To work in true, collaborative partnership with horses, we first must be with them. To be with them, we must first be with ourselves. Horses are innately attuned to emotion; 50 million years of evolution has shaped their core survival instincts around an ability to sense the emotional states of predators and importantly, their fellow herd. To the horse, the safety of the other is synonymous to that of their own. Thus, they are masterful in attuning to our nervous systems, recognising the emotions we may so deftly conceal beneath a mask, reflecting our truth back to us, even if we are yet to be consciously aware of it.

In our daily human lives, where so much value is placed on productivity, on doing, we can easily become habituated to living in almost constant states of tension, stress, or anxiety. We learn to suppress emotion rather than be guided by it. Thoughts, obscured by our social conditioning or prior experiences, prevail over feeling. Our recognition and expression of our gifts becomes stifled through fear of judgement. And so often, in a society where accomplishment is measured in the manifestation of the material, we see stillness as a waste. We forget to pause. To appreciate the learning that precedes every achievement, to reflect on our growth before moving on to the next goal.

The horse meanwhile possesses grace, agility and power in movement, yet will always return to calm homeostasis, to grazing. Inherently peaceable animals, horses love harmony. Simply watching horses in nature is known to calm our nervous system – being in authentic connection with them deepens our sense of oneness with Self, Others and the World. When we choose our path from this place of embodied knowing, isolation, anxiety and distress are ameliorated by qualities of agility, creativity, resilience, collaboration and openness.