Advice for Riding Instructors: Helping Students Regulate Emotions

As a riding instructor, you have a unique opportunity to guide your students not only in mastering their riding skills but also in managing their emotions. One powerful concept can help you and your students navigate challenging moments in and out of the saddle: You are not what you feel. This simple idea can spark profound change, empowering your students to stay grounded when emotions run high.

When a student is struggling—perhaps feeling overwhelmed by frustration after a difficult ride or anxious about an upcoming competition—it’s easy for them to become consumed by those emotions. In those moments, their feelings can seem to define their entire experience, even who they are. As their instructor, you can help them step back and regain control by teaching them to separate themselves from their emotions.

Practical Steps to Help Students Regulate Emotions

1. Introduce the Concept of the Observing Self
   Teach your students that they are not their emotions. Encourage them to practice observing their feelings without judgment, much like they observe their horse’s behavior during a lesson. For example, if a student is upset after a fall, guide them to notice their feelings—say, “I feel frustrated” rather than “I am frustrated.” This small shift creates mental space, helping them see emotions as temporary states, not their identity.
2. Model Emotional Regulation
   When working with a student who’s struggling emotionally, stay calm and grounded. Just as you maintain steady energy when handling a nervous horse, model a composed presence. Your calm demeanor shows students that they can trust the process, even when emotions feel overwhelming. For instance, if a student is anxious about a jump, acknowledge their fear calmly and guide them through a breathing exercise before continuing the lesson.
3. Teach Awareness of Thoughts and Feelings
   Help students build awareness by encouraging them to pause and notice their thoughts and emotions during a lesson. For example, during a challenging exercise, ask, “What are you feeling right now?” or “What thoughts are coming up?” This practice helps them recognize emotional patterns, like tension before a canter transition, and respond thoughtfully rather than react impulsively.
4. Apply the Concept to Thoughts
   Extend this idea beyond emotions to thoughts. Students often get stuck in negative thought loops, like “I’ll never get this right.” Teach them that just as they are not their feelings, they are not their thoughts either. Encourage them to observe their thoughts as passing clouds, not facts. For instance, if a student says, “I’m terrible at this,” guide them to reframe it: “I’m having the thought that I’m struggling, but I can keep practicing.”
5. Build Emotional Regulation Skills
   Equip your students with tools to manage their emotions, such as deep breathing, visualization, or grounding exercises. For example, before a lesson, have them take three slow breaths, focusing on the sensation of the air to calm their nerves. You can also encourage them to visualize a successful ride, which builds confidence and reduces anxiety. These skills are like building strong tracks for their emotional “train” to run smoothly.

Why This Matters in Riding

Riding is as much an emotional journey as it is a physical one. Horses are highly sensitive to their rider’s emotional state, and unregulated emotions can disrupt the connection between horse and rider. By teaching your students to observe their emotions and thoughts, you help them stay present and communicate clearly with their horse, fostering a stronger partnership.

There is one thing people don’t talk about when they discuss building a bridge: bridges must start and end on stable ground.

I have recently been writing about my experiences as a teacher and psychologist, focusing on the challenges I faced starting out and the personal qualities I had to foster and develop to elevate my teaching and consulting. Not surprisingly, I concentrated on my own regulation—the ability to manage my energy, anxiety, frustration, thoughts, and behavior.

In the role of teacher, mentor, instructor, or trainer, we are all called to expand our self-awareness and commit to personal growth. This includes growth in our knowledge and skills but, perhaps more importantly, growth in our mental and emotional fitness and our capacity for self-regulation.

Teaching and mentoring are all about building bridges. Before we can impart knowledge, provide support, or challenge our students, there must be an established path of connection and communication. Like all bridges, that path must start and end on solid ground.

As a mentor to many riding instructors and trainers, I find that the most common challenges they face revolve around their students’ emotional regulation. I hear about struggles with their students’ tears and fears, anger and frustration, acting out, and shutting down. When our students are dysregulated, we cannot teach, and they cannot learn.

When this happens, we need to rebuild the bridge, starting with establishing stable ground in ourselves and helping our students find theirs. ~ Paul

I remember my first day teaching like it was yesterday. Fresh out of college, I walked through the door of my high school senior Developmental Physics class (physics without numbers) just as the bell rang and took my place at the front of the room. There, right in front of me, sat the football team… in formation. Linemen in the first row. Receivers on the wings. Quarterback and running backs in the second and third rows, respectively. My heart started pounding. My mouth went dry.

For those who don’t know me, I am not a big man. I was terrified and filled with trepidation. Images of a classroom spiraling out of control flashed through my mind. I desperately wanted to succeed in my first job out of college, and I was terrified that it would dissolve into disaster in the very first class of the very first day.

The next few minutes turned out to be pivotal. I had to decide in a moment how I was going to approach the class. I am forever grateful that I decided on being firm (a bit of a hard-ass, to be sure), fair, and funny, in that order. In the end, that class ended up being one of my favorites of all the classes I have ever taught.

I have said it before, and I will say it again: Teaching is one of the hardest things a person can do. It requires an incredible level of awareness of both yourself and your students. It requires an extraordinary amount of personal resilience and self-control. It also requires a powerful capacity to connect and act in the service of others, even when those others process and react to the world in ways profoundly different from you.

Maybe the only thing harder than teaching is teaching riding. Here’s to all the instructors out there who are in the arena every day, teaching a challenging skill while facing fears, calming nerves, fostering courage, and cultivating confidence and a love of both horses and the sport. We appreciate you and want to support you in any way we can. ~ Paul

PC – #eringilmorephotos

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