I came across the word picadero in my reading some time ago. It means “temple of the horse”. Essentially, a picadero is a small, square ménage or riding arena. Over the years, I’ve come to think of my round pen as the “temple of the horse” here on my little ranch. It is the place where I work with my horses and hopefully achieve harmony there. In vaulting, we work on a 20-meter circle. I’ve come to view that circle as a bit of a temple as well.

Yesterday, I spent a good while with my vaulting coach remembering to use my breath as I sat on her Irish Draft Shakespeare on the 20-meter circle and practiced some compulsory moves.

The exercise we went through was this—

Inhale, filling your lungs and abdomen with breath and then exhale, lengthening up through the pelvic floor, the abdomen, the sternum, the chest, the neck, the head. You feel the breath circulating up and through your chest as your shoulder blades widen down your back and flutter out.

Like wings. It occurs to me. Like the wings of an angel. And I'm not speaking of the Hallmark angels, the one on the top of the Christmas tree, or cherubs with arrows. I'm talking of something else, but about which I can only ask questions.

Is this part of all of this recent interest in horses and spirit in a lot of the content that is being generated in the equestrian world? As riders and as vaulters we pay attention to the breath. And isn’t the breath a mystery? The very life within us? And from that springs this gift of human consciousness? I think the answer is yes.

When meditating, one breathes in and out, circulating the breath into the lungs, into the abdomen, and upon exhalation, the breath travels from the base of the spine up and out. It’s a way to pay attention to the very essence of ourselves, to that “I” that has nothing to do with ego. To that “I” that is the authentic self. Who I am without all of the outside trappings or my ideas about who I may think I am.

I think of the exchanges of breath that occur between two horses meeting for the first time. It is an almost ritualized greeting. I greet my horses this way many times. I've passed this along to my kids. I sometimes see them standing nostril to nostril with a horse when they go down to the pasture. What is it that we are sharing with each other--horse and human during these exchanges?

Breath. Pneuma. Spirit. Sometimes experienced in the simple act of saying hello to an equine friend or on the back of a horse when sitting the walk, trot, canter.

This is why I often think of the work I do on horseback as occurring within a temple. The Temple of the Horse. I can sit on the horse’s back and have an encounter with the divine through the direct experience of the breath and other things I have no words for. In the Temple of the Horse I have experienced gnosis. It happens that I am sometimes carried on a broad equine’s back into the unknowable, ineffable mystery. It is the deep knowledge of experience that words can barely describe. It is no longer the faith of a little child. Nor is this the knowledge of smug, self-assurance and dogma.

I am in awe when it happens.