InStep Equine

Happy New Year from the hill! So grateful for this herd and the lovely humans that work with them. ❤️

“I think 99 times and find nothing. I stop thinking, swim in the silence, and the truth comes to me.” -Albert Einstein

Context. It’s a big part of horse work and a big part of inner work too. Fear in the context of expansive relational space and acknowledgement doesn’t have the same power - it still comes up in us but doesn’t direct our next move. For a horse in fear, their human handler can give them this context too - acknowledgment and relational presence but bringing something bigger: perspective, conscious wisdom, the choice on how to proceed. In both cases something entirely new and creative is possible.

Skook! The days are made more beautiful by this magnificent creature. Him greeting me every morning at the gate is something I probably often take for granted but try to appreciate and embrace each time more fully. Sometimes the most familiar and predictable aspects of daily life can also be the most profound when we can slow down and pay attention. It is one of the most powerful of human capacities and greatest antidotes to the over-thinking and patterned mind: redirection of attention to the simple and conscious presence that is always available, in us and all around us.

“Put down the weight of your aloneness and ease into the conversation. The kettle is singing even as it pours you a drink, the cooking pots have left their arrogant aloofness and seen the good in you at last. All the birds and creatures of the world are unutterably themselves. Everything is waiting for you.” -David Whyte

Sweet Thor learned to be a logging horse today. Some firewood for next winter cut and moved and stacked. Lots more to go. Contributing to office heat and outdoor fire pit counselling sessions. What a good boy.

Equine facilitated counselling offers a different kind of space than traditional office-based work. It is relational at its very core, offers and invites nourishing presence, draws people into connection with the world and themselves.

There are many forces that can push and pull us in all kinds of unconscious directions. Pressures from the outside, habitual or inherited patterns, accommodating or defying others. What does it look like to live more consciously from our wisest selves?

Working with the horses people come to stand more firmly on the earth, find balanced connection with the other and the expansive world, and become more fully themselves. In this space insight abounds. What a gift these fourleggeds offer us every day.

Therapy doggies’ day off.

It’s been a while since I’ve posted updates on any of the beautiful fourleggeds that make this place what it is.

Anyone who knows me knows that Skookum has a very special place in my heart. He actually inspired this entire equine therapy adventure - many years ago and a story for another time.

This winter Skookum got ill. He was so unwell the vet told me later ‘I didn’t think he was coming back from that one’. The illness itself was evading clear diagnosis and so the treatment too was an exploration. In the end it took a lot of observation, reflection and a deeper kind of knowing than ultrasound machines or blood analyses could access.

I’ve always been aware of how wide open Skook is in his work with people - the sensitivity and connection that make him who he is are amazing in therapeutic work, and also put him at risk for taking too much in and on. He was carrying too much that didn’t belong to him. He was literally starting to disappear. Many humans I know work with finding this balance too. For the empaths in the world, and especially those that have experienced trauma, there is a sensitivity, attunement and depth of feeling that are both a tremendous gift and a true struggle.

Skook’s treatment of course involved medicine and supplements and dietary intervention. And, what seemed most powerful in the end was the space we gave him, the practice of helping him let go. He needed to experience that showing up for those we love does not mean taking on their pain. His recovery once this was our practice with him was remarkable. It was like he could grow back into the spaces that were given back to him.

It reminded me how powerful relational space can be. Therapy itself is founded on this space and Skook taught an important lesson about balance, boundaries - that presence itself is truly healthy and most powerful when we don’t lose ourselves in the other.

We love you Skook and I can’t tell you how good it feels to view the world through these ears once again.

Kalix enjoying some sweet dreams after a few bad weather days. Always nice to see this air element horse so full of levity and movement take a moment to sink into the heaviness of earth and gravity.

“I thought the earth remembered me, she took me back so tenderly, arranging her dark skirts, her pockets full of lichens and seeds. I slept as never before, a stone on the riverbed, nothing between me and the white fire of the stars” -Mary Oliver

JJ. Where to even begin in trying to express in words the magnitude of this little being, this beautiful life.
To meet JJ was to know the purity of love and presence, pain and acceptance, joy amidst suffering. It’s hard to know why some fourleggeds are afflicted with physical ailment, why some seem to get more than their fair share of struggle. JJ had been sick a long time - first Cushings, then cancer. After 8 years together and 6 years of daily meds, ups and downs, flare-ups and miraculous recoveries, we said goodbye to this sweet little guy last week.
I’ll never forget you JJ and all the ways you helped so many people, all the invaluable lessons you taught me through the years. The herd is just not the same without you, but I can feel you running freely through these hills. RIP ❤️