Today I want to share a little more deeply on how Horse & Human came to be and how it is evolving… 🐴💫
In 2019, I set Horse & Human up as a blog site.

After exiting the veterinary profession a year earlier and wondering wtf I was doing my friend suggested I start writing about what I was exploring, if nothing more than a way to organise my thoughts and mark out the unusual path I was taking.

After setting my doubts aside I went for it and my original lovingly handcrafted Wix blog site was born.

Horse & Human became a ‘thing’ that continued to unfurl.

It did so in the wake of a few key questions:

  1. What does it mean to be well?
  2. What is the healing power of the horse – human bond?

I started by writing two ‘articles’ that can be found here.

But what I didn’t verbalise at the time, because I thought no one would understand and to be honest I didn’t really understand myself, was that there was a third enquiry running parallel to the first two.

It was actually this enquiry that first drew my attention away from the convention of the path I was on and head first into the mysterious callings of my intuition.

And it was this:

  1. Autism and horses – what’s the link? 

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Rewind ten years, it’s 2015 and I’m a third year student at vet school.

I’ve just ended a relationship which seems to have opened up a portal of devastation, mental breakdown, liberation and spiritual awakening all in one disorientating soup.

Somewhere, I can’t remember where, I hear about a link between autism and horses and feel called by my very soul to follow it.

Now for some, following a soul calling may be a totally natural thing to do.

But for many of us in our spiritually starved world, it can feel completely at odds with what we’re ‘supposed’ to do.

I found being steeped in academia with nothing but the patriarchal paradigm of science as my daily bread, that the thought of openly saying ‘I’m going to follow my intuition to explore the link between horses and autism’, felt akin to volunteering to be burnt at the stake.

But eventually it’s exactly what I did.

So whilst everyone else joined the RCVS (Royal College of Veterinary Surgeons), I used the subscription fee to instead buy a plane ticket to the USA and visit a centre working with horses and autistic children.

As it turned out I didn’t get burnt at the stake, nobody gave a shit and in fact many cheered me on – a good reminder for anyone else fearing the call of their soul 😉

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Fast forward to today and Horse & Human has grown from a blog site into my business which works to serve the highest good of horse and human alike whilst feeding my soul in the process 💖

I’ve spent the last seven years exploring what continues to emerge from those original lines of enquiry that birthed Horse & Human.

The deepening journey into the magical link between horses and autism has been truly humbling, awe-inspiring and unifying.

This link truly has everything to do with answering my first two questions on what it means to be well and what the healing power of the horse-human bond is.

I will never be able to fully capture what this link is revealing to me – it’s beyond words.

But I want to offer you a flavour, it may be a little mystical and intangible, but let’s roll with it 🔮

If my time working with horses and children with autism has taught me one thing so far it’s this: The present moment is everything.

Sensitivity to what is occurring in the ’emotional environment’ (a term I use to describe the environment around us that we cannot see but can feel) is so acute in both horses and those with autism.

In fact they are so connected to it they cannot disconnect or ‘numb out’ in the way so many ‘neurotypical’ people have been conditioned to.

Instead they stay loyal to detecting and reflecting the currents of the emotional environment (some might say they ‘act it out’), not out of choice, but out of sensitivity. Sensitivity to the present moment.

Indian philosopher Jiddu Krishnamurti writes, ‘The very nature of intelligence is sensitivity, and this sensitivity is love. Without this intelligence there can be no compassion’, whilst Anthony de Mello writes ‘What is love? It is a sensitivity to every portion of reality within you and without, together with a wholehearted response to that reality’.

The link between autism and horses has everything to do with what exists in the space between words and that in its essence is love.

Not a fluffy fuzzy concept of it, but a real experience of it.

As Krishnamurti goes on to describe, ‘it is free from sentiment, romanticism and emotional enthusiasm. It is as strong as death.
It is like a great rock, immovable in the midst of confusion, misery and anxiety. Without this compassion no new culture or society can come into being’.

Our current paradigm of medicine pathologises autism by focusing on behaviour and labelling it as ‘wrong’. But behaviour is just an end point, where did it begin? What is it communicating?

When we are willing to look into the mirror of behaviour without ideas of right or wrong but with an open heart and a wish to understand, what will we learn?

Will it be the crux of how a new society can come into being?

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Mmm food for thought.

I can’t wait to share more about what I’m discovering in the silent web of connection underlying the physical that the horse-autism link allows me to glimpse more fully.

In the meantime, with open hearts and open minds I invite you to check out the Telepathy Tapes podcast here.

This podcast invites us into understanding more about the gifts and challenges of being a non-speaking autistic being on this planet, giving a voice to depth unfathomable and shifting our understanding of the true nature of reality.

There’s so much magic about, it might feel a little unsettling, but rest assured, all is well 😌

Here’s to your continued unfolding courageous traveller!

Until next time,

Ruby