Libery Longeing 5. The Art of Meeting the Horse

There is a profound difference between liberty longeing and line longeing. Each has its own purpose, and each has an important place in the development of the horse. But for me, liberty comes first.

Before I ever attach a line, I want to know who is standing before me today.

Not who the horse was yesterday. Not who I expect them to be. Not what the training schedule says they should do.

Who are they in this moment—physically, mentally, emotionally, and spiritually?

And perhaps just as importantly:

Who am I in this moment?

Because liberty is not simply an opportunity for me to assess the horse.

It is an opportunity for us to meet.

I don’t enter the arena expecting the horse to give me anything. My first responsibility is simply to arrive—to become present enough that, if the horse is willing, a conversation can begin.

Liberty gives the horse the freedom to answer.

And it gives the horse the freedom not to.

Before We Ask, We Listen

When a horse enters an arena at liberty, I don’t immediately ask them to work.

I let them arrive.

They may walk around the perimeter, sniff the footing, investigate where other horses have been, look into the distance, or simply stand and take everything in. Horses naturally want to explore their environment, even an arena they know well. They are gathering information, feeling the space, and settling into where they are.

They may want to roll. With my own horses, I always give them the opportunity to roll before beginning.

That seemingly simple period tells me a great deal.

A horse may walk quietly with their head lowered. Another may suddenly explode into a magnificent canter, buck, kick, toss their head, and announce in every possible way:

I feel wonderful today.

And I love that.

I want my horses to know that I delight in their self-expression. I want them to know that I am in awe of their movement—not merely when that movement is controlled or useful to me, but when it belongs entirely to them.

They know when we are watching them with awe. They know when we are enjoying their joy.

Other days, a horse may say something completely different:

I don’t feel like running today.

That, too, is communication.

Liberty gives us an opportunity to notice subtle changes in movement, rhythm, energy, posture, and demeanor before tack, equipment, or our own agenda begins influencing what we see.

But what I am doing during this time goes much deeper than watching behavior or examining physical appearance.

I am trying to arrive.

I am becoming quiet.

I am listening.

I am giving this moment completely to the horse.

And I am hoping—not expecting—that I can enter deeply enough into the present moment that the horse might become curious enough, comfortable enough, and open enough to meet me there.

Because when that happens, something begins that is very difficult to explain in ordinary language.

Beyond the Five Senses

There is a kind of communication with horses that doesn’t fit neatly into words.

It isn’t merely visual.

It isn’t simply body language.

It isn’t dependent upon voice commands, physical cues, equipment, or tools.

Those things can certainly become part of our vocabulary later. But beneath them is something more fundamental.

It is a communication that I experience through energetic resonance, sensory awareness, intuition, and the heart.

After practicing this for many years, there are moments when I simply know something about the horse standing before me.

I sense it.

I feel it.

Something comes into my awareness that seems to require no conscious reasoning.

It is difficult to translate because the communication does not arrive as a sentence.

It may arrive as a feeling.

An impression.

A change within my own body.

A sudden knowing.

A sense of openness or hesitation.

An awareness that something is being held.

Or simply a very clear feeling of what the horse is communicating in that moment.

This requires trust.

Not blind certainty that every impression I have must be correct—that would simply create another form of projection—but enough trust in my own awareness to listen to what arises while continuing to observe the horse in front of me.

For me, sensory awareness is not confined to the five physical senses.

There is another kind of perception that becomes available when the noise within us becomes quiet.

And that is where this practice begins.

Meeting a Horse for the First Time

Liberty becomes especially revealing when I am meeting a horse I have never encountered before.

Occasionally, someone will ask me to accompany them when they are considering acquiring a horse. These encounters give me the opportunity to experience that first meeting again—the moment before a relationship exists.

I don’t enter the arena believing I am entitled to the horse’s attention.

The horse may look at me.

They may ignore me.

They may move away.

They may investigate every corner of the arena before acknowledging me at all.

I let them.

They may need to sniff, walk, look around, roll, or simply be left alone for a while.

Because a conversation has already begun.

But there is something essential to understand about that first period.

I am not the only one perceiving.

The horse is perceiving me as well.

Not in the analytical way human beings often assess one another.

The horse is sensing my state.

My energetic resonance.

What am I bringing into this space?

Fear?

Doubt?

Anger?

Frustration?

Sadness?

Guilt?

Shame?

Impatience?

Expectation?

An agenda?

Or am I truly here?

The Horse Reads Beneath the Mask

Human beings have become extraordinarily good at masks.

We can enter an arena smiling while underneath the smile we are angry.

We can make our body appear calm while internally we are afraid.

We can speak softly while carrying irritation.

We can project confidence while underneath it there is doubt.

We may have had an argument with someone twenty minutes earlier.

We may be worrying about something tomorrow.

We may be replaying something from yesterday.

We may be carrying grief, shame, frustration, insecurity, or guilt while believing that because we aren’t outwardly displaying it, we have successfully hidden it.

Another human being may accept the mask.

The horse may perceive something very different.

The horse senses the energetic resonance beneath what we present on the surface.

Our thoughts and emotions affect the state we bring into the arena.

And this is why I cannot simply act present.

If my mind is somewhere else, the connection doesn’t happen for me.

If I am thinking about another person, replaying a problem, worrying about tomorrow, questioning myself, or carrying an agenda for what the horse needs to accomplish, I am not giving the horse my presence.

My body may be standing in the arena.

But I am somewhere else.

And I cannot ask the horse to meet me somewhere that I myself have not arrived.

Finding the Frequency

Imagine an old-fashioned radio.

Somewhere in all that static, music is playing. But until the dial reaches the right frequency, you cannot hear it clearly.

Working with a horse at liberty can feel very much like that.

We have to tune in.

And simply telling ourselves, I’m present, isn’t enough.

Presence isn’t a performance.

It isn’t standing still.

It isn’t lowering our voice.

It isn’t deliberately moving slowly.

It isn’t putting a peaceful expression on our face while turmoil continues underneath it.

For me, entering that state requires breath.

It requires releasing the concerns I carried into the arena.

It means letting go of what happened yesterday and what might happen tomorrow.

It means releasing expectation, ego, doubt, and the need to produce a particular result.

For that moment, the emotional baggage is suspended.

I call it zeroing out.

And when we truly arrive in the present moment, something changes.

The static begins to disappear.

We are no longer projecting yesterday into the arena.

We are no longer projecting tomorrow.

We are no longer asking the horse to meet our fear, anger, doubt, guilt, shame, or expectations.

We are simply here.

And that opens a different frequency.

A frequency the horse already knows.

A frequency they may choose to meet.

The Universal Language

This is where, for me, the work becomes something far greater than horse training.

There is a universal language that does not require words.

It does not belong exclusively to horses or human beings.

It exists within nature.

Within animals.

Within the trees.

Within the earth.

Within life itself.

We don’t have to manufacture it.

We have to become quiet enough to perceive it.

And I believe the doorway is the present moment.

That is where communication becomes possible.

That is where connection lives.

That is where healing begins.

That is where wholeness already exists.

That is where resolution can arise.

That is where the extraordinary beauty of life has always been waiting for us.

We spend so much of our human lives trying to get somewhere—trying to become whole, trying to heal, trying to find answers, trying to reconnect.

But perhaps what we are seeking isn’t somewhere else.

Perhaps the present moment is where we return to our natural state.

What I experience as the Divine state.

And the horse can meet us there because the horse has never needed our words to understand presence.

There is nothing I need to give the horse in order to manufacture that connection.

In a sense, I am simply removing what prevents me from experiencing what is already there.

Heart to Heart

There is another dimension to this that I experience very strongly: the heart.

I experience horses as having an enormous presence around the heart—an expansive field that can be felt when we become quiet enough to meet it.

When I speak of meeting a horse energetically, I am speaking about something that feels deeply heart-centered.

Not sentimental.

Not emotional projection.

Resonant.

There are moments when horse and human seem to meet beneath language entirely.

Nothing needs to be said.

Nothing needs to be done.

There is simply a knowing:

I am here.

You are here.

And we recognize one another.

That is the conversation I hope to make myself available for every time I enter the arena.

I cannot demand it.

I cannot manufacture it.

And I certainly cannot demand anything from the horse that I am unwilling to bring myself.

If I want presence, I must become present.

If I want openness, I must become open.

If I want trust, I must be trustworthy.

If I want the horse to listen, I must first learn how to listen.

Every Horse Arrives Through a Different Door

The state in which I prepare myself may remain the same.

But every horse is different.

Every horse has their own personality.

Their own experiences.

Their own memories.

Their own relationships.

Their own joys.

Their own losses.

Their own history of trust or mistrust.

Some have experienced trauma.

Some have experienced grief.

Some have experienced abuse.

Some have been handled without cruelty but without recognition of their sovereignty.

And some have been raised in environments where their sovereignty, individuality, and expression have been honored.

All of that becomes part of the individual standing before me.

So although the frequency at which genuine communication becomes possible may be the same, the doorway into relationship is unique to each horse.

One horse may become curious immediately.

Another may remain distant.

Another may want to move.

Another may stand quietly.

Another may need considerably more time before they are willing to open themselves to a human being.

And none of those responses makes one horse better than another.

They are individuals.

That individuality is part of what makes this work endlessly fascinating to me.

We speak of oneness—and I believe deeply that all life arises from the Divine—but oneness does not erase uniqueness.

Quite the opposite.

Within the One exists this extraordinary diversity of expression.

Every horse carries something uniquely their own.

Every human being does too.

And relationship becomes beautiful precisely because two unique beings can meet without either one having to disappear.

Curiosity: The Door Begins to Open

When I have truly arrived, a horse I have never encountered will sometimes suddenly look at me with what appears to be surprise and curiosity.

There is a change.

Their attention comes toward me.

It can feel almost as though they are saying:

Oh. You see me.

That curiosity is important.

It feels as though a door has opened.

But we cannot pound on that door.

We cannot force our way through it.

We need the key.

Presence is the key.

If the horse is not ready to open that door, I don’t force it.

The invitation may not come that day.

That is part of respecting sovereignty.

But when curiosity appears and resonance begins to form, there comes a moment when I can feel that we are ready to begin another part of the conversation.

Only then do I begin asking for movement.

The Wand Is Not a Weapon

In my liberty work, the longe whip is not a whip in the conventional sense. I think of it as a wand—an extension of my arm, intention, and energetic field.

My position in relation to the horse matters enormously.

I don’t chase from behind.

My body is generally positioned perpendicular to the horse, rather like the relationship my body would have to them if I were sitting upon their back, although at liberty there may be twenty or twenty-five feet between us.

When I want to invite forward movement, I use a sweeping gesture with the wand.

I bring my arm through an arc—a kind of rainbow—directing the sweep toward the horse’s line of movement.

Think about moving your arm through water.

The water around your arm moves too.

Air is invisible, and the energetic effect of our movement may be invisible, but the horse perceives extraordinarily subtle changes around them.

So rather than thinking:

I need to make this horse move.

I think in terms of creating a clear invitation through space, movement, intention, and energy.

At first, particularly with a horse I am meeting or assessing, I am not concerned about whether they walk, trot, or canter.

I want to see their choice.

And then I watch.

What Is the Horse Telling Me?

Is the head carried high and the body rigid?

Or does the neck begin to lower?

Is the movement hurried and irregular, or soft, supple, and rhythmic?

Are they trying to escape pressure, or beginning to move comfortably around me?

Do they blow out through the nostrils?

Do they lick their lips?

Are their lips and mouth soft rather than tight?

Does the body begin to release?

Is there rhythm and regularity in the gait?

Are they curious?

Are they beginning to acknowledge my requests?

These things matter more to me than simply getting a particular gait.

But again, my perception isn’t confined to what I can see.

I am feeling.

Listening.

Sensing.

Sometimes something comes into my awareness that I cannot immediately explain through the physical signs alone.

I remain careful not to turn intuition into assumption. The horse before me remains the ultimate reference point.

But over years of practice, I have learned to trust that quiet knowing while continuing to listen for confirmation from the horse.

When the horse responds, I acknowledge them.

Good.

I speak to them. I let them know I heard their answer.

And sometimes they answer again—with a blow through the nose, a softening of the body, a change in expression, or simply an easier rhythm.

With a horse I know well, the conversation can become extraordinarily refined. The horse already knows my vocabulary, and I know theirs.

And yet the same principle remains:

Never assume yesterday’s conversation is today’s conversation.

Observation Travels in Both Directions

Horses can be remarkably sensitive to us. I have found this particularly striking with Friesians.

If I enter with doubt, tension, unusually low energy, or something unresolved within myself, my horses may reflect that back to me.

And if I am not sufficiently self-aware, I can misunderstand what I am seeing.

I may look at my horse and think:

Something is wrong with you.

You’re not yourself today.

Your energy is low.

When perhaps the horse is responding to something I brought into the arena.

Before concluding that the horse’s energy is low, I need to examine my own.

Before deciding the horse is uncertain, I need to ask whether I brought uncertainty.

Before deciding the horse has disconnected from me, I need to ask whether I disconnected first.

This is where liberty becomes an extraordinary form of self-discovery.

We must distinguish observation from projection.

And that requires humility.

The intuitive communication I value so deeply must never become an excuse for assuming that every feeling I have belongs to the horse.

Sometimes the horse is showing me the horse.

Sometimes the horse is showing me myself.

Learning the difference is part of the practice.

Position Is Language

As the conversation develops, I begin asking for transitions and changes of direction.

At liberty, position itself becomes language.

If I want the horse to change direction, I don’t walk into them or chase their hindquarters around.

From a considerable distance, I move my own position toward the front of the horse’s line and extend the wand in front of that line.

I think of it as gently closing an energetic door.

The horse recognizes that the path ahead has been closed and can choose the new direction.

How they turn tells me something as well.

A horse who turns away from me, presenting their hindquarters as they reverse direction, has still heard my request. They changed direction. But they may not yet be ready to fully engage with me.

It may be their way of saying:

I hear you. I’m listening. But I’m not ready to come into that conversation yet.

A horse who turns inward, faces me, and then takes the new direction is offering something different:

Yes. I see you. I’m in the conversation.

Neither response needs punishment.

It is information.

And this is why clarity matters so much.

If my body is in the wrong place, I can give the horse a confusing request and then mistakenly blame them for not understanding it.

My position must be clear.

My intention must be clear.

My energy must be clear.

Energetic resonance, position, clarity, and intention must agree with one another.

Breath Becomes Part of the Dance

As the conversation develops, the language becomes increasingly subtle.

The sweep of the wand can change in height and energy depending upon the transition I am requesting. A larger, higher arc can invite more forward energy—from walk toward trot, or trot toward canter.

But the wand is only one part of it.

My breath and core become part of the conversation.

Breath can invite the energy downward and help bring a transition back. An engagement through my center—what I think of as a half-halt within my own body—can invite the energy upward into a more forward gait.

Walk.

Trot.

Canter.

And back again.

Eventually, very little needs to happen externally.

The horse begins to understand the smallest changes in breath, body, intention, and position.

And I begin to understand the smallest changes in them.

This is where liberty becomes extraordinarily beautiful.

It begins to look less like one being instructing another and more like two beings learning one another’s language.

Sometimes the Answer Is “Not Today”

There are days when the correct decision is not to continue.

That is not failure.

It is listening.

If the horse is uncomfortable, unusually withdrawn, physically questionable, overwhelmed, or simply telling me clearly that something is different, I listen.

The age, experience, temperament, and history of the horse matter as well.

Even the size of the arena matters.

My own arena is approximately 150 by 75 feet, a size I particularly like with my larger horses. It gives them enough room to genuinely move away from me—and therefore enough freedom to choose whether to return.

With another horse, particularly a young or inexperienced horse, a smaller space may initially be useful.

But if close proximity creates stress, I would rather give the horse more room.

Because this work is not about trapping the horse into interacting with me.

Pas de Cheval is never about creating stress in order to obtain obedience. It is about honoring sovereignty while developing mutual trust, respect, connection, and relationship.

The horse is not asked to surrender who they are in order to connect with us.

Instead, we create the conditions in which two sovereign beings can willingly meet—where communication becomes connection, connection can deepen into communion, and relationship develops through choice rather than control.

Sovereignty does not mean separation.

It does not mean that one being exists without regard for the other.

It means that neither must be diminished for relationship to exist.

There can be boundaries.

There can be requests.

There can be communication and clarity.

But beneath all of it is recognition:

I see you as a sovereign being, and I am asking you to meet me—not surrender to me.

And we cannot expect anything from the horse that we ourselves are unwilling to bring into that meeting.

That is an entirely different foundation for relationship.

And therefore:

Choice has to mean something.

Let Them Buck

With my own horses, liberty serves another very practical purpose before line longeing.

I want them to move their bodies freely.

If they want to run, let them run.

If they want to play, let them play.

And if they want to buck, let them buck.

A buck is not automatically disobedience.

Horses use movement to mobilize and stretch their bodies, including their backs. This can be particularly important when they are cold or have been standing.

I don’t want to punish a horse for expressing what their body needs.

Nor do I believe that allowing a horse to buck freely at liberty somehow teaches them to buck under saddle.

Quite the opposite.

I would rather give the horse the opportunity to stretch, move, play, and express themselves freely before I ever attach the line or eventually place a saddle upon their back.

Imagine putting a saddle onto a cold, tight back and immediately asking the horse to carry weight.

Perhaps that horse needs to stretch.

Perhaps they need to buck.

Perhaps they need to lift and mobilize their back before they can comfortably carry us.

And if the horse has learned that bucking always results in reprimand, they may suppress that expression while remaining physically tight and uncomfortable.

That isn’t what I want.

The goal isn’t to extinguish expression.

The goal is to listen to it.

Liberty gives the horse an opportunity to tell us what their body needs before we begin telling their body what we want.

Happiness Matters

There is something deeply rewarding about watching your horse moving freely and knowing that you cared enough to give them that time.

Not because it improves the next exercise.

Not because you are trying to tire them out.

Not because freedom is a reward they earned.

But because their happiness matters.

There is joy in watching a horse discover that the arena is not simply a place where something is always demanded of them.

Sometimes it is a place to roll.

Sometimes it is a place to run.

Sometimes it is a place to stretch.

Sometimes it is a place to play.

And sometimes it becomes a place where two beings meet.

That changes the meaning of the arena itself.

The Révérence

Eventually, something wonderful can happen.

The horse turns.

They face you.

And they begin walking toward you.

I don’t want the horse simply walking into my physical space, so I raise my hand and quietly ask them to stop at a respectful distance.

That boundary is part of our mutual respect.

And then something important happens:

I walk to them.

That distinction matters deeply to me.

The horse has offered the invitation.

I accept it.

I approach, caress them, speak kindly to them, and acknowledge what we have just shared.

In ballet, at the conclusion of a class or performance, there is the révérence—the bow or curtsy, an expression of acknowledgment and gratitude.

This is our révérence.

It is the completion of the dance.

Not because I conquered the horse.

Not because the horse submitted.

Not because one being prevailed over another.

But because for those moments, we found the same frequency.

Two sovereign beings listened.

Two sovereign beings perceived.

Two sovereign beings answered.

Two unique expressions of the same Divine source met without either having to surrender who they were.

And somewhere between breath, heart, movement, space, choice, intuition, and stillness, communication became connection.

Connection became relationship.

And relationship opened into communion.

Perhaps this is ultimately what the horse continually reminds us:

We do not have to become something more in order to connect with life.

We have to become present enough to experience what is already here.

The horse does not create that state for us.

The horse meets us there.

And once we discover that meeting place, we begin to recognize that it was never limited to the horse.

It is there with the trees.

With the earth.

With animals.

With nature.

With one another.

With all of life.

The present moment is where the separation begins to soften.

It is where we remember our natural state.

It is where I experience wholeness.

It is where healing becomes possible.

It is where the dance begins.

From Liberty to Dance

And there is another beautiful possibility that can grow from this foundation.

For those who are drawn to the artistic realm of movement, music, and dance, liberty longeing can become a precursor to dancing with horses—what I call Liberty Dance.

It isn’t something everyone will choose to explore, nor does it need to be.

But for me, with my own background in ballet and the arts, it became a natural extension of this relationship and one of the sweetest expressions of Pas de Cheval—a way of taking the relationship with the horse into an even deeper place.

Liberty longeing establishes something essential before that can happen: presence, trust, communication, mutual respect, energetic resonance, and the willingness of two sovereign beings to meet one another freely.

There is no demand that the relationship go there.

There is no destination the horse must reach.

But when that particular expression belongs to both horse and human, the foundation laid through liberty creates the possibility for it.

And sometimes, from that place, the dance simply comes.

And that is the foundation I want before I ever attach a line.

Because liberty is not simply what we do without a line.

Liberty reveals what remains when there is nothing connecting horse and human except their willingness to meet.

Only then—when the horse, the relationship, and the day tell me we are ready—do I reach for the line.

And that is where another conversation begins.