Horses speak a lot about surrendering. They sometimes refer to it as ‘The Surrender’, as if it is a learning or a discipline unto itself. Horses are Masters of Surrender. Indeed, if they do not surrender, they may be punished until they submit. Or worse if they do not surrender or submit. Recently while speaking with a friend about life, she referred to ‘letting go’ as The Great Surrender.
This sheds tremendous insight on the art of Surrender. One Horse called it the Dance of Surrender, he says:
‘When you align with acceptance, you become the dance of surrender,
this is not the same as losing. Surrender becomes its own interpretation of individuality and power. It becomes a life of its own.”
Surrender carries its own power, unlike ‘submitting’ which carries the energy of losing, dominance, or force. Surrender carries many options because resistance has abated opening the way for possibilities. I previously wrote a blog on Dancers of Surrender about how Horses manage life with Humans through Surrender.
This blog is about Humans learning to Surrender to the Horse. In another Reading, a Mustang mare said,
“Humans don’t want to surrender; they want the Horse to surrender.
When Humans learn to surrender their expectations and their superiority Horses and Humans will find themselves on common ground and change and partnership can be formed.”
We are witnessing this now; many Humans are recognizing the invitation and the insight that Horses bring to our experience. How much they have to contribute to our physical, emotional, and spiritual evolution as a culture through equine assisted modalities as well as through relational partnership.
So the question is, are we aware of when we need to surrender to something the horse or the relationship itself has asked us to surrender? When challenge appears do we dig in and hold to ‘what has always been’? Do we stand our ground because we don’t know what else to do and we don’t know how to yield to the Horse? Or do we give ourselves to The Great Surrender and lean into the possibility of what the Horse and the spirit between Horse and Human is asking us to release?
When we embrace The Surrender, we open to possibility and common ground with our Horse. Safety is always a priority, but so is common ground. When we allow the possibility between us as Horse and Human; we find the presence of Divine and we discover wisdom we will never find while in the space of resistance. Allowing The Great Surrender to become the common ground between us is to open the doorway to possibilities we cannot imagine.
The Invitation
Consider your ultimate dream of your relationship with your Horse. Observe the blocks or the challenges. Observe your behaviors and tendencies about these things. Then, observe your Horse while you consider these things. Allow yourself to think, feel and label these things. And then take a deep breath, close your eyes, and let all of those things go. Change your perspective from blocks and challenges to the idea of Dancing with Surrender. This eliminates the ideas of wining, losing, being right or wrong, and invites a new sense of potential and intimacy to your partnership.