Horses and Intuition
It’s interesting, as I write about the fictional relationship between a girl and her horse (Danika and Yatimah)it brings to mind that it is really based on fact.
Do you remember a time when you had to exercise your horse after a disastrous day. But you still ride. How did it go? For me usually it was a disaster. The horse picks up on my every emotion, multiplies it by infinity and the day ends in a battle of wits. They know don’t they? They know when you’re mind isn’t with them or when you’re afraid. They also know when they are threatened or when they are safe. A horse possess the most incredible intuition.
What about how horses relate to children, they are so kind. I spent some time recently checking though my archive photographs to realise that I had a lots of shots with children and our horses, especially our stallions. How many of you who own horses have seen the most amazing displays of intuitive empathy and understanding from a horse. I would bet most of you.
I’ve lost count of the phone calls from clients/friends/associates who purchased horses from us ringing to tell me about the most extraordinary situations with children and horses. An example is a toddler wandering into the paddock to clutch at the front leg of a feisty colt. The colt remained motionless until the mother came and removed the child from it’s death like grip on the colts foreleg.
Again in the late 70’s after lecturing a child to not go near a stallion who was known to bite. When we weren’t looking she was straight over to the stallion. He allowed her to pat him all over the head without so much as a lip twitch! To see a stallion bring his head down the the child’s eye level to be patted reminds us that innocence without emotional gain is recognised even by a horse. Again to see foals and children together you see they relate to the child in a completely different way than to an adult.
As I think about this I wonder if we’re losing our ability to relate to and connect with nature? Are we less intuitive?The word intuition comes from the Latin intuir, which appropriately means ‘knowledge from within.’ Are we no longer using our five senses or our inner senses our gut feelings? Moreover, intuition allegedly improves with practice . Do you think it’s time to work on our intuition by spending more time connecting with our horses and learning from their intuitive behaviour?
“Our bodies have five senses: touch, smell, taste, sight, hearing. But not to be overlooked are the senses of our souls: intuition, peace, foresight, trust, empathy. The differences between people lie in their use of these senses; most people don’t know anything about the inner senses while a few people rely on them just as they rely on their physical senses, and in fact probably even more.”
~ C. JoyBell C.
I can remember writing down an exercise I often did when I had a terrible day at work and included it in an article I wrote several years ago.
“How many breeders have stood beside their horses closed their eyes and looked at them through their fingertips? Tracing the small pointed ears, sliding down the broad forehead into the slight indent above the eye cage, cupping the eye and feeling it slowly close relaxed as eyelashes tickle your palm. Slide your fingertips around the large jowl then across and down the structure of the tear bone onto the velvet soft muzzle and finally around the nostrils.”
This exercise is perfect when everything feels just too hard; it immediately boosts the spirit and makes you smile releasing all those important endorphins that make you happy.
Photographs (c) Carmel Rowley, Greg Egan
Leave a Reply