Do you move your horse with energy and intention?

It’s all about energy whenever we spend time with our horses. If you’re in a bad mood, chances are that your horse will pick up on that and reflect it back to you. Being absent minded or not being in the present around your horse can result in accidents, or simply the feeling of being in disharmony or out of sync, leaving you frustrated after your ride.

I see it the most when riders handle their horses from the ground. The horse is walking all over them, pulling them around, stepping on toes, whinnying, etc. The horse continuously knocks the handler with his shoulder as he runs around them, not wanting to settle down.

“You have to stand your ground and push the horse out of your space.”

Whenever I say this to someone they end up frantically swishing their arms around the head of the horse, or pushing the 1000+ pound body of the horse with their hands simultaneously getting dangerously close to the kicking zone…

The thing is, you can’t move a horse with physical strength - if you’ve ever tried lifting a front leg of a horse that doesn’t offer any assistance, you will know what I mean. Trying to move the entire body through use of sheer muscle strength is enough to give anyone a herniated disc.

If you can’t move a horse with muscle strength, it also means that you shouldn’t need to make physical contact with him in order to move him. Let me explain: Heavy objects are hard to move from close up, but, if you get a running start, the momentum will make moving the object so much easier.

Momentum is a form of energy. A focused thought is also a form of energy because it carries intent. Combine intent and momentum and you will get a result in the receiving end, which in this case means that the horse will move.

Here is the step-by-step process. By the way, if you’re wondering why I’m writing an article about how to “move your horse around”, it’s because mastering your energy is what I observe to be the hardest lesson for most people. It’s right alongside “how to be dominant without being mean” and “how to communicate clearly with your body language” - all huge pitfalls for us humans. Horses move into each other’s space in order to assert dominance. Whomever moves out of the space is not the dominant one of the two. If we as handlers allow ourselves to be pushed around, we are also communicating that we are low on the totem pole, which begs the horse to continue his dictatorship.

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Step 1: Focused thought or Intention.?Imagine that you’re holding a basketball in your hands, try squeezing it and feel how solid the air inside of it is. It’s impossible to squash with your bare hands. Now imagine the same ball becoming 10 or 20 times larger. Place the imaginary ball between you and the horse and visualize what it would look like to move towards the horse, bouncing the ball against the horse until he steps away.?

Step 2: Momentum.?The process here is for you to apply physical energy to move the ball and then allow the kinetic energy of the ball to move the horse. That’s what intention is all about. Your intention is an idea, yet you must treat it as a physical object. Visualize the goal and then see the air between you and the horse as a solid object that you, through your body movements and energy, have to move so that the momentum transfers directly into the horse from a distance.

To reinforce this, use big but slow arm movements, stand up tall and square up with the horse so that you appear bigger. Having a rope, lariat or whip can also be helpful, but it’s important that the energy from your body flows through that object from afar so that only the object makes contact with the horse, otherwise it won’t work. If the horse disconnects the objects from your body, he will only respect you if you carry a whip in your hand at all times. Instead, he needs to believe that the whip is an extension of you, not a separate thing from you.?

Once this has been established, you will be able to move the horse simply by standing up tall and moving intently towards his body. He will see this as a dominant move and will be more than willing to move away.

Don’t let yourself be pushed around, it’s dangerous. Learning to push the horse out of your space is very empowering and will build your confidence and feelings of safety. At any moment you can choose to. Drop your eyes and shoulders, turn away from the horse and invite him back in again for some love and rubs, but this is a game that should function like a magnet - one end repels, the other end attracts. Practice both.

What I so love about horse training is that it can easily be applied to life in general… Are you moving your life with energy and intention?

Ride with Lightness

Celie

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