13/11/2024
Learning how to ride from a place of connenction and feeling. ✨
About 40 years ago, i started horse riding lessons. I would arrive at the stables, where the pony’s would be bridled & saddled. I would mount and ride for an hour… without any proper interacting with the pony in advance. From the first lesson, instantly; it was my first true passion in life. Horses. ❤️
I was quite talented and so I became good at riding quickly. Not technically, because I was not really taught proper technical riding skills in those lessons. But I was very good tuning into feeling the horses. With my high sensitivity, that came natural for me.
I loved ALL the horse time I could get. And since that one hour a week on a horse, felt like way too little horse time for me. As soon as I was old enough, I started hanging out at the stables all day. Helping out in the lessons. In return, every time someone would fall off, in a lesson. If they did not want to continue riding… I would get to ride that pony for the rest of the lesson. Extra horse time for me. Yay!
I was quite fearless, a little dare devil.
I would be the one to ride all the new pony’s, that had arrived at the stables. And some of them were either frisky, or dissociated or traumatized.. creating not so comfortable behavior. Like flight/running, bucking, spooking and more so. I would ride it out… I fell off many times. In retrospect.. it was not a safe way to approach riding. But I always got back on. Because for me, it was precious horse time. And as I regulated my nervous system and that of the horse, I would manage relaxation & trust; taking the horse out of flight response and moving towards cooperation.
Today… to me it does not feel right or respectful towards the horses, the way the riding lessons were set up. I am grateful for what all the horses throughout those years taught me. But I feel it’s not ‘right’, nor respectful to the horse. Neither is it safe. To have someone without horse experience, just mount that horse and ride off..
Nowadays I teach ‘horse language’ from the ground. Where you learn to read the body language and communication from the horses, in the herd and in interacting with us, humans. I teach by coaching around what we pick up from the horses, by feeling. Feeling in our own bodies what is truly going on, versus our mind projecting our thoughts onto situations.
When we take all that we’ve learned around the horses on the ground and then mount a horse. There is a base of mutual understanding. Feeling what is going on in ourselves and in the horse. Starting the riding from this place of connection, respect and trust, a completely different dynamic in riding occurs. It’s a magical feeling. Having such a majestic creature allowing you on there back and feeling the interconnection.
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