Seeking Equine Alchemy: Healing Horse Medicine.
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Horse, you are born from earth-dust, wanderlust and magic.
You drink your power from a cool stream, and hold the fire of the sun and the silver of the moon in your hearty chest. You fly. You carry our dreams to the heavens, and hold our soul-aches in your curved neck.
Dreamed Awake
She dreams of the sound of hoofbeats strumming dirt underneath her body as she sails through air. Time stops yet moves forward slowly with the muscle, the motion, the silence — except for his breath, her breath, his hooves pounding out the path.
She is awake. She feels the excitement building in her chest as she walks into a barn and hears his voice calling out, with pure, clear aliveness and knowing. That distinctive sound that only one creature on the planet can make — the variations in his voice as his throat shakes and quivers with each whinny. To hear the voice of a foal calling out is like witnessing heaven.
That sound comes from a place deep within, a memory. It vibrates in air and stays long after the actual sound is gone.
She breathes in the distinct smell of brown horse hair, his energy, his coat combined with air, dirt, sweat and God. She feels the hugeness of his heartbeats and her heart opens. She talks to him and prays to angels for his protection. She knows his lightness and his darkness. She knows he likes to use his weight to get his way sometimes, he demands things too. It is comical.
Most importantly, she respects his wild, wild soul. He looks into her eyes, really sees her, sniffs her scent, yet always looks beyond. His wild is his survival. He is fiercely strong, outrageously powerful, even in his gentle, leg-folded sleep. He dances.
Balance
Horses have big energy. Bring your troubles, your negative thoughts about your self, your struggles, your conflicts, your shadowy hatred of your current situation, to a horse.
And even if you don’t, even if you try to hide it and focus on all of the ways you are so perfect, so successful, so in control, a horse will mirror your emotions, your patterns, your behaviors back to you until you are left sitting in a paddock, kicking your angry boots at the world. They are reading you before you have even had time to hide your dark shadows.
They see in the bright of the sun and the dripping dark of the night.
So things have not been great and you are thinking you want some change? What the heck is alchemy anyway? I look at energetic alchemy as the ability to change or transmute heavy energy, old burdensome emotions or life blocks into something that is so amazing, so growth-producing that you look back thinking, “Why didn’t I do this sooner?” Because you are now walking around feeling different.
Feeling different in a good way. Are you game?
Well, with alchemy, with transformation, you first need to see what you are actually struggling with, what you are actually creating in your life. And for some reason, these big noble, magical horse creatures are just the right ones to show you. With our conscious minds, it is often nearly impossible to see the many ways we create our own destruction. It is maddening.
“Why would I want to sabotage myself?” Well, it’s really quite simple. We have had unmet needs. When we were children and we could not meet all of our needs, other people sometimes didn’t either. Sometimes they chose not to, sometimes they didn’t know the need existed, and sometimes they were abusive or caught up in their own unmet needs.
So, a part of us developed that tried to meet those needs, but it wasn’t always in the best ways for us.
The tricky part is that these things are so subtle, so guarded, so protected, that we cannot even see them in ourselves, except for tiny little hints that leak out sometimes, which are easy to push back inside and pretend they don’t exist, to pretend that they won’t escape into the light of day again. But I have found with mine, they always do.
They always wrangle out of my lockdown and expose me in some way, usually a way that I don’t like, that I don’t want anyone to see. Things like shame and guilt and anger and jealousy and sadness. And other bigger existential things like I am unworthy, unloved, invisible, too much, un-this, too-that.
But here is the good news and the bad news: Everyone else can see what you are blind to seeing in yourself, including horses, and all animals for that matter. Horses are not judgmental, so maybe it would be good to just go do some work with them. It’s a choice. It is always a choice. Do you want alchemy or not?
It’s a real question. Do you want change, or do you want to sit right where you are, pushing it down, pushing it out, pushing and pulling all of the time? I know there are layers to self-discovery. I am in a big period of that right now and it is not solved, it is not straight yet, in any way, shape or form, but I am going to keep working at it, until the alchemy, the learning occurs one way or another.
I will keep breathing and walking and working until the confused energy is transmuted to sheer power, power born of a horse’s heart.
Boundaries
Horses teach us boundaries. Part of the reason that they are so good at teaching this is that they are huge and they have no qualms about taking up space in the world. In a herd, you will see them move each other around with a touch of the nose or a kick. They have big feet. They must be given room to be who they are, but not so much room that they take advantage.
This is a fine line to learn with people, so it’s good to practice on something that makes it so obvious. Go up against 1200 pounds to learn boundaries, and people will seem like no big deal.
Horses also teach us boundaries within ourselves. You need to know your limit. You will know it quickly with a horse. They also show us that it is okay to share love, and carrots and apples, with those we love. They are sensitive, and have sensitive stomachs and individualized needs. So do we. What are you eating that is weighing you down physically, energetically, emotionally?
I have found that it is easy to be so careful with what I feed my horse and dog loves, yet equally careless with what I put into my own body.
Travel
Oh Horse, you cover so much ground. Horses have been instrumental, possibly the most influential animals, in human progress in the past centuries (okay, I love wolves too). The horses provided transportation, they sacrificed in so many ways, including on the battlefield and the farm field. They have amazing stamina. They have carried us on their backs and protected us in many ways.
Embrace their sense of roaming freedom in your own life. They have a wandering spirit. Horses can help us identify where we have stopped moving or ceased to explore. Where is it that you are longing to go? What are the blocks? Horse energy is fluid, and when you tune into it, you recognize that you also have the power to go anywhere your heart desires. So take the chance. Be brave.
Sleep
She dreams of falling asleep between sweet hooves, smelling the grass on his breath. She can’t explain this love, it has existed since before time began. It is in the soul. A longing, a memory, a shared vision. This ultimate respect for something so wild. She cannot explain how danger and empathy exist at the very same time in this magnificent horse’s eyes that always call her home.
Find a horse, go home, fall into his eyes. Heal your blood-soaked battle wounds. Find your sweet, sweet, delicate soul glow in the pulse of a horse’s undying spirit, and soar!
{Photo credit: Carol Biermann}
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Maura Coyne is a seeker, a dirty wild horse girl, and a lover of the passionate life. She practices hypnotherapy, equine therapy and energy/breathwork to assist others in removing the blocks and obstacles that often prevent them from moving forward on their life path. Teaching others to transmute the heavy and dark challenges that they face, by moving them into the light of creativity, strength and spirit, she is committed to healing herself along the way, and witnessing miracles in Nature. If you are interested in a little soul archaeology of your own, contact her at Wild Goose Farm, named for her patriarchal Coyne ancestral line. She aspires to continue going on wild goose chases for the rest of her time on the planet.
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