Setting, Respecting, and Tending Boundaries
Every lesson I’ve learned from horses I find myself translating to the world of humans, and I feel strongly that my work instilling and strengthening boundaries in my horsemanship has made my boundaries with humans easier to uphold and practice.
Boundaries are not a static landmark, and they truly vary not only depending on the species, but the individual. Therefore the only “right” way to do this work is to understand your threshold in what boundaries feel safe for you and to acknowledge that what feels overwhelming to you may feel underwhelming to others. To make matters more complicated, there are many different types of boundaries, including, but not limited to: physical, emotional, energetic, spiritual and mental boundaries. This post is largely concerned with physical boundaries, which I refer to as physical property lines, as they tend to be easier to identify and practice upholding; and especially for those who have undergone trauma and abuse, physical boundaries are fundamental to set, respect, and tend to in order to create a safe space in our bodies and allow healing to occur.
While I have no list of emboldened ‘do’s’ or ‘don’t do’s’ when it comes to applying boundary techniques to people (human- or non-human animals), I encourage you to modify your boundary setting practice based on the individual, rather than the species. After all, while horses are physically much bigger than us humans, and our need for maintaining a safe distance may be heightened so we don’t get trampled or stepped on, I personally have found that I have to work harder to uphold my own boundaries with humans and dogs than with horses. Physical size may be a factor in determining how safe we feel and how consciously we work to uphold boundaries, however I find that horses are so great to practice this work with because they are so big and extremely sensitive to our energy. Horses are truly great teachers who help us learn to stand firm in our personal space and summon strength to practice unapologetic boundary setting.
Tending to boundaries doesn’t have to be a strict daily regimen you practice with everyone around you in the same exact way, but rather boundary setting can be subject to change and form to fit the needs to your unique relationships with everyone you interact with. Most importantly, remember that while maintaining your sacred personal physical, mental, spiritual and emotional boundaries can be a form of self care, it can at times feel harsh to those who may run into your boundaries, whether consciously or unconsciously. While you may become “the heavy” in some cases, know that you can preserve your boundaries while holding compassion for whoever is on the receiving end of them.
Compassion will be your greatest ally in this work. Speaking from experience as someone who has had a really challenging time learning how to uphold my own personal boundaries, I can say that while enforcing boundaries doesn’t always feel kind to others (one reason why I previously didn’t think boundaries were kind), it is undoubtedly better than overextending myself in order to help others, or ignoring my need for greater personal space and consequently exploding when I’d had “enough” because I didn’t prioritize keeping clean boundaries when I needed them most. Our self care feeds community care when it comes to maintaining healthy boundaries.
Posting the Property Lines
As I referenced in my post The Healthy Lung: Tending Unf*ckwithable Boundaries which explored how Lung energy relates to boundary setting, tending healthy and resilient boundaries really starts with our breath, and as I will outline, our voice. Boundaries breed empowerment, and in order to built them, you need simply post your property lines.
What I mean by posting your property lines is to claim your personal space - you don’t need to have land or a house that you can fence off and post ‘no trespassing’ signs on - you have exactly what you need already, a physical body that is its own sacred space, and now you need to practice confidently and unapologetically claiming that space.
Having clear boundaries is like approaching a gated property and seeing there is a sign that says “no trespassing”… Having unclear boundaries is like approaching a gated property outlined with a fence that’s falling apart with missing sections and well established trails passing through it where visitors - whether welcomed or not - have routinely passed through without much thought.
I’m a soft spoken person, and growing up had a hard time having my voice heard even when I was turning the volume up and projecting my voice as loudly as I could. This was probably one reason I loved interacting with horses so much as I didn’t have to use my voice to communicate with them. However as I worked on strengthening my voice over the years as an adult out of necessity, I’d learned to incorporate my voice into my horsemanship, and surprisingly grew to like using it to communicate with horses. One client in particular really helped shake me out of my quiet comfort zone by asking me to use vocal cues when training her horse, since that was how she was used to interacting with her horse. Initially, I faked my enthusiasm when using vocal cues to mark positive behaviors, however eventually bringing my voice into the training equation grew on me as I witnessed the horses I worked with relax, tune into me, or even breathe a sigh of relief when being told “Yes!” More and more I began to speak to my horses in training, not only to reinforce positive behaviors in the form of “yes”, “beautiful”, “that’s it”, or “good job”, but also to express disapproval of behaviors or responses I didn’t want.
My partner, being a dog trainer, really reinforced the importance of using “yes” and “no” to mark rewards and corrections in the training process. Instead of interchangeably using random words, he explains that sticking to a calm and clear “yes” and “no” takes much of the emotional upheaval out of the process, which more often that not can make your training inconsistent.
Yes, I will admit, when a horse I’m working with does something like try to bite or kick out at me, I will likely express my disapproval with a much more loud “NO!” than I otherwise would if they’d simply lost focus or been slow to respond to a cue. However, there is a difference between using your voice to express your disapproval matter-of-factly and unwaveringly, and yelling or screaming in a fit of rage or frustration. Letting your emotions “get the better of you” will always chart you on a precarious course where you’re dangerously close to falling into guilt/shame territory or anger/resentment territory. In fact, letting our emotions take the wheel is usually followed by taking someone’s response personally, rather than stepping back and saying “I don’t know what’s going on in this person’s life, or what it feels like under their skin, and I don’t need to make their reaction/response about me.” Moreover when working with horses or dogs, we can’t always immediately rule out that a negative response we received was due to them experiencing pain or not, as they can’t simply say “ouch, that hurts - please don’t do that.”
Make a point to respond as gracefully as you can to positive and negative behaviors and responses with a clear and calm “yes” or “no”, and you will find that you’re drawing a map for yourself and others of what is acceptable and unacceptable in your interactions. In this way, you are posting the property lines of where those who come to interact with you may tread in order to stay on your “good side”. Additionally in this light, setting boundaries doesn’t have to mean that if someone trespasses your boundary that you cut them out of your life forever - rather, it may mean that you need to have clearer communication with them to sort out how that happened in the first place, and to ensure it doesn’t continue happening.
Think of it like this - having clear boundaries is like approaching a gated property and seeing there is a sign that says “no trespassing” and knowing right away it’s not a good idea to cross over the threshold unless you have been invited in. Having unclear boundaries is like approaching a gated property outlined with a fence that’s falling apart with missing sections and well established trails passing through it where visitors - whether welcomed or not - have routinely passed through without much thought. If you catch trespassers on your property without your permission, can you really take out your frustration on them if you never bothered to post the “no trespassing” sign? While it’s fine to be more relaxed about your boundaries, you can still specify for yourself and others that while visitors are welcome, at times you need your privacy and require visitors to ask for permission before arriving at your door expecting to be welcomed. In fact, you may not even realize that you have a greater need for privacy until you find yourself at a standoff with a threatening person at your gate or doorstep wondering how they got the impression they could simply show up uninvited.
The more you practice expressing your approval or disapproval out loud during your training, and even in everyday interactions with your friends, family, or partner, the more your awareness of your personal boundaries will grow. You may find as you become more conscious of your boundaries that you are always having a hard time saying “no” to people who show up in need of your help or services, and while you like to help you are easily exhausted by overextending yourself to others. Or you may observe that while you have zero trouble saying “no” when you need space or time off, you routinely are burning bridges with people who you perceive as trespassers on your property, and are blocking people left and right on social media, your phone, or in your thoughts. It is completely normal to have either of these experiences ring true for you. In fact, you may go through phases of either being quick to say “no” and uphold your boundaries, and alternately at times finding it difficult beyond belief to say “no” and watch your boundaries shift. As I mentioned earlier, boundaries are not static landmarks - they vary not only by each individual but also each relationship, the phase of your life, and even how you’re feeling in the moment.
Shifting Territories
It takes consistency and great awareness to map your physical property lines, no less tolerance and flexibility to understand that they will not always remain rooted in the same familiar “place”.
We’ve all had days where we feel incredibly open, excited and outgoing - maybe to the extent where we’re waving at strangers we pass on the road and smiling at everyone we come across. Undoubtedly we’ve also all had days where we don’t feel centered no matter what we do, and we may want to hide away at home as it seems that every person we interact with leaves us with a bitter feeling of growing frustration. Days like these are thanks to your shifting boundaries at work.
Like incredibly slow moving tectonic plates, our boundaries can change over time invisible to the naked eye, or they can be like rubber bands which expand and contract quickly, sometimes making us flinch with their sudden snapping into place.
Boundary setting may feel like incredibly hard work initially, especially as you realize they are complex, multi-layered interactive structures which can feel concrete en yet cannot be made substance. It takes consistency and great awareness to map your physical property lines, no less tolerance and flexibility to understand that they will not always remain rooted in the same familiar “place”.
I believe that while horses are humbling teachers of maintaining boundaries, wild horses or mustangs are moreover incredibly skilled at demonstrating to us the fluidity of boundaries. In my experience gentling wild horses who have had little interaction with humans, the first few days or weeks is often spent conditioning them to allow you in their space, little by little, inch by inch.
We all have sacred property lines surrounding us. Horse trainers understand these physical property lines in horses as their flight distance, which is how close a horse allows you to get to them before their stress response tells them to flee. While we as humans may not perceive of ourselves as having a flight distance, we do, only as we’re not prey animals I like to think of it as physical property lines which signal us to fight, flight, or freeze when we perceive a threat closing in. For a wild horse who is untrusting of humans, their physical property lines may extend ten to a thousand times farther than ours, and were they not confined by fences which force them to allow humans close before their trust is gained, they may feel comfortable with you only if you have a quarter mile distance between you and them.
I cannot stress enough how important it is to allow a wild horse to slowly acclimate to humans crossing the threshold of their property lines during the gentling process. While you know that you aren’t going to harm them, a wild horse is at first likely is perceiving you as a predator preparing to pounce as soon as their guard is down. Wild or tame, a horse is biologically hardwired to be sensitive to their surroundings in order to survive. We may be able touch them, saddle them, or get on their back through force or simply tiring them out until their resistance is lowered, however if they are filled with tension and resistance to our presence, we haven’t done right by them to gain their trust and permission to cross into their threshold of physical space.
Over time, if we’ve done our job right as horse trainers, the wild horses we work with with learn that they can trust us to enter their physical space and no harm will come to them. It may be painstaking, slow going progress earning this trust, however in the end, it makes the difference between partnership and an abusive power dynamic. All people, human and animal, deserve the same consideration from us to ask for permission and earning trust before crossing into their space.
You will find over time as you grow and change that your boundaries grow and change right along with you - just as during the gentling process a wild horse can be transformed from resisting humans being close to them to eventually granting them permission to get close and enjoying physical contact with humans. In relationships in order to grow together you will find that tending boundaries is not an exercise in cold calculating guard raising but rather in remaining flexible and compassionate as you navigate and identify physical property lines, practice a willingness to apologize and ask for forgiveness when boundaries have been crossed without consent, and find a resilience and deep devotion as you work to earn greater trust.
Finding Neutrality
I talk to my clients frequently about finding neutrality when they’re working with their horses. Like boundaries, neutrality in horsemanship changes depending on what’s happening in your interactions. For instance, when your horse in circling around you (referred to in Natural Horsemanship as the circle game or traditionally, lungeing), while you want your horse to be active and engaged, you must be active and engaged as well. However, there’s a difference between “working” and being “engaged” when it comes to circling, as I want my horse to be light and responsive as though we’re playing a game rather than dull and going through the motions as though it’s just another day of work. To keep my horse light, I must be attentive and continually moving with them, however I don’t want to be so active that I’m tiring myself out trying to keep up with them on the ground! As you place yourself at the center of the circle, the horses responsibility is to maintain their circle around you at a walk, trot, or canter, and it then becomes your job to let them know they’re maintaining it well. To do this, I walk in a micro-circle facing forward (looking ahead in the same direction as the horse - rather than pointing my body directly at them on the circle), and speed or slow my walk to match my horses gait or raise or lower my energy in motion or at a standstill to reflect how much energy I want them to match.
Working with horses has taught me that being neutral isn’t standing perfectly still amidst chaos, it is moving in spite of chaos around you and neither denying or feeding into it. Being neutral is essentially acceptance, and can even thought of as being at peace, however it isn’t being resigned or disengaged. It’s so fundamentally important to feel what it’s like to be neutral - and horses are great teachers of this if you have no idea what this is like to experience - because your neutral point is essentially where your boundaries are being tended to in a balanced way, and neither overextended or reigned in tightly.
You can think of neutrality as riding a horse, whether at a mellow walk or a full throttle gallop, and moving so harmoniously with them that there is no hesitation, fear, intimidation, unmet expectation or worry holding you back from being wholly in the moment with them. Like shifting your car into neutral, you will pick up speed depending on whether you’re on a slope or a flat surface, and there will be days when everything around you seems to pass by so quickly, or move by so slowly it feels like you’re moving through sludge. If you’re allowing yourself to remain in neutral, you can kick back and preserve your energy reserves versus expressing disapproval of things outside your control. The real tricky thing is knowing when something is within your control which if you act (either by approving or condemning) you can change, and knowing when resistance is futile and you may as well go along for the ride.
Setting boundaries is essentially an exercise in declaring “no means no” and “yes means yes”, while respecting and tending to boundaries requires great flexibility, compassion and grace to admit when we’ve crossed a line or relay to others when they’re crossed our thresholds without permission. Tending to boundaries means establishing with those around you that you genuinely mean what you say, and that your mind and your feelings are also subject to change, and that you are able to renegotiate your terms with others as your needs shift. The more consistently and compassionately you map your boundaries out to others, reinforce them when others respect them, and enforce them when they’ve been crossed, the more ease you’ll find as you can allow yourself to go along for the ride when you don’t need to direct much of your focus towards them.
It won’t always be perfect, but aiming for emotional equilibrium and practicing finding neutrality will better prepare you for those times when your boundaries suddenly shift and you’ve lost your bearings, or a life-changing event occurs and you must fully reorient yourself to your new physical property lines.
Remember that not everyone needs to understand your boundaries, only you do. Similarly, you don’t need to understand why someone has raised their boundary with you and requires physical space, you simply need to respect it and be gentle with them. When you are aware of boundaries and accept them no matter what reason or rhyme you have for upholding them, everyone else can respect them, even if they don’t agree with them. Your boundaries are yours to tend as it is your sacred property to care for - do it your way, and allow others to do the same.
Resources
Barlow-Irick, P.L., 2013. Distance in a Wild Horse Holding Facility.
Mack, Lindsay, 2019. Tarot For the Wild Soul (Feb. 21, 2019). Episode 65. Unf*ckwithable Boundaries: Two of Swords and Queen of Swords. Information available at: https://lindsaymack.com/podcast.
Waran, N., 2005. Equestrianism and horse welfare: The need for an ‘equine-centred’approach to training. Friday 26th and Saturday 27th August, 2005 Australian Equine Behaviour Centre, Melbourne, Australia., p.67.
