From Gunny: About BeingTogether

Disclaimer: Written while attending Carolyn Resnick's 2010 Waterhole Ritual Insider Circle Class. The following post is a combination of my own ideas and also reflects my personal experience, understanding, and application of material taught in the class.

(Note from Holly: Gunny has added his introduction to the About Us page. You can scroll down past mine to read his. He introduces himself and explains why he is going to start writing articles, so it would make most sense to read that first.)

Being Together is simply about being in the same space together. Horses evaluate a space by the potential it has for supporting us living in that space. That means it needs to have food and water and feel safe. Once a horse has determined that an area can provide these things, we will look to create a bond through connecting by being in that space together. Being Together is the number one activity that horses do and spend the most time at. It creates our bond and well-being from being in a herd together. Being Together covers many activities such as dozing, swishing flies, eating together, shuffling hay piles, and just standing by each other. When we Be Together, we become friends with each other because we get to know each other. Being Together is important to our culture because it is the foundation for the bond of the herd which helps to keep us together and form a unit that can function as one for finding food and water and escaping predators.

When Everything changed, Holly started sitting with me while I ate my hay. That was during the snowy season and she didn’t stay with me for very long at a time. After the snow turned to water and the grass started to taste really sweet again, she started to sit for longer and longer. I like it when she sits with me and looks at the thing in her hand. Sometimes she just looks at it for awhile and then turns a piece of it over and looks at that another while. Sometimes she has a long, skinny thing in her hand that she uses to touch the surface of the thing she is looking at. She moves it back and forth and it leaves marks.

Anyways, most days I just hang out with her and eat by her while she looks at her things and makes her marks. This makes me feel like it was when Buster and I used to stand next to one another and eat or just take a nap in the sunshine together. Sometimes I feel like being closer to her and I will go by her and rest my nose on her head or beside her face so we can breathe together. A lot of times I will just stand close and take a nap. That feels good. When Holly first started sitting with me, I wanted to know what the thing was that she was sitting on and what was in her hand. I tried to figure that out by sniffing and biting at it and trying to pick it up. But Holly would let me sniff and nibble and when I was really starting to have fun and thinking about pushing the chair away or picking the thing up out of her hand, she would ask me to move away with that long grass thing. I decided that I would rather be close to her than sent away, so I quit trying to play with those things. I have other toys to play with anyways. Some days she follows along as I eat and this increases our connection too. We even shuffle hay piles together sometimes too and then she will go back to sitting and looking at her stuff.

I really like that Holly spends time with me Being Together almost every day. This really has made me feel a lot more connected to her and willing to do other things with her. I feel more like cooperating instead of trying to argue. I think I have succeeded in teaching Holly the lesson of slowing down and just being in the flow of each moment as it happens.

Next week I plan to tell you about the Greeting Breath ritual and the lessons I have taught Holly regarding it.