And now to do ... nothing...
what?Today I was playing with a 2nd level movement -- pick
up the right lead canter as if to circle right, then peel
left to B, hang right and continue on down the longwall in
'counter canter.' As movements go, the hairy part w
That's when I do 'nothing.'
I let the experience be hers.
It's one of my favorite aspects of riding: letting the
realization land. There's this moment where you can
tell the gears have turned in the horse's head and they
realize something -- they are learning. And the trick,
as a rider, is to leave them alone so that whatever it is
they just got, they keep it!
It has now become a regular part of my riding. I
liken it to the 'dead man's pose' in yoga.
So years ago I started doing yoga. Back then,
the way I thought of it was: There were these poses - called
asanas, where you'd test your balance and coordination and
ability to breath while doing weird things. Then there
was this 'dead man's pose.' Where I was supposed to
just lie there on the ground. And it had to be between
every pose. There was even this little blurb in there
about how this was the hardest but most important pose to
do. Blah Blah. Just let me get to the next pose.
See - I can stand on one foot!
Then time goes by - years go by. Yoga gets to be
really popular, and I move in and out of a regular practice
but this funny thing happens. As time goes by, I get
to where I really like this 'dead man's pose.' This
actually is important, and I get
it. It was a slow realization. It
was so slow, I'm not entirely sure how it landed. It
could have been the Somatics. It could have been the Centered
Riding Shake Out. It could have been that line in
"Sprial Dynamics" quoting Barbara Jordan:
"Change: from what, to what?" It was there
all those years ago, kept alive in the memory of the voice
of my High School Band Instructor saying "Music is in
the rests." Or maybe it was something from NLP,
that learning happens in an instant -- and it happens when
you recognize something. It is not an arduous task,
it is a natural instinct. But the trick is the
recognition - the awareness. If you don't know something
changed, there is no learning. When you are aware
something happened, something is different, you've learned.
So I set this up in riding now, and I cherish
it. I let the horse 'complete that thought.' And
I find it all goes so much better.
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