Understanding the Horse

It seems like such a straight-forward title, “Understanding the Horse.” Yet if it was easy to do, we wouldn’t have a book, video, clinic, and training industry that’s worth billions of dollars annually.

Two aspects of understanding the horse are represented by the seminars I offer: how horses stand and move, and how horses relate to humans through story. While these may seem like two very different things, they are really deeply connected. Consider, as just one example, the fact that apparently one universal symbolic meaning of horses is “rapid forward movement.” It is for this reason, the psychologist Carl Jung pointed out, that horses are depicted in the iconography of “Knights” in the Tarot deck — developed at least as long ago as the 14th Century in Europe — to signify symbolically that an issue being asked about will move forward rapidly. So the rapid speed at which horses can move is symbolically a very deep part of the human psyche.

Biomechanics is a field of study that allows us to explore and understand how and why, anatomically, horses are able to move this way. Study of the bones and muscles, as well as other soft tissues, and of their material properties and orientations allows us to appreciate how these animals can run at a speed of 30 miles an hour while carrying a second animal, one that may weigh as much as a quarter of its own body weight, on its back. If you have ever carried a toddler on your back, and particularly if you’ve tried to jog or run with that child in place, you’ve got an idea of the specialized structures that must be in place for a horse to do this successfully.

Because I am a scientist trained in biomechanics, I have a solid understanding of the adaptations that allow horses to run at high speeds while carrying people on their backs. And because I worked for many years in the field of interdisciplinary scholarship that integrates science with art, philosophy, spirituality, story, and culture, I have a good grasp of the ways that horses can be understood by looking at the roles they play in art, movies, books, and other expressions of culture. And because I am a Choctaw Indian woman, such integration of knowledge is fundamental to the way I see and experience the world. In the years that I was on a national speaking circuit addressing university and seminary faculty and students about these matters, I learned that many people in contemporary culture are hungry for this same integrated approach.

Over the coming months, we will be adding more ways of understanding horses to our website, and another blogger will join me in posting insights, questions, and thoughts. For now, there’s this first post. I hope you find what’s written here evocative and useful. If nothing else, I hope it makes you go outside and look at your horse in a new way, maybe even one where you’ve got your head tipped to one side and a big grin spreading over your face.

Here’s to you and your horse! Long may you run, together!

Dawn Adams, Ph.D.