Thank you for joining us as we share our impressions and experiences of being in the mindful moment with our horses. We are Shreyasi and Frank Brodhecker. We started this blog as a forum for horse lovers seeking ways to be in the present moment and practice everyday mindfulness at their favourite place- in the barn or out in the pasture.
Mindfulness has evolved into its own movement and, although there are several definitions, we define it by using Dr. Jon Kabat-Zinn’s description of mindfulness being “the awareness that emerges through paying attention on purpose, in the present moment, and nonjudgmentally to the unfolding of experience moment by moment”. We pay attention to the present in a particular way, by using what are known as mindful attitudes. We talk more about this in future posts, and how that applies when we are at the barn, For now, we’ll mention briefly that some mindful attitudes are being non-judgmental when paying attention, staying curious, being accepting of what arises, and learning to let go of staying attached to the things that we like and pushing away the things that we don’t like about each present moment.
Why are we writing about this? We wholeheartedly believe from our experience that when we are fully aware in the present moment, and notice everything arising just as it is with curiosity, acceptance and kindness for ourselves, we can start to create moments of connection and insight. We become capable of being more attuned to our horses, ourselves and when we are with others. We create relationship when we stay open to ourselves and to our horses in this way. In fact, horses and other animals are wonderful role models to teach us how to be mindful and to be in the present moment! h
In our other lives as mental health professionals, we have been exposed to training in mindfulness and have collaborated to facilitate an inpatient group that teaches emotion regulation and mindfulness skills to hospitalized older adults with anxiety and depression. We both spend time staying mindful during moments of our day. And we are also privileged to own horses and to be around them regularly. Some of our herd will feature during our stories and comments, and you’ll get to know all of them over the next while. When you are immersed in such a world, you learn pretty quickly that the more you observe, the easier it becomes to cultivate safe attuned responses in the moment, during times that you are grooming, training, riding, or otherwise just hanging out with your horses. This is something that most of our horse loving readers will relate to naturally, even if they haven’t put it into words in this way.
As we cultivated our mindfulness practice over the years, and also implemented mindfulness at work in the form of modified emotion regulation groups with mindfulness teachings, we saw parallels between the skills to be more focused and attentive of the present and the skills we employ when we take care of, train, ride, or otherwise spend time with our horses. This was exciting to us. So exciting that we decided to write about it! Besides this blog, we are also in the process of creating a book project, “Sharing The Now: Mindfulness Exercises to Enhance the Connection with Your Horse”, which we hope to publish later this year. We will include excerpts from the book, and share contributing photography and illustrations in our writings to come. Our contributing photographer and illustrative artist are Lara Matiisen of Next to Wild Photography and Nicole Toren of Hand Gallop Studio respectively.
We hope that you join us as we discuss different ways that we can be more mindful in daily life, and how that directly impacts the relationship with our horses for the better. We will share regular impressions and experiences of how mindfulness helps us at the barn, general descriptions and research on mindfulness, and stories of our horses. Finally, we will also share excerpts of the exercises included in our book, so that we can all practice this mind state and way of being when around our horse buddies. The more we can try this out with them, the more familiar it will feel and the more frequently we can apply this way of paying attention at other times of the day. We have had first hand proof of how being mindful opens the door to new insights, deeper connections with others, and shifts in how we relate to our horses. We hope that you too may experience and share this with the rest of us through discussions and participation in the blog. Welcome again and thank you for reading!!
The contributing artist to “Sharing The Now: Mindfulness Exercises to Enhance The Connection With Your Horse”