which can carry it further.

I have an image in my mind of a great source of light and colour, just like the sun, and it sits below us, and above us.. all around us in fact. Yet it is in a different dimension, a dimension that is much older and wiser and truer than the world we live in here. It is only truer because it is the Source. Just as it could be said that the letters of the alphabet are truer than words, which are truer than sentences, which are truer than stories. This is only because each step is a little further away from the fundamental, unlimited potential of the Source itself.

We are living stories here on earth, sometimes they get very complicated, with many constraints and deeply travelled pathways that seem to be real to the point of imprisoning us. From the point of view of the Source they are not real at all, these pathways, because we are free to walk anywhere. On the other hand we have chosen to discover our own unique pathway, to understand it, to experience it and ultimately to outgrow it. It is the discovery that individuality is not the same as separation, this is what is being lived through us, right now.

Elements of Partnership

When I am merging with the horses I feel the Source, the light and the colour, is seeping up into all of our beings.

As if there are a million tiny little holes opening up from that dimension into this, and the Source is finding its way through and filling us up with colour and light. The words ‘colouring in’ came into my mind.

It started by going deep into the energetic connection, beyond thoughts, beyond memories, beyond ideas, beyond our stories and back into the Source itself. The little holes open in this physical place where we are within our bodies, where we breathe and metabolise and function.

Engaging in this way involves becoming aware of the horses in terms of their bodies… perceiving clearly how they have assimilated their life experience. The damage in Rafi’s neck, how his ligaments feel.. the deep bruising in Gorrion’s lumbar vertebrae. The way Marie’s nervous system feels and the sense of how Honey could move to feel more comfortable. The patterns and expressions and complexity of it is bountiful and unlimited.

It is an awareness of the awareness itself which colours them in. Feeling how becoming aware is opening the pores of the membrane between soul and body and how the Source flows in like water.

Through the capillaries of consciousness and connecting us together. Because I can feel them, I can touch them, and align my own physical reality with theirs.

We don’t have to do anything, but the doing is aligned, guided and inspired by the merging between us. This is not new, and yet every time we engage in this way there are less limitations, more pathways, greater integration, and now, it is beginning to grow a new behaviour in the horses. A new awareness is arriving. 

Witnessing The New Behaviour

That same day I witnessed this new behaviour. After the colouring-in episode which was so intense, I went and did other things, and happened to be in the barn again later on. Quaramba came and sought me out. She was curious, yet she wasn’t asking for grooming or scratches as she normally would.

We rarely involve food because it is a great distraction, and there was no association with food. I could feel that this was a development of our merge earlier, something had been ignited in her, and here we were.

I fetched the head-collar because it is a tool in the physical matrix of training, and it felt right, I can’t even remember the last time I put one on her. Although wearing a head-collar has never been an issue with her, there was a sense of discovery, of awakening something new. It was possible to capture our exchange on video, and I’m glad I did because there was something very delicate, very subtle, and yet radically new in her behaviour. Hopefully you can see it too. This was a genuine dialogue, the authentically mutual exchange that I have had faith would appear. Quaramba not only felt liberated to explore this with me, she actually wanted to. It interested her. 

The Waiting Room

In many cases with horses there is already considerable tension and often trauma from their previous experiences with people. This energy is often re-channeled into training, which may be more choice-based, but is still ultimately conditioned behaviour. With Quaramba it was our pathway to work without tension, and if tension arose to allow it to release, not re-channel it. So there was no association of tension with training. This wasn’t an intellectual choice, it just felt right for us. 

It brought us to an interesting place however, a kind of waiting room. We knew that we wanted to proceed in a genuine partnership, but we couldn’t feel the shape of that. She felt that the equipment represented lack of physical freedom for her, and she chose not to wear it. I knew I didn’t want to use tension to stimulate her, such as putting her in the arena alone and making demands, with or without equipment. It was the engagement itself that always felt inspiring and limitless, so we stayed with that in each moment. I worked past my expectations and now we seem to have reached this magical point where Quaramba is genuinely choosing to go forward with a physical interaction. 

Partnership Is Our Path

Since the day of the head-collar I have visited the herd and Quaramba was snoozing in the sunshine. There was potential was in the air, and I had brought the cavesson down with me. I spent some time with Gorrion who was lying down.

He is going deeply into addressing his physical patterning in this period of the winter, and I wanted to support him for a bit.

When I turned back to Quaramba we could suddenly smell the air full of gunpowder from a hunt nearby, and she was the only horse who seemed particularly fascinated by it. She walked towards me and then changed her mind, thought about lying down and then went off further to graze. It was clear that she was not ready to continue at this time, and that felt just as right as our head-collar exchange.

The willingness to stay unencumbered with any kind of influence outside of the moments themselves with the herd is essential for this evolution of behaviour. I don’t know how long it may take, or what we might actually achieve physically. What I am certain of is that this equality, this interchangeability, this partnership, is our path.