I am currently reading the Biophilia Effect: A Scientific and Spiritual Exploration of the Healing Bond Between Humans and Nature by Clemens G. Arvay. Biophilia is a term coined by psychologist Erich Fromm and popularized by biologist Edward O. Wilson to name our intrinsic longing for nature. In Arvay’s book, the Austrian biologist presents research demonstrating that we are genetically wired to respond to nature and that our health not only benefits from our connection with nature but may also depend upon it.
Arvay describes studies of how trees give off biochemical substances that can strengthen our immune systems, the results of a 1984 study by Roger Ulrich showing that viewing a tree through a window can help hospital patients recover faster and even how to create an anti-cancer garden.
Some women are called to horses through art and dreams, like Kim McElroy in this description of a potent horse dream that she had as a girl.
Pastel Horses, April 2021 by Catherine Held
Recently, I pulled out Kim McElroy’s Secrets of Drawing Horses dvd given to me by the artist when we met at her home in the Pacific Northwest in 2014. On vacation with my daughter, I had spotted prints of some of her pastel horse paintings. When I picked up the first image, I was delighted to find that among the white clouds were hidden horses. After generously inviting me to her home, I interviewed her for my forthcoming book, Called by the Horse: Women, Horses and Consciousness.
Kim has since made the workshop available for free online. It begins with The Girl Who Wanted to be a Horse. In it Kim describes her girlhood love of horses and her frustration while trying to capture the movement of horses in her drawings. When she imagined herself as a horse, though, the drawings came easily. Afterwards, she fell asleep in her friend’s hayloft where a white winged horse came to her in her dreams to tell her she could tune into the magical power of horses through her imagination and art and affirmed her path as an artist.
Following prompts from the DVD, I listened to Kim’s meditation. I imagined myself as a horse in a sea of horses and picked up chalk pastels to draw the feelings evoked in the drawing shown here.
I believe that women are called to horses in many ways, including, as in Kim’s experience, through dreams and art as well as to living, breathing horses. My curiosity about the call to the horse experienced by so many women has preoccupied me for almost twenty years. Why now? What does it mean? How shall we respond? These are questions I have wrestled with in the book. As I prepare the manuscript for publication, the answers are clearer. Ultimately, I have come to believe that horses are calling women—and some men—to empower us into greater leadership and partnership for the sake of our precious Earth and all of her inhabitants.
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