Something new – this is my new free offering: The Weekly Challenge. Every week, I am going to offer a specific strategy for waking up to improvisational, embodied living.
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Feb24
Category Archives: the body
Feb19
detail
This is the time of year when I miss this kind of color. Painters see all kinds of colors in the bleak mid-winter. I see brown. Often I feel brown, gray, black. I want to live in Hawaii, or St. Barthelemy or San Miguel de Allende. At least for a few weeks each year would be ideal.
The problem for me with winter is that I tune out of the details. I don’t see them in the bleak wintery dark. No individual little blades of grass, or single petals of a flower, or intricate little spider webs, no delicious bird songs, or soft warm air on my skin. Am I a sensualist? You betcha.
So I have given myself an assignment, to find something different to notice in great detail every day. Today, I savored my ride on the big Friesian, Sanne. I noticed how finely soft I could become with the reins, how sensitive my leg could be, how I could feel his warmth and the texture of his coat even through my boot. I kissed his nose over and over as if it were a bouquet of lilies. The warm fragrance of his breath, the intense softness of the space between his nostrils.
Yesterday I got very detailed about a cup of tea – the specific shape of the lip of the cup on my lips, the feeling of the handle, the temperature, the way I picked it up and put it down, the layers of taste within the tea.
What did you notice today?
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Jan28
the big picture
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?
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Jan27
the dance
At one point in the workshop with Mark Rashid today, he began to show us the dancing magic partnership with his horse. Forward, back, side, side, forward diagonals, back diagonals – light, soft steps in any direction – articulating each foot like an improvisational tango. I fantasized my beautiful dancers, DeAnna and Ingrid in the arena with Mark and his horse – listening and improvising together – an unimaginably gorgeous quartet.
Today was fodder for about twenty blog posts. What I am loving about this experience is that it confirms everything I believe about the human-horse connection as a template and groundwork for spiritual practice.
Here are a few highlights:
- Allow the horse to tell you what is going on – if you can learn to listen to the horse, you will get an education. If you don’t listen to the horse you will get experience.
- Ask ,”How can I help you do the things I am asking, not how can I make you do them?”
- Instead of trying to fix the problem, focus on what you want.
During my ride today, Mark helped me to create the walk that I wanted – engaged, moving forward with softness and ease – from the first step. The horse that I am riding had inadvertently been taught to walk off reluctantly, with no forwardness. Most of the change in his walk had to do with creating the desired walk inside of me and then transmitting it to the horse. Not using more and more leg. That is the dance of creating from the inside out, not just mechanically changing the outside. The same thing works with children. It works with any creative effort that I have ever been a part of. It works, every time, no exceptions.