I call Levi my “heart horse,” a term that horse people use to describe a profound human-horse connection. Truthfully, I adore all of our animals. Yet Levi continues to be the horse that leads me into a deeper relationship with myself, and therefore my heart. He keeps taking me to my edge, unveiling the power of the human heart, and what is possible when we align with our heart and FEEL what is true in our bodies.
A few months after Levi arrived I found myself really frustrated with him walking on a leadline. My dream was to go on walks in the woods together and he just wanted to graze. Of course, he is a horse. This may seem obvious to you, but it brought up a lot for me. Somewhere in my upbringing and training with horses I developed a belief that horses need to obey humans or else they’re taking advantage of us. It’s not hard to imagine where this belief would have come from, just consider the language: “breaking” a horse. Breaking their spirit so that they’ll do what humans ask of them.
I would ask Levi to walk forward; he’d keep grazing.This would escalate very quickly into a tense energetic conversation, and a possible tug of war. Which I never recommend trying with a 1,000 pound animal.
Around this time I learned about Kerri Lake, and I listened to her audiobook, Listen Like a Horse: Relationships without Dominance. In fact, I listened to it twice in a row. I was captured by the possibility of being with myself and others with love instead of dominance, or force. I became more aware of the ways I was dominating myself, and trying to force myself and life into being what made me “comfortable.” I set up a zoom appointment with Kerri to “work on my relationship with Levi.” The only work, of course, was on the relationship between me and myself; the wisdom that has arisen from this learning has offered a softening of self-judgment and ultimately supported a deep paradigm shift within me.
Kerri was instrumental in guiding me to simply feel the tension within that arises in any relationship: we often skip this and go right into our old, limiting patterns of analyzing, evaluating, judging, labeling, or defending why we’re right. Yet without pausing and feeling the sensations within our bodies, there’s no other option except our limiting pattern. And in this particular scenario with Levi and me, when I asked him to do something like lift his head and proceed to walk with me, I needed to first pause and feel my body when he communicated I want to graze.
Previously, I was reacting to this response from Levi with more force and escalation. Yet when I pause and feel the sensations within me, both comfortable and uncomfortable, I have a chance to breathe, and feel my body. And ultimately I have a lot more options from this space. I learned from Kerri that once I became aware of what I was feeling, and acknowledged the tension within, I could then create a feeling to share, and ultimately communicate this way with Levi. Animals (including humans, I might add) feel energy, and feelings are energy, whether it’s tension and frustration, or something else.
I learned that a really powerful and effective activity for my mind is to IMAGINE, in this case, Levi and I walking in the woods together, enjoying each other’s company. This supported me in activating a feeling in my energetic body of what I wanted it to feel like between Levi and me. This created a really different experience within me, so instead of tugging on Levi, his will vs. mine, I’m creating a feeling of love, enjoyment, and appreciation. And Levi ultimately responds to this with a lot more willingness than anything I was trying to do out of force and dominance.
A year later, taking walks with Levi really does activate love, enjoyment and appreciation within me. He still stops to graze, yet I have more options. As importantly, when I forget to pause and feel the tension within and instead plow ahead with my old limiting patterns, I have less judgment of myself for my imperfections.
Levi, and all of our animals, continue to lead me into deeper exploration of what is possible when we experience the feeling. Simply feeling what is true, and letting go of all the rest. When we can honor the deeper challenging feeling within us, we can let go of the story, the expectation, the justification, the judgment. Horses are attracted to this purity and truth within humans, and are therefore powerful guides for us on our life journeys.
If anyone is interested in learning more with Kerri Lake, I’m thrilled to be sharing that Kerri will be coming to Inner Freedom next summer!! I can’t wait to learn more with her in person with the herd here. More information is on her website.