Feel Pleased
“So here’s your challenge friends, feel pleased.”
Horses are masters at reading our intention and focus. Mother Nature programmed them to be able to read predatory behavior and outwit it. It’s kept them alive in nature and the instincts inside of them are just under the surface of our beloved partners. Because of their sensitivity to intention horses feed into ours, sometimes quite dramatically. This is a reason horses are often used in therapy practices.
Horses can feel the difference when we feel pleased or displeased (with ourselves, with them, the situation, the task, the weather). I’ve seen this happen too many times in my career for it to be any sort of coincidence. It’s not! They feel it. Sensitive or more intuitive humans can feel it too. You know when your spouse has had a bad day the moment they walk in the door. They don’t have to say a word for you to feel it. We can understand and reason it away, but if we approach our sessions with our horses feeling displeased they don’t understand it. They perceive that as pressure. Prey animals brace against or run away from pressure when they don’t understand it.
I’ve seen people use the same techniques that I use but have an underlying negative feeling inside themselves (could have nothing to do with the horse) and the horse does not respond well or complies but has a layer of tension as the task is completed.
One example of the power of this was when I was assisting one of my mentors in a Horsemanship Camp. Whenever a horse would solve a puzzle she would say over her sound system, “Everybody feel pleased!” And every time horses that were unrelated to the one who had solved the puzzle would blowout or yawn multiple times. They feel the energy of the group even if we are not aware of it.
So here’s your challenge friends, feel pleased. – Ashley
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