Finding Horse Time

Horse Time, as I like to call it, is that blissful place where the world slows down, senses struggle back to life, and the tension lines throughout my body soften and dissipate. Just standing with a horse is calming. Watching him eat, graze, and move about his world is a gentle reminder to pay attention, breathe more deeply, and?get out of my head and into the moment.?This, without a doubt, is the part of the day where I return to myself, find my own sacred space, and recapture the quiet rhythm that life always offers, but in the rapid-fire demands of the world around us, ?gets easier and easier ?ignore. Do you take this time to just “be” with your horse? Or do you, like I used to, enter the barn every day with a head full of agenda, a list of to-dos, and expectations of your horse and yourself that have very little to do with your heart and everything to do with your head? Sometimes life has a way of slapping some sense into us. I recently took a full time job ? an exciting, demanding, challenging return to who I used to be in the work world. As a Director of Communications now instead of a writer of books and articles and freelance grants, I start each day with a staggering to-do list (usually with a few leftovers from the day before), and time enters warp speed as demands on my attention pelt me like pea-sized hail (not enough to hurt me any; just impossible to ignore). Every escape to the barn ? not every day now, but every chance I can create ? has helped me realize the true gift of Horse Time. Now I realize that while it’s good to have goals with your horse (and mine do start to come back to me if I am able to stay at the barn long enough), it’s just as important to allow yourself to take the ideas espoused in Veronique Vienne’s treatise on the subject, a little book called The Art of Doing Nothing into your Horse Time. The opportunity is there for all of us, every time we’re with our horse. It’s quiet though. And very easy to miss. Take some time today and let yourself soak up a little bit of this wonder. You’ll be glad you did. And, of course, now I want to hear from you. How do you find more Horse Time? For those of you who work in the 8-5 world as I now do, what’s your strategy for getting enough Horse Time without shortchanging the important people in your life? This has always been a hot topic, and now that it’s turned personal, it’s even more important to me ?to dig into it than ever before. Let’s put our heads together here and brainstorm ways to find and make the most of our ?Horse Time!

undefined

What did you think of this article?

Thank you for your feedback!