14th January 2025
Working with Belle’s personal space in the barn is not easy because just by being with her in the barn we have encroached on her personal space.
She is responding really well now to the creative reaction technique (from the Trust Technique), where we create a feeling – the present moment or peaceful feeling where there is no intent or thinking, and then wait and regard the reaction, allowing the reaction to happen. What we are saying is “We see you. However you want to react is okay”.
Belle’s thinking levels increase significantly when her personal space is encroached upon. She snorts at you normally and if you are too quick or have too much intent it can spiral up quickly, where she will pace backwards and forwards. We try not to let it raise up that far, but allow a little response, then bring the peace back. Everything is incremental.
Belle is starting to understand the process and she engages well now. She feels the feeling of peace, and even though she is not yet able to fully let her guard down, she is recognising the feeling and processing all the time. You will see some little licks and chews, and a softening of the eyes as we go a little deeper.
Just as we got to considering a deeper level of peace, taking things down to a level 2, Lara, the black pony, could not cope and we had a big reaction from her. You will see it at the end of the video. Chaos came to play.
It is interesting this, because when you have a herd, everything you do affects all of them, so this reaction from Lara, was just as important as any reaction from Belle.
We bought some peace back to the barn when Lara had said what she needed to say. Again the important thing is to allow the pony’s to “talk”. Lisa did some lovely PM and regard work with Lara for about 20 minutes, while I went back to working a little bit more with Belle. Unfortunately the battery on the camera ran out but everything settled nicely and we finished up with a peaceful barn, and lots for the ponies to process.