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Embracing the Capacity for “Feel”
Leigh Shambo,
MSW
Is intuition
reliable? In fact, my own intuition is the most faithful and reliable
guide to what I can do in each present moment, both to keep myself safe
and to optimize my sense of connection and harmony with my environment.
Intuition can be seen as one aspect of what psychologist Peter Levine
calls an internal “felt sense” of reality. Levine describes it as, “the
experience of being in a living body that understands the nuances of its
environment by way of its response to that environment”.
Needless to say, we all operate from
this very private, internal felt sense most of the time, though we may
be barely conscious of it. Horses can help us immensely in bringing our
felt sense to consciousness and fine-tuning it through interaction.
When great horse trainers discuss the importance of “feel”, they are
talking about the value of staying close to your own felt sense in each
moment with your horse.
...
As I educate people about the healing aspects of the horse-human bond, I
help people reconnect to the bodily experience of knowing and the
freedom to act upon that knowing. A client recently wrote to me after a
session, “The image/feeling of being with Dakota in the arena came back
to me and it felt soooo good and so right and so fun and so
authentic(real). Hard to describe the experience but it felt like the
power/fullness of the horse got injected into and carried by my body for
a couple of days at least. Some kind of ally? I could also feel the
theme of ‘do I belong?’ I want to belong!”
Living close to your felt
sense is not as easy as it sounds. Along with the healthy and positive
aspects of the authentic self dwelling inside you, you will also
encounter fears and defenses, misperceptions of others, vulnerable
places, and strong emotional sensations. It is an experience of radical
intimacy with oneself, and it requires us to grow once we start
listening carefully to our own guts and heart. The story of Pat
illustrates how challenging it can be to reawaken the felt sense, to
literally connect with our feelings.
Several years ago, I coached
a dressage rider named Pat. Both Pat and her horse April were tall and
statuesque, and together they made an elegant team. A very experienced
rider with good form who had ridden since childhood, Pat had drifted
away from horses while establishing her career as a social worker in a
government agency charged with investigating child abuse cases. After
several years working on the front lines of this difficult profession,
she was finally earning enough money to once again take up riding. She
took lessons regularly and attended small shows and events, getting
better with each passing year.
Along the way Pat bought April, who
was a challenge even for Pat’s solid skills. Other trainers had
disparaged April, but Pat was devoted to her. April was difficult to
ride due to her violent and unexpected shying, and her general tendency
to be nervous and high-headed. Discipline for such a fearful horse was
out of the question – the best strategy was for Pat to develop her
skills as a sympathetic, intuitive leader of the riding dance. Dressage,
when taught gently and correctly, was soothing to April, who had
previously competed as a jumper. But dressage proved difficult for Pat
to learn… especially the elusive quality known as “feel”.
The always challenging task
of the riding instructor is to translate the infinite nuances of feel –
which may include physical sensations, timing, split second judgments
and the always varied conversation between rider and horse—into words,
useable pictures and manageable chunks. She communicates these as she
is best able to the rider’s brain and nervous system. Then the rider
must go through the process of matching this “map” with her own felt
sense and the responses from the horse. For Pat, this process was
frustratingly slow because Pat seemed unable to access her own felt
sense.
Each time I saw April relax
and stretch her back in response to changes in Pat’s riding, I would
call out “There! Did you feel those strides in the corner?” Almost
every time I asked her if she had felt a certain change in her horse,
the answer came back, “No… no, I can’t feel that”. Time and time
again Pat said to me while riding, “I can’t feel what you’re talking
about.” No matter how well April responded, Pat always missed the
moment and then would report to me “I didn’t feel anything.” For many
months, it seemed that there was very little change.
At the time, I didn’t understand that
this limited capacity to experience the input of our own senses
is not only common to varying degrees, but even culturally encouraged.
I’m sure Pat’s colleagues in the state agency felt that her ability to
suppress her emotions in order to do her job was desirable. In
some cases, the word “professional” is a synonym for being inauthentic
about one’s real feelings.
But little by little, over time,
Pat’s ability to sense April’s nuances and moods with her own body began
to develop. Tentatively at first, Pat began to really feel April, and
respond to her subtle nuances with measured whispers of her own. And
then suddenly, real change occurred! Pat’s capacity to feel the nuances
of April’s movements beneath her greatly expanded —when she moved to
a different job!
Pat’s innate sensitivity, which had
led her to become a social worker, had long ago shut down, protecting
her from feeling the pain of the abused and neglected children she
witnessed daily in her job at the child abuse bureau. That
sensitivity now emerged as a healing and comforting force for the highly
strung April. Their performance together blossomed. In schooling and
at shows, observers would often comment on the subtle finesse of Pat’s
riding. Quite often their exact words were: “She rides with such
feel!” The real victory was Pat’s satisfaction with her new job,
where she worked with adults on social issues in which she could see the
positive outcomes.
The highly sensitive instrument that
we all possess for really knowing ourselves and our horses is our very
own body. The felt sense includes infinite nuances with more detail,
imagery and meaning than we could ever translate completely to another.
Ponder that for a moment. With horses, we share our felt sense very
deeply: we share awareness of our bodies in all kinds of activities, we
venture out into all kinds of environments with that close body to body
contact, and we engage in acts of willful communication about our lives
and our goals. All of this and more, with no words. Every finely tuned
detail of both bodies forms the language. In our highly socialized,
verbal world, such experiences for intimate contact, with our felt sense
largely shared by another, are rare indeed.
To fully embrace the felt sense and
trust in its guidance requires some work. As Pat discovered, even
waking your body up enough to feel your horse is likely to awaken other,
more challenging feelings about your life as well! Witnessing the
powerful effect that tuning in to her own body-based wisdom had on Pat’s
life fueled my interest in understanding how horses help us find these
pathways to a more authentic and self-fulfilled life.
To embrace one’s capacity for feel
requires willingness, and the desire to honestly know ourselves at a
deep level. In a society (not to mention families, schools and
religions) where we are literally trained to be inauthentic, our ability
to trust the felt sense can be damaged, or simply wither from lack of
use. We become protective of our deepest selves in environments where
feelings and intrinsic knowing are not honored. But the horses love
for us to dwell in the felt sense. In the grounded and practical
reality of the arena, we can recontact our overshadowed authentic self,
and use it to make meaningful contact with horses. When we have the
courage to embrace our felt sense, it works and feels like magic. And
yet, it’s the most natural thing in the world.
Author
Leigh Shambo,
MSW is a
clinical therapist and educator whose
first career was horse training and instruction. Leigh
is widely recognized for her articulation of the
horse-human bond and its application in therapeutic and
learning programs. She is the founder and lead
therapist for Human-Equine Alliances for Learning
(HEAL), a
non-profit charitable organization that supports
equine-assisted services and programs for healing,
personal growth and riding/training.
Leigh is an Advanced
Facilitator
graduate of Linda Kohanov's Epona Center
apprenticeship
program and is EAGALA
certified.
Her website is
www.humanequinealliance.org.
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