Choice is such a fundamental part of the horse human connection. We are in the process of expanding ourselves so that we can offer choice to the horses in our lives. And in this there is the vastness of letting go of limitations, assumptions and agendas, including awakening to whether the horses remember what it is to choose. The choice I have been acknowledging recently however, is my own. Have you considered the value of your ability to choose?

Who We are Creates What We Do

One thing I have come to understand is that in my relationship with horses, who I am, how I behave, what I feel to do, is all informed by what I have become. This becoming is an actual process.

A releasing process which identifies my limitations and lets them go. and none of this happens on the intellectual level. I am not learning how to be someone… in a sense it is unlearning, and yet it is not happening on the thought level at all. 

Although this is my experience, it seems this is true for all of us. In a way it is a relief to let go of the attachment to learning. To realise that whatever you know cannot change who you are. And to accept that who you are can only be accessed in this moment, and influenced in this moment. Going to that place of listening within yourself is the ultimate influence. When you do that you initiate immediately the unwinding of everything that has been restricting you. Every pattern, trauma and emotion that is expressing itself within you and altering who you are. 

If you can be pure, unaffected love, how could your relationship be other than perfect merging with another?

The Choice I was Making

In the last few weeks I have been going through a healing process. It started when I recognised a choice I was making unconsciously. Every day when I thought about going to visit the herd I would feel a kind of apathy about it. It was quite a pervasive feeling, so it was difficult to recognise at first. When I think of how different it was to the passion I normally feel, it was easier to identify it as a restriction pattern. Once I was aware of it I began to go into the apathy and deeper down there was anxiety. 

Anxiety had also been surfacing when I was with Quaramba, especially if we were focusing on going to the arena. Perhaps there is no individual responsibility for such feelings, but when I decided that the anxiety was mine, its root was in me, that felt right. It was a step forward in the process. 

From Small to Vast, Conditioning to Potential

Another facet of awareness has been coming to light during this time. It is about integration.. how to reach the vast self from the small self. How to shift out of conditioned pathways which are so deep and so wide that they dictate an experience over and over.

What was coming through is that one way for this to happen, this widening out, this re-patterning, is through tiny little pathways forming themselves anew. Imagine a great river beginning to transform into hundreds of millions of streams, running like capillaries, finding new possibilities, releasing potential. 

We were exploring this in our interactions in the arena, both Marie and Cheyenne made the choice to do this. Which is interesting in hindsight, because they both have quite deeply conditioned behavioural patterns in relation to people. They express aggression which seems random, untethered to any identifiable source. There are times when it is more likely to surface, and both mares will dissociate to some degree from the present moment. 

Re-patterning Aggression with Cheyenne and Marie

In these sessions I was focusing on the relationship between us and bringing in this energetic dynamic of creating capillaries from the heavy conditioned pathways. This manifested itself as becoming more sensitive and feeling into the boundary between us. Looking for the subtlest thread of connection and following it. Marie was being particularly dramatic, even striking out, and yet that aspect of her behaviour felt far away. It felt so distant it was as if it didn’t exist energetically. During the process we came into a much more intimate connection and eventually she made the choice to sleep there in the arena for a while. 

With Cheyenne it feels that our partnership is getting more solid. Her friendliness, her naturally placid nature, is gradually seeping into everything… following the capillaries perhaps.. and melting away the conditioned hostility. She is coming into the place that reminds me of where Honey and I are now. On the brink and spilling out into the flow and stretch offered by the energetic engagement. 

Acknowledging My Anxiety

When I engaged with Quaramba in the winter barn, we were enjoying each others company, and when I showed her the ear bonnet she made such a rapid shift it was surprising. It was as if she turned into a wild deer all of a sudden. She didn’t run away, or even move very much, but her energy transformed. The funny thing was that she wasn’t concerned with escaping… in fact she was making the choice to come with me, just without physical attachments. So she came out, and as she was grazing outside of the arena, I began to focus on the anxiety again. 

This was when it became clear that the anxiety was within me, sourcing from me. I closed my eyes and a memory came of when I was eleven or twelve and I had been riding my pony Copper in the field. He had been severely traumatised when he was transported from Ireland to Scotland and separated from his brother. I discovered this later on, but at the time all I knew was that he got upset when I rode him on his own. He would rear and spin and bolt. We had been working on this process with each other for a while, and we were very close. It had been a turbulent experience with highs and lows, and at this point we were in a low.

The Healing Process

There was a stable hand at this yard, a former jockey, and he was extremely abusive to horses. He had seen how I jumped off Copper when he started to rear and plunge about, and he was scornful, he told me I was pathetic and I needed to sort Copper out or we would never get anywhere. I can’t remember his exact words, but I remember how they made me feel. I was vulnerable, scared of riding my pony, and worried about his behaviour being unacceptable. It was a feeling of being trapped in a space that wasn’t the right shape for me, and that it wasn’t the space that was wrong, it was my shape. The grief came up then and I was able to let it go. 

I saw a buzzard flying right up close to the clouds and it came to me that I am free now. The choice belongs to me… I can follow what feels right. The ability to respond to the horses needs is there, and I have chosen it.

This space we have, this herd connection, it is my shape. Nothing can change that shape. Quaramba was right there, manifesting the choice, and afterwards she was tired. 

I am reminded again of the intelligence, the scintillating vast detail in the Universe. The depth of this process. Nothing is left out, no strings remain untied. That experience in my childhood that had not been acknowledged caused a disconnect thirty five years later in my relationship with Quaramba.

And even more amazing, we can heal it, just like that, by opening to it, being present, engaging. Now when I approach her, I am someone different, and we can meet together in a new place. 

Choice is there waiting for all of us.