it's not what you think

“Humans are born communicators; we don’t have to wait until we acquire language skills to get our point across. We have awareness before we have spoken language . . . Wordless communications happen all the time . . . so subtly that they often go unnoticed while the constant noise of conscious thoughts and emotions claim our attention. But intuition is no less real for its subtlety. We don’t need words to hear what our hearts are saying.” --Excerpt from The Language of Animals by Carol Gurney (emphasis mine)

“When we interact with our horse the most important part to the horse is the metamessage – the part that supplies the context and meaning to our messages. They read that in our body. Ease or fright, fun or work, alert or sluggish – how we say it. The extent to which our whole body sends the same message is what the horse looks at to figure out whether or not we’re sure. It’s a lightning fast, intuitive, visceral level of communication between bodies."
--Excerpt from the T'ai Chi for Horsemen page on the Prairie Winds Equine Massage website of Sarah and Michael Stenson.

All the “threads” on this page of the Prairie Winds site are great. The EMT (equine massage therapy) program offered by Prairie Winds has me totally intrigued – it is a two-month, 350 hour immersion and is based in an energetic perspective.

Dawn Harris and her horse “Valentine” pictured above certainly personify the heart-to-heart connection. I met Dawn at a Centered Riding Clinic in Pedericktown, NJ this autumn. She was very excited to hear that I taught the Alexander Technique, as she would like to incorporate it as part of her continuing ed as a Centered Riding Instructor. Dawn loaned me her sweet Appaloosa “Danny Boy” to ride at the CR Instructors Clinic in North Carolina. She patiently helped me tack him up and shared generously from her wealth of knowledge and experience. Dawn grew up in Texas on a working ranch. She tells me she learned many things “the hard way” – now she is approaching her riding and teaching from the Centered Riding perspective; her big heart and hard knocks experiences are serving her well!