The Power of the Herd (50 page)

To even notice this dynamic, let alone learn to use it productively, I literally had to “get off my high horse” and spend large amounts of time with these animals on the ground. And while I'd like to say that curiosity led me down this surprisingly fruitful path, a seriously injured mare was my sole motivation for hanging out with a herd of horses on
their
terms. As I described earlier in the book, in 1994 Rasa, a beautiful three-year-old Arabian full of enthusiasm, power, and potential — the very first horse I learned to start under saddle — showed up lame the morning after an extended trail ride. The injury, which I initially thought was related solely to the stress of a big black dog chasing us down the wash, turned out to be more serious than expected. Much to my growing disappointment and despair, x-rays revealed that her right back stifle (similar to the knee in humans) was damaged, probably congenitally, making it doubtful that I would ever ride her again, quashing my advanced-riding ambitions. I'd even sold my viola to pay for this purebred mare; I wouldn't be able to buy another horse in the foreseeable future.

During Rasa's initial, three-month convalescence, I couldn't even engage in conventional ground training activities with her. And yet we were deeply bonded. While other people joked about my “thousand-pound pet,” I yearned to spend time with her. So after I got off work as an apprentice trainer riding
other people's young horses, I would mill around a large back pasture with Rasa, my husband's former cow horse Noche, and several other boarders' horses. And it was there that I gained access to a secret world, one that would alter everything I thought I knew about how living beings relate and communicate.

I was intrigued, first of all, to find that mainstream theories about dominance hierarchies didn't quite fit this herd's behavior. Coming from a variety of backgrounds, the horses in Rasa's pasture seemed to
trade off
the leadership role according to who was calmest, most experienced, or most invested in whatever situation arose. And there was something else happening, something I couldn't quite put my finger on, some kind of nonverbal coordination I couldn't begin to explain. Then a month later I was hit, in the gut, with the knowledge that horses could broadcast fear over considerable distances
before
they were able to move their thousand-pound bodies into flight-or-fight pose, let alone attack or take off running.

That pivotal October afternoon started out calmly enough. I was grooming Rasa, feeling unusually relaxed and content, enjoying the perfectly clear, deep-blue desert sky and the warm, dry wind gently blowing through my hair. Noche was grazing with the other horses at the far end of their two-acre pasture; the black mare was dozing as I braided her mane and stroked her shiny coat. Suddenly — out of nowhere — I felt like I'd been kicked in the stomach. My gut clenched, my heart skipped a beat, and my breath caught in my throat as a strange invisible force seemed to move up my body toward my brain, turning my neck and causing me to look at Noche, who was simultaneously lifting his head up from the ground in obvious alarm. At that moment, some involuntary switch was tripped, and all our bodies became coordinated. Noche and the other horses took off. Rasa and I too began to run — away from a threat I couldn't see. Yet as the rest of the herd galloped on by, my stubby legs failed me, and my human brain finally took over, wondering what the hell was going on.

It was a man on a mountain bike, riding a nearby trail. And I realized that from a horse's perspective, this guy looked downright sinister. Dressed in a fluorescent silver-and-cobalt shirt, with orange skulls on his little black socks spinning around and around as he pedaled, he seemed to slither, fast, hissing through the sand, like some demented cross between a snake and a massive, multicolored beetle: His black backpack, filled with water, rose and fell like wings trying to unfurl as he negotiated the rough terrain. And his helmet, shaped like the head of the creature from
Alien,
gave way to mirrored sunglasses, accentuating a disturbing, grossly unnatural appearance.

If this lithe and suspect creature had been a mountain lion, I would have been the first to die: the horses easily outran me as I took those first unconscious
steps in sync with the herd. But when I realized, seconds later, that I was not about to be eaten, the whole thing struck me as incredibly funny. I was just about to turn around and let the horses know that everything was fine, when I discovered that they had already sensed my relaxation and amusement and were now standing right behind me, staring curiously, yet still cautiously, at the insect man, as if they too were smiling, though a bit more nervously than I.

As Frans de Waal observed in
The Age of Empathy,
“The primacy of the body is sometimes summarized
in the phrase ‘I must be afraid, because I'm running.' ” That's exactly how I felt the day I experienced a whole herd of horses speaking through my body in a language older than words. Over time, I realized that I could use these “body-first” signals to sense what a fearful colt or angry stallion was
about to do
before he could actually do it. And in that split-second delay, I could turn a dangerous trend around —
if
I breathed into the rising tension in my own body and loosened my spine, creating a response I now call “the opposite of fear.”

In fostering a relaxed yet heightened awareness that literally saved my life with challenging horses, I also became more conscious of sensations and postures my body would take on in the presence of other people. And I realized, long before I found research to validate my experience, that humans share emotions the way horses do. If I really paid attention to what was happening during interactions with my own species, I could sense others' moods and sometimes turn an unproductive emotional trend around — through body language conveying “the opposite of fear” combined with discussions addressing people's unspoken concerns. This was more difficult, though certainly less dangerous, than working with horses, not only because I had to learn to speak and feel at the same time, but also because I had to find ways of addressing uncomfortable emotions and other subjects that no one really wanted to talk about, including me!

And so today, I'm inviting you to take the first step in mastering that “other 90 percent” — namely, listening to the marvelous sentient being your own mind rides around on. Over time, if you treat your body as an intelligent partner, not a slave or a senseless hunk of meat, life will become not only much more interesting but also more fulfilling and empowering as a result. The catch is that once everyone in our human herd learns how to do this, we'll have to imagine a new form of leadership, one that values feeling and reason, empathy and assertiveness, transparency, cooperation, and mutual empowerment — a style of leadership that, I'm happy to report, Rasa, Noche, and those other horses showed me in that very same pasture years ago.

The body scan described at the end of this chapter is a simple six-point technique for using the body as a sensing device, as a tuner, receiver, and amplifier for information coming from the environment, other people, and one's own internal compass, safety system, authenticity meter, intuition, and genius.

This is not a form of self-hypnosis or a technique for promoting relaxation or optimal body posture. When scanning the body to collect information, you do
not
want to “relax out of” or adjust any sensations or postures on purpose. Rather, notice how your body changes according to environmental influences, including encounters with other people.

Later, I will teach you how to use this information for various purposes, but in order to build emotional and social intelligence you must first become conscious of “what
is
happening” with your body, instead of fixating on what
should
or
shouldn't
be happening, or ignoring the body completely, as most of us are taught to do.

If you've been sitting at a desk for twenty years, suppressing emotion because you don't know what else to do with it, you might be reluctant to use the body-scanning technique for one of two reasons:

1.   Fear of failure (comments indicating this include: I can't feel anything below my neck. I feel like a brain rolling around on a metal box. I feel fine. I feel numb. What do you want me to feel? I never really understand what people mean when they tell me to “listen to my body.” This is dumb. When's lunch? Where's my Blackberry?)

2.   Fear of feeling overwhelmed (comments include: I've been suppressing so much for so long I don't know what might come up. I don't want to open the floodgates. If I were to start crying I'd never stop. It's dangerous to go into the body. I'm not here for therapy!)

It's important to realize, first of all, that your body registers information from the environment and other beings all day long, changing your heart rate, breathing, and posture in response to these stimuli regardless of whether you're aware of it or not.

The idea that emotional-intelligence skills automatically fall under the heading of therapy, however, goes back to the ancient Greek stoics, rationalists of the seventeenth century, and religious traditions that believe emotions are byproducts of a dysfunctional mind or evidence of an “unevolved, lowly animal
nature” taking over. We've since learned that emotion is essential to the
healthy functioning
of the mind. In
Descartes' Error,
for instance, award-winning neuroscientist Antonio Damasio shows that
brain injury patients who've lost contact with key emotional centers
while maintaining full reasoning powers have trouble making simple decisions. In
Radical Knowing,
consciousness researcher Christian de Quincey writes that
people must learn to “feel their thinking”
to develop stronger relationships
and
access a more creative, balanced approach to life.

If emotions were innately dangerous, artists would automatically be traumatized by their work, as would anyone who viewed their paintings, listened to their music, or attended their plays and films. As a violist in orchestras and chamber music groups, I was encouraged to express all kinds of emotions from age ten on, everything from elation and power to rage, deep longing, and sorrow — without losing my place in the music, losing contact with others, or going insane. When I visited my alma mater twenty years later, I found that our concertmaster, a talented violinist named Rick Smreck, had become one of the high school's guidance counselors. As we reminisced, he told me that he'd been intrigued to find that the vast majority of our fellow players had become highly successful in all kinds of fields, excelling as doctors, lawyers, engineers, writers, and professors. He believed our music training gave us important emotional- and social-intelligence skills that few people access in today's increasingly mechanistic education system.

Abuse or trauma survivors
can
become easily overwhelmed by their own feelings and body sensations, as well as by strong emotions coming from others. At work these people often function respectably, not so much exploding as dissociating during tense situations, becoming foggy, spacey, and unable to act assertively. As mentioned in Guiding Principle 1, this often leads to the “perpetual assistant” phenomenon, where an executive secretary or computer specialist seems talented, supportive, and filled with great ideas. Yet because this person goes blank under stress, he or she is repeatedly passed over for promotions.

Some “perpetual assistants” are shy or highly sensitive people who need assertiveness and public-speaking skills. Others are untreated abuse survivors. In the latter case, as with any trauma survivor, emotional-intelligence skills should be practiced in conjunction with treatment by a counselor specializing in trauma.

A number of Eponaquest instructors who are licensed therapists have found the body scan useful in teaching important self-regulation and mindfulness skills that also translate to success in work and relationships. But if you know or suspect you may be a trauma survivor, contact one of these professionals, not only to learn this technique, but also to gain long-term support in
moving beyond other challenges that make it difficult to function under stress. Equine-facilitated psychotherapy, in fact, is an unusually efficient and often fun way to move beyond the past and embrace a new, empowered way of life free from fears that were once legitimate and debilitating.

If you're more comfortable relating to digital processors than to horses or people, it helps to think of the body's ability to register tension and relaxation as a kind of binary code. Computers receive, store, and translate all kinds of complex information through a series of ones and zeros, and the body operates through a similar principle. By noticing which body parts feel tense, which feel relaxed, and how this changes in various situations, you'll be scanning your body. You can also notice when you're holding your breath or breathing fast and shallowly, and when you are naturally breathing more deeply — evidence of the sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous systems in action, another somatic binary code that we'll be engaging consciously for more specific purposes later on.

If you feel “nothing,” notice if you're feeling numb, neutral, or calm. If you're feeling numb, you may be dissociating (disconnecting from the body to avoid feeling overwhelmed). However, just as often, people say they feel nothing when their body feels relaxed, safe, or just plain good.

It's important to notice positive or peaceful sensations as well as negative or tension-related sensations. As a leader, you will at times be charged with helping people feel calmer, safer, or more energized and enthusiastic, so you have to start paying attention to these sensations and emotions in yourself and others simultaneously. Some people have been taught to emphasize what's wrong while ignoring what's actually going well. Others gloss over negative emotions and sensations in favor of an overoptimistic, Pollyanna-like attitude. Masterful leaders are secure in gaining information from both positive and negative sensations and emotions, and their comfort in this regard is contagious, helping to calm and focus people in tense situations.