Listen to Your Feelings to Increase Harmony
One of the most important things I have learned since starting this course is to listen to my feelings and use that for information on how to proceed. Related to this is the fact that we can feel the feelings of others as if they are our own. This means that we can feel our horse's feelings too. One of the main ways that horses communicate is through emotions. So if we are feeling fear or anxiety or frustration, regarding our relationship with our horse, there is a good chance that some (or even all) of that is coming from our horse.
The thing is, we will get the very first signs of the feeling before there is any outward physical indication of what is going on. In a practical sense, this means we can learn to listen to this and totally avoid an undesirable response in our horse. For myself and Gunny, I had been very dependent on reading the physical signs. And then using that as my information. But now I am learning how to feel the first inklings that something is not going as well as it could be and to change something at that point. This means we can totally avoid defensiveness, frustration, anxiety, fear or any of the other emotions that come up so commonly around our horse.
The big challenge for me has been to listen to these "precursor feelings". It didn't take me too long to start noticing them once I knew that they existed. But then, the mistake I would make was to look at the outward picture, see that everything looked fine, and dismiss the feeling as my imagination. Usually within a minute or two, I would get a less than happy and willing response from Gunny on whatever thing we were doing. It took awhile, but I finally noticed that there was a pattern happening. I made a decision to start acting on the little inklings and doing something about it.
And the results have been that as long as I can be "innerly aware" enough to pay attention to these inklings, our harmony has increased dramatically.
The thing is, we will get the very first signs of the feeling before there is any outward physical indication of what is going on. In a practical sense, this means we can learn to listen to this and totally avoid an undesirable response in our horse. For myself and Gunny, I had been very dependent on reading the physical signs. And then using that as my information. But now I am learning how to feel the first inklings that something is not going as well as it could be and to change something at that point. This means we can totally avoid defensiveness, frustration, anxiety, fear or any of the other emotions that come up so commonly around our horse.
The big challenge for me has been to listen to these "precursor feelings". It didn't take me too long to start noticing them once I knew that they existed. But then, the mistake I would make was to look at the outward picture, see that everything looked fine, and dismiss the feeling as my imagination. Usually within a minute or two, I would get a less than happy and willing response from Gunny on whatever thing we were doing. It took awhile, but I finally noticed that there was a pattern happening. I made a decision to start acting on the little inklings and doing something about it.
And the results have been that as long as I can be "innerly aware" enough to pay attention to these inklings, our harmony has increased dramatically.
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