Establishing Leadership and Bonding with Horses at Liberty with The Waterhole Rituals
When I created the Waterhole Rituals, my focus was on developing leadership in an inclusive way, so that a horse enjoys following your lead. The Waterhole Rituals are a self-realization experience in learning how to connect, communicate and train a horse in the moments of flow from your natural instincts. The Rituals teach an inclusive leadership in which you learn to know when to support, when to pause, when to dance, when to follow, and when to lead. When unity is achieved, leadership is shared.
Inclusive leadership develops naturally from the way my program is offered to you. It is without thought, without effort. You discover your natural ability to communicate with a horse which grows the bond from your leadership style as well as knowing how to connect to the very heart of the horse.
When you start to lead a horse, you will begin by choosing to follow his lead. Following his lead, you step into the flow of connection with him. This is what I call the entry point of connection. An evolution then takes place which will cause the horse to follow your lead. In this same evolution, you will naturally sense when to follow his lead.
This reminds me of a story. I remember going on a cruise with my Dad…everyone on the boat was older while I was young and in my 20’s. I was hoping to meet people my own age…perhaps someone that I would connect with. There was only one person my age of the opposite sex, so we were rather thrown together and we immediately took a disliking to one another. It was quite funny in a way, and since we seemed destined to have to spend time together, we came up with a plan. When we were together, we allotted uninterrupted time of one hour for him to speak, and I would be silent…and then we would switch and it would be my time to talk. Through this process of sharing and listening we learned how to enjoy each other in the flow. In the end there was a shift in us, and we both discovered that when we relaxed, we actually liked each other. We had experienced how to quiet down and find that entry point of connection.
When I set out to learn about the culture of horses in nature as a child, I was looking to see if a horse would naturally accept me onto his back without any form of training. Like any horse girl ever dreamed… I wanted to have a relationship with a horse that was completely natural and magical.
One of the things that my Dad had taught me was that anything that anyone can imagine is possible. So, I imagined that the relationship between horses and humans was magical!
The first year (actually the first summer) that I wanted to connect with wild horses, they chose not to interact with me. Because I had not made a connection, I felt I had gained no insight or understanding of these wild horses. However, I was to discover a shift had indeed happened in me. A learning by osmosis had occurred which manifested when I got back home to my own horses. I behaved differently with them and this difference was quite large and quite a surprise. Since I gained this information by just being with the horses, I can’t even tell you what the difference was, I can only tell you that there was a palatable shift. You will see that in the Waterhole Rituals program, this shift will happen for you too! It is an understanding of life before thought. It is naturally being able to see and feel how to interact with horses. The shift will give you the ability to follow a Code of Conduct which makes it possible for a horse/human relationship to be natural and without the need to train for performance. From the way that my program is offered, inclusive leadership grows the bond. It is without thought and without effort from a bond that grows naturally.
May the spirit of the bond be with you,
Carolyn