Skip navigation

Monthly Archives: August 2018

The Project:

Horses from many walks of life, communication through body language, tools used only for safety, never to train.

_I0A8715

The Goal:

To discover how far Equestrian Art can be developed solely using body language.

 

Unapologetically Happy

When was the last time you were completely and totally unapologetically happy?

 

For me it happens in the early mornings as I am walking out to see the herd of horses. The fog is slowly lifting and sunlight is filtering through, bringing us all into the bright sunny day ahead.

 

For me, the more deeply I feel I know and understand the horses, the better I can find my place among them and the richer that happiness feels.

 

A couple of weeks ago I set myself a weekly challenge to spend eight hours in a single day with one horse. I started “The Eight Hour Challenge” with Cleo who I know well. Then the second week I continued, “Playing with the Foundations of FBT”. I did this with a horse that belongs to a friend of mine; this horse Lily has deeply fascinated me for a long time.

IMG_5750

This week it was time for me to return back to my roots and the horse that started it all: Myrnah.

 

Here is the funny thing about me, I feel like I need to earn my happiness, and work at increasing it perpetually. I fully believe everything in life waxes and wanes in natural cycles and we get more of what we pay attention to.

 

If I want more happiness in my life, I need to pay attention to the things that foster happiness.

 

Connection with Myrnah was my focus for eight hours on this beautiful day in August, however I wasn’t going to do it the easy way, I was in deep for learning!

 

When Myrnah and I are close together or touching our connection feels effortless and her focus changes are so fluid and easy as she does whatever it is we are doing together.

_I0A8564

When I am farther away Myrnah seems to ignore me completely and while it doesn’t feel like she is overtly pushing to get closer to me, or trying to get away from me, I often find myself somewhere completely different than I had intended to be and I was never quite sure how that happened. On this day I was determined to practice this thing I wasn’t good at!

 

I would stand in flow with Myrnah about twenty feet away, watching her with my peripheral vision to see any changes of focus that would signal me to move slightly to my new place of harmony with her. When she walked I would do my best to walk with her holding my relationship in space with her… yet somehow I found myself on her right shoulder about six feet away over and over again. It was funnier than anything to see how deftly Myrnah put me where she liked me.

 

I persevered and kept using my supportive leadership and walking to find my distance flow again. After a particularly good stretch of harmony, I would relent and drift in closer to that six foot distance or touching that Myrnah and I love so much. Then when I could I would drift back out to the challenging distance again. I walked and walked and walked all day struggling to establish distance, and while Myrnah didn’t seem to object, she certainly didn’t make it easy for me to do.

 

As I watched throughout the day (one hour in the early morning, and then seven more hours in the afternoon and evening) I saw how much more social Myrnah is than most horses. She drifts around the herd in continuous close partnership with one horse partner after the next and she LOVES her friends. The interesting thing is she particularly loves a friend who will push her a little. When a horse would approach with pinned ears and a nod of their nose, Myrnah would pin her ears too and grumpily move her feet to accommodate their push… and then the two of them would settle, staying in perfect flow with feet matching stride for stride, step for step for ages. It was like the push was the glue that stuck them together, and that togetherness brought Myrnah so much peace and contentment.

IMG_5859_F

Now, I had taken the task on of being her partner passively and supportively with as much distance as possible, and since there was no push between us it also felt like there was no glue. I didn’t feel unwelcome, but I felt completely unnecessary to Myrnah in this endurance day of partnership.

I persevered, because I really felt like there was something important for me to learn from this.

 

I watched and mirrored, and found new places of harmony on the thinking moments I saw in Myrnah. When she did not let me hold my chosen place of harmony I walked and walked and walked until I saw a thinking moment that might yield better success for us feeling the flow together.

 

By the end of the day I felt more connected to Myrnah than I have in a long time.

_I0A8613

It was perhaps one of the most challenging eight hours I have ever spent with a horse. I could see how perpetually happy Myrnah was all day with all her various friends, and I only seemed to make the friend list if I was close enough to touch her. I wanted more connection with her than that; I wanted to mean more to her than everyone else seemed to! I had to laugh at myself as I realized I was in that trap of wanting what I wanted when I wanted it! That wild streak in me needed to be tamed and I needed to show up and pay attention to building what I wanted, one small success at a time.

 

When I walked out into the early morning fog to see her the next morning that unapologetic happiness for us seemed deeper and cleaner than ever before and I think it wasn’t only me, it seemed deeper for her too.

 

I am eternally grateful for everything Myrnah has taught me, and continues to teach me. Connection with her is my unapologetic happiness.

_I0A8578

What is your source of unapologetic happiness? What would you do to foster it and let it grow?

 

Hooves and Heartbeats,

Elsa

 

TamingWild.com

(for those of you who get this by email, click on the title at the top to see the video on the blog site)

The Project:

Horses from many walks of life, communication through body language, tools used only for safety, never to train.

IMG_5750

The Goal:

To discover how far Equestrian Art can be developed solely using body language.

Playing With The Foundations Of FBT

My beautiful dapple-grey partner for the day was subtly and gently displeased with me, and I was not sure why. From reading her body language I knew she was displeased with me, because there was no yield in her movements, and I was working hard to figure out where to be in the spaces around her to find the partnership where yield became easy between us.

I was standing about twelve feet from her shoulder, out in an arena that was next to the stable where she had been eating hay for the last couple of hours. Lily was watching the neighborhood around her paddock and I was watching it with her.

Without any warning I could see, Lily turned directly spinning on her haunches so that suddenly I was at her tail and she was walking away from me. That was a movement I had no way of keeping up with, and there was no way for me to continue to hold the spot twelve feet from her shoulder that I had chosen to be, so faced with this communication from Lily, I walked around her (in the opposite direction of the spin, so I was not chasing her head as she turned) and look for my next spot to choose, hoping that it would be a place she appreciated my company more.

If I got it right I would know because Lily’s movements would start to show yield and become softly easy for me to match step for step. This is the simple quiet communication horses are always giving out.

The horse says to us: If I make it easy for you to move with me, or stand with me, you are in a reasonable place in relationship to me and you know this because of the yield in my movements.

If I move in a way you cannot hold the place in relation to me that you chose, you chose the wrong spot, or you chose to be there too long. You will know this as I try to get away from you and show some small degree of flight, or I push into you and show some small degree of fight.

I believe horses broadcast these messages to each other and us perpetually, but sadly, often, no one is listening.

On this day, I had decided to give myself fully to understanding Lily and listening to her for eight hours.

IMG_5743

Why eight hours? Because it was a length of time that challenged my stamina and skill in a reasonable way, and I have found something often changes for me and the horse together in a particularly beautiful way somewhere between hour six and hour eight.

In this particular moment of our session (about two and a half hours into the day together) we had spent most of our time in the stable as Lily ate hay from the hay bag on the wall, and interacted with the horses around her. Now we had taken a walk out to the arena for a moment and Lily was telling me that all my choices of place were wrong, or too long.

I determinedly tried to do better, circling around her until I saw that change of focus or ear flick that gave me a hint she was thinking more, and I might be in a spot that was acceptable to her. When I saw that flick of an ear from Lily, I came back into flow matching her feet and her focus, only to see her spin slowly away from me again letting me know I was wrong. Wrong place Elsa, too long.

Each time I walked a circle around again looking for the right place and thinking I had found it I would come back into flow, and again Lily would spin slowly away from me.

Frustrated with my lack of understanding as I listened to Lily, I kept trying to get it right and after five attempts to explain it to me, Lily decided to get more direct in her communication. Turning her quiet flight away from me into fight towards me, Lily pinned her ears to her neck and marched directly toward me in a threatening way, forcing me to put my arms out to defend myself as I skirted past her.

Then the light bulb of understanding turned on for me. I was too close!!! My adjustments from twelve feet away to fourteen feet to sixteen feet and from left side to right side and back side were all good tries, but not actually the right answer. Lily at that moment wanted me a good sixty to a hundred feet away.

IMG_5703

Why didn’t I figure that out sooner!

I fully believe if I had intuited that “right decision” of where to be and taken that choice of place, then Lily would have felt like I really was listening and I really understood her in that moment. As it was, we had to work at communicating until we figured out how to be together peacefully.

Once I adjusted my position to one much farther away, Lily’s movements became much easier to flow with and she let me know I was on the right track to understanding her in that moment.

However, just to be sure I got the message, Lily did something I have been noticing frequently when horses don’t want to have a close partnership with someone. Lily went and found her other friends, Mouse and Koa, and she placed herself directly between them in a way that made it very difficult for me to even try to get closer. Message received loud and clear Lily, I am listening and I will respond in a way that lets you know I am listening.

Because Lily was in the stable at that point, I chose to be her partner from outside, standing in the aisle of the barn. I was outside the bars and I did my best to move positions on the momentary signs of thought I could see in the flick of her ears, the theory being that noticing those thinking moments and responding to them with finding a new place of harmony, before I wore out my welcome in the place I was standing, was perpetually proving to Lily I was listening and I was responding to her. Even from outside the bars of the stable, I can listen to Lily, and I can respond. If I do it right, and I make the right choices, Lily will let me know by showing more and more yield in her movements so we can go places together when she chooses to move. If I do it wrong, there will be some degree of fight or flight letting me know I need to make better choices if I want her voluntary partnership.

Over the next month or six weeks, as I work to develop my personal stamina for my next year long Taming Wild project, I have decided to take one day each week to spend with a new and different horse.

During this day I am not aiming to change to help or develop the horse I am with, instead my goal is simply to hold space for them and be WITH them in the best ways I know how. My job is to observe them deeply and learn who they are in each moment we are together. As I grow to know them better, I can anticipate what they might choose to do next and I can place myself in the best location to partner them in their moment-to-moment choices.

IMG_5709

The theory of Freedom Based Training® starts NOT from a place of changing the horse, instead we change ourselves and hone our skills of where and when to be around the horse so that they become more and more interested in partnering with us.

We are attempting to change our own skill of body placement around them so they are in the frame of mind where they start to voluntarily develop into easier partners.

Later, from that foundation I will be able to more directly ask a horse to develop good partnership skills. Today’s task with Lily was simply to hone my own partnership skills while listening to Lily’s feedback deeply.

I noticed that Lily started the day in self-focus and I was making my responses as she made subtle focus shifts from one version of self-focus to another. Such as, pulling the hay out of the hay bag in one moment, to chewing the hay she had just pulled out in the following moment. Even though there was no obvious change in the ears or the eyes in the difference of those two actions, I would chose to respond to Lily’s small change of thought, moving to a new place around her.

If I could change places around Lily in a moment I thought there was more thinking, I would move only briefly returning to harmony as directly as possible.

If I had no thinking change from Lily and I had to move for any other reason, I would continue to walk around her until she showed me a thinking moment to let me know, THAT spot of physical relationship is one that might work for us.

My job was to listen to Lily and do my best to respond to her subtle body language conversation. I was not just doing whatever I felt like around Lily, I was taking small actions in response to her positive communication.

IMG_5734

What happens all too often in relationships is we do what we feel like until someone gets irritated enough to yell and get our attention that we should have made a different choice. In contrast to that, passive leadership is about making responses to positive communication (those subtle thinking moments) because I believe if we deeply listen and respond to the positive communications, there is less and less need to for the louder communications of fight or flight.

Lily showed me this throughout the day as she was mostly self-absorbed and did what she felt like as I shadowed her to the best of my ability. Every once in a while, Lily would put herself in a place that irritated Lovey, or Koa or Mouse and would get chased or threatened with some intensity. I could see it coming and would be for the most part walking away before it happened (leading Lily by good example that she could choose to follow or not).

Horses crave social interaction, and they seem to often feel much better after some conversation with each other. The problem is, if no one makes the effort to respond to subtle positive communication, they are going to have to push on each other harder to get any attention from their friends.

After every negative interaction with her paddock mates I observed Lily markedly happier with more thinking moments and more focus changes, with signs of licking and chewing and yawning and deep breaths. In a strange way irritating her friends into chasing her was rewarding for Lily, because she felt much better after they paid attention to her and gave her some response.

My job was not to change this, my job was to observe and learn and continually show Lily that I was responding to her small thinking moments, so she didn’t have to get loud or irritating to get my attention.

Throughout the day, slowly and surely, there was more and more yield in Lily’s movements, less and less pushing on and irritating her friends and each of my next responses to Lily started becoming easier to gauge and choose correctly.

The important thing for me is that I was not trying to make this change happen in Lily, I was trying to train my own awareness and responsiveness to her. Lily’s positive changes were an accidental by-product of my practice.

It was hugely gratifying in this situation to see the partnership with Lily grow easier for us both as the day went on. From the deep self-focus of the morning I watched Lily vary in thinking patterns, changing between patterns of more or less diversity as she focused around herself on a greater or lesser variety of things. As I observed and responded I saw a gradual overall change in the way Lily thought about and considered the world.

IMG_5746

As Lily’s thoughts became more diverse and had a wider range of interest, it became easier for me to be in the right place at the right time. I could see the eyes and the ears change first, and then the feet would start to move following her thought. This was very different from the beginning of the day where thought changes were very subtle and Lily’s feet seemed to move, propelled with no thought or plan behind the movement. In those moments I felt forced into supportive leadership where I had to keep moving my feet until I saw some sign of thinking change again, that led me back into Flow and Passive leadership.

Every moment I could see clearer thinking from Lily I wanted to jump up and down and cheer, and then I would remember, that isn’t the goal today that is the side effect of this work. The goal is for Elsa to get better and better at responding to the positive thinking and yielding signs. What Lily chooses to do with that is not my job to change; it is simply feedback on how well I am doing making my perpetual choices around her.

Still, when I get positive feedback that the general trend between us is better… I want to jump up and down and cheer.

But I don’t.

Instead I breathe, and match Lily, and think deeply about how I might do it better in the next moment and the next moment and the next.

This is my work, and I love it.

Hooves and Heartbeats,

Elsa

TamingWild.com

 

 

 

 

 

The Project:

Horses from many walks of life, communication through body language, tools used only for safety, never to train.

_I0A6940

The Goal:

To discover how far Equestrian Art can be developed solely using body language.

 

The Eight Hour Challenge

How deeply do any of us know our horses?

 

I once read that to feel loved is to feel known and I think there is some truth to that. To really know someone requires an intense curiosity and an experimental willingness to take action and adjust action depending on the response received.

 

I believe there is some degree of love in every relationship, including our relationships with our horses.

 

In most horse training we ask a horse to know us and pay attention to how their actions and choices affect us as humans. We expect a well-trained horse partner to be in the right place at the right time and to adjust their behavior to suit us perpetually.

Photo Aug 02, 1 55 08 PM (1)_F.jpg

In Freedom Based Training® I start from the other side of the equation. How well do I know my horse? How well can I express that understanding to my horse?

 

If I know my horse doesn’t like it when I stand too far away, then a short amount of standing far away may be interesting to them, but if I stand far away for too long or too often, my presence becomes a burden on their experience. If I deeply know my horse I will know how long it is appropriate to do anything, and where the line is between interesting and irritating. I will be able to take action before I become irritating, and I will be able to regain our state of harmony in good places and ways frequently.

 

To really know my horse, I have to put aside my personal desire that my horse know me. In Freedom Based Training®, I have to trust that what I give will come back to me. Or more directly, once I have given enough of my attention and I know my horse deeply, I have earned the right to ask them to know me in return.

Photo Aug 04, 9 29 21 AM_F

This depth of relationship building is the foundation for what I do in Freedom Based Training®, and I have found there is an awesome side effect to this work. The more time spent really knowing a horse, and taking actions in a way that prove to them that they are known and understood, the more they seem to make this same effort towards others. Then all their relationships improve, both with people and other horses. This deeply affects the quality of a horse’s life with the other horses in their herd.

 

This week I noticed my mare Cleo had gotten in an emotional rut. I don’t know why, I just know that as I was watching the evidence of action in the herd, I was seeing a downward spiral. Cleo was angry and quick to pin her ears and push the others, then instead of yielding to her and finding harmony together, the other horses in the herd would simply walk away from her to find harmony with someone else instead. Cleo was so grumpy and unpleasant no one wanted to be with her, no one wanted to be curious about what she needed and no one wanted to help her lower her stress by being her partner. The more disinterest the horses showed, the more ugly Cleo’s behavior became and the more ugly her behavior was the more disinterest it created in her friends.

 

I do work with Cleo for an hour or so each day, but my usual Freedom Based Training just wasn’t seeming to make much of a difference to Cleo in the rest of her life this week.

 

I decided this was my perfect opportunity to prove my worth as Cleo’s partner and see what happened with some intense investment in attention from me.

Photo Aug 02, 5 57 44 PM (1)_F.jpg

The challenge:

 

Eight hours in one day spent in the best mirroring, matching, flow and harmony I could manage.

 

The means for me to do this were based on the first two leadership styles in the leadership spectrum:

 

Passive Leadership and Supportive Leadership

 

Passive Leadership is the most important, because it is where I am curious about how to shape my actions around Cleo to know her deeply.

 

Where can I place myself in harmony with Cleo and then when it is time to change, where is the next place I can place myself in harmony with Cleo. If I know her, I can make decisions of where to stand and they will feel good to her, if I do not know her well enough, she has to move her own body until I am in a place that works for her. By deeply knowing a horse we take the pressure off them to make themselves comfortable and we take the responsibility to be in the right place at the right time. The more consistently we do this, the more they feel they can trust us and the lower their stress levels become.

IMG_5224_F_ME

Sometimes though, I am going to make mistakes and the place I choose to be will cause Cleo to make a counter decision to let me know I was in the wrong place for the wrong amount of time. That is when I would get moved into supportive leadership.

 

Supportive leadership is where I start taking action, by walking around my horse (or stroking or petting or rocking my horse), experimenting with distance from my horse and my style of action. As I experiment with all this I am aware of the surroundings and being deeply curious about which place I am in when Cleo starts to think more and show better feelings. When she does that it is my clue to come back into harmony with her.

 

If I deeply knew Cleo I could have gone right to that spot directly before she got uncomfortable. When my feel and timing is off, Cleo shows that discomfort by moving in ways we cannot move together. However, knowing someone is always a process of experimentation, and if we don’t know where to be we have to simply try things until we get positive feedback from our horse that we are now in the right place where harmony can resume.

 

Every “right place” we choose to be with our horse has an expiration date. Our job is to change places of harmony before the one we are in becomes stale.

 

This process of choosing the next best place of harmony and flow with a horse perpetually is an awesome challenge. Try doing it for eight hours and you might be amazed with what you learn.

 

Now, this is not normal behavior in a horse herd or between a horse and a human because this intensity of perpetual awareness and responsiveness is exhausting. I actually have only attempted this intensity of training and relationship a few times in the many years I have been doing this. Even when I was in the depth of training in the first movie, my norm with Myrnah was between four and six hours a day, not eight.

 

Watching the development in Cleo blossom in this eight hour challenge this week changed my mind about my personal willingness to dive deeper and work longer. The results were so interesting with Cleo, I find I want to try it again, with different horses and see what happens.

 

For the first four hours Cleo was often grumpy with her horse friends in the herd, and I moved often and experimented heavily to find the right places to be. After the first hour, I was exhausted from the effort so I chose to go have a bit of a nap in the shade of the hedgerow. About fifteen minutes later I was wakened by a soft nuzzle from Cleo on my leg. It was interesting to me that of all fourteen horses in the herd, Cleo was the one who came over to wake me when she felt I had slept long enough. I stepped back up to my challenge and resumed my efforts in matching, mirroring, harmony, and flow with Cleo.

Photo Aug 02, 1 54 51 PM_F

Then, all the horses took a nap under the deep shade of the cedar trees and my job got much easier, standing in harmony and flow with Cleo as she slept. When all the other horses chose to leave the shade and move off to their grazing on the other side of the pond, Cleo chose to stay in the shade with me, sleeping longer than everyone else. I believe it was my company that allowed her to stay longer and rest more, without me there I don’t think she would have taken that time as I have never seen her off by herself, she always goes where the herd goes.

 

After that nap Cleo’s mood improved dramatically and she seemed appreciative of a greater variety of things. The better her mood was the greater likelihood I had of making the right choices and being at the right place at the right time. We rejoined the herd and then Cleo spent the rest of the afternoon taking me away from the herd to graze in odd corners of the pasture away from everyone in a way that seemed very unlike her normal behavior. We would be off by ourselves for twenty minutes or so and then wander back and pair up with one of the others for a while, before wandering off by ourselves for a few more minutes.

 

Cleo’s mood and positive outlook on life seemed to perpetually improve all day. By the time it was getting dark and we were in the last hour of the challenge Cleo seemed happily paired up with her best horse friends in a way I felt deeply good about. It was time for me to walk away, find my bed and think deeply about all I had learned.

_I0A6916_F

I hope my personal challenge inspires you.

 

How well do you know your horse?

 

How many hours would you be willing to spend with your horse without asking anything of them, and challenging yourself to your best feel and timing, resulting in the maximum amount of flow and harmony possible? What would you learn if you did that?

 

Are you willing to take the eight hour challenge?

 

Or perhaps six hours, or four hours would be a good challenge for you?

 

I picked ten hours the first time I did an intensive session of passive leadership; you can find the blog about that here:

https://equineclarity.org/2016/11/29/it-takes-time/

 

Eight hours seemed more manageable this time with Cleo.

 

Just remember, this work can be subtle, and sometimes you won’t see much change in the first few hours. So if you are interested and you can dig a little deeper, spend a little more time, and see what happens.

 

If you find yourself inspired to try it, I would love to hear how it went for you. Perhaps you could write down your experiences and share them here as a guest blog?

 

Hooves and Heartbeats,

Elsa

TamingWild.com