“HOW FUNNY YOU ARE SURPRISED BY THAT!” – LOVE, THE HORSES OF THE PLANET

By Amanda Holland

I have a bit of a confession to make –I haven’t had a lot of horse-experience.  I have only taken one CHCR  / ESSE class with Suzy.  I’d had a horse for a short while in my teens, a big Australian Thoroughbred called Apache who was retired from a prestigious dressage career and had a penchant for throwing me off the moment I wasn’t totally present.  I knew a greater connection with him as a rider should have been possible, but it remained elusive at the time and I judged myself as being stupid and not ‘in-tune’ enough to be a “horse-person”!

Fast forward about 19 years, and I am in the saddle on the back of one of the horses in Suzy’s class – a beautiful, energetic, glossy-brown mare. Suzy asked me to pull energy from the earth and through the body of the horse and through me.  There was collective group sigh of acknowledgement of the change in the energy and the relaxation of all our bodies.  At that moment, I received a ‘download’ (though it was delivered more like Niagara Falls flowing through my whole being!) of how the horse perceived me: Infinite space, unlimited capacity, total potency with no barriers to creating (and riding) with total ease. There was no doubt in her world of what I was capable of. When I looked at that energy next to the energy of how I perceived myself, the difference was beyond astounding.  The ‘me’ I thought I was, was so much smaller, and had problems, barriers, fears.  In the mare’s world that stuff could not and did not exist. That awareness she so forthrightly delivered has been gifting to me ever since. After that, I had to get over my point of view that I couldn’t “connect” with a horse!

So when the chance came up to work with CHCR as a Creative Producer, despite having not ridden a horse in about 20 years (excepting Suzy’s class of course), it was a huge “Yes!” for me.

Recently, I was lucky enough to meet a bunch of my co-creators-to-be, CHCR facilitators from around the world who had come to Noosa for Certified Facilitators training.  I recalled again my experience in Suzy’s class and wondered, if that occurred for me with a single class, what magic had the facilitators created in their classes?!

So I asked them about the most surprising things that show up in facilitating with horses.

Viv Adcock, an Australian CHCR facilitator local to Noosa, recalls the first time she facilitated Conscious Horse, Conscious Rider: ‘I totally freaked out. I thought, “What the heck am I doing? I don’t know anything! I am not a riding instructor!”  So I asked the horses, “Okay guys I need you to back me up!” I had 10 people and a dozen horses and every single horse went, “Here you go, I will show you what the next thing is to talk about. Just relax you silly person!” They literally took the class for me. Talk about having my back! It was a billion times greater than I could possibly imagine and I had to be completely out of control and let go.’

“Horses tend to follow the energy!” added Anna Ullenius, CHCR facilitator from Sweden.

Anna told me a recent story of facilitating a CHCR class in South Africa.  One lady who’d attended was so different afterwards that her riding instructor said, “What have you been doing?  Whatever you have, I want to have it too!” They both chose to fly from South Africa to Stockholm the very next weekend to take the Access Foundation class with Anna!

Tamara Gonsor-Ramlawi and Beth Schliebe are CHCR facilitators from Arizona who on considering my question, responded, “Nothing is surprising actually; horses are amazing facilitators!”

Tamara went on to say, “The most amazing thing is that probably most of the people who’ve come to the CHCR classes have no prior experience with horses.”  Could it be that receiving from and gifting to horses, the planet, and consciousness has nothing at all to do with your past experience?! I wonder…

Could I ask you to do something now?  Close your eyes, ask to expand out and connect with the energy of the horses on the planet.  What are they inviting you to gift, to receive, to be and to know?

Upcoming Conscious Horse Conscious Rider Classes:
Conscious Horse, Conscious Rider 11/Feb/2017 Gauteng, South Africa
Conscious Horse, Conscious Rider 17/Feb/2017 Benalla, VIC, Australia
Conscious Horse, Conscious Rider 17/Feb/2017 2412 Wolfsthal, Austria
Conscious Horse, Conscious Rider 1/Apr/2017 Dehli, India
Conscious Horse, Conscious Rider 1/Apr/2017 Beijing, China
Conscious Horse, Conscious Rider 8/Apr/2017 Shanghai, China
Conscious Horse, Conscious Rider 6/May/2017 78073 Bad Dürrheim, Germany

{Photo Caption:  CHCR facilitators and contributors in Noosa! (L to R)  Viv Adcock, Tamara Gonsor-Ramlawi, Beth Schliebe, Brigid Neylan, Amanda Holland, Marianne Redmond, Anna Ullenius and Kelvin Cope.
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