It’s time to reclaim ownership of your own process.
The sentiment I am going to express here may not sound prudent given my chosen career path - but I think it is an important distinction we need to discuss, so here it goes:
Horses are not magical and mystical creatures with innate healing\ teaching capabilities. They are horses, no more no less and to think of them differently does both them and you a deep disservice.
Please understand, I say this with the utmost love and respect for my horses. They are the legs I stand on in my business and I value them personally more deeply than you can imagine. But my relationship with my horses is built on the reality of who and what they are - not a fantasy.
Programs, including early iterations of my own, that involve horses often tout them as healers and teachers. It makes sense because it is such a rich learning environment but it also leads to a passing of our personal responsibility for our healing\learning journeys, to the horse.
It is the passing of this responsibility which troubles me.
Putting the responsibility of healing or deep learning on the horse takes the client (you) out of the process - making the horse the hero of your story and you at best the passive player that things happen to and at worst, a victim of your own circumstance.
Ultimately, it is the client not the horse who has to choose to buy in, choose to learn, choose to grow and yes, choose to heal. You cannot force information into an unwilling brain. It simply does not work. You also can’t force someone to heal or grow - it is 100% on the individual doing the healing\growing so what’s preventing you from declaring yourself the hero of your own story?
It is not the horse’s job to make things easy for you.
The only responsibility the horse has, is to be a horse - the rest is on you.
When we pass our responsibility off on the horse many things can happen, most particularly, we become entitled to a result. If we don’t achieve that result or that result gets more difficult to achieve over time - it’s not our fault. We have no responsibility because we put it all on the animal, they either heal us or they don’t.
If we don’t claim our failure to feel better because we’ve given our responsibility away, we also don’t claim it when we succeed to feel better. We mistakenly feel as though the horse was the thing that made us heal, like a magic pill, and we know magic pills do not exist.
Learning, growth and healing are experiences you can’t fast track with magic pills. It’s a process. The process begins by opening yourself to the possibilities and then taking responsibility for your development. You must own your failures as much as you own your successes.
The relationship you build with the horse only improves as you improve personally, that’s the magic! Your growth and healing outside of the arena is supported when you choose to embrace what you’ve learned about yourself, as reflected by the horse.
Real talk: horses did not evolve over millions of years to save you and it’s pretty self-important of you to think that they did.
You are the only one who can heal you.
Take the credit.
You’ve earned it.