<![CDATA[ HorseDream - Blog]]>Mon, 27 Apr 2026 23:51:21 -0400Weebly<![CDATA[How to bring the heart back into your business]]>Tue, 11 Apr 2017 12:30:00 GMThttp://www.horsedream.ca/blog/how-to-bring-the-heart-back-into-your-business
It is true that there is room for strategy and planning within the confines of a business. But there is also room for heart, and that comes forward when we accept the present moment we are in and the work we do together.
Engaging in equine assisted learning as a business exercise is a challenging concept for many of the people who arrive for HorseDream.ca programs. There are two dominant emotions always present, even if the clients hide them well.

One is a love of horses and the other is a fear of horses. Sometimes the two are combined and that is even more difficult for the person about to engage in an exchange with a horse or horses.

They are nervous. Sometimes, if they are unfamiliar with horses, they are really intimidated by the size of the horse. Often they are cynical about the expected outcomes of the program. They may have been sent rather than willingly volunteered to engage with us. They think they have been trained by the best professors at the best universities. What could a large animal calmly staring at them across a field teach them?

In many cases companies send whole teams of workers in the hopes that the experience will help them work better together and put some much needed “heart” back into the business. The supervisors confide in me that while they have effective teams who are used to getting jobs done, they feel sometimes as if they are just going through the motions and have lost the passion for the vision of the company.

What’s wonderful about interacting with horses, is that there is no “one size fits all” response to it. It’s deeply personal, and the impact is so profound that it stays with the participant long after a normal classroom trainer’s words are forgotten.

Scientists documenting exchanges between horses and humans have discovered that we are calmer and more centered when we are with horses. Our focus is keen and when the connection is made, the human feels it more profoundly than they could ever have imagined.

Horses can bring heart back to our companies by teaching people about themselves and making their offering clearer. For example, we may think that we are a natural, instinctive leader, but the horse may show us we are not. We may consider that our intent is communicated clearly, but we may be causing confusion instead. We may think our vision is clear, but a day spent with horses teaches us we are really quite uncertain.

Through our interactions with horse, we become more open and honest when we return to our workplace. We are a little braver in tackling our problems and willing to demonstrate both emotion and humility. We have just figured out that we don’t have all the answers, but that within our team, or our “herd,” we can find them. We are more conscious of striking the right tone in our communications as we recognize that our spoken word does not convey our entire message. We recognize the role of failure in the struggle for innovation and creation and accept it without the harsh judgment we once reserved for it. We not only bring back a renewed sense of our work value within our company or organization, but also within ourselves.

In short, we go back with new skills and new heart and that renews and invigorates our workplace. We have purpose and a clear route to our destination.

HorseDream Canada, founded by Susan Wilson, provides high impact, quality leadership and team development experiences for individuals, teams, leaders and companies. It is part of an internationally renowned Horse Assisted Education Program proving transformative learning experiences around the world. HorseDream Canada is a division of I DO BUSINESS. Inc., a social purpose business. For more information, contact us at info@horsedream.ca. Watch for our new book, Leadership 93/7 coming soon!
]]><![CDATA[Are you throwing your life away at work?]]>Thu, 06 Apr 2017 12:00:00 GMThttp://www.horsedream.ca/blog/are-you-throwing-your-life-away-at-work
Our true vocation in life, as Parker Palmer so aptly put it, is not answering a calling “out there” that demands we be something we are not. It is from our inner voice, calling us to be the person we were born to be.
The world is full of people marking big black “Xs” through days that are done as they wait for their retirement to begin. They fell into working in a job they didn’t like from the beginning and progressed to working in a job they absolutely hated as time went by.

They have a lot of reasons for throwing their lives away in work they don’t find interesting or fulfilling. There are the realities of feeding a hungry family, the failure to have other options at different times and places in our lives, and our fear of leaving and giving up what little security we believe we have.

​One of the most beautiful things about equine assisted learning programs such as HorseDream is the way they allow people come to grips with the idea of re-engaging with their work or making the decision to go down a different career path when they suddenly gain the insight that it is not working for them.

All of us need to work to have the financial means to sustain ourselves, but work also fulfills other needs, like giving us purpose, fulfilling our passions and permitting us to use our talents. When our work does not do anything more than sustain us financially, we soon grow weary of it and long for something more. Sometimes it is only when we re-discover ourselves through time spent with horses that we realize which parts of the work equation are missing from our lives.

One of the most beautiful things about equine assisted learning programs such as HorseDream is the way they allow people come to grips with the idea of re-engaging with their work or making the decision to go down a different career path when they suddenly gain the insight that it is not working for them. Horses don’t care what you do for a living. They do not judge you if you have been passed over for promotions or if you have ended up in a role that you hate and are doing it badly. They know only how you are treating them in the moment and whether what you say to them and encourage them to do is in sync with what you feel on the inside.

If they sense a disconnect between your emotions and your actions, they will not respond to you. Instead, they will continue to do what they were doing before you arrived, or they will merely walk or run away from you. You cannot put on a front with an animal that sees so clearly into your motives and intentions. You cannot fool the horse into believing you are a leader because your business card says that you are. The horse will decide if he will remain the leader, or if he will follow you.

Taking our lives and breaking them down into such a simple equation is vital when we are adults. Sometimes it is the only clue that we get that we are throwing away most of the days of our lives on a job we don’t like or aren’t suited for. It is up to us to deal with the insight when we receive it. But just knowing that something about us is not authentic is a good impetus for small changes, which may ultimately lead to large ones.

It is almost impossible for one person to advise on another person’s life without some element of judgment entering into the exchange. But the purity of the feedback we receive from horses surpasses the petty comparisons of our life with theirs, it surpasses their set of cultural or value beliefs, and it comes out as it is, now in this moment.

We can take it or leave it. The horse is unconcerned. If we take it, we can change our lives forever. If we leave it, we will still have planted a seed somewhere within us that will take root and spring to life unexpectedly in the future.

HorseDream Canada, founded by Susan Wilson, provides high impact, quality leadership and team development experiences for individuals, teams, leaders and companies. It is part of an internationally renowned Horse Assisted Education Program proving transformative learning experiences around the world. HorseDream Canada is a division of I DO BUSINESS. Inc., a social purpose business. For more information, contact us at info@horsedream.ca. Watch for our new book, Leadership 93/7 coming soon!
]]><![CDATA[You can't change people, but you can change their attitude]]>Tue, 28 Mar 2017 13:30:00 GMThttp://www.horsedream.ca/blog/you-cant-change-people-but-you-can-change-their-attitude
As Dr. Wayne Dyer puts it, “when we change the way we look at things, the things we look at change.”
Unless a horse is being bothered, it is rarely stressed. It stands calmly, conserving energy in case a run from a predator might be needed at some point. It doesn’t regret what happened yesterday or worry about what might happen tomorrow.

When a person approaches the area where a horse is, the horse is extremely perceptive about the emotions of the intruder. It is sometimes said that horses can “smell fear,” but in fact it is all emotions that they can sense deeply.

If you try to lead them but your intentions are conflicted, they will not comply with your wishes. If you try to approach them but your outside actions do not match your inner emotions, they will also pick up from that and shy away from you.

In that sense, a horse is the ultimate natural feedback tool. If you want to know whether you think you have changed or whether you have really changed, re-engage with the horse and he will let you know. In this sense, a horse is an effective teacher. The horse cannot make you into something that you are not, but it can push you to change your attitude and become who you really are, instead of someone masquerading as you. That is the essence of what makes equine assisted learning programs like HorseDream so effective.

Genuine communication between a horse and a person is a tremendously self-healing experience. It strips away our pretenses and allows us to see who we really are. It shows us, often for the first time as adults, the differences between who we are and who we think we are. When the communication is open, bare and honest, we go to a place where we are finally willing to abandon what is not working for us without remorse or blame or self-criticism. We finally accept what is instead of what we want it to be. That is a tremendously freeing experience, and the foundation for new personal growth. We no longer have to pretend.

Working with clients at many different stages of their lives has taught us how life-changing this experience can be. Once people tap into their authentic self, the revelation can be staggering in its impact. We have seen people walk away from what others perceive as “top jobs” to return to a skillset that they love and which gives them genuine joy. We have watched people re-examine their relationships with others on their team, and being to understand why certain behaviors and assumptions were blocking progress. We have seen people break down and be overwhelmed with the self-insight that flooded into them, while others have walked away amazed at how a beautiful creature who could not even communicate in their language could have stripped away the barriers and discovered who they really are.

When we know who we are, real change can happen if we desire it. It begins with our attitudes and perceptions of our world, and it grows from there. Unlike learning as a child, which is aided and guided by the adults in our lives, learning as an adult is wide-open world that starts to make sense for us again, one aspect at a time.

HorseDream Canada, founded by Susan Wilson, provides high impact, quality leadership and team development experiences for individuals, teams, leaders and companies. It is part of an internationally renowned Horse Assisted Education Program proving transformative learning experiences around the world. HorseDream Canada is a division of I DO BUSINESS. Inc., a social purpose business. For more information, contact us at info@horsedream.ca. Watch for our new book, Leadership 93/7 coming soon!
]]><![CDATA[How to find yourself through horses]]>Wed, 22 Mar 2017 15:00:00 GMThttp://www.horsedream.ca/blog/how-to-find-yourself-through-horses
From the time we enter day care, the process of disconnecting our inner beings from our natural intuition begins and we are encouraged to replace emotional responses with logic. In the process we lose ourselves.
What some call training, others call conditioning. Either way, we all undergo it as the years pass.

From the time we are young, we are taught to suppress our natural emotions. “Don’t be a cry baby,” we are admonished. “You must not be angry,” “don’t yell,” “share your marbles with your friends,” and other advice comes from parents and caregivers to remind us to build a strong shield between ourselves and our natural emotions.

So even though our instinct is to cry because we have fallen and it hurts, even though we are angry because someone has done something mean to us, and even though we want to keep our marbles all to ourselves, we comply. We do not instinctively like a person or a situation, but we are encouraged to get over that and interact with someone or engage in an uncomfortable situation as part of our learning process.

We feel one way inside ourselves, but when we are taught that certain emotions are not conducive to getting along with others, we either accept that change and go with it, or we begin to operate by feeling one thing on the inside and practicing a completely different thing on the outside.

In many instances, this is constructive and encourages us to grow past our natural comfort zone and to see that social skills are needed to function creatively in our world. We grow and adapt and find our place in a broader world, finding our courage and honing our sense of adventure.

But when it pushes us too far in an attempt to mold us into a being that is not what we are meant to be, we become too far removed from the person we want to be and the exercise can cripple us emotionally and intuitively. We can end up in roles we were never meant to play in life. We can find ourselves doing things that do not necessarily match our skillset or calling. When we become too disconnected from our intuition and our emotions, we can find ourselves in a state of perpetual conflict.

Working and being in close proximity with horses through equine assisted learning programs like HorseDream can help us unlock the doors to our inner selves and begin a readjustment process.

The horse, who has no judgment about our emotional hang-ups, just takes us as we are. If it senses we are confused and at odds with our authentic self, it will send that feedback to us loudly and clearly by refusing to do what we ask. Like a mirror to all that we have hidden deep in our souls, it will shine it out and reflect it back to us through its own actions.

It is important at some point as adults to get out of our heads and back into our hearts to see what is really there. With the wisdom we have gathered over the years, we need to go back and reconnect to our authentic selves. We need to forgive ourselves if our feelings are not what others think they should be. We need to find confidence that what we sense is accurate and enlightening and gives us wisdom, just as much as the conditioning and courage we have summoned. We need to rediscover how we think and how we feel and how closely it is linked to our authentic personality. We have to figure out why we are worthy of trust and what we can do to convince those we lead to follow us. We learn that by allowing the horse, without pretense, to strip our souls bear and beam them back to us.
​
If the horse will not follow us, or let us lead it, we have clearly confused it or failed to gain its trust. If it ignores us, we have not connected at any authentic level with it. If it runs away from us, it is not accepting our leadership, and we must look deep to determine what we are missing. When our inner actions match our outer actions, we sense the horse accepting us, and we know we have found our inner self again with its help.

HorseDream Canada, founded by Susan Wilson, provides high impact, quality leadership and team development experiences for individuals, teams, leaders and companies. It is part of an internationally renowned Horse Assisted Education Program proving transformative learning experiences around the world. HorseDream Canada is a division of I DO BUSINESS. Inc., a social purpose business. For more information, contact us at info@horsedream.ca. Watch for our new book, Leadership 93/7 coming soon!
]]><![CDATA[leading with minimal pressure]]>Mon, 13 Mar 2017 15:00:00 GMThttp://www.horsedream.ca/blog/leading-with-minimal-pressure
When you are a leader, the greatest accomplishment is to learn how to use just enough pressure to create the movement you need, and avoid over-extending your force and your reach.
You will never have physical power over a horse. But, you can gain mental power.

The secret with horses, as it is with people, is to learn to exercise the minimal amount of pressure needed to get them to move when you want them to and in the direction you want them to go.

There are many fine qualities that are part of the personality of a horse, but they don’t all lend themselves to being easy to lead. For example, under most conditions, a horse’s preferred action is just to be left alone. They won’t stand there and plot to take your job or court your affections to take advantage of you. They are largely indifferent to you, and there is a great honesty in that. But if you want to take control of them, they will challenge you and push your boundaries just to test you and see where it goes.

In your relationship with the horse, it will not really be equal. Either you will lead the horse or the horse will lead you. The beautiful part of this is that the horse doesn’t really care. It moves into the relationship with an open mind. It will take its cue from whether or not you are authentic. If you attempt to convey one message with your movement and voice, but the horse senses a different and conflicting message inside, it becomes confused and will not comply with your wishes.

When you are leading a horse or riding a horse, if you have power over that horse, you can proceed with the reins slack. The horse will understand the destination and proceed surely and with certainty in the direction you lead it. But if you hold the reins too tight and want to go first one way and then another, the horse becomes uncertain about what you want and may refuse to move at all. Either that or it will go where it wants. Sensing a discrepancy, or constrained by confusing commands or too tight a rein, the horse will rebel and challenge the leader either by moving in a different direction, running away, or standing immobilized. The horse knows if it is standing still and you are running madly around the paddock that you are clearly not the leader. With a horse, the smallest gesture like a raised hand, a push of a shoulder or hip can communicate a clear message.

All leadership is like that. You need to know just how much pressure you need to exert on the reins of power to reach the destination you seek. If you give conflicting directions to your work team, for example, or if you tell them to do one thing one day and another the next, they will be confused and frustrated and you will not achieve the best result. If you hold the reins too tightly the horse feels constrained and uncomfortable, just as your co-workers do when you do not allow them to find a comfortable pace for their contributions to a project.

For generations, social scientists have been studying the impact of constraints on motivation and human behavior, but nothing is as revealing as watching people interact with horses. When there is any inconsistency between the actions of a person who aims to master the horse and their sense of self in relation to the horse, the latter senses it, picks up on it, and challenges the leadership. The horse, like those we would lead in our work lives, knows that he has his own motivations, his skills and his resourcefulness. Led with a loose rein, the horse will deliver the rider to his destination or follow the leader on his course. The same could be said for our co-workers, even if the behavior is not as obvious.

HorseDream Canada, founded by Susan Wilson, provides high impact, quality leadership and team development experiences for individuals, teams, leaders and companies. It is part of an internationally renowned Horse Assisted Education Program proving transformative learning experiences around the world. HorseDream Canada is a division of I DO BUSINESS. Inc., a social purpose business. For more information, contact us at info@horsedream.ca. Watch for our new book, Leadership 93/7 coming soon!
]]><![CDATA[The characteristics of mistakes]]>Tue, 07 Mar 2017 16:00:00 GMThttp://www.horsedream.ca/blog/the-characteristics-of-mistakes
Own your mistakes. Make them, fix them and learn from them. They are an essential part of your learning process.
John Wooden, the great American basketball player and coach who was also known as the Wizard of Westwood, counselled his players that making mistakes was not a bad thing.

“If you’re not making mistakes, then you’re not doing anything,” he said.

When we watch people engaged in HorseDream training make mistakes and recover from them, it is clear that what others call mistakes are merely blocks tumbling down as the wall of their comfort zone crumbles.

When we ultimately find the courage to move outside of our comfort zone, we are able, finally, to shed the habits and thoughts that keep us a prisoner of what we have always done, and allow us to grow and soar and become what we are meant to be.

In all our lives, working with horses teaches us that mistakes are not burdens or bad things in our lives. Instead, they are the means to propel ourselves forward to new and better strategies, to think bigger and bolder, and to innovate through what doesn’t work until we find what does work.

Three of the most common mistakes people make when working with horses are to assume that:
  1. The horse is a dog.
  2. The horse will do what you say no matter what.
  3. The horse understands your language.

In the first instance, we often make mistakes assuming that because one thing we are looking at has some characteristics of another thing we are familiar with, that one will react and be the same as the other. It rarely works. Your horse, for example, is not just a big dog who will cozy up to you instantly if you have a little treat in your pocket. It will not wag its tail and be happy to see you just because you have arrived. It will not do tricks on command when it first makes your acquaintance. We can no more say that horses are like dogs because they are both four-legged animals than we can say all people are alike because they are two-legged. There is no justification for making such a leap. By their inner nature, the dog and the horse are bred to be uniquely different. The dog is a predator, the horse is a prey, so the way they assess their worlds and interpret the messages they receive are quite different.

With regard to the second mistake, a horse will deliberately do just what it wants to do, not what you want it to do, unless you find a way to ensure that the horse sees you as the leader in the relationship. You must either establish yourself as the leader of the horse or fall in with the reality that the horse will lead you.

Finally, the horse will communicate with you, but it cares nothing for your choice of language or command of word imagery. Working with horses teaches you the importance of matching your outside message with your inside message. If you can’t communicate honestly and non-verbally, it will ignore you and go back to doing what it wants to do. A horse understands clearly your intent, even when you don’t. It watches your nonverbal communication and picks up its cue from there. If you want to communicate fully with your horse, you must learn to do the same thing, to watch its body language and interpret its message from what you observe.

These are all mistakes that we make in the broader context of the world around us and the people that we meet. When we learn that we cannot assume connections and patterns of behavior until they have been clearly established; when we establish the basis of our relationship as either leader, follower, or equal; and when we communicate authentically with our inside and outside voices matching, only then can we begin to overcome our mistakes.

HorseDream Canada, founded by Susan Wilson, provides high impact, quality leadership and team development experiences for individuals, teams, leaders and companies. It is part of an internationally renowned Horse Assisted Education Program proving transformative learning experiences around the world. HorseDream Canada is a division of I DO BUSINESS. Inc., a social purpose business. For more information, contact us at info@horsedream.ca. Watch for our new book, Leadership 93/7 coming soon!
]]><![CDATA[How to find your herd]]>Tue, 28 Feb 2017 21:39:33 GMThttp://www.horsedream.ca/blog/how-to-find-your-herd
Just as horses need the company of their own kind, so must humans find a “herd” where we can make the kind of emotional, social, and professional connections we need to become our best.
Horses appear so majestic and independent standing alone in a field that they seem impervious to the rest of the world.But horses have an instinctive need to seek the company of their own kind. They are herd animals; genetically programmed to seek highly sophisticated relationships and deep emotional connections with other horses. Their relationships with each other also change over time. We can learn much about our own social and deep-rooted urge for connections with others when we study and learn from horses.

In the wild, horses will band together in a herd and conform to a leader’s dominance. This tendency seems to emerge from their nature of being a grazing animal, meaning during the times they are standing still and eating, they are vulnerable to attack. The horse herd, led by the dominant stallion, moves constantly through the hours of the day, seven days a week. The dominant mare leads the others to the best grazing fields in good weather and to sheltered spots in the winter. The majestic stallion moves to the back of the herd to ensure the slower horses keep up with the herd’s pace and guards them and the offspring from attack. At a certain age, the offspring are pushed out of the herd to find their own new herd, and in this way, the horses prevent inbreeding. Sometimes the young don’t want to leave, but their mothers push them out when it is time for them to make their own way.

All herds have a mixture of followers and leaders and most conform to the leadership of the herd. When they don’t play by the rules, they are roundly rejected by all the others and cast out, making them highly susceptible to the attacks of predators.

While wild horses tend to be more genetically diverse than their domestic cousins, and are thus better able to adapt to changing environments, all horses seek relationships. For the domestic horse, bringing in a new horse to their territory can be a tenuous challenge, since if they take an instant dislike to each other or perceive a threat, they will fight viciously, kicking and biting and causing each other serious injury. But even with domestic horses, all of them will ultimately trust a good leader and adapt to their own herd mentality.

As humans we need to find our “herds” as well, but our choices and reasoning can be more complex. How do you go about finding the right herd for you? A good start is to first confront a couple of misconceptions. The two biggest myths about being in a herd is that it weakens you as an individual, and it can replace your sense of independent action, pushing you to blend in and do what everyone else does.

If you study the horse herd, you will see that it does neither. Herding for horses is totally for the benefit of the survival of each individual horse. It gives them a strength to survive longer in this supportive environment. The closer the horse is to the center of the herd, the better positioned they are to survive, since predators will attack those on the outside first. One human individual, trying to move forward with an idea or attempting to grow a company, can benefit tremendously by surrounding themselves with a resourceful herd. It gives them strength and just as with the horse herd, promotes access to more information.

Secondly, when we herd as humans, it is also for our individual strengthening. We are stronger, more resourceful and more knowledgeable as a group. We can still think independently. We may watch the behaviors of those around us, and in some circumstances that may help us to survive. By observing the interactions of those around us as well, we can make better sense of our own thoughts and feelings.

We don’t have to be like everyone with whom we interact. No one horse has to assume the exact characteristics and personality of the other horses in the herd.

Sometimes, just like horses, we fight a newcomer entering our herd. When that action takes place, it can be divisive for the herd. There is the potential for injury.

Our behavior in our herd does not mean that is necessarily our behavior when we move out of our herd to have some safe alone time. When we observe horses, we see that a horse can be gentle and vulnerable with a person, but be more aggressive and stronger in the herd.

Finally, we have work herds, social herds and family herds, and in many ways, all of these blend into one full life. Individuals who have herds have been studied and found to be healthier mentally, physically, and emotionally. They are better able to accomplish their goals in life.

Such is the complexity of the horse and human personality.

HorseDream Canada, founded by Susan Wilson, provides high impact, quality leadership and team development experiences for individuals, teams, leaders and companies. It is part of an internationally renowned Horse Assisted Education Program proving transformative learning experiences around the world. HorseDream Canada is a division of I DO BUSINESS. Inc., a social purpose business. For more information, contact us at info@horsedream.ca. Watch for our new book, Leadership 93/7 coming soon
]]><![CDATA[how to use your emotion, not suppress it]]>Wed, 21 Dec 2016 15:00:00 GMThttp://www.horsedream.ca/blog/how-to-use-your-emotion-not-suppress-it
Our body pays a price when we hide how we really feel. Learn how to use your emotion effectively, rather than bottling it up.
In movies, the tough, traditional leader is the one who never shows their emotions.

Leaders are taught from their mentors, that displays of emotion are signs of weakness. Anything further than a guarded chuckle or a high-five for a job well done is excessive.

Never cry, never show anger or fear or even frustration. When you exhibit any emotions, others will immediately take control of you, because they will see that you have lost control of yourself.

The problem is, bad things happen to the minds and bodies of people who spend all their work days suppressing emotions.

One of the latest studies to support this theory was from Stanford University. Researchers there discovered that when we intentionally suppress our emotions, our memory of an event is impaired.

When you go to bed at night, your brain finds itself in a conflicted position. It is trying to remember the event, but also to forget the event. Mental fatigue is the end result.

Keeping a clamp on those emotions also keeps others from seeing you are suffering. You really need the hormone oxytocin, also known as "the cuddle hormone", because it reduces stress. If no one can see you hurting, they are not going to move forward with the hug you really need.

The Stanford study also linked poor sleep habits and higher blood pressure to people who stifle their emotions. You may end up grinding your teeth, having digestive problems, and experience weight gain as you over-indulge in comfort food.

When you work with horses, it is hard to hide how you really feel.

Horses are like mirrors to what is going on inside of you. They give clarity to how you really feel. They do not judge, or try to take advantage of the situation; they just reflect it back to you.

The horse becomes calm when you acknowledge your true feelings, even if you cannot diminish the emotion. The horse’s feedback is instant and authentic. It will change its behavior as you change yours and become true to yourself.

The horse does not approach you with a preconceived idea of how you are. It does not look across the corral and think, “there is a person who is hiding a lot of anger,” and approach you knowing that. They approach you with a blank slate.

As you begin to interact with them, their keen senses make them aware when what they see is not what they sense. Some call it intuition, while others call it an enhanced response, but it is present in every exchange between you and the horse.

Some riders jokingly say that their horse can read their minds, but in reality, the horse is reading other signs that you exhibit. They are observing your stance, your breathing pattern, your body tension and the primary, uninhibited signals your body sends, despite how tightly you are controlling your mind.

The horse does not judge if you are angry or sad or happy. The horse uses your non-verbal communication as data, making them aware of what emotion is present in you. It is just data to the horse, even the subtlest change is transmitted to them because of their finely-tuned senses.
You cannot fake it with them.

If what you feel on the inside is not the same emotion as you are exhibiting on the outside, it is confusing and upsetting to the horse, and it will be uncomfortable as a result.

Dealing with your emotions, changing them, acting on them, or dismissing them as unworthy are all ways to handle them. Hiding and suppressing your emotions, and trying to communicate with your horse will not end well for your experience with the animal.

It also will not do your mind or body any good. Consider that the next time you bottle up honest emotion.

Find ways to use your emotions as communications tools in your work with others. Your horse will respond better when you are authentic with your emotional state. So will humans.

HorseDream Canada, founded by Susan Wilson, provides high impact, quality leadership and team development experiences for individuals, teams, leaders and companies. It is part of an internationally renowned Horse Assisted Education Program providing transformative learning experiences around the world. HorseDream Canada is a division of I DO BUSINESS. Inc., a social purpose business. For more information, contact us at info@horsedream.ca. Watch for our new book, Leadership 93/7 coming soon!

]]><![CDATA[How Horses Help us be more authentic]]>Mon, 19 Dec 2016 14:00:00 GMThttp://www.horsedream.ca/blog/how-horses-help-us-be-more-authentic
When a horse interacts with a human, they do not care whether that person is the manager of a Fortune 500 company or an idler with absolutely no ambition. All they care about is whether the human cares about them.
Every HorseDream Canada trainer has a story to tell of a brash manager arriving for Equine Assisted Learning, marching in to take control of a horse, and becoming astounded when their intentions are stymied by a four-legged bundle of stubbornness.

These are the people in whom we see such tremendous progress as the day goes on, and they start to abandon their pretensions and get closer and closer to their authentic selves.

The amazing things about working with horses is that unlike humans, they do not operate under the burden of ego. Horses are creatures of perpetual mindfulness, taking their behavioral cues from what they sense in their immediate environment, and ignoring everything else.

They do not engage in a behavior that they do not want to do because they think it will advance them to where they want to go in the future.

They do not take certain actions because they want to pay someone back for a good deed or an ill deed. A horse does not flatter someone to arouse their affections, or insult someone to express their anger.

A horse can only behave in one way, and that is with total authenticity. What you see is exactly what you are seeing; what you get is exactly what you get.

Horses are unimpressed whether the human they are interacting with is corporately or politically important. They do not care whether a person drives a four-year-old Ford truck or a brand-new Mercedes.

All horses care about is how you interact with them in this precise moment. If you are authentic with them, they will be authentic back to you. If they sense you are operating through the masks of ego, they will help you adjust to authenticity in the moment.

Horses are herd animals and prey animals, they have no use for ego in their quest to survive.

In the process, they can teach us much about finding our own authenticity. It is only when we remove our protective layers of ego and pretense and become who we truly are that they choose to connect fully with us. At that point, they will engage with us without constraints, because they recognize that what they think they see is in fact what they see.

How can we recognize that we are not being authentic when we work with horses?

The biggest signal of non-authenticity is when we are a different person at work from the person we are at home. When we focus on the past and not the present or future, when we do not really know what we think or feel about just about everything, we fake interest in too any things.

It is a genuine expression of wanting to connect as opposed to a contrived exchange. It is most of all when we lead with heart and mind combined into one authentic action.

 HorseDream Canada, founded by Susan Wilson, provides high impact, quality leadership and team development experiences for individuals, teams, leaders and companies. It is part of an internationally renowned Horse Assisted Education Program provided transformative learning experiences around the world. HorseDream Canada is a division of I DO BUSINESS. Inc., a social purpose business. For more information, contact us at info@horsedream.ca. Watch for our new book, Leadership 93/7 coming soon!
]]><![CDATA[How Reason and Emotion Complement Each Other]]>Fri, 16 Dec 2016 16:00:00 GMThttp://www.horsedream.ca/blog/how-reason-and-emotion-complement-each-other
Your emotions are not necessarily an enemy of your rational thought process. Sometimes, when the two work together, the results can be very powerful and innovative.
In the dialogue “Phaedrus,” the great philosopher Plato described the conflict between our emotions and our reasons as akin to two horses trying to pull a chariot in opposite directions.

The white horse is rational and moral and the black horse is irrational and willful, given to following his emotions. The driver of the chariot tries to stop the horses from pulling in different directions and instead, get them to pull together towards full enlightenment.

This depiction of the struggle between our rational side and our emotional side still stands as a premise of our thinking about this subject today. In fact, throughout the developed world, our entire corporate bodies are built on a theory that emotion has no place in the boardrooms of the nation. Dispassionate reasoning is the new god of good decisions.

It is true that uncontrolled emotions can cause us problems. They push many of us to make poor decisions, especially if the emotion is fueled by hate or revenge or self-promotion.

But through our Equine Assisted Learning Programs at HorseDream Canada, we are also learning that there are times when both emotion and reason can be brought together to complement each other for amazing results.

As we watch our clients work with horses and see how their ability to be intuitive about emotions can lead them to success in dealing with them, we are reminded that there are other sides to this equation that we have not fully explored.

Scientists are also realizing there is an open field of study here too, to determine what happens when positive emotions come together with rational thinking, and the results can be fascinating.

For example, neurologist Antonio Damasio, in his study “Insensitivity to future consequences following damage to human prefrontal cortex,” discovered that even when negative emotions come together with rational think, sometimes better decisions can be made. In his case, he studied how gamblers made better decisions about avoiding high risks when they allowed their negative emotions to be part of their decision.

What we are learning is, that the interplay of emotion and reason has a great deal to do with the unique circumstances of each situation.

When we are working with horses, for example, they are very emotional creatures. If we are not sensitive to that and responsive to their emotions, all our rational thinking about how they should behave can be futile.

When you are respectful of the horse’s emotions and become its leader, a state of harmony will exist. If you are determined to think in rational terms only, you may not achieve the same result.

When we are not rational in our thinking, it is usually a clue that we are moving past the point of our current understanding, knowledge and experience. Uncertain, we react with fear, anger or other strong emotions. Knowing that, as we work with horses they help us to back up and relearn skills so we can move past them, rather than release those negative emotions.

Can emotion and reason meet? Yes, they can, and they can become strong teammates if both sides learn to understand the other.

Reference:
Bechara, A., Damásio, A. R., Damasio, H., & Anderson, S. W. (1994). Insensitivity to future consequences following damage to human prefrontal cortex, Cognition, 50, 7-15.

HorseDream Canada, founded by Susan Wilson, provides high impact, quality leadership and team development experiences for individuals, teams, leaders and companies. It is part of an internationally renowned Horse Assisted Education Program providing transformative learning experiences around the world. HorseDream Canada is a division of I DO BUSINESS. Inc., a social purpose business. For more information, contact us at info@horsedream.ca. Watch for our new book, Leadership 93/7 coming soon!
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