Parallel Effects Equine

I want to tell you about something I have watched happen more than once.

The session finds its pace and something starts to move in the client's body. Not dramatically. Just a shift or a softening somewhere. A breath that goes a little deeper than the ones before it.

One of the horses walks over. Then another. Sometimes all four find their way into the space around this one person, each of them attending to something different, each of them certain about where they need to be.

Not to the client's hand, extended in greeting. Not to the space in front of them where most human interaction happens. To the place in their body where the thing is held. A shoulder carrying years of tension it has never been able to put down. A chest that has been braced so long the person stopped noticing. A place in the back that has been quietly aching through every session they have ever sat in with anyone.

They just stand there. Touching those places.

Breathing.

The client usually goes very still. Sometimes they cry. Not the effortful kind of crying that comes from being asked to access something. The other kind. The kind that arrives on its own because something has finally been met that has been waiting a long time to be met.

I have also watched a horse refuse to engage with clients who are performing or hiding behind a mask. They also refuse to disengage when a client's mind was ready to move on before the body was ready. The horse stayed exactly where it was, at that place, with a patience and a certainty that I can only describe as knowing.

The body's process was not finished. The horse knew before any of us did.

I cannot fully explain this. I just know to trust it completely.

The horses know where the work is.

They always find it.