Natural horsemanship means riding where rider and horse work as one. There is mutual respect and cooperation, a man-horse relationship, horsemanship. Natural horsemanship is the art of living naturally and non-aggressively with horses, learning to negotiate with them, keeping calm, respect and determination and realizing that in this way we can get everything from these sensitive and intelligent animals.
There are a considerable number of famous riders who follow the art of natural horsemanship: John Lyons, Pat Parilli, Linda Tellington-Jones, Monty Roberts and others. Each of them has their own style and technique, but they all perform within the same parameters. Natural horsemanship can be learned by all horse lovers, even after many years of traditional riding. For this, it is necessary to have a good knowledge of the horse’s natural behavior, which emerges after a lot of observation, a lot of taste and patience, in order to understand its body language, its sense of sight, hearing, etc.
We know that many successful riders use body language to get the horse to understand what they want it to do, but in natural horsemanship this is a key element. We learn when and how to use our eyes, how to position our body in relation to the horse, the tone of our voice or silence itself, and the tools to use to reinforce communications.
Horses naturally fear man, because we are predators and they are prey. The challenge is to teach them not to be afraid of us, which is achieved after a lot of relationship work and an effective type of communication, so that they see us as a friend and not as a predator, so that they learn to trust us without any hesitation.
The work we do with people is not intended to train riders, but to create a relationship on the ground with the horses in order to get to know ourselves and work internally. Horses fully reflect our emotions and behaviors and, in this way, allow us to get to know each other more deeply.
The activities we promote with our therapists and shamanic horses are through the relationship established with them, which allows us to dive inside ourselves, discovering and working on various aspects of our personal development such as sensitivity, self-confidence, body and emotional awareness and the thoughts that come to us.
We create most of the time a shamanic context with which we identify and taking into account all the symbology and ancestral myths associated with the horse, this is how we develop our activities.
It is not necessary to have any previous experience with horses.