What’s a good sideways got to do with the state of the world?

What’s a good sideways got to do with the state of the world? Answer: You can’t push a horse or the universe around and get a lovely result.

I watched someone wrestling to get a sideways yesterday, in pretty much the same way as I’d been taught waaay back in the olden days – escalating pressure until the horse “tried.” The horse’s head was up, his neck was braced, his body was stiff. As they escalated the pressure, whether accidentally or on purpose he eventually moved away from the leg a little bit. At which point they rewarded him by stopping the pressure.

We were taught to train a horse like that hey? The trouble is, they didn’t know there was another way of being with a horse that is a whole lot more satisfying, a whole lot more effective and gobsmackingly faster.

There’s this thing that happens when we escalate pressure with a horse, we push past their body’s ability to give us what we want sweetly. We create a tension in their body and a confusion or even a resistance in their mind.

We might get what looks like a good sideways out of it eventually, but there’s tension that got locked into our horse’s body in the push and it’s creating unexpected side effects and tension somewhere else – not the least of which is a decreased desire and ability to be “one” with us – which is where the poetry and the joy comes from.

I call it “over-riding” when we blow past the boundaries of our horse’s ability to give us what we want:

• Whether they can’t give us what we want because they’ve already got tensions locked in their body that are preventing or restricting that movement and then pushing makes that worse.

• Or whether our horse can’t give us what we want because they don’t understand the conflicting messages of our body that happen BECAUSE of our push. The conflicting messages arise because the push itself causes our riding seat and the rest of our bodies and minds to disconnect from its beautiful flowing communication with them. Then we have our riding seat saying one confusing thing and our legs and maybe even our hands and our minds too, telling them something else.

While you’re sitting there on the chair right now, put your leg onto your imaginary horse and give it a good push – feel the contortions of your seat bones and then the weirdness and tension of the rest of your body that happens as you escalate that push – understand the truth or not for yourself.

Pushing past our horse’s ability to give us what we want creates more problems than it solves and it’s one of the reasons people think that beautiful riding is harder than it really is.

So what could we do instead?

• We start from the place where our horse already has confidence in our ability to listen to them.

• We start from our beautiful deeply connected riding seat where we can Feel our horse and communicate with our body.

• As we ask them for the movement – whether it’s a simple movement like sideways or a more advanced sidepass, half pass or shoulder in – as we Feel the limit of where our horse is giving us that bend, that movement, that flexion (and believe me, when you’re in your perfectly connected riding seat you can actually FEEL exactly where that limit is in their body) – then you just melt a tiny bit off that block, that limit, that resistance and you wait.

• And you wait as long as your Feel feels the channels of communication are open. You stop or change something when your Feel tells you it’s time. Or you stop if the channels of communication close, whether you got what you wanted or not. Yeah… stop whether you got what you wanted or not and allow your horse to come back to you. Because once the channels of communication aren’t flowing any more – THAT becomes the problem, not the achievement or non achievement of a movement.

• And when you get it happening, you’ll experience the joy of One-ness with your horse in the achieving of the movement AND in the melting AND in the stopping at the right time.

This connection together … this ability to feel and solve and flow together… THIS is what you yearned for in your soul when you yearned for a horse. Actually I should make this about me, because maybe your yearning was different. THIS is was what I didn’t even know was possible when I yearned for a horse.

But my soul knew.

So what’s that got to do with the state of the world?

Are we wrestling with the Universe in a similar way to that person wrestling with their horse in the sideways?

Are we struggling and feeling crappy about what’s happening – whether that’s happening directly to us or around us? (I can’t believe that with everything I already knew, that I needed a bit more depth in that experience recently! 🙂 )

Are we trying to MAKE change happen? Are we trying to FORCE things and losing our connection doing it? Are we rushing it? Are we missing the opportunity for the joy in the achievement AND ALSO in the melting AND ALSO in the stopping and changing at the right time?

Or are we we gonna ride and guide where the guidance is working and flow with that sucker when the magic happens? I wish you could hear the tone of my voice! 🙂

Come “ride” with us a in a glorious clinic that weaves practical horsemanship into this place where the magic happens…

Through the Grace of Your Horse

Today’s picture: is one of Karen Osborn’s gorgeous paintings. Look at the mischievous look on that horse’s face. He knows how to make it sooo much easier. You can find Karen and her beautiful art on Instagram here.