The Healing Space that is the Moment of Shift for People and Animals
A few weeks ago, a woman, Mary contacted me to connect with her horses. One of the horses was Harry. Harry had been born on the property and his turn was always going to come. His age was creeping up and he hadn’t done much.
Harry had lived there through a few losses of people, dogs and horses. At one point, Mary was a seasoned dressage rider with her horses in the past. She was experiencing guilt over the fact that she hadn’t done anything with Harry. Mary had specifically bred her mare to have this great dressage horse and one thing after another got in the way of him being worked.
On top of it all, he was annoying. He was mouthy and demanded a lot of attention. We all know what happens when someone is mouthy and annoying (no matter what species), they get a lot of attention, the kind of attention they don’t want….always in trouble. And so it can go on for years like that.
It was time to start doing something with Harry but Mary had her reservations. During the reading, I suggested EFT (Emotional Freedom Technique) Tapping for both the horse and soon to be rider.
EFT is one of my favorite go to energy techniques for behaviors, especially unwanted behaviors. For those that are new to me upon reading this, it is a technique of tapping on specific acupressure points along the meridians that are associated with specific emotions. Throughout the tapping, you are going over the story or the script or the stuck emotions in order to relieve the mind/body of the experience so different choices may be experienced.
Mary had me on speaker phone and away we went with the tapping. I talked as if I were Harry while she tapped on the specific points on the horse that I called out. I talked (as Harry) about how much I was forgotten, that the others got to do stuff and that I knew I was annoying. I could feel into his energy and actually felt him really taking this in. I said (as Harry) “sometimes I like my shenanigans” and Mary started laughing. I broke character and said what is going on? She said, “he was completely quiet until you said that about the shenanigans and then he started fiddling with the lead rope.”
We continued tapping and he quieted down again at once.
I could feel both the woman and the horse really connecting. I could feel a shift. I stopped the tapping and the “script” again for a moment to ask her how she was feeling physically and she said that she could feel her feet tensing, her toes curling.
I remembered back to living in Denver in the early 2000’s and teaching animal communication with a woman that taught Centered Riding. During the workshop, we did a lot of connecting, animal communication and exercises with horses that were non-riding. In that weekend workshop, we discovered that nearly every mistake or tension people experience in the saddle, they experience on the ground, next to their horses.
I asked Mary to breath into her feet and spread her toes. I knew at that point, in this silence, this was where the relationship between them lies. And that when she can move her past feelings about him out of the way and she can breathe into her feet, they can become a great team. This was demonstrated during the tapping, as other than the one naughty moment, Harry was a true gentleman through the healing session.
And it’s in that space of breath and awareness, that the shift happens. Both the human and animal can be in the “the zone”. That place without words.
I tell my students all the time….I love energy work. I love it so much, I wrote a book about it. But when it comes down to shifting something for an animal that is behavioral, it is often a 1st, 2nd, or 3rd chakra challenge. And at that point, you need a more energetic body work. Like EFT tapping, like TTouch, and like several other modalities.
Mary’s road to getting back in the saddle may take some time but the path to their relationship is within each conscious breath. And, what’s getting in the saddle without that great relationship?
I’m honored to be part of their path of coming back together.
