Welcome to my 2025 passion project. I’ve asked all the amazing horse people that we work with on our retreats – in Montana, Argentina, Sweden and Costa Rica – to answer the question, how do horses make us more mindful?
It’s so invigorating and inspiring when you align with another human. Meeting like-minded women is a tenet of my yoga retreats. It’s alchemy to recognize yourself, and find validation through things in common that are held dear. Yoga, horses, travel, wine, Spanish majors and even the same birthday have connected me with Kathy, aka @vinstagrape. After many retreats together, she created our new horses + mindfulness program that inspired this project, and that we launched on our Cowgirl Yoga Argentina retreat in March of this year. Not only will we be doing it again in 2026, she’s also coming to Montana to teach horses + mindfulness on our Dude Ranch Cowgirl Yoga retreat this September.
Kathy was also featured by Bold Journey, read her interview here.
Kathy, how do horses make us more mindful?
Mindfulness is a practice in self-awareness described as ‘a state of being in the present moment, perceiving and accepting things for what they are, without judgement.’ Horses don’t necessarily “make us” more mindful. However – they are, should we have the opportunity to learn from them, the greatest teachers of present moment awareness – a living study of mindfulness. By opening ourselves to a horse’s quiet example, we become more “horse-like.” Experiences become more satisfying because we are more wide awake and aware of the here and now.
Whether riding a horse or simply enjoying their presence on the ground, horses demonstrate to us how to be truly present to moment-by-moment experiences. Horses’ brains do not have the capacity to plan for the future or mull over the past; they live utterly in the moment at hand. Our human minds often become anxious and distracted by thoughts of the past or future. Mindfulness exercises with equine partners can teach us to slow down and take notice of our moment-by-moment experiences, holding onto little “savorings,” small moments where memories are made.
An example of such an equine mindfulness opportunity is to ride in silence, feeling the movement of the horse beneath you, and feeling your own body’s movement in response to his movement, step by step. Quieting the breath, you begin to dissolve the edges of your sensory awareness, broadening your perception from the very near to the very distant periphery. Riding with soft eyes, carefully taking in the sounds and smells around you, the warmth of the sun, the feel of the breeze, scanning the horizon as horses do, noticing what’s happening behind and all around you with a quiet mind and wide open awareness – in essence, becoming more horse-like in our way of perceiving and connecting with our environment.
Mindfulness exercises like these also encourage deep connection between human and horse. That connection enables us to experience riding, as well as quality time spent with our equine partners, as shared experience in the present moment.
Yeehaw & Namaste.
