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Tag Archives: Centered Riding

The Winds of Change

The Project:

One Mustang directly off the range

One trainer

No tools

Just body language

 

The Goal:

To discover how far Equestrian Art can be developed solely using body language.

 

 

 

The Winds of Change

My home is tucked in a valley. Between a hill to our backs and a dense forest in front of us is the most beautiful gem of garden and green. The wind hardly ever touches us here; by the time it filters down to us from the world outside, it is just a breeze kissing skin and fur with a playful caress. It is a peaceful place and has provided a perfect beginning for Myrnah and me. In keeping with our locale, the winds of change have been gentle and forgiving as we develop together.

 

This week it became time for change to blow through us a little stronger, and for the larger world to become our playground. With spring growing in strength, the green grass coming on lush, and the ground beginning to dry out, the larger pastures of Plumb Pond beckoned. It was time to move Myrnah from the dry, quiet, high ground of my home to the larger windswept pastures a mile down the road.

 

I think this has been the most apprehensive moment I have weathered yet with Myrnah. The night before the move I felt sick with worry. Was she ready to move gracefully into the larger herd of horses? Would these winds of change tear through our relationship like a storm, fraying our connection and weakening our bond? Would she feel grateful to me for bringing her to a new family in a location that feels like heaven on earth for horses, or would she fault me for changing everything she knows, and throwing her head first into an unknown herd?

 

Even the logistics of getting her to her new home felt challenging. I pulled the trailer into the top pasture where the ground was hard and dry enough to drive on. From there, as Myrnah stepped out of the trailer, we could see the current herd of four grazing the midlands below the pond on the other side of the barn. Myrnah is wary of new horses; I knew this from playing approach and retreat with the various horse paddocks at home. Her first choice is to run to a safe viewpoint and watch them from afar. To my surprise, on this windy Thursday in March, Myrnah showed an unexpected boldness. We alternately walked and stopped to watch the herd, and walked again making our way almost all the way to the barn in short order. Then Myrnah’s youth and inexperience took over and she turned around to retreat up the hill again- a safe vantage point to view the new herd from a distance. I was ready for this change of heart and simply retreated with her.

 

Over the next hour we advanced down the hill to the barn, lost confidence, and retreated back up the hill several times- more and more time for Myrnah to spend ears pricked and focused intently on the herd below. Finally the winds of change blew her confidence up a notch, and we were able to walk past the barn, over the hill by the pond, and proceed out through the electric wire gate into the field the horses were in.

 

The bald eagles called to each other above us, the Canadian geese grazed next to the pond beside us, the deer traveled the lowlands on the far edges of the pastures, and Myrnah’s new herd watched us intently as we made our way down the hill to meet them.

 

As we reached the middle of the pasture, all four of them came at us at a run as horses sometimes will. Myrnah stood the charge with her customary quietness, and I pushed the running horses to the side into a circle around us. When they ran back down to the bottom of the pasture, Myrnah and I followed quietly and gently, stopping to graze when we got close. Antheia, the beautiful grey two-year-old mustang was the first and most friendly of the herd. Coated head to toe in the fresh mud she had found to roll in, she sauntered over so say hi, first to me whom she knows and secondly to Myrnah. Myrnah, mostly interested in grazing and cautious of new horses, was reticent yet patient with Antheia’s inquisitive nature. The other three horses mostly ignored us, allowing us to tag along behind as everyone munched the new spring grass. It wasn’t long before I felt I had facilitated what I needed to for Myrnah. She was here and as confident as I could set her up to be; the rest was up to her.

All in all our herd is thirteen strong, soon to be fourteen when Myrnah’s baby is born. For the next few weeks Myrnah’s herd will grow a few at a time as we move them all from winter paddocks to summer pasture. At first, day times spent grazing and nights in paddocks adjacent to the pasture, eating dry hay all night to soften the change of diet. Little by little they will stay out more and more until they are out on grass full time. Myrnah will continue to come in every night until she foals. Once she is on full grass her nighttime lodging will be the lushest pasture of all, the pasture above the barn where all foals at Plumb Pond have had their beginnings.

 

There is a balance I am aiming for here with Myrnah: between her comfort and adjustment to her new large family on the one hand, and a quiet space for her to retreat to as she becomes a mother to the new little one.

 

It will doubtless be interesting to see how our riding and training progress with all the new changes. Wednesday, before the move, we had our best ride to date. Confidently walking all around the drive way, stopping, backing and turning on cue, Myrnah doesn’t seem to mind carrying me at all anymore, even going so far as to trot a few steps now and then when I ask. It really does feel like a gift, all that she does for me.

 

Now that the space and the herd have changed for Myrnah, we shall see how her relationship with me evolves. The winds of change blow stronger in the pastures of Plumb Pond as the herd and the space broaden Myrnah’s focus. I am thrilled to be part of the evolution and promise to keep you all posted.

 

Elsa Sinclair

EquineClarity.com

Attention

 

 

The Project:

One Mustang directly off the range

One trainer

No tools

Just body language

 

 

 

The Goal:

To discover how far Equestrian Art can be developed solely using body language.

 

 

 

Attention

All of us are either moving toward something we want, or away from something we don’t want. Usually it is some combination of the two that motivates us; however, if we can break it down to the simplest equation, life gets easier to understand. What are we paying attention to, and are we moving towards it, or away from it? Are we moving towards the life we want? Or are we running from the life we are afraid of?

This past weekend I attended a workshop put on by a mounted policeman, Bill Richey. Two days of smoke bombs, flares, lines of fire, hanging plastic, bridges, barking dogs, police cars, sirens and lights. I had intended to ride my mustang, Saavedra, through all this; however, she hurt herself a few weeks beforehand and left me without a ride. Several people jokingly suggested I take Myrnah and I laughed saying, maybe next year.

This time around my dear friend, Heather, jumped at the chance to send her four-year-old Gypsy horse Sage through the course with me. So Friday we loaded up the trailer with Cameron’s horse, Maharrah, Maggie’s horse, Joy, Sage as my mount, and we were off to Butler Hill Equestrian Center. For any of you interested there will be more of these clinics offered at Butler Hill. They do a wonderful job of putting them on, and everyone walks out of the clinic far more confident in day to day life than they arrived.

Throughout the workshop I had a great deal of time to watch and think about how things work. Sage, true to his Gypsy lineage, is a pro at handling chaos; so I got to sit back and watch the show everyone else put on as we walked through the obstacles. Starting with a simple sheet of plywood we formed a line and walked over it again and again until most everyone was OK with it. Then we added a bridge, walking around in a circle over the bridge and then over the plywood until everyone was fine with that… and so the obstacle practice continued. For the less tangible obstacles like noise, we rode drill patterns weaving in and out of the other horses, walking steadily on until the horses got used to the whistles, sirens, barking dog and so on. By day two everyone had progressed to navigating bridges with visually impenetrable smoke billowing from beneath, crossing lines of fire, and walking under hanging tarps and swinging curtains of clattering pipes.

All day I watched horses wrestling with the choice to run away or move forward where their riders asked and I came to this conclusion: a bridle is simply an attention-getting device. As you ride a horse toward an obstacle he is afraid of, his first instinct is to look for his escape route, and then run away. The bridle, depending on its severity and the horse’s willingness to have his attention directed, allows us to insist the horse pay attention to where we want him to go. If you cause enough pain, you can grab anyone’s attention, at least for a moment. Once the horse is looking in the right direction, pressure on the bridle releases, pain goes away, and the horse starts thinking perhaps the thing he was afraid of is actually less painful than the escape route he thought he wanted to take. And so, little by little, the horse learns that moving toward something his rider directs him to is far more pleasant than running away from something he thinks he might be afraid of.

We are all constantly weighing our options with more or less awareness depending on our stress levels. What feels better- what feels worse, it doesn’t have to be logical or rational. It is just that simple emotionally: we all want to feel better, and we will do whatever it takes. Horses run into burning barns because the familiarity of their stall feels better than the unfamiliar outside. People on a runaway horse will scream at the top of their lungs, not because it’s the smart thing to do, just because the scream makes them feel better.

We all do stupid things sometimes in an effort to feel better. What kind of pain, or attention-getting device would it take to redirect our attention and look at the other options? Here is what I think: the lower the stress levels, the more aware we can be about redirecting our attention. The higher the stress levels, the more pain it will take to redirect our attention. The beautiful thing about taking Sage, the Gypsy horse, through the course this past weekend was, he naturally doesn’t carry much stress. So riding him in a halter was easy. Add to that the nature of the course and the constant rhythmic walking we all did for hours on end, whatever stress was coming up was constantly being drained away. The less stressed we are carrying, the smarter we get and the clearer we can see options of where to move forward instead of panicking and running away.

So that brings me back to Myrnah and our training with no tools. If I don’t have a bridle as an attention-getting device, what will I do when she wants to go somewhere I do not want to go? What do I do when she decides something is frightening and she needs to run from it?

For now the working hypothesis is: Attention Attention Attention! I have to train her to bring her attention back to me or back to the the direction I choose over and over again. I have to train that habit in her so strongly that I don’t need pain to get it. I need to use persistence and timing to teach her to yield to the pressure of my fingertips. She needs to become patterned to yielding her attention whenever I ask, over and over and over again in low stress situations, so when stress increases in any given situation she has a pattern of behavior with me that will hopefully circumvent the need for a bridle.

This week we took our riding outside the paddocks and around the circle driveway. Slowly Myrnah’s confidence builds and she is willing to walk twelve steps instead of just seven, and then fifteen, and then more between each pause to gather her thoughts. Her deep breaths come more often, and I can feel the stress draining away as we travel together. My rides still only last for five minutes or less, but after a rest I jump on and we play again.

Wednesday we encountered a slight downhill, and as my weight shifted Myrnah lost confidence and gave a scoot and a buck. I jumped off and had her practice backing up the slight incline. Shifting her weight back will help her balance my extra weight as she carries me over terrain. If I had a bridle on her I could have quickly redirected her attention, helping her find her balance on the slope. Without a bridle and with her current stress levels about carrying weight, I didn’t have enough pressure to redirect her attention while I was on her. So I do whatever I need to do. Jump down, talk to her from a position she can hear me from, and then I can get back on to see what we can do together- after patterns of attention directing have been reestablished.

I never said this was the fastest way to train a horse, but I am without doubt learning more about how everything works through this process and Myrnah’s help. When Myrnah and I do get it right and I can get her attention with a whisper instead of a shout, every moment we spent getting there feels worth it.

So here is to redirecting attention and getting smarter as we figure out how to move forward into a life that feels better.

Elsa Sinclair

EquineClarity.com

This Baby is a Dancer…

The Project:

One Mustang directly off the range, One trainer, No tools, Just body language,

The Goal: To discover how far Equestrian Art can be developed solely using body language.

 

This Baby is a Dancer…

Sunset… Some of our best rides are at sunset. Work for the day is done; the light in the sky is fading fast. Osgar Lopez’s guitar sets the tone from a red, mud-spattered, boom box beside the arena. Myrnah and I travel together, step for step, stride for stride, side by side; and that baby dances right along with us. Myrnah is solid and seemingly unaffected by the fact that her belly jumps and dances to the left and right completely independently of the movements she and I make together. This baby is a dancer and will not be denied.

I don’t remember this kind of movement from any of the other unborn foals I have spent time with, perhaps though, I have never spent so much time with my other mares as I am now with Myrnah: my arm draped across her back, my ribs pressed against hers, our steps and our timing moving as one… and that baby, clearly moving independently from either of us. The movements under Myrnah’s ribs and beside mine don’t feel aggressive or constrained; it just feels like a dance that cannot be contained.

This baby seems to only dance at sunset though. When Myrnah and I ride in the mornings, the baby sleeps quietly though everything. While our morning rides tend to be focused and productive, our evening rides are a wonder as this third character dances amidst our practice.

Myrnah has indeed decided she likes having me ride more than she likes the incessant moving I like to do with her when I am not riding. She likes the peacefulness of putting me up on the mounting block; she likes my still, reverent patience as I let her adjust to and understand carrying weight on her back. She doesn’t seem to mind carrying her dancing baby and me all at the same time- though it is still very new to her, every step a consideration and a thoughtful undertaking.

Myrnah will walk a few steps and then stop to think about it. A careful lean one way and then the other, as though getting the feel for what happens to the weight on her back when she moves, a back up for a step or two, a rest, and then forward again followed by stillness. I am, for the most part, a devoted passenger. I cue gently with my hands and my legs in any direction she chooses, letting her match the feel of my body with the direction of her choice. When Myrnah takes a few steps with more confidence or gives a sigh of relaxation, I jump off and let her contemplate us from a more familiar standpoint.

For most of the week, that was our pattern of practice, our rides lasting for up to five minutes before I would dismount. Today Myrnah felt more confident, allowing me to ask for movement forward, backward, left and right. It is a thrill though me as I ask for a move or a turn with my fingers on her neck and my ankle at her girth… knowing we have practiced this for months from the ground, and yet also knowing I can’t make her do anything she doesn’t choose to do. If I pushed too hard, I think she would escalate her movement until she got me off her back. I am there as a guest; I make no demands, only requests. If I don’t like where she takes me, I am free to get off. Myrnah is not a slave, she is my partner, and this is a discussion between us. Someday, when she trusts me enough, she may allow me to dictate her movement; but for now she reserves the right to ask me to get off, so I had best be polite in my requests for movement.

This baby, however, doesn’t need to be polite at all. He may dance however he chooses, tumbling Myrnah’s belly this way and that while she patiently allows him be the dancer he is. There will be plenty of time to teach him to be polite later on. For now she has her work cut out keeping me in line.

So as the light fades from the sky each night and the silky strains of guitar music fill the air, you can know Myrnah and I will be riding and building our skills together, while this baby does his best to distract us from the seriousness of our endeavors, because this baby is a dancer and will not be denied.

Elsa Sinclair

EquineClarity.com

Breakthrough!

The Project:

One Mustang directly off the range, One trainer, No tools, Just body language

The Goal:

To discover how far Equestrian Art can be developed solely using body language.

 

Breakthrough!

 

Progress with Myrnah is a meandering path of smelling the roses. We have plenty of goals we would like to reach; however, the journey is entirely more important than any destination. As you all know, I sat on Myrnah a couple of times back in October while she was eating hay, and she was completely at ease about it. Then abruptly she decided she didn’t like weight on her back, and we embarked on what seemed like an endless discussion developing her tolerance of my getting on and off. Our training in that area largely seemed to plateau, and every time I broke the process down, it seemed I needed to break it down some more, take it slower, wait with more quiet understanding, and enjoy the moments with her regardless. I am pleased to say yesterday we had a breakthrough!

 

Every day Myrnah and I practice moving together: walking trotting, turning, and generally traveling through space side by side with as much grace as we can muster. The fun part is, she continually asks me if we can stop at the mounting block and play that game instead. Even though she can’t tolerate my sitting on her back for more than a moment, she seems to trust me to respect her apprehensions and is drawn to the process of learning about weight on her back as much as I am. For months now all she could tolerate was a moment of my sitting on her. I would slide on, feel every muscle tense up for a reactive explosion, and I would slide off. If I wasn’t quick enough, I would be sliding off as she scooted forward or backward. Myrnah’s tension was instantly high enough in response to weight on her back there wasn’t any chance of asking her to bend her neck around to look at me, or really to ask anything at all of her. All we could do was quietly and patiently play advance and retreat, allowing her to realize the weight was only temporary.

This week on Tuesday and Wednesday came the breakthrough in riding. Myrnah and I had begun pushing the envelope a little in terms of trotting together side by side: another exercise which she was brilliantly relaxed about back in October, yet became averse to shortly thereafter. So each day we patiently played advance and retreat with the movements, enjoying the time together regardless of the apparent progress.

 

On Tuesday when we began to advance to trot more frequently (yet briefly) Myrnah became more and more insistent that the game at the mounting block was the one she would rather play. Once there I would take my time to settle with her and then slide on where, to my surprise, on this day, her tension would come up only slowly giving me a few more seconds to sit there each time before I slid back to the ground. It may not seem like much to the outside observer, but after months of approach and retreat the change felt dramatic and exciting to me.

 

Wednesday we played more of the same and were even able to start asking for a bend around, Myrnah’s nose coming over to investigate my hand or my foot any time I asked. And then we began to move together. The first few times it was a pure offer from Myrnah: a few hesitant steps forward followed by her reaching around to touch me as if to ask if we were still all right. Pretty soon I was able to ask for those few steps, my leg just behind her elbow asking her to move, just like we have been practicing using hand pressure when we walk side by side. We traveled no more than perhaps six steps each time I sat on her, and sometimes we just stood and didn’t travel at all. The breakthrough in interest between Myrnah and me about riding together felt amazing.

It really has been interesting to train Myrnah without any recourse of action when she says no. When I have tools I have all sorts of games of distraction I can play to get around a no. With Myrnah, all we can do is sit with it, play with it, let it be, and let her say no as many times as she needs to before she decides she is ready to say yes.

 

I honestly don’t know if this is the best way to train a horse. I don’t know if Myrnah is any happier or better off than any of the other horses I train using more tools of force. I do know, however, this process is teaching me more about horses every day than I ever imagined it would. Myrnah I feel is teaching me every bit as much I am teaching her, and the high of the breakthrough this week, simple as it was, means more to me than most of what I have accomplished with my other horses over the years.

 

I don’t know how it is that one simple little change can feel so monumental. This breakthrough is worth every moment I have spent patiently approaching and retreating for months. It feels like there are no words to convey the brilliance of this moment for Myrnah and I, but trust me, it’s all worth it.

 

Elsa Sinclair

EquineClarity.com

Five things I can count on

The Project:

One Mustang directly off the range, One trainer, No tools, Just body language The Goal:

To discover how far Equestrian Art can be developed solely using body language.

Five things I can count on

It snowed this week, beautiful white mounds of fluffy snow adorning every surface around my house- the landscape brilliantly beautiful, and yet for me, not as much fun as one might think. Unfortunately emotions and logic don’t always dance in the sane and controllable fashion we would like them to. I can logically appreciate the beauty, yet at the same time find my emotions beating me to a pulp underneath all that beautiful sane logic. Snow and cold send me into panic attacks of vertigo and nausea, blinding anxiety, and difficulty breathing. I am however far too stubborn to let that stop me, so for the most part everything proceeds normally. I have found there are five things I can count on to help. No matter how good, or how bad I feel, these five things will always improve the situation.

Thank-you Sally Swift for creating the five basics of Centered Riding. Thank-you Stephanie Mosely for introducing me to the existence of Centered Riding; and thank-you to all the brilliant Centered Riding instructors who have helped me understand those five basics in deeper and more profound ways.

I have been exposed to, and devoted to many different models of horse training. Each model and idea has created a facet of who I am and how I train today. I would have to say though, Centered Riding remains at the core of everything I do. The principles reach far beyond riding a horse. They apply to every action in life, and within these five simple ideas lies a power to improve any moment.

  1. Grounding – The feeling of having your feet rooted down through the Earth. Sally Swift added this to her original four basics when she wrote her second book. No matter which training idea I am currently working with, taking a moment to wiggle my toes in my boots and feel my feet become grounded always lends a solid and reliable feel to whatever I am doing.
  2. Centering – The feeling of your weight down low in the core of your body, the idea of chi or qi that martial arts talks of, all action originating from the center of your body. This idea always gives me a sense of connection with my horse and that legendary “feel” between horse and rider that instructors are always saying is so essential and so hard to teach.
  3. Breathing – Deeply, using the diaphragm and letting the air fill every part of your body like a professional singer would. This is perhaps the most challenging for me, yet I know how important it is. Horses are herd creatures and are constantly assessing the well-being of those around them. My ability to breath allows me to work at my best and signals my horse that I am feeling ok- there is nothing to worry about in our herd. Constantly I remind myself and my students, when your horse does something you like, just take one deep breath before you do anything else. That deep breath and the resulting positive feeling it brings to you and your horse is the simplest and best reward you can give.
  4. Soft eyes – Using a soft balance of focus and peripheral vision. In an ideal scenario we are using our muscles in a state of release contracting muscles or extender muscles used to the degree we need them. When we use both the contractors and the extenders at the same time an unnecessary tension and stress is present. We tend to create a great deal of stress in the small muscles around our eyes… the relaxation of those muscles allows us to use our peripheral vision as well as our focus.
  5. Building Blocks – The feeling of each part of the skeleton stacked in balance on top of the piece below- using only the essential muscular effort needed to stand, sit or move, nothing extra.

All these five principles can be evolved and developed, pondered and meditated on, however they work best for me in their simplicity. They are just five words to remember, each with a profound impact on positivity in any given moment.

Grounding

Centering

Breathing

Soft Eyes

Building Blocks

So when Myrnah and I are walking through the woods in the snow, my mind tells me this should be a marvelous novelty of fun, while unfortunately, my emotions batter my skull, blur my vision, lay lead weight on my lungs and make me want to cry or throw up. I reach for those five words, because I know they are five things I can count on no matter what to make everything better.

Grounding, I can feel my toes wiggle in my socks, I can feel the snow crunch underfoot, I can feel my weight roll from heel to toe, step by step in harmony with Myrnah. I can imagine that she feels grounded too as we walk together. Centering- Every movement of mine originating from the core of my body, every movement of Myrnah’s felt and followed from my core. Breathing- It’s not easy for me out in the cold and the snow, but if I think about it I can feel Myrnah breath, and I can match her rhythm, let her breath through me, an underlying rhythm to every movement we make together. Soft eyes can feel impossible when for me the world is spinning and everything looks blurry from vertigo, so this is where having practiced on a good day is invaluable. I remember what it feels like to release the muscles around my eyes, I remember what it feels like inside my eyes when I soften them and allow all my peripheral vision to become part of what I see. As I do these things it helps the world become still and more clear. It helps the stress dissolve and the beauty of the day become apparent again. Building Blocks- a nod of the head up yes and then no, smaller and smaller until the center resting point is found, a shrug and circle of the shoulders around until they too find the central balance, the ribs, the hips the knees and the ankles, all have their central resting point, in fluid balance with all the other parts.

Each one of these five ideas has benefit without need for perfection. Simply walking through them with whatever awareness I have on any give day has a power I would not want to live without.

We all have our highs and our lows, as do our horses. We hope that when one of us is low, the other in the partnership can step in and support, building the bond of connection stronger and deeper.

It often feels perhaps I should not train when I am low or stressed. I become afraid of spreading the horror of what I feel like a menacing rain cloud darkening everyone’s day. If I can allow myself simply to be as imperfect as I am and just show up anyway, I find very often my horses seem to enjoy stepping up to the plate to take care of me for a change. We can walk through the simplest of our movements together, my job being to remember my five basics and attend to them with whatever skill I have that day. I can let my horse take care of the rest of the details.

The five things I can count on will always be there for me. High or low, rain, snow, sun or wind. Life isn’t always easy, but with a partner like Myrnah traveling alongside me, it is pretty wonderful regardless.

Elsa Sinclair

EquineClarity.com