Tag Archives: Linda Tellington Jones

Mar29

both sides, same issue

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Our friend Lynn Mordas is the owner of Dashing Star Farm, just about a mile down the road from us.  It is where we get the most delicious eggs in the world, in shades of blue that are almost green, an astonishing range of whites and light browns.  For the past couple weeks, I have been driving by the farm and pulling over to admire the lambs.  I love watching them bask and nurse and explore. When I decided it was time to photograph, I had a humbling lesson about shooting livestock.  I stopped by on the evening that shearing was about to happen, so the Moms and the lambs were separated and all in noisy distress.  No one was standing still for a bucolic shot.  Absolutely none of my chicken shots made the cut. . .

This photograph reminded me of something that I have been noticing lately:  how different an issue can seem depending upon which side of it you are looking at.  When I see something from the perspective of possibility, it has an entirely different look than if I am looking at it as a problem.   If I am worrying, the color and shape of things is very different from when I am appreciating.

I am also noticing a tendency this spring to see financial situations as immutable, unchangeable.  I realize that if I do not see money as a renewable resource, then it simply cannot be.  If I am focused on the outflow and not aligning myself with nourishing inflows, they cannot come! (Thank you Napoleon Hill).

When I realized that this was a fairly hardwired point of view, I was not happy.  Then I remembered my wonderful teacher, Linda Tellington-Jones, who when looking at an intractable problem with a horse, says, “Isn’t that interesting.”  And that interest opens the door to a solution – to engagement and possibility, rather than driving deeper into the problem.  And that certainly seems worth a try.

 

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Jan10

what they teach

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“The greatest language is that without words. Communicating with a single touch that which delivers the energy of a message is always understood, a vibration of the vocal chords to gestures of the body. The forgotten wisdom in this primitive relationship we share with animals is so important. We tend to take advantage of our ability to communicate verbally with each other and often ramble on aimlessly without purpose and thought in our words. “It’s okay to be quiet” I often hear myself say while others addictively babble on. I seek refuge in the company of my teacher, the spirit of the horse who quiets my mind down, for I have learned to communicate calmly with love and attentiveness.”   Ariana Waite

 

These words were written by a young woman who volunteers at Blue Star Equiculture, a loving sanctuary for retired or rescued carriage horses in Palmer, MA.

Today when I was with Nelson, I opened the gate to his catch pen so that we could continue our movement conversation in the big six-acre field where he lives.  He started to leave, and then I raised one hand, really just a shadow of a gesture, and he curved his path around and came back to me.

Then he did something surprising.  Without my asking, he walked into the big round pen that is in his field.  He stood there quietly while I untied and then closed the gate.  Understand that Nelson does not like any kind of confinement. I then began to signal him to move around me and then come back to me – a continuation of last week’s dance.  Today, my hand signal was subtle: a kind of light, curving whisper of a movement, which, brilliant decoder of movement that he is, he read perfectly.

We did a sequence of moving away, changing direction, coming back to me, moving away a number of times, each time, I could feel the dance between his body and my hands and body become more like a quiet, elegant, listening tai chi.

I remembered Anat Baniel’s words:  “More force is the definition of less differentiation.”  And Linda Tellington-Jones urging us to feel more by making our touch lighter, slower, more subtle.

And here is Nelson, telling me, “Yes, that is right.  Less is more. I understand you perfectly.  When I don’t, I will show you.”  And indeed that is true.  When I am unclear, he mirrors that.  When I am nervous, he mirrors that.  When I breathe, slow down and feel, so does he.

Who mirrors you so perfectly?

Sep25

cross dressing

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Marion Laval-Jeantet is a performance artist who is experimenting with the meaning of “trans-species” art.  In her piece, Que le cheval vive en moi (the horse lives in me), over a period of several months, she was injected with horse blood plasma containing a spectrum of equine immunoglobulins.  Her goal was to experience the body-mind of another species, which she described as a heightened sensibility and nervousness. After the final injection she performed a communication ritual with the horse, pictured above.

Marion’s work connects to the body art experiments of Carol Schneeman, Marina Abramović, one of who’s works involved dancing until she collapsed from exhaustion, among others.

I am interested in this work because it seems to be an effort to dissolve the prey/predator distinction between horse and human.  There are horse whisperers and trainers who claim to “speak horse,” and yet when I watch, there is always that divide.  The man/woman is still a meat eater.

The closest thing I have experienced in dissolving that divide is the work of Linda Tellington-Jones. TTouch, her radical work with touch goes “under the skin” – creating a borderless place of attunement where horse (or dog, cat, snake, bird, elephant) and human meet.  I have been TTouching for about seven years, and I wonder if Marion would find that using touch in this way can carry her as deeply into the blood and bone of the human-horse bond.

How do you cross dress?