I wonder why, horses have healing powers? My logical and rationale part of my continues to diminish the unarguable results. I have personally experienced their healing powers. Today was another one of those days.
Maybe it’s got nothing to do with the horses, maybe it’s just me?
Is it being outside in the fresh air?
Could it be simply being present and aware?
Maybe it’s the exercise?
Is it some chemicals released?
Endorphins – a happiness hormones.
Dopamine – a satisfied hormone
Oxytocin – a relationships hormone.
You may have heard that horses are incredibly spiritual and can sense things way beyond our understanding. I see it with my own eyes and yet I continue to try and rationalise it as something else. It cannot possible be true.
Today I Am Broken
Today I feel like I experienced a miracle, I experienced the healing power of horses. I have had a day off because work has been crazy. Working incredibly long hours, weekends and managing tricky issues and I am not feeling great. Actually I am broken.
Well I have been unwell like I haven’t been in a very long time. Pain riddled throughout my body, my gut can’t decide if I am bloated, constipated or have diarrhoea. My back is cramping and nerve pain all down my legs. Also my joints just have a deep ache and a migraine to boot. I don’t want to move. My body is so fatigued that I am dizzy and just want to sleep but I am so over tired. I can’t even carry a whole sentence though.
Now as I am writing this it is late in the day and I am hot, sweaty, dirty looking like something the cat dragged in, but I am feeling so good. I have just simply spent time with my horses. This morning I stumbled down the back of our place to the stables. I needed to feed everyone and let them out.
We had a horse not doing so great so thought I needed to spend some time down in the paddock checking up on him. So I just hung out with my herd they were so serene this morning it was a little magical. The birds were chirping, beautiful sunshine and a slight breeze. Just a picture perfect day.
My Mood Lifts
I began to feel my mood lift just being with them. So much so I went up to the house to get some stuff done. Which ended in complete frustration as everything wasn’t going to plan. Even my coffee machine wasn’t working properly.
It was then that I started to become aware that I am feeling a little bit better than I was this morning. I hadn’t ridden any horses or spent anytime with them in more than two weeks. So why not grab one and go for a little ride. Let’s just work with one of them.
With my halter in hand I am walking towards my horses and thought whoever comes over to say hello, is who I will ride. Well my baby giant Duke never disappoints he is very quick to come and say hello. He always brings a smile to my face as he is always happy to see me.
Well I saddle him up and knowing I am not fully functional I am just going to do a short session in the round yard and go back to some basics. He was so good trying so hard that I didn’t want it to finish.
Feeling better
Now I am feeling even better and think well I may as well ride Pippi too. She too was amazing and trying so hard for me. Before we saddle up she is in my face needing to be hugged. Pippi is such an affectionate mare that her happy place is one with cuddles and pats. She just wants to be with me and really wants me to connect with her. Pippi is incredible at insisting you be present and making sure you breathe.
So why not do some ground work with a third horse because I am on a roll. Well little shy BJ (the new guy) had a break through too and just wanted to hang with me. So ridiculously cute!
When you can connect with one horse you can feel it in your gut and heart. Anyone who has felt it, knows it is something incredibly spiritual. I don’t have all the language to explain it but there is magic in that moment. Reflecting that all three gave me a deep level of connection today, they somehow knew I needed it.
Well now I am hot and sweaty but I am feeling so much better and I put it down to the healing power of horses. I don’t know how they do it but I do know it happens.
What ever the reason is it continues to work. I have seen it work on others too. “It’s my happy place” or “where I am relaxed” or “where I get my energy back” whatever their feelings are it’s always a place of wellness or well-being.
I know, I still find it hard to believe that a horse can make you feel better than anything I have in my medicine cabinet. However I am living proof that horses have healing powers.
Leadership, mothers and dictators can you recognise them in your workplace?
Life with horses is about self improvement. I was attending a virtual horse expo listening to an incredible horseman recently Tristian Tucker who made a statement about how to create balanced horses. How to make horses that are mentally stable able to think through problems. He made the point that horses don’t want you to be a mother and they don’t want a dictator, they need a calm confident leader. I thought how powerful that statement was when thinking about leadership. When you look at your teams in the workplace can you identify the mother and the dictator?
Mothers
In order to create a horse who is mentally able to cope with strange things we can’t mother it. Making it comfortable and stress free. In horse terms it looks like the best of everything. You have seen the treat bringer, someone who always has a pocket full of the favourite treats so he/she comes to you. If something happens that it doesn’t like then we make sure that it never sees that stimulus again. He doesn’t like rugs so we don’t ever rug him again.
In the workplace mothering looks like the feeder. The person who bakes or brings lollies. Or the person who needs to make sure everyone is happy, they are a nurturer working out how not to have conflict. They would rather ignore the difficult bits, they are no difficult conversation at all just nurturing. We can all be friends and we will take away anything that makes you upset. They will be the person that always brings comfort.
Dictators
In horse terms it means managing everything. Your horse is not allowed to make a mistake and learn. They are often punished but not always rewarded. Every step is managed.
In the workplace dictatorship looks like micromanagement. You are not allowed to think your job is to do and to do in the way the dictator needs it done. Mistakes will not happen and if they do they will be punished. Chances are you will made an example of so no one makes the same mistake.
Fear
Both of these extremes are fear responses and coping mechanisms. Both end up creating a workplace full of anxiety. It doesn’t build innovation and confidence for growth.
I personally have operated in both styles, mothering making everyone my friend, and thought that management meant I needed a dictator style. I can say from experience that neither side is where you should stay. Use the tools when appropriate but to use leadership skills requires you to think differently.
Leadership
Creates confidence and develops people. Allowing people to learn be inquisitive and fail. Experience builds people so your role as a leader is to create opportunities for wins. How are you creating opportunities for your team to becoming a better and more balanced people?
Allowing someone to fail and learn is the hardest skill in the world to master.
Leadership, with calm confidence, how can you create the environment to create calm confident teams. You can learn how with leadership workshops.
Emotional intelligence workshops with horses. Sounds like a crazy idea for leadership but it works. Now that emotional intelligence is an essential skill in leadership and the most sought after skill. It is something we all need to learn and master to become effective leaders.
What is emotional intelligence?
Emotional intelligence is simply put the ability to control your emotions and others in the present moment. It sounds simple but has a number of key factors. According to Daniel Goleman,
Self-awareness.
Self-regulation.
Motivation.
Empathy.
Social skills.
Why is it important?
Developing emotional intelligence is the one factor that will make you successful in almost every area of your life. At a professional level is the one factor that sets high performing leaders above others. At a personal level, it means your relationships around you will feel more connected. Allows for improved communication skills and increases your resilience. It turns out it is one of the most important life skills and increases your chances of success in every area of your life.
Can it be learnt?
Emotional intelligence is something you can learn. However, I believe it is something you need to experience it to understand it. Staying curious and responding appropriately to what is happening around you. Emotional intelligence is a skill that is challenging to learn from a book. Yes, you can get an understanding of the theory but until you practice it in real life you don’t know how to use it. It is a bit like trying to be a bodybuilder from a textbook. You can learn the theory but unless you lift the weights and practice you can’t develop those muscles.
Why does it matter to leadership?
Leaders without emotional intelligence can be very costly to any organisation.
All of us at some points in our career have worked for a manager we didn’t like and/or didn’t like us. We may have felt that they were unreasonable, not fair or at the extreme end they were a bully. These are all feelings of no connection or low emotional intelligence.
Leaders and managers with high emotional intelligence generally will have staff that want to come to work. They will have staff that will often feel heard and respected. A team that is motivated with less technical abilities will always outperform a highly skilled team going through the motions. So if this is the case why is emotional intelligence not taught?
We have all read the leadership textbooks talking through different models of leadership. As a leader, your leadership style should move change and respond to what is happening around you. If you only have one style you are still in the manager phase and each skill takes time to learn and develop.
There are many documented styles of leadership;
Autocratic – commander style
Bureaucratic – administrator style
Charismatic – the charmer
Democratic – the motivator
Laissez-Faire – the delegator
Servant –the steward
Transactional – the standardiser
Transformational – the inspirer
A leader who has developed their emotional intelligence will be able to transition through many different types of leadership style. They move and flex with the situation and may actually manage each person in their team with a different technique.
I accidentally found out through training horses that I was strengthening and developing my emotional intelligence in all aspects of my life. I found that incredible horse trainers who were rehabilitating troubled horses all had high levels of emotional intelligence. It was their empathy, self-regulation, and incredible awareness level. It almost felt like a heightened sense. This started my curiosity and openness to explore why it felt better. I felt like I was being genuine with relationships and with my leadership. It was a light bulb moment and realised I can also help others to understand and engage with it.
You don’t need to be a horse person to gain something from the workshops. It is made for people who have little to no experience with horses, and even those who have lots of experience will also gain some personal insights.
If sounds like something you might want to try then get in touch
The lessons learned from Finnegan weren’t about horses it was about me.
Anyone who has ridden an anxious horse will tell you “its like sitting on a time bomb waiting for it to go off”
I wonder how many of you can relate to this story and all my problems.
I got back into horse riding after having many years off, and my enthusiasm wasn’t going to be dampened by my reality. I knew I desperately wanted a horse and the one I could afford at the time was a green-off-the-track racehorse with a number of issues. As we all know, for a green rider, is exactly the type of horse you shouldn’t have. He didn’t load onto a horse float, he bucked almost every time you asked for a canter, he was anxious about everything, and I simply couldn’t keep weight on him.
So I am sure you wouldn’t be surprised when I told you I came off this horse multiple times. I experienced a number of broken bones, concussions and damaged discs in my neck. It is hard to remember the number of hospital visits and injuries sustained with this new found love of mine. He was just like a ticking time bomb just waiting for the explosion.
Lessons That Everyone Wanted to Impart
Everyone had advice; all I needed was a different saddle, it was the saddle that needed to be fitted correctly, it’s definitely the bridle causing the problem. When that didn’t work it was; his teeth needed to be done, you obviously just need to lunge him more, tire him out, he needs a chiropractor he is definitely sore. Then it was; his feed is making him anxious, he has ulcers you need the vet. I listened to all of them and tried all of them, each with their own expenses. Now the bills are adding up, and I still don’t have a horse that I can do much with.
Maybe I just needed to spend more and buy a new horse because obviously all of these problems were because my horse just wasn’t right.
The Dream Horse Finnegan
So I bought a bigger better horse, Finnegan. I was so sure that this was the answer because it was love at first sight. I just had to have this horse. He also loaded on the horse float and could be ridden out in public. I thought I bought the dream.
That was until I had one of the worst falls of my life. I broke my pelvis, had severe concussion, a dislocated shoulder, and was in the hospital and unable to walk for weeks.
So now my confidence and self-belief is at an all-time low. Do I sell him too? I tried but just couldn’t part with him.
Incredible Horseman
It was at this time I met an incredible horseman who said to me, I am not taking on any more horses to retrain them. He was meeting horses with human problems. Not people with problem horses. So unless people came with their horses to work on the whole issue he wasn’t going to do it. Which is how I started working on me and my horses.
I needed to solve my own issues. It wasn’t just a horse problem it was also a people problem.
Lessons Learned from Finnegan
So now my experiences are very different and I see things differently. My horses allow me an opportunity for self-development every time I am with them. I am always trying to find new ways to give my horses a stable state of mind and a willingness to learn as there is always something new to explore. Every time I am with my horses I am practicing so many things. Am I present and aware of how I am feeling right now? What is my horse telling me about how I am feeling? When you listen they will tell you.
Finnegan would hold his head on my chest until I started breathing. It took me so long to understand what was happening. My routine was to rush down to the stables after work. If I got home quick enough I could fit a ride in before dark. So I would grab my horse, quickly saddle him and rush into the arena all the time racing before it got dark. Then one day he started putting his head on my chest whilst I was trying to saddle him. I would pat and then quickly rush to get the rest done and he would get more persistent. Until I stopped and smiled and really noticed him and patted. What I started to realise was that the act of patting him and noticing him made me think about him and not the task at hand. So I would breathe and my energy levels dropped. He was a genius. He figured out if he could get me to stop and relax before I rode, I was happier and so was he. Because I was in a different state of mind, I would be more patient and enjoyed my ride. It wasn’t just another thing to fit into my busy day. The epiphany came, when reflecting on my behaviours in an executive coaching session. I became aware of what was actually happening.
So I started being aware of how I was feeling when saddling him up. Every time, if I was rushing and anxious, he would put his head on my chest until I relaxed. It was a habit. As soon as I relaxed he would let me get on with what I was doing. Once I figured out his queue for me our relationship shifted. I started being more aware of the smaller things he was telling me. This is how it started. Finnegan became my teacher and wow what an incredible teacher he was. So many life changing lessons learned from Finnegan but the biggest one is horses can teach.
