Last week I went to see Nelson.  We are celebrating our one-year friendship anniversary.

Working with Nelson, one of the things that has eluded me pretty consistently is leading him.  He does not think that being led is a good idea.  And I don’t feel like trying to convince him of that with any kind of force is a good idea.

But last week, I set an intention to lead him.  As I got out of the car, I started to pick up the rope halter and lead, and then opted instead for a Tellington Balance rein – a piece of rope with a leather strap attached that can be buckled to create a circle.   After I groomed him, I got out the balance rein and looped it around his neck.  He was fine with that,  we have done that many times before.  I fastened it high on his neck so that about 18″ of strap was hanging down.  Then I started to walk, giving him a little tiny bit of pressure on the line as I stepped off.

To my astonishment, he started walking with me, nice as you please.  This was the day after my cat Musia died, so I was pretty tender.  I felt like crying.  We stopped and walked and stopped and walked and changed directions and wandered all over his six acre field.  No problem.

I realized that all the things I had been doing with him before had led to this.  We were practicing.  But there must have been some subtle piece that was missing – some imperfection in the practice and in my movement that didn’t tell him as clearly as I could have, THIS is what I would like us to do.

That day, I had a really clear picture of what I wanted.  I wish I could say I had no doubt.  That would not be true.   I had no expectation.  And I was OK if it didn’t work.  Practice doesn’t necessarily make perfect.  If you are practicing the wrong thing, or rehearsing the wrong state of mind, or forcing, no amount of practice will make that right.

The perfection that I practice with Nelson is this:  Our agreement is that if it is OK with him, we will go for it.  If it isn’t, we will not.  That doesn’t mean that we don’t try hard, and work through some initial resistance.  It does mean that we both have to feel successful and balanced at the end of our time together.  And yes, we do.

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I am not sure if he was meditating, but when I downloaded my pictures, there was this photograph of Nelson with his eye closed.  Over the months that I have known him, Nelson has become a pretty equanimous horse.  He takes things more in stride and I will often see him reading me – reading my movement, parsing what I am asking before responding.

My body has become more readable as well.  I can feel it as I get out of the car and assemble my equipment (gloves, fanny pack with treats, brushes, sometimes a halter).  Settling, breathing, feeling the rhythm and smoothness of my gestures.  I don’t have a particular agenda or plan.  Usually we review the things that we know (grooming, hoof lifting and picking practicing our movement cues.  Then, depending on how he feels to me (steady, nervous, curious, disinterested), we move into something new.

I recently heard about a competition called the Extreme Mustang Makeover.  Contestants have 90 days to gentle and train a wild Mustang.  To me that sounds like a lot of pressure on both horse and human.  It also sounds like doing things in human time, not horse time.

For me, the joy of Nelson is in taking my time and in building trust, friendship and understanding in slow, comprehensible steps.  One of the greatest gifts that horses can teach us is learning to be in horse time, which is not goal oriented or clock and schedule driven.  And, as Klaus Hempfling says, letting the horse come to me, not the other way around.

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When I first met Nelson, the almost formerly wild Mustang, he did not want to be touched.  He was nervous, and that made me feel nervous, and we did a strange nervous dance for quite a while.  Both of us prickly and alert, sympathetic nervous systems on orange.

I wish I could say that I found a magic key and that suddenly Nelson was easily touchable, but I did not.  What I did find was horse time.  Horse time is biologic, sometimes even geologic.  It does not have to do with any kind of human time measurement.  It has to do with listening and with waiting.

I got very good at waiting.  One day when I came to work with him, Nelson would not let me anywhere near him.  So I sat leaning against the fence for about 2 hours until he finally came close enough to get a treat.  I had a lot of time that day to think about taking that personally.  A lot of time to feel my impatience and what I assumed was my ineptitude.

The real thing that I have learned from Nelson is that if I listen and wait, he gives me everything.  And the lovely thing is that I have also found that to be true about myself.  If I listen and wait, then what I want unfolds and offers itself to me.  All in good horse time.

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Klaus Ferdinand Hempfling is the most beautiful man on or off a horse that I have ever seen. I do not mean “sexiest man alive” beautiful, but lovely in his ability to be with a horse – beautiful in the connection. His work with a horse on the ground is an extraordinary dance improvisation.  His movement is neither predator nor prey, but has a deep, grounded athleticism like a kind of running tai chi.

When I first saw this video (below), I thought how wonderful it would be to be able to run with Nelson, the formerly wild Mustang. So yesterday we went out into the big field and did our walking dance:  me asking him to move around me in a circle and then come back to me.  This is all at liberty, no halter or lead rope and in a six acre field.  Just small hand signals.  So far so good.

Then I  started running.  I wanted him to see me running, but not be afraid.  So I ran away from him.  He looked mystified, but not particularly alarmed.  I walked back to him and petted him, then I ran away again.  This went on for a bit.

Then I said, “OK, you run.”  I have been hesitant to ask him to run because in the past he would run AWAY and then our time together is finished for that day.  But this time he ran, head up, tail flagging, but with one eye on me.  And when I did that little signal with my hand by my side, he circled and came back.  We hung out together and then I asked him to run again.  And again he came back.

I am no Klaus, but I was pretty happy with that dance.  And Nelson seemed pretty happy too.  Two animals working  out together how to go and come back, how to run and be connected.  And all of that makes me a very happy horse dancer.

Here is the master:

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This morning when I was grooming Nelson, he rested his head on my shoulder and I could feel his soft breath on my cheek.  We stood like that for almost a minute in the cold January sun.

I have been working with Nelson on going away and coming back.  On being able to respond to hand signals to ask him to walk around me in a circle, change directions and then come back to me, turning toward me.

This may sound like no big deal, but it is.  He is saying “OK, I feel safe to come back to you.”  What I especially appreciate is that he is calm throughout.  Even when I asked him to move off more briskly (not on this clip), he was still not anxious.   How I can tell is that he settles immediately on a subtle hand signal.  He is more interested in reading my movement than getting upset. (I was not able to be so clear with my signals because of holding the camera.)

This is a yoga:  opening to more movement, more awareness, more attunement – one breath, one day at a time.  Laying down a path of trust and communication, in what feels like little improvisational dance phrases.

Did I mention that I love this horse?

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Today was a strangely, deliciously balmy December day in the Hudson Valley.  I went to see Nelson (the formerly wild Mustang) with some holiday carrots. He was very cuddly from the beginning, seeming to echo the softness and quiet of the day. Have I mentioned that I love this horse?

I have been asking him to move around me in a small circle, while staying calm and responding to the “go” signal from my hand and the “whoa” signal from my movement and my voice.  Today he was flawless when circling to the right, still uncertain to the left.

So I played with that by asking him to stay with the hard side, to keep trying.  And here’s the lovely part:  he allowed me to improvise more freely with changes of direction and with different kinds of cues than ever before.  My hand, my body, the lead rope, the wand, nothing seemed to really phase him.  It was as if there had been a quantum shift in his tolerance for new information – his ability to take it in without being frightened.

Even after I opened the gate of his catch pen out into the six-acre field, he stayed with me – no halter, no lead rope – moving smoothly around me to the right, and doing his best in the other direction. No running off, no spooking.  He wanted to continue the dance.

Everything about my work with Nelson during the past eight months has been an improvisation.  But the movement vocabulary was very small, very careful.  Now, our language is suddenly expanding:  new options, different choices, greater flexibility. A reservoir of trust. This new softness is deepening, penetrating, lasting from week-to-week.

This expanding relationship reminds me of the comparison of meditating to dipping a cloth into dye. For the first 100 times, the color will rinse away, but slowly, surely, the color starts to take and deepen.

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Yesterday I went to work with Nelson.  There is The Work, but the other part is that I go to Nelson because being with him is an immediate way to get happy and move into focus.

There had been snow so things were different.  Nelson was spookier than he has been for a long time.  The snow was falling off the trees onto the hood of my car making this random timpani sound which he found alarming (so did I).  For both of us the light was refracting differently, and the footing was sloppy and icy.  He allowed me to take the giant snow balls off his feet, and then we went to work.

I have been developing the work on Nelson’s left – the dark side – asking him to move on cue onto a circle going left so that his dark side is the one facing me.  When he circles to the right, his body is a smooth curve, and he moves comfortably – either close in to me or farther out, depending on how I have asked.  When he goes left, his body is straight as a plank, he doesn’t want to look at me and he is markedly more tense.  It is as if the cannot feel himself on that side.

The BLM freeze brands the captured Mustangs on the left side of their neck.  Given Nelson’s terror and ferocity at that time, I am sure that event was traumatic and violent at least.  Maybe that is why the dark side is so persistently dark.

The lovely thing was that after we practiced his a few times, he got quieter and calmer.  Not exactly soft, but I could see that coming.  That was when I hit a patch of slippery slush and made a shockingly disorganized predator movement.  Arms flung up for balance.  He took off.  After a few moments, he came back and we went on.  That is the very beautiful part of developing a long relationship with a horse.  There is a foundation of trust, a language of ask and answer that let’s us slide seamlessly back into the work and the relationship.

Here are some of the things I have learned from Nelson.  These are lessons that spill into my writing, my choreography, my mothering.

• the importance of consistency
• how to go slow
• how to build the work incrementally
• how to begin again
• the meaning of love

The last one is probably the most important.  There is nothing like stopping to take in the sun, the trees, the hills while standing next to a creature that is choosing to be there, to be next to you in that breathing moment.  Today my stallion Capprichio put his nose on my neck and stood like that, just breathing for about two minutes.  Bliss.

postscript:  I am teaching an online class called Breaking into Blossom:  Moving into an Improvisational Life starting on January 23.  If you register before December 23, the price is $75.  On Christmas Eve Day it goes up to $100.

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A couple days ago I asked how you dance with chaos.  This is my answer.

When I am in horse time, I find a way out of the chop and current of chaos and into calmer waters.  When I am with a horse, and especially this one, the lovely Mustang Nelson, I can’t be anywhere else.  He will know.  And so will I.

Horse time is a good metaphor for breathing time, for feeling your feet on the ground, noticing where your spine is and spreading yourself into the fullness of the moment.

What is your horse time?

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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.

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