Happiness, Healing & Beautiful Horsemanship

happiness and healing for horses and people

Yes folks – I ran my mini-marathon

Arthritis ·

Me running

Ian Wilson running
My thanks to Ian Wilson, the guy in the front of this picture, who encouraged me so much and gave me several of the keys that I needed to come back to physical health.

 

Judging by how many emails I’ve had, many people wanted to know.  Thanks everyone for your interest – it’s heart warming.  🙂

Yes folks I made it! I ran the 7km Southern Highlands Challenge and completed the course.

To come back from last December being half crippled when I got out of bed – to walk/floating for that distance was an incredible achievement and I am VERY grateful to Ian Wilson, our Narel’s husband for encouraging me and providing the feet exercises that have so significantly contributed to my come back to feet and leg health.

The first km and a half of the run were terrible – I wondered whether I was going to make it.  I couldn’t find my rhythm or my breathing.  But I worked on my posture as I went along and worked on the emotional pressure I felt and the last 3 kms were easier than the first three.

I learned a big lesson on this journey, about how I cannot allow goals or pressure to distract me from enjoying the journey, (small words but a BIG concept that needs our attention to REALLY happen.)

I learned even more than I already knew about how incredible our bodies are at healing – it felt like instantaneous healing sometimes.

I learned about how changing the goals in response to what is happening NOW is not only OK, but a good deal.

I learned how to float along in my running action, with no impact on my joints, how to move up and down hills in perfect and incredibly powerful posture and I learned what that has to do with collection or an increase in power in our horses and how to teach that more effectively to both horse and human.

I learned how to do fabulous tension free and relaxed shoulder ins.    I learned fabulous walk to trot transitions and trot to canter transitions with no tension at all in my body and I learned how to teach that – so watch this space!

Now I’m joining a running club that does 5kms every Saturday morning.  My Meremma dog Lily Bär, may not be too happy, because she’ll miss out coming on those days, so I guess we’ll see if I still enjoy it as much without her “Come along Mum” encouragement.  🙂

… Because just like it is with our horses, enjoying the journey is what I am all about…

 

Reader Interactions

Comments

  1. Jenny- I am really pleased you did this, AND FINSHED! As someone who finds running difficult, I can appreciate the effort you have put into doing it. WELL DONE!!

    Reply

  3. Yes big congratulations Jenny, I absolutely love your picture crossing the line…. you are so beautiful, it shines all around you xxxxx

    Reply

  4. Congratulations Jenny!!! You look Great on the pic. at the gate, looking like you can run forever! Thank you very much for your sharing the story. I enjoyed reading your post and wanted to put LIKEs on all the comments above! You are the energy itself,the one which lightened all of us!!

    Reply

  8. That is great to hear that you have made it Jenny, and in the way you did it is wonderful! How importent isn´t it to enjoy what we are doing and how “easy” it can be when we enjoy the journey 🙂
    I love the pic when you are on the other side of the “finish” and I can feel the great feeling when you have completed a thing like this! Wow!

    Love
    Anna-Karin

    Reply

    • Thanks Anna-Karin, you’ve nailed it. That’s exactly it – the journey IS so much easier, we drop so much struggle when we do what we need to do, understand what we need to understand, to enjoy it. It’s all tied in together.

      Reply

  10. Congratulations Jenny. You are such a powerful, creative, determined woman. You learn and share with us so many lessons from your experiences and insights and thoughtfulness.

    Reply

  15. Wow, Jenny! Fantastic! Congrats! I feel inspired to work harder on my physical fitness in order to ride better, from your story.

    -Barbara

    Reply

    • I didn’t really work on it exactly – it was more like enjoying doing it. And when that wasn’t what I was doing, it all went to heck and I started hurting myself with lots of little injuries! 🙂

      Reply

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published.