Chazot

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Helyn taught me to turn my head transversally moving my lips when I wanted a carrot. I use that when he enters the barn and he is very well trained. He smiles, thinking, “The brain;” It was in reference to a humoristic movie about an extraordinary train robbery in England. The nick name of the man who planned the robbery was “the brain”. On the movie, the brain of the man was so heavy that his head was tilted side way.  He walked toward the tack room thinking, “attend.” “Attend” means “wait” in French. Sometime he uses French words but this is not a problem as his body language means the same whatever he thinks in French or in English. I did it again as I knew that he had a second carrot in his pocket. He gave it to me thinking about the researches of peoples such as Buzan, Machado, Wenger and many others. “Although individuals are endowed more or less talent in a given area, IQ can be raised significantly through appropriated training.” 

He thinks that I am unusually intelligent. The fact is that it is by developing my intelligence that he makes me move away from my intense protective reflex mechanism that I had developed in my youth on the race track. From day one, I reacted differently than most other horses.  When I tried to guess what my trainer wanted me to do, my basic instinctive reaction was apparently right but I put myself in trouble because in a second thought, I was thinking that they cannot be that primitive and I tried something a more intelligent. My second guessing was wrong and I was punished for my reaction. I became angry by the unfairness. I was told that human was an intelligent specie and I could not believe that they could be that dumb. Their training philosophy that they called “leadership,” was an anthology to their ego, but was totally unrelated to the way we think and react.  I felt that the punishments were unfair and I revolted. It did not take long for me to realize that they were impressed by my size and my power.

At first I played the game. I used my size and my power to run as fast as I could,  but it is when the suffering started. He told me later, “It was a crime to make a horse of your size run full speed on the track. You were 17,1 hand when you were a yearling. You have grown too tall, too fast. Your body had to deal with enormous growing issues.” I could not handle the speed too long and the trainer decided that I was lazy giving order to the jokey to beat me with the whip as soon as I exited the starting gate. He watched the video thinking, “These peoples are insane. The first 200 yards of a race are the most dangerous. Horses accelerate as fast as they can, using a combination of leaping gait and a canter until they reach a real canter. In terms of kinematics, it is chaos and this is when dramatic fractures and other problems occur.” I freeze when I picked up his thought. I remembered the sharp pain in my caudal thoracic and lumbar area on the right side. It happened the day they beat me out of the starting gate, during the first 200 yards of the race. I still have great sensitivity in this area today. He knows it and he works my body very specifically. Each day, he focusses the beginning of my work on coordinating this area of my back. It is body work in motion.

He often says, “Equine body work has to be done in motion.” Doing it and beneficiating from it, I totally agree with him. However, discussing about it with Manchester and Caesar, I realized that our body work can only be effective if our brain is developed concurrently. While other horses submitted on the race track telling me that slavery was better than death, I revolted. If humans are not smart enough to deal with my brain, they will have to deal with my intensity and power and they are going to have hard time. I gave them hard time. I ejected every jockey climbing on my back, but I paid a heavy price. I was no longer in training, I did not even have turn out, I was in a double stall spinning like an idiot and turning into a lunatic horse until Helyn and He arrived. When I realized that I can “hear” his thoughts, I was thinking first that they both were a different type of humans. She was fascinated by the intensity of my eyes but he was concerned about possible lack of intelligence. I reacted like a maniac and what changed his mind was my reaction when he asked them to jog me and they gave him the lunges saying, “You do it.” I reared, ready to fight him and he looked at me thinking “nice balance.” I was blown away. I behaved to scare him and he was interested by my athleticism. It is basically at this instant that my life changed. I was so blown away by his quietness that I walked toward him exploring him with my nose. Us horses, we can smell fear, anger, nastiness and this is what humans that I deal with so far smelled. Instead, he had no fear, no anger, no nastiness. I had experience this smell, with Rosie, who was the owner of the barn. She showed me kindness by contrast to all the others who had fear, anger and frustration. He patted my head gently and suddenly, I took conscience of the trap in which these humans with their psychology of domination had cornered me. They pushed me into the trap of revolt and did not gave me a chance to think further. I reacted aggressively toward him and his mind was thinking, ”OK. that is the bad horse that they created. Show me the real horse. Show me who you really are.” I did, without realizing what I was doing. I went forward touching him, smelling him and I responded to his kindness and confidence. I was not at this point free of my aggressiveness but he opened the door to a world that I had totally forgotten. I run next to him it almost happy. He told me later that it is this jog that changed his mind. He was concerned at first by my behavior and this brief encounter convinced him that I was the one who was intelligent. The dummies were the ones who tried to dominate and numb my cleverness.

Rearing was my revolt, my frustration, my wariness. Rearing became my reaction to everything. He did not try to correct my rearing habit; instead, he gave a sense to my life. Work is not painful, work is developing and coordinating my physique for the athletic demand of the move. It is not about submission; it is about participation aiming to ease and effortlessness. Work is interesting, challenging and comfortable. At first, asking me simple things in hand, it was a situation of no control. I observed that I was capable to perceive nuances in the energy emanating from his body. As I was gaining confidence in the fact that he will not punish me, I explored this perception trying to follow it. I knew that this energy was created through nuances in muscle tone of his body and as he changed it slightly as I matched his energy. Doing so, I made adjustments in my own body to remain in harmony with him. Soon, I register in my cerebellum, olivary nuclei, basal nuclei, which are the part of my brain monitoring my body, greater ease and comfort. I became interested at following him. I never had any “dialogue” at this level before and I realized that I was at ease at this level of subtlety. Gradually I became more aware of my own body and I became capable of more complex and sophisticated coordination.

I like ease and comfort and effortlessness and I quickly understood that he guided me toward ease and comfort and effortlessness. Even at the beginning when I was balanced between my revolt and my curiosity, the perspective of ease and effortlessness was a major factor in my decisions. Many times in our relation, he told me or showed me why humans think that they have to dominate us, fear, insecurity, ego. The quote which in my opinion summarize the whole human problem was written by the Tom Regan. “Because we have viewed other animals through the myopic lens of our self-importance, we have misperceived who and what they are. Because we have repeated our ignorance, one to the other, we have mistaken it for knowledge.”

Caesar entered the conversation. “This is exactly the point that won my decision. In spite of the pain, I worked with him because of these few strides where I was pain free. He did it in hand first. I did not fully understand but I was intrigued by the energy that I can feel from his body, he did not try to control or discipline me and as I followed his back muscles adjustments, the pain lessen on my lower leg and it was a few strides where I was pain free. I don’t know if he felt what I just felt but he stopped me and patted me. That is where I realized that my soundness was his goal. Until there, they asked me to perform in spite of the pain. It was like a new world. I looked at him; he looked like the other humans but it was a totally different thinking. He showed me how to move pain free and rewarded me when I was pain free. At first, I believed that he was a guru and he can feel my pain. Later I understand that he knew when I was pain free but not as directly as I believed. He identified the kinematics abnormality that was causing abnormal stress between my second phalange and my coffin bone. He figured where was the source of my kinematics abnormality and corrected it. My first strides pain free were a mystery. He worked on proper function of my thoracolumbar spine and the pain on my lower leg vanished. I remember asking you, Chazot, why as he was working on my thoracolummbar spine, the pain on my lower leg vanished. Your response was Leo Jeffcott statement, (The biomechanics of the vertebral column although very complex are of vital importance as they form the basis of all body movements). You told me that He does not lose our time and his time focusing on the symptom. Instead he identifies the root cause and correct it.”

He does not claim that he discovered the process. He always says that he applies the wisdom of his ancestors after having updated their teaching to actual knowledge of our biomechanics. He admits that without updating previous beliefs to actual knowledge, the practical application of our ancestors’ ideas does not fit actual knowledge but at the contrary, when updated to actual knowledge and applied in respect to actual knowledge many of our ancestors’ visions are quite effective. I wondered why pretenders were using “classic” as an umbrella against progress instead of updating classical authors view to actual knowledge. His response was Douglas Adams’ quote. “Human beings, who are almost unique in having the ability to learn from the experience of others, are also remarkable for their apparent disinclination to do so.”

Chazot