Tag Archives: riding

Feb21

flow

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Photo:  Pam White                 Dae and Esme flowing down Lucy Vincent Beach on Martha’s Vineyard

I learned some wonderful lessons about flow today.

First, a lesson from the movement analyst (me):  In movement, in creativity, in relationships, there are two kinds of flow. Free flow is where the feeling is unrestricted, outpouring, ongoing.  Bound flow occurs when the movement is restricted, held back.  A lot of us assume that bound flow is bad – it means that we are stuck, or limited in some terrible way.  But there are times when we want to engage bound flow – putting down a delicate cup, or picking up a pen for example.  We don’t want the cup to crash, the pen to fly our of our hands.

  • During my riding lesson with Brandi Rivera, I learned (again) that using bound flow in my riding aids (leg, seat, hands) for short moments creates a clearer sense of free flowing, fluid connection and suppleness with my horse, Sanne.
  • I learned that creating boundaries for a troublesome child opens us to greater ease and communication.
  • I learned that starting the day early by opening the floodgates to my fiction writing creates another one of those great, unexpected entry points to the day.  It is like choosing to enter the cave first, rather than stepping right out into the light.

How do you experience flow?

 

 

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Jan19

on not figuring it out

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Photo:  Claire Glover

Amadeo is my talented, complicated 17 year-old Andalusian gelding.  I have had him since he was 8, when I imported him from Spain.  He has never been an easy ride for me, and about six months ago, he made the decision that he did not want me to ride him.  To be more specific, he decided that only Brandi Rivera, his very talented trainer (and mine) should ride him.  We confirmed all of this with an animal communicator. She told us that he wanted to show off his skill and beauty, which includes the gorgeous flying changes, pirouettes and half passes that he is doing.

Brandi is now pregnant and not riding.  So Amadeo, this brilliant and opinionated horse, is unemployed.  And because he is not turned out with another horse because he can get rambunctious, he is both unemployed and lonely.

My happiest scenario for Amadeo is that someone would love him, like to lease him and enjoy riding and spending time with him. Deo loves to work – he enjoys that connection with himself and a rider – he is just very specific about how that looks and feels.  I love him, but I am not that rider – something that has taken me some time and some tears to accept.  If you are interested in meeting Deo, you can see him here, and follow that contact information.

My challenge in all of this is to not obsess about figuring out what will happen next for Deo.  To not focus on what is making me unhappy, but to feel my way toward a beautiful outcome for both of us.  And to keep all of that general, because getting specific creates more thinking, more working at it, more obstacles.

Dec18

riding, dancing

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Photo:  Claire Glover;  Brandi Rivera riding Amadeo

Riding is the hardest thing that I do.  Physically.  Mentally.  Spiritually.

I am a dancer.  Riding is harder.  The intricacy, the communication, the balance, the nuance, the subtlety required in the riding arena are beyond anything I have experienced in a dance studio.  Martha Graham said that it takes ten years to make a dancer.  One of my first trainers, Beach Bennett, said that it takes at least two lifetimes to become a rider. She is right.

I have had to accept that despite my physical skills, my training and my understanding, I am going to need that second lifetime to become all that I want as a rider.  It is humbling. I welcome it.

I wrote yesterday about touching horses, and the way that brings me to my knees.  How I love it.  Riding is that way too.  Sitting in the saddle (my zafu) and finding the first rhythmic harmonics with my horse’s walk is like breathing. Or like stepping into the water, readying for a swim.  Being challenged to seek harmony, softness, clarity and balance throughout a riding lesson is like sitting with a tough Zen master.  Or like my yoga classes with Patricia Walden.  No tuning out, not ever, not for a moment.

The horse, you see, deserves nothing less than my very best.

Rigor and ecstasy.  Could there be anything better?

Sep6

the whole, the parts

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After I wrote the post on Nelson, talking about the “basic, homogenized body”, I thought about the other side of that coin:  the separate and distinct flavors of the body.  A little like the difference between Western cuisine, which strives for combinations of flavors, and Japan, where there is more of an emphasis on meals consisting of distinct foods, each retaining their own individual taste and appearance.

When I first started to ride, I was overwhelmed by all of the sensory information from my own body and the horse’s body – like trying to listen to about five hundred radio stations at once.  After about fifteen years of sifting and sorting, I can (often, not always) selectively tune into one channel at a time.   It happens quickly – like a momentary check in:  my hips, my legs, his mouth (I feel that in my hands through the reins), each of his legs, my spine, and so on.  This requires a light, quick body-mind, one that doesn’t bear down or get stuck in one place.  No over-thinking, no aggressive fixing. Corrections happen in a flow, awareness is dextrous and global.  That is the goal.

I can feel my lovely trainer, Brandi Rivera, smiling as she reads this.  She has seen me get very stuck, heavy-handed and frustrated.  When that happens, I am usually not tasting or feeling much of anything.  The parts have gotten thick and mushy, like a bad soup. At that moment, I find it helps to tune into the fluid base of the breath, and from there let the mind bloom out to the feast of flavors once again.  It’s the same when dancing – sensing the whole while feeling the relationships and qualities of the parts.