I finished the last post with the question: “How am I going to do it?” When you receive a message from the Universe, your inner guide, or however you choose to name it, you probably feel a surge of energy, thinking, “Okay, let’s do it!” You might start your search on Google, plan your agenda, or make small daily changes. However, sometimes, doing is not the right approach.
You must understand that the Universe is quite clever in setting up your next move and closing doors you aren’t meant to take. If you believe those closed doors are also messages, you embrace them and go with the flow. If you don't, you keep trying, likely crashing into them quite hard at some point.
The message here is that every single event is a real message and contains all the information you need. If you see everything, good and bad, as a message, life becomes much easier. And by easier, I mean less burdened by the responsibilities of understanding, analyzing, and making things happen, believing that it's all about us, and the answers are in our logic mind, in a better planning, in the choices. The Universe gives us very clear signals about what we should and shouldn’t do. Often, we are too stubborn or simply not listening. Then usually we get stuck, or sick, or stressed...
I invite everyone to choose one day and treat everything that happens as a message. See how you feel at the end of the day, where all the answers to your questions manifest in front of you without any effort, anxiety, or pressure. There is one thing you have to know though: you would need to let go of everything and simply accept the message (that’s actually the hard part). Just try it once and let me know how it goes.
With this introduction, I will start writing about my journey over the last six years—the path I’ve been on, how I got here, and everything that happened in between. There have been many messages, lots of pain, joy, and peace. When it all began, I wasn’t aware of these messages, and my life was much heavier and more complicated than it is now. I had a great guide along the way—a grey horse, my ultimate soulmate, Percha. And from him I want to start this story...
Enjoy reading part 2 of my path with horses…
For me, horse training is the best opportunity to learn something about myself, always going deeper and deeper. I’m not sure how many layers there are; I just know that every time something new comes, even from something old. At the end of the day, I hope I have given something to my horses, just a little thing, because they definitely have given me a lot more. They have been there throughout the sessions, communicating with me in silent, subtle ways, of which I might have understood only 10%. This makes me think I did a good job.
As many of you, I am also a product of this society, goal oriented, constantly doing things, running around to get stuff done, etc...But, fortunately, I have learned to reset my mind when being with my horses, go with a flow most of the time, and try to stay in the present moment with them.
That was the easy part to do at the end, while being with them, the world around me always stopped, my mind was empty, I was always focus in my body position, movements, cues, amount of pressure, reading the horse response etc…I also could easily get involved by that natural way of the horses to embrace into their present moment, that stillness they like to have, simply doing nothing.
Going further in the horse training and meeting Percha in my way, I got to discover that there was way way more when interacting with the horses and “training them”.
Percha was a quiet messed up horse, beautiful as few horses are, but that beauty was stacked into a stone of nerves, tension and fears, unknown to the outside, which only him knew about it. He was extremely unpredictable, in every situation, from getting him out of the paddock, in walking him around the stable, in grooming him, haltering him etc…You can imagine that if all that was a challenge, “working” with him was an adventure. He would overeact to anything, the whip was the devil, the pressure of the rope halter was the reason to pull off harder and harder, and if he did not manage to run away from it, he would go into a freezing mode, collecting more and more energy, and try harder at the next possible moment. If let free, he would run for quiet some time and then starting to wonder around and try to be as far as possible from you, human. His mistrust towards the human world was exponential, he seemed a complete untamed horse.
In October 2019, I got an accident and I got a brain bleed. I was out of normal life for a full month. My mare died few weeks before that event and I was in a very depressed moment. During that time at home, almost all the time stearing the sealing or tidy up a drawer or painting some woods, the image of Percha was coming up in my mind. My friend asked me what I was going to do with the horses, I was going to stop or continue? My answer was instictively and one: “If Percha arrived there must be a reason, I think I need to take care of him now”.
And that’s what I did—I took care of Percha from that moment on. However, I had a brain injury and was home for a month, so my energy levels were very low, my response to stimuli was slow, and I couldn’t handle too many tasks at once. On the advice of my doctor, I could only ride for 5 minutes a day after two months from the accident. Groundwork with Percha, who was extremely quick and prone to overreacting, requiring quite a bit of strength to manage (if at all possible), was a real challenge.
I didn’t have a specific plan; I just went to him. When I walked into his paddock, the first thing he did was place his nose on my chest and remain very calm. I began interacting with him in a completely different way than before. We spent a lot of time standing still without a rope halter, in freedom, just waiting for him to breathe or lower his head a little. We spent a lot of time doing nothing and asking nothing of each other. I would walk him in the round pen and let him roam freely while I stood nearby, observing him. I paid attention to what he was doing, where his ears were pointing, where his head was looking, whether he was looking at me, chewing, or not. These tiny details mattered. If he looked towards me, I would reward him by stepping back a little, exhaling, and not looking at him. If he turned away but stood still, I would slowly walk towards him. When he turned to look, I would stop, turn slightly away, and exhale. This approach and reward process continued until I could gradually get close to him and gain his approval.
Here’s something important: from that moment on, every time I interacted with him, I asked permission to enter his personal space, and if granted, I thanked him. If he declined, I accepted it and tried again, being more attuned to his cues. The goal was to understand his thoughts about the situation, not to impose my desires. I couldn’t comprehend his seemingly random reactions or his fears of simple things like a rope, halter, or brush. So, I decided to understand him by observing him closely.
My energy level was low, and I couldn’t move much, so it was beneficial for both of us to do this. With each granted permission, I got to know him better. I started to recognize the subtle signs of his consent and gradually engaged him to follow me and stand by me quietly. I gently began with one hand on his withers, and slowly we managed to take a few steps together. Often, one side, the left, was preferred, while the right side was more challenging to gain permission for. When I finally got permission to stand on his side in freedom, I put the rope halter on and repeated the same process.
“Putting the rope halter” was another challenge. Sometimes, when I managed to get his nose inside, he would bolt in less than a second when the rope had to go around his ears. Other times, he would run off even earlier. This was a gradual process. I asked permission to put the rope halter on, accepted the no, and tried again. When I succeeded, I thanked him. As he began to trust me more, I introduced some food, aiming for him to voluntarily put his nose into the halter. I wanted to give him the freedom to choose to be with me on his terms.
From this experience, I learned never to try to avoid a reaction but to put both of us in a situation where his reaction was not a problem. If it occurred, I could simply ask again and again. Now, in my journey as a horse trainer, my master teachers emphasize the same principle: let the horse choose the reaction and respond with the same attitude as a horse would. They learn from the consequences of their actions.
As I started to gain more energy and build up on tasks, I also began to progress with Percha. However, taking things slowly and spending time doing nothing helped me connect with myself on a deeper level and notice the shifts in Percha that mirrored what was happening inside me. You can’t imagine how much is going on within yourself and how much your horse can reveal to you unless you slow down significantly, for hours and days.
When I began more structured training with the rope halter, stick, circles, and gate changes, I realized that Percha was reacting to every single shift within me and overreacting to it constantly. He wasn’t a crazy horse; he was simply overwhelmed by everything he could sense from humans. He acted like a big amplifier. At one point, it felt like his first layer of skin was off, exposing all his nerves to the outside without any protection. Anything, even the air, would make him jump when it touched his nerves. That was Percha at the time.
Additionally, pressures were piling up for him. My presence was already a pressure, as were the rope, the stick, the round pen, and the noises around him. It’s challenging for a being with exposed nerves to protect himself from so many stimuli, so his way of releasing it all was to run—for his life, to rid himself of all that pressure that prevented him from breathing. In those moments, I realized that the key wasn’t to control him but to check what was happening within myself, find a steady and calm point, and connect to that. Eventually, he would connect to that too and return to the present moment. He wouldn’t relax or come close to me immediately. He might stop running and wonder, “What am I running from?”
Due to past traumas, his body was extremely tight, and his feelings would bring him back to the past and make him fear the future. Years later, after following Peter Levine’s work and reading about trauma, the biological responses of the body, the vagus nerve, and the natural responses to repeated traumas, I understood that the nervous system can constantly signal “DANGER.” That was Percha’s state, and I first needed to reset his nervous system before he could learn the things he had never learned before.
Did you enjoy reading the early part of the story about me and Percha? I truly hope so! Follow the next blog series to discover more!
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