Sitting in the pasture, feeling into the space that the herd lives in, listening to the late summer cricket chorus and the breeze move the leaves in the trees. Following up on the arrival of the mare and burro from my last newsletter, when I opened the gates to let the mare and burro out with the geldings it was turbulent. I watched terrified as one of my geldings chased after the burro, asserting his dominance, biting her butt. I felt heartbroken, having a lot of judgments and thoughts about the events unfolding in front of me, caught in my human belief system about how they “should” be acting.
As I have sat back the last few weeks there is a stability they are finding and it gives me so much joy to be with them. Of course they figured it out on their own. The younger gelding continues to test boundaries with the donkey, yet with less aggression, almost playfulness. Each day the donkey holds her ground, kicking her back legs to him when he comes in to test, sometimes connecting with the gelding’s neck. Yet I’ve also seen them graze very close to each other. The horses are grooming each other; so much fun to watch their teeth and muzzles at work on each other’s skin. I even saw the mare muzzling the donkey’s bite mark a few days after she got bitten, removing dirt and debris that were sticking on her back. The herd feels complete to me yet I’m witnessing each of them anew. With each completion perhaps, a new beginning.
Around the time the herd merged I had a personal situation in which I felt my boundaries had been stepped on, even crossed. I felt anger, a telltale sign of a boundary being crossed. I held my ground gently in the exchange yet afterwards I felt uneasy, uncomfortable, and sad. Then the realization hit me that I was watching a similar dynamic with the gelding and burro, an impersonal and physical energetic exchange before my eyes about boundary crossing, standing our ground, claiming our space. How amazing! This relates so much to the exercises we’re exploring through Equine Guided Empowerment® here at Inner Freedom, feeling into our rite to space (yes, rite, more on that another time) and our capacity to expand our energetic field.
With both the herd and my personal situation I didn’t really “do” anything. I was aware of many thoughts about doing things to “fix” it, such as separating my younger gelding, even selling him, approaching this person to re-engage, on and on…yet the horses are pointing us toward being present and engaging with spaciousness, and this allowed me to watch the thoughts and pause. Both situations worked themselves out quite organically without my doing anything. It wasn’t comfortable for me to give myself and the situations space, yet practicing awareness and feeling the tension and discomfort in my body opened up a spaciousness for less entanglement. And things untangled.
It also has reignited a curiosity in me about the power of space, and what is happening energetically when we connect with it. What is space?
It feels quite beyond the form of words, which is perhaps exactly the point. It’s formless and beyond our linear mind’s capacity to grasp and analyze. Yet we are not separate from it. Connecting with our awareness is connecting with space. Learning from the horses about embodying our own space, being present, is all a way of dancing with space and opening to a new paradigm. For now I’ll continue to explore with the herd, and with my life, how to engage with spaciousness, which frankly is feeling more like engaging with love or loving kindness than anything else. I’d love to explore further with anyone interested in coming to check out what’s happening here at Inner Freedom!
Sincerely,
Elizabeth and the herd
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