My barn mentor once told me, “The horse is a mirror where you can see your feelings reflected.”
If you’re afraid, the horse becomes afraid. If you are calm, the horse is calmed. This is why horses are such good partners in psychiatric and behavioral therapy. They can sense emotions hidden even from the human feeling them and then act on those emotions, bringing them into the conscious awareness of the handler or the attendant therapist’s attention. However, knowledge of horse emotional expressions is needed for the therapy to be effective. Unless those leading the session know what horses look like when afraid, nervous, calm, frustrated, or curious, they won’t be able to interpret the mirrored emotional response. Some of the most sensitive horses are seen as “reactive” or “unpredictable.” They may indeed have some ingrained problems, and/or they may be so in tune with the people interacting with them that they act in strange ways in response to the hidden emotional baggage the humans carry around with them. If they are healthy, alert horses, then they respond as if the emotion were on the surface for everyone to see. Horses are the ultimate empaths. It is up to humans to see them as mirrors and stay curious about what their reactions to us mean. – Standing in a Field With Horses by Maeve Birch
There are so many parallels between the mental worlds of horses and humans. Both humans and horses are social creatures, living together and trying to read other’s cues. Both want safety, security, and companionship in relations with others. Throughout my early journey with horses is a slowly swelling theme of learning to successfully navigate human-to-human interactions through the less-threatening work of human-to-horse interactions. Many others have also found this to be the case, to the point where equine therapy exists to take advantage of these cross-species skills.
Less than ten days until the release of my book. I’m counting down! Standing in a Field With Horses will be released as an eBook on SmashWords and Kindle on November 13th. Want updates on the book release and interesting tidbits from the blog? Sign up on our Home page for email alerts!
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