The on-line clinic that we just finished, brought this fact home – yet again – in a spectacular way. Emotional stress = muscular tension. And muscular tension gets in the way of us being everything that we can be as riders.
It is difficult for our horse to have their body with the right kind of mixture of relaxation and strength to carry us with good health, unless WE are relatively free of emotional stress and muscular tension. Well that sounds pretty simple hey?
It’s even more simple than that.
We need to BE the change that we want to help our horse to be.
If there was ever one single phrase that has the capacity to launch your horsemanship into excellence, it would be the phrase “BE the change that you wish your horse to be.”
And it doesn’t have to involve sitting on a mountain top chanting “ohm”.
Whatever you are looking for from your horse – more confidence for example – then simply embody more confidence in yourself. You want relaxation from your horse? Then search out, find and clean up the pockets of tension in your own body. You want self carriage? Then embody self carriage in yourself – clean up the nooks and crannies of poor posture that are in the way of your own self carriage and get it for yourself first. You want collection from your horse? Then find the ability for your own body to collect and wowwww… feel the change in your horse.
BE the change that you want your horse to be.
If we are very good riders, we can jiggle our horse here and pick up a dropped shoulder there, drive that horse forward, flex that jaw, loosen that poll, put that leg here or there – but is that the Magic that we are looking for? Where is the Magic of ONE-ness, where is the amazing energy of ONE-ness in constantly needing to correct our horse?
BEING the change, embodying in ourselves what we are looking for from our horse – BEING the calm confidence, BEING the self carriage (yes – emphatically yes – we riders should be in self carriage too!), having the ability to FEEL collection in our own bodies and drive forwards with the power of that, feeling the absolute joyfulness of our own self expression and having our horse magnify that – THAT is the path to the magic of ONE-ness with our horse.
THAT is what we are going to do in the April Horse Retreat here (this was 2015 this particular clinic is long over) – a gentle, powerful path to inner peace and excellence with horses – wellness for ourselves, wellness for our horse.
And the Magic of BEING the change that we want our horse to be.
😀 Some day perhaps!
We will look forward to meeting you in person! 🙂
It would have been lovely to join that clinic!
You’re such a joy to be around Anna Karin, that we would enjoy it too! 🙂