The New Horsepower

By Mari Rubens

“What area of your body is speaking the loudest to you right now?” my facilitator asked. “My sacrum...there is a pulsing golden spiral over my sacrum.” “And what else?” she asked. “Behind my closed eyes, there is a herd of wild horses running, kicking up so much dust with golden sunlight behind it. Now they are gone and there is just one horse. I see his silhouette as he looks off to the distance.” “Are you ready to turn and meet your horse?” she asks. I am standing outside of a round pen and I am nervous, not sure what to expect. I am in the third day of a seven-day equine experiential learning workshop and I can feel the breath of the 18-hand, 2,000-pound black Belgium draft horse on my back. “Yes,” I finally answer. I turn to face my horse, expecting him to be standing just on the other side of the railing. But no, he is on the far side of the pen, his silhouette an exact duplicate of the final horse I had just seen inside my head.

I enter the round pen, and the black giant takes his gaze off the far hills and turns it to me. Something in me cracks, tears stream down my face, my head bows, and my hands come into a prayer position at my forehead. I am humbled by the benevolence of this magnificent black being as much as if a roshi had just blessed me. He reaches me in three strides. His head is massive and he presses it fully against my torso. The star in the middle of his forehead caresses my third eye. His nostrils are against my thighs and I can feel the moist heat of his breath through my jeans. I don’t remember how long we stood like that, the massive head purposefully pressed fully against my chakras. The next thing I knew I was being pulled to the ground, my body simply wanting to lie on the earth at the feet of this medicine horse. My facilitator interjected from outside the round pen. “I know it is really tempting to lie down and I need you to stay on your feet.”

So began my journey into equine experiential work and the healing waters of horse energy. Three years later and working as a facilitator myself, I am still humbled by the ability and power of horses to deeply touch our hearts and ground us into the earth’s core energy. Horses have both a mystical and a mythical past. In many legends they were created out of the waters and with that watery past they are masters of reading energy and emotion. Lakotah legend says that horses came to life when lightning struck a whirlpool. It is such a powerful image—the light of the heavens coming down and mating with the vortex-spiraling energy of water being grounded into the earth. Such is the power of the horse and this new horsepower is just beginning to be tapped in service to the healing and transformation of humanity.

Horses bring many gifts to the table of healing and growth and all are channeled through their huge heart capacity and desire to show up for us. The Institute of Heart Math has partnered with some curious horse professionals and studies found that it didn’t matter whether the horses knew the person. The horses perceived, in the moment, the coherent or incoherent human heart rate variable (HRV) and began reflecting that human HRV in their own behavior. (HRV are dynamics that are measurable and are particularly sensitive to changes in emotional states, and positive and negative emotions can be observed by changes in the heart-rhythm patterns, which are independent of heart rate.) The horse offers instant biofeedback when it is in a human energy field and it will show us what is hidden within us.

As herd animals with a familial hierarchy, horses can model leadership skills and follower skills, challenge our ability to set and maintain boundaries, and demonstrate the power of flowing between the masculine and feminine or the yin/yang qualities on a moment-to-moment basis. As our lives and the world continue to speed up and we spend less time consciously connecting into the earth’s energy, coming to a place of stillness and body/mind awareness while in the presence of horses can offer a megadose experience of being grounded and present in the moment: the new horsepower!

For more information call Mari Rubens, 530-263-7072.