Energy, Feel, and Attachment
Sometimes we focus so much on the horse that we forget about ourselves in the training process.
We want to see what the horse is doing and how they are moving. We want to help the horse move and feel better. We want to study the horse and know the horse. But if all of our awareness is on the horse, we cannot support them.
Part of that awareness needs to be on ourselves. Our own sensations in the body. The thoughts in our heads. The breath in our lungs, diaphragm, and pelvic floor. Our balance and alignment. Our posture and muscular engagement. These are the things which we use to connect with and influence the horse, so we are ineffective guides to them when we exclude ourselves from our focus.
Zoe connecting her breath to her transitions.
Notice her centered, self-awareness, and the relaxing effect it has on her pony.
In a lesson last summer, one of my clients was struggling to get her horse to rock his sternum back and engage the thoracic sling on the ground. I would take the rein and move my body and whip towards the horse’s chest and he shifted his weight back, lifting through the withers. She would take the rein and nothing would happen. She tried tapping his chest, switching to a flag, waving the whip, using more vocal cues, moving her body differently etc.
I encouraged her to visualize the biomechanics of what she wanted– the sling muscles lifting the ribcage between the shoulders and bringing the sternum back to where the front legs where vertical, thereby boosting the withers up between the scapulas, which then would trigger the abdominals to engage and the weight shifting to the hind end would invite the lumbosacral joint to flex and the pelvis to come into neutral, if not anterior tilt.
A student teaching her horse a sternum rock while rehabbing from a torn suspensory. (Yes, the pelvis and stifles still locked up at this stage in his rehab, and it took a lot of bodywork to help him sit down behind)
She improved, but I could see her mind churning over this struggle all the way to the end of her lesson that day.
The next lesson, she grinned when I asked her to rock her horse’s sternum back. She told me she knew how to do it now. I asked her what changed? What was the trick for her?
“I realized it wasn’t about being able to see it or ask correctly. It’s about being able to feel it in my body. I have to FEEL the sternum rock.”
Then she stood in front of her horse and I could feel her energy come up and out the end of her whip and through the horse’s sternum. He engaged his thoracic sling and sat back and down on his haunches.
In another lesson, her horse was a bit anxious about the environment and scattered in his attention. We used the emotional regulation exercises we’d taught him from the beginning like a guided meditation and he came back to her, connected in that space. But the “monsters” were on the other side of the arena, so I guided her to approach the scary corner and turn around to go back to the safe place BEFORE he spooked or had to ask her to retreat. I had her repeatedly walk with her horse to the edge of his comfort zone and back until his comfort zone grew to envelop the scary monster corner.
At certain parts of this process, she accidentally went a little farther than he was comfortable, so when she turned him around he rushed past her. We are very precise with teaching horses to use us as reference points and orient their bodies so they are straight without pushing or pulling. I guided my student through steps to prevent her horse from pushing forward, getting crooked, and passing her shoulder with his point of shoulder. But again and again, it was happening. I asked her for the rein so I could feel him for myself. He walked perfectly with me almost into the scary corner and all the way back.
I asked her,
“Were you concerned that he was going to get in front of you or make this mistake? Were you trying to prevent this from happening and holding onto the good walk you’d established?”
“Yes.”
It was this concerned energy that was impacting her horse and causing the behavioral issue. First and foremost, we have to regulate ourselves. Not just our emotions and our thoughts, but also our own balance, our rhythm. When we walk with a horse and intend to lead them, our feet should be like a metronome– steady, predictable, comforting, unrushed. Our shoulders and hips should be level and straight. Our postural muscles should be engaged and our movement muscles relaxed and swinging. Our breath should come in and out, softening the inside of our bodies.
Then we must let go of any attachment to what the horse is doing or what we think he should be doing.
If we are attached to a behavior, a posture, a movement, or anything else the horse is doing, we are setting ourselves up for suffering when we lose it. And with horses, we’re much more likely to lose it when they feel this attachment– the expectation and anticipation of what they “should” do. Besides, learning how to get it back again is how you create new facilitated pathways– which can only happen if you lose it. That applies to any learning or development.
Most horses learn at an early age what signs indicate that a person is about to pull on them. Our halters, cavessons, and bridles all attach to their head, which pulls the horse’s neck. The neck is the horse’s balancing apparatus. Pulling a horse off balance sends them to their sympathetic nervous system by making them vulnerable. Their body tells their brain “I’m not safe” when they feel out of balance, and then mobilizes the body into a postural pattern for survival. This is what happens when we pull on our horse’s heads and necks.
And yet, a lot of training does indeed involve putting pressure on the horse’s head and neck in order to train them, and even to release and soften those tissues. We can educate the horse to our touch and to the signals though their headgear what we mean so they soften and relax under that pressure. If the horse can learn to trust our hand to help them find better balance, we can train the horse through the rein from a parasympathetic nervous system state.
And there are times when the horse is going to pull on us. The only way to stop pulling from happening is to stop holding or stop pulling back.
And when we feel the horse tensing up, or expect or perceive tension, we tell our body “get ready to be pulled on”. Which relays to the horse, “get ready to be pulled on”. The way to balance oneself when being pulled on is pulling back. Just think of tug of war.
So there, just in our process of being concerned about the horse losing their rhythm, their balance, or their composure, we create a balance problem in which the horse engages their muscles to pull against you.
If we release ourselves from the attachment of the horse doing whatever it is we want and simply regulate ourselves, while maintaining awareness of the horse, we support them best. We see them the most clearly without muddying the waters with our own anxieties.
Energy matters– we have to create the feeling we want to have with the horse, whether it’s conjuring up the sensation of the horse engaging their thoracic sling, or keeping our minds and bodies in a steady, relaxed, and aligned walk in order to maintain one.
We create a feeling to offer the horse, and then the horse can make an offer to us. We’ll never get there with fear of losing what we have, or by losing ourselves in the process.
Being present is more than seeing and hearing what’s in front of you– it’s about feeling what’s within you, and how it colors the space you and your horse walk in.
Anxious, distracted OTTB at one of my clinics finding comfort in my presence.
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