4 Simple Steps to overcome your fear and be deeply nourished by horses.
I would love to honour the brave lady who raised her hand and asked a question so many of us are afraid to ask. I have been granted her permission to share her question and my answer with our beloved readers and followers, so that they too may share in the message that came through for us today.
"Hi Lara. My question or should I rather say my plea for help is, I never grew up with horses but the universe has blessed me with two girls who eat, breath and sleep horses. I am a Reiki practitioner and I have always dreamed of working on horses but I have a huge underlying fear for them or should I rather say respect but yet I am scared when I approach them and this they obviously pick up before I have even arrived. I once worked on a horse and I did about 4 sessions and then one day he just head butted me as I was speaking to his owner, I knew he was not happy with me, the animal communicator said he did not like the emotions I was bringing up to the service as he was not ready to work through them yet. So the only way he could let me know was to head butt me. I was sore for weeks. My point is I love horses and think they are magical beings and then my girls who so desperately want me to work on the injured horses are for ever looking at me going "Mommy there is nothing to be afraid of look see you just kiss them and hug them...." How do I get over this fear? Thank you for taking the time to read this. Lots of love x"
I would love to share with you a perspective and philosophy that has really helped me to begin to successfully get through the fears that have come up in my life and to see each fear as a beautiful opportunity to learn more about myself. And this philosophy is the foundation for all the teachings at The Gift of the Horse.
When we are experiencing a fear emotion, we must be empowered to lovingly witness the fears that do come up, when they come up. And if we are around horses at the time when the voice of fear becomes louder than the voice of love, then, in order to remain congruent in the presence of the horse, we need to step away from the horse and work through our fear away from the horse. This is so that when we return to the horse, we are energetically and physically congruent. (i.e. we are not outwardly doing one thing, yet internally experiencing another thing).
What I would love to share with you is that your inner guide or the voice of your highest self (the voice of love) has communicated to you, this need and desire to heal horses through your Reiki practice and I believe that through exploring this need and desire and showing up fully to these horses with pure love and a desire to heal them, is what will actually be of the highest service for your own healing. And this notion, this way of looking at things, is what has been personally profound to me, in my journey with horses. It is not so much about their healing as it is about both our healing together. And this alone is a beautiful concept to come to the horses with. It takes us out of our human mind (the ego self) of wanting to fix, change and enhance the horse and drops us deep down into pure, pure love (the real self) and to be in the space of devotional service to another being. So often we want to fix the horse. And we look outside of ourselves for the answers. But all we have to do is accept the assignment from the horse to begin our own healing journey and just by shifting this healing inwards, the horse responds positively and can too begin their own healing work.
Step 1: Lovingly Witness your Fear as an Opportunity for Growth.
So, in the instance that you are working with a horse and you feel the fear come up – the horse (and your inner guide) have offered you an opportunity to begin the journey of healing that fear. It is also important to lovingly witness our fears with non-judgement of ourselves and without any thoughts of self-attack. So often we get upset with ourselves for feeling fear and we want to squash the fear right down, pretend it is not there and push on through, but this is what makes us incongruent and confusing to the horse. Remember he is reading your energy, feels your heart rate and can tune into your breathing. So, we can never pretend to the horse. This is what makes the horse such a beautifully honest teacher. There is also no need to feel any shame around our fears. When we look at our fears through the lens of love, we can start to work through them and heal them, not from a place of shame or anger, but from a place of deep self-love and respect. When we look at our fears this way, they are no longer scary and they are no longer “bad”. They are simply just there. Once we get to work on them, they bring us into the light of who we truly need to become in order to overcome our fear.
Step 2: Accepting what is.
Once we have loving witnessed our fear, we can take the next step which is accepting what is. We are feeling fearful. Sometimes our fear is so deep, that it has become part of who we are. "I am fearful around horses." This is a story that we retell ourselves over and over again and a place where we live constantly, because we only know fear around a certain circumstance or environment.
Each time your fear comes up when working with the horses during your practice of Reiki, you will be gifted the opportunity to dive deeper and deeper into uncovering this fear story. More often than not, the fear story is not born from working with horses, it is a far deeper fear that we carry subconsciously to the horses from other areas of our lives. The absolute gift of working with horses using The Gift of The Horse philosophy, is that we can begin to witness, recognise, acknowledge and release the fears that come up in the moments today when we are working with the horse, we are actually in fact opening the door to begin to heal fears from our childhood, fears of lack, fears of not being good enough, fears of abandonment, even fears from yesterday and future fears that we create in our mind, by giving new life to our past fears every day – all these fears that we had long since buried or fears that we are subconsciously re-creating every day – these fears can ALL begin to be healed, through pausing, allowing ourselves the honour of feeling that fear come up when working with horses and beginning the journey within so that we may start to heal.
Maybe this fear comes up 10 times in one session. And 10 times you say: “Thank you” to the horse for showing you that you still have great work to do. And it will be beautiful work. You may find, that in the following session, that fear bubbles up only 6 times. And again, say “thank you” and gracefully accept the opportunity to dig a little deeper into why this fear comes up for you. Then that fear comes up 4 times. Again, you say: “Thank you, I still have great work to do.” Then one day you will have a session and you will come away having noticed that the voice of fear, never spoke up, because the voice of love is now so much stronger. And this is a true miracle. This miracle begins when we stopped pretending the fear wasn’t there and started shifted our perception and the moment we decided to view the fear as a way to heal rather than something we needed to ignore, this is the moment the healing begins. And this is all thanks to the horse as teacher, the horse who bears the gifts to remind us to listen to the voice of love, rather than the voice of fear.
Step 3: Lovingly Letting Go.
Once we have lovingly witnessed our fear and accepted what is, we can begin the process of lovingly letting go of that fear. Releasing our fear is a decision that we have to make. It is a conscious choice in which we decide from this moment onwards I will no longer listen to the fear story that I have held onto so tightly from the past, that my mind (my ego voice) has turned into a fear in this present moment. So often we also future trip our fears. We worry about what could happen so much that we believe the story rather than what is actually happening in the present moment. Releasing our fear is a daily practice of decision making. “Today I witness my fear. Today I accept my fear, lovingly and without self-judgment or self-attack. And today I begin to release my fear.”
Step 4: Asking for help.
We do not have to rely on ourselves alone to overcome our fears. Tap into your inner guide, connect with your highest self. Ask for help through prayer and receive guidance through your daily meditations. Prayer does not have to be a religious experience – prayer is coming to stillness and asking for guidance that will serve the highest purpose for all.
Often times when we feel a lot of fear, it can mean that we are relying only on ourselves for the answers. Start to rely on that voice of love within. Start to rely on your inner guide. Start to trust those messages and gifts that come up for you when you are following these 4 simple steps to overcoming your fear, each time that fear comes up when working with the horse.
The beautiful truth is that those flutters of fear that start at the very pit of your stomach are calling you to rise up, calling you to witness, calling you to acknowledge and release your fear and once you begin the healing work you will become empowered to show up to life fully and intimately connected to the voice of love within you.
I do hope this answer served you.
Please look out for our videos on our Facebook page, The Gift of The Horse, where we look deeper into this amazing question and many more like it.
I hope you have a beautiful day.
Sat Nam.
