I’m careful not to attach a story, but I know Nadia so well at this point that any extended time off usually starts back in predictable fashion. Our arena, at this point of the winter, is a fair way from where her horsey friends are and she feels a little concerned about leaving their safe corner, their little corner of the world where she has been happily grazing, doing as she pleases for some months now.
The last time we did anything formal together, as far as work and play, was close to the start of the year. At that point, we had just mustered sheep and ridden for hours over the most beautiful country on the South Island of New Zealand, and on arriving home, she was kicked on her front leg and it took her some time to fully recover.
Now, with health restored and possibility once again showing herself, Nadia and I ventured back out into the wilds together. Her default response, as mentioned, is to feel a bit concerned.
Are you sure it’s ok to leave the others? Are you sure we shouldn’t just go back? I can hear them calling? Maybe we should check?
She asks these questions with slightly tight muscles, hooves that are reluctant to keep still. Nadia is a horse who is both gymnastic and powerful. To try and restrict that energy is to attempt to block a geyser with a bath plug. Neither useful nor possible.
I admit the same energy that I now enjoy, that I now understand, years back used to worry me. I wasn’t sure how exactly it would manifest and how it was that I could allow her to feel better, whilst finding a midground that suited both of us. More than Nadia coming back to meet me, I had to rise to meet her. I had to allow my body to meet her big energy, to allow it to move through me in a way that was productive and in flow.
I know, in these situations, that Nadia needs to move, that she really craves direction. That I can communicate to her that she’s ok, that we’re both doing this together, by allowing that big engine of her body, the power of her stride to really go.
As I allowed Nadia to move around me, I watched her topline start to lengthen, her rhythm establish itself, her body liquify. And then, just as quickly as she let down, she would prickle a few moments with concern.
I used to call this phenomenon- the situation where relaxation would start to come only to be met with worry- ‘rebound anxiety’. Not truly understanding what was happening in the body, I explained it in more general, conceptual terms as expansion and contraction. That if a mind, a body is not used to the feeling of space, the feeling of expansion, then there a contractive experience that arises almost as a reflex. It’s like they can’t allow themselves the feeling of flow and vitality; that it feels unfamiliar and consequently unsafe. Especially if they have histories where humans have not always been their allies.
But yesterday, as Nadia moved round, I understood this situation differently. I finally ‘got it’. In my work with humans, one of the biggest things we seek to reconcile is our relationship with sensation. We are in a body that is constantly changing; where bones and shifting, organs are changing their location in relationship to nervous system states.
As a body moves from Parasympathetic to Sympathetic and back again (a situation that can change with the rapidity of a light switch turning on and off), we experience sensation. A vital body is a feeling body is a body full of sensation. A fight flight body is a contracted body, a body devoid or used to only a small vocabulary of feeling.
Just like us, my glorious horse was experiencing the same. As her structure started to change, as she began to relax, her organs started to shift. Her diaphragm shifted up, her heart and lungs took up a fullness in her chest. And just like with humans, this creates sensation; a feeling that is novel and for a concerned mind, incorrectly translated as unsafe.
And just like us again, my role as the human she is partnered with is to tell her, in whatever way is possible, that she IS, in fact, ok. To allow her a new physical experience that helps her find comfort with a structure that’s more open, to find new ways of being in her body as she moves through space.
So yesterday I played; with intuitive body work guided by this realization. With ways of encouraging her to move that was supportive of what she was experiencing (JoyRiders, you’ll be hearing from me about this!).
I love how pieces fall into place; that something I have observed for years I now understand on a much deeper level. It’s wild how the same situation, the same horse can be endlessly fascinating, endlessly curious if you stay open with your noticing.
And what’s even more fun is I can play with my red mare again.
What a gift she is.
