WHAT CAN HORSES TEACH US ABOUT INTIMACY?

What would it be like to truly live without walls and barriers? What would it be like to live with a greater sense of vulnerability, gratitude, trust, allowance and honouring in every part of our lives? What would being intimate with ourselves actually be like, feel like and look like?

As kids and growing up, very few of us are invited to truly have a closeness and intimacy with ourselves, to trust in ourselves and our own awareness of things, and to honour our own knowing in the choices we make.  Rather, we are taught to judge and to be what others project and desire us to be.

Horses are phenomenal facilitators of intimacy – and in a recent episode of “Horses Talk, We Listen” on Blogtalk Radio, Beth Schliebe, a Conscious Horse Conscious Rider Certified Facilitator based in Arizona, USA, invited us to explore what horses can teach us about this very topic!

“When I think of intimacy it’s pretty full-scope. To me it’s a familiarity, a friendship, a closeness, it’s about developing a rapport of communion with whatever it is that you are engaged with, whether it be another person, whether it be any animal. Whether it be the earth, or yourself! It’s a space where words aren’t necessary. It seems to have this peaceful connection to it without effort… it’s that effortless ease.  And in that intimacy, you are in that space of knowing…”

The gift of intimacy is often in the space of peace, presence and possibility it invites us to live as. In particular, people who have attended a Conscious Horse, Conscious Rider class who have experienced trauma, abuse or suffering from PTSD – or any sense of having barriers or being stuck so that they do not have a sense of ease in their world or body – animals, and in particular horses, whether they touch the animal or just be in the presence of them, it is often the first time that people are able to have the space of that intimacy, peace and ease, without words, without anything…  When they begin to get this sense of intimacy, where they can finally just be present, the possibilities for expanding beyond that fear or trauma starts to become an accessible reality.

Beth recalls a class in which a participant who previously had owned horses and a ranch had stopped interacting with horses since being diagnosed with MS and had been afraid of getting on a horse after losing confidence with her body: “This lady used to be a horseback rider and she realised what a victim she had become to herself. Once we were able to have her just be with the horses, it was amazing to see her walls came down, how she started getting excited about and communicating with horses again. And the horse absolutely was coming up to meet her. To see her then get the confidence to get on this horse bareback, and then walk with horse while she was on his back, and to see the mobility come back into her body and the horse relaxing with her… just watching the fear disappear and how she transformed the mobility of her body and the excitement that just went through her whole body.  It really woke her up to what she had been choosing and how she could actually transform that.  She now has the intimacy with herself to acknowledge without judgment when she is stopping herself in her tracks and to change it, and choose with gratitude for what the day can bring.”

You can listen to the replay of the Horses Talk, We Listen episode “What Can Horses Teach Us about Intimacy?” with Beth Schliebe here.