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Horse Wisdom · Relatively Stable

• 0:07
  SPEAKER_00: Horse Wisdom.
• 0:09
  SPEAKER_00: Remembering us back into nature's silence.
• 0:14
  SPEAKER_00: When I look up, I see buds along the knuckled tree branches.
• 0:20
  SPEAKER_00: When I look down the bank below where I stand by the arena fence,
• 0:24
  SPEAKER_00: I see a big oak split in the storm like a bloom of ink and water.
• 0:30
  SPEAKER_00: I see where the briars and moss creep up the recumbent trunk,
• 0:34
  SPEAKER_00: nature's stage crew working behind the spotlight of the sun.
• 0:40
  Forty degrees feels balmy,
• 0:42
  but things are still growing while the earth sleeps.
• 0:46
  We grab clippers to cut the thorny vines back where they emerge
• 0:50
  from the still
• 0:51
  SPEAKER_00: standing branches that drape the arena.
• 0:55
  SPEAKER_00: Tomorrow the vines will return and there will be even more to cut back.
• 0:59
  The cycles of the Earth's clock are so slow that we forget the
• 1:03
  world is turning
• 1:04
  SPEAKER_00: around us while we sleep and dream the worlds inside of us.
• 1:10
  SPEAKER_00: Humans are nesting dolls of possibilities.
• 1:16
  SPEAKER_00: In the house after lessons, I fall asleep while the new kitten dozes.
• 1:20
  I wake up confused from a dream,
• 1:24
  and for a moment it feels like I have forgotten how to write.
• 1:29
  SPEAKER_00: Lakin asked why my post last week made her cry.
• 1:33
  SPEAKER_00: My writing wasn't meant to be sad.
• 1:35
  SPEAKER_00: I introduced the new kitten to the world, but that was just the surface.
• 1:41
  SPEAKER_00: Underneath my words, grief pooled, a catch in my throat as I swallowed.
• 1:48
  SPEAKER_00: You're sensing the sadness trapped between the words, I said.
• 1:53
  SPEAKER_00: Horse people like Lakin are adept at sensing the energy between things,
• 1:58
  SPEAKER_00: the truth and the unspoken,
• 2:00
  SPEAKER_00: the white spaces that,
• 2:02
  SPEAKER_00: like glue,
• 2:03
  SPEAKER_00: hold the world together.
• 2:06
  SPEAKER_00: This is the season of transition,
• 2:08
  SPEAKER_00: the weather holding her breath between winter and spring,
• 2:12
  SPEAKER_00: the sunlight inching longer into the days,
• 2:15
  SPEAKER_00: the awkward silence of waiting.
• 2:18
  SPEAKER_00: We're neither here nor there.
• 2:22
  SPEAKER_00: My work with clients this week has been about noticing,
• 2:26
  SPEAKER_00: about getting comfortable with the awkwardness of stillness,
• 2:29
  SPEAKER_00: of not trying to fill the spaces between the words.
• 2:33
  Because it's only when we sink into stillness that we can hear
• 2:37
  and taste the
• 2:37
  SPEAKER_00: invisible fullness contained inside the gaps of our understanding.
• 2:42
  SPEAKER_00: Horses are masters at teaching this.
• 2:47
  We were halfway home in the long drive across the mountains to
• 2:50
  bring the new kitten
• 2:51
  SPEAKER_00: home when I learned that a beloved member of our farm family,
• 2:55
  SPEAKER_00: of my family,
• 2:56
  SPEAKER_00: had suffered an unimaginable loss,
• 3:00
  SPEAKER_00: the kind of loss that changed the landscape of her life forever.
• 3:05
  SPEAKER_00: My skin went numb for her.
• 3:08
  SPEAKER_00: I watched the road,
• 3:10
  SPEAKER_00: looked down at the sleeping kitten in my lap,
• 3:13
  SPEAKER_00: up to the road,
• 3:14
  SPEAKER_00: down to the kitten,
• 3:17
  SPEAKER_00: I lost my words.
• 3:20
  We've talked a lot since Hurricane Helene about how disasters
• 3:23
  boil us down to our essence,
• 3:26
  SPEAKER_00: like a condensed brew.
• 3:28
  SPEAKER_00: But we don't really talk about what essence is made of,
• 3:32
  SPEAKER_00: the stuff of us that exists in the waiting between actions.
• 3:37
  I had big lofty themes I wanted to explore this week in my riding,
• 3:42
  namely pride.
• 3:44
  SPEAKER_00: That's a subject I want to tackle.
• 3:46
  And those recurring themes of awe and creativity that I'm
• 3:50
  obsessed with in this new year.
• 3:52
  SPEAKER_00: But like my sessions with the horses and clients,
• 3:55
  SPEAKER_00: what's really on my mind is the ineffable,
• 3:58
  SPEAKER_00: the unspoken,
• 4:00
  SPEAKER_00: those thorny vines that keep growing while I sleep in winter.
• 4:06
  I realized that I work with horses every day,
• 4:08
  but somewhere along the way I'd stop seeing them.
• 4:13
  SPEAKER_00: Same with people around me in the present moment.
• 4:16
  SPEAKER_00: My work is about helping people find themselves.
• 4:20
  SPEAKER_00: I know the tools, but am I really using them?
• 4:24
  I'm in a session and I lean on the arena fence beside the bank
• 4:28
  of the storm split
• 4:29
  SPEAKER_00: tree where the moss creeps up the drying bark.
• 4:34
  SPEAKER_00: I watch a client stand in silence with a horse.
• 4:37
  SPEAKER_00: We're working on noticing.
• 4:40
  SPEAKER_00: In inches and in minutes.
• 4:44
  SPEAKER_00: When did the horse notice you?
• 4:46
  SPEAKER_00: Did you catch it?
• 4:48
  SPEAKER_00: Did the moment pass but you noticed it after the fact?
• 4:52
  SPEAKER_00: That counts too, I say.
• 4:55
  SPEAKER_00: I'm the witness watching the little bay mare pen and ear,
• 4:59
  SPEAKER_00: a nostril balloon to hold the scent of the brush fire in the woods,
• 5:04
  SPEAKER_00: her neck twitching at the creak of the budding branches above us.
• 5:09
  SPEAKER_00: What if I let go of my discernment?
• 5:12
  SPEAKER_00: What would that feel like?
• 5:15
  SPEAKER_00: To me, discernment is weighing the balance of right and wrong.
• 5:20
  SPEAKER_00: It's a life work of constant planning,
• 5:22
  SPEAKER_00: aching into the future,
• 5:24
  SPEAKER_00: the next moment,
• 5:25
  SPEAKER_00: constantly searching for the next best move.
• 5:30
  In the sacred space of the client and little bay mare's silence,
• 5:34
  I let go.
• 5:35
  SPEAKER_00: I let go of my need to deliver.
• 5:38
  SPEAKER_00: I let go of my need to make sense.
• 5:42
  SPEAKER_00: I let go of trying to tell the future so that I can prepare,
• 5:46
  SPEAKER_00: so that I can plan,
• 5:47
  SPEAKER_00: so I can only travel the paths that I see clearly.
• 5:50
  SPEAKER_00: I let go of all that.
• 5:54
  SPEAKER_00: The world doesn't stop turning.
• 5:58
  SPEAKER_00: The low winter sun stays put along the edge of the horizon.
• 6:03
  SPEAKER_00: Nature keeps on naturing.
• 6:06
  I almost write that nature keeps on naturing without me,
• 6:10
  but that's not true.
• 6:12
  SPEAKER_00: I'm a part of it too.
• 6:15
  SPEAKER_00: But when I drop my urgency to produce, I can actually feel it.
• 6:21
  SPEAKER_00: I sink into the in-between spaces.
• 6:25
  SPEAKER_00: There are no words.
• 6:27
  SPEAKER_00: I've said this so many times in the past months.
• 6:30
  SPEAKER_00: But words are my currency and I feel broke without them.
• 6:36
  SPEAKER_00: Horses and humans have many similarities in their nervous systems,
• 6:40
  SPEAKER_00: but the human brain is very different.
• 6:43
  SPEAKER_00: Horses don't, for all we know, extrapolate.
• 6:47
  SPEAKER_00: They don't try to constantly guess the future.
• 6:51
  SPEAKER_00: For centuries,
• 6:52
  we have tried to use the explanation of animals lacking a
• 6:55
  complex forebrain to
• 6:58
  SPEAKER_00: argue that humans are intellectually superior.
• 7:02
  That logic holds when we expect animals to recite Shakespearean
• 7:06
  couplets or state
• 7:08
  SPEAKER_00: their species in French.
• 7:11
  But what if humans have filled their heads with so much stuff
• 7:15
  that they've reached capacity?
• 7:18
  SPEAKER_00: I imagine, because I'm human,
• 7:20
  SPEAKER_00: over information, filling like the septic system in the farmhouse.
• 7:26
  SPEAKER_00: If the tank isn't cleaned every so often,
• 7:28
  SPEAKER_00: the waste backs up through the drains,
• 7:31
  SPEAKER_00: spilling out and over,
• 7:33
  SPEAKER_00: dirtying an otherwise clean space.
• 7:38
  SPEAKER_00: I remind my client to feel their feet,
• 7:40
  SPEAKER_00: to press the shallow breath in their chest down into their belly.
• 7:45
  SPEAKER_00: I remind myself to do the same.
• 7:49
  SPEAKER_00: We've become phobic of noticing what's in front of us.
• 7:53
  SPEAKER_00: That's why silence and stillness feel so awkward,
• 7:56
  SPEAKER_00: like it's foreign to think with our bodies instead of our brains.
• 8:01
  SPEAKER_00: Good thing the horses are here to remember us back.
• 8:05
  Or a warm sleeping kitten in my lap as I watch the road and try
• 8:10
  to comprehend
• 8:11
  SPEAKER_00: incomprehensible news.
• 8:14
  SPEAKER_00: When the words in our heads are spinning out,
• 8:17
  we need a touchstone to ground us back into the earth around us
• 8:21
  instead of living
• 8:22
  SPEAKER_00: in the world we've created inside our minds.
• 8:26
  SPEAKER_00: I do that with my clients in respite sessions.
• 8:29
  Respite is a catch-all term until I can think of a better one
• 8:33
  that means a lot of
• 8:34
  SPEAKER_00: different things to different people,
• 8:36
  but all respites share a similar theme of being in nature with
• 8:40
  the horses.
• 8:43
  SPEAKER_00: My client stands with a little bay mare whose big,
• 8:46
  SPEAKER_00: deep eyes drop low in rest,
• 8:49
  SPEAKER_00: like the winter sun along the low rim of the horizon.
• 8:53
  SPEAKER_00: I notice the sense of the mare's presence and the space between us,
• 8:58
  the edge of my presence mixing with the shared space of the
• 9:01
  horse and my client.
• 9:03
  SPEAKER_00: We don't have to fill this quiet with words.
• 9:08
  Somewhere in the space between the birds resting on the budding
• 9:11
  branches and the
• 9:13
  SPEAKER_00: imperceptible lengthening of the thorny vines,
• 9:16
  SPEAKER_00: relationships are braiding through the mingling of our breaths.
• 9:21
  SPEAKER_00: And somewhere in that in-between space, we find our essence.
• 9:28
  SPEAKER_00: Love, Kim