WHAT HORSES TAUGHT ME ABOUT POWER

My greatest lessons around power have come from horses. Powerful & majestic creatures who, on a whim, can become pure adrenaline coursing through muscle with only the instinct to survive.

Dangerous at times.

The way to work with horses, truly, is through the heart. Connect to a horse through your heart, with trust and companionship, and they will give you everything they have.

Everything that they are.

That is when the muscles and the mind of a horse become an eloquently tuned instrument of beauty, power, and agility.

Their bodies are highly athletic, nimble, and strong. They can dance, literally.

The great horseman knows this. And they understand that the only way to have a horse show up in all of its talent is through relaxation and connection.

If a horse is not relaxed, it not only cannot move fluidly, it can be dangerous to itself, its rider, and anyone around it.

But when a horse is relaxed, the powerful hind end moves the energy harmonically through the body, and it is as if the horse begins to float. Graceful beyond comprehension.

Horses teach leadership.

You can force a horse through fear tactics. And it can yield results. Many riders win from these methods. But the beautiful irony beneath those ribbons is that the rider never experiences the full expression of that horse’s genius.

The vulnerability.

Because in a state of safety, the horse puts aside its natural instincts of survival as a prey animal and leans into you as its leader.

It trusts you and will expose its most intimate aspects of itself. This vulnerability is the point where the horse gives you its heart. Flesh, blood, and bone. You have the entirety of all that the horse is.

There is nothing like it. That feeling of earning the trust of such a profound being. Of having them choose to listen to you over the noise that screams “run” in their ears.

They will climb into a metal box, which to a prey animal represents pure unsafety.

They will expose themselves in an arena to thousands of predatory eyes and the noise of the crowd, erratic and unpredictable. Even the elevation of the crowd above the horse is a natural trigger to the senses of danger.

The potential for the “cat” to jump on your back from the hill.

The true horseman…the true leader can bring their horse in, calm, collected, with their ears faced backwards and their focus on every tiny move of their leader.

You move together, you think together, you breathe together.

And this is the leadership that lives in humanity, from one person to the next.

Not force. Not pressure. Not fear and aggression.

Presence, safety, connection. And from there, a harmonic attunement that creates a melody of genius and innovation.