The Project:
Horses from many walks of life, communication through body language, tools used only for safety, never to train.
The Goal:
To discover how far Equestrian Art can be developed solely using body language.
Curiosity and Interest
It has been over a week now of immersing myself in this new way of being with Atlas. A week of walking together.
My mind is challenged in a good way as it is confronted with the use of a methodology I always knew I had “Walking a horse down” but didn’t want to use.
If you missed the last blog post about my turning point, you can find it here: https://equineclarity.org/2019/03/03/walking-a-horse-down/
When I started this project, my goal was to prove that a damaged, abused, and traumatized horse could be nurtured into health using exactly the same methods I used to bring Myrnah into the domestic world in the first Taming Wild film.
I was high on life with the success Myrnah and I had found together and then shared with thousands of people and horses around the world. I wanted to take those same methods and apply them to bring about miraculous change and beauty in a horse that everyone had given up on.
I have always told my students that Freedom Based Training® is the slowest possible way to train a horse, and it is a method that perhaps benefits the learning of the human far more dramatically than it benefits the horse. This week my pride is feeling the trueness of that statement and while my ego is bruised, my understanding of how everything works is growing profoundly.
I still believe in the idea that a damaged, abused, and traumatized horse could be nurtured into health using exactly the same methods I used to bring Myrnah into the domestic world in the first Taming Wild film, but in reality, I might not currently have the time to do so.
A horse with a healthy mind meets me on a level playing field and every good or bad choice I make around them is judged at face value. A horse with extreme trauma judges me from a perspective of extreme bias. Every good choice I make is judged with a perspective that it might have been an accidental occurrence, and the momentary good feeling cannot be counted on. While every bad choice I make by accident or bad feeling that happens in association with me, is judged as proof that I am indeed untrustworthy.
Five months of attempting to prove to Atlas that I am worthy of trust simply by my own actions around him, has led down a winding road of beauty and heartbreak. I see glimpses of the horse he might become, for a day or a week here and there, and then some random occurrence in the environment will tip the scales the wrong way and we backslide again, returning again to fear, and anger, and catatonia.
We have been fully successful establishing a relationship where outright physical aggression is no longer Atlas’s first choice and for that firm success I am grateful. Beyond that point, all our relationship successes have appeared to be a momentary exploration of what might be possible for him sometime in the future, but cannot hold steady against the internal angst that life seems to trigger for Atlas.
I keep thinking, if I can just sense that moment when his inner worry is building too much, if I can see what happens before Atlas implodes or explodes. If I can glimpse what is happening before it all goes wrong, then I can take the right action around him to show him I understand, that we can become a united force to develop a better life for him.
Instead, again and again and again I seem to miss the cues (if they are even in existence to read) and I am in the wrong place at the wrong time when the anxiety overflows for Atlas. He feels terrible, and I am blamed yet again in association with whatever caused his life to unravel into chaos once more. The trust I thought we had built between us crumbles to dust yet again.
If only I knew how to be in the right place at the right time for Atlas more consistently.
This past week has been about admitting, I do not currently have the skill in Freedom Based Training® it would take to nurture Atlas into the kind of mental health I need him to have, living in this domestic world with me.
We needed more tools and more support.
“Walking a horse down” is a concept I used before I ever knew it had a name. When I was ten years old, I was given an uncatchable pony named Chocolate to catch every day from a hundred-acre pasture. That pony taught me a lot and walking a horse down became a way of life for me.
(You can see Chocolate and I together here in the blog “Why Freedom Based Training®?”) https://equineclarity.org/2016/09/12/why-freedom-based-training/
It was only later I learned that Native American people had been using the technique to gentle horses far before I was even born.
Five months into this project of filming “Taming Wild: Evolution”, it was time for me to put my original goal aside and reach for a training method I knew would help Atlas find his trust in me in a more consistent way. I needed to be associated with more good feelings than bad, and I needed to do it in a way that allowed me to make those mistakes of being in the wrong place at the wrong time without eroding the trust that was so very fragile between Atlas and me.
In the past, uncontrollable events with bad outcomes made Atlas the victim of circumstance. Humans were present when he felt terrible, so humans became a thing to be defended against.
Powerless to control bad outcomes, the best a horse can do is to minimize them through self-defense.
Self-defense and the bad side of stress comes in three forms, fight, flight, and freeze.
The more fight, flight, and freeze are perpetuated, the more curiosity and interest are killed.
The brain chemistry can feel overwhelming to study, but this short video has a very clear and simple way of explaining it:
https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=267957677203615
I believe curiosity and interest are the factors that will heal a traumatized mind, but a traumatized mind will not want to risk letting down any of their self-defense patterns that have kept them alive so far.
So, what do we do?
If we have the skill, we can simply be present and meditate our way through the layers of self-defense with a horse. Being present, being aware, being in the right place at the right time to prove that curiosity and interest pay dividends of good experiences and that that self-defense is a pale and weak choice in comparison.
If we do not have the skill to meditate our way into finding interest and curiosity, then we must use the horse’s movement to affect the body in a way that allows the horse to lower its defenses. Only then will the mind start to soften, allowing interest and curiosity the room they need to grow.
Atlas and I walk together, because the ways to find curiosity and interest again are through meditation and exercise. Without a herd of horses to provide the exercise support, my skills in working Atlas through the Freedom Based Training® meditation have not been sufficient in my five months of attempting it, so now we walk.
Walking Atlas down lets the gentle exercise coach him into finding the next better feeling.
Feelings go through:
- Anger (fight)
- Fear (flight)
- Catatonia (freeze)
And then as the horse walks, it starts to find moments of:
- Brace (fight in refusing to move, threatening the mover)
- Distraction (flight of the mind)
- Disinterest (freeze)
And then with more walking, we start to see moments appear from the good sides of the stress spectrum.
- Curiosity (the good side of fight, the beginning of play, “what happens if I do…?”)
- Yield (the good side of flight, making room for a partner)
- Interest (the good side of freeze, ears start moving, eyes start looking, thinking is beginning)
When the good side of the spectrum starts to happen, friends want to spend time with you, and when friends want to spend time with you, life starts to open up in its potential for enjoyment.
How do we know what is being felt? How do we know if the feeling falls on the good or the bad side of the stress spectrum?
It is fight if you just want something to stop happening, it is curiosity or play if you are interested about how you can shape the thing that is happening and enjoy it.
It is flight if you just want to get away from what is happening, it is yield if you can make room for what is happening and shape the event in a way that brings enjoyment.
It is freeze, if you just want to pretend what is happening is not happening. It is thinking and interest if you can be in harmony with what is happening and engaged in seeing the outcome.
A good life doesn’t necessarily have to include friends, there are stallions out in the wild who choose to walk away from the herds and live solo, and there are humans who choose to live in solitude, but for most of us, friends make life better.
I believe the reason this is true is because good friends foster the mental and emotional skills that allow us to experience the good side of the stress spectrum. Thinking, yielding and playing, and these are the same mental and emotional skills that make life enjoyable.
It all starts with curiosity and interest.
Walking a horse down is one way to find those. Once we have found that glimmer of curiosity, then we can foster it with meditation, being present, and learning to be in the right place at the right time for each other in a greater and greater variety of situations.
I have posted a video this week about Atlas and myself in our first week of using this theory. Join us in the Patreon group to see it and new videos each week in the ongoing development of “Taming Wild: Evolution”.
https://www.patreon.com/tamingwild
I hope this blog has piqued your curiosity and interest. If it hasn’t, don’t worry, I will keep writing and helping you walk your stress levels down with a continuing cascade of words, until you too are curious enough to want more.
Here is to curiosity and interest making life worth living.
Hooves and Heartbeats,
Elsa