Horses and the Path of Transformation

"We create the world that we perceive, not because there is no reality outside our heads, but because we select and edit the reality we see to conform to our beliefs about what sort of world we live in. Sometimes the dissonance between reality and false beliefs reaches a point when it becomes impossible to avoid the awareness that the world no longer makes sense. Only then is it possible for the mind to consider radically different ideas and perceptions."

This quote by scholar Gregory Bateson speaks to the transformative potential inherent within each human being. There are many ways in which the mind can transform its experience of the world. One of the ways is connection to Nature — Nature heals!

This is one of the reasons why equine-assisted interventions provide such a rich container for personal development, growth, and transformation. When we connect with horses, we connect to the power of Nature and its ability to nurture our soul; to make us feel part of something primal and unspoken; rich in texture and feelings; and inspiring in its capacity to present to us an experience of Beauty.

Gregory Bateson defined beauty as the awareness that we are interconnected to the whole of Nature — it is the experience of Oneness and the, even if momentary, loss of the sense of separation.

Horses return us to the magic that has gotten lost in the rat race of our daily lives, in the toxicity of the political scene and the evening news, and in the over-stimulation to our nervous systems from being bombarded by more information than we can possibly process.

Horses are authentic beings, and most of their wildness is intact despite their domestication — connecting to their wildness allows us to reconnect to our own. Re-wilding ourselves is a path toward increased self-awareness, an improved ability to understand and regulate our emotions, and an improved capacity to balance our intuition with our intellect.