Nahshon Cook Horsemanship

14/06/2025

If you can work with Madison, you should. She is wonderful.

my Ottawa people! I am super excited to announce that I will be in town and offering lessons at the end of June. I look forward to seeing some of you there!

08/06/2025

Relationship is the art of relaxing our brain into the frequency of who, or what, we are, or want to be, connected to.

With Xodo, who was very angry when he and I first met, the invitation into relationship looked like me offering him the understanding that if he would allow me to teach him how to breathe in a way that would help his mind relax, his body would begin to feel better.

In my heart I told him, “If you can relax, you can heal. The choice is yours. ”

When he began to believe that I was a human whose heart he could trust, I heated my body up with the memory of when I felt safest in my own body and asked his breath follow my right hand’s soft palpations down his back, vertebrae by vertebrae, from his withers to his lumbo-scaral junction, until he was inhaling and exhaling so deeply that his flanks began to rise and fall like the tide.

By the end of our first session, Xodo’s tongue was cradling a lowered Missing Link snaffle bit. His lower lip was drooping like the labellum of a black orchid. His eyes were closed in restful, rejuvenating sleep as activated Deep Ventral Line lifted his pasterns like his now non-existent suspensory ligaments once did. From beginning to end, the whole thing took about forty-five minutes.

I waited for Xodo to wake up before thanking him for feeling like I felt safe enough with him for him to feel safe with me. In response, he turned to see me with Thummim eyes whose gaze was the Quantum reflecting my field back to itself, with perfect fidelity, in that moment. In my heart I heard him say, "Thank you for helping me feel better today. See you next time.” Then he turned towards the door, and walked out of the arena with his person on the other end of the lead line.

My work with Xodo has re-affirmed for me that relaxation means that bodies feeling safe inside of their relationship with the life they’re living is how well-being happens. When the body believes what is possible, that’s what the body becomes, because bodies are memories asking questions whose only answer is always right now.

In the participatory, self-talkung universe that we're a part of, I see horsehumanship as a spiritual science of experiential mysticism where consciousness is relationship, frequency is the answer, vibration is the question, and energy is the miracle of communication in devotion to relationship.

06/06/2025

In May, I had the opportunity to watch Nahshon Cook train a herd of horses in Wisconsin. Nahshon is one of my greatest teachers, guiding me to change my life and my horsehumanship, as he calls it, for the better each time I see him. Watching this group of 9 horses and talking to Nahshon about them p

06/06/2025

30/05/2025

Thank you Eclectic Horseman Magazine & Katrina Hays for this beautiful article

Nahshon Cook And the Advantages of Attending a Clinic By Katrina Hays Photos By Steven McBurnett

Nahshon Cook’s clinic emphasizes the deep connection between a human’s emotional state and a horse’s physical well-being, demonstrating how a rider’s presence and internal state can lead to profound healing in horses. He teaches that by focusing on internal comfort and safety, humans can help horses release tension and improve their physical demeanor, transforming challenging equine issues through a compassionate and holistic approach. The article encourages attending clinics, whether as a participant or auditor, to gain new perspectives and deepen the understanding of the horse-human relationship.

Subscribe Today: https://eclectic-horseman.com/the-horsemanship-shop/subscriptions/magazine-subscriptions/

Nahshon Cook Horsemanship Katrina Hays

22/05/2025

THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS A HORSE WHISPERER. There never has been and never will be. The idea is an affront to the horse. You can talk and listen to horses all you want, and what you will learn, if you pay close attention, is that they live on open ground way beyond language and that language, no matter how you characterize it, is a poor trope for what horses understand about themselves and about humans. You need to practice only three things, patience, observation and humility, all of which were summed up in the life of an old man who died Tuesday (July 20, 1999) in California, a man named Bill Dorrance.

Dorrance was 93, and until only a few months before his death he still rode and he still roped. He was one of a handful of men, including his brother Tom, who in separate ways have helped redefine relations between the horse and the human. Bill Dorrance saw that subtlety was nearly always a more effective tool than force, but he realized that subtlety was a hard tool to exercise if you believe, as most people do, that you are superior to the horse. There was no dominance in the way Dorrance rode, or in what he taught, only partnership. To the exalted horsemanship of the vaquero -- the Spanish cowboy of 18th-century California -- he brought an exalted humanity, whose highest expression is faith in the willingness of the horse.

There is no codifying what Bill Dorrance knew. Some of it, like how to braid a rawhide lariat, is relatively easy to teach, and some of it, thanks to the individuality of horses and humans, cannot be taught at all, only learned. His legacy is exceedingly complex and, in a sense, self-annulling. It is an internal legacy. The more a horseman says he has learned from Dorrance the less likely he is to have learned anything at all.

That sounds oblique, but it reflects the fact that what you could learn from Dorrance was a manner of learning whose subject was nominally the horse but that extended itself in surprising directions to include dogs, cattle and people. If you learned it, you would know it was nothing to boast about.

There is no mysticism, no magic, in this, only the recognition of kinship with horses. Plenty of people have come across Bill Dorrance and borrowed an insight or two, and some have made a lot of money by popularizing what they seemed to think he knew. But what he knew will never be popular, nor did he ever make much money from it. You cannot sell modesty or undying curiosity. It is hard to put a price on accepting that everything you think you know about horses may change with the very next horse.

From an article by Verlyn Klinkenborg 'Death of a Legendary Horseman' - NY Times July 24, 1999 - http://www.nytimes.com/1999/07/24/opinion/editorial-notebook-death-of-a-legendary-horseman.html

Image of Bill is by Steven and Leslie Dorrance - http://www.billdorrance.com/about.htm

27/04/2025

So, I recieved this video a few weeks ago. And it may not look extraordinary, but everything about it is. Particularly as it concerns the sweet one, Xodo.

Xodo is the grey horse. He's twenty-three. In the video he's playing with his twenty-five year old friend. I've been working with him for a year and a month. When I met him, Xodo was barely able to walk, and sometimes needed help getting up. The reason for this is because he has DSLD. The suspensory ligaments in his hind legs are completely gone, and have been replaced by scar tissue, which is a mercy because it's stronger than soft tissue.

Before I began working with him, he'd been retired for, I think, a year and a half, maybe two, and had been in a state of steady decline. A lot of professio nals that had been brought in to try and help, and basically just threw him away. I'm not throwing stones, it's just a fact of the matter. There are many more sad things to say about that, but they wouldn't be helpful, so I won't.

Because of that state of his hind legs when he and I started working together, everything physically, and emotionilanally was misaligned, but mentally he was very sound. In my way of thinking and feeling in the earth, the skeletal system is the physical body, the muscular system is the emotional body, and the fascial system is the mental body, and since the that was the only one that was sound, that's where we began. Soon, the emotional and physical bodies followed, and here we are, a year and month (of consistent work) later. When we began, his hind fetlocks were touching the ground, unless he was walking. Last June, his pasterns lifted, and have stayed.

Bodies are memories asking questions whose only answer is always right now.

He also has PSSM2, and now that his three bodies are aligned, he's beginning to gain and hold muscle.

For those of you who heard me talk about him at my clinics last year, this is him. He is a king to my eyes, a friend to my heart, and one of the greatest teachers to my mind.

I think it should also be said, that I don't do my work with horses, or live and trust life, because I'm afraid of death and dieing. All of the horses I work with will die. All of the horses I don't work with will die. You will die, and so will I. It's part of the process. But until that moment when the ability to experience what living in this life has to teach us comes to an end, why not keep learning how to do and be better us's unlearning how to be afraid. That's what Xodo, the sweet one, has taught me so far--because he's wanted to.

That said, I'm thankful to his people for trusting me and believing in my work enough to allow Xodo to teach us all about the hard work that goes into leaving room for miracles. My work with horses is my prayer.

I hope this finds you all well in the practices of life and horsehumanship.

17/04/2025

“It saved me emotionally and psychologically because I had to practice the virtues that horses teach you. And they teach you mercilessly to be all those things: brave, generous, empathetic, patient, disciplined. They raised me.” -Charles de Kunffy

USDF is saddened to learn of the passing of classical dressage master Charles de Kunffy. In recognition of his contributions to the development and promotion of classical dressage in the US, he was bestowed USDF’s highest honor in 2013 when he was inducted into the Roemer Foundation/USDF Hall of Fame.

The Chronicle Of The Horse has reprinted an article about his fascinating life, from surviving both a N**i occupation and Soviet occupation in his home country of Hungary, to becoming one of the most eloquent ambassadors of dressage as a lifelong educator and charismatic instructor. You can read it here:
https://www.chronofhorse.com/article/charles-de-kunffy-saved-by-horses/

Photo by Monica Adams

27/03/2025

For the ones it could possibly help.

Very affordable clinic in Tuba for tribal members, get your horse relatives spring vaccines, teeth floats, hoof trims and annuals.