Congruence: Your Presence Precedes You
This is part 7 of a series of articles that explore the following questions: How can the way of the horse frame leadership and how to be successful together? What can a horse teach about executive presence? What does it mean to lead authentically?
“What we think is often worlds away from what we feel. People in our modern world tend to over-rely on thinking thereby diminishing the rich information offered by our emotions. We cut ourselves off at the neck, dividing our bodies from our minds as if we are two separate entities. Sadly, many of us remain unaware of this split.” — Alita Buzel, Ph.D.
Horses are extremely sensitive and attuned to the subtlest shifts in each other and their environment. They can feel a fly land on them, and they know what is happening in a half-mile radius surrounding them. Their hooves, while hard and durable, are very alive. Hoof tissues are filled with blood from arteries that run from the heart down their legs. Like a drum skin, they feel the vibration of the earth. Horses can also feel each other and what each other is feeling. This means they can feel you, too.
The way horses sense and respond to congruence and incongruence in their environment is the same way they can feel the congruence and incongruence in the humans in the herd with them. For a horse, it’s not safe to trust incongruence.
As prey animals, horses have the capacity to register intention. They sense and respond to the intention of a predator, rather than the role the predator is acting out. For instance, a herd of Zebras can be seen at a watering hole with a lion lazing nearby. As soon as that lion starts to pretend he’s a rock in order to score lunch, the Zebra’s know something is amiss and flee.
When we can bring ourselves into greater congruence with ourselves, by slowing down, finding our breath, feeling what’s alive and present in us, then we can arrive back on our foundation enough to be of value as a herd member. In working with humans with horses in the arena during a coaching session, I have seen time and time again a previously uninterested horse walk the length of the arena to go check out the human as soon as the human had a big shift. Horses can see through the stories we tell ourselves about what we’re doing, and why. They see us when we true-up with what’s going on inside of us, or when we find rapport with self.
Because of the horse’s acutely attuned body-feeling-tracking system, they can feel you coming from a half a mile away. They feel all of you, no matter how you present yourself to them. Your presence (or lack thereof) precedes you. “Horses react to what lies in our hearts, not in our heads,” writes Alan Hamilton in his book Zen Mind, Zen Horse. “They are not confused by the words we use to lie to ourselves or hide from others.” For a horse to feel safe with you, he needs to know: How are you? No, really: how are you? How’s your heart? They will find it hard to relax around you until you can drop into the feeling-truth of how you are right now.
Congruence is when your insides true-up with your outside, or the face you put on for the world to see. When your heart and your outside face match, you’ve found congruence. This might feel new, this might feel like vulnerability, but this might also feel like who you really are.
What tensions are you holding? What sadness? What anger? What joys? What fears? What memories are present now, holding you back from experiencing life fully? Whatever is there: include it. It belongs and has a place, and there’s no place it can hide. In so doing, you become more congruent with yourself, and therefore able to be in rapport with others with a sense of clarity for them.
As Jack Kornfield offers in A Path With Heart: “Let go of the battle. Breathe Quietly and let it be. Let your body relax and your heart soften. Open to whatever you experience without fighting.”
Author Toko-pa Turner reminds us how important it is to include what’s here for us not only for our own well-being but for the well-being of those around us. When we find the undivided ground of our full experience, our presence allows others to find that space within them. Moreover, others can relax when we make this vulnerability our ally. She writes:
“There is a special quality of stillness in a person who encounters their shadow wholeheartedly. Your body may relax in their company because it understands, in the subtle communications of their presence, that nothing is excluded in themselves, or you, from belonging. Such a person, who has given up guarding against the shadow, who has come to wear their scars with dignity, no longer squirms from discomfort or bristles at suffering. They no longer brace in avoidance of conflict. They carry a deep willingness to dance with the inconstancy of life. They’ve given up distancing as a strategy and made vulnerability their ally.”
One thing we know about the leaders of the herd is that they know how to meet each member of the herd and be in a way that allows that member to find what inner resources they need to show up as secure herd-mates. Your ability to do so depends on the depth of your inner work and awareness of your shadow. A leader’s well-honed, real and vulnerable presence allows them to be present for their herd mates (or office mates). They are able to listen to them and be with them in a way that lets them know that they matter. With your stuff accounted for and included, it doesn’t get in the way of another person’s experience.
Attuning Your Horse Body — An exercise with or without a horse.
As you stand with the horse, or the herd, (or with yourself in your office herd), or alone with your self notice the following:
How are you?
How do you hold yourself in your body? Do your insides and outsides match?
What do you feel in your body? Where is it and what does it feel like? What might it remind you of?
What emotion would you ascribe to your inner state?
What face are you presenting to the world?
How do you feel in your body in relation to others and the world around you?
How safe do you feel?
Where is your foundation?
How is your breathing?
What do your toes feel like?
What’s in your heart?
How does it feel to take all of this in? What is happening in your body? What feelings are you feeling?
