The mornings are so beautiful. I wake with the dawn chorus--a billion birds all starting the day with their public announcements, a call to prayer, and am barefoot in the dew long before the first rays of sun have spilled over the edge of the valley and filled it up like honey. The horses watch me as I move around the terraces but are silent, waiting, until I call out a greeting and then theirs, all four distinct, ring out joyfully across the mountain, telling me how pleased they are that it's finally time for breakfast. And we start our day. 

We are finding a rhythm together, all of us. Resting, strengthening, finding a connection, working together. We go for walks across the mountains, we stay in a good place that we find and hours pass lulled by the deeply-calming rhythm of the grazing. We dance together in the round-pen and in the fields, and we explore where we feel safe with each other and how. I challenge them to confront their fear of me and they do the same to me, and we all discover that we’re happy. I know how to read their bodies so that I am at no risk (they arrived here wild and scared) and they know how to read mine for the same reason. In this way, thinking about the signals my body gives, I learn once again the power of slowing down, of trusting in sometimes only a thought, in leaving space around me so they can come to me, of asking only for 1 cm and when I get it, stopping for a least 10 seconds. And of trusting in the process--that what seems so little is enough. The next day they give me 100 cms. 

I learn about the difference between being a boss (a feeling that has had me sit on the floor at their feet and cry) and being a dance-partner (pure joy and expansion). I relish the process of breaking down what I would like us to achieve into really tiny steps and these suddenly all linking up and flowing. I learn again and again not to plan but to go with what is there, what is being offered, and the massive difference between intention ("I would like us to do this"; helpful, freeing, clear) and control ("Ionly want to do this"; aggressive, hopeless, blocked). If I have clear intention, 99% of the time we will successfully begin with what I intended and it flows from there to new places, in a conversation. From a fixed idea of exactly the same thing being what HAS to happen, we never even get to the start.

What is wonderful about being alone with them is the huge trust that grows through familiarity. They know how I move, how I sound, the smell of my shampoo, they know fact that they like to be around me, and that I ask new things of them so gradually that they barely notice apart from it awakening their curiosity in an exciting way. And it’s the same for me. When I am bareback riding Sofia up to a terrace to graze, the gentle familiarity of routine and pathway allows us both to soften into the moment, and when something unexpected happens, and she or I are startled and move in new and challenging ways, we are relaxed, fluid, able to absorb the potentially stressful situation. If she moved like that in a new training session in a new place, we would probably both end up on the floor.

As they are almost my only source of conversation, contact and affection, massive amounts of love flow between us. This is the privilege of being alone with them. I love them, and they are tender and demonstrative with me, and extremely accepting. When I think I must be imagining this huge trust a new person comes and they are unsettled and it takes a few days or longer for things to soften again, and I see that it is true. For a horse to let you approach when it is lying down is rare, and a massive act of trust. For it to allow you to lie down too and use its shoulder as a pillow is almost unheard of. It is a wonderful acceptance. They will follow me anywhere, even at 5am when they (the two little ones, who love to explore anything off-limits) have escaped and I am woken by the drumming of eight small galloping hooves off in search of the Dharmaloca vines, and we all glow white in the moonlight as we walk bleary-eyed across the mountains homeward. 

Taki, the biggest, shyest adult mare, if I work with her in gentle way, gives me extraordinarily sweet equine kisses on the top of my head, and my ribs. I took her out for a walk last week; her first walk in a halter and rope outside the corral. She strode up next to me like a show horse, and walked right alongside me, instead of directly behind as she does at home. She was attentive and interested and alive, just looking and walking. I felt we had set out to walk for hours. I would have wished it, her too; we were both loving it. Until the others, off in an orchard, noticed us walking by up on the track. Her daughter, Ganga, panicked at the separation that she hadn’t actually noticed until then, charged up the steep and crumbling bank, bust through the electric fence, pulling the fencing-posts out of the ground, and wrapped the whole thing around the both of them. Oops. Taki looked to me, saw I was calm, and so she was calm too. That is how receptive they are. If I am calm, they are calm. Even when wrapped in fencing. Remarkable. So I take the other things they reflect back to me as a gift, for someone like me who lives a quite isolated life with little reflection from significant others. 

These horses soothe and nourish me, energize and challenge me, and I am always laughing out loud. They are wonderful company and deeply touching. They demand respect, they give respect, they are clear about boundaries, they welcome me, they heal me, they respond to my suggestions and want to work with me, they are curious about the things I ask of them and keen to understand how to fulfill them, and they are always surprising me. When I slow down they show me a whole universe.

by Kate

(Photos: Kate with the horses, by Gemma.)

Sweet Silence

Ilan Abrahams sent this poem for us to share...

"Sweet Silence," by Ilana Abrahams

Sweet silence is my lover

she lives where the wind blows through she-oaks

she comes to me at night

carries me and cuddles me back home in a sheep skin and sensual embrace

calms my beating heart

I could stand on a footbridge above the freeway

spit at cars below

she would giggle

Sometimes we  don’t see each other for a while

It's good to have some distance I s'pose

but then I'm walking after a movie

a bat wing flaps and she's back

she brings me home again

embraces me in places that I could not feel
 

In the morning on the train

we sit together and hold hands

(Photo by Jaya.)

~ Upcoming Retreat Dates & Details

For more information about retreats organized by our sister organizations visit www.SanghaCalendar.org

~ Welcome to Everyone

¿Vivir o sobrevivir?

Presente

Este mes Hedy comparte un cuento sobre la oscuridad y la luz.

Vuelvo a compartir un cuento. Esta vez escrito por mí en un momento internamente complicado. Y al dejarme llevar escribí más allá de lo que sentía, hasta dar con mi luz guía. Porque los cuentos nos hablan de nosotros y dejan que el corazón se exprese sin tapujos, conectando con nuestra sabiduría interna.

por Hedy

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