Your Relationship with your Horse

Let's have a look at the relationship with your horse - regardless whether you own a horse, or are just take riding lessons in a horse riding school.

Is the relationship what you have always been dreaming of when you started riding?
Are you feeling connected to your horse, does it understand what you are asking of him, and do you get along without fighting or without being scared?

That feeling is amazing and I think this is so much more important than any ribbons, medals or prices.

Being together with horses can give us so much more than these materialistic trophies - being around and connected to these sensitive animals can help us grow inside ourselves, grow into better people and to be better humans.

They give us a feeling of being needed and of being good enough just the way we are - if we allow this to happen.

Connecting back to nature

There are not many prey animals that allow us, the human predators, such close and intimate contact.
If you have even just momentarily had the chance to experience a close relationship with your horse, a moment of togetherness, of aligned thoughts, and the joint body movement, you will know what I am talking about.

Being a prey animal, always on their toes and ready to move, these animals have stayed very connected to nature.
They take in everything that happens around them, are fine-tuned to the noises, smells and movements around them, and live in the absolute moment.
Past and future don't count, only the here and now.

Living in the moment  - a very important ability which we are loosing more and more in our busy lives.

Being with and around horses, connecting to them, touching them and moving in sync with them allows our soul and body to reconnect back with our own nature.

Do you want to work on the relationship with your horse?

I could tell you to book a coaching - but honestly, the best thing you can do if you really want to improve the relationship with your horse is to just take the time to do nothing - to just being with your horse. Make sure your horse's needs are met, and expect less of them.

We often come to the stable with an agenda, with limited time, stressed from work and our busy routine, and bring that same stress to the horse.

Instead, what if you just put your horse in a paddock and make time every once in a while to just do nothing?
To just being with the horse, without an agenda?

Learn to observe your horse, it's body language, the surroundings, listen to the wind and the birds, and enjoy doing nothing.

A simple trick to live in the moment

A very simple trick which I read in a book by Klaus Ferdinand Hempfling has stuck with me since years, a simple trick how to quickly get connected to the present moment:

Smell the air around you.
Feel the earth under your feet or the warm body of the horse under your fingertips.
And listen to the sounds around you.

If you try and focus on at least three senses at once, you are immediately present.
You cannot do that and at the same time think about the disagreement you had with your boss earlier.

No matter if you are seriously competing with your horse, are just a beginner who doesn't own a horse, or whatever else your relationship to horses may be:

We can all use some peace and quietness.

It's good for our minds, our health, and the horses will be thankful if they can deal with more balanced humans, who are at peace with their surroundings and do not get in unnecessary fights with nature's creations.