The Teacher
The education I have received from my connection to horses has been unexpected and endlessly fruitful. After being taught that I would be working on the horses, it turns out that they have been working on me. We are taught to think of the horse in a superficial fashion, disregarding the essence of what makes the horse a horse. The desired end result apparently, is the physical being without all the complicating features like self-preservation, emotions and a working, decision making brain.
Looking at the horse from the perspective that he is a highly social creature, and therefore wants to get along with other, made all the difference for me. From that point I began to work to enter the herd in order to communicate in a way that made sense to them. This of course meant that I must learn their society in a way that was few do. A big part of my integration process was that I took the gamble of trusting the horse that he was not in a competition with me and therefore would willfully try to overpower me.
Looking at the horse from the perspective that he is a highly social creature, and therefore wants to get along with other, made all the difference for me. From that point I began to work to enter the herd in order to communicate in a way that made sense to them. This of course meant that I must learn their society in a way that was few do. A big part of my integration process was that I took the gamble of trusting the horse that he was not in a competition with me and therefore would willfully try to overpower me.
Riders intuitively know every time we climb on board a horse we are putting our lives in their hands. I began to realize that most riding was based on the patriarchal driven need for control, which led to riding horses in a way that is an attempt to strip away some of their power. Man over Nature. This is very alarming to the horse and pushes him to self-preservation behavior, which is the very behavior that so concerns riders justifiably. When a horse feels that they need to offload this ‘predator’ on their back they are extremely effective. We have now created a classic negative feedback loop.
What these magnificent creatures have been passing on to me is the realization that everything that I could ever desire from a horse is already there. My ‘job’ is to figure out how to ask for what is needed in a way that is clear to the horse hence it is presented from his perspective, from nature’s intentions, making it his idea. More stunning however, is how looking through the same lens is a window through which a healthy human society could be imagined.
Horses have taught me nature has programed within all social creatures the parameters that are necessary to set up a healthy functioning society. As with my discovery with horses, that everything that I could ever need from them is there from the moment of birth, the same is true of humans. We are all born little wild animals with the basic elements for healthy survival skills in place. It is the job of ‘our’ society to utilize those elements to socialize us. Healthy socialization does not look for places to lay blame, it looks to find solutions and balance.
What these magnificent creatures have been passing on to me is the realization that everything that I could ever desire from a horse is already there. My ‘job’ is to figure out how to ask for what is needed in a way that is clear to the horse hence it is presented from his perspective, from nature’s intentions, making it his idea. More stunning however, is how looking through the same lens is a window through which a healthy human society could be imagined.
Horses have taught me nature has programed within all social creatures the parameters that are necessary to set up a healthy functioning society. As with my discovery with horses, that everything that I could ever need from them is there from the moment of birth, the same is true of humans. We are all born little wild animals with the basic elements for healthy survival skills in place. It is the job of ‘our’ society to utilize those elements to socialize us. Healthy socialization does not look for places to lay blame, it looks to find solutions and balance.
The goals of Equa Quest are twofold:
First, to continue the work to achieve the highest levels of riding where the horse is an active participant in both the physical aspect and the emotional and problem solving aspect. After all, they are the horse, they know more about being a horse than any human can pretend to know. For the rider, by continually striving to attain the highest level of ‘pas de deux’ (dance of two) with this extraordinarily generous creature, deeper levels of partnership are learned, moving away from 'man over nature' to integrating with nature.
Second, to take natures lessons learned from entering horse society and use those insights as a mirror to teach what nature intended for human societies. Our society as nature laid it out has been deeply buried under the controlling patriarchal society we find ourselves in. Buried so deeply in fact, we no longer have good models for what it might look like, horses can give us a profound view. Horses have shown me that is not about win/lose. If I set it up for my horse to be a winner then and only then can I be a winner. If any of us lose, then we all lose, this should be crystal clear in this time of Climate Change. It is time to make the shift away from patriarchy to relearn masculine/feminine balance from nature.
Leslie Hammel-Turk
First, to continue the work to achieve the highest levels of riding where the horse is an active participant in both the physical aspect and the emotional and problem solving aspect. After all, they are the horse, they know more about being a horse than any human can pretend to know. For the rider, by continually striving to attain the highest level of ‘pas de deux’ (dance of two) with this extraordinarily generous creature, deeper levels of partnership are learned, moving away from 'man over nature' to integrating with nature.
Second, to take natures lessons learned from entering horse society and use those insights as a mirror to teach what nature intended for human societies. Our society as nature laid it out has been deeply buried under the controlling patriarchal society we find ourselves in. Buried so deeply in fact, we no longer have good models for what it might look like, horses can give us a profound view. Horses have shown me that is not about win/lose. If I set it up for my horse to be a winner then and only then can I be a winner. If any of us lose, then we all lose, this should be crystal clear in this time of Climate Change. It is time to make the shift away from patriarchy to relearn masculine/feminine balance from nature.
Leslie Hammel-Turk