Monthly Archives: August 2011

Open heart, open life

I have had this quotation from Alice Walker floating around on my computer forever.  time to share it.

“Hearts are there to be broken, and I say that because that seems to be just part of what happens with hearts.  I mean, mine has been broken so many times that I have lost count.  But it just seems to be broken open more and more and more, and it just gets bigger.  In fact, I was saying to my therapist not long ago, “You know, my heart by now feels like it has just sort of dropped open, you know, like how a big suitcase falls open.  It feels like that.”  Instead of that feeling of having a thorn through your heart, that feeling [Buddhist teacher] Pema Chodron talks about in tonglen meditation, you have a sense of openness, as if the wind could blow through it.  And that’s the way I’m used to my heart feeling.  The feeling of the heart being so open that the wind blows through it.”

Alice Walker, Shambhala Sun, January 1997

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Nelson

Nelson is a wild Mustang culled by the Bureau of Land Management that I have been working with for several months.  He has gone to a horse that could not bear to be touched, to a horse that is learning a new vocabulary of touch with humans.

Here I am with Nelson first thing in the morning. Happy boy. Happy me.

 

Improvisation Life

Ingrid Schatz, who has danced with me for the past 15 years, told me of a recent study showing that movement improvisation has been shown to be the greatest antidote to dementia!  Nearly four years ago I lost my mother to Alzheimer’s disease, after eight years of losing her piece by piece in excruciating increments.  I wonder what might have been different had I engaged her in some kind of movement play.  Improvising turns on the brain’s circuitry, creating new pathways and connections.  Improvising, we don’t now where we are going, we are traveling through time and space without a map, following the wild and ragged heart of the body.  Horse Dancing at its best, really.  The continual, present-centered, unfolding bodily conversation with yourself, a horse, a lover.  A way to get unstuck from the rote, the habitual, the usual.  Try this:  take five minutes sometime today and lie down in a quiet spot and just let your body move in any way that it wants.  Little, big, fast, slow – doesn’t matter.  No editor, no instructor, no judge.  Listen to the body.  Let it speak.

The Kind Horse

Some horses in my life have a generosity of spirit that makes them particularly precious to me.  My Andalusian stallion Capprichio is one.  The Mustang stallion Nelson is another.  The glorious Friesian, Sanne, is another.  These horses seem to have time to just be, to stand with you, to ask nothing.  Just share breath and space.  I think it has to do with a certain confidence that they share.  Other horses can nudge and fidget – want to know what is next or why are you there.  I find myself drawn to these three because there is a sense of kindness and wholeness about them. Moments spent with them – grazing, standing, stroking, even training – are healing, calming, deeply refreshing.  Horse peace.