Presence with Horses

April 15, 2019

Spring is bursting forth in the natural world and I am happy to say that I am tapping into the energy of that exuberance. Over these past few weeks I have finally begun to reestablish some balance after the past two-and-a-half-plus years of chaos – or maybe I should say a lifetime of chaos. My exhaustion from the severe digestive disturbance due to my entire system being devastated by six days in hospital in Hilo, Hawaii on heavy-duty antibiotics is finally fading. I marvel at the absurd predicament of topping off two years of cancer challenges with a raging, potentially fatal infection from a cat bite! Seems the cosmic two-by-four whacks of two cancers in two years wasn’t enough to get my attention. The third whack was accompanied by a cosmic joke! As I have often said over the years, a priceless route to self-compassion is humour.

In my last update I still hadn’t had the scan of my chest to follow through on the shadow that showed up in an x-ray. The scan came back clear, much to my relief. An inner spark of vitality within my core is reignited and gaining strength. Feeling it now, I recognize the extent to which it has been absent. The active cancer tumour cell count in my blood remains high. I still have waves to surf. Moment-by-moment, day by day I heed the call to be present and remain aware of not scurrying back to my familiar form of becoming overly busy, overly committed and treating my self-care, nourishment and sheer enjoyment as secondary luxuries to be tended to with leftover time.

Just the other morning I launched into multi-tasking mode, then immediately slammed my finger in a drawer, drawing blood as well as a blood-curdling scream. Actually the scream felt good, I let out a few more for good measure. The joy and freedom of living in the woods. The more I live with presence the more direct and dramatic are the consequences as soon as I go non-present.

Horses

Engaging with horses was a pivotal lesson in presence for me at the end of February. Through the generosity of Andrew Bing arranging for a small group of us associated with Haven to participate with Susan and CrisMarie in their Mojo workshop in Montana. I had the opportunity to relate with several phenomenal four-leggeds. These magnificent soft-bodied beings made a profound and lasting impact on my life. Our interactions with each other were life-affirming in a way that no other modality has ever touched me. Amongst them: Floyd the willful, “I’m doing my own thing” old dude; Star the gentle listener; Promise the intuitive healer; and Shantay the high-spirited, feisty, gorgeous Arabian.

When I arrived at the horse ranch I was, as usual, experiencing distress in my guts. Standing outside the arena in the snow talking with someone, three horses came close around us immediately. To my amazement and delight, with no hesitation one beauty put her nose directly on my belly and began nuzzling. She continued for a long time then gave my heart a gentle nudge in conclusion.

Watching one of the horses in the ring interacting with another person was an opportunity to get a sense of their character—as it turns out both the character of the person and the horse! Horses are magnificently, finely tuned, exquisitely present and responsive beings. I witnessed first-hand how horses and humans mirror each other. Horses are utterly congruent. We humans have so much to learn from them.

Although I’ve had a life-long appreciation for horses and find them strikingly beautiful, I’ve felt sad for them. I have found it passionately disturbing to see them possessed as objects for the gratification of humans, penned up, tied up, neglected at times, dominated and taught to do silly tricks and performances for superficial entertainment. When I expressed that during our workshop, I learned something new. Apparently out of all creatures, horses have the capacity to return to their natural state the fastest. When removed from traumatizing situations and free to live in the open they come back naturally. For me that is a tremendous relief, truly awesome.

I believe that many of us humans are living with profound separation trauma having uprooted ourselves bit by bit throughout the centuries from our interwoven relationship with the natural, more than human world. Personally, I am more aware than ever of my visceral longing to heal the gaping wound of that artificial separation. Currently there is much awareness about the impact of attachment patterns developed in this lifetime’s family of origin and the traumas of unhealthy attachment. It seems to me that our “original loss,” our separation trauma, goes much farther back than our individual families of origin. In our development as humans we have been torn asunder for eons from nature, our external and internal nature.

We are now universally, not-so-consciously grieving the artificial separation which is threatening our continued existence. I was told that horses want to return to their natural state and that even when they have been traumatized they will soon begin to thrive when freed to live in the open. I think we humans have an affinity with horses and that our resilience is bolstered when we live consciously tuned into the natural world. Though it seems we are less resilient than horses and don’t have the luxury of being able to simply live in the open again. We have massive complexities to deal with in order to relearn how to co-exist harmoniously within our more than human world. It appears, however, that our lives depend upon learning. I wonder to what degree our more than human world will tolerate the level of incongruence that we humans are demonstrating. It seems to me that we have much wisdom to be gained from our soft-bodied horse teachers.

As I observed people and horses interacting with each other in the ring, I became increasingly nervous that the horses wouldn’t like me, wouldn’t respond, would mirror me as not present – or worse. I was a bit shocked at the intensity of what I had thought of as worn-out insecurities of mine surfaced. I decided to face my fear and get into the ring quickly, before I took myself out altogether.

Horses sense and respond to authenticity. I meet Star in the ring, just the two of us. Some tears surface as I feel a sudden wave of sadness. Star approaches and stays beside me! As I walk, Star walks. When I stop, he stops. I am told that I can talk intimately with Star so I lean in and begin to very quietly speak what is real for me. Confessions, my innermost thoughts and feelings pour out intuitively, some of which I have never, even in my private awareness, put together before. Star keeps perfect pace alongside me, when I speed up he speeds up. I am leading, Star is responding. Remarkably, Star leans his ear into me so that as I whisper I can feel the delicate hairs of his ear brushing my lips. I feel my heart open and my body relax with his listening. Spontaneously I turn and kneel in the dirt right in front of him, looking up (way up!) facing him. He stops and leans down to come face to face with me. Pure loving.

At another point during our encounter, Star actually presses his body up against mine and curls around me to the extent that his body would allow. I am horse-hugged! Precious moments.

Then the independent dude, Floyd. Off chewing in the corner, presenting his formidable big brown rump to the rest of us, ignoring various and sundry attempts to have him behave otherwise. I am coached to lead from behind. Floyd’s rump towering over me is a foreboding challenge. No words, the energy of being fully present with intention is the way to get through to Floyd. The idea is to express my intentional energy with subtle movement of my body, staying behind but not too close. I get it that distracting myself with self-doubt or ambition will contaminate my intention, a luxury I don’t want to indulge in. He responds to my intention! He joins me, then he joins others that are in the ring, he falls in with the rhythm and pattern of moving as intended! I am elated!

Shantay, the high-spirited, feisty, gorgeous Arabian and I run around the ring with each other—until I am breathless and have to slow down. She slows down to stay with me. Just as the others, she is intuitively responsive to my intentions, keeping pace with me, not taking off to do her own thing. Running and playing with her I feel freedom and the sheer joy of being alive.

All my life self-doubt has been my companion, the relentless loyal soldier that is rarely off-duty. And even if off-duty at times, self-doubt jumps to alert lightening quick as soon as I dare step beyond familiar borders. My engagements with the horses affirm that my dedication to learning, growing, maturing has yielded the gift of capacities for presence, for authenticity and presented me with the golden opportunity to offer honourable retirement to my loyal self-doubt soldier. There are so many other more constructive employments awaiting soldierly support.

Being with the horses is a priceless gift. I have gained insights into the bigger picture of my existence in this lifetime. I recognize dimensions where I have undervalued and underestimated myself. Patterns of self-doubt and the belief that “I am never enough” are relieved. I feel lightened, free, joyful and inspired to celebrate the work I have dedicated myself to and keen to continue to dive into whatever the future offers.

The remarkable Barbara Marx Hubbard recently passed. As told by Lynn McTaggart, an amazing woman herself, when Barbara was 76 she referred to herself as being in ‘Regenopause’. She said that

“when we enter menopause, and are no longer producing eggs—we ourselves are the ‘egg’.”

Thank you Barbara! I am adopting that. I am now in Regenopause.

Horses

On Breathing

Personal Update, February 2019