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MY NOTES FOR THE SESSION
June and Sue have been having an interesting conversation on June’s personal thread on the forum. June’s a feet trimmer and she has this great technique? – perhaps not the right word – she has this great approach to helping dangerously reactive horses to pick their feet up for her. She teaches them to NOT pick their feet up. She teaches them to keep their feet on the ground while she touches the leg all over.
And when they have released all the anxiety and terror and resistance from goodness knows what old history, when they’ve found confidence in her, then they come to a true place of choice – where they can choose to pick up their feet OR NOT. And she says that it’s just as important to walk away when they say “no” without trimming the feet then too.
It’s a little different to what I’d been doing, because it’s ACTIVELY teaching them to keep their foot on the ground until they get to the place of real choice.
I’ve been working with Rapunzel for some weeks now and she is gorgeous, bless her – specially in her liberty work. Right from the first day she was co-operative and obedient and pretty soon was walking and trotting around me in a big open space, stopping and backing up on the circle smooth and sweet. But her mouth was a bit tight and her ears back a little and after my initial pleasure at such great results so fast, neither of us were feeling the joy.
So I’ve been exploring what is it that is lacking? WHY is that joy lacking? Did I need to get more subtle in my “asks”? Yeah well she appreciated that. Then I understood that I need to get BIGGER, with higher energy and no she wasn’t happy about high energy, so we did some work getting her OK with high energy. Each thing I explored improved it, but still… there was something missing.
And then we came to yesterday. June’s slightly different approach was on my mind. So I TAUGHT Rapunzel to leave me at liberty – at high speed. Can you see that was bigger than ALLOWING her to leave?  There I was, swirling and twirling around with my arms stretched out wide, almost dancing in the very high energy wind of a big storm coming – Rapunzel galloping away from me and back to me – both of us feeling freer than before.
And she started to find the joy at last – with little bucks and rears and jumps that I think are going to get a LOT bigger as she gets used to expressing herself. One flood of insight was that she’s always had to be a Caretaker (crikey I hope she still is one under saddle – or I’m going to have to find my more youthful stick on riding ability!), she had always looked out for others and yes I did get that insight was about me as well.
It is CHOICE – real choice – that is making that breakthrough to her joy. Giving her back her ability to say “no”. Actually TEACHING her that is was OK to say “no”.
So the fact that I’d chosen CHOICE as our topic for this month was not coincidental I thought.
So what is it that gets in the way of OUR choice? Of OUR ability to choose?
Fear gets in the way of genuine choosing. For example – If someone was afraid to leave the house, are they CHOOSING to stay at home?
No I don’t think so either. 🙂 Clean up the fear (that is, understand it and thus release it) and then that person would truly be in a place of choice about whether to stay home or not and staying home would be a decision of pure enjoyment.
Beliefs get in the way of genuine choice. If someone believed they were incapable of beautiful riding, then choosing not to ride is not a real choice at all, hey?
Understand the Truth behind that outworn belief and then we can make a REAL choice about whether to do that thing or not.
Society’s norms, that is, things that are “normal” in our society, they too get in the way of real choice. Here’s what sounds like a silly example.  It used to be that good girls wear pink, stay clean, don’t get angry, be obedient (whew did you feel the energy in THAT?) What choices did I make to conform to other people’s ideas? Is that even a choice AT ALL?
And if we rebel and struggle against society’s expectations – is THAT a choice either? Find our own Truth and our own Path will be full of REAL CHOICE.
Gosh there’s a lot of examples of things that take away our choice, or of ways that we give away our choice. Let’s have a conversation about some of them and then we’ll do a Quiet Mind about noticing and understanding something that has been restricting OUR choices.