Winter in the northern hemisphere has arrived, and with it comes the invitation to slow down beneath the darkening afternoon sky. Yet, the modern world doesn’t always align with the natural rhythms of the seasons. While there may be an instinct to turn inward, we still face a world brimming with very real needs.
How do we move forward when a moment of pause seems to be the right answer? As humans, we rely heavily on our ability to make sense of things—and often, we do so quite well. Yet, when logic doesn’t provide clarity, other forms of intelligence—intuitive, somatic, emotional—are ready to emerge, if only we let them.
One experience from my Equus Coach Training stands out as the clearest demonstration of the body’s wisdom I’ve encountered. At the time, I found myself in the round pen with a horse eager to rejoin his herd. As I stood at the center, grounding my energy with the hope it might influence his, I watched him race around me at a dizzying pace. The more I tried to remain still and centered, the faster he seemed to move.
I looked down to steady myself, and it became clear: no amount of inner stillness, no matter how deep, would shift the space between us. If I wanted to connect with this horse in a way that we could both hear each other, I had to meet his energy where it was—and guide it with the steadiness I carried within.
So often, life feels like it’s speeding up around us. We know we can support our inner state with practices like self-care, meditation, time in nature, or rest. But the moment we step out of our carefully protected spaces and re-enter the world, it’s not long before we find ourselves at the center of chaos once again.
Back in the round pen, after exhausting every strategy I knew to shift the energy between us, a sense of surrender took over. Suddenly, my body instinctively knew what to do. As I share this, I realize it might sound simple—or even convenient—but in truth, it was both simple and challenging. In that moment, I realized that the real obstacle wasn’t my urge to figure out how, but that very urge itself, which was getting in the way. When I let go of the need for a rational solution and allowed my thoughts to quiet, it was then that my body took the lead.
I moved in front of the horse, then behind, back and forth, until I found a rhythmic flow that, over time, allowed him to notice me—and eventually connect. He didn’t get what I presume he wanted (his herd), but there was safety to be found in our interaction, and that safety changed everything.
In life, we may not be able to stop the relentless spin of the world around us, and sometimes even our best efforts to cultivate inner calm may fall short. But there is a deep intelligence within our bodies that knows how to respond when we act from a place of inner steadiness. It’s less about finding the “perfect” solution and more about opening ourselves to the possibility that the answer may not look like we expect. And still, there are other forces—both within and around us—that can guide us forward.
To me, this offers a deep sense of hope: the understanding that even in uncertainty, there is wisdom and guidance available—if only we can allow it.