Out of the Stable

Today I rode a horse for two hours. This is another activity that scares me. (Seems I had quite the childhood trauma!) As an 11 or 12 year old I rode a horse one day at summer camp. We were making our way down a steep-ish hill when my horse lost its footing and I ended up sitting atop its head afraid I would fall off and die. (Not that I over-exaggerate, at all.)

Since then I did a beautiful healing day with Mustang horses in Utah working on energy, leadership and trust, and rode a small horse in Iceland and then there was today.

I’m happy to report I survived today’s horse riding, even the trotting which was a bit fast for me. There is a big trust/leadership exchange that happens on a horse. I have to trust that my horse (McKenzie is his name) knows his footing better than I do and I have to lead McKenzie away from the low tree branches so I don’t lose my head. (Um, literally.)

Once again, I could have died or been seriously injured – but that could happen any day of our lives. I don’t know about you but it seems like we’ve stopped taking risks (or I sure did) in an attempt to be stable. (Funny that horses live in stables, I guess that’s what got me thinking about choices for stability.)

Even horses have to come out of their stables or I imagine their muscles would get pretty bad. But we humans have gotten so comfortable with our stability that we’ll make huge sacrifices to keep it. Sacrifices like:

• Happiness
• Delaying travel plans
• Doing work we don’t enjoy
• The environment
• Love

But there’s got to be more to life than earning mone so we can eat and retire well (and put kids through all the training so they can repeat this cycle.)

With my guide, Kevin, of Kevin Tours in Costa Rica

So, at least I walked out of my own stable, and as I exercise my muscles, Im looking forward to all I am and will discover.