Your Words Are Useless

Rewiring myself to be a better listener and communicator

Mahalo for joining me once again, or for the first time, to read episodes of memoir and reflective essays. Although I ended my sequential memoir with 1997, I seem to have leaped over an invisible jump to land in the early 2000s when my serious adventures with horses as teachers began. Iʻm not intending to teach my readers how to train a horse (which in any event I would do quite differently today than the path I discovered in 2002) or even the principles of equine guided education. These stories are about how I learned some lessons that highly capable human spiritual and personal growth teachers had utterly failed to drive home in my studies with them. Not that they were incompetent - the stubborn resistance was entirely mine. The horses had better luck with me.

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Where I left off in the previous episode, I had accepted a mission to rehabilitate a previously abused Arabian mare and tame her daughter, a still-wild 6-year-old mare. The Arabian breed is known for their elegance and refined way of moving, their sensitivity, and their endurance. You donʻt want to get into an argument with one because they will outlast you! Arabian horses are also known for being people-oriented, with prized broodmares sleeping in the tent of their Bedouin owners. Somewhere inside these two skinny gray (most non-horse people would call them “white”) horses eyeing me with suspicion and disdain was an intelligent, loyal partner.

Two skeptical Arabian mares, daughter and mother.

Ironically, this was the breed I had fallen in love with as a child reading Walter Farleyʻs Black Stallion series, and Marguerite Henryʻs King of the Wind. The Universe had delivered up to me, not a shipwrecked black stallion or the neglected colt who would become the founding sire of the Thoroughbred breed, but two rescued fleabitten gray mares. My life was full of synchronicities leading me to important teachers and teachings. The foreshadowing and irony was not lost on me.

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I had found a book that offered a “natural” approach to horsemanship, working with the horseʻs nature using equine psychology and two-way communication rather than one-way directives backed by force or restrictive tools. I studied the principles. This communication was not going to be accomplished via an exchange of words, but with body language, posture and energy. I had been humbled by an experience of that the prior year, so I believed the horse would pay attention and respond to me with accurate feedback. I just needed to learn their language, since my words, my words of which I was and am so very proud, would be useless.

I could see that horses communicate through body language and “pressure” - which could be direct touch or energy/movement. When approached with a saddle, the older mare would pin her ears in warning. If that did not work, she would attempt to bite or stomp her feet threatening to kick - a more direct way to drive her “attacker” away through physical touch and movement. That part was clear enough to me.

What was mysterious was the bookʻs instruction that it was the timing of the release of pressure that would communicate to the horse that she had found the right answer. The further instruction was to reward the smallest try, and then begin again, asking for more bit by bit until the desired result was achieved. The horse would understand I was asking something, and when I stopped asking was how would I communicate “getting warmer” or “getting colder” until we shared an understanding about what I was asking. I grasped the principle but how the heck was I supposed to recognize the “smallest try”? And then I was supposed to make my request in phases, applying increasing pressure but only gradually as needed. What did those phases look and feel like, so I could stop escalating when I saw that elusive smallest try?

No amount of re-reading the instructions would help. I had to go figure it out by trial and error. No more learning with words about something. This was learning to do something.

On the one hand, we humans do communicate nonverbally all the time. But often we trust in words more than the non-verbal cues when they are at odds. Even more often (at least in my case), we are so focused on our own beautiful words that we keep talking and talking even after our point is made. Or we prepare our next utterance when we should just be listening. Horses do neither of those things.

The mare pinned her ears to ask me to step back. Maybe she even gave me a warning look before she flattened her ears if I was observant enough. If that was enough and I jumped backwards or even just froze in place, she would not bite. Quite the opposite, her ears would flick forward and she would appear calm. Everything was cool between us. As a human interacting with another human, my tendency was less measured. I would never just give a warning look or quiet word of warning before I started yelling and doing jumping jacks. Nope, I did not do phases. I would go right to HEY GET THE HELL BACK while wagging my finger in your face and stomping my feet.

And then there was that other revelation. Stop asking when you get what you asked for. What a concept! I have financial security. I WANT MORE MONEY! I have professional success. I WANT MORE RECOGNITION! I have love. BUT IT DOESNʻT LOOK LIKE THE MOVIES!

It reminded me of “Manchildʻs Dream,” a number in Carman Mooreʻs major multimedia work that I had co-produced at Lincoln Center Out-of-Doors, the Mass for the 21st Century. Manchildʻs balloon keeps inflating and inflating (I WANT MORE BALLOON!) until it pops and leaves him with nothing.

Initially this was not going to be about training the horses at all! To apply the principles with these sensitive mares meant I would have to find the elusive throttle inside myself. I was the one who would be retrained through learning to communicate with them. I would have to learn how to watch them carefully, beginning with
the “neutral” of a calm sensitivity and full attention, as I began to “ask” for a response, and then be able to drop or hold my energy steady and thereby communicate my observation and acknowledgement of the desired response. I might have to actually g-o s-l-o-w. Gradually the horses and I would use the nonverbal language we shared to build trust and a positive working relationship.

In the early 2000s I was making a living as a consultant and coach to leaders and small organizations, mostly not-for-profit ones. The implications of this “natural horse training” for humans leading teams and organizations were blowing my mind. I had told Ariana after my first experience with her that if she ever wanted to train people to do what she did with horses in helping people learn and heal and grow, I would sign up to study with her. Apparently the Universe heard me, but I had a preparatory course to complete before that happened.

Twenty-two years later Iʻm still deep in the graduate school version. Learning to listen and communicate well seems to be my lifetime learning program. Come back next week for more of my early adventures in learning.