about

"Do you give the horse his strength
or clothe his neck with a flowing mane?
Do you make him leap like a locust,
striking terror with his proud snorting?
He paws fiercely, rejoicing in his strength,
and charges into the fray.
He laughs at fear, afraid of nothing;
he does not shy away from the sword.
The quiver rattles against his side,
along with the flashing spear and lance.
In frenzied excitement he eats up the ground;
he cannot stand still when the trumpet sounds.
At the blast of the trumpet he snorts, 'Aha!'
He catches the scent of battle from afar,
the shout of commanders and the battle cry."
~Job 39:19-25 (NIV)

The name is a guide. In Bible times, people often named children something significant, something that related what the Lord was doing in their life at that time. I have done the same with Cambria. 

Cambria

The Celtic girl's name "Cambria" means "beautiful life" or "full of expression," and that is the goal of my horsemanship—a partnership of joyful expression for both horse and human.


Beautiful Life
Life, as it was created to be, is indeed of the most stunning beauty, not meant to be stagnant, legalistic, or ritualistic. It should be bursting with expression and art, the relationship between two beings providing the most expressive dance imaginable.

Full of Expression
The longest Bible passage about a horse, written above, describes him radiating expression and pride. The context of the passage is the Lord speaking to Job, telling of His glory through creation. If that was how the Lord chose to describe the horse—if describing him full of confidence and pride and wild expression was the ultimate portrayal of him and of the glory of creation, then that is what I seek to bring out in the horse today.


Radiance ~ Release ~ Renewal

Patricia Pellen and bridleless bullfighting

My first love has always been training in lightness, particularly at liberty and bridleless, from first steps to final performance, inspired by the Iberian bullfighting horses, with their sensitivity, functionality, athleticism, and pure brilliance. My vision is to see horses being able to emanate and perform that sort of radiance and glory, yet bridleless and at liberty. When a horse becomes so proud and free that he finds how to use his body in that stunning way without any tack, the horsemanship has at that point turned into a gift to him which will bless him for the rest of his life.

Radiance
Horses have helped opened me to myself. They have revealed to me my faults and strengths and shown how much a mirror living creatures are to us—and what a gift that is. Horses have made me understand, not scoff at, those people who are transformed mentally, emotionally, and spiritually by being around those four-footed steeds—for I am now one of them.

The longer I am with horses, the more I realize that it is I who must change as much as my horse. For years, I saw horsemanship as simply horse training; certainly I should become softer, calmer, clearer, but this was of secondary importance to my skill in training. I do not believe this is the case any longer. Instead, to be a person to whom horses are drawn, I need to radiate the sort of balanced, complete life for which horses know they were made—the life that used to be before time, and the life that will someday come again at the end of it. Horses have not forgotten.

Release
When trained with conditioned cues, with patterns, with food rewards, with pressure and release, horses have less of a choice than we think. They feel judged—wrong—uncertain. They are right very little of the time and uncertain a great deal of the time. Some horses struggle, but gallantly give their all. Others just cannot take it and rebel.

With the horsemanship of feel and release, however, pressure at the horse does not occur. Instincts instead of cues are used, while associations instead of conditioning is practiced. Horses can be released to a maneuver with no preceding pressure—open your legs to go forward, loosen your reins to halt, open your leg to turn, give the rein to receive a bend. In many ways, this is a radical horsemanship.

But then, isn’t that what we are looking for?

Renewal

Horses have taught me about what I call “maia,” ("close to God"), something you can read about more fully on my personal blog (www.prayersoflight.blogspot.com)—and it is no coincidence that my horse who brought me to that is named "Maia" as well. “Maia” is the wrenching of your heart when you are longing for beauty, or perfectly happy, or awestruck by glory; it is when you are absolutely, completely alive. I believe pursuing and bringing about maia in Him is the Lord’s calling for each of us, and I was taught this by horses when I realized I could find maia in perfect bridleless connection with them.

I believe the calling in horsemanship we all feel towards harmony—beauty—expression, is not rooted in just a nice idea and is not based in a desperate hope. Instead, I see it rooted in the very foundation of the world itself, part of the calling of every human to renew the world and bring it, through the redemption of Christ, to a new earth. This is why a transformational horsemanship is not just nice and is not just good—it is necessary; it is not inferior to other callings, for in every corner of the kingdom is a holy calling.