EXPLORING THE MEANING OF NATURAL IN HORSEMANSHIP

 

 

Since ‘natural’ is something that exists in or is formed by nature, an inherent quality not acquired or changed from its natural state, we might ask if anything we do with horses apart from allowing them to graze unrestricted in a herd, is strictly natural. Beyond the semantics is the realisation that nature is all knowing, the result of a universal wisdom that guides and shapes life in an evolutionary spiral of infinite intelligence that quantum physics is able to show reaches down to the sub atomic level where it has been discovered that everything is connected across time and space. If that is the case, we can connect with horses on an emotional, mental, and intuitive level in accordance with natural law governing non verbal species.

Herd living provides horses with all they need for their physical and emotional survival. It is easy to supply solutions for the former but far more difficult to serve the latter. From the moment we take a horse away from his social circle, he feels an inner need to return. It is up to us to find ways to replicate those feelings of comfort and safety in our company, or within the confines of our areas of containment, that he can experience as a natural extension to his daily routine free from anxiety and worry. 

It only requires a small leap of faith to believe that removing horses from their natural environment isn’t that unnatural depending on what our motives are and how we approach the great responsibility of delivering information so that the horse understands what we want him to do for us. To do this successfully in harmony with horse nature involves horsemanship which, on a deeper level, is really horse..man..relationship; horse and man working together to build a relationship, a meaning which may not be recognised from a purely mechanical perspective.

The foundation for the most authentic horse-human relationship is built on trust, mutual respect, listening and communication. An absence of these basic qualities, which are everywhere in nature, will lack depth because a training program on its own it isn’t natural whereas building a relationship is. The term Natural Horsemanship makes us feel we are doing the best by the horse but if we simply go through the motions they tend to have a mechanical quality. In working with horses naturally, we must get in touch our true nature. Horses know when we have an agenda contrary to our original (natural) self, and are unable to completely trust us. One of the most important factors in the natural horsemanship armoury is our sense of feel. When we ask something of the horse, as in giving an aid, he may well do it, but it won’t be executed as freely as if we were to ask him from a place of true feeling. Horses really can relate to requests based on integrity of feeling, allowing them to respond in a much softer manner.

Although we sometimes forget we are part of the cycle of nature, we have an inner longing to feel and rediscover it and there is no better place to start than by simply watching horses who are truly at home in the great outdoors. Natural Horsemanship is not so much a method, it is more a way of thinking, based on developing a sense of feel free from the pressures of linear time that can lead to a completely new outlook and way of being. There are indeed lessons to be learned through relationship building with horses that go beyond horsemanship.