Helping.  Breathing.

These are the two themes that floated to the surface for me today in the workshop with Mark Rashid.  Helping was a theme for all three days, and one that I needed to hear every day.  He asked us to consider this question:  “How can I help him to do what I am asking, not how can I make him do it?”  Because of our big brain and the big ego that accompanies it, we often default to making, not helping.  Helping requires us to continually move inside toward listening and feeling.   For ego driven humans, that is very hard.  We direct, we make things happen, we push, we demand.  Helping engages different parts of us – the more tender, vulnerable, receptive and willing parts.  Somehow in working with these generous creatures who show us through their bodies exactly what we are doing -both right and wrong – we have to homogenize these parts of ourselves.

How?  Well, Mark dropped some hints like, “An exhale would go a long way here.”  Or, “When the wheels come off, try exhaling.”  During my lesson, he saw that I was not breathing – not in a way that would allow me to open to the horse, or sustain the activity of riding.  So he had me breathe in on a four count and out on a five count in rhythm with the walk.  He had me maintain that rhythm in the trot.  And in his perfect way, Sam, the lovely blue roan quarter horse I was riding, began to breathe himself, his stride opening and lengthening, and then I noticed that I was having fun,  And what is more important than that?