Deep Peace Farm

Attuning Your Horse Body — An exercise with or without a horse.

As you stand with the horse, or the herd, (or with yourself in your office herd), or alone with your self notice the following:

How are you?
How do you hold yourself in your body? Do your insides and outsides match?
What do you feel in your body? Where is it and what does it feel like? What might it remind you of?
What emotion would you ascribe to your inner state?
What face are you presenting to the world?
How do you feel in your body in relation to others and the world around you? What feels too close? What would you like to move closer to? How does it feel to be right where you are now?
How safe do you feel?
Where is your foundation?
How is your breathing?
What do your toes feel like?
What’s in your heart?
How does it feel to take all of this in? What is happening in your body? What feelings are you feeling?
What do you sense about what’s emerging?

Horses are extremely sensitive and attuned to the subtlest shifts in each other and their environment. They can feel a fly land on them, and they know what is happening in a half-mile radius surrounding them. Their hooves, while hard and durable, are very alive. Hoof tissues are filled with blood from arteries that run from the heart down their legs. Like a drum skin, they feel the vibration of the earth. Horses can also feel each other and what each other is feeling. This means they can feel you, too.

The way horses sense and respond to congruence and incongruence in their environment is the same way they can feel the congruence and incongruence in the humans in the herd with them. For a horse, it’s not safe to trust incongruence.

Congruence is when your insides true-up with your outside, or the face you put on for the world to see. When your heart and your outside face match, you’ve found congruence. This might feel new, this might feel like vulnerability, but this might also feel like who you really are.

What tensions are you holding? What sadness? What anger? What joys? What fears? What memories are present now, holding you back from experiencing life fully? Whatever is there: include it. It belongs and has a place, and there’s no place it can hide. In so doing, you become more congruent with yourself, and therefore able to be in rapport with others with a sense of clarity for them.

A horse will want to know, or have a conversation about: What is our awareness of the larger environment? Do we feel safe here? Do you understand me? Are we able to attune to where they are and what they might need based on what they value? How do we respect their space by also being crystal clear about our space? Is it clear what roles each of us has? Who’s doing what, who’s leading and who’s following, and who decides where to go?

(This may also sound a bit like any good, clear meeting in any office on any day of the workweek.)

“In dreams, mythical stories, and lore one universal symbol for the human body and its instinctual nature is the horse.” — Peter Levine

Our way of being can create a sense of safety, relief, grounding for the nervous system of the herd, or it can create mistrust, anxiety, and tension. One of the factors that supports safety and connection is clarity around boundaries. Respect for our boundaries and the boundaries of another lends itself to the psychological safety of the group. Knowing where our boundary is lets the herd know where we are, and from there conversations about role, responsibility, who’s leading, and who’s following can take place.

For horses and the bubbles of space, their perceptive worldview is oriented to, space is more important than touch. Respecting this space is important to them. Crowding their space with your body such as being too close to them or touching them before mutual respect and rapport have been established is like being with someone who has no boundaries physically and psychically. It’s an invasion of space to enter before invited. As a prey animal, unwelcome touch feels violating. Their bodies are their lifeline.

Clarity around one’s boundary, as a horse, is necessary for their safety and survival. It also informs how they can be together (or how they can be together moving fast to avoid a predator). When we are with horses, they are looking at us not only to see if they can be safe with us but to know where we are. They need to know where our boundary is so that they know where we are and how to be with us. The more clear we can be about ourselves — how we feel, what’s in our heart, and where our energy is going — the better of a herd member (or leader) we can be.
Presence begins in the body. Knowing your boundary begins in the body.

What is your relationship with your body?