Here at Freedom Farm we have the greatest teachers, our horses. Over the years, these great teachers come and go in our lives, but even as the horse passes on, the lessons remain with us.
For me, the lesson that rings most true after all these years is 'follow nature's model'; pause before we turn loose our emotions without considering the perfect balance nature has set up for us. What has our horse just told us/asked us/demonstrated to us so eloquently? Learning to see before we react is key.
When the horse starts to resist, we often strive to fix rather than engage. He throws his head up, so we think, I need to get his head down... possibly with a new item of tack. They chomp at the bit, and we think, there's a noseband for that! These are examples of how we try to outsmart and 'solve' nature, rather than slowing down and letting the horse teach us the appropriate pieces that are missing in our technique.
The lessons available from mother nature involve the kind of learning that satisfies our inner spirit with a sense of "the right stuff". Our horses live by this code of nature instinctually, but we humans have a harder time yielding to its perfection. We look to our intellect for the answers first and nature second. Our horses continually remind us to consider nature first, and then use our intellect to better serve them and ourselves.
(Originally published February 2015)
