14/08/2024
"Your Best Self," an excerpt from Paul Belasik's latest book, Dressage for No Country:
What if dressage was instead about reaching a place where you are near the “best idea” of yourself? You might not be famous, but your horse likes and respects you, people like and respect you. You work hard, but you’re not nervous about the outcome. How you feel about your work won’t change much because of some judge’s opinion. You are less concerned with how you measure up to an external yardstick because you are seriously engaged in how you meet standards established by your own tests. When you are riding, training, or teaching, you are so focused, you are often unaware of time. Even when a session is difficult, you feel right with your horse. The stiffness in your back seems to have disappeared. If you get frustrated, you can quickly recover your attention. Your emotions can’t seem to get a foothold; the anxieties in your life seem suspended for a while. What you do together with your horse seems like cooperation; a mutually beneficial dance, and not like a continuing argument.
Have you ever seen pictures of people swimming in the ocean, their hands clasped around the dorsal fin of a dolphin as the dolphin carries them along? They feel excitement, fear, joy— their faces say it all. They can’t put into words the rapture they are relishing, a suspension of any editorializing or sarcasm. It is a powerful jolt of pure experience, in that moment of communion with nature itself. Even though the positive effect of that connection can’t be entirely explained, most people acknowledge it is important. We ride horses. Do we find ourselves forgetting how ridiculously amazing that is?
