Using the Information my Feelings Provide to Make a Change in Gunny
A huge piece of this course (From Your Horse's Heart by Jenny Pearce) that I started to talk about in the last post is to learn to notice your feelings and to act on them to improve your relationship with your horse. Jenny is teaching us that our feelings are there for a reason. They are a message from our gut, our higher self, our intuition, our soul--whatever you want to call it. The reason that our feelings get uncomfortable is because they are getting bigger/louder because we haven't gotten the message. Our feelings are not meant to make us miserable. Exactly the opposite. They are there to provide us a message that we need to listen to in order to achieve what it is our soul wants for us. And once we get the message and intend to act on the message, the feelings go away.
I have used this information to help me with Gunny at feeding time. Gunny has been known to look less than happy about his grain being delivered to him. Since starting the course, I have learned how to listen to the tiny little nigglings that something is "not quite right", as Jenny calls it. For me, the nigglings are a little flutter in my solar plexus area. If I am paying close enough attention to hear that little niggling, I then pause in my approach with the grain and wait for a feeling of relaxation to come back. For me, that is usually a deeper breath. Then I resume my approach, while still listening internally, and go about my grain delivery duties. By doing this, I am now able to approach Gunny with grain and he is happy and relaxed about it at the same time.
This is a huge change for us. In the past I had tried to retreat when I saw the unhappy expression. But it would continue to happen time after time. (Remember how I said that our feelings get louder and persist because we didn't get the message.) The little fluttery feeling happens when Gunny still looks fine. So the trick was to learn to listen to what was happening inside instead of paying attention to what the outward picture was.
I have used this information to help me with Gunny at feeding time. Gunny has been known to look less than happy about his grain being delivered to him. Since starting the course, I have learned how to listen to the tiny little nigglings that something is "not quite right", as Jenny calls it. For me, the nigglings are a little flutter in my solar plexus area. If I am paying close enough attention to hear that little niggling, I then pause in my approach with the grain and wait for a feeling of relaxation to come back. For me, that is usually a deeper breath. Then I resume my approach, while still listening internally, and go about my grain delivery duties. By doing this, I am now able to approach Gunny with grain and he is happy and relaxed about it at the same time.
This is a huge change for us. In the past I had tried to retreat when I saw the unhappy expression. But it would continue to happen time after time. (Remember how I said that our feelings get louder and persist because we didn't get the message.) The little fluttery feeling happens when Gunny still looks fine. So the trick was to learn to listen to what was happening inside instead of paying attention to what the outward picture was.
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