That writing on the picture is a bit of a shocker hey? Let me explain the wonderful thing that’s coming out of it!
I had a big ahhaaa bombshell moment yesterday – when we practice our riding with existing tension, we’re just practicing tension – getting that tension deeper and deeper into our muscle memory!
I’ve been working with a young rider who was a talented rider BEFORE she came to me. She came for health issues and her horse has been brilliantly helping her with that. If you haven’t come across this before, it’s pretty routine around here – horses help people and people help horses in what I call “a mutually supportive escalation of healing and happiness”.
She was using a technique that we’d come up with to get nervous or novice riders really comfortable on their horses and she’d got phenomenal benefit from it. I had this whoosh of realization that she’s not the first very advanced rider who’s got huge benefit from this technique. Then I started thinking oh my goodness I’ve been drawn to get almost all the advanced riders doing that beginner rider exercise too!
And then I realized that’s because even advanced riders are carrying tensions in their body that mean when they’re practicing their riding, they’re practicing those tensions – which means they’re in effect practicing something crappy!
It makes sense doesn’t it? How can practicing with tension be useful? We’ve been led to believe it’s normal that it takes years and years to become a really good rider. We think if we can just do more, practice more, get more knowledge, then we’ll be good enough. Can you see me stamping my feet, throwing my hands up in the air, crying “nooooo” at the wrongness of it?
Yeah I know I’m a bit of a drama queen – but seriously, I am sooo tired of watching people struggle with stuff that is fixed so easily.
It’s simple – achieving the kind of skill that we admire in the really great riders DOES NOT involve practice practice practice trying to get better at it and it doesn’t involve more knowledge either.
It takes getting rid of those tensions first. THAT’s the magic button. Getting rid of those tensions makes us better riders on AUTO-PILOT.
It wasn’t our fault – our first few rides on a horse were so often a source of that practicing crap thing.
Most of us were taught to ride in some version of being bounced around on the horse’s back at the trot. Because it had always been done that way (I think it came from the military), there was this assumption that eventually we’d find the rhythm of our horse and be able to ride. And it worked up to a point.
The problem is, that assumption ignored the tension being programmed into our muscle memory from trying to stay on while we were being bounced around. I’m telling you that if we haven’t done something to get rid of them, those tensions that were programmed into us back then, still have some aspects of them stuck in our bodies – to this very day. Even for the very good riders. Yeah even for the VERY good riders.
We’ve developed a way to release those old muscle memory tensions from being bounced around when we were learning to ride.
It even more wasn’t our fault – old falls off horses are another source of tension that causes our practice to be ineffectively practicing tension.
On top of “getting bounced around in tension” thinking that’s a good thing, we add the even more ridiculous assumption that falling off a horse is just the “price of the ticket”, the cost of riding a horse. The fact is, that falling off horses is also programmed into us by that original tension from the way we learned to ride, that is in almost every horse rider I come across – even the very good ones.
And those old falls off horses are cumulative – every one of those tensions from each fright, from each fall, is adding on to the next until even the great riders can end up carrying whopping tensions in their bodies that stop them too from being the riders that they can be.
We’ve also developed a way to get rid of the frights and the tensions from all those old falls.
It’s almost impossible to find poetry with a horse, the kind of riding that satisfies that deep yearning within us, when it’s based on our tension or our horse’s tension.
People think it’s natural talent that makes people good riders – natural talent and hard work. I strongly disagree. In fact I disagree so strongly that I could just stamp my feet AGAIN with temper at the idea that it’s only the small amount of naturally talented people that can be good riders. And I’m STILL stamping at the idea that hard work, with it’s practicing of crappy tension is the answer. People THINK you have to be naturally talented to be that good, BECAUSE almost everyone is riding with tension that doesn’t have to be there!
In our programs and riding lessons we take people OFF their horse to get rid of the blockages, the tensions, the frights, the PTSD’s from old falls, the resistances that are BEHIND what’s going on, that are getting in the way of you being a better rider. So when all that’s released or changed, the improvement is effortless and automatic.
Something wonderful happens to our bodies when we release the frights from those old falls in the way that we do it here. We’re automatically more confident, but the bigger deal is that the tension that was caused by those frights is released too. It allows the blood to flow and when blood is flowing, the oxygen needed for healing is being carried where it’s needed. Muscles fill up with that life healing blood and they can start functioning properly, bones can re-align.
And then we put people back on their horse in a simple, fun and easy way that has no tension in us or in our horses. And if tension does come up at some point, because that’s life sometimes, we deal with it differently.
We’ve got testimonials up the wazoo for healing of even old injuries when we release the tensions and frights from old falls. You’ll find some of them on the Fast Track pages here. But read on first and come back to this link later.
Fast Track – Innovative Techniques
What we do here is advanced sports psychology meets cutting edge physical therapy meets alternative healing.
For getting rid of the tensions you can work on something like a 44 gallon drum like Clara on Magic in the photo – I built this to learn to vault on years ago, but at its heart it’s just a 44 gallon drum with a heap of welding to make it fancy. Or you can just use a plain flat chair like Donna or sit at a desk like Kristina. If you’re tall, you can put something solid under the chair legs.
When we’ve been away doing clinics, we’ve used saddle stands if they’ve been strong enough, even logs – for this part of the work, the seat bones and upper body position, it doesn’t have to be fancy. The legs we take care of when we put you back on your horse in this very innovative way that Bobby taught me.
This works so spectacularly BECAUSE we work on-line!
This changes the way we teach riding. It changes the way we get to be the rider we can be and makes good riding – beautiful riding – EFFORTLESS and AUTOMATIC. And the beauty is, that we discovered how easy this is BECAUSE we work on-line. There’s also a deeper Comfort Zone for you and your horse when you don’t even have to load your horse on the trailer and take them to a strange place.
So it never was our fault hey?
Those sticky places, those stuck spots, those struggles – I feel this sense of wonder – they never were our fault after all.
The Fast Track to Brilliant Riding
Today’s photo is my friend Leanne, taken from a 14 year old video just after she’d made a phenomenal breakthrough and released her 20 year old PTSD and injuries from that incredibly nasty fall. I’ll bring you the video another day.
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