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Tag Archives: Movement

The Big Red Button

The Project:

Horses from many walks of life, communication through body language, tools used only for safety, never to train.

The Goal:

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

 

The Big Red Button

 

It is right there – red, shiny, catches your attention. What would happen if you pushed it? You know you shouldn’t, it doesn’t belong to you, but the curiosity flares every time you see it. Big Red Buttons beg to be pushed!

 

Now there are some personality types for whom this is not an issue, but for me this is a lifelong dilemma. When there is a button there and you are not sure what it does, don’t you just want to push it and find out?

 

Or sometimes, even when you do know what that button does… you have to push it anyway, simply because nothing else is happening at the moment and something happening would feel more productive than nothing happening.

 

I am sure by now you have figured out I am not really talking about a plastic red button on an otherwise empty wall; I am speaking as I often do, metaphorically.

 

As I work with a horse, I am working to develop our comfort zones so that we will have more and more things we can do together that bring us joy. There are of course the learning stages of tolerance and acceptance that need to be worked through on the way to joy, and that is what I study and teach in Freedom Based Training.

In this blog post I want to talk about Intolerance – those things the horse says NO to. When the horse says I won’t do that, I can’t do that, I don’t feel like doing that. Most of us horse trainers are taught to find those things and then work them out. That is our job!

 

Most of us who aspire to be horse trainers think this is what horse training is.

 

The common saying is the comfort zone is only growing when you are uncomfortable.

 

I would like to challenge that.

 

A student asked me the other day if she should take it personally that some days her horse didn’t seem at all interested in doing things with her when she came to see him. So I had to turn that question around and ask, should your horse take it personally that you don’t seem interested in hanging out at the hay pile with him while he eats?

 

Part of being in relationship is the basic premise and fact that we will bring interest and diversity into each other’s lives. Taming Wild is about taming that wild streak we all have within us that wants everything the way we want it right away. When we tame that wild streak, we open the door to being curious about all the things we could enjoy together.

 

There is a problem though; we get bored with someone else’s desires and we want them to want what we want.

And if the horse does not want what we want, how many times do we need to ask them and make them say “no” to us again and again and again?

 

I find the horse saying “no” is the biggest irresistible red button for people.

 

If a horse loves to jump jumps, what do people do? They keep asking it to jump higher and stranger things until it says; “No, I can’t do that.”

 

If a horse likes to walk through the fields, what do people do? They want to canter or gallop until the horse says; “No, that scares me and I just want to run home where it is safe when you ask me to go that fast.”

 

This seems to be our human nature; we always want a little too much from our partners.

 

I am as much to blame on this account as anyone is and so I find myself asking WHY?

 

Why do I get bored with what the horse finds enjoyable? Why do I find myself wanting to reach for that “NO” answer from the horse and push us right over the edge of the comfort zone? Why is my wild streak so incorrigible sometimes?

Part of me wants to say it is simply my training, because horse trainers are generally paid to work horses through the things they are intolerant of until they accept or enjoy what was once an answer of “no”.

 

However, I know now for a fact that my best training comes from being curious and gently exploring all the possible fun things I can do with a horse. Why am I always tempted to reach for the red button and make my horse say “no” to me yet again?

 

I think the answer is in our understanding of stress levels.

 

Stress is a good thing, it helps us grow and learn and develop, and when it is at a functional level it bonds us together with our partners.

 

When stress is at a dysfunctional level, all of us will tend to take actions of Fight, Flight or Freeze that alienate us from our friends.

 

Recently I have been spending some time working with a beautiful grey Arabian mare. As I do my passive leadership work, I get a chance to watch Lily interact with her herd mates. When she is at a functional stress level she has friends, the other horses will flow and find harmony with her, but, when her stress levels increase beyond a certain point, she goes looking for ways to bring them down to a functional level again.

 

The two things that bring stress down are:

  1. Leadership – Someone who makes decisions that are accepted by others.
  2. Movement – The contraction and extension of muscles in a rhythmic way that moves energy through the body.

 

So when Lily’s stress levels increase, I watch her reach for that big red button just like I do. She walks around the paddock pushing on the other horses until one of them says “NO” to her in a big enough way she accepts their decision. As soon as that happens, you can see her stress dissipate, and she can fall into flow and harmony with the leader she just found for herself.

As a horse trainer I am a little different. I am not going to accept the answer “no” from a horse because I don’t see that as beneficial for anyone. “Yes” answers grow the comfort zone; “no” answers keep the comfort zone rigidly in place. Yet watching Lily lower her stress levels by pushing on her friends until they set a boundary for her makes me wonder if that is why I reach for the red button also? Am I making horses set a boundary for me to make me feel better? Even if I push through their intolerance to get a “yes” answer of some sort before finding harmony with a horse, did I first have to set them up to give me a boundary so my personal stress levels would go down?

 

It is a question worth thinking about.

 

Acting on this premise has led me to a brilliant set of sessions with horses lately. When I am tempted to go push that red button and do something the horse is likely to say “no” to, instead I ask myself the question, what can I do to take personal responsibility for my stress levels.

 

The two things that bring stress down are:

  1. Leadership – Someone who makes decisions that are accepted by others.
  2. Movement – The contraction and extension of muscles in a rhythmic way that moves energy through the body.

 

So I apply those principles to myself. Leadership – make a decision for Elsa that will be accepted by the horse I am working with. Movement – walk rhythmically around my horse until I feel better.

Once my stress levels are at more functional levels, I am more likely to ask my horse for things they will say “yes” to.

 

The same goes for my horses, The more functional level their stress is, the more they will ask their friends for things that might evoke a “yes” answer, leading to harmony and flow.

 

The less functional the stress levels are, the more likely the boredom/freeze, flight, or fight come into play and the horses go looking for those red buttons, those “no” answers, and those boundaries given by a moment of leadership that bring the stress levels down temporarily.

 

What we do in Freedom Based Training is work to bring stress to a functional level for everyone involved by taking personal responsibility for our stress and letting the horses take personal responsibility for theirs.

The other day at the end of a three-hour training session with Lily, I stood with her as she ate some Alfalfa. Then we walked together as she smoothly stepped in on Daisy’s pile and Daisy moved easily away to find a different pile of hay, between them an easy flow and harmony with no need for any display of boundaries. Then you could see Lily’s tension rise; she needed that red button, so into Mouse’s stall we went, too strong, too fast and Mouse felt pushed enough to kick out at Lily, giving her leadership and a boundary and making her back off. Lily seemed to feel better instantly, THEN she took a breath and very gently worked her way into flow and harmony at Mouse’s pile. One step forward and pause, another step forward and pause, one step back to give him a moment, then one step forward again. When she made it all the way to the hay pile, she didn’t eat right away. She looked around for a little while, showed some interest in the hay and then backed off and watched the barn for a moment again before she reached down and took a bite. Before long they were munching side by side in flow and harmony together.

 

Like any good horse trainer, Lily didn’t take “no” for an answer in that situation. She persisted until she got the answer of “yes”. She used advance and retreat (movement and leadership) to lower Mouse’s stress level until his likely answer was “yes”, then she took a bite of his hay.

 

The question simply is: Did she really need to come in so strong and fast in the beginning and make Mouse kick at her before she did it right?

 

How often are we all guilty of the same process where we need to push that big red button and get a big “no” answer before we slow down and develop our relationship and the things we do together in a fully functional way.

 

Perhaps if we put a little forethought into our actions, we might see where those big red “no” buttons are and resist pushing them to ease our own boredom or lower our own stress.

When we refuse to push the button that makes others create boundaries for us, then we truly start to take responsibility for our own stress, our own wild streak, and our own capability to make everything better for everyone.

 

Hooves and Heartbeats,

Elsa

 

TamingWild.com

 

Surfing the Emotional Waves

The Project:

Horses from many walks of life, communication through body language, tools used only for safety, never to train.

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The Goal:

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

Check it out! We are translating the blog into more languages. Please excuse the learning process and pardon us for the two extra Dutch emails you may have received as we figured out how to link the languages. Enjoy!

Surfing the Emotional Waves

I had a great conversation with a student this week and she broached a subject that many shy away from. I, however, find myself intrigued, fascinated, and unable to stop thinking about it.

Are we at the mercy of our horse’s emotional state? What about that horse that seems to love you one moment and then wants to bite your head off the next?

What do we do with that in the realm of Freedom Based Training?

My answer is, yes, in Freedom Based Training we are at the mercy of the emotional current, because in this way of training they are free to feel the way they feel.

Giving your horse the freedom to feel however they are feeling allows us to know them at a much deeper level. These emotions are the way we are able to read our horse’s stress levels. Yet how we surf these waves of emotion has everything to do with the relationship that evolves out of it.

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When you have a partner who is very emotional, there are waves of emotion they feel and will emote that can knock you down like the crash of a wave when you are not looking, or can lift you high and carry you. It is all in how you respond. Yes, I know that the idea that we could possibly surf the intensity of our horse’s emotion is hard to see when we have been knocked down for the fifth time and have come up spitting sand.

Stepping out of my ocean analogy for a moment, let us think about what most horse trainers do when a horse gets overly emotional.

The conventional norm is to let the horse know that their behavior is inappropriate by making “the wrong thing difficult and the right thing easy”. That means, if a horse bites you, you do something it doesn’t appreciate, like making a loud noise to surprise them, or chasing them around the round pen until they wish they had never thought about biting you, or backing them up until they wish they had controlled themselves instead of striking out.

Therein lies the crux of the problem though. If a horse controls themselves and doesn’t strike out when they feel the impulse, the stress that was the energy underneath that emotional impulse doesn’t go away, instead it gets buried to be dealt with later.

So what do we do in Freedom Based Training when a horse bites you?

Well, if we are doing our job as a passive leader that will never happen in the first place. The study of passive leadership is all about being in the right place at the right time.

So that means, if your horse is feeling the kind of stress that might lead to an emotional outburst, DO NOT get that close to your horse!

There is so much we can do for our partnership without ever getting inside the strike zone that there is no good reason to still be standing there when the horse strikes!

Instead we do our work as a passive leader to lower the stress our horse feels until we see that the emotional climate is one that we want to step into.

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What if we don’t want to be at the mercy of the horse’s time frame? What if we want to do something with our horse when they feel too stressed to say yes easily to us in that particular moment?

This is where dominance training is a beautiful thing. When we set up the extrinsic motivators correctly, the horse learns to put aside how they feel and simply go with our request. This is not wrong or bad; I actually think it is a good life skill for horses to have. The caution that goes along with dominance training is, how intense is that stress bubbling under the surface for your horse? Are they actually capable of holding themselves together and being open-minded about what you want to do? Is that stress going to explode all over you in a moment when their emotions cause the horse to tell you how they really feel.

A dominant trainer with good feel and timing will ask a horse to put aside how they feel for a moment and do what is asked. Then they choose activities with the horse that lower stress so that there are no pent-up emotions to explode unexpectedly later. A good dominant trainer will know that the causes for stress are many and varied and things like body pain or fear will have to be addressed for stress levels to go down.

A good trainer promises, if the horse is willing to put their emotions aside for the moment and not act with an excess of fight or flight, they will in return help the horse process whatever stress is underneath that emotion and let it go in a healthy way.

Now if we don’t have the tools at hand to dominantly ask horses to stop expressing the emotion they feel, what do we do instead?

Instead we work on the underlying stress with leadership and movement. When we take time to mirror, match, and be a partner to our horse while making good choices about where to be around them in time and space, this will lower the stress they feel. VERY gently and VERY slowly the horse will feel better and better until they have nothing to be overly emotional about.

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This practice is NOT something that can be done once and then forgotten because stress is an ongoing evolution of events for everyone. Every day as a passive leader we have to walk into the relationship asking, “What is possible today; what, where, when, and how do I need to be to best effect this partnership for the long run?”

If my horse slept funny and their back hurts, they are going to be more stressed and emotional that day. Some horses will freeze up and not want to move, some will leap and buck more trying to work it out, and some will spook and jump out of their skin at every sound as their flight instinct comes up strongly in their state of vulnerability.

What I have found is that when I take time to be a partner to my horse in a way that allows them to feel however they feel and also not be alone, and when I do this in a way that lets them know I am attentive and aware and taking actions that keep us both safer, then their muscles soften and little by little they are able to breathe through and walk off whatever stress they were feeling.

The important thing to note is that in passive leadership I do not CAUSE the horse to feel better; I simply partner with them in good ways and wait for it to happen naturally.

What I find is, to the degree that they are willing to let their stress down, they will be willing to take suggestions from me, such as, perhaps if we take a walk together you will feel better. Or, perhaps, if I rub your back here the muscle will release and then you will feel better. I call these sorts of actions assertive actions, and they can only be received if the horse is in an emotional equilibrium that allows us to surf the emotions together.

To go back to the ocean analogy, if the emotions are at a reasonable level for my horse and me (the waves are not too big or overpowering), we can do something together and ride that wave of emotion until its intensity diminishes, leaving us both exhilarated by the experience. Emotion is a beautiful thing if it gives you the energy to do things together that make you both feel better when you are done!

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If the horse is too stressed, then it is better if I simply stand back, let them know I am there for them, and act like a partner without interfering or getting close enough to irritate them. I find, with time and patience, the stress will go down, and THEN I will be able to step in more assertively and be a more direct cause for the horse to feel better.

As it usually does, the question of dominant or passive leadership comes down to the question of how much time do we have and how safe are we if we choose to let stress and emotion evolve naturally?

I am so excited to begin filming on the second Taming Wild movie seven weeks from now. This second project will give us a chance to explore the evolution of partnership with a horse including some of the time and safety constraints that affect most relationships.

In the first movie I was able to take a whole year in a very safe environment to work through the process of developing passive leadership until it evolved into assertive leadership, and those emotional waves were really something Myrnah and I could ride together.

In “Taming Wild: Pura Vida” we have set up some real-life situations where we are rescuing the horses from lives that have given them cause for stress, and potentially the kinds of emotional chaos that comes from that stress.

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We are going to tackle the challenge of surfing those emotions together with our horses while trekking the width of a country.

Is it possible to safely allow horses to feel how they feel in a real-life situation like this? Honestly, I think I am going to learn how to surf a whole lot better as we go. Hopefully, I don’t come up spitting sand too often because I was in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Wish me luck! And, if you want to be on the list to get a copy of the movie as soon as it is finished, you can pre-order it here!

https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/taming-wild-pura-vida/x/17824790#/

This is going to be an adventure worth sharing!

Hooves and Heartbeats,

Elsa

TamingWild.com

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Movement and Trust Building

The Project:

Horses from many walks of life, communication through body language, tools used only for safety, never to train.

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The Goal:

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

 

Movement and Trust Building

 

The rose hips bright red on the skeletal frame of winter rose bushes, the hawthorn berries in their dark red glory adorning the fairy trees around the pasture, the last withered apples falling from the high branches of the trees in the orchard and the grass slowly turning winter dormant under our feet. This is the backdrop for Myrnah and I as we delve into the meditation of the moment.

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This meditation is about movement.

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This meditation is all about the upcoming movie to be filmed in January and February and the pieces of understanding that will need to be developed around this project.

 

You see, there are two predominant categories of questions come up when people watch the first Taming Wild movie.

 

The first question is how much time did you spend with Myrnah in the year of filming the movie? The answer is from 3-6 hours a day five days a week. The follow up question is always what if I want to do Freedom Based Training but I don’t have that much time?

 

The second question has to do with history. Since you did this with Myrnah, who was a clean slate and didn’t have any bad associations with people, how does that apply for those of us who have horses from bad situations, horses who perhaps have good reasons for not trusting people. How can Freedom Based Training be applicable in these situations?

 

I find I can answer these questions in theory, but not in practicality because I haven’t had personal experience walking the path that would let me fully EXPERIENCE the answers to these questions.

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“Taming Wild: Pura Vida” is the project that will allow me to dive in deeply and live those questions so I can experience all the learning that comes from them. I am doing the project for my own personal opportunity to learn and we are filming the project so that people all around the world can experience and learn from it too!

 

So here I am walking around the pastures of San Juan Island with Myrnah meditating on how those questions might be answered?

 

We ask: If a horse comes from a situation where they have little reason to trust people, can we use a freedom based approach to help them learn to trust people again? How might we apply our understanding of relationship to build that comfort, trust and, bonding to the best effect?

 

I believe that movement in partnership is one of the keys to lowering stress, and lowering stress opens the door for bonding and trust to occur.

 

In the first movie, Myrnah moved when she chose, and I worked in a passive leadership form around her using the movement choices in my own body to lower her stress. Then, when I thought her stress levels were low enough I progressed to assertive leadership where I asked her to do things with me.

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For those of you who have seen the movie, you know I was not always accurate in my judgment of Myrnah’s stress levels, which meant sometimes I asked her to do things at times when she could only say NO to me. I accept that both of us were learning together and mistakes are often made in that learning process… besides my mistakes made for a potentially more entertaining movie for you all to watch.

 

“Taming Wild: Pura Vida” will be no different. Andrea and I will have ideas that we are working through with our equine partners. We will get it right sometimes and we will get it wrong sometimes, but we will give it all we have to give and learn every step of the way.

 

Yes, I literally mean that, every step of the way. This project is built around the idea that movement is one of our greatest allies in building relationship with horses, so we are going to do this work as we walk across the country of Costa Rica from the west coast to the east coast.

 

Wait you ask:

How is this Freedom Based Training if you have a proscribed path to travel during the movie? What if the horses don’t want to do that?

 

The answer to that question is one of those I am excited to explore. We are to some degree counting on the idea that horses in the wild travel and move a fair amount each day, and we believe we can use this natural instinct to support the trust we are aiming to develop with these horses.

 

Will the horses be completely at liberty?

 

No, we will be using halters enough to keep the horses safe in the human traffic filled environments they will be crossing and enough to make sure we do not lose them into the jungle never to be seen again.

 

Will they be at liberty sometimes?

 

Yes! As much freedom as we feel we can safely give them!

 

How is this Freedom Based Training if you are walking a proscribed path and using halters?

 

While the first movie was FREEDOM based training with the emphasis on the freedom idea, we were able to do that with Myrnah only because the environments we chose to work in were completely safe for horses.

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In the second movie we will be using freedom BASED training. With the idea that we will be focusing on using freedom as our BASE of understanding and communication to the degree it can be safely experienced. For example ropes will be placed across the horse’s back as much of the time as possible, halters removed in areas where we won’t encounter traffic and can safely and responsibly do so.

 

I learned more in the one year of FREEDOM based training with Myrnah than I have in all my years with horse’s combined. I believe this second project will again be a dramatic development of knowledge for everyone involved. We will be focusing on freedom as the BASIS for what we do. Freedom will be the framework to understand how time and trust are intertwined in this partnership journey between horse and human.

 

Until we have boots on the ground in Costa Rica, and meet our new horse partners. I will be walking with Myrnah through our pastures here on San Juan Island, and meditating on what it means to develop trust through movement.

 

I promise to keep you posted on the things we learn along the way.

 

If you haven’t yet, stop by the Kickstarter for “Taming Wild: Pura Vida”. We have an amazing community developing around this project and I would love you to be part of it before the Kickstarter finishes on December 7th.

 

Hooves and Heartbeats,

Elsa

TamingWild.com