Boundaries

YEARS ago, I designed and created a halter to help me control horses. The fact that I needed to do so stemmed from a horrible accident in 1968 when, at the age of 13, I fell through a plate glass window. This accident severed the nerves, blood vessels and tendons in my left arm at the wrist - all of them! The slender bone of my forearm was cracked and brilliant surgeons put me back together (with nurses telling me that they had to find my recoiled tendons up past my elbow and I had aspirated and was brought back during the surgery).

Years of healing and finding ways to function later, I was riding horses again. The story of my long time of training horses and riders is held back in a respectful way from saying that I worked always with a disability. I did not want humans or equines to think of me as anything but fully capable.

Sometimes the young or abused and frightened horses would be able to challenge my questionable grip on the lead shank and I have always found a loose horse a very scary prospect. When I got Dharma Gita and Darjeeling (brother and cousin to our own sweet Dream Cat) - purebred Arabian colts - I found myself feeling compromised. I looked at an old drawing I had of a "war bridle" and began tying a smooth rope into halter-like configurations. I did not like the part that went through the mouth, so I eliminated it.

I ended up with a simple design that would squeeze the horse's head when they tried to pull away from me but would immediately release when they yielded. This aspect was what made it work - the horse got an instant reward for yielding to me and listening. It was incredible. I could safely lead Darjeeling past terrifying things like tractors and really know that I could hold onto him; better yet, I could SCHOOL him in the halter and he was learning in half the usual time. Dharma Gita had been orphaned at birth and had a tendency to test ALL of the boundaries... he gave me a name for the halter. The "Boundary Halter".

I made them myself and took them to confidence clinics I taught. A client bought one and was finally able to work with her very bold and strong Morgan gelding. She said "This halter could save someone's life". It had saved me on so many occasions! 

I ended up a few years later helping at an equine rescue and was able to work with many draft horses and draft crosses there and the people often watched me hold onto and successfully school a massive horse or a colt who had been unhandled... and certainly others were working the horses, too. But, I had a left hand and arm that were functioning at 10 or 20%. I offered my boundary halter to one of the fellows whose horse always bolted and got loose. No one was interested. A trainer that came to them each year had truly disliked my design because it squeezed the horse's head. Of course I told everyone that you NEVER tied a horse with this halter and NEVER left one on a horse.

Years passed. I still used my halter. I sold a half a dozen of them. I was just not wanting to push them at people and I felt like I was the only one who needed to use one.

Then, tonight, I was looking at videos. I saw, just in a passing moment, a man in Britain schooling a horse in a halter just like mine!! I found his website and saw the identical halter not only in use but offered for sale. Strangely, I was elated. I am smart enough to know that no idea is totally original and my halter is/was so simple... heck, I had posted photos of it often through the years and would be thrilled to know that someone had made their own and it had helped a horse. But what made my night, so to speak, was the fact that this respected trainer was getting profound results and using the same design I had created also. Those who had criticized and dismissed my design were somehow exposed (in my awareness) as having tunnel vision. I was correct. I was smart when I found a way to overcome a weakness in myself and make a training tool that offered instant clarity for the horse.

Sad, though, it is that it took an outside observation to make me confident again and proud of my design. Sad it is that I was influenced by others to feel diminished then influenced by another to feel vindicated. I have GOT to let go of any need for outside approval from humans. How things go with the horses is the true test of success.

Each Unique

My sweet white horse, Majic (who is technically gray) is unique in many ways. One thing that happened several years ago when I boarded him at a friend's stable proved how different he was from her two geldings! She put out multiple piles of grass hay on the 5 acres the horses roamed. The piles were kept large and her horses just grazed as needed and wandered around the field... catching shade, drinking, playing and the like.

Well, Majic did not understand that natural grazing on the big hay piles concept and he just ate until the hay was gone. Our agreement was that I paid for the bales over what she used to put out each month for her horses. Crikey! I ended up paying for twice the hay her horses had been eating and Majic became a balloon!!

What this taught me was a lesson I learn over and over throughout my life - we are all, equine & human, individuals!

A nice day at Dharmahorse

The In Between Places

I was watching the sun light fade and night fall around us in the stable yard tonight... thinking about those "in between" times and spaces and ideas. Instead of just being black or white, the gray areas of dusk and dawn; of the beach between the hills and the sea; of life and what we call death. All of these are not just transitions, but places in their own right with a reality to be experienced, certainly, if not savored.

I also see the value of the dynamic approaches of horsemanship styles. And the multiple ways in which good health is preserved by natural methods. Those in between places serve to blend ideas and make useful all manner of things we might miss with a rigid mind-set. I love using Australian saddles for my riding lessons and I tell students that they are like a combination between western and english styles.

My Mother used to say she put sugar in her tea to make it sweet and lemon to make it sour, but the combination was better than either. The in between places are of blending and easing from one thing to another. The in between places are where we can linger, experiencing that gentle shift.

From this life to the next life is an in between place where I think elderly beings visit and sometimes linger when deep in sleep or daydreaming. Spring eases us into summer; autumn eases us into winter.

If we are going to climb to 14,000 feet, we linger at 8,000, then 10,000 feet, making an in between place to adjust to the altitude.

So, I wonder why we would expect such immediate, total obedience from an animal, a person or ourselves when faced with a change or a task? Depending upon the degree of the shift and how much change is required, there needs to be an in between place where the transition can flow with grace. When that cannot happen and a sudden or violent shift occurs, it is shocking and that shock will need to be addressed one way or another later on.

Being decisive is powerful. Being decisive is clear and planned and directed. It can be immediate in its application from the space of transitioning, but cannot act like the cracking end of a whip that then ricochets aimlessly. The in between place holds the form of the concept, decision or path and allows its unfolding without interruption or distortion. It may only hold it for a moment or it may hold the form for years.

My Mother likes limes and mint in her tea now. I ride and school horses in bitless bridles. We leave giant Yuccas in our turn out (that also serves as an arena) because we like Yuccas (and riding a circle around a giant "cactus" will sure keep a rider from leaning inward!) and the area becomes a kind of transition place between the round pen and riding out on the trail. An in between place...

We kind of "ride between worlds" at Dharmahorse; taking what we find the best from many styles and methodologies in horsemanship and in healing. And we help horses and people shift gently from place to place; idea to idea. The world is full of possibilities.

Find Yourself

Every morning when we wake up, we face ourselves. While our thoughts may be of work to be done, plans to be made or people to please; our first awareness each day is of our own embodiment. I have found that if I wake up to chaos - a jumbled bedroom, a messy bathroom, a kitchen in disarray - my awareness is naturally negative. If we begin each morning defeated by circumstances and our own thoughts, how can we expect to grow and accomplish things?

Simplicity can free you. I had a riding student whose business was teaching people to un-clutter their lives. When offered a brochure, she would read it and hand it back, making a note if necessary in her own little book. She did not even take on, momentarily, the objects that would become clutter in her life. Her car was clean, neat, simple inside and out. I can only imagine how her home would be! Her life, truly, must have been (and is, she is just no longer my student) filled with clarity.

After knowing her, I took a long look at my own "feng shui", the energy of my home and stable. I found that I had, once again, accumulated tons of things I did not need, but felt compelled to hang onto... just in case. Now, I must quickly say that you have always been able to walk freely throughout my home and see every wall, window, piece of furniture, etc. But, the clutter was there on the surface and, with the picture of my former student's probable abode in my head, I decided to find myself under the accumulation.

A roll of trash bags in hand, I started at one end of the house and worked my way through... I only partially filled one large trash can, but I had opened up my world and the morning after, I faced a lovely bit of simple neatness. With 3 wonderful dogs sharing my home, I know it will never be spotless - but organized it must remain so I do not lose myself again under the insulation of clutter.

And insulation it can be. If you want to disappear and be "comfortably numb", nothing works quite as well as just not caring, not cleaning and being a victim. Slipping quietly into the cocoon of the "setting sun world" where you do not have to shower, shave, dress or be productive. It can happen. Then, when your senses return, you see the sadness of it and look to the "great eastern sun", the sun rising on your world and shining light into all the corners.

You take a deep breath, then another, clearing the "mind" and "soul" clutter with each exhalation. You begin to see everything around you, the trees, the earth, the horses and dogs and the world you create as sacred. Then you see yourself as a genuine, good human being and you find the joy of a day spent in meditation with a pot of tea and a cheese sandwich and it hits you - life is its own answer.

As I walked about the stable yard this evening, I felt a deeper connection to my past. I was remembering past stables, past horses - but not in a regretful or comparing way - I felt a keen sense of it all being linked. As if the energy of all the things I have done, seen and been were just as real and immediate as what I was doing tonight. I felt more real. more valid, more present than I have felt in years. It reminded of my childhood when I would spin head over heels under water in my grandfather's pool with a swim mask on; churning thousands of bubbles, then release and let myself float to the surface with those bubbles... watching them... being them. In those moments, I felt connected to all the water on the planet. It was as if all water everywhere was dancing with me.

Tonight, I want you to feel deep connections to the important things in your life. I found the clarity and inspiration of my meditation to be my catalyst. It never hurts to relax. It never hurts to just breathe. It is powerful to take a penetrating look directly at yourself and allow that vision to become something awesome.

Take nothing for granted... I never will.

Having had a varied and dynamic life, I do not take things for granted. I remember being hungry. Not just needing a meal, but being without enough to eat for days at a time as a girl in Florida, away from my family.... I worked some at a stable where their summer campers were fed lunch and I got to have a sandwich and chips on weekdays. I shoplifted 4 cans of tuna one evening from the market and felt so guilty. I've always been vegetarian, so the tuna made me sick on several levels - the guilt of taking it and the guilt of eating an animal. I was 17 years old. I called my Dad and he rescued me, in spite of his alcoholism - he came down and brought me back to Virginia.

To have a fridge full of fresh food is often the type of photo I put on my vision boards. The ability to fix a healthy meal and sometimes to "make something from nothing" became important to me. I do mindful eating, considering who grew my food, how nature created it, who prepared it, being grateful for all.

I lived in a "house" for a year that was a shack connected to a trailer (poorly so) where I had to climb on the roof and attach tarps to keep the rain from pouring in through the seam like a waterfall. Even then, I used muck buckets and feeders to catch the water. The wind howled through the house and water in a glass on the "kitchen" counter would freeze in the winter. I had no water heater, I used a metal rod (for heating water in a bucket for the stable) to heat water to take "bucket baths" with a ladle as I squatted in the tub. I had an oil filled electric radiator and my dogs and I stayed warm in the tiny bedroom with the door closed. We stayed cool with a window A/C I installed. I had no stove, just a crockpot and a hot plate. I had a refrigerator a friend gave to me. I had running water (when it wasn't frozen) and I made myself happy most of the time.

My dogs and horses were with me (including Basil, my dog who is now 20 years old). I built the horse pens, turn out and shelters myself - digging every post hole by hand around almost 2 acres. I taught lessons there on my sweet horses. I owned the land and wanted to build a house someday, but the wind could get to 90 miles an hour and after one night with my dogs and I in the tiny radio room, terrified, unable to leave with the house being torn apart around us - I gave up.

My stories could be told for days on end. I was born into wealth and have seen both sides for sure. My first car was a Jaguar Mark 2, I had my own riding school at age 18 (my father sobered up briefly and set me up as a part of his corporation that then went bankrupt when he started drinking again and everything was taken from me). I had to rebuild another school years later on my own and I kept training horses and people to make a living as best I could.

So, now... I revel in a hot shower! I kiss my thermostat (I have central air!!!)! My horses have shelters and turn out and trees (the wind still blows, but my good old mobile home is ground set and I have lots of TREES). I cherish my life. I know my place doesn't seem posh to others, but it does seem so to me - even though I grew up in a house with 6 bathrooms and a pool in the garden room! I am so grateful to have seen so many sides to life. I hope this has made me more compassionate and more appreciative.