Sanne, ridden by Brandi Rivera

Opening

Habits can be helpful. They prevent us from having to learn certain activities every time we encounter them – like eating, brushing our teeth or walking up stairs. Habits can also be dulling and keep us from a wide-awake, fresh experience of the moment. They can narrow our focus to the known, rather than opening us to the unexpected.

Incorporating variation in our day is one way to open to new possibilities. Take a different route to work. Sit at a different spot at the dining room table, use your non-dominant hand for eating or teeth brushing. Experiment with moving as slowly or as quickly as you can. With your horse, try doing things in a different order. Start by giving the horse a massage, taking him for a walk, or grooming slowly and sensually. Or warm up by walking in meandering patterns around the field or arena. Variation opens us to new possibilities and greater feeling.

Slowing

Horse time is not clock time. From their perspective, time is expansive, marked by food, shelter, dark and light and our presence or absence. When we enter horse time, we can breathe, feel our bodies and notice what is here right now. Being present dissolves the tensions of the rush and press of our daily lives. When we hurry, we are focused on a point in the future, rather than dropping into the deep stillness of the moment.

Slowing down helps us to become more aware, more sensitive and flexible. Picture everything around you slowing and becoming more spacious. As you do that, you will begin to notice that each part of what you are seeing and feeling becomes more distinct and clear. Bring that slowing into each part of your movement: the way you close the car door, walk to the stable, put on your boots, pick up a grooming brush. Taste and savor each moment instead of rushing through your ride, or pushing your horse to get something “right.”

Capprichio, ridden by Sabine Schut-Kery

These two ideas are excerpted from a book that I am writing called The Common Body:  Horses and Humans Sharing the Language of Movement and the Body.  There are four “installments.”  Stay tuned!

1. Arriving

It you have been sitting at your desk all day or have driven through traffic to get to the stable, you body and mind need to transition and arrive fully. When you get out of your car, take a few minutes to stand, breathing fully as you drop your weight into your legs and feet. Then stretch your arms up and open and take in the sky. Slowly turn around to your right and then to your left, taking in the whole panorama of your surroundings. As you enter the barn and begin your time with your horse, can you consciously expand your focus to include the whole physical and emotional landscape, rather than narrowing your focus?

Using our peripheral vision is another way to arrive by expanding our senses, to what is at the edges of our sight, sound, taste, smell and touch.   Horses are peripheral beings. Their eyes, unlike ours, are set to the outsides of their faces, so that they can take in their surroundings. If you are walking a horse with your focus straight ahead, you are missing the big picture of their world. Try walking with your horse opening your vision and awareness out to the periphery.

2. Aligning

Alignment is not static, but dynamic, changing and fluid. Consciously aligning with yourself and your horse is a good way to begin your horse time. Begin by simply paying attention to the flow of your breath. Placing your mind on the breath gives us a single focus, anchoring and stilling the mind.

Instead of inadvertently tuning out or going into an automatic routine of preparation and riding, see how focused and attentive you can be, how fully engaged and involved with what you are doing. Use your breath to connect with yourself so that you can more effortlessly and fully connect with your horse.  Have the goal of coming back to the breath throughout your time with your horse, using that soft awareness to align with yourself and him.

I spent some time on Saturday and Sunday watching the Fitch’s Corner Horse Trials in Millbrook, NY.  During the stadium jumping a viewer standing near me said, “That horse is being a jerk.”  Really?  The horse had refused a jump.  The rider was tight, spurs driving into the horse, yanking on the reins, whip flying.  Who is the jerk?  I heard trainers literally snarling like dogs at a horse, riders cursing and whipping, viewers disparaging a horse that refused a jump.  Why is that ok?

Horses are prey animals with an extraordinary sensitivity.  They are not “dishonest” or “bad” or “jerks.”  They are generally responding to some kind of confusion, tension, abuse or fear.  They are often trying to protect themselves from harm.  Harm can be the rider or a jump for which they have not been properly prepared or a noise or movement that startles or frightens them.

Mark Rashid says that instead of MAKING the horse do something, we need to be HELPING the horse do it.  Linda Tellington-Jones exhorts her students to mentally say “Let’s do it”  rather than “Do it” to their horse when they are asking them to do anything.

It is not hard to spot a beautiful, breathing, soft, confluence of rider and horse.  You can see it in their eyes, in the openness and focus of the bodies and the sense of presence and listening.  I did see some of that as well.  In those moments it is as if the rider has let go of everything except the pure joy and harmony of the ride and the love for horse who carries her.