Exploring Connection: Tapping into Our Subtle Ways of Knowing

Recently, I had a group of university students and their supervisors out for an equine-facilitated learning workshop.  I called it Exploring Connection: Tapping into Our Subtle Ways of Knowing.  There is so much about the university experience that uses our rational (left) brain to learn, unless one is in an arts-based program such as music, art or drama, where the creative and intuitive right brain excels.  I wanted to introduce these students to other ways of knowing and of communicating.  Part of the problem is that what is stored in our right brain is not readily available to us through language.  Language is a left-brain function.  Tuning into the right brain requires us to notice in a deeper way than most of us usually do in our day to day lives, bring what we notice to consciousness and then transfer it to the left brain so we can speak of it.

 But we don’t ‘know’ only with our brain.  It turns out that our body is a magnificent ‘tuner, receiver, and amplifier’ of non-verbal information.  (This phrase comes from Linda Kohanov of Eponquest.  It also dates us as belonging to the age of hi-fi audio systems!)  But, as I told the students, many of us walk around as ‘heads on a stick’, as I described how I used to be.  I was really good at using my rational brain, so excelled in most school subjects.  But I couldn’t feel in my body and I had little access to intuition.  This often happens to people as a result of trauma or overwhelming situations.

In Somatic Experiencing, we learned to follow the acronym SIBAM to look at the channels of how our clients know.  SIBAM stands for: Sensation, Image, Behavior, Affect (or emotion), and Meaning.  Sensation is our earliest way of knowing, beginning in utero.  Image refers to memory, pictures, bits of songs, phrases, etc. that may pop into our head.  I would also include intuition here.  Behavior is the only channel that I, as a Somatic Experiencing Practitioner, can see in a client.  Affect or emotion may be visible to me, but it may also be masked by the client if they learned that it was unsafe for them to express themselves.  Meaning is the only channel that comes from our neo-cortex, or thinking brain.

So with all this background (and more), the students had some opportunities to practice these other ways of knowing.  They learned how to do a body scan, they spent time just observing each horse individually and noticing what came up for them – how they responded to each horse.  One of the students (who is a theatre major) even wrote a poem about each horse and eerily managed to capture an accurate sense of the horse’s character.  They also practiced sensing their personal boundaries by doing an exercise I call ‘How Close is Too Close’.

With this learning, each participant then got an opportunity to spend time with a horse in the roundpen.  I was there to facilitate when needed, as they practiced setting a boundary with the horse.  But since we can’t really have connection if we insist on keeping a boundary, they also got to explore how to connect with the horse in a way that felt safe to them.  For some, it was through the bars of the fence, the horse on the inside and the participant on the outside.  For some, it was tentative reaching out towards the horse, unsure of how to connect to such a large and unfamiliar creature.  But for others, there was a comfort in the presence of the horse which allowed them to reach out and touch, and even hug, the horse.  What was important was not what each person did with their time with the horse, but rather noticing what they felt in the moment.  I hoped that each person would come away with a deeper appreciation of this experience of connecting to a horse and connecting with themselves.

A couple of days later, I got an email from the supervisor thanking me for the workshop.  Her words were deeply touching to me and validated the work I do. 

               …I wanted to take a moment to let you know how impactful your workshop has been.  We had a good time and the learning has been great.  We are referring to it all the time.

               It was also cool for me to watch you.  You are so good at what you’re doing! Very much in the moment, good awareness & decisions, great facilitation, authenticity.  Plus, beautiful facility & generous host!