Sport psychology

The Climb to the Summit

By |2025-02-18T11:12:18-05:00February 18, 2025|Categories: Sport psychology|

Justin and I have been presenting at the Leadership Adventures 2024 Equine Assisted Learning Summit this weekend. What a joyous and inspiring event. Our presentation later today is entitled The Art of Allowing. We are exploring how to leverage the qualities and characteristics of complex systems theory to help guide our engagement in the process of growth.

Heady topic, I know. But, the application is simple and powerful. There are dynamics in this world which are simply the a reflection of its complexity. Here are a few…

There is a drive for self-organization. Left alone complex systems move toward organized and stable patterns. Think personality.
They are emergent. The whole is greater than the sum of the parts. Characteristics of the system arise from the interaction of the parts rather than from the parts themselves and can not be predicted by the characteristics of the parts. We are all more than our organ systems.

They are interconnected. Parts of a complex system are interdependent and connected to each other and the environment through a flow of energy and information. Mind-body connection for example.

They are sensitive to initial conditions (non-linear). Small changes in initial conditions can lead to large changes in outcomes over time. The effects are not proportional to causes. This is the butterfly effect.

Finally, a well functioning complex system has an open flow of energy and information between its parts. When that flow breaks down, the system becomes rigid and/or chaotic until that block to the flow is reopened allowing the system to reintegrate. This, by the way, describes all of human psychopathology and every behavioral issue in horses.

Our point today is a simple one. When fostering growth in ourselves, others, our horses, or our relationships; we must respect the complexity of the systems involved. We have the power to influence the initial conditions. We can present our best selves and set positive intentions, and do our best to open the flow of energy and information. Then we need to get out of the way and allow. Allow for the emergence of new and different qualities, characteristics experiences, and levels of organization.

This is the very first time we are presenting out reflections on complex systems theory in an organized way. We have done our best to prepare and create a set of initial conditions that we hope will increase the probability of a meaningful experience for all involved. So here it goes. We will honor the magic of complexity and… allow. ~ Paul

#equestrian ##sportpsych #equestriansportpsych #sportpsychology #equestriansportpsychology #complexity #complexsystemstheory #2024ealsummit #growth #braintrain #trainyournervoussystem #overcomingchallenge #emotionalneeds #equestrian #equestrianlife #sportpsych #equestriansportpsych #sportpsychology #equestriansportpsychology

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When Emotional Needs Collide

By |2025-02-09T11:22:08-05:00February 9, 2025|Categories: Sport psychology|

A bit of history here for those that may not know me well. In 2013, my then young horse Revel spooked and took off. While I can’t tell you what happened next because I don’t remember, I know I ended up in the head trauma unit of Fairfax Hospital for overnight observation. In the summer of 2022, I took on a young Westphalian gelding Lil’Joe who was gifted to me because he had been bolting with his owner.

I know what you’re thinking… “What the hell were you thinking?” At least this seems to be the most common reaction. I could give you the emotional answer which is that I felt connected to this horse from the moment I first met him; all goofy and playful with his goat eaten tail. And, while that is true, I think the real answer is a much deeper one.

While I had worked through my experience with Revel, there was still a part of me that knew that I still didn’t have what was needed to help Revel at the time. I needed to find that in myself. Not just to “make things right” with Revel but to take responsibility for myself and have more to offer Lil’ Joe and all the other horses that would come into my life.

It has been quite a journey. Revel opened the door for me to learn how to grow through my intense fear. My clients have benefited enormously from what he taught me. Lil’ Joe has opened the door for to explore and retrain my nervous system. Like all of us, my nervous system works to keep me safe and seldom asks permission first. While some of the ways it responds informs my intuition and helps my decision making, many of my reactions work against me in the moment. Apparently, my nervous system doesn’t know much about horses.

Joe is one of those horses that is highly sensitive to his environment. No matter how relaxed he is in his work, he is only a hair’s breath away from high alert status. The work with him is always gradual. Gains are often almost imperceptible in the moment and accrue very slowly over time. It is always helpful to look back over several months to truly appreciate his progress.

One sticking point for him is the indoor arena (the only contained riding space on the farm larger than our round pen). It is not always a comfortable place for him. On the days when the gremlins run free, my work with him takes a large step back, helping him get reconnected and settled. Often sticking to ground work.

The other day, Justin and I were alone at the farm and had a chance to ride together for the first time in a while. We talked about where we were going to ride. He wanted to ride in the outdoor arena since the weather was so nice. The few times I had ridden Joe in the outdoor he was actually more relaxed than usual. Me not so much. I realized in that moment that our emotional needs did not align. I chose to meet Joe’s as best I could.

It was a beautiful ride. Joe was relaxed and regulated. We worked on building responsiveness to the aids with lightness. He stayed connected through the whole experience. I, on the other hand, struggled. I found myself internally distracted by unhelpful thoughts and repeatedly had to address my tension, both emotional and physical. It was a challenge to stay in the present and connect to the real experience of the ride.

It would be easy in that moment to get down on myself. I can be just as harshly self-critical as the next rider. It has helped me to appreciate that all of the intrusive thoughts and physical tension I experienced were simply my nervous system doing its best to take care of me. I have known for some time that my next personal growth agenda will be to train my nervous system to respond differently, to respond the reality of the moment rather than my past traumas. I have also known that my growth, like Lil’ Joe’s, will be slow and gradual.

If you are challenged by your nervous system in similar ways, join me in the process and commitment of training new, more adaptive responses. Training ourselves with deep personal understanding. Treating ourselves with kindness and compassion in the process. And, perhaps most of all, training ourselves with quiet consistency over time, appreciating even the smallest gains because that is the way that growth happens. ~ Paul

#growth #braintrain #trainyournervoussystem #overcomingchallenge #emotionalneeds #equestrian #equestrianlife #sportpsych #equestriansportpsych #sportpsychology #equestriansportpsychology

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Words

By |2025-02-07T12:00:11-05:00February 7, 2025|Categories: Sport psychology|

A letting go, pop, release, unwind, crescendo. These are just some of the words to describe the effect or outcome when I was guided, these last few days, to place my fingers on specific spots on a horse and meld, feel, invite, or offer my energy. The results were undeniable. They could be seen by everyone in the arena. As we often say in the equestrian world, “Horses don’t lie.”

The challenge for me was not in the action, the placement of a touch or the opening of awareness, it was in processing the language so that I could share in an understanding of what just happened and how.

I am participating in an Integrated Equine Therapies training this weekend with Grace McCoskey Keeton of Nova Equine Renovations and Bonnie Bemboom. As I participated in lectures and discussion, I was reminded once again of another powerful saying, “The map is not the territory.” I realized as I struggled to “read the map” they were offering, to understand the words they were using to describe and explain, that the words were just that… words.

It is natural for all of us to make meaning of our experience. It is also natural for all of us to want to predict the world and comfort ourselves by convincing ourselves that we “know.” The unfortunate thing is that we can easily fall into protecting our “knowing” by either dismissing the other “maps” or worse, persecuting anyone that suggests that our “map” is incomplete or inaccurate. Our history is filled with atrocities that were justified by defending the “truth” or what was “known.”

We live in a world that does this all the time. Think about our worship of science and the results of research. It has gone from a powerful method for expanding our understanding of the world to a kind of religion or demagoguery. The funniest, or perhaps saddest, part of it is that we take the results of a study or two that maps a tiny, tiny, tiny area and then use it as if it is a map of the world. Then, as if that isn’t enough, we disparage or dismiss anyone that tries to make meaning of our world and experience in a different way.

It is natural for us to want to connect and participate in shared meaning. I now realize that this is my goal throughout this training. Can I open myself up. Open myself up to the experience and explore the ways I interact with the world and horses beyond the 5 senses I have been indoctrinates to focus on. And… open myself to other maps of our world, our experience, and our healing without demanding they mirror my own. ~ Paul

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Imagination – It’s not just for the future anymore!

By |2025-02-04T11:30:03-05:00February 4, 2025|Categories: Sport psychology|

For some reason the use of our imagination seems to have been indelibly linked to creativity and the future. Let’s be clear, I delight in the creative dimensions of imagination. We get to experience worlds that have never been and give form to our wishes and dreams. Using our imagination this way helps us open doors in ways that lived experience never can.

But, why stop there?

Our imagination is also a powerful tool that we can use to mine our past for riches and resources in our lived experience. And, it is a fabulous tool for practice. One hard truth of riding is that we are always limited in the practice repetitions when we ride. It is simply not like golf where you can grab a bucket of balls and practice your swing hundreds of time in one session.

Imagine how much progress you could make in on your riding if you could effectively navigate that challenging bending line like you did in your lesson yesterday or ride the amazing tempe changes you nailed in competition last week over, and over again. Just imagine. Just imagine. Yes… imagine because, in our imagination we can.

Reliving effective rides or movements in our imagination is a powerful tool for building skills and creating ease and automaticity. What I can’t imagine is that it’s uses stop there.

How do you use your imagination to progress in your riding?
~ Paul

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The Phases of Facing Fear

By |2025-01-31T10:44:58-05:00January 31, 2025|Categories: Sport psychology|

There is no single strategy for working through fear that will take you from start to finish. Even the most helpful strategy can be misapplied, mistimed, or overplayed. In fact. many of our roadblocks are either created or bolstered by overusing or overplaying a great and effective strategy.

It is helpful to think of the work of facing fear in phases: Preparation, Application and Approach, and Patient Persistence.

Preparation – Preparation is a lot like working out or practicing basic skills. It involves learning strategies to better regulate your nervous system and grow your ability to lower your overall emotional activation. In order to grow your mental fitness, it is extremely important to practice these skills and techniques away any from intensely triggering stimuli.

Approach and Application – Well armed with your practiced skills and strategies and increased mental fitness. It is now time to approach your fear and apply your tools and techniques. It is not enough to simply think about pushing yourself out of your comfort zone. It important to know both how far out over the line to push yourself and, how long to stay there. This will change from person to person. Ignoring these considerations will, at best, slow your progress and, more likely, make things worse.

Patient Persistence – After careful preparation and success applying your tools to better regulate your nervous system in fear inducing situations, it is now time to leverage your nervous systems capacity for habituation. In other words, ride your pants off. Timing is everything in this phase. If you push too hard before you have confidence in your ability to regulate yourself, you will likely find yourself retraumatized. If you don’t push hard enough, your nervous system will not habituate to the challenging situation or activity.

Next time you are tackling a fear or emotionally challenging situation, ask yourself if you have considered these phases of fear eradication. Honor each phase, even if you don’t rigidly work through the process step by step. You will thank yourself in the end. ~ Paul

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Grace Under Pressure

By |2025-01-26T18:58:08-05:00January 26, 2025|Categories: Sport psychology|

Have you ever heard your trainer say something that you heard a thousand times like, “Inside leg to outside rein” and have a moment of realization that you don’t even really know what that means? I often challenge my clients to explore these common simple instructional phrases. What do they really mean? Do they mean the same thing to different professionals? Different riders? So many times I’ve found that, at best, we are unclear.

I was reminded today of the phrase “grace under pressure.” I had that same realization. What does it really mean? Grace. Grace under pressure. I think I get the “under pressure” part but what does grace actually mean.

Turns out some of my uncertainty and confusion is that grace means a lot of different things in a lot of different contexts. Elegance and beauty. Divine favor. Courtesy or politeness. A short prayer. Special privilege. Moral virtue. Honorary title. Yet, when I pair these definitions with “under pressure,” it seems to fall flat.

I have this vague memory from 40 odd years ago of someone sharing a definition of grace that something to do with relationships. I don’t think I understood it at the time, but it struck me deeply enough that it stuck with me all these years. So, I decided to do some research.

It turns out that there is a whole tradition around relational grace. And, while admittedly poorly defined, here are a few relationship oriented gems I discovered:

Compassion and Forgiveness – Grace often involves offering kindness and understanding, especially in difficult situations or to someone who may not “deserve” it. This fosters healing and reconciliation in relationships.

Unconditional Favor – Grace implies giving without expecting anything in return, creating a bond rooted in generosity and goodwill.

Gratitude and Reciprocity – The concept of grace is intertwined with thankfulness, which strengthens connections through appreciation and acknowledgment of others.

Politeness and Respect – Grace in manners reflects a respectful and considerate attitude, which enhances relationships by creating mutual respect and comfort.

Harmony and Balance – Grace signifies the ability to maintain balance and harmony in relationships, whether through tact, emotional intelligence, or mutual support.

Grace under pressure. Now, these are some definitions I can get my head around.

One of the cardinal rules of any sort of skill or strategy is to practice it before applying it in a pressure situation. Join me in practicing grace, relational grace. Pick your favorite definition and apply it to the people around you, your horse, and to yourself. Work on it. Perfect it. Then carry it with you the next time you are under pressure. ~ Paul

PC – Erin Gilmore Photography

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When Needs Collide… Or do they?

By |2025-01-24T11:40:24-05:00January 24, 2025|Categories: Sport psychology|

There is an old New Yorker cartoon that depicts an older couple in marriage therapy. The husband says something to the effect of “Your need to communicate is getting in the way of my need for silence.” It made me chuckle at the time because it mirrored the battles of so many couples that I worked with over the years. Conflicts were framed as a competition over whose needs take priority and casts each person’s needs in conflict with the other’s.

Marshall Rosenberg is a psychologist who developed an approach to conflict resolution and relationships called Nonviolent Communication. There is much for us to learn from him with regard to our horsemanship as well as our human relationships. One thing I remember reading or hearing him say, that has had a huge influence on me, went something like this… There is no conflict on the level of need. All conflict is on the level of the strategies we use to get our needs met. In this way, conflict is just a crisis of creativity.

The clear implication here is that in every relationship it is possible to meet the needs of both participating partners. If there is conflict we need to change our strategy for getting our needs met, not give up hope on meeting our need.

All of this assumes that we are curious and committed to knowing the unmet needs that drive our behavior, and that we are curious and committed to understanding the unmet needs of our partners. Any one who has taken on this challenge knows how hard this can be. We are acculturated to conflict and “violent” approaches to meet our needs. And, often settle on behaviors and strategies to get our needs met before even knowing what they really are.

The next time you run into a conflict with your horse, take the time to try and understand their needs in the moment and how you might meet them. More importantly, take the time to notice your feelings and the needs that drive them. Then relieve your horse of the responsibility of meeting your needs and get to work finding other creative ways to get

them met. ~ Paul

PC – @ErinGilmorePhotography @eringilmorephotos

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Emotional Habits

By |2025-01-19T20:07:15-05:00January 19, 2025|Categories: Sport psychology|

I have been thinking a lot about how we can get stuck in a rut. Some times its our behavior. Sometimes its our thoughts. Sometimes its our emotions. Some times it is much larger, like our whole state of being. We fall into a rut when our responses to specific situations can rise to the level of a habit. This is true whether we’re talking about thoughts, behaviors or feelings.

Do you have a characteristic emotional response to challenging situations or the unknown? Many of my clients reflexively react with anxiety, depression, or anger. When they examine their emotional responding over time they notice consistent patterns.

If we pathologize these patterns we would diagnose ourselves with the appropriate mental disorder and then treat it, usually with medication and/or therapy, to make the symptoms go away. What if it weren’t as nefarious as all that? What if we simply had a bad habit of responding to situations with a specific emotion?

If this were true, then at least part of the solution would be to change the bad habit; substituting a more adaptive response for the undesirable one. My experience has taught me that there are three essential steps to this process. Awareness – the ability to notice when maladaptive feelings arise. Interruption – the ability to “stop the train” of negativity. And finally, Redirection – the ability to refocus your attention, thought, emotion ,and energy on a consciously chosen desired response.

Practicing awareness, interruption, and redirection replacing negative responses with healthier ones, is hard work. But, over time, these new patterns become your default, helping you navigate life with greater resilience and positivity.Transformation is gradual but empowering, as you reshape your emotional landscape with intention and care. ~ Paul

PC – #ErinGilmorePhotography

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Letting Go to Take Control

By |2025-01-18T08:45:00-05:00January 18, 2025|Categories: Sport psychology|

We are working on a project this winter to build resources for riding instructors. In the process, I have had a whole crap ton of thoughts and feelings. “Who am I to think I have something to offer people?” “This will never be good enough.” “This needs to be perfect.” Anxiety, panic, feeling frozen, … I know that many of you know these feelings intimately because you have shared them with me. And, we have worked together to move through and beyond them.

For me it felt like a tug-of-war with my angst. In between us, a pit of despair. The cost of losing this war was just that, falling into that pit. I felt drawn to all the vital tasks of our work and our projects. But I had to fight that tug-of-war first. It felt like everything else depended on me winning that war. Then it hit me… let go. I can’t be pulled in if I am not holding onto that rope.

Our minds are tricky things. My angst certainly did not give up that easily. It repeatedly offers me that rope to engage yet again in that tug-of-war. Tempting as it is to reengage in old familiar patterns and responses to the invitation, I commit to letting go in order to take control. I commit to choosing a different response. ~ Paul

PC – Erin Gilmore Photography

#ridingfar #lettinggo #takingcontrol #impostersyndrome #equestrian #equestrianlife #sportpsych #equestriansportpsych #sportpsychology #equestriansportpsychology

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Sentiment Override

By |2025-01-17T11:21:31-05:00January 17, 2025|Categories: Sport psychology|

Did you know that my specialization in graduate school was marital communication? Throughout my career, I have had the both the challenge and joy of working with couples to improve their relationships. I have discovered so many parallels between the behaviors that predict relationship satisfaction in human relationships and those that predict success in human-horse relationships. Maybe it’s worth doing a whole series just on that.

Recently, I have been thinking about one relationship superpower, positive sentiment override (PSO), and how I could leverage it to keep me positively engaged when life is busy and feels challenging. PSO refers to the response in an interaction when our partner does something objectively negative, like a criticize us. Rather than responding in kind, our response is either neutral or positive helping us avoid a whirlpool of negativity.

Like so many helpful behavioral patterns, PSO generally happens spontaneously. It is not something that is planned for, or worked on. Yet, to get it working for us in either our own relationships, our relationships with our horse, or in our lives in general, we have to make a conscious effort.

There is the behavioral side. Awareness – Interrupting Negative Patterns – Choosing and Inserting an Adaptive Behaviors – Lather, Rinse, Repeat. This takes commitment and effort. Then… there is the sentiment side. Sentiment override can go either way. How do we keep it positive?

I know for me it is about building positivity and affection by noticing the good moments, practicing gratitude, and fostering curiosity and playfulness. I commit to this in my relationships with family, work mates, horses, and my life in general.

I am not always successful. Sometimes I take the bait and get lost in negative cycles within myself and with others. But, I believe deeply that it is worth the effort. Will you join me? What do you do to grow positivity and affection in important relationships in your life? ~ Paul

PC – @eringilmorephotos Erin Gilmore Photography

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