WE SUPPORT, CHALLENGE AND INSPIRE EQUESTRIANS
We hope you will enjoy our insights in the forms of Casual Conversations, videos and articles aimed at helping the equestrian transform their relationships with their horses. We are passionate about sharing our knowledge, tips, tricks, and experiences.
Imagination – It’s not just for the future anymore!
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
The Phases of Facing Fear
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
Grace Under Pressure
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
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
When Needs Collide… Or do they?
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
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.
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.
them met. ~ Paul
PC – @ErinGilmorePhotography @eringilmorephotos
Emotional Habits
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
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 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.
Letting Go to Take Control
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
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
TURN INSIGHT INTO ACTION
THIS IS MORE THAN YOUR TYPICAL SPORT PSYCHOLOGY OR HORSE TRAINING.
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