MICHELE'S STORY

Having owned horses since the age of eleven and other pets to include cats, dogs, rabbits and a goat, I have always known I wanted to do something for animals but never known what exactly. As a child I lived in an area where a dealer kept a lot of horses. I did not like what I saw and could feel the sadness in many of them, but unlike the other strays I would take home they were just too big to hide and there was nothing I could do.

After a ten year break from horses I found a goat running in the road that led me to the two ten month old foals I still have today, Zulu and Sirius. I was twenty seven then and I am now forty two years old. I knew instinctively these horses were going to be a very special part of my life and they have led me on a path I never knew existed.

Well bred, but not making the grade, I wanted to do my best for them, but despite my experience with horses on the ground I had little riding experience. I studied classical riding and was with a natural horsemanship instructor for three years, but after big lessons of not listening to my own gut feeling, which resulted in my horses sustaining injuries, I began to look beyond any system. I asked myself what I was looking for and the answer was ‘the horse’s permission’.

When you are ready – you will find it:
Despite eleven years study I still felt I had a long way to go. Feeling confused, miss-understood and wondering whether I was just weak I kept asking the Universe for direction. Shamanism was something that kept been presented to me time and time again. After experiencing things I could not explain, that were becoming more frequent, I took the step to study shamanism and became a member of The International Foundation for Shamanic Studies.

I later became a student of The Sacred Trust with whom I studied Animal Spirit Medicine for one year. Animal Spirit Medicine is animal shamanism, shamanism through animals. It is based on a sacred trust that exists between the human and animal kingdom, residing in a ‘meeting point’ between the two.

Shamanism has enabled me to understand what I have been seeing and feeling in animals, especially horses, since my childhood.  It has brought clarity and understanding to a place where I only felt frustration and confusion because of what I was being told.  I have discovered the things we feel have real meaning in our relationships with our animal friends.  Soul level bonds are achievable, but too much structure blocks these capacities.  Everything in life has to be allowed its own rhythm.

Hidden depths aren’t immediately obvious. But given time, they emerge:
Shamanism is a broad subject and one where clarity of the consciousness of the Shamanic Practitioner is of utmost importance, requiring purity and integrity of consciousness.

The evolution of our own consciousness is a process.  After years of study my personal understanding is that everything that comes from riding is a direct result of everything else -  to do with The Self.  As humans we have a tendency to look outside of ourselves for the answers, but as a Spirit once told a Siberian Samoyed Shaman, “shamanizing, you will find your way, by yourself”.

Hildegard of Bingen:
"O human, see then the human being rightly: the human being has heaven and earth and the whole of creation in itself, and yet is a complete form, and in it everything is already present, though hidden."

I continue to develop my own clarity of consciousness with the study of Kabbalah. Kabbalah is the worlds oldest body of spiritual wisdom and contains the long hidden keys to the secrets of the universe, as well as the keys to the mysteries of the human heart and soul.

Theo is the latest addition to our family.  He is a shetland pony who came to us at 5 months old from the Shetland Isles after the herd he was from was sold, one by one, and he was the only one left.  Several ladies were informed of his plight by a vet's wife who knew Theo would end up at the horse market and, most likely, sold for meat.  It is thanks to their kind hearts that Theo is with us today in his new home with his big brothers.