Owning Your Horse's Stress

Stress expresses itself in our bodies, in our lives, and in our relationships with horses

By Dr. Theresa Dobson​, Chiropractor and Natural Health Practitioner

Stress is now well known to be the culprit of most disease, sickness, sleep issues, depression, and general unhappiness. It is threaded through our lives as we accept the endless to do list as our new "normal."

As a Natural Health practitioner I had the obligation to address this in my patients’ healing and for this reason I decided to become an expert on stress. I have been doing seminars on stress throughout New Zealand for 10 years. As a presenter for Health 2000, writer for several magazines, and corporate presenter on the topic, I have seen how deeply engaged in stress we all have become and the unpleasant results in how it expresses itself in our bodies and our lives.

Being a single Mom of three children I certainly experienced stress first hand. With exhaustion from overcommitment I soon learned I would have to manage it or slip into a life that was fear-based and joyless.

In my seminars I give each person a toolbox in which to understand, measure, and manage their stress and have had truly amazing results. But deep within, I felt there was a missing link to getting the long lasting results I desired for my clients, patients, and myself.

In September 2017, I found that missing link. I attended a workshop called HAY at Dunes Lake Lodge (Horses, Art, and Yoga). By the end of this weekend seminar I knew I had found the missing link. I had a deep passion for horses I cultivated in my late teens. That had been laid to rest for 20 years being a single Mom, and I wanted to renew this passion and love now that my children were grown. I decided to attend the HAY workshop upon a friend’s recommendation.

That weekend, Rosemary unveiled a profound recipe for identifying my own stress and energy patterns by showing me how a horse will immediately reflect back to me my "true mental and energetic presence.” No psychology or self help course can reveal this to you so intricately as humans are locked into "word" communication based on their own experience which has endless limitations (I could write a book on that itself). Horses, on the other hand, have no agenda, judgment, or "gain" from the interaction, thus reflecting "you" right back to you in the interaction, be it long or short. I had never been called out on "my stuff" so purely before!

After I left that weekend, I decided to play with that experience and infuse it into every relationship in my life, including with myself. The dance in self-reflection and self-responsibility presented immediately as I watched sweet shifts begin all around me.

I now know horses are aware of our breath, eye and body language, energy presence (be it love or fear), and choose to engage with us or not based on "where we are" in that immediate moment.

As we shift...the horse will shift for better or worse like an energetic mirror. These beautiful animals hold such a powerful presence if you allow the dance of love, they will deliver and play with you endlessly.

I have much more to learn in my new play and relationship with horses, but what I do know is that anyone experiencing stress can have a profound change within minutes of being with a horse in learning who and what they are bringing to their world and how this reflected horse energy can re-weave the tapestry of their lives.