How did Horse Breathing end up in a Macca’s takeaway Queue?

Last week we talked about the importance of being calm to interact with the horses, we mentioned breathing as a way of enabling calmness in our clients. We introduce horse breathing before we go near the horses, we walk around the outside of the arena and breath in through the nose and out through the mouth, on some occasions if a client is struggling we ask the clients to hold the inward nose breath before they breath out, if a client is very active we ask them to breath in through the nose and out through the nose just like the horses do. Horse breathing as we call it is then used in all session with the horses.

Breathing this way enables a person to be calm, our clients understand this as the horses only interact with them if they are calm, the horses walk away from them if they are not calm. Some clients are not aware of what feeling calm is for them, they have never consciously recognised the feeling of calm. For these people telling them to clam down when they angry is a disaster as they don’t know how to be calm, they have no idea of what it feels like.

Our non verbal horses don’t ask for calmness they react through non verbal communication, they let a person know very clearly when they are calm as they interact with them. This in turn enables the person start to recognise when they are feeling calm. This is taken away by many of our clients who use horse breathing in many different situations when they want to be calm.

So how did horse breathing end up in Macca’s takeaway queue? A young lady that comes to horse coaching each week was out with her 2 siblings and support worker, its a regular Saturday outing and each week one of the siblings choses where to eat. The support worker told me how on this particular cold and rainy Saturday the arranged eating place didn’t workout, they moved to the second choice but there was no room, the 3rd choice Nando’s had a table but refused to take cash! They gave up and returned to the car deciding to go for a takeaway at Macca’s, by this time everyone, including the support worker was hungry, tired and fed up, voices became loud and arguments started in the takeaway queue. My client told everyone they needed to do horse breathing, she explained how, modelled the breathing and everyone followed, they all calmed down, food was ordered and everyone was happy!