Pas de Cheval 6. Liberty Dance

The Unspoken Language Between Two Sovereign Beings

There are aspects of Pas de Cheval that I can teach.

I can teach foundations. I can speak about attunement and communion, respectful boundaries, work in hand, liberty, breath, movement, body awareness, spatial awareness, and learning to understand the language of the horse.

But I cannot teach someone how to Liberty Dance.

I can share its philosophy.

I can share the foundation from which it arose in my life.

I can speak about what I believe must be present before someone should ever contemplate it.

But I will not reduce Liberty Dance to a series of techniques.

Because at its deepest level, Liberty Dance has no mechanics.

It has a language.

An unspoken, universal language.

And that language becomes perceptible when we become still enough, authentic enough, and present enough to tap into the Divine frequency within ourselves—the same Divinity that flows through the horse and through all life.

That is the heart of Liberty Dance.

It is not something we do to a horse.

It is a free-flowing symphony—a pas de deux between two sovereign beings who recognize one another within a language deeper than words.

And because the horse is free, that freedom changes everything.

It Began With a Black Stallion

I was twelve years old when I first encountered this language.

There was a black stallion living alone in a field in Texas. I began visiting him.

I wasn't training him.

I wasn't trying to accomplish anything.

I wasn't trying to make him perform.

I simply kept returning.

And organically, a friendship developed between us.

Something happened in that field that I did not yet have language for. I only knew that this magnificent being and I had somehow found a way of meeting beyond the ordinary relationship I had been taught existed between horses and humans.

That experience never left me.

It established something within me very young—a knowing about horses and relationship, and about what becomes possible when we stop approaching another being solely through the roles humanity has assigned to them.

Years later, when I finally had a horse of my own, I desperately wanted to find that connection again.

Her name was Staryadnia—Stary.

I imagined that perhaps the extraordinary connection I had experienced with the black stallion would simply happen again.

It didn't.

Stary had been severely abused.

I didn't understand the extent of what she had experienced when I brought her home. I only knew that I couldn't seem to reach her.

So I began going inward.

And what Stary eventually taught me was that I was trying to connect authentically with another being while I was still hiding from the truth within myself.

Stary Would Not Meet the False Me

At that time, I was experiencing abuse within my own life.

And like so many people, I had learned to maintain an outward appearance that everything was fine.

My life was fine.

I was fine.

But underneath that appearance was a truth I wasn't yet willing to face completely.

Stary knew.

I could pretend with the world. I could not pretend with her.

She did not truly open to me until I opened to myself.

I had to become honest about what was happening in my own life.

I had to stop maintaining the appearance that everything was perfect.

I had to face the abuse.

I had to face my fear.

I had to begin discovering the authentic self underneath everything I had learned to present to the world.

And only when I began opening to my own truth did Stary begin opening hers to me.

She showed me what had happened to her.

She showed me the abuse she had endured.

And from that moment forward, I felt extraordinarily bonded to her.

Not simply attached.

Bonded as souls.

There was recognition between us.

And Stary became one of the most profound forms of biofeedback I had ever experienced.

She required authenticity from me.

She would not meet the mask.

She waited for me.

Everything Was Connected

This wasn't happening in isolation.

My entire life was changing.

I had begun deep meditation around the time my first daughter was born.

Later, my youngest daughter was born with a rare disease, and my intense desire to help her drew me further into meditation and energy healing.

At the same time, I was facing and healing from abuse.

I was raising my daughters.

I was trying to understand Stary.

I was trying to understand myself.

I was learning about energy and healing.

I was discovering authenticity.

And I was beginning to recognize the Divine spark within.

These weren't separate journeys.

Everything was connected.

My daughters.

My healing.

My horses.

My understanding of energy.

My own awakening.

My search for truth.

All of these seemingly separate threads were drawing me toward the same realization:

Something within me had to shift.

I had to discover who I was beneath conditioning.

I had to become honest.

I had to become present.

I had to learn to recognize the Divine within myself.

And as I began recognizing that Divinity within myself, I began recognizing the same Source everywhere—in my daughters, in the horses, in nature, in every sovereign expression of life.

The horses helped shape my life back toward authenticity.

They influenced the way I raised my daughters—to encourage them to know themselves, nurture the divinity within themselves, and listen to their own inner knowing rather than surrendering themselves to societal conditioning.

This became, for me, the Way of the Horse.

Then Stary Began to Dance

Once Stary and I truly connected, music became part of our communion.

I had been a ballerina for years and had my own ballet company. After my ballet classes were finished, I would take music outside into the field.

I would play it.

And Stary would dance with me.

There wasn't choreography.

There wasn't a routine.

There wasn't a mechanical sequence of movements I had taught her.

I moved.

She moved.

And Stary would keep perfect tempo with the music.

When the music changed tempo, she changed with it.

We moved together.

She danced around me.

I danced with her.

Sometimes it felt less like two separate beings coordinating movement and more like both of us had entered the same current.

That was when I began understanding something fundamental:

The dance wasn't created by movement. The movement was being created by communion.

And Stary would not truly meet me there unless I had first found that place within myself.

If I was distracted, disconnected, pretending, or somewhere other than my authentic center, the quality changed.

She knew.

Again, she became biofeedback.

The horse reflected whether I had actually entered that deeper place.

I couldn't fake the frequency.

“Apparently Mares Can't Do That”

There was another moment with Stary that I have never forgotten.

I had been reading a book written by a trick trainer who claimed that certain movements—rearing among them—were things only stallions could do.

I remember chuckling.

So I went outside and began talking to Stary.

We weren't training.

We weren't dancing.

There was no performance.

I wasn't asking her to do anything.

I simply said something along the lines of:

“Listen to this, Stary. This trainer says that because you're a mare, you can't rear on cue. You can't do these things.”

Then I looked away.

When I looked back, Stary was standing on her hind legs.

And she stayed there.

Her head was tossing from side to side almost as though she were saying:

Oh, really?

It seemed like an eternity—perhaps ten seconds.

I was completely blown away.

I had never seen anything like it.

But what mattered wasn't the rear.

I hadn't asked her to rear.

There had been no cue.

No trick.

No performance.

I had simply been talking to her.

And in that moment, it felt as though she had answered me.

Experiences like this made it impossible for me to continue reducing horses to obedience or measuring their intelligence by their willingness to execute human commands.

There was something much deeper occurring between us.

The Universal Language

This is the place where Liberty Dance becomes difficult to explain.

How do you teach something whose deepest essence exists before technique?

I experience it as a universal language.

Energy.

Frequency.

Presence.

Intuition.

Heart.

Source.

The Divine within.

These words are simply different ways of pointing toward something that is ultimately experienced rather than intellectually understood.

For me, the deepest foundation of Liberty Dance is learning to tap into that Divine frequency within oneself.

Because that Divinity isn't mine.

It isn't contained within the boundaries of the human body.

It is the same living Source flowing through the horse.

There is a human expression of it.

There is an equine expression of it.

Two completely unique beings.

Two sovereign expressions.

And beneath that apparent separateness:

One Source.

That recognition of Oneness is the language.

The Instruments of the Symphony

This is why I think of Liberty Dance as a symphony.

A symphony requires many instruments.

One instrument is spatial awareness.

Another is body awareness.

Another is agility.

Another is athleticism.

Another is musicality.

There is rhythm.

There is timing.

There is knowledge of horses.

There is an understanding of boundaries.

There is an ability to recognize changes in energy and movement.

There is the physical awareness required to know where your own body is while a very large animal moves freely through the same space.

All of those instruments matter.

But no individual instrument is the symphony.

Something brings them together.

For me, that something is attunement to the Divine.

Authenticity brings the instruments into tune.

Presence makes them audible.

Communion brings them into relationship.

And then body awareness, spatial awareness, athleticism, agility, musicality, boundaries, intuition, love and energetic resonance can begin moving together.

The instruments become music.

And sometimes the music becomes dance.

Liberty Dance Is a Spiritual Byproduct

This is why Liberty Dance is not merely the culmination of horse training.

For me, it is a byproduct of a spiritual path.

And that distinction is crucial.

If someone meditates because they want their horse to rear beside them, they have already missed it.

If someone cultivates presence because they want to produce an impressive liberty performance, then presence itself has been turned into another technique for obtaining an outcome.

The inward journey has to be real.

It is a journey toward authenticity.

Toward knowing oneself.

Toward recognizing the Divine essence within.

Toward releasing enough conditioning that we can encounter another being without constantly imposing our own projections upon them.

The dance is not the destination.

It may arise as a byproduct of that remembering.

The horse recognizes something in us.

And perhaps more importantly, we finally become capable of recognizing the horse.

Not the riding horse.

Not the show horse.

Not the trained horse.

Not my horse.

The being.

A sovereign expression of the same living Source.

Relationship Is Not Enough

This is also why saying:

“I have a close relationship with my horse”

doesn't fully describe what I mean.

Relationship matters enormously.

But this goes deeper than affection.

And it goes deeper than simply performing the responsibilities associated with horse ownership.

Yes, feed them.

Groom them.

Care for them.

Know their bodies.

Know their expressions.

But guardianship is devotion.

Be there when there is nothing in it for you.

Be there when the horse is having a down day.

Sit with them when they seem blue.

Be beside them when they don't feel well.

Sit up late with them when something is wrong.

Know when they want companionship.

Know when they need space.

Be there when there is no riding.

No training.

No accomplishment.

No photograph.

No audience.

Change your plans because they need something.

Love them when they have nothing to give you.

That is what I mean by being a selfless guardian.

Not possession.

Not ownership.

Not service in exchange for performance.

Devotion without demand.

And within that devotion, something reciprocal develops.

Not transactional reciprocity.

Not:

I did something for you, now you owe me something.

Love answers love.

Presence recognizes presence.

You come to know one another.

And the horse becomes woven into your inner life just as you become woven into theirs.

A Horse Is Not a Motorcycle

This is why I feel so strongly about a certain model of horsemanship.

A child is given a horse.

The horse lives at an equestrian center.

Someone else feeds the horse.

Someone else cares for the horse.

Someone else handles the horse.

Someone else prepares the horse.

A trainer saddles the horse.

The child arrives.

Gets on.

Has a lesson.

Gets off.

And leaves.

To me, something fundamental is absent.

A horse is not a motorcycle.

A horse is not sporting equipment waiting to be prepared so that someone can arrive and use them.

The ordinary moments are part of the relationship.

The feeding matters.

The grooming matters.

But even those things aren't the deepest point.

Being there matters.

When the horse needs you.

When nothing interesting is happening.

When the horse isn't feeling well.

When the horse simply wants to stand.

When there is absolutely nothing for the human to gain.

The relationship isn't something that occurs only during the hour in which we ask the horse to enter our world.

It grows through our willingness to enter theirs.

They Are Not Pets

I don't really think of the animals who share my life as pets.

For me, that word carries too much of an old idea of ownership—something cute or furry that belongs to us and exists within the human world for human purposes.

That isn't how I experience animals.

The horse is a sovereign being.

The dog is a sovereign being.

The cat is a sovereign being.

Every animal is a sovereign being.

Sovereignty isn't something humans bestow.

It isn't something I allow the horse to have.

It was never mine to grant.

They arrive with it.

Our responsibility is to recognize it.

Obedience Is Not Communion

Most horses in the human world learn compliance.

They learn what humans expect.

They learn what happens when pressure is applied.

They learn which response causes pressure to disappear.

A horse may therefore become extraordinarily obedient.

But obedience and communion are not necessarily the same thing.

A horse can comply without ever truly being seen.

Liberty exposes this distinction because so much external physical structure disappears.

The horse is free.

And now the question becomes:

Who are we to one another when the horse is free to choose?

That question is at the heart of Pas de Cheval.

Sovereignty Requires Boundaries

But sovereignty must never be confused with an absence of boundaries.

I respect your boundary, and I respect mine.

That is mutual respect.

And this is especially important in Liberty Dance.

A horse moving freely may trot, canter, accelerate, change direction, buck, kick, rear, play or suddenly express enormous exuberance.

That freedom is beautiful.

But horses are also very large and tremendously powerful animals.

We must never spiritualize away that physical reality.

This is why I would not recommend Liberty Dance with a very young horse who is still developing an understanding of boundaries.

I would not recommend attempting it with a horse whose communication and spatial boundaries are not deeply understood.

I would not recommend it with a traumatized, unpredictable, physically distressed or emotionally distressed horse.

And I would not recommend that an inexperienced person attempt it with an unfamiliar horse.

The Human Must Be Ready Too

The human must also possess the physical capacity to participate safely.

My background as a ballerina gave me something I didn't initially recognize as unusual:

a highly developed awareness of my body in space.

I understand rhythm.

Weight shifts.

Acceleration.

Deceleration.

Direction.

Balance.

Timing.

And I can remain aware of another moving body while knowing where my own body is.

For Liberty Dance, that matters enormously.

A person needs to be relatively athletic and agile and have very good spatial and body awareness.

You need to know where the horse is.

Where you are.

Where the fence is.

Where the horse's feet are traveling.

And where your open space is.

I have watched people attempt to imitate liberty dancing and place themselves between a freely moving horse and an arena fence.

Then the horse bucks toward them.

Suddenly someone's head is terrifyingly close to a hoof.

Never pin yourself between a freely moving horse and a fence.

That isn't fear.

It is awareness.

A spiritual connection does not eliminate physics.

The horse can be extraordinarily sensitive, intuitive and deeply connected with us while still inhabiting a large, powerful physical body.

Both truths matter.

Why I Will Not Teach Liberty Dance

This is precisely why I will share the philosophy of Liberty Dance but will not turn it into a mechanical how-to.

Everything we do around horses should seek to keep risk low.

I can share the prerequisites.

I can share my experiences.

I can describe the spiritual foundation.

But I will not say:

Step one.

Step two.

Step three.

Because someone could imitate those movements without possessing the relationship, spiritual foundation, energetic sensitivity, agility, body awareness, spatial awareness, experience or judgment necessary to make those movements meaningful or safe.

The visible movement isn't the dance.

The invisible communion beneath it is.

Mechanical Liberty Is Not the Same Dance

People can certainly produce something that looks like Liberty Dance mechanically.

Horses can be taught tricks.

Movements can be cued.

Routines can be rehearsed.

A person can learn where to stand, when to run, when to raise an arm and when to ask for a rear.

It can look impressive.

But that isn't the Liberty Dance I am describing.

Because the deepest dance is spontaneous.

Creative.

Alive.

Neither being completely authors it.

I move.

The horse answers.

The horse offers something.

I answer.

One movement creates another.

Eventually it becomes almost impossible to say who began what.

That is a pas de deux.

The horse isn't executing my dance.

I am not executing the horse's dance.

Something new is being created between us.

You Cannot Imitate Communion

I have seen beautiful expressions of liberty, including the extraordinary relationship Frédéric Pignon expressed with horses through Cavalia.

What inspired me wasn't simply what the horses did.

It was what seemed to exist underneath it.

But this is where misunderstanding can begin.

Someone sees something beautiful and thinks:

I want to do that.

Then they copy the movement.

But you cannot imitate communion.

The rear isn't the communion.

The canter isn't the communion.

The horse following the person isn't the communion.

The choreography isn't the communion.

Those things may be expressions of something deeper.

They are not its source.

It is like copying the movements of ballet without ever developing balance, musicality, strength, spatial awareness or the ability to inhabit your own body.

The shape may resemble a dance.

The dance itself is absent.

Dancing With Horses I Had Never Met

Later in my life, I had experiences that taught me something else about this universal language.

On more than one occasion, I was asked to dance with a stallion I had never met.

One was a P.R.E. stallion.

I entered the arena.

Music was playing.

I began moving.

Nothing choreographed.

Nothing particularly balletic.

Just free-flowing movement.

I connected with him through that energetic resonance.

And almost immediately, he joined me.

He cantered around me.

He moved with me.

When I invited that upward energy, he reared.

His person was astonished.

There was also a black Friesian stallion.

Again, there was something almost immediate between us.

A recognition.

With him, it went particularly deep.

There was an extraordinary familiarity—as though somehow I had known him before.

That stallion would eventually become the horse with whom I performed in Las Vegas.

These experiences might appear to contradict my insistence that people should not attempt Liberty Dance with horses they do not know.

They don't.

I would never recommend that someone imitate what I did.

By then, I had spent years cultivating body awareness, spatial awareness, energetic sensitivity, understanding of horses, intuition and the ability to remain deeply present while moving.

But those skills alone weren't the source of the connection.

Something deeper was happening.

I knew how to go inward.

I knew how to touch that Divine essence within myself.

And when another being met me there, there was already a common language.

The same Divinity flowed through both of us.

For me, that recognition of Oneness created the communion from which the dance—and a profound degree of mutual awareness—could emerge.

That spiritual connection is never a guarantee against physical accident. Sound judgment and physical awareness remain essential around any horse.

But they are the instruments.

The Divine recognition is the music.

When I Tried to Turn the Dance Into a Show

At one point, I didn't fully understand what was happening.

I knew Liberty Dance was beautiful.

I knew how deeply it moved me.

And I began imagining creating a Liberty Dance production—something inspired, in part, by what I had seen in the work of Frédéric Pignon.

People became interested.

Opportunities appeared.

People wanted to join forces.

And gradually I began to see the direction it was taking.

The focus was shifting.

Ego entered.

The human counterpart was being elevated.

The thing that had been born from communion was beginning to move toward performance.

And I wanted nothing to do with that.

So I walked away.

At first, I thought I was protecting the horse from becoming secondary to human ambition.

And I was.

But later I understood that something else was at risk too.

Our own authenticity.

The moment I began trying to manufacture for an audience what had arisen spontaneously between horse and human, something changed.

I was trying to capture something whose beauty came partly from the fact that it had never been captured.

The Friesian Stallion and Las Vegas

I felt this distinction again when I performed with the Friesian stallion in Las Vegas.

It was a good experience.

My connection with that horse was extraordinary.

There was that immediate recognition between us—a depth and familiarity that was difficult to explain.

But the performance itself represented only a small percentage of what I knew Liberty Dance could truly be.

Because now people were watching.

There was an audience.

There was expectation.

There was a performance to create.

Something was supposed to happen.

And the deepest dance isn't supposed to happen.

It simply happens.

The most beautiful dances remained the ones at home.

In my own arena.

In the field.

With music playing.

No audience.

No applause.

No expectation.

No one evaluating whether the horse performed correctly.

No one waiting for the impressive moment.

Just us.

Dance Like No One Is Watching

There is an old expression:

Dance like no one is watching.

I understand that phrase very differently now.

When nobody is watching, there is nothing to prove.

There is no image to maintain.

No applause to seek.

No expectation to satisfy.

No reason to become anything other than what we are.

And perhaps that is when we become most capable of touching the Divine within ourselves.

This brings me all the way back to Stary.

She would not meet me while I was pretending.

She met me when I became authentic.

And years later, Liberty Dance taught me the same lesson again.

Performance can become another form of pretending.

The deepest dance appears when there is no need to perform.

You Cannot Catch a Rainbow

Liberty Dance reminds me of trying to catch a rainbow.

You can see a rainbow.

You can stand beneath it in wonder.

You can let its beauty reach somewhere deep within you.

You may remember it for the rest of your life.

But you cannot possess it.

The moment we say:

I want to capture this. I want to reproduce it. I want to make it happen whenever I choose.

—we have misunderstood its nature.

The rainbow was beautiful partly because it appeared.

You didn't create it.

You didn't own it.

You received it.

The deepest Liberty Dance is like that.

When we try too hard to capture it, package it, reproduce it, perform it or possess it, we diminish the very thing that made it sacred.

But when it arises spontaneously between horse and human, it can touch something extraordinarily deep within us.

It becomes more than movement.

It becomes an inner awakening.

The Symphony

And this is where all of the pieces finally come together.

Yes, Liberty Dance requires spatial awareness.

Body awareness.

Agility.

Athleticism.

Musicality.

Rhythm.

Experience.

Knowledge of horses.

Clear mutual boundaries.

Intuition.

Presence.

Love.

Guardianship.

These are the instruments.

Each is important.

Each must be tuned.

But instruments sitting silently in an orchestra pit are not yet music.

What brings them together?

For me, it is the recognition of the Divine frequency within ourselves and within the horse.

That is the current running beneath everything.

The human remains completely human.

The horse remains completely horse.

Neither disappears into the other.

Neither sacrifices sovereignty.

Two completely unique expressions of life remain present.

And yet beneath those differences is the recognition:

The Source within you is the Source within me.

Then music begins.

One body moves.

The other answers.

Energy rises.

The horse responds.

The horse offers something unexpected.

The human hears it and answers.

Neither possesses the dance.

Neither completely authors it.

Something is being born between them in real time.

The separate instruments have become a symphony.

When Two Sovereign Beings Choose the Dance

And that is ultimately why I cannot give someone Liberty Dance.

I can share the Way.

I can teach foundations.

I can speak about attunement and communion.

I can speak about boundaries and safety.

I can encourage people to know their own bodies and become exquisitely aware of the horse.

I can share what Stary taught me.

I can tell someone to go inward.

To become authentic.

To discover the Divine within themselves.

To recognize that same Divinity within the horse.

But I cannot give them the dance.

Because the horse must bring half of it.

If I manufacture both halves, it isn't a pas de deux.

If the horse is simply executing my choreography, something essential has been lost.

The Liberty Dance appears when two sovereign beings—each possessing their own intelligence, personality, boundaries, movement and freedom—meet within a shared field of awareness and discover movement together.

And perhaps on a particular day, there is no dance at all.

That must be sacred too.

The horse owes us nothing.

There is nothing to conquer.

Nothing to prove.

Nothing to reproduce.

Nothing to capture.

And when it does appear—when music begins, our body moves, the horse answers, and suddenly two completely different beings seem to be moving within one living current—we don't possess that moment.

We receive it.

Liberty Dance is not something we do to the horse.

It is not the culmination of tricks.

It is not obedience made beautiful.

It is not choreography without a line.

It is a spontaneous byproduct of the Way—a spiritual path toward authenticity, presence, sovereignty and remembrance.

It is what can emerge when the instruments are tuned, the mechanics fall away, the heart becomes quiet, and two sovereign beings recognize the same Divine current flowing through them both.

It is communion becoming movement.

Oneness expressing itself without erasing individuality.

A free-flowing symphony between horse and human.

A moment we cannot capture any more than we can capture a rainbow.

We can only become present enough to receive it.

And when it comes—

dance like no one is watching.

That is Pas de Cheval.

The Dance of the Horse.