Although I love my EAL practice, I hit another plateau, another “what is the reason I’m doing all this” place. I was feeling a lack of inspiration and had accepted this was how it was meant to be for the time being and would shift when it was meant to.
Well the shift happened last weekend when I attended an inspiring Yoga workshop run by a talented teacher called Lisa Peterson. The way that Lisa guided us to be in and with the body, experiencing expanding awareness, lack of judgment and yielding to what is, reminded me of how I love to work with people and horses, and more importantly, why.
Whether it is yoga, EAL or another path, the reason we start these practices, whether it is conscious or not, is the inner drive to be connected to our spiritual, authentic self. Whether our motivation is exercise, improved horsemanship or even recovery from trauma, it is the spiritual impulse that underlies it. Donna Fahri (an international yoga teacher and Lisa’s teacher and colleague) describes this impulse as, “a desire to experience a lightness of being and transcendence that does not take us away from our everyday experience but exists within it…..seeing a way home to our self” .
Donna Fahri states that through yoga we learn how to contain and liberate our energy and ultimately direct it toward a more positive way of being. If you read the following quote and change Yoga to EAL, you could be describing the benefits of Equine Assisted Learning.
“And what is this more positive way of being? When we are in full command of our physical, mental and emotional capacities and in complete possession of our self, we begin to live fearlessly and to open to new experiences, new possibilities, and new challenges. Then the energy that we may have previously squandered defending and fortifying a limited definition of self, is mobilized to express our unique talents and abilities.
These abilities can then be directed in such a way as to fulfill our personal destiny. We rise to the occasion, and the occasion is this life, right now, just as it is. Practicing Yoga does not eliminate life’s challenges and neither does it provide us with a convenient trap-door to escape from life’s distractions. Instead, Yoga gives us the skills to meet life head-on with dignity and poise” Donna Fahri “Bringing Yoga to Life”
This is the reason I love EAL and why, like Yoga, it’s not just a regular practise, but a way of life.