Familiarization Versus Desensitization Maybe to understand the difference between familiarization and desensitization it is necessary to see them as symptoms, and go back a step to their source. The source of the desire to desensitize a horse to a stimulus has to be fear. What other reason but fear of what might happen would make anyone want to switch off a horses reactions. Familiarizing a horse to a stimulus, on the other hand, is a wish to share feelings with them, maybe inviting them to perceive something in a similar way as ourselves, or just to be with us in trust and harmony. The source of uniting and sharing is always love. Cybele is a trotter filly we have been working with. She had started her training when the farrier fought with her for over two hours the first time she was to be shod. Over the following weeks the situation went from bad to worse, and the trainer sent her back to her owner. In that world - or at least that corner of that world - if a horse cant be shod then they cant be trained and if they cant be trained they cant race and then they must be shot because there are too many horses as it is. So we have taken her on for as long as we could negotiate, to see if we can make her future brighter - not giving up on the possibility her owner will convert to barefoot in the process! Horses only become desensitized when they are detached from the reality of the present moment, and they must dissociate to do that. That is part of the traumatization process, and requires persistent breaching of their boundaries. I want to talk about familiarization instead. Sadly because it requires sensitivity as opposed to insensitivity, it is less popular. This seems to be because of the effort required. Whether it is physical or mental, if effort is required something is less attractive to most people, which is maybe natural, but when you consider the gain involved it is worth it a hundred times over. Gaining a friend not an enemy in your horse is surely worth a bit of work. The aim with Cybele is to restore her confidence in people, and in particular people touching and handling her body and specifically her legs. Every time something happened to her in her life which gave her a physical or an emotional shock, that was stored in her central nervous system. These shocks could be stored as a pattern of tissue contraction, like an injury, or as feelings which are connected to areas of her body. Emotions can also be trapped which are linked to the physical patterns. So all of these layers of energetic holding are within her, and they affect her behaviour. She doesnt choose to react the way she does when someone approaches those areas again, she reacts because any stimulus from outside will activate the stored feelings. It can be thought of as a negative association, but it does have a real physical basis. The good news is that these feelings arent who she is, even though all horses have different innate levels of sensitivity, they are not innately dangerous or violent in their behaviour. All horses have a gentle and trusting core, although in many cases it is hidden under layers and layers of trapped energy. It is important to acknowledge that these layers were necessary at the time they were formed as protection, but when the threat is gone they will often remain. Resolving them is the only way to reach the real horse again. Resolving these layers can be tucked away under the therapy label, reserved for therapists with training in that area, but I believe that is creating a division which doesnt necessarily exist. Healing is as simple as acknowledgement. You may have to develop your awareness of what is there, and that may take some time, but on some level you can always accomplish a resolution with your horse. It can become as sophisticated as your interest and effort allows, but it can also be as simple as what you see and feel right there in that moment. So at first with Cybele the feeling I got from her was like being beside a pressure cooker, she had a lot of tension in her body. When we went to touch her, she would flinch away, not just with her body, but her muscles and her skin would jump and harden in anticipation of the touch. The release of that tension is about accepting that it is there, and responding to it accordingly. Maybe by bringing the utmost gentleness into her presence, just being with her but respecting her space, convincing her patiently and sensitively that your touch can be aware and kind. The focus is always on hearing her energy state, not ignoring it or even actively trying to change it. The key is to see and to feel and then it will shift on its own. Even having the intention to change things is separating yourself from the present reality. The intention to listen and feel, hear and see keeps you on the right track. The beauty of it is that there are no rules about what might feel right to do. That potential for any possibility is why it is so attractive to work like this. There is no pressure to follow some kind of rigid technique based on getting a result. As you spend time staying with each layer, understanding it and letting it shift, the trusting horse reactions begin to surface. In Cybeles case the explosive reactions she would make when you touched her legs slowed then ceased, and she gradually became less frightened and open to the possibility of balancing herself with a leg up. In her process I could feel a rib injury, an older pelvic injury where a nerve was trapped. there was sadness and anger. She missed her mother. she had head-aches and sore eyes from teething. There was a whole book of patterns to read, and it was unfolding in a beautiful way. No-one could have foreseen exactly how it would happen, or when however. We cant impose that on a horse. We cant decide to fix this or that issue, because true fixing is not under our control. It is a bit like we have the power to switch on our TV, and even change the channel, but we cant decide what programs there will be on each channel. This is absolutely right too, because horses are not our creation and our machine, they are unique souls inhabiting their body who have chosen to come into our lives for a while.
Posted on: Wed, 29 Oct 2014 21:23:22 +0000