Well Caroline’s goosebumps on the topic turned out to be right on the mark! What a wonderful and far ranging discussion on our beliefs about rightness and wrongness and how I’ve had to change quite a few of mine lately and the benefit of debunking those beliefs that aren’t true or at least aren’t true in all circumstances. There was a lot of talk about BEing Present and because it’s an important aspect of Feel for our horse, we’re going to have a discussion about how each of us experiences and deepens being Present on the forum. (link below)
If you have any trouble with the audio, you can click here for an alternative recording
You’ll find my notes for today’s session underneath the brags. The discussion took off so well, that we didn’t even get that far! lol!
From Mary and Sierra
About 3 weeks ago I had taken Sierra to a residential clinic with Steve Halfpenny, at his place in Blanchetown. So she had a 2 hr float trip to get there, in the afternoon I took her onto his mountain trail in hand and worked around and over all the obstacles.
Saturday was day 1 of the clinic and she was really good altho being only 6.5 her brain didn’t see out each session. By Sunday morning when we were again just doing in line things she was standing with me after a learning session and her feet were getting closer and closer together but she wouldn’t lie down. It was SO obvious to me she needed
to lie and sleep and was mentally exhausted so I lay down and she dropped immediately beside me. In fact she actually went ‘dead horse’ twice before deciding she had enough rest and was happy to get up for the lunch break!
From Anna Karin & Bizkaia
Some people that visit me ask me what I am doing with the horses and it is always not so easy to explain.
I am not thinking forward when it comes to horses and in lot of other thinks to, anymore. I am more into going deeper…Oh, isn’t it all about that going/digging deeper? For me is it through being softer, follow my inner guidance and feeling, that is the way forward, in a deeper way. It is about doing what is needed right now for me and the horses.
The other day I was planning to ride Bizkaia. I asked her to follow. And the best way is to ask and just before I can feel her in the rope I soften. Doing so a few times she follow, it can take some time to get to the gate. But if she ever going to find joy in doing things with a human I need to let her take all the time is needed and being even softer than I think what soft has been. And there are a lot of releasing during the pauses.
When we arrived at the arena we walked together for a while, me mirroring her a lot. She prefered standing at the gate.
When I felt we were ready for me to sit on her she blocked me from getting up on her on her left side, but she was ok, with the right side. I slided gentle on her, bareback and the rope tied in the halter. I felt that she shouldn’t move an inch, even if I asked her, and I have decided that she was the one to start moving. So I sat on her finding her breath and started to breath together with her.
After five minutes she started to move round in a circle, she stopped at the gate again and I sat relaxed, breathing and she started to walk again. She walked in circles, straight forward and after a while she stopped again, paused for a while. I felt that I should ask her softly to move forward and she walked off. I asked her to turn, she stopped, I layed my hand on a spot at her neck, she let go of some tension with a jerk and started to move in the direction I earlier asked for. We walked back to the gate and paused, breathing together. And she started to jawn big, I don’t know for how many times. I slided off her and thanked her and she thanked me through breathing in my face.
This will be the way forward for us. Bizkaia often resist a lot, but she has also been forced to do things when not being in her comfort zone. It is so obvious that force brings resistance. Softness brings willingness.
Softly going through all the resistance she has built up during the years and helping her to let go of it brings so much joy and peace in my heart.
Why is this a brag? It is a brag because I have noticed that I can be even softer than I thought and I can feel resistance before i feel it in my hand if I am in the now, present. I have been soft before and I am mostly in the now while being with the horses. But now I have gone even “deeper”. And I am so happy that I have Bizkaia guiding me on this beautiful way.
My notes for today about rightness and wrongness
I’ve recently had a whole bunch of things I was sure about, changed – beliefs of rightness / wrongness, “I’ll always do this.” “I’ll never do that.” Things that look to be the opposite of what I would have said that I stand for. It sounds a bit weird even as I write this, because Oliver has been bringing me the message of rightness in the wrongness for years. So this must be just another layer! But the Universe has been bringing me a great list of them recently, as if to make a big point.
Enjoying weed spraying as being a good thing to do
The first has been weed spraying, which is a big one for me. For years I fought here to have an organic farm and to control the blackberries organically and we’ve dug the hundreds of thistles out by hand. I’ve come to the conclusion that being organic for the weeds on this farm simply doesn’t work. Our landlord quite rightly was not happy about the spread of the blackberries, so I’ve paid people to come in and do the weed spraying for the last 5 plus years. A series of contractors have been incredibly unreliable and the weeds have been getting away, with some of the blackberries taller than me and bigger than 2 big cars.
So I have been going out myself, masked and clothed, day after day, spraying weeds and looking forward to the job. That’s the part that has seriously surprised me. I am passionately anti-chemical and yet I was enjoying the job of spraying chemicals all over my paddocks. I’d had a talk / meditation with the earth about it. And I’d brought a healing energy into the earth to compensate for it, but ENJOYING it? I’d been making this “wrong” for years and years and here I was enjoying it.
Using treats to catch a horse.
The next thing debunked has been a number of things with Rapunzel. She has always, from the very first week, preferred big clear direction instead of subtlety – the emphasis on clearness, but she’s taken that to a new level over the last few weeks. I’m not riding capable at the moment and she needs a lot of exercise in our very strong spring grass growth so as to not founder and we’ve been exercising her out of the car window for between 4 and 6 kms a day.
I’ve been strong for quite a while now about our horse wanting to work with us and walking away if they don’t want to – at first that was not always graciously! 🙂 Well there was only two choices with Rapunzel – exercise (and I try very hard to make that as interesting and enjoyable as possible) or lock her up. One option was to keep her with the ponies in a long narrow fenced area for about 1/2 a kilometre, with the big shelter trees. There’s lots of grass but it’s long and rank and low sugar and perfect for fat ponies in spring time. But Boots is the stallion herd leader and he gets distressed if she’s locked in the tree area away from the big horse herd.
So to keep herd harmony, I came to her choice was exercise or the whole herd was locked up at the hay shed with as much hay as they could eat, but locked up. It was funny, all the horses knew exactly why they were being locked up and the last couple of times she turned her head away and said no she didn’t want to exercise and they were all locked up for half a day, they chased her around and bit her butt!
We came to a time where too many days she was saying no thanks and walking away from me and it didn’t feel right. I had to find another way to motivate her to come and do this exercise (meanwhile I’m also working on making it more interesting) AND I took some treats out to catch her AND she dropped her head in the halter happily after that. AND she had her happiest days work afterwards! So I’ve come to never say never about catching a horse with a treat and she’s getting treats often.
Go faster and work harder to find a Comfort Zone, instead of slower and gentler
Next thing we had a situation where was she was unbalanced and her back wasn’t lifted which spells Comfort Zone issue for me. I tried various quiet options, getting softer and gentler and slower and all she was doing was her head toss which says “Not happy!” So we went faster and bigger, with MORE effort needed on her part and she enjoyed it again. Walk to canter, big sweeping of the whip in front of her to bring her to big stops and back-ups – even gallop to big stops. The other day she even did a slide stop from a gallop which startled me.
Then she was unbalanced downhill and slowing down / being quieter wasn’t working, so we went faster – with canter to walk to canter transitions going downhill and the result was she flowed into a beautiful rocking horse canter where she is feeling sooo good.
All these things are the opposite to what I would have thought.
I want to be clear. There was a rightness in the going faster to solve it, a rightness in the getting bigger.
Suck it up princess
Caution: Anna-Karin’s beautiful story with a Bizkaia is a perfect counterpoint and works as a caution for what I’m saying.
Boots farting around with the feet trimmer, not scared, not resistant, he’s has had meticulous Comfort Zone stuff with his feet to the nth degree, but he was just choosing to jerk her around. It was as if he didn’t really know what was expected of him for a happy relationship with the feet trimmer AND it’s not fair on my feet trimmer to have her knocked around under a horse with bad manners. AND she listens to them too about how they want their feet trimmed and puts them down for rests, is happy to do a foot and go to the next horse and come back to them if they’re a bit sore or have something going on. She’s a very good trimmer and very considerate of them.
So he had to learn to “suck it up princess”. Do what he’s asked. So each time he jerked his foot I moved him around a little, with a very strong “stand still and hold your foot up nicely” in my mind when we came back to Kathryn. It’s a pressure-release technique from my natural horsemanship days that I would have said that I wouldn’t have used any more. And I dare say I probably wouldn’t use it for a horse who was afraid and wouldn’t use it for a horse who was resistant (which is defensive) but I can no longer say I wouldn’t use it at all.
And Sunny had a similar “suck it up princess” thing happen with a painful foot that she had to stand on for us to be able to reduce her pain. She NEEDED this work done to help her. She HAD to give Kathryn her foot and stand for just a few seconds each time so Kathryn could do what needed doing bit by bit. I was gentler than with Boots but just as strong in what she needed to do.
A funny feeling in my third eye
In all these instances there was a funny feeling in my third eye – almost like a doubt about whether I was right in what I was I was doing, a wishy washiness around my leadership. If … I… wasn’t sure, how could my horse be? All I would be communicating would be that weird slightly off kilter Not Quite Right feeling. So when I felt into that funny feeling in my third eye, the answers came MUCH different to what I expected – spraying chemicals, faster instead of slower, bigger instead of softer, stronger and insistent instead of gentler.
No doubt you’ll do it differently to me. And the circumstances will be different and all the threads that bring you and your horse to this moment will be different to mine.
Here’s the caution
But here’s the caution. There’s a confidence in our relationship together that has come from helping them deal with their fears and supporting them to release their defensiveness and resistance. I cannot imagine any of these horse things working as the first way of approaching a problem hey?
I liked the way Kathryn expressed it when she and I were talking about this last feet trimming day. She said something about knowing the rules, to break the rules.
Discussion:
So are there instances where you need to step up to a different kind of leadership in the moment? And how do you experience that NQR?