Enchanted Horsemanship:
A philosophy that encourages people to walk into a pasture, a barn, with a clear and open mind, ready and willing to gaze upon these incredible beings with a sense of awe and wonder, as if it’s your first time witnessing them, every time.
Centered around being fully grounded, in our own bodies, understanding and tuning to our own emotions and energy we emit, while simultaneously receiving the magic and spiritual connections from the horses.
Encouraging creativity, imagination, and play.
It not only inspires a deeper connection to ourselves, nature, and horses, but also it radiates so brightly that others cannot possibly turn away.
People will ask questions like they are angry at us for doing things differently, their words come across harsh and rude, especially when it comes from a place of envy. “Why aren’t you doing anything with your horse?” or “That horse can’t just sit in the pasture all day, it needs a purpose!”
But what if their purpose was just as important as any other animal? To be.
To bestow magic upon this land, upon our hearts.
What if the “not doing” was the MOST important lessons we could learn in this human experience during this time?
Because it’s in the space where “nothing” is happening, that everything is happening.
There are shifts in our hearts, in the things that block up our emotional pipelines. Horses have this amazing capacity to help us unclog so much of the stickiness by simply being in their presence.
So, can we sit in pure presence alongside a horse and not want to “do” anything with or to them?
Can we just be?
When we do engage, can we be fully aware of their autonomy, that they have permission to decline our question?
Does that hurt our ego? or does it keep us in check, that we humans are not the only ones that can have choices.
Can we reignite the passion and love for horses we felt as children, that time before expectations and constraints lead us to believe that horses were no longer magic, but something to be dominated? That they must bend to our will, so that we little humans can feel “respected?”
Where did we lose the magic along the way?
In horses, but also in life?
Creativity, imagination, play, things that children easily tap into, are often snuffed out by adults, culture, and “growing up.”
The mature, grown up world doesn’t allow such antics, you must behave, fall in line, get your head out of the clouds.
This can go for the same in our love for horses, our pure love and joy around them becomes about goals, expectations, money, time, etc and the flame of what you started with is extinguished.
“We say things to kids, like “it’s just your imagination,” because we’ve completely lost any sense of how real and powerful that can be.
It is a dance, to be sure, one that weaves an interface between the imaginal and physical worlds.
Wonderment. I think it’s the state that we as humans were created to experience- it’s both our place and our purpose in the cosmic ecology.”
-Sharon Blackie, The Enchanted Life
I think the dance between the physical and imaginary is one that anyone who has had a profound encounter with a horse can relate to, a liminal space, an edge between worlds.
You come away questioning if you were imagining it all, if that was even real? Could you really hear, feel, sense those things the horses were sharing with you?
That’s why it’s so important to tap into our inner children, our creative selves, the ones that unchain us from the mundane world and into a magical one, where possibilities are endless and we can begin to catch glimpses behind the veil of the illusions of this 3D world.
My childhood love of horses was imbued in not just the horse, but the SYMBOL of the horse, the symbol of freedom, the idea that when I rode, I was flying, I was able to become part animal.
I was a part of everything.
In reality however, I was quickly told that we must make them do what we tell them, that we must kick them harder, pull back stronger.
Although I wasn’t always thinking of what the horse was feeling, because I was told that what I was doing was correct, I still craved that connection, that relationship that I still to this day, continue to yearn for. That deep heart and soul bond that has been built over years of hard conversations and magical moments.
In my personal “awakening” journey with horses, I had to strip away everything I thought I knew, I had to learn how to be with them without doing. Through needing to find that magic again, wanting to do what was best for the horses, that I began to find myself.
It felt like someone slowly tearing pieces of my heart away
In small chunks at a time,
One revelation after the next,
For how I loved horses,
Was not love at all,
I took their symbolism of freedom as my own,
Using their bodies to carry me to liberation
Through forests, over mountains, across beaches,
A ride of a lifetime,
Yes, But now,
It was time to slow down,
Walk beside them,And relearn from the ground up
Walk beside them,And relearn from the ground up
What is means to be free, truly free
What is Enchantment?
Definition: 1. A feeling of great pleasure; delight 2. The state of being under a spell; magic
I’ll be referring to Sharon Blackie’s book, The Enchanted Life a LOT because she lays this out so beautifully, and this basic definition of enchantment does not do this concept justice. She believes that there are four major components to the state of enchantment:
1. It is founded upon a sense of fully participating in a living world- a feeling of belonging rather than separation
2. It incorporates a feeling of wonder and curiosity. To be enchanted is to be comfortable with the fact that not everything can be explained; to tolerate and even welcome the presence of mystery.
3. Enchantment is not all in the head, it is very much a function of our lived, embodied experience in the world.
4. Enchantment is an emanation of the mythic imagination and is founded on an acknowledgement of myth and story as living principles of the world.
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…WONDER, CURIOSITY, MYSTERY, IMAGINATION all are key constitutes of enchantment.
Cultivating them is essential to living an enchanted life.
When we begin to participate in the world as if we a part of it, we begin to open up and see things for more than the inanimate objects, soulless creatures, we have been told they are.
We begin to feel a sense of belonging, of oneness, of connection.
I think that horses (and animals) are such an important part of this human consciousness awakening because they can connect us to that magic again. We may or may not remember the feeling of wonder or awe that came over us as children when we gazed upon the sleek shiny body, the soft dark eyes of a horse that towered over us, that maybe even allowed us to climb upon their backs and FLY.
If you remember that feeling or got to experience that as a child, I’m sure it was stripped away at some point later in life, when expectations, money, sport, training, discipline, or competition came into the picture.
Where did the magical unicorn rides go?
When did that get lost?
I love Sharon’s description of the difference between wonder and awe, she writes,
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“Wonder is different from awe, which usually is defined as the sense of having an encounter with some presence larger than ourselves, something more powerful, and a little frightening.
In a state of awe, we feel humbled.
In a state of wonder, we feel possible…
I find it almost exclusively in the natural world, in situations which offer me a new sense of our deep connectedness… Wonder enhances creativity because it is tied up with our ability to imagine new possibilities.”
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We need a renewed sense of awe and wonder when it comes to how we interact with horses on a societal level. They have become objects in many places, devoid of soul only good for sport, money, breeding, etc.
Even to the people who claim they love their beloved horses, often still see them as a thing to enjoy, a hobby, and when they become “too much” to handle, or the opposite, when they become broken, many can toss them aside for the next best thing.
The tides are turning and there is a massive wave of change rippling through the horse world, and I do believe that reinstating that sense of wonder around horses is at the heart of it and will carry us through to the next levels of our humanity.
When we can be humbled by the horse, we can then be open for wonder and imagine new possibilities of what it means to be in relationship with animals, with ourselves, with the earth.
