Horses have a Sense of Space, but what does it look like - it's like a 6th sense, and brings with it a tremendous amount of awareness about everything around them. That awareness includes a degree of safety, how fast they need to move, their connection to the herd -- so much information that helps them navigate their world.
In the human world, a sense of space is overlooked, forgotten about which means our sense of awareness is shut down, as human life encroaches on us, getting too close, invading our personal space, we become overloaded, overwhelmed and our sensory system shuts down in an attempt to protect us from feeling invaded and overwhelmed.
This then creates overthinking, shallow, haphazard breathing resulting in increased anxiety, stress and again out of control overwhelm.
This results in us mis-communicating with our horses. Some horses may be happy to be close to you, for some of the time, others not so much. Three of my horses do not enjoy having their personal space invaded uninvited.
They are very particular about inviting you into their space and being able to express when they feel you are too close or not close enough.
I feel that because humans live in a stressed out, unaware world we miss these cues from our horses and wonder why they then express themselves through "bad behaviour" when all they are doing is communicating their needs.
When it comes to personal space like humans there needs to be a freedom of choice for the horse.
You see being given that freedom of choice means that they can maintain their personal balance and energetic equilibrium. Unfortunately when horses try to express their choice, we humans take it personally, making unnecessary judgments and made up stories of what we think they are saying to us and we end up feeling hurt by the space that they choose to keep or even their departure.
The lesson here is for humans to build their awareness to understand that if our horse moves away from us we have done nothing wrong. They are not expressing whether the desire by you to be close to them is good or bad, there is no agenda, no judgment from your horse, there is no rejection or abandonment.
They are expressing their congruent, authentic selves, and are very attuned about when they want to approach you, and when they don't.
I feel that if we truly seek a partnership and an authentic relationship with our horse and with anyone else for that matter, we need to learn to respect that choice without taking it personally.
We could very much benefit from this truthful choosing to interact, or to connect -- or to maintain a sense of distance. If we humans paid more attention to this natural flow of awareness -- so many interactions would feel better.
It's the same with human to human relationships - when engaging with someone who may want close contact, or not, being aware of yourself, will guide you to whether or not there is agenda or judgment in your interaction. You will have awareness on whether whatever the outcome is as a result of that engagement, or something to do with you or the other person, or even both.
This allows us as individuals to simply see what is good for us and what does not serve us - you could call it the impulses of Towards and Away.
If you take the time to sit quietly without judgment and simply observe your horse and how he/she continually, and gently navigates, you will bring your awareness to your own sense of space and what it feels like in your body.
When we do this we rediscover what it's like to move toward or away from something or someone. By paying attention, this guidance, our intuitive radar comes back online very quickly and we begin to regain a sense of trust in our own human senses.
One exercise you can do is to learn how to turn into your "human-horse sense" to allow you to enter your horse's world with calmness, gentleness, patience and peacefulness, and then to take that sense out into your wider world
Horses often respond instantly to this silent invitation to connect. Rather than reaching out to your horse, allow your horse to approach you first.
Before you touch or embrace your horse, send an invitation for gentle touch and wait to see how your horse responds.
In this way we are learning to observe their body language to see if they are seeking contact.
We avoid the temptation to just start stroking their faces, and bring our horses into the partnership in a new more respectful way in which they have a say in the interaction.
Reaching out without an invitation to touch, would be considered by many humans as an impolite, overly familiar and unwanted greeting - sometimes horses feel this way too as I have witnessed on numerous occasions.
Instead, welcome your horse with greeting of peacefulness that they can choose to accept or not, or maybe accept later.
We learn so much about our own state of mind by watching a horse's response to us. They are sometimes more aware of our internal state than we are.
The Horse-Human Partnership is important to both you and the horses you share your life with. If you find yourself losing confidence, or struggling in anyway get in touch. Through Horse Led Mentoring I help you identify and address the challenges and problems within yourself, such as negative thinking and self-doubt, as well as develop creative optimism to build a successful life and a successful partnership with your horse.
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