The muse waits for us all–we need only look for a mane, a tail, and four hooves.
And there, in the silence, in the middle of the day, of the dark, slovenly winter,
the intense horses were the blood
and rhythm,
the animating treasure of life.
I looked.
I looked and was reborn: without knowing it,
there, was the fountain,
the dance of gold, the sky,
the fire that revived in beauty.
I have forgotten that dark Berlin winter.
I will not forget the light of the horses.
The young woman leans her back against the gnarled trunk of a hundred-year-old eucalyptus in a stand of trees we call the sacred grove on the hilltop of a thirty-five acre paddock. There are views in every direction: vineyards, forests, pasture, and rolling hills. It is as if all the world comes to exist in this one space and moment in time.
I hover in the background observing an unfolding exchange between two hearts. One belongs to the young woman. She has been coming to this place for months, excavating her soul in search of the root of her deep depression. The other heart is equine.
Over many sessions, we have been exploring the role of creativity as a means by which she may stretch out her hands and grasp some sense of joy or at least comfort in her life – but she’s not there yet. She has not been able to summon the courage to lift her hand from her lap, not once. Beside her is a closed journal, with a hard black cover, abandoned in the lush grass. There is also a packet of coloured pens – a rainbow of fine tips to create the words her heart so longs to speak.
But she is silent and still.
We are, however, not alone.
Ten horses live in this beautiful paddock. Each one of them brings a unique perspective to the art of healing.
The herd exists quietly nearby. Occasionally, a grazing head rises from a trail of sweet pasture to look at us, but our presence does not bother them. Our small chestnut pony wanders over, sniffs the air around her, and then moves on. An elder horse of more than thirty years makes her way towards the young woman. She becomes animated, pawing at the ground with her front left hoof. I cannot interpret. I don’t know what her message is – that is for my young woman to decipher, to feel. Together, they drop their heads, and then our old girl moves away.
Silence emerges over the landscape, and behind me, I hear the solid hoofprints of our large sixteen-hand thoroughbred. His name is Winter. He has had a blessed life, born in this paddock and never knowing a moment of trauma, unlike many of the other members of our herd. His nickname is Teddy Bear because his cuddly way with the world shows no shame in the positive expressions of emotion and love.
I take a step backwards. I have the sense that something important is about to be exchanged between Winter and the young woman. He walks over to her and places his nostrils on her forehead and exerts a loud exhale. I see her stiffen. He is large and looming over her, as she sits cross-legged on the ground. Part of me wants to intervene because there are safety protocols important in these moments, but I trust Winter and what he has to say, so I stay in my stillness. He flicks one ear towards me, and I know we have an understanding.
Winter nuzzles the woman on the arm as if to say, “What are you doing?”. I see her take a deep breath, but her hands stay still. Winter‘s lips quiver on her forearm. He shakes his head gently and sniffs the ground beside her. In one considered move, he flips the lid open on the packet of pens, and they scatter on the ground. He nudges one towards her knee. I see a faint smile curl in the corner of her mouth, but still her hands are motionless.
Winter takes another deep breath, his rib cage expanding to fullness and then softness. He paws at the ground and picks up the journal between his teeth. He drops it gently into her lap and then noses it open to reveal the plain, untouched pages inside. She places her hand slowly on his muzzle and gives him a little scratch, and he is satisfied – but only for a moment. He nudges again, and she can no longer hold her face stony. She starts to laugh, a shy giggle that blooms on her face and opens her up in a way we have not been able to accomplish for months.
With a trembling hand, she picks up a pen and starts to move her hand. However the lines make their way onto the page is okay – words or images – it’s all the soul speaking. I watch as she deftly creates a beautiful rendition of Winter’s head. I am breathless, tears are forming, and my heart is racing.
This is a pure moment of recognition – of what has just been given and received in this moment. I know because a similar foundational experience started me on my journey. Horses taught me how deeply involved the herd was prepared to be in my creative life.
I did not know how to truly write authentically until I found my place in the heart of the herd.
I have written more words in a paddock than I have at a desk. I spent years searching for ways to connect to my creativity – to dialogue with my muse – but it was the herd that showed me how. Horses reflect how to be fully present and live in a constant state of co-creation with life. After years of striving, I found the quietude of the herd opened a new doorway within my creative practice.
I have come to know the feeling of being in a herd as something akin to the state of presence we ascribe to flow state. Simply put, ‘herd state’ is flow state, that is, the feeling of being completely and utterly immersed in what you are doing, where time and space cease to exist.
Mihály Csíkszentmihályi first penned the term flow state within the framework of positive psychology, believing this to be both a necessary precursor and outcome of deep creative practice. It is this state that horses occupy as a natural place of being, and it is in our attention to the way horses live in their world that we find many clues to how we can enter that same state of immersive wonder.
Our muse perhaps has four legs, a wither, a mane, and a tail. The herd holds space for creativity in every moment of being alive and present. This is the source of wisdom we can tap, a muse that is available to us as we enter the realm of the paddock, but also as a state of grace that we can find within us wherever we are. As my favourite poet Pablo Neruda wrote, horses are “the animating treasure of life”.
We start where we are with a simple embrace of three concepts. The muse emerges when we:
Soften into the Slowest Part of the Self
A horse does not set goals, nor have a calendar marked out in increments of time. Horses only experience life in the moment. They do not know deadlines or demands, but simply exist as an open conduit of inspiration between the earth and sky. Their lives are not random but filled with purpose. We may not realise this unless we slow down and observe the herd for several hours and understand how they move together with a deep sense of wisdom as they graze across the land. This is a state of being that we can cultivate in our own hearts. We can embrace the softness that is our natural state, and put aside the agenda of doing. Creativity is an act, but it is not born from busyness or striving. Instead, we are better served by lowering our heads and dropping into a state of presence that horses know as truth.
Dropping our head lowers our adrenaline. Softness opens the part of us that is receptive to the creative pulse. Our strength is not in being bigger, or better, or holding our heads high, but in the softness of being that lets our resistances fall away and allows the muse to enter. The inherent softness of a horse is a symbol of our safety, of our capacity to notice, and of our willingness to surrender to something that we cannot always define.
Slowing in a culture of busyness can sometimes feel to be a slackening, or a giving up, but it is only in this rich field that we can live truly and authentically. Creativity is fed by the herd’s commitment to softness, and in this space, momentum finds its own natural rhythm.
Know the Beauty of Respect and Consideration
A herd does not mask when communicating. They afford each other the respect of direct words, offered with a sense of immediacy and clarity. The muse adopts a similar communication style, so when we can adopt these notions into our own giving and receiving of meaning, we can step closer to the source of our creative inspiration.
How often do we ignore a feeling inside that seeks our attention? How often do we explain away a sense as silliness or unimportant? Horses teach us that we need to bear witness to the verbal and non-verbal language that lives within us – the inner dialogue that has our back, just as the herd considers one another.
The herd offers us an insight into how we can fully live in a state of respect for ourselves, our community, and our creativity. By paying attention to the world around us and within us, we can learn how to live in a state of reverence and revelation. Our ability to consider the voice of the muse is a knowing that horses carry as a natural state. We carry this belief innately as well, but sometimes we first need to unlearn the lessons of our pasts that tell us our own wisdom is untrustworthy, or that we are too much or too little. The respect that ties a herd together, despite their differences, is that same energy that we need to harness in our inner worlds.
Seek Relief in the Ease
Creativity does not need to be difficult. We do not need to strive for a word count or even judge the outputs we create. There is no judgement when we stand in the presence of the herd, and similarly, our work flourishes in that same space of no judgement. This is often felt as a relief. We are free to function in the moment simply because. The horse doesn’t look for obstacles to doing exactly what they want to do when they seek to do it. In this way, they turn their attention in each second to the most important thing to them. Not tomorrow, not next week, just now. It is this purity of intent that makes them trustworthy and honest to their word. If the moment calls them to run, they embrace full expression and run; if the moment takes them to rest, they stand with soft eyes and simply let themselves be.
Coveting the muse is like finding your heart horse. While we can never own the sentience of another being, we can care for and elevate a relationship that is rewarding and real. This is the soft place of herd state we fall into, the relief that we seek in knowing our worth and the value of what we produce for the simple reason that we created it. Our practice knows an ease as it is fed by something beyond us, but uniquely within us. We sink our muzzles into the grass and blade by blade nourish the muse so that we, in turn, may also be nourished.
The horse as muse is resplendent in wisdom. It is a simple and authentic understanding of nature and the shared experience we carry when we settle and allow the herd to guide us. These knowledge gifts are continuous, incomparable, real, and life-affirming. Once known, they live inside the act of creation to serve your practice. I know this from my own lived experience, my metaphoric hooves dancing a pathway of words.
The herd state we seek is already seeking us.
I cannot tell you what happened to the young woman after she received such a wonderful lesson from Winter. She never returned for another session, and while I love the story of a turning point, it is not always that simple in a complex world. What I am left with personally is thankfulness for the opportunity I had to witness the immense power of horse wisdom in action. I know that she felt seen and heard in a way that will serve her at some point in her life – it does not have to be now. I am also reminded that horses also teach us about choice and the freedom we have to take on what they seek to share.
Creativity is an act of gentle patience, most of all with ourselves. If we imagine ourselves as horses, as the wild animals of instinct we already are, we can step into a sense of time and space that exists without clock time and without fear or hurriedness. This is the liminal space of the muse and a place we, too, can live in, if we choose.
This article was originally published in Equine Leadership: A Collection of Short Stories Sharing the Wisdom of the Horse. READ HERE
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