dysfunctional coin, and my faith in the sanity of our species was deteriorating — fast.
And so in my midthirties, while my husband was off touring Europe with several other musicians, I impulsively bought a horse. My intention was to ride into the desert, to get as far away as possible from the human race on a regular basis. Yet this beautiful, willful mare refused to comply with my escape plan. Nakia, a striking Thoroughbred ex-racehorse, tested me every step of the way, showing absolutely no respect for my hard-won reputation. It didn’t matter to her that a well-known music magazine flew me to Los Angeles to interview k.d. lang one week, then sent me to Japan a month later to write a cover story on Brian Eno. There was no way I could impress my mount with stories of how another publication was arranging dinners with classical violin virtuosos Isaac Stern and Anne-Sophie Mutter in between meetings with jazz great Wynton Marsalis and rock guitarist Carlos Santana. She didn’t even care that I talked to Johnny Cash an hour before I drove out to the barn one day. Chatting with a country music legend did not make me a passable rider. All those years sitting at a desk, writing, listening to music, and talking into a microphone had cut me off from the fluidity, assertiveness, and balance in motion that even the most generous horse demands, and this mare was hell-bent on showing me exactly how my “prestigious” career made me weak and ineffective.
Yet a strange thing began to happen. As I became more adept at motivating my horse, focusing her attention, and gaining her respect, relationships at home and work improved. People commented on the change, yet no one could pinpoint what had shifted. I also noticed nonverbal dynamics at play in myself and others that were reinforcing dysfunctional patterns on both sides of the employer/employee relationship, though at first I had no idea how to change the situation. It was as if someone had suddenly turned a spotlight on interactions we’d been trying to maneuver through in the shadows, and yet for years I had been unable to even describe these observations to others. Over time, I realized that no matter how eloquently we humans advocated change, how diligently we debated the issues, how zealously we strategized, what we couldn’t talk about was a much more powerful motivator of behavior than anything we could discuss. Working with horses quickly became much more than a diversion. It was the missing link in my education as a writer, musician, wife, friend, employee, and, increasingly, leader.
Psychologists have observed that only 10 percent of human interpersonal communication is verbal. And yet in our culture, we’ve become mesmerized by words as our social and educational systems teach us to dissociate from the body, the environment, and the subtle nuances of nonverbal communication. More and more, our conversations don’t even take place in person, as cell phones, email, and text messages proliferate. Where in the world do we go to master that other 90 percent?
For me, the most rustic of boarding stables proved a worthy setting. In fact, there was no end to the character-building exercises my growing herd saw fit to impose. Through a relentless series of experiential lessons, my four-legged companions transformed me into a more engaged, assertive, intuitive, adaptable, and courageous person, not so much by tutoring as by tuning me, helping me over time to hold a more balanced frequency. I was amazed to find that, like Pegasus, the mythical winged stallion who inspired poets, artists, and musicians, my horses could dispel the worst case of writer’s block through the simplest interactions. Like Zen masters, these exquisitely mindful creatures helped me navigate paradox with increasing facility. They even held the key to effectively dealing with emotion, and it didn’t involve suppression or expression. (For details, see Guiding Principle 1, in chapter 13 of the book.) I could act horselike in all kinds of perplexing human situations and completely change the outcome for the better. The barn took on a mystical patina as my equine friends taught me more in silence than anyone ever had in words.
It’s taken me a good fifteen years to translate horse wisdom into spoken and written language, and yes, I can even inject significant logic into the discussion. Much of the research allowing me to do this didn’t exist when I started this journey in 1993, so it seems I was born at the right time and place to take on such a project. Over the years, through much experimentation, I also developed ways of teaching these same skills to others. Yet while there is much I can now offer in conference rooms and lecture halls, my horses remain the true masters at transforming human behavior, illuminating ineffective habits and hidden strengths, and teaching awareness of, and eventually mastery of, that “other 90 percent” with remarkable ease and efficiency.
In this respect, it’s absolutely no accident that the most effective historical leaders — from Alexander the Great to Katherine the Great, George Washington, Winston Churchill, and Ronald Reagan — were skillful riders, equestrians who had close relationships with spirited, arguably heroic horses. Regardless of policy and agenda, these people exhibited exceptional poise under pressure, clarity of intention, courage, and conviction. Their mounts were not mindless machines. They required — and continued to foster — an almost supernatural level of leadership presence capable of motivating others to face incredible odds and create innovative, highly ambitious empires. That Alexander the Great and George Washington each rode the same horses into battle year after year also demonstrates their ability to cultivate relationship as a source of power: to tap resources without taxing them, even in the most dangerous and desperate circumstances. Their horses returned the favor, saving their lives on more than one occasion.
Business, politics, education, and religion may seem like opposing forces at times, but they all share one significant, potentially fatal flaw: mistrust of the body. Civilization has thus interrupted the optimal flow of human evolution. Your body is the horse that your mind rides around on. It’s a sentient being, not a machine. (See Guiding Principle 2, chapter 14.) Starve that horse, beat it into submission, ignore its vast stores of nonverbal wisdom, and it will fail you when you need it most, throwing you during a crisis, perhaps wandering into traffic at the most inopportune moment. Reawakening corporeal intelligence — learning to form a partnership with instinct, intuition, and emotion — these skills are essential in harnessing the strength, creativity, spirit, compassion, and endurance needed to manifest lasting, meaningful change.
There’s a whole herd of horses in my cathedral, and they remain my greatest teachers. This is the course, the handbook they’ve dictated in so many subtle and powerful gestures.
The request for backup was unprecedented, especially so soon after the election — one Secret Service agent was injured, and the future president of the United States was taking care of him, waiting for assistance. Ronald Reagan hadn’t even taken the oath of office, and already he was a security risk.
“I have a big problem out here,” the detail supervisor reported during that subsequent, no doubt embarrassing, call to the White House. “I need someone who can ride a horse.”
Turns out that Reagan wanted to spend time at his California ranch after a grueling election campaign, but it was difficult for him to relax with members of the Presidential Protective Division acting like Keystone Cops on horseback. As John Barletta reveals in his insightful, occasionally hilarious book Riding with Reagan: From the White House to the Ranch, no one on the secret service staff even knew how to tie a horse that first week at Rancho del Cielo, so the president-elect ended up saddling all their mounts. Things only got worse when they started riding. At one point, Reagan took off at a gallop, jumping fences through the rugged Santa Ynez Mountains. Members of the security team were having trouble keeping up, though it wasn’t for lack of trying. Finally, one agent fell off his horse and broke his arm. The veteran of numerous cowboy movies dismounted and rushed to the man’s side until the rest of the crew arrived on the scene. No doubt Reagan also supervised the rescue mission as his novice rider-agents figured out how to get their wounded comrade back to ranch headquarters through a scenic yet confusing maze of trails where the deer and the antelope play alongside the
