Smoothing Your Interactions

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One of the most difficult aspects of working with prey animals like horses is their skittishness. Prone to anxiety, with prey brains that command them to run away from any potential danger, horses sometimes offer very sudden, dramatic actions—bucking, rearing, shying, kicking, bolting. Often, when a 1,200-pound animal moves this quickly, people get hurt.

In addition to keeping ourselves safe, equine welfare and good performance demand that we attempt to keep our horses calm. A nervous horse, like a nervous person, cannot learn effectively or practice her new skills well. The neural connections necessary for developing knowledge are overwhelmed with noise from emotional baggage.

One way to calm a horse—or any animal—is by smoothing our movements. Horses are highly attuned to body language as a clue to risk, paying attention to the tiniest details of human movement. If you’re standing 30 feet from an inexperienced horse, stepping forward only an inch or two can cause her to move away, especially if that step is rigid, tense, sudden, or quick. An involuntary jerk of your hand is enough to warn her of danger.

Veteran horse trainers often note that people have different movement styles by nature. Those who make long, smooth movements, gradually and slowly, are most likely to become good trainers or riders. Why? Because the horses remain calm, learn to predict human movement, and, from that predictability, learn to trust us. But that’s only part of the story.

Neuroscience shows that humans pick up anxiety through body movements, too. In an interaction between two people, each is unconsciously sensing the fluidity of the other’s gestures as well as their facial, head, and postural motions. Erratic movements carried out with tense, rigid muscle tone undermine people’s credibility and suggest nervousness. That in turn raises the question of why this other individual is nervous—because she is afraid? Lying? Has ulterior motives?

So far, this evidence is limited to humans and has not been tested in horses. But chances are good that the mammalian brain common to both species will be found to use fluidity in movement to decipher levels of anxiety. To calm your human and equine partners, try to make your movements smooth. If you work with horses, watch their responses to your movements very closely—they will magnify for you the motions you might not realize you are making. Dance, tai-chi, yoga, and the like are also excellent ways to develop smooth motion—the benefits will carry over from your physical health to your daily interactions with others of many species.