The Boring Horse.

photo of me & Pearl by Nadia Meli.

This is not a title for a blog post that I thought I would ever be using.

This week has been a very busy week for me, I hate being busy. Since starting to properly heal and recover from severe burn out and a life time of fight and flight I no longer have any interest in being busy. I no longer want to be “exciting” 2023 has seen me commit to a much slower and more meaningful life.

But I overcooked it this week and I have become sick. What a surprise, my body saying no after I promised to listen to it. I have a week of not a lot ahead of me and this will be the last time I book up more than 60% of my time. The reason it went a step too far was because my Mum wanted us to go to the Festival of The Iberian Horse as my beloved Pearl is a Portuguese Lusitano, with a long line of war horses behind her, not that you would ever think that if you met her. Pearl is an exceptionally slow moving being who fully leans into what it means to meander delightfully through life.

She is a very boring horse.

So on Thursday night I found myself in Westpoint, Exeter for the full dress rehearsal of the show. I had mixed feelings about this. While I understand why my mum wanted us to go and of course I wanted to spend time with her, my feelings around riding, competing and using horses as tools has dramatically changed over the years. I find it all deeply uncomfortable but that is a different conversation than this one. Or maybe it isn’t.

There was one part of the show where four horses came out, it was a parade and the owners could just freestyle around the arena doing whatever they liked. Three of the horses bounced excitably around the arena, their riders commanding them to perform. Ears pinned forward, tense necks and flared nostrils, everything about these horses felt anxious. I could practically smell their stress hormones. I haven’t been around horses in that state for a very long time.

There was one though, a beautiful buckskin Lusitano ridden by an older man. They were calm, relaxed, the horses ears flicking back gently towards its rider, an indication of presence and engagement. Its mouth was soft and they moved at a slow considered pace which is no small achievement in an unknown arena with 100s of people watching, harsh lights, a commentator and three other very anxious horses bouncing around.

‘That horse is the prettiest in there but it’s the most boring, what are they doing?’

I heard the people behind me say. They were laughing at the older man and his relaxed horse. I just thought how funny it was that they deemed that level of beautiful connection, trust and relaxation as boring. I smiled to myself, remembering a version of me who would have also found that incredibly boring.

I remember a version of myself who was addicted to drama, excitement and stress.

A year ago I was chasing drama. The thrill of hitting huge money goals by overworking myself, dating unavailable people, allowing narcissists in my orbit because of the thrill they gave me and involving myself in online dramas because of the dopamine hit from the comments section. I can list many other ways in which I distracted myself to avoid healing my destroyed nervous system. I had been in this state for a very long time.

I was the horse bouncing around the arena in a perpetual state of anxiety while everyone applauded because for some reason this state is something to strive for. We all seem to crave drama and excitement. I guess it makes sense if all we know is a constant state of stress. That beast needs to be fed, our entire capitalist system is built on that.

We love to fall in love with unavailable people, pedestal those we long to be like and then cancel them just as fast as we adored them and we unconsciously throw ourselves into social media witch hunts and soap operas, feeding off the drama. Our bodies in a near constant state of fight or flight. When we aren’t getting our drama hit I can almost guarantee we will create one. It’s a constant back and forth of self sabotage. It’s a form of theatre. The art of calm, safety and being slow and intentional has been lost to us in the age of individualism, information and choice.

When I first started training Pearl I worked with a what we will call a horse whisperer. Overnight at the age of nearly 2yrs old, Pearl became a hormonally charged and reactive young mare. Handling her made me an anxious mess. She would often barge me over, start rearing, charge around me. The more nervous I became the worse she got. So we needed some help. We worked with Mandy for many years. Her presence was always calm. Mandy worked on the belief that you could always make a horse speed up, get excited etc but it was far far harder and of more value to teach a horse to be calm, slow and well almost boring in any situation.

The most valuable tool Mandy gave me with Pearl was stand and be still. When you have half a ton of prey animal built to be sensitive to almost any disturbance this is the most powerful tool for safety. Pearl got to the stage where we could go almost anywhere and be in any highly charged situation and she could be stood in the middle of it all half asleep if I asked her to.

From the outside it looked dull I am sure but the level of trust, connection and presence required to do that is far from boring. It was a foundation. When I was working with Pearl at liberty I could move her with my breath and energy, we could go up and down as we pleased. None of this was a reaction and it was a space to play safely.

As she got older Pearl grew wiser. If I went into the arena with her while in a state of disembodiment she quickly deemed me unsafe and wanted very little to do with me. If I pushed from a place of frustration or expectation then I was punished and on occasion narrowly missed hooves to face. These days we don’t practise liberty work but when I visit the more grounded I am, the more she wants to be with me.

And this is the thing with life outside of horses. The more I heal, the more aware I become, the more I choose calm over drama and the less I find myself drawn to harmful people and situations. Secure people, true intimacy and rest used to terrify me even though I would tell people that is what I wanted. It’s what I spent a lot of money going to therapy trying to achieve, yet every time I found it, I would often reject it as boring.

It has taken me 4yrs of therapy, many many painful lessons, one psychedelic trip and an active & consistent commitment to my own wellbeing through daily practise to get into my boring horse era.

The space where I finally choose to have a regulated nervous system, where I don’t live in a constant state of reaction & performance and where I can stand and be still, anchored even through the most challenging periods. From here I can make healthy decisions, experience real joy, reject unhealthy people, maintain boundaries and most importantly be a safe person for those around me.

So if you ever get the joy to observe a boring horse, take a moment to relish in something that is truly grounded, something that doesn’t need to perform to be alive and the beauty of safety.