What Is Enlightened Horsemanship?

Enlightened horsemanship, or natural horsemanship, refers to an understanding of horses' natural being and habitat. Find out how enlightened horsemanship can be applied to understand a horse's feelings and emotions with information from an applied behavioral ecologist in this free video on natural horsemanship.

Hi I'm Mary Ann Simonds I'm an applied behavioral equine ecologist. I live in my ranch in Vancouver Washington. And I'm here today just to talk to you about enlightened horsemanship. That's actually just a title I gave some of my training programs because years ago I was calling it natural horsemanship. And this was long before there were any training programs called natural horsemanship because in science natural has a direct meaning to the horse's natural habitat. And being an applied behavioral ecologist studying wild horses natural means that you understand the horses natural way of being. As I evolved and started making flower essences and doing magnetic therapy and developing more holistic approaches with horses and teaching, then that evolved into a holistic horsemanship. And as that became a training modality for someone I stayed a step ahead and we went to enlightened horsemanship. So enlightened horsemanship is something that can be used when a person understands the whole world of the horse. Not just how to train a horse, not just what you want the horse to do or particular discipline, enlightened horsemanship means that you understand the relationship. You learn the relationship of humans and horses ,how we are similar, how we are different. You understand a horses feelings and emotions and how they express it. You understand horse/human communication and how to do it, and how horses communicate and how horses communicate with human. We look at projection of human projections and on horses. Horses don't typically project their attitudes or feelings on humans. So all of the qualities of consciousness and awareness looking at how to access the temperament of horses. How horses learn. The best way to relate to your horses. All of those things are wrapped up in the training and the programs in enlightened horsemanship.