I woke up this morning and wondered what it would look like if our political parties used the principles of Natural Lifemanship to interact with each other and to do business. Think about it.
What if each party attempted to meet both their own needs and the needs of the other party?
What if each party cared about and worked for compromise and equality in their partnership?
What if each party truly understood that if it is not good for both parties, it ultimately is not good for either party? What if they responded appropriately when the other party “moved their feet”?
What if each party created space for the other party to make choices that are best for both parties? That neither party took away the choices of the other party and neither tried to control the other?
What if both were careful with their verbal and nonverbal communications with the other?
What if it were safe to make mistakes, disagree, and openly and honestly communicate ideas, needs, and beliefs?
What if each party appropriately controlled itself, and made choices using their whole brains?
What if each party respected the other party and was able to set and accept limits?
What if each party was assertive in their communication and actions and not passive or aggressive?
What if both parties were able to use the principles of pressure appropriately? That is, each party increased the pressure when the other party was ignoring. Each party maintained the pressure when the other party was resisting, and each party released the pressure when the other party was cooperating?
What would it be like?
What might we accomplish?
Rebecca J. Hubbard writes stories for children and is a master’s level licensed marriage and family therapist in Texas specializing in equine-assisted psychotherapy. More information can be found at www.rebeccahubbardlmft.com
A recent article published in the Journal of Equine Veterinary Science suggests that the concept of human leadership equating to the hierarchy in a horse herd, which has become foundational in many training approaches, is unreliable and largely irrelevant. Instead, the researchers found that consistent reinforcement of desired behaviors had a much greater effect on horses’ responses than the application of dominance or leadership types of interventions. Although the emerging language used in Natural Horsemanship training methods may sound kinder and gentler, the techniques employed still tend to be based on the use of power, domination and control, which ultimately removes the element of choice from the interaction and largely keeps a horse in his brainstem, where he is operating out of a survival, or fear response system.
The Natural Lifemanship approach to building relationships between horses and humans relies on the principles of pressure, or the raising and lowering of a calm, centered body energy, to invite connection as a choice coming from the horse’s neocortex. The horse always has the option to ignore, resist, or cooperate with the request. By creating a safe space for all of these responses, the horse learns to experience the positive benefits of being in a connected relationship with a human without fear or coercion. Releasing pressure when the horse makes the choice to cooperate uses negative reinforcement (the removal of a stimulus) to encourage positive behaviors. This lines up with what these researchers concluded after sifting through 100 scientific studies on horse behavior, where they found that “horses’ responses to training are more likely a result of reinforcement” rather than of humans taking a leadership role. The researchers ask, “could horses be assigned a more active role during training or are they merely followers with little autonomy if concepts such as leadership are applied in a training context?” Natural Lifemanship practitioners are all about giving horses an “active role” in developing healthy relationships!
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