I have had a profound bodily and emotional revelation.  It came about as I was watching Bonnie Bainbridge Cohen’s videos about the organ system.  In the last DVD, she is explaining something called the “organ roll.”  It begins by side lying,  feeling the lateral line of the body, and clearly sensing the front body and the back body.  When I first lay on my side, I quivered into uneasy balance,  I could feel muscles bracing, and how my sacrum pushed forward, and then my chest drew back, looking for how to lie poised on that razor’s edge of the side body.

I stayed there for a long time, then changed sides, then came back to the first side again.  Gradually, I began to feel how I could unwind from the inside out, releasing my sacrum (and the pain there) and how as I stayed, it became more restful, more expansive.  In Bonnie’s words, the confusion between the back body and front body began to ease – nothing pushing or falling backwards or forwards.  When I stood up, I felt as if – perhaps for the first time – I was resting in my center, nothing braced or pushing or falling.  My mind also felt quiet, reflecting this new balance. I became curious about how this new way of sensing balance would change my riding.

The answer is, profoundly.  I felt a huge shift with my big Friesian, Sanne, who because of his power, can easily disrupt my balance, engaging me in a forward-falling, backward-bracing dialogue,  It was as if all of that simply unraveled.  I could feel my own quiet center – no muscling required – and he reflected that easy longitudinal balance in a completely new and effortless way.  Our riding dialogue was soft, engaged, supple and playful.

This physical revelation has an emotional parallel in the Somatic Experiencing work that I have been studying for the past couple years.  In that work, when we become activated – emotionally triggered – we find regularion by using sensing awareness and slowing to pendulate between activation and settling.  It is a way of finding balance, of not tipping into full on panic or disassociation.

To learn more about this work, connect with me here.