I am in Savannah, GA taking a workshop with cowboy-Aikido master, Mark Rashid.  I have written about him before, and being able to ride with him and experience his work firsthand is a dream come true.

Today I rode a horse named Sam who had, as Mark said, “an industrial strength brace” that showed up in the way he hit the bits by throwing his head.  Sam would hit the bits so hard that he would back himself up – like a wave hitting a sea wall.  He could not soften.  With me on his back, Mark again and again corrected him, backing him up all the way across the big paddock where we were riding.  That sounds harsh and punitive.  It wasn’t.  What was interesting was with all that backing, I could clearly feel when the horse “homogenized”  in other words, stopped feeling like four separate, blocky quadrants and suddenly came together in a smooth flow.

When Mark showed me what he was doing with the reins, by having me be the horse and brace my hands and arms, he softened my resistance with something that felt like to me warm water moving up the reins.  He explained that he was sending intention, and “going underneath,” something that comes from his practice of Aikido. His point is that the fix is not mechanical, but happens by finding the connection between the inside of the rider to the inside of the horse. He says that if you aren’t connected to yourself, there is no way that you can connect to the horse.

Then he had me take the reins and instead of meeting the horse’s resistance with my own resistance, just picture my hands moving toward the horse’s mouth.  Doing that dissolved the brace for both me and the horse, and gave me a sensation that I have never experienced before.  Which for a smart somatic person was pretty exciting and humbling. He also cataloged my own stiffness without hardly looking at me in about five seconds.  Like I said, humbling.

For those of you who have been following the Deo Diaries, you can imagine how excited I am to go home and try all of this with him!

Photo:  Pam White

Sometimes life enforces a big rest.  I have the flu.  I am having a big, unsolicited rest.  But was it unsolicited, or had I managed to tune out sufficiently to invite a collapse instead of a recuperation.

Maybe, but godson Jacob had a very runny nose and perhaps I missed a few hand washes – or got to the soap too late.  In any case, I am down.

But resting doesn’t have to always look like Pachi, above – all grace, softness and light, or me with the tornado sneezes and subterranean cough.  There are the other, more subtle rests.  Those are the ones I want to talk about.

Rudolf Laban, discovered that factory works engaged in repetitive motion labor were less efficient that when small recuperative moments were salted into those repeated movements. Through working specifically with the rhythm of movement in qualitative patterning, their approaches improved efficiency, reduced fatigue, and increased job satisfaction. (Janet Kaylo)  In Laban Movement Analysis, that means looking at not just how much energy is being expended, but what are the specific qualities those movements – quick/sustained, light/strong, direct/indirect, free/bound in their flow.

When I was watching JoAnn, Jacob ‘s Mom, I noticed that she used her eyes in a strong, piercing direct way.  She is used to watching Jacob this way – always on guard, always ready.  There is no recuperation and that tension in the eyes makes it way into the whole body.  I invited her to let her vision take in Jacob in a more peripheral, global way and also to intersperse moments of letting her focus meander in a soft and intentional way, instead of being focused, laser-like on Jacob.  Both of those are little recuperations.

Getting up from writing to walk from room to room, or get a glass of water, or step outside and look around – even if only for a few moments – is recuperative.  A breath with attention is a recuperation.  We don’t have to get sick or go to the Caribbean to feel better (although I do enjoy the latter).

Experiment with little recuperations.  Right now I am lying in bed with my cat Ivy snuggled by my right side.  I just took a moment from typing to stroke her and pay attention to how that felt and I feel refreshed.That was less than 10 seconds.

Recuperate and tell me what you discover.