The Power of the Herd (49 page)

S
ometimes people ask me
how I can tell what a horse is feeling. To the untrained eye, equine facial expressions do seem more limited than ours. However, horses more than make up for this through consistent, meaningful changes in ear position and body posture that are recognizable at a considerable distance, an important adaptation for social animals grazing over large territories. Humans — who cannot move their ears — probably look stoic to the average horse, like a schoolmarm with her hair pulled back in a severe bun. And just think how close you have to stand to a person to see her wink, frown, or smile, let alone clench her jaw in anger, turn red with embarrassment, or well up with the first sign of tears.

Science, however, has recently discovered that people are better at reading body postures than you might expect — sometimes trusting these cues more than facial expressions in determining others' moods. In
The Age of Empathy: Nature's Lessons for a Kinder Society,
biologist Frans de Waal cites a number of clever studies illustrating this point. In one experiment, scientists pasted an angry face on a fearful body and a fearful face on an angry body. At first the subjects were noticeably confused by the incongruity, which slowed down their reaction time, but
“the body posture won out when the subjects
were asked to judge the emotional state of the depicted person.” In another experiment, when people watched pictures of fearful body postures with the faces blacked out, “the subjects' faces still registered fear.”

These and others studies led de Waal to develop
the Body First Theory, which holds that
sometimes “emotions arise from our bodies” and are also
transferred between people through the body first. Most people believe that emotions arise from thoughts and memories, and while this is often accurate, the brain is not always in charge of this process, not by a long shot. Work by Candace Pert and other researchers active in the field of psychoneuroimmunology proved that the molecules carrying emotional information (called neuropeptides) are generated not only by the brain but also by sites throughout the body, most dramatically the heart and the gut. As it turns out, recommendations to “follow your heart” or “pay attention to gut feelings” are
not
metaphors. Researchers subsequently discovered that a significant number of the heart's cells are neural, and that the gut has more neural cells than the spinal column, prompting some scientists to consider the brain as one of
three
somatic intelligence centers that can gather, process, and, yes, even communicate information (see
chapter 3
).

In the late twentieth century, scientists also confirmed that the body-mind connection is a two-way street. Postures and facial expressions not only
express
our emotional state, they can
change
our emotional state. So, while we smile when we are happy,
“our mood can be improved by simply lifting
the corners of our mouth,” de Waal reveals. “If people are asked to bite down on a pencil lengthwise, taking care not to let the pencil touch their lips (thus forcing the mouth into a smilelike shape), they judge cartoons funnier than if they have been asked to frown.” Similarly, political, social, and religious organizations have a long history of creating rigid, compliant followers by promoting submissive or militaristic, machinelike postures and behaviors, drawing, as we now know, on the contagious, consciousness-altering nature of body language.

Yet as de Waal also emphasizes, even seriously repressed people have some choice in the matter. We all know, for instance, that
there “are times when matching the other's emotions
is not a good idea. When we're facing a furious boss, for example, we'd get into deep trouble if we were to mimic his attitude.”

Social intelligence involves accurately reading people's feelings and using this information thoughtfully. This also requires noticing when you're catching an emotion or body posture that originated in someone else. For leaders, it can even involve recognizing unproductive emotional trends and
turning them around,
“driving emotions in the right direction
to have a positive impact on earnings or strategy,” as Goleman, Boyatzis, and McKee emphasize in
Primal Leadership
(see
chapter 2
).

Contrary to popular belief, however, this doesn't mean sweeping uncomfortable feelings and concerns under the rug. Add current research on the contagious nature of emotion, and you realize that to turn negative feelings around in a group, you must
transform
them, not hide them. And that means you must
first turn them around in yourself, recognizing that your own heart rate, blood pressure, and body posture are being affected by the feelings of others, and vice versa. Sounds like an evil little hall of mirrors, doesn't it? But it's the “other 90 percent” at work, plain and simple.

Traditionally, riders have been told to never, ever show fear to a horse, presumably to keep the animal from taking advantage of a perceived weakness. Life at the barn would be so much simpler if only people could comply with this ageold request. But as it turns out, horses
sense
as much as see emotion. So even if you manage to approximate the body posture of confidence, these highly sensitive prey animals can still tell you're afraid if your heart rate and blood pressure are elevated. To a horse, congruence means not only that your words, actions, facial expressions, and body language are in sync but that your “insides match your outside.”

As I noted earlier, science shows that human beings are also affected by the hidden emotions of others. You can ignore that information, as most of us are taught to do through decades of cultural conditioning, but it still affects you unconsciously. And sadly, what remains unconscious ultimately
controls
you, usually at the most stressful, inconvenient moments when it really would be helpful to be playing, consciously, with a full deck.

In
chapter 2
, I cited several studies exploring the effects of
affect contagion,
the (usually) unconscious transfer of feelings between living beings. For our purposes here, it's important to emphasize once again that hiding emotion adds stress to group interactions, potentially causing others to act defensively or have trouble thinking clearly and creatively. In
Social Intelligence: The New Science of Human Relationships,
Goleman showed that not only does a person's blood pressure escalate when he tries to suppress feeling, but
the blood pressure of those interacting with him also rises.

Remember: unless you're a sociopath, your heart rate and blood pressure rise when you're frightened or angry, even when you're wearing your best poker face. It takes extra effort to hide these feelings, energy that you and the people you're interacting with could be using for other purposes. When emotions are suppressed over the long term, they intensify into other, more troublesome complexes and impulses (see the Emotional Message Chart, at the end of
chapter 13
), eventually causing people to act out in unproductive ways when the pressure reaches critical mass, sometimes damaging relationships irreparably. Our culturally induced emphasis on verbal communication lessens awareness
of this dynamic in its earlier, more manageable stages, but anyone who retains or reclaims awareness of affect contagion has a definite edge in influencing the nonverbal elements of social interactions.

In horses and other prey species, the volume of this recently discovered “sixth” sense is turned way up. These animals become noticeably agitated in the presence of people who are incongruent, who try to cover anger, fear, or sadness with an appearance of well-being. This is not an equine judgment of our tendency to lie about what we're really feeling; it's a reflection of emotion's physiology — and its contagious nature. Horses, who exhibit heightened stress when a human handler tries to suppress emotion, also show signs of relief the moment this person acknowledges a hidden or simply unconscious feeling, even if the emotion itself is still present. By making the fear or anger conscious, by becoming congruent, the handler effectively lowers his own blood pressure, even if only slightly. But it's enough to drop the horse's blood pressure in response, which the animal demonstrates by sighing, licking and chewing, and/or lowering his head.

So what are we to do with this information? Turn a business meeting into an encounter group?
Absolutely not,
you'll be happy to know. Deciphering the information that emotions present can be handled efficiently and professionally. Subsequent guiding principles, in fact, are designed to help you do just that. It's also important for leaders to remember that
authentic
positive feelings are contagious too. A person who truly feels peaceful in situations that unnerve others can have a calming effect on everyone around her.

Skills associated with driving others' emotions in a more productive direction are outlined in the next lesson, Guiding Principle 3, which explores how to manage contagious emotions. First, however, you need to notice how your body is affected by your own and others' unspoken feelings. The good news is that, rather than being victimized by this long-neglected and thoroughly natural process, you can use it to your advantage.

Engaging daily with your body as a sentient tuner, receiver, and amplifier for that “other 90 percent,” you'll gain proficiency in accessing all kinds of nonverbal information floating around, information that will give you a significant edge in achieving your goals and enjoying more satisfying personal relationships, to boot.

I first realized that my body had a mind of its own when I noticed my mare paying attention to my body as if it
were
another horse. What I
thought
I was
communicating was much less important to her than what I was unconsciously conveying through posture, heart rate, muscle tension, breathing, and the various emotions that either caused those physiological responses to rise and fall or (as we now know) were created by the body first in response to the environment.

And so I began to think of my body as the horse that my mind rides around on. As with any horse, I could form a mutually respectful partnership with it, or I could rein it in and spur it on, refusing to listen to it, only to have it throw me during stressful situations and head for the hills when I needed its cooperation most. What's more, I realized, when people are taught to focus exclusively on what an authority figure is saying, suppressing gut feelings and wildly fluttering heartbeats, their bodies' intuitive wisdom and natural warning systems are muzzled, allowing, in the worst-case scenario, a malevolent boss, cult leader, or dictator to corral them for any number of purposes against their better judgment, as history has shown time and time again. Accessing my body's wisdom, then, was an act of revolution and empowerment.

It also took practice, like learning to ride a bike, drive a car, or operate a computer. Over time, the procedure became second nature, applicable to countless situations in everyday life and at work. However, truly
listening
to my body was quite different from what was taught by the vast majority of relaxation, meditation, massage, yoga, and sport-oriented coaches, including equestrians.

When I first started riding lessons in my midthirties, I was surprised at how little I could
feel,
being a musician and all. But I had been sitting in a chair for twenty years, holding my viola between my chin and my upraised left arm, an extremely unnatural position that my body adapted to over time. As a gymnast in high school and in exercise classes as an adult, I would demand all kinds of other outlandish things from my body, pushing it through the pain, sometimes experiencing elation, sometimes experiencing frustration, all the while focusing on whatever posture was optimal for the sport in question.

And then there was the correct riding posture for sitting gracefully on the back of a trotting horse. My first instructors were like drill sergeants, shouting at me to keep my heels down, my shoulders straight, and my hands still. “Relax!” they would scream, causing the hair on the back of my neck to rise and my legs to tighten, whereupon my mare would lunge forward as I gripped her belly with my thighs, inadvertently giving her the cue to go faster or even buck, at which point I would either hang on or crash to the ground, getting the air knocked out of me. Then, gasping and wheezing, checking for broken bones, I would get back on because, well, everyone knows what you're supposed to do when you fall off a horse...

Then I found a more advanced instructor, and she raised the bar higher. I was expected to use my own body to
help
the horse achieve whatever I asked. No longer allowed to pull back on the reins or kick furiously, I was instructed to use my seat bones to communicate with my mare, either moving ahead of her current rhythm to speed up, or working against her forward movement to slow down, like pedaling backward on a bicycle without moving my legs. To transition up to a canter where her
right front
leg was leading, giving her optimal balance to move in a clockwise circle, I had to sense when the horse's
left back
hoof hit the ground and give the proper “aid” (supportive, well-timed cue) then. This meant I not only had to know where all my own body parts were, using them independently and purposefully for a variety of desired effects, but also had to literally
feel
what my horse's legs were doing from moment to moment.

Body language took on a whole new meaning at that point. But spending time with herds of horses took me to a much deeper, completely unexpected place. I realized that
their
emotions could dramatically affect my body. And that, for better or worse, my own emotions could affect the entire herd.