This ancient and beautiful art literally means to ‘join with gold’, or ‘golden repair’. Of course, gold represents beauty and great value, repair means to fix or mend, or to put right. When applying this idea to Horses, I feel it is best to avoid the fix or mend, and focus on ‘put right’, or better yet, ‘make right’. As best we can.
In Japanese tradition broken pieces of pottery are reconnected with a lacquer from an indigenous tree, metaphorically, Kintsugi is a process that unites the past with the future. It brings meaning to every broken piece of life by creating a new, more valuable, ‘Whole’.
As Human, when we break, often we just want to clean it up before anyone sees the mess, a deeply personal mess. Or we want to hide away in our own panic or despair and not let others see that we are broken.
What about fractured Horses? How do we notice this in Horses? If we are to repair/rejoin, we need to look at what is broken, how else do we know how to re-create a resemblance of wholeness? Sometimes a Horse comes to us broken and at first we might not see this, but it will appear over time and through interaction with them.
When a Horse is fearful, what caused the fear? What causes a Horse to have the continual reaction to fight? What caused the learned helplessness? What caused the disconnect or shut down? If we do not know the history, this will take us on a journey into deep connection with the Horse to find Soulutions for the Golden Repair.
Humans break Horses. For our ego or in our ignorance, we break Horses. Both equally damaging. The abuse of gaited Horses being ‘sored’ for the sake of a high step, of Arabian halter Horses being terrorized so that they appear ‘spirited’ when they enter the ring, or Reining Horses so overused that they need hock injections at 4 years of age, to name a few. All for the sake of a meretricious trophy. The plight of the American Mustang is a blatant example of mass Horses being broken by Humans. Is there even enough gold to make these repairs?
I joined with Mystic over 20 years ago and it grieves me to know that I have been guilty of both, reacting with ego, or marching on in ignorance. And I have spent a great deal of time mending these fractures. Because Horses are so magnanimously forgiving, repairs have been made and our relationship is now marbled with veins of gold. I remember the pain of these fractures and I take great care to not repeat them with Enchantress, because when I realize I have fractured my Horse… then I shatter and fragment as well. Now we both need Golden Repair.
Kintsugi is about reconnection with beauty… not perfection. It is about healing, with evidence of our fractures still showing. We have opportunity to help our Horses fill their brokenness, places where they were cracked and separated from their wholeness. Kintsugi teaches us that rather than viewing scars as damage, perhaps we need to view them as a new story. One that speaks of new understanding, forgiveness, and reconnection. One that sees beauty through the reconnection instead of scars and fragments.
Metaphorically applying the art of Kintsugi teaches us to be kind. Forgiving. Compassionate. Horse or Human, through Kintsugi we make our cracks our reconnection and our celebration. In this art form, the gold is not a cover up, it is a glory. It’s where we make our scars our beauty. No longer do they show our suffering, instead they tell the story of beautiful reconnection to wholeness. The fracture becomes a symbol of fragility, strength and beauty. It gives courage and stability to our vulnerabilities.
If our fractures, our broken pieces, tell a story, how do we interpret the story? How does your Horse tell the story? Is it still broken, or has it been filled with a beautiful Golden Repair that tells the story of being beautifully reconnected?