This is a longer post, friends, so strap in.
There’s a gorgeousness to working with people.
And yes, I’m aware that any number of my former equestrian clients are knee-slap laughing right now. Because from the lifetime equestrian climbing up one horse, then back up another, who swore I was a horse-not-people trainer? The shift at my crossroads, to two-leggeds and this learning, is the path that I never saw coming.
I’ll do my best to explain.
There’s a kind of acceptance that vibrates at the heart of the natural world, a rhythm that needs no explanation. The antelope doesn’t wonder why he’s not a lion; he simply senses danger, and runs.
In my early path-work, I assumed two-leggeds lacked that integral piece, and that this absence blocked the authenticity of the animal vibration. Since fully transitioning from horses to people, I see now that primal healing springs from deep within that true acceptance part of our being.
But in perfect human rendering, it wasn’t until I began to meet people with the same distinction that I met horses – energetically, with presence and stillness – that I realized the lacking in my exchanges was my own. I’d fallen victim to the trap of surface words and had to remember: the natural world taught me other ways of speaking. In pivoting to extend my energetic-horse-reads to people, I stumbled upon the language in which I was fluent.
My energetic connections helped me understand, that just like any prey animal, humans also guard a soft white underbelly. It may not bridge between the four legged pillars of our support, or nestle beneath the ribs for protection; but our truths are buried deep in our darkness. And our shadows, those guardians of all that is tender, make sure they never see the light. We stand such vigilant guard, that were we to hold our breath and plunge into our own depths, we might find ourselves fully stripped of what we know to be us by the time we hit the bottom.
And when we come up for air, our friends, family might stare right through us, looking where we were supposed to be – because weren’t we just standing right there on the edge?
And we realize they don’t recognize us either.
This is the healing journey.
It’s looking so deep within ourselves that we’re not sure what’s beneath the layers caked in our refuse. And are we really ready to see the us beneath the layers of what everyone thought we should be? What might we find when we strip down and freely take in that reflection?
Love? Fear? Hate? Would we find an unending depth of compassion or the tiniest droplet of respect? Would we find that we regard ourselves more or less than we regard others? Because no matter the layers we’ve built on top, beneath that soft underbelly we are who we always were… until experience taught us we weren’t enough.
This is the foundation of integration, of healing. It’s the platform on which we stand, the prerequisite required before we’re allowed to take a seat and face the us on the other side of the table. And the pillar supporting this platform? That hard shiny gem at it’s core – responsibility. Not blame or shame, but radical emotional responsibility as a path toward integration.
And I say that knowing full well that responsibility can get a bad rap. We tend to conflate being responsible for ourselves with letting others off the hook. Especially those who had a hand (often heavy) in shaping our experience.
But here’s the thing about integration and primal healing: it doesn’t care about external circumstances. It doesn’t care who did what to get us here. It cares only for the truth – our emotional and energetic levels – and the next step in our evolution. To do this, primal healing centers us in the ways maybe no one ever has. Including ourselves. It demands that we care enough to face the shadows in our corners without caring why the crack let the dark seep in. It asks only that we hold the candle and have the courage to not just look, but to see.
Primal-radical-healing demands we loosen our grip on what we see as our story and instead, examine the torn bruised flesh that we carve upon. We have to want to change what we’ve accepted as our story, and if not want it? Then at the very least be willing to let outdated parts go.
And who are we when we let our stories go?
What does that even mean? How do we allow that letting go to happen? In a nutshell? Work. It takes a commitment to self and a girding of the loins to learn new ways of being. To relearn how to engage day to day with ourselves. To forgive, we have to recalibrate the lens through which we view our healing and wellness and wholeness. We have to meet ourselves where we’re at and nurture our own growth as we go. We have to be willing to protect that growth, defend it even, because if we struggle to release old ideas of self just wait until we introduce our evolution to the ones we hold dear. And under it all, squeezed beneath our fingers in the very center of our grip, we have to trust ourselves, trust the us we’re revealing.
We speak of faith; doesn’t it have to start in our heart? No one can force us to believe in an expressive sentient universe, just like no one can force us to believe that at our core, we are exactly as we should be. But if we believe in the Universe, the Great Unknown, Source (whatever we choose to call it) how can we not trust the version of us the universe dropped into existence? Our acceptance of something bigger than ourselves roots the acceptance of ourselves. And while a perfect version of us may have arrived on this plane; it’s up to us to with our morals our values, our system of ethics, constant self correction and healing to mind the scars the world leaves on perfect skin.
So. May this brush like a whisper on bruised skin and call our soul selves to the surface. The depth of our knowing is unmeasured. Our biggest flex, is seeing through eyes that know and being who we’re meant to be anyway. It’s holding our own hand as we walk this path home; it’s flashing our underbelly to the sun.
We can always put on sunscreen.
Or just let it burn.
