Domesticated horses retain the thought and behavior patterns of their nomadic ancestors. Interacting with these animals on their own terms encourages a fluidity of human thought, emotion, and behavior that sedentary twenty-first-century life makes difficult.  Horses also model the strengths of cooperation over competition, relationship over territory, responsiveness over strategy, emotion and in

tuition over logic, process over goal, and the creative approach to life that these qualities engender.

    Equine experiential learning, whether practiced formally with a trained facilitator, or informally with one’s own horse, first and foremost expands nonverbal awareness.  Internet relationships, computer games, cell phones, radios, and flashy multimedia encourage excessive reliance on language and surface appearances.  Modern humans are literally mesmerized by words, yet psychologists have determined that less than 10 percent of communication is verbal.  Vast nuances of information arise from behavior, emotional import, intent, and more subtle energetic exchanges, qualities so grossly downplayed in postindustrial society that people are losing their ability to function fully and authentically.  They tend to judge others, and sometimes themselves, as being good or bad, smart or stupid, trustworthy or suspect based on a few isolated experiences, their often unconscious prejudices and the opinions of peers.  Once this impression is formed, they become increasingly blind to what’s happening in the moment. 

                                                                                                    -Linda Kohanov,

                                                                                                    “Riding Between the Worlds”