ABSTRACT
In this essay, Stephen Smith argues that what he calls a “crittercal somaticity,” comprising the capacities of breathing together, moving mimetically, and attuning somatically with other more motile beings, is exemplified in the practice of liberty play with horses. Ecosomatic scholars and practitioners of Shin Somatics help fashion this practice performatively and as a heightened sensory manner of interspecies attunement. The recovery of an inner wildness, or what might be thought of as coming to our horse senses, reverberates with what can otherwise appear as an outer wildness in creatures even of a domesticated kind. Rewilding our horse senses thereby becomes not merely a practiced somaticity of humankind but the crittercal capacity to move ever more animatedly in concert with others of a more-than-human kind.
