Yogi Bear, Horses and Joy

Yogi Bear, Horses, and Joy.  By Victoria Williams

“Whatever the shape of eyes or nose, a joyful face is a beautiful face.  Become joy, become beautiful.”  - Sadhguru

Within the kids’ program of our riding school, I have had many students who, to quote Yogi, are “not your average bears.”  That is to say, some are neuro-diverse or have learning and developmental differences that distinguish them from some of their peers. A few of my students have emotional issues or are bravely dealing with trauma or anxiety. I know this because of information gleaned from intake forms, or conversations with parents and caregivers and of course, just interacting with the students themselves. As their instructor, I try my best to meet each kid where they are on any given day, at any given moment. The same goes for the typical students, too. I feel like all kids, wherever they happen to be on the developmental spectrum, ought to be given the space to explore, perhaps even breach, the outer boundaries of their singularity.  In doing so, we might discover that our divergence, not only boosts the health and wellbeing of the whole of our society, but also creates a collective connectivity, in which we all realize and take comfort in the knowing that we are all a little or even a lot peculiar and not only is that ok, it is absolutely necessary.  

We need, must have, can’t do without a divergent plethora of viewpoints and voices if we want to live in a world that values creativity and nurtures inspired ingenuity.  It’s sort of like a thriving, diverse, variegated, yet harmonious ecosystem in which everyone’s distinct perspectives and gifts are critical to the survival of the whole, each one playing an invaluable role in keeping noxious weeds, harmful disease or destructive parasites from taking over, otherwise causing irreparable, catastrophic damage.  

Furthermore, I absolutely know that the freedom to “be yourself” in its most authentic, raw, weird, breathtaking, vulnerable, ever-evolving state is essential to experiencing joy.  Again, this goes for the Yogi’s and the BooBoo’s of the world. I am not talking about plain old happiness here, which is fine, however fleeting. For me, it is important to create a distinction between happiness and joy. Happiness is a sense of well being that is elicited by superficial things, external accolades and all manner of worldly pleasantries. Happiness is great, but not sustainable or sustaining. What I am talking about is hard won, internal, eternal joy. 

Joy can only be felt through lived experience that is steeped in trial and tribulation, suffering, service, and suppression of the ego. No matter where you fall on any spectrum, authenticity and freedom must be grounded in adversity and effort.  That said, those folks that live with intrinsic differences that make societal conformity inherently more challenging, may have a leg up in the joy department. 

Once again, here is where the intersection of horses and humans creates opportunity for growth for all involved.  Put simply, horses can teach humans a lot about how to live.  Working with horses is hard - they require an immense amount of care and service, most of which is labor intensive, uncomfortable, monotonous and thankless.  Working with horses can be scary. Horses are large, powerful, emotional, unpredictable animals prone to reactive, primitive, intimidating behaviors.  All of this is to point out that horses often put us in situations in which our expectations are left unmet, we have to suffer a bit and we end up quite humbled.  Not super fun or easy stuff.  

While at the barn, say we do all that, we lean into the hard stuff, embrace the process, push through our fear, maybe get a toe stepped on, probably scoop some poop and definitely get some grit under our fingernails.  This all leads to learning something new about ourselves and we grow in some profound ways. Which is right about when we get to do the joy part! Yay! This is where things get good...  

Whether you are a Yogi or a BooBoo, or someone in between or someone on the perimeter, horses do not buy into labels or classifications, diagnoses or expectations, limiting beliefs or old stories.  Horses just don’t care about any of those things and this is a liberating concept for most of us humans.  When a student finds herself momentarily uninhibited, heart singing, bursting with joy as she finds her balance within the bouncy rhythm of her steed’s trot, her horse responds in kind, with a bouncier, more buoyant gait. In that moment, he reciprocated her joy. The horse gets it, interpreting joy through a universal knowing. His body mirrors what he feels back to his rider by way of somatic and energetic feedback. This moment has been cultivated over time through the connection the student and the horse have been living. 

The student, pushed through her fear of falling, kept working on her balance and rhythm, all the while, developing a relationship with her horse over time through caring for him. The process created the moment of joy she’s feeling now. As a bonus, the student didn’t care if her joyful reaction was out of the norm or appeared a little kooky and neither did the horse! In the realm of horses, if it’s pure, it passes, period!  That’s how joy works and that’s how horses work and there is the intersectionality that works so beautifully in equine therapy or any equine guided learning.

Here’s where it gets really interesting... when an entirely different rider, experiencing the same jubilant trot, realizes the same joy, but embodies it in their own unique way, for example like a shy, sliver of a smile or a tiny, inaudible release of held breath, the horse responds just as wholeheartedly, just as joyfully, only this time manifested more subtly, perhaps softer, so to be recognized and felt by that student at their own level of sensory awareness. In other words, joy is universally felt between horse and human, but customized as per each encounter’s individual output and experience. The universal constant is authenticity. It is a miraculous interplay between species, one we would all do well to pay closer attention to.  

Horses offer us a portal to our own expansive  potential for love, for joy, and for growth. Through that opening, we see people seeking the hard uncomfortable stuff; working with horses is generally humbling and can be really tough, on our bodies and our egos. We see people pursuing selfless, meaningful service, like scooping manure from a stall or picking a rock from a hoof. We see people realizing fully embodied joy, free from concern for what other people say or the judgements they make. We see adults and kids, neuro-diverse and typical, shedding their armor and masks to share their unique gifts and distinct perspectives, which is the crux of unlimited potentiality. What more could we ever hope for each other? For humanity?  All things considered, I suppose we could all use a little horse time.