Ocean of Duality in Horsemanship

It always amazes me that people can tell in one breath and in one sentence that horses are very intelligent animals and respond to the subtlest changes of the most ethereal energies, and that the very same horses are disrespectful if they are pushy for the treats … It confuses me each time I hear it, but it also gives me a big warm feeling in the heart, because I see that there is still space for growth for us, for people … that we see and “understand” so many things, and yet in potentially stressful situations we are coming back to the old patterns of thinking and start to diminish the very same horse to which just nano second ago we attributed divine powers and expanded awareness …

We tend to think that in one situations things happen with a reason, and in the other situations without any reason.
We tend to believe that Life has at the same time divine order and can be a total chaos and a source of threat.
We tend to think that the horse teaches us, and at the same time that we have to teach him some “manners”.
We tend to think that the horse is our guide, but only in some given situations and only under our rules.
We tend to think that the horse is divine, and barbaric at the same time.

We are drowning in the Ocean of Duality.

Sunday is a day of reflection and rest. Through reflection and rest there can be created a space for the CHANGE. When we know what is limiting us, when we start to see the patterns in our behaviour, we can see the field of growth that we can fill.

This change can come to you only through a direct experience of something new, but then it will need some time off to be digested and unfold in your heart, mind and body. The change will need some time off, when you do not do anything and when you are just resting, to blossom and bring you her sweet fruits. And this is why we have two scheduled days of break during each week of OneHorseLife Online Classes.

Understanding is connected neither with reflecting, nor with thinking.

Understanding is always connected with being able to access something. Only when you experience something, and even further — only when you can access something through a direct experience — you can understand it.

People think that understanding comes from reasoning. This is what we are taught in schools, and unfortunately, this thinking cuts us off from being able to directly experience something, because we seek in the outside of us only the things that we expect, that already exist in our heads, that we agree with, and that are constructed by our thoughts. How does it limit your direct experience, and thus ability to access new things and understand them? Very much. Because you train yourself to see and look in the outside of you only for the things that already exist in you, and this can only extend your current situation and current level of awareness onto the future.

Some people say that experience is one’s biggest enemy

It means that the more you know, the less you are open for the new. I experienced that the experience is never an enemy, but that thoughts and assumptions about what you already experienced and thinking that “Now I know what it is” is. It is blocking people from accessing more and new things, because they try to access it using the same pathways that they “already know”. If you always walk through the same doors, you always find yourself in the same room.

So what is OneHorseLife and what do we do here? — In case you are still green to OneHorseLife and are still observing us from the distance thinking if this is something for you or not. What OneHorseLife stands for and what the Changes, that I invite you to experience, mean if you haven’t been to OneHorseLife Clinic or Workshop before?

Let me start from the gross level of experience, from the level that you see when you read my writings, books see my photographs or watch the videos. I am starting from this point to let you know why all I do is arranged in the way it is.

Whenever I prepare for you an Online Class or my JoinAnna Materials, I have in my heart and mind a clear picture of what I wish, in general, the given Class to bring you. For example, the purpose of B.A.S.E. Kick-Start Training is to open you to the experience of the Energy that emerges from Calmness without any underlying possibility of pressure or increased body movement, increasing or decreasing “inner energy” (descendo of pressure) and tensions in your body and mind (also in the form of fear “What if I try and have no response from the horse?” and “What if he will not want to do this? What will I do then?”).

To prepare you for this powerful experience of the Energy, that I was guided to directly by my horses, I know that we have to expose you to experience something NEW; to the situations in which you can learn more about yourself and who you are. In simple words: in order for you to experience Energy, we have to do prepare you, so you you are ready to receive this gift from your horse.

Becoming a person ready to receive a gift

This preparation is based on changing you, but not in a way to become someone else (no matter if “some else” means for you someone better or worse), but on the contrary to that, it is based on stripping away from you everything that you might have thought about yourself, and about Life, and your horse that was limiting you, and to open you for who you really are. This I do through experiences that are meant to prepare you both physically and mentally to receive the powerful gift of Energy, that can be only given by your horse and through ACCESSING it via a direct experience.

When I know what you need to experience, for example “Not attaching to the fruits of your actions”, or “Releasing the tension connected with seeing on the outside of you things that are different to what you planned or expected” I dress these experiences up in very down-to-earth exercises, based on positive reinforcement.

Why don't we start immediately from the spirituality, as the change on this level is our main goal?

Because spirituality exists in everything and exists always. And the more we separate spirituality from the Real Life situations, the more we risk that we will drift into the illusion and will start to imagine things. Every spiritual path, to be a successful one, a true one, a real one, has to be deeply rooter in the Rreality, so that the Nature, also in a form of your horse, can show you if you are stepping on the right path staying real, or if you are simply becoming delusional.

The purpose of the exercises that I share with all my students during our Online Workshops and my JoinAnna Materials is to create for you possibilities to see it and experience it, and then be able to see and recognise the spiritual guidance everywhere and always when you are alone, or with other people, with or without your horse.

To do this we have to start from something very concrete, very rooted in reality — FROM AN EXERCISE — because the spiritual path is not only a very real one, but also because it always comes with the real life results. When you are with your horse, this real life results that confirm that you have changed come in the form of responses from your horse: We know that we are on the right path whenever we see that not only you say that you feel like changing, but when we see as well that your horse confirms this change by becoming more soft, yielding, more connected to you and to himself, braver, more confident and willing to engage to guide you to take the next steps.

From Taking to Receiving

To what I feel the best way to proceed through these exercises is to start to THANK YOUR HORSE for every little change in him that confirms that something is changing in you. This way you do not reinforce your horse for doing things for you, but you start to recognise and thank your horse for his guidance. Spiritual path is when you become as one with everything around you. When you become one with your horse, you see that what you dreamed of achieving is simply coming to you. Then, the only thing you have to do, is to humbly thank for that feedback.

There are millions of ways in which you can thank your horse, but from what I see and what keeps on coming and coming to me is that thanking a horse with a treat is very important for people. Not only because it releases the stress connected with “Does he feel that I am grateful? I feel stressed, because we are in the new place/doing new things, I am afraid that he doesn’t feel that I am grateful”, but also because offering something that is perceived as limited resource very powerfully free from tensions shown on the outside as fear that the resource will be finished. This technique is present in all religions in form of offering the goods to Gods or other people (alms), and although these goods have material shape, the underlying spiritual meaning of this act is the one that frees people most to receive more: “I AM NOT AFRAID I WILL MISS IT, I OFFER YOU ALL.”

Experience rooted in Calmness

When you are not afraid of that your horse will “go nuts” over the treats and then you will not know what to do and how to stop it, when you are not afraid that your horse “will only want the treats now” and will not pay any attention to you — you are freed from some of few very important tensions that might have been blocking your path. These tensions are not related to the treats, on the contrary to that, they are quite far from them but we can easily see them coming up on the surface whenever a potentially stressful situation appears: I want to be important for my horse, I want my horse do to things FOR ME (and not for anything or anyone else).

These deceptively positive thoughts and feelings have a very strong underlying energy of control and fear. Simply because your horse is a separate being and he will do things he likes and for his own reasons and pleasures (to many of which you won’t have access to and won’t be able to understand them), and because the reality of your being with your horse is to support each other’s existence to the fullness, and not to control one existence to match desires of the other existence.

Of course, there comes another fear about the safety.
Safety is always our main objective and is always rooted in Calmness.

People want horses to guide them and they claim that they seek help in their horses, and at the same time they are scared. People can tell in one breath and in one sentence that horses are very intelligent animals that respond to the subtlest changes of the most ethereal energies, and that they are disrespectful and dangerous if they are pushy for the treats … It confuses me each time I hear it, but it also gives me a big warm feeling in the heart, because I see that there is still space for growth for us, for people :) that we see and “understand” so many things, and yet in potentially stressful situations we are coming back to the old patterns of thinking and fear and start to diminish the very same horse, to which just nano second ago we attributed divine powers …

Nothing happens without a Reason

Horses are not pushy without a reason. Horses are not dangerous without a reason. Horses are not excited without a reason. And this reason is not the training technique, this reason is never hidden in the tools you use, but it is you on the outside, manifesting before yourself, to show you all that is inside of you and that you are refusing to see or simply not seeing: the fear, the need to control, the worries, the tensions, etc. It may sound a little bit magical, but on the contrary to that this is my everyday real-life experience that the moment we change some situations simply disappear from our Lives, because it is not longer necessary to show us them on the outside of us. We understood, we allow ourselves to acknowledge it, we humbly and with gratitude accepted our lesson and with love we moved forward. We changed. And every change emerges from Calmness.

OneHorseLife: Everything Starts from Calmness

When you go through the experiences that I prepared for you honestly and with an open heart, when you are ready to learn more about yourself, and not to school your horse — through these experiences, and with help of your beloved horse, we increase the level of Calmness for you in the given situation and and in your Life in general. We understand Calmness neither as passive state of inaction, nor as meditative state of awareness focused purely on the self.

We understand Calmness as a state that emerges from the last and connects all in one unified experience: Calmness is a state of a deep connection between yourself and everything that exists around you; a state that is dynamic, flowing, changing and providing you direct guidance second by second by second, so you can continue to evolve and change in the best possible way and with 100% support to unravel and fulfil your true potential.

But to see this guidance is one thing. The other thing is to act upon it outside of the patterns and mechanical reactions of the mind. And for this we need Calmness, that enables you to take actions and make decisions without blurring influence of your thoughts, fears, dreams and emotions. Without the influence of the past experiences and the expectations about the future.

And this is what I honestly and from the bottom of my heart wish you, wherever you may be, close and far. And this is the purpose of OneHorseLife Online Classes, it is the purpose of their form and order of the experiences I invite you all to go through. This is also the purpose of my JOIN ANNA training videos, which show you how myself and my students blossom in change and how this change changes everything that is around us in an instant second.

The exercise is just a real-life situation that provides possibility to experience something NEW.

It is not important what you do. People often think that if they change the training technique, everything will change, but this is not true. If you are focused only on changing your tools, nothing in the reality is changing in your Life. You can use treats or proceed without them, you can use positive reinforcement or any other communication oriented technique that you know and feel comfortable with. It doesn’t matter WHAT YOU DO, but HOW YOU DO IT.

WHAT YOU DO is just a starting point, then we move together to HOW YOU DO IT that is very essential and crucial to enter the experience that stands behind WHAT YOU DO and to open for it’s guidance to the fullness. And then you can experience something new, see something new, taste something new.

And then the most incredible thing happen… Starting from WHAT YOU DO, getting deeper and deeper understanding through the HOW YOU DO IT phase, we arrive at the WHO DOES IT — final question and final answer.

Maybe you can ask this question yourself today?
Maybe you can ask yourself “Who I Am?”

Maybe some answers will come to you like “I am Anna”, or “I am a positive trainer”, or “I am a mother”.

But maybe you will dare to penetrate this question deeper, and look for the new answers to the question that stands behind the WHO DOES IT, during your trainings with your horse.

But to get new answers to this question, you will have to ask your horse for help.
And your horse can help you only by inviting you to experience with him something NEW.

To experience with your horse something NEW, you just have to dare to walk with your horse through the new doors, trusting that they will take you to the new room… And once you experience it you will see that horses do it all the time: They invite us to experience something NEW.

Only when you experience something new, you can access it.
And you can understand only these things that you can access.

And this you can do with treats, without treats, using clicker, and without using clicker.
The only thing that is truly important is your most humble and honest openness and a PURE DESIRE TO KNOW.

Wishing you the most wonderful, and a sunny SUNDAY filled with rest and growth,

Anna