94 SIDELINES DECEMBER 2012
FOR HORSE PEOPLE • ABOUT HORSE PEOPLE
e
Sports Psychology
By Ann S. Reilly, Ph. D.
The holiday season is a time for refecting on the spiritual
aspects of our lives although this refection time can get lost in
the hustle bustle of buying gifts and holiday celebrations. While
material giving is an expression to others from the heart and
spirit, giving yourself the gift of time to refect on the condition of
your own heart and spirit can bring you the gifts peace, joy, and
wholeness.
In one of the late Whitney Houston songs, she sings, “Learning
to love yourself is the greatest gift of all.” Feeding your heart and
spirit, through refection and meditation time, enhances your ability
to love yourself. It allows you to keep the warm, loving holiday
spirit in your life throughout the rest of the year.
During your refection and meditation time, you can include
your love of horses. For me, and I believe many people, horses
play a large role in helping us learn to love ourselves. As children,
horses inspired our imagination and many of us, horse owners or
not, enjoyed reading our children’s books about horses, watching
horse movies, drawing horses or writing about these beautiful
animals whom we fell in love with. Horses inspired us to creatively
express our capacity to love ourselves when we spent time
around horses, in real life or through literature, art, movies or our
imaginations.
Falling in love with horses helps us learn to love ourselves
because through this love we recognize the great heart and spirit
horses have. This recognition mirrors the great heart and spirit
each one of us on this planet earth is born with. And from this
enlightenment, we can work on loving ourselves, which ultimately
will create a loving world.
While refecting or meditating try to
remember the special moment in your life
when you frst touched a pony or horse. Think about when a pony
or horse frst touched your life. Relax and allow your mind to fll up
with memories of the beauty you perceived the frst time you saw
a pony or horse.
Horses do not know if they are rich or poor. While they naturally
have a “pecking order” they do not think one is better than another.
They do not have thoughts that they are not good enough, rich
enough, pretty enough or other thoughts that cause us humans
to not be able to love ourselves. Instead, horses show us their
natural spirit. They sure do not worry if their mane is messed up,
their whiskers are not clipped, they are not braided or have their
fake tails on or their hooves not painted.
Horses have these glorious, natural spirits because they are
part of the world of nature. No matter how human we make them,
horses manage to maintain their connection to nature. Humans
can learn from horses how to reconnect to the natural rhythm of
life by being around horses. Much of the stress we as humans
experience is caused by losing touch with loving ourselves and
falling out of step with the natural rhythm of life from living in a
highly technical world.
During this holiday season, take some time to enjoy your love
of horses. Go out in nature and look at some horses grazing in a
feld. While doing this refect on the gifts horses have presented
to you throughout your life. And give yourself the greatest gift of
all - loving yourself, just the way you are!
Ann S. Reilly, Ph.D. is a sport psychologist and author of “A Sport Psychology
Workbook for Riders,” available from amazon.com. Questions for Ms. Reilly’s column
can be addressed to areilly627@aol.com.