Teachers Among Us

Tankha Growing Up
by Leigh Shambo

In the last newsletter, I mentioned that my youngest horse Tankha is a good teacher for me. I could add, the best teachers are often not easy! In age and development, Tankha is like a teenage boy, with some resistance to making his grown up way. When Tankha is exuberant, he likes to play rough and bossy. When I demand respect, he shuts down and becomes sullen. And when I try to keep things clear and task-focused, he becomes bored and clumsy, indifferent to my communications. If he was a human, he would certainly be rolling his eyes, or giving me "the finger" (though in his case it's a whole hind foot aimed in my direction!). Tankha

First I had to muster the intensity with which I had to impress on Tankha that certain behaviors were NOT okay. This included kicking, a dangerous vice which cannot be tolerated. I wanted to be nice, but Tankha required two things, and he made these clear. I had to produce an immediate and very strong aversive (sometimes a physical whack!); and just as immediately had to drop it and continue in a spirit of fun and camaraderie. Wow, talk about emotional flexibility!

A second lesson involved suspending any judgment which was overly negative or overly positive. Just the facts, Ma'am. If I believe he is "bad", guess what? He is. And if I believe he is good, well, then he might be.I still need to be careful. If I am too naïve, I can be nipped or kicked. Feeling my own struggle to suspend my judgment, I can more readily understand other humans who feel stuck in a place of helpless blaming with others. What a freedom comes with just seeing realistically, in shades of grey instead of black and white.

Not every horse has faced the same challenges as Tankha, nor do they all present such challenges as Tankha in stages of their training. Such comparisons are of little use to Tankha. The goal of relationship must be to understand and work with, not to excuse, avoid or punish. It feels vulnerable and uncertain to build an understanding by allowing processes to unfold and deepen, like making an investment that we aren't sure will pay off. It takes restraint not to resort to force. And he requires the investment of my time, my caring and my attention which is considerable.

HEAL reader Claudia Mielke from Simi Valley, California, wrote, "I am a special education teacher. My students (grades K through 5) have mild to moderate learning disabilities. You inspire me in regards to 'how' I work with my herd of students in teaching them to read, write and do math. I also want to do what you describe so eloquently, 'slow down enough to connect'. My students often feel like failures because they have experienced some difficulty in learning compared to their friends or family members. I also completely agree with the following statement of yours, 'The dividends of connection are abundantly clear.' I see this every day when I create these conditions you write about," [activating the SEEKING, CARING and PLAY brain pathways]. "Then LEARNING takes place in great bounds!"

And so it does! As the weeks pass, Tankha's face grows softer. Always eager for our time together, the other day he nickered as he trotted toward me when I entered the pasture.

It doesn't really matter if Tankha is teaching me, or I'm teaching him. We SEEK each other finding ways to PLAY so that our CARE for each other yields mutual safety, growth and joy. Written in CAPS, these words are the labels of actual neural networks in the mammalian brain, those that produce emotional energies to help us thrive and evolve. Come learn more at HEAL's summer workshop, Energy & Grace!