What is the spiritual role of animals in our lives?

As a Practitioner and a student of Metaphysics for the past 20 years the subject intrigued me. I have personally kept a herd of horses for 18 years (we now have 9).

I noticed that when I was around my horses I felt relaxed and healed. I now truly believe that Nature, in the purest sense, will become the next modality of healing

Before we are able to connect with the horse’s higher self we had to clear away ( in both horse and human) all the blocks from the past that were causing mistrust, fear, confusion etc.  Many of the horses came with a lot of baggage. In some cases it took years to gain their trust .

By empowering them they could then reclaim their true spirit

During my practice as a Naturopath I saw that animal patients who were being treated often carried issues or similar physical symptoms to their human. After studying Energy and working with my horses I began to understand this phenomena, that we are all connected by this intuitive/instinctive 6^th sense and that they were here to aid our healing, not only emotionally but physically and spiritually too. We gained insight to create programs to then help others.

Built on a foundation of unconditional love we now have an awesome team of teachers.

The Age of Pieces represented duality. Right /wrong, win / loose, head/heart, life/ death, me against you and competition. These are the old programs, as we enter Aquarius the energy changes to that of Oneness ie. co-operation, teamwork. Community and communication .

We must leave the old programming where we were safe "in our heads", and move into the Aquarian energy and learn how to feel safe being "in our hearts".

How can I give something away without feeling a sense of loss myself (Pieces). How can I let you be right without me being wrong? The key is in understanding and identifying where the true self lives , where energy (power, will) comes from and then learning how to integrate it into our relationships. This true power comes from the Solar Plexus which then connects to the heart centre.

Too much negative power plays out as anger and aggression etc. whereas with too little we become powerless "I wish I had said this/that". We often only see our imbalance of power by the reaction we get from the other person, which may be quite unpleasant.

Our potential for empowerment is directly governed by HOW WE FEEL ABOUT OURSELF. Unfortunately we have all judged ourselves from the wrong set of standards which we now need to reassess.

To understand how to achieve this balance (empowerment) we need to learn how to merge left-brain / right brain function. WE NEED TO USE OUR LEFT-BRAIN SOLEY AS AN INFORMATION GATHERING CENTRE AND THEN GO TO OUR RIGHT BRAIN INTUITIVE CENTRE FOR INSPIRATION ACT.

Enter the Horses

Facing my 2 strong willed young horses every morning was a real challenge. I needed to have willpower, courage and determination. They pulled me up to a level that enabled me to face anything the day had in store. All this was achieved doing groundwork.

I could not hide my spiritual potential from them. Together with a colleague we have now managed to create interactive programs with horses (groundwork) to help Adults and children empower and enrich their lives.

The mirroring effect of animals

By interacting with the horse we can see and understand areas in our lives that are not working for us. The horse mirrors back to us our shortcomings, enabling us to address these issues in a fun, non-threatening environment.

Just as Martial Arts was developed by observing the stances and movements of the animals, so too, the discipline of "Holistequine" was created after observing the finer interactions and social structure of our equine friends Given no human interference horses live within a totally functional social family structures.

For healthy social development we need to interact with "others" in our lives, ie. Partners, friends, family pets etc. These others ideally teach us to trust, develop and grow by mirroring back and giving us feedback, not only on positive behaviour but also on behaviour that is not appropriate, ideally from this feedback we correct any dysfunctional behaviour. Holistequine has developed these programs to utilise the horse as the " other ". Animals seem to be able to do this mirroring without us feeling threatened.

There are hundreds of self– help books, seminars and courses, helping us find peace and harmony in our lives and most are very helpful, however we found that when we take in information through our senses (hearing and seeing), the information is only absorbed at the intellectual level. We then need to act on it By working with the horses in these programs it becomes experiential, that is, we actually integrate the experience energetically so that it then becomes part of "who we are".

We then seem to know the information at some deeper level.

Meditation, music, the arts and nature all take us to the level of Alpha. Because this is the natural state of the horse he helps us to relax and de-stress ourselves. We teach ourselves to recognise this Alpha state and eventually " to become " this state.

The horse, remember, interacts within his herd by reading energy. When we start working with him he interacts with us by reading our energy, he can see blockages in our energy field and reacts to them. These energy blocks (negativity) are caused by our emotional state ie. Low self-esteem, anger, lack of confidence, guilt etc. Imagine a light globe (100 watts) as our birth spirit potential, then, as we grow up every negative emotion we believe about ourselves dims the glow just a little. Being told that we are stupid, lazy, useless etc. all have a negative effect on our "globe" and as we grow up our light diminishes to only about 60 watts, or less) this "Wattage" reference point is now used by our practitioners as a gauge or "energy meter" .to measure self-esteem . Together with Kinesiology we then work with this meter to correct our self-image.

We see "Holistequine" as a preventative, fun, Holistic approach to healing at the level of body, mind and spirit. By meeting the needs of the body at the emotional/mental level we correct and heal any dis-ease before it presents in the physical body. This is preventative medicine

Children's Equine Assisted Therapy and Bullying

The horse as a natural bully, enables him to find his functional place within the herd. For the horse this is a "positive" because working together means survival. Once again after years of observation the horse has shown us what is fair and appropriate behaviour in these situations and how we can re -create the energy dynamics and understand this " bullying" to help us form healthy social interaction ourselves.

The horse (except when in fight or flight) does not have the Pieces programming of duality, you against me, competitive mentality. Working together with strong fair leadership, to the horses, is a matter of life or death. They have always worked with Aquarian Energy.

Like horses, humans are social beings with our human offspring needing to be taught how to use energy constructively. The stronger child will always test himself against another, here the other is the horse, not a kid at school, and because of the horse’s natural ability to dispense justice based on positive qualities like fairness, trust, honesty self esteem the child too learns appropriate interaction.

After observing our horses over many years we noticed that the elders of the horse families do not wait until the younger ones do something wrong, the elders never lose focus or drop their guard and are always conscious catching negative behaviour before it happens.

Bullying, like the pecking order of animals involves dumping anger and frustration on the next weaker individual. In our experience children do this because they do not know how to express themselves properly or no one is listening to their needs. As they cannot pinpoint what is troubling them they dump on others. The children here work with the horse doing a series of ground tasks until the problems are resolved. Somehow the horse managed to reverse or absorb this negativity.

After working with our children’s programs for 5 years we saw some amazing developments. Parents were giving us feedback on the positive changes they saw in their children.

In these classes children learn how to recognise their level of self worth They learn that how they feel about themselves influences their energy field which then determines how others act toward them. In this work the children must earn everything they get from the horse, this inturn builds their confidence, teamwork skills, concentration and trust. The children are not only taught to recognise and listen to their inner self and to become their own authority, but also to then use their new found power wisely.

Empowerment requires believing in yourself, that is, your higher Self (the connection to Source). We achieve this by learning to trust our intuition. The horse knows only to trust his.

Equine Assisted therapy uses the horse as a role model to change dysfunctional behaviour patterns in Adults and children and is fun and non threatening ..........see our products page for more information about all of our online horse courses