Sensitives: Cassie Chooses Me
Soon after beginning to communicate consciously with animals, I read Linda Kohanov’s seminal books on equine consciousness, “The Tao of Equus” and “Riding Between the Worlds.” In these books, she describes witnessing how horses chose certain people with whom they felt a resonance, and the ensuing emotional connection that those humans demonstrated during the session with the horse. My own experience with Springer and Allie illustrated this pattern.
Still new to how communicating with animals worked, I met Nanci Beyerl, a Social Worker and horse lover who turned her passion for helping people and horses into a sanctuary for at-risk and slaughter-bound equines called Peaceful Acres Horses in Pattersonville, NY, not far from where I lived.
Nanci soon gave me carte blanche to visit the horses in her care. I would drive up her long driveway to the parking area opposite the barn and let my intuition guide me to a corral or stall, and wait for a horse to catch my attention. Sometimes I came in response to Nanci’s asking me about particular horses. I loved all of it. Having permission to wander among, touch, and commune with these magnificent beings I had loved all my life was a great blessing.
I attended a few sessions in which Nanci helped her clients relate to horses selected for their ability to serve therapeutically.
As I watched the first session, Nanci explained that a horse will not relate to someone who is emotionally incongruent, not owning their authentic set of feelings.
The two horses in the indoor arena that evening were Cassie, a bay mare, and Pokka, a Paint gelding. There were two of us there to learn how – as if by magic – we could, by focusing simply and truthfully on being in the moment with our whole consciousness, get the horse to “join up” with us. We both got the horses to follow us, one at a time, in turn, around the arena, eventually engaging in what looked – and felt, I discovered – like a dance, without any physical connection: no halter or lead, and no hands on the horse.
A third participant, Mary, arrived late, flustered. She took her place in the arena and made a visible effort to calm herself in order to attract Cassie’s attention. Cassie seemed somewhat interested initially but didn’t follow Mary. Frustrated, Mary trudged across the arena to join us, and complained dejectedly that she had been having a rotten day and that she had known she wouldn’t be able to get the horse to join up with her. As soon as she began speaking, the bay mare walked to her, touched her nose to her shoulder, and walked away.
“See?” Nanci said, “Now you’re being authentic. Before, you were hiding what you were really feeling, and Cassie knew it. She just walked over to acknowledge that now you’re in sync with yourself. And that’s what you’ve got to be in order to relate in this way with the horses.”
I was amazed. I had never encountered anything like this. Ten years before, when I started creating Lightspeak Energy Portraits, I learned to open my heart – a necessary act in order to create the Energy Portraits – by practicing with horses. I have always loved horses, and whenever I could would pull the car over to the side of the road wherever there were horses nearby. I’d stand at the fence and wish that they would come over and say hello. They seldom did. When I realized I had to open my heart chakra as the primary perceptual organ to create Energy Portraits, I approached the horses differently. I would stop the car, walk toward the fence, and carefully focus my physical energy flow toward the horses. I would close my eyes and imagine a hinge which could open my heart as a gate opens into a garden. I would picture that heart gate opening and through that opening, I would imagine light flowing out of my heart. It began to happen that when I opened my eyes, one or two horses were at the fence looking at me. It was marvelous. I had found a gate to wonder.
That evening in Nanci Beyerl’s indoor arena, the gate opened as Cassie, a horse I had never met, chose me. The dances of my shy teenage wallflower years lost their power to shame me in the moment Cassie trotted to stand in front of me and waited for me to take the first step in our dance together.
