This session starts with a discussion on resource guarding by Vie, which also includes Sheila as a ‘scratching resource’.
Knowing when we need to take responsibility for our own boundaries is key to developing emotional maturity and respect in our animals.
How should they know they are over-stepping our boundaries if we don’t step back when they are pushing into us?
Vie has really let go of her tensions regarding touch since the sessions carried out this time last year. When we first met Vie on this journey she didn’t want to be touched. Now she asks for it.
This session also shows how spending 30 minutes just ‘being’ with the horses in the field (or pasture, or yard or shelter – it doesn’t matter where), before putting on the halter, is lovely and has a very positive effect on the relationship and the willingness of the horses to be with a human. Doing this creates interest in you as a human. It provokes curiosity.
If we make a human meeting human comparision: if somebody approaches you with a smile and no agenda you become interested in who they are and what they are about. If they approach you with a determined look on their face and a wheelbarrow and shovel, you know they are going to ask you to poo pick.
At 34 minutes into the session Sheila starts to put halters on. There is a conversation around intent and how we can ask for something without pressure, through sharing a feeling. We haven’t got a defined way of doing that yet, but every animal is different, like every human.
Vie’s response to asking something from her is to graze. She grazes when she doesn’t know what to do. Usually Sheila puts the halters on either Lucie or Fina first, but both these horses said No today. They said that Vie had to have hers first. (Unfortunately we got a little distracted by a visitor, and then Lucie & Fina asked for their halters, but we continued to work with Vie from where we left off).
Around 49 minutes Sheila is working with getting focus from Vie, being grateful for her focus when she gets it, if only for a few seconds. As soon as Vie gives Sheila her focus she offers the Present Moment.
At 54.30 we have a discussion on how our own energy levels work. If we can understand where our own energy level is (we can use a scale of 1-10 – just define it for yourself) we can get more energetic without raising our thinking levels too high.
At 57 minutes Sheila is putting Vie’s halter on. It is interesting to watch how Lucie and Fina lick and chew and push Sheila towards Vie when it is time to put Vie’s halter on.
There is also a discussion closer to the end of the video on the difference in ‘held’ energy, or tension, in the head and body, and how we humans tend to look at the whole body as one solid piece, whereas it has many elements to it, the same as us. We may have tension in our shoulders but be relaxed in our hips, or vice versa. The same applies to animals. When we are waiting for relaxation, asking the animal to come into the Present Moment with us, we should wait for the whole body.