Un-Natural Horsemanship

12/11/2024

Challenging My Conditioning: Rejection of the Truth Bomb

I was taught and taught to teach, through authoritarian coercion delivered through fear and pain.

For an example with horses:

If I wanted to go over a jump and the horse refused to jump, I was taught to hit it repeatedly on the hindquarters with a whip until it jumped. I taught others to do this as well.

For an example with humans:

During my initial education in saddle fitting, the teacher taught us to “scare our clients into changing what they were doing”.

In both cases, the idea was that when subjected to enough fear and/or pain, an animal or human will change their undesirable behaviour.

Sadly, this practice can yield results. Depending on our ideal outcome, we may achieve our desired goal. The horse goes over the jump, the human buys a new saddle. But how does everyone involved FEEL?

When I began to change the way I handled horses, ultimately moving away from results and toward relationship, it was only natural that I began to change the way I handled people as well. Like many conventional riding instructors, I had modelled myself after the George Morris trope. I even went as far as to deeply believe that if my instructor didn’t make me cry at some point during my lesson, I wasn’t getting bang for my buck. So if I didn’t command fear from my students, I wasn’t a good teacher.

Fear is indeed a powerful motivator. I think of the times in my life I have been motivated by another human through fear. They are, all of them, traumatic and caused lasting damage that I will spend the rest of my life healing from. I am not alone in this.

As I moved away from this philosophy of teaching and started counting myself among the “woke” equestrian community, it saddened me deeply to observe and experience that authoritarian coercion through fear was just as rampant there as in the conventional equestrian world. While I eagerly hopped on the bandwagon and began mimicking the ways in which others were achieving results from a more seemingly ethical persuasive approach, I couldn’t turn away from the uncomfortable feeling that in many ways, nothing had changed. The vocabulary was different, the actions were different, but the overall feeling was shockingly similar. Why was this? Why, when the information I was delivering or receiving was so ethical, so righteous, so important, did it feel so icky? I began noticing a particularly icky practice in myself and others… it was the truth bomb.

Rejection of Truth Bombing has been a profound challenge for me. It’s been really, really hard to avoid both in giving and receiving. I grew up around people who seemed to love dropping truth bombs, I’ve always had that crap exploding on and around me, it almost seems to be a part of our collective human nature. Here are some things I have learned after much exploration throughout my life:

* Bombs are only ever dropped with the intention to hurt. When I have dropped truth bombs on others, it has been out of a desire to illicit change for what I want, not necessarily what is best for the other person. Even if my bomb contains a component of truth and even if that truth is righteous, it is still an assertion of manipulation, a way to control. A way to deflect from my own image and place blame or shame on another.

* When I have been the recipient of a truth bomb, it has never taught me much about myself but has always taught me a very great deal about the person who dropped it. I hold grace and love for myself in the aftermath of being the one who did the dropping and while I may have had noble intentions, I can see now how much damage it did to me and am grateful that others have seen this side of me, even though I’m not proud of it.

* Engaging in Truth Bombing is symptomatic of entanglement in the drama triangle.

I have a thing about others trying to define me for me. I have a thing about unsolicited advice. I have a thing about value and character judgment. I can’t speak for anyone else but for myself, when someone is using fear to coerce me into doing something, I’m not likely to hear what they’re saying. In fact, I’m most likely to run like my hair is on fire. And rightfully so. I have learned that I cannot stop someone from flinging a bomb at me but I can read between the lines. I can read the feel behind their words. I can read their hurt, their fear, their insecurity and I can choose to either walk away or offer connection. When connection is made and we feel safe, the bombs stop dropping.

Learning how to resist the temptation to drop bombs on others has been much more difficult. I want so badly to help my students. I want it so badly that I can become desperate to do so, especially when I might see that the ways they are doing things are harmful to themselves or to their horses. I want so badly to advocate for equine welfare. I want so badly for people to change in ways that I have changed.

That. Is. Not. My. Responsibility.

Why did I change? Because I wanted to. I was not coerced or pressured or shamed into changing. I changed how I did and when I did because it felt GOOD to do so. There is no other reason and because of the good feeling, I will continue to change as it comes. I want this for everyone else- for everyone to find a good feeling and grow from it. So what have I done to change my approach?

Enter: The Bath Bomb!

These are lovely little wrapped packages of ideas, concepts, information, etc that I can hand off casually, even in passing. I hand them off and if the person takes them home and leaves them in a drawer for 10 years, that is none of my business. When THEY want to, they will pick up their bath bomb, drop it into a tub of warm water and soak in the delicious fizziness that feels GOOD to experience. This is what my best teachers/mentors/facilitators have done for me. They made my progress, my success, my good feeling my responsibility to choose when it felt right by me for me. And I love them for it!

I catch myself dropping truth bombs on my clients all the time. Sometimes I can catch it before it’s launched and reframe it into something beautiful, warm and fuzzy. The kind of feeling someone wants to experience. Sometimes I launch it and then, realizing how out of line I was, I can immediately try to make repair for my wrongdoing. This, while humbling and frightening to do, is necessary when my goal is to cultivate a safe space. I bet that sometimes, I do it without even realizing it. I love you. I’m sorry. Please Forgive Me. Thank You 💕

~ Chiara xo

12/10/2024

Sharing a pic that shows a handful of the tools + toys I’ve accumulated over the years for use in and/or out of the saddle for myself and my students!

I’ve found that things like Franklin balls and resistance bands have helped facilitate deeper body awareness + proprioception as well as aided in the release of rider tension. Exploration with tools such as the lariat and bow + arrows facilitate development of an independent seat and about a billion other things, most importantly (imo) encouraging joyful and targeted movement, much like a horse hooking on to a cutting flag.

As a big fan of these concepts and practices with the horses, through my apprenticeship with the wonderful Katherine Lowry, I am learning to apply them to my inside life- filling my hamster cage with all the coolest toys! I am loving finding creative new ways to get bucked off my living room pony and our dogs are getting unparalleled bang for their buck with so much energetic floor time 💕

Happy Free Play, My Friends!

~ Chiara xo

12/09/2024

One of the most valuable pursuits for me this year has been bringing in awareness around my own Conditioning.

Conditioning can be defined as:

“A simple form of learning involving the formation, strengthening, or weakening of an association between a stimulus and a response”.

By this definition, I do not feel that the concept of Conditioning is inherently positive or negative/good or bad, but our relationship to it certainly can be either. It has been a curious endeavour, both illuminating and invigorating, to examine my conditioned values/ideas/beliefs and inquire if they are serving me and others or not.

As a woman, an eldest daughter and a survivor of childhood trauma, I was Conditioned to believe that I was responsible for the experiences and feelings of others. This deeply ingrained belief has caused me a great deal of harm and I do not believe has provided anything beneficial to anyone else, either. As expected, the more I looked at the areas of my life where this belief was rooted, the more examples seemed to pop up. I believed that as a wife, it was my duty to take away any suffering in my partner. I believed that as a riding instructor, it was my duty to assume responsibility for my student’s success with their horses. As a horse trainer, I believed it was my duty to achieve human ordained results. As a friend, I believed that it was my duty to give my loved ones my life mask. As a horse owner, I believed it was my duty to protect my herd from any “bad” feeling.

What I have learned is that suffering is essential, impermanent, and unless it is my own, none of my business. I began to see how my ‘noble’ efforts to provide relief to my partner/horse/friend/student was not only invalidating to their experience and depriving them of growth, but was in fact not noble at all. My actions to take away the suffering in others were COERCION not COMPASSION. I’m an empath and deeply feel the experiences of those around me and so, no matter how selfless it may seem on the surface, my desire to make those around me feel better was directly related to how good I could feel.

With Un-Natural Horsemanship, I aim to challenge limiting beliefs in myself and others. Recognizing the areas of our Conditioning (family, school, training, society, community) and how we relate to them (self-esteem, confidence, clarity, compassion or coercion) has been immensely helpful in creating space to reflect on what is serving us and what we can let go. In the sphere of horsemanship, I will often find in myself or others a desire to take away our animal‘s anxiety/tension/etc. Do we do this so that then our animal will feel good and then we can feel good? Do we do this so that our horse’s current state stops getting in the way of our goals? Do we do this as an indulgence, a way to avoid strong contact, vulnerability and self-awareness?

When I am able to recognize coercion as a selfish manipulation of others to my own benefit, I am able to truly show up for myself and everyone else regardless of their number of legs from a place of compassion and respect. I am in awe of a body’s ability to protect itself and hold reverence for the ways in which it has, I will remove what is ready to be released and nothing more. I am in awe of human resilience, the way we can express our feelings and move through them. I have found that tears carry as much beauty and grace as a smile. I have learned to honour the experiences of others by offering connection and practicing acceptance when it is not wanted. I have learned to send love by way of light, as opposed to by way of bulldozer. I’m not saying I’ve mastered this, absolutely not. But I am aware, I am making changes and I am doing my best.

With Un-Natural Horsemanship, we welcome these conversations and aim to facilitate self-discovery and right-relationship with ourselves and our equine partners ❤️

~ Chiara xo

12/05/2024

has been with us 3 weeks now and today (his 9th day of “training”) he went on his first excursion outside his pen. He conducted himself admirably earning him much more exploration in the days to come. His halter work is progressing nicely and he is now able to be touched on most of his body without trouble. He is curious and open minded about most of the strange human things we ask him about. In familiar settings he is really starting to let down and even feels safe enough to lie down and roll with humans nearby.

12/05/2024

“Brego? Ðin nama is cynglic.”
Brego? Your name is Kingly.

Sometimes the horses come with a name that they have claimed. Sometimes a name pops into my head when I ask and that’s what we go with. Sometimes they’re unsure so I rapid fire whatever comes to mind until I get a little energetic burst that calls it.

This one was different. I’ve never had such a difficult time with a name, going around in circles for months. I’m (obviously!) not at all opposed to a pasture full of LotR’s names but desired something at least a bit uncommon. After all, I personally know 3 Brego’s and have heard of at least 2 more. It’s a bit tired imo but it’s what he wants and he wears it with a pride worthy of the title.

Le nathlam hi Brego, myn mellon.

~ Chiara

11/27/2024

Additional Notes:

If a horse initially has an adverse reaction, it is a species appropriate response to this amount of contact and confinement around the sensitive areas of their face, head and neck. We try not to force a horse to accept anything, we simply ask questions and allow them to be honest with us about how they’re feeling.

11/25/2024

Quick update: with only sporadic weather windows this week, I’m pretty pleased with his progress. Ferdinand is become increasingly curious about what we might have to offer and is routinely allowing both Chiara and I to pet/scratch all over his head, and both sides of his neck and shoulders without any noticeable worry. He has figured out how to operate his hay net and is quite interested in the delicious supplements in the black tubs. After 2 days of work with just a lariat rope around his neck, today I was able to easily slip a halter around his neck and over his nose. Once I connected the lariat to the halter and began going through some familiar motions he seemed to have the experience I am used to seeing: the halter just gave more clear communication for thing he already knew how to do. By the end of the short session, his prowess in leading/groundwork is probably in the 95th percentile of horse I meet and no marked stress or sweat. -Zak

11/19/2024

What’s in a name?

“Habibi Von Otterdick”, the title displayed on your papers. I’m glad we agree that this will never do.

“Playboy”, your sobriquet, bestowed by my dear friend who brought us together. Cute and neither of us mind it but I hear you when you tell me that it is not your Name.

You have never had a Person. You have been Nameless. I do not know if I am She or if I am mentor to your journey but I do know that you are here in our herd and this makes me your Guardian. I understand, Your Name is Important.

I try things on for size. Some bring your ears forward and a little tug of a smile pulls at the corners of your lips. Some illicit no response. I have hang up’s over a couple that we agree upon and am feeling into the Why behind that.

We’ll figure it out, you and I- As we unwind, sifting through the darker corners and exploring new ways to bring in the light. As we settle, finding safety in one another’s presence, growing bolder in our curiosity. As we move through the hard things, building trust and confidence. We’ll figure it out 💕
~ Chiara

11/19/2024

Welcome Ferdinand! On Friday I took the trailer to the BLM corrals in Canyon City and selected this cutie from about 700 available. He's 6 years old from Antelope Valley HMA in Nevada. I had never been to this facility and it was a fascinating experience to wander the pens of hundreds of wild horses and notice how they all responded to the human incursions. This guy stood out in the pen of roughly 50 5-6 year olds for his height, broad chest, large ears and especially for his pronounced interest in me. He approached me with confidence while most of his companions whirled around the pen sniffing me deeply and even allowed me to touch his nose. I told him that me picking him was going to seem like a bad deal for the next few hours, but I promise it will be worth it. He will be with us for the next several months until he is ready to find a suitable human partner. After many years of exclusively taking on mustangs from failed adoption scenarios, it is a real treat to have a genuine "wildy" again. Many updates to come on . -Zak

11/15/2024

It was an honour and a privilege to be involved in this passion project with Great Escape Mustang Collaborative. We hope you enjoy the stunning cinematography, the shared vision, the stories and the horses that are the heart of our purpose, whose spirits speak to our souls ♥️

Peter Melhado is a freelance photographer and filmmaker based out of CHS working with global brands across a range of industries.

10/31/2024

Blessed Samhain

As the year turns and the new season unfolds, I set my intention to nurture the shadows within, not to bring light to the dark but to love the darkness for without it, no light can shine. In this time of rest and reflection, the fruit of my year’s endeavors are ripe for the pleasure of savoring.

It was a year of rediscovery, restructuring and release with the cards all aligning in the ways that they do. I look in the rearview and feel pride for so many of the limiting beliefs I have let go of and yet, am called to give heed to the ways in which these insidious hooks continue to bind me. I turn and hug myself, the self who has hidden for so long because of professionalism, because of reputation, because of appearances. I hug her and I tell her that we are free. While it is a topic of great curiosity, what people might Think; where the heart of it lies, where the centre grounds, where the mind settles, is in what we Feel.

There has been some grief, letting go of relationships, practices and presentations that are no longer in alignment. It is hard to watch beautiful things crumble and harder still to resist the urge to rebuild that which is fallen but familiar.

There has been some ecstasy, surrendering to new bonds, turning toward forgotten or neglected connections. Rediscovering the joy of movement, embracing the spirit, the self, the tidal wave of possibility that comes when exploration and adventure are at the helm.

I look ahead and feel support from the foundations I have laid. The ones I have lovingly shaped, the mortar still wet on my hands and I sigh; I have gifts ready to be enjoyed, the things I poured so much into to be able to provide for myself- restful sleep, companionship, nourishing food, the sanctuary that is our home. I feel into my open heart and move towards the open hearts that surround me, trusting, breathing, knowing. Knowing that “to live will be an awfully big adventure”.

~ Chiara
xo

10/29/2024

One of the most beneficial practices I have implemented into my horsemanship is Self Inventory- the process of hitting the pause button during an adverse situation and checking in with myself before turning my attention to the horse. When I began to explore this idea, I became acutely aware of how often, when conflict arose, whether due to my cultural conditioning or simply to my own humanness, I noticed a proclivity to go immediately to “fixing” it in the horse rather than beginning the conversation by turning my gaze inward.

Through the experience I have gained in this exploration, I can say with complete confidence that when I do a quick internal diagnostic scan, it has swiftly resolved the majority of conflict situations between my horses and I!

First, I check in with my Body:

Where is my breath? How is my breath? Do I have a neutral pelvis and spinal alignment? Are there any areas of tension that I can find and release? Am I aware of where my body is in space and how it is organized? Am I grounded and centred?

Simply doing a quick body scan will bring our awareness into the present moment and help us to determine if we are inadvertently blocking our horses or otherwise inhibiting calm, confident, clear communication.

Next, I check in with my Mind:

Am I in the moment or am I storytelling? Am I fixating on a Why? Am I placing blame/attempting to avoid accountability (including with self-deprecation)? In cases of struggle between me and my horse, when checking in with my mind space, I will often find that my mind is preoccupied in arguing with reality. I find myself shoulding and comparing, neither of which are productive and both will obstruct connection.

Giving our mind a little job to do that will keep it proactively engaged in the moment can be profoundly helpful. It may look like reviewing the situation to determine if we’ve missed a step in preparation for the movement or in most cases, simply asking our minds to visualize what we are seeking to accomplish yields remarkable results. For those that do not visualize, I have had students find success by using words or physical sensations to describe what they are seeking to accomplish.

To bring it all together, I check in with my Heart:

What is the feeling in this moment? Does it feel good to me? What is the Feel I am currently offering to the horse? Fascinatingly, in most cases where I believe that I am in conflict with the horse and my body is tight and my mind is fixated on resolution, my heart is actually deeply content. The wisdom of my heart knows that conflict is a necessary component of vulnerability and thus, an embracing of authenticity. My heart knows that the horse is making contact with me in the messiness and knows that working through this conflict, both internally within myself and externally with the horse, will foster deeper connection in our partnership.

When I am not connected to self, my fragmented energy can be troublesome for the horse. When I am disconnected from my body, I am out of balance. When I am disconnected from my mind, my thoughts consume me. When I am disconnected from my heart, I am outcome attached.

When we allow ourselves to be present in our bodies, mindful with our thoughts and leading from our heart space, we are able to approach the less desirable interactions with our horses (ie when they do not respond with a favourable answer or are behaving in an undesirable way) from a place of gentle solidarity where we are curious to listen, confident to speak and content to be here now 💕

10/19/2024

"Timeless Horses"

About a year ago, I was trying to figure out if I actually liked doing anything at all. I have done a lot of different things in my life relative to my age and I have excelled at several of them, but I also have had almost no problem abruptly cutting something that had been a strong interest. For instance, I was once quite dedicated to playing guitar and even taught myself to build them from scratch when I was in high school, but I have not plucked a single string in over a decade and I never think about it. It’s a story for another time, but the eventual explanation was: as a masked autistic, I was often able to pick up new activities very quickly, and the value that the society I lived in placed on being “good at things” was a very reliable scapegoat for the autistic traits I hoped no one would detect. The real answer to my “do I actually like doing anything” question was, yes, probably but the motivation behind all of my pursuits, even the ones I might genuinely enjoy, had turned to a vicious cycle: I was running out of energy and still pouring every spare ounce on the fire to keep the light of “achievement” burning bright enough that people would look at that instead of the rest of me. The best reward I could get from my actions was “relief” from the pressure I put on myself to stay ahead of that fear. I was so locked into this routine, that I had almost completely forgotten what actual “joy” felt like and I certainly couldn’t dream of it being a goal, let alone a priority.
Along the way, I devised the following thought experiment to help me figure out what I might truly wish to “do”: If I woke up tomorrow and time had stopped for all humans except for me, what would I do? Now, if you need this to be a perfect experiment, make any modifications you want, but the feeling for me is “time is stopped, but I can start it again whenever I want, so I might as well do (X)”. When I first started running this, I could not come up with any answer other than “rest”. This led me to the realization that I felt I could not allow myself to rest in a world where other humans existed, and after a few more months of deep work I was able to begin to get past that and give my body what it needed more reliably. When I ran the experiment again, the next result was immediate and crystal-clear: I would get a horse out.
Even as I write this, the thought of waking up and discovering that I have nowhere to be and horses I can interact with feels strongly exciting. On many days I have been able to hold this feeling through my time with my horses but still not constantly. I am still trying to shed the remnants of my decades old vice: doing with horses (or whatever) what I think will provide me with relief from pressure. A foundational principle of my current trajectory is: Move towards things which feel good, and not towards things which do not. I can say with rigorous certainty that anything I have ever done around a horse which did not felt good was something I thought would yield some amount of relief, not joy.
I wish to clarify that I believe pressure on me, can only come from me, even if it is related to outside factors. I have put pressure on myself to: make enough money, be seen as a member of a specific horsemanship faction, avoid criticism from peers and strangers, fulfill my “potential”, help as many horses as possible in my lifetime, help as many people as possible in my lifetime, provide my clients with “adequate” value for their time or money, the list goes on, but they all influenced my value judgement around how I spent my time with my horses and those entrusted to me. Now that I have shifted my priority structure in favor of trying to enjoy every moment of my life, I am trying very hard to be honest with myself about whether or not I am acting like time has stopped when I’m with my horses. I can say that I am finding this more often and it makes my heart very happy to be completely enraptured in the “timeless” experience.
When I find my sweet feeling is faltering or evading me entirely, I try to run my thought experiment again in that moment. So far without fail I have found that when this happens I have put a quarter in the machine that is designed to produce “relief” and I am inexplicably surprised that it has once again failed to provide me with “joy” even thought it does exactly what it says on the box. In motorsport they say there is a $1 item that will surely break any $1million race car: the stopwatch. I would guess it’s probably about as reliable for relationships built on true connection and intimacy.
Today I am really enjoying trying to figure out what a “timeless” relationship with a horse can be for me. Time of course still does “exist” in some capacity, but at my current age I can reasonably confidently tell my horses that I will outlive them so we really have at least their whole life ahead of us to do whatever seems best. I thought at first I would just find that I did things more slowly, more thoroughly, gave the horses more time to soak and process, etc. While this is often the case, I have been surprised by another unforeseen effect: I have also been emboldened to take more risks in what I can bring up with a horse that may involve some form of conflict. On one hand, the feeling is “if we are going to spend eternity together, let’s not put this hard conversation off for one more day. Conversely, if my actions are inappropriate at that time, or my skill in the delivery insufficiently developed, I have limitless time to atone with the horse, and reflect on how I might try differently in the future. As is often the case, I hope my exploration of this type of relationship with my horses will help to inform me on how I would most like to participate in my human relationships as well. How often do I not bring what is truly on me heart because of my fear that there will not be adequate time to unpack whatever comes up for the other person or myself in the process? How could I better signal to others that I am interested in making whatever time is needed to hear and feel what is really important even if for some tangible “time” related reason we have to postpone the full expression?
Some days I still think about what I would do with my horse today if time had stopped and I still can’t come up with anything but “rest”. On those days I am trying to resist the practiced path of putting pressure on myself to do it anyway so that I may have relief from some future version of myself who will scorn me for “wasting such a beautiful day” or some other contrivence. Fear of missing out is not the same as longing for something cherished and knowing it’s just not the right time to have it. I sure know the difference in how it feels when my hand touches the lead rope and it feels like there’s nowhere I’d rather be and no need to do anything but that which serves us, and I’m pretty sure my horses do to.

-Zak