Horses, and important life lessons they can teach us!
I have multiple passions and interests in life; learning, coaching, teaching and … horses! The more time I spend with horses, the more insights I get about time, priorities and life management in general. And today, I want to share those in the hope some of this will resonate with you too. Ready to explore this passion with me?
So, what’s so special about horses?
Horses bring excitement and joy. Horses bring a heavy dose of dopamine! isn't that the key to a happy life?
Dopamine is one of the happiness hormones, critical to one's life and health as it helps combat cortisol, produced when our stress level increases. Cortisol, although necessary for our survival, can cause quite a bit of damage to one's health when circulating in our body day in and day out in large doses. Cortisol is meant to come as bursts and go away, so homeostasis can be restored in our body. The pace at which we live our lives has made it such that we have a constant flow of cortisol in our bodies caused by our stress level, which is in turn causing irrevocable (often) damages to our health. According to Gallup's 2022 world of work report, stress among workers reached an all-time high in 2021, with 44% of respondents reporting having felt a LOT of stress the day before, and women in the US and Canada being especially vulnerable to stress. It is estimated that stress is costing the US economy 300 billion per year.
The good news is that we can counter this constant flow of cortisol with daily and heavy doses of dopamine, serotonin , oxytocin and endorphin. Here are a few ways you can get those. Obviously I would add to the list: spend time with a horse!
(image source: Linked in post from David Mclean)
Horses force you to be in the present moment. When I spend time with my horse, nothing else matters!
With my horse, my attention shifts from narrow-focus (which I will talk about later) to a more diffused and immersed mode of attention - Opening my senses will activate alpha waves in the brain generating a sense of overall well being. Being fully immersed in the experience is calming for the mind, and the body and connects you to the present moment. Most of us tend to live in the past or in the future, and find it quite challenging to live in the present. Living outside of the present moment often causes anxiety and increases stress. Interestingly enough, horse's ability to live in the present moment is what will ensure their survival in the wild, whereas humans' inability to live in the present moment is what will jeopardise our survival as a species. The past and the future you cannot control. The one thing you can however control is the here and now; what you pay attention to and how you spend your time and your energy. The more grounded and connected you are to the present moment, and to yourself (to all of your bodily sensations, thoughts, feelings and emotions) the better the quality of your decisions. We tend to rely heavily on our mental brain to make decisions, but the cardiac (in the heart) and encephalic (in the gut) brains with their thousands and millions of neurons is where our wisdom resides, we simply rarely listen to it (often from a lack of knowing how).
Working with horses is a fantastic way to reconnect with your wisdom within, mindfulness is another , and has numerous benefits including reducing anxiety and stress, improving physical health and memory, increasing your emotional regulation, improving resilience, and so on. Definitely worth a try!
Let me close this second point with 2 of my favourite quotes to remind us to be grateful for the here and now:
"Don't let what you want make you forget what you have."
"Enjoy the little things, as one day you may look-back to realise they were big things!"
Horses help you focus on the journey and not the destination. Similar to learning to live in the present moment, when I am spending time with my horses I don’t have a preconceived plan of what this encounter will be about, I just explore new paths and ways to ‘be’ with my horse. I don't think about the destination, I simply enjoy every second that passes with high awareness of my environment, and deep curiosity and gratitude. Coming from someone who plans every little detail in her life, needless to say, this is refreshing, relaxing and so important for my mental health. Speaking of exploring...
Horses provide a multi-sensory experience; sticky, memorable and impactful. When we experience something new, the information is encoded in your brain through all your senses. As John Medina in his famous book 'brain rules' clearly explains it, the more senses you involve in your experience, the more parts of the brain are solicited and as a result the more you learn and remember. This is why a simple smell, like one of an apple pie, can bring you back to your grandma's kitchen in a snap. The smell of the apple pie is connected to the visual of your grandma's kitchen and the emotions attached to it. Spending quality time with a horse is definitely something you never forget. It is a magical, multi-sensory experience! Horses are also fantastic coaches, if you stop, listen and are willing to be vulnerable and authentic for a few minutes. They have so much to teach us about our leadership and authenticity!
Horses remind us to slow down. Riding a horse allows you to alternate between moments of quiet, peaceful riding, with moments of adrenaline rush when you start to gallop. You quickly realise though that this fast pace is not sustainable. For one, the narrow-focus state of attention that it requires, although positive, can be quite draining for the body and brain. Les Fehmi and Jim Robbins in their book, the open-focus brain explain the impact of sustained narrow focus attention on the human body and brain, and its high correlation with stress . Narrow focus attention is an emergency mode of attention that gets activated when we focus our energy and zoom in on a single thing at a time, dismissing all other stimuli. During this time, all of our thoughts are monopolised. Unfortunately, too often than not those can be limiting thoughts, negative emotions, painful physical sensations or challenging situations. These will engage the flight, fight & freeze (FFF) response in our brain causing it to tap down physiological systems that aren't needed for an emergency (such as our immune and digestive functions) and increase our heart and respiratory rates and muscle tone. It is not surprising that stress causes so many health problems. According to them, you can improve your health, and improve how you feel by changing the way you pay attention!
This fifth lesson reminds me that we need to balance the speed (of our everyday lives) with moments of rest and calm. We live our lives at high speed, and rarely slow down, at least I don't. There aren't enough minutes in a day for all the things I would like to do!!! I once read a quote that said:
"If you don't take the time, time will take you."
Over the years, I have therefore adopted daily habits that incorporates as much 'zen' moments as possible, starting with meditation, yoga or training in the morning, spending time with my horses, taking a daily walk with my dogs, taking a small afternoon nap, reading...and of course....writing blogs, which is both exciting and relaxing at once!
So, what is your passion ? What is that thing that makes you forget everything else?
And the even more important questions:
How much of it do you have in your life?
What if you increased that by 1%?
What would it take and what impact would this have?
Note: If you are curious to learn more about the wisdom of horses and why they are such great teachers for us, and such great partners for me in my coaching practice, you can attend one of my upcoming webinars or simply contact me. You'll see, it's quite fascinating! :-)
Until then, remember to enjoy the little things...and the present moment!
