Hi Everyone,
I hope you are enjoying the longer days and warmer weather and getting enough horse time in your life. We recently completed the 6 week course here at “Alchemy Place”. Once again it was very successful with very happy participants and big transformations for all.
The picture above (paint horse at liberty) is a student’s horse I was working with in the 6 week course. We had a big focus on liberty at the end of the course. It was not about doing “tricks” or lots of tasks but truly about getting to the essence of what I believe liberty should be about – CONNECTION AND ALLOWING HORSES MORE FREEDOM OF CHOICE and testing how well people are using their energy and body language.
When I begin liberty with horses I don’t use treats (even though I do use them in many other aspects of training and later on in liberty). I want the horse to be with me because of the mental and energetic connection not because they want food. I use PSYCHOLOGY – IT’S A MIND GAME – AS OPPOSED TO BIG PHYSICAL PRESSURE and it is not about sending the horse away or making it feel wrong. Nor is it based on prey animal psychology because I and not wanting the horse to feel like a prey animal and me a predator, and its not treating the horse like I am a horse herd leader because I am not another horse. I play it how it is – a human wanting to connect, interact, communicate and do something together with a horse – another being with a heart and mind of their own. Respecting them for who they are, listening to them and using the universal language of energy and body language to interact. I use the INTRINSIC MOTIVATION OF DOING THINGS TOGETHER IN HARMONY AND FLOW and of our ENERGY FIELDS BECOMING UNIFIED to motivate the horse to want to participate with me. It took some time to turn the horse pictured around. In the beginning he was a very unwilling participant but he made a very positive change and softened and opened up beautifully.
HOW DO WE PROVE TO THE HORSE THAT WE LOVE ENOUGH, ARE AWARE ENOUGH, ARE INTERESTING ENOUGH, FOCUSED ENOUGH AND STIMULATING ENOUGH TO GET THEM TO WANT TO PARTICIPATE ??? This is what the course participants were learning in the recent 6 week course.
We filmed the 6 week course and plan to make it available for people to purchase. Of course the editing will be a big job but we have made a start.
We have some new courses on the schedule – COVID has made scheduling and planning difficult this year with quite a bit of shuffling and rescheduling going on. See below for information on courses, saddling consultations and more.
Go well, have a fantastic day and I will look forward to connecting with you either face to face in a course or via video coaching soon.
Love,
Mel