Category: The (almost kinda) Daily

Normally I’m quite a productive little creature. I don’t really notice this about myself until I have a day where the inspiration just isn’t flowing, the words just aren’t coming, and the usual energy I feel coursing through my cells just isn’t there.

The old me used to rage against the machine when this happened.

I would sit listlessly at my computer pretending to work.

I would lament that I should be riding and not ride.

I would insert thing I felt like I should be doing at that time and instead do something not related to that thing, whilst thinking about that thing.

In other words, I was half-assing two things. It’s a terrible business.

The latest version of me now sees the early warning signals and actions the Whole Ass Method.

I say to myself, seriously Jane. If you are going to sit here half-ass working, you might as well go away and full-ass something else until you’re ready to bring your whole self to the job.

The same for riding. No horse of mine deserves my half-ass attention. If I can’t full ass it, then I will come back when I can.

It’s worth it, trust me.

Don’t half-ass two things. Whole ass one thing.

Thanks, Ron.

And you’re welcome.

Onwards.

❤️ Jane

My riding has become an exploration of responsiveness.

I understand now that as soon as I require my leg to be here, or my arm to be there…

That as soon as I fix my hands or assume a position that I have created in my mind’s eye as the ideal…

I have pulled myself out of the moment. I have cancelled out any opportunity that my unconscious brain has to seek, tweak and adjust the position of my body in response to the movement of my horse.

I am no longer with her.

So instead, I seek two points.

I ask, can I match my midline up with the midline of your body?

Where is my pubic symphysis in relation to my belly button?

Are my armpits over my iliac crests? Do they feel wider? Narrower? Forward or behind them?

As I turn, does my midline turn first? Or does the shoulder lead? Or the hip?

Does my trigeminal nerve stay closer to the surface of my skin as I go this direction, or does it draw in towards the midline of my body?

I don’t change or judge. I don’t forcibly adjust.

I simply observe. And in my observations, I give my unconscious brain more information about where it is I sit in space. I let it make the decision about where I need to be, and how best to be in harmony within the movement.

My role is to observe, to give my unconscious brain more information about what is happening in the here and now.

Onwards.

❤️ Jane

I saw a meme the other day that said something along the line of “Anxiety is not of the mind. Anxiety is of the body”.

It’s always a curiosity to me when we seek to separate out the body and mind in this way. If you think of it in far too simplistic terms we started by considering anxiety to be a function of the mind. And now, as our understandings of the nervous system progresses and we have become more familiar with body-based or somatic therapies, we have flipped to understanding something like anxiety as a function of the body.

Regardless of whether we consider an experience to be “of the mind or of the body”, any decision we arrive at that considers the mind-body connection in these terms is still very binary; it’s still “one or the other”, even if we think it to be more heavily weighted to one side.

Functionally and physiologically speaking, the mind and body exist as a complex, interwoven, multidimensional, and highly intelligent integrated system. Any attempt to understand one as separate from the other exists only for the purposes of our understanding, perhaps because we find it hard to comprehend the extraordinary universe that our beings represent.

Every thought that I have, every emotion that I experience, every sensation I feel comes alive in the motor patterns and responses of my body. In this way, emotion cannot exist without its representative physicality.

And conversely, the expression of my body- of your body- the way that my skin, fascia, muscles, organs, bones take shape is dependent on the presence of my senses, on my ability to communicate my aliveness in response to my environment.

Mind is the air to my balloon. My body encases my mind that provides the invisible form that I take shape around.

The geometry of aliveness.

Onwards.

❤️ Jane

The other day was one of Those Days.

Those Days are tricky because they often sneak up on you. You can even have a streak when you think that Those Days are behind you, that they’re over.

And then all at once you wake up, and a familiar feeling descends, and that’s when you know.

Oh, you think to yourself, it’s one of Those Days.

What Those Days look like varies from person to person.

Those Days might be days where you feel anxious.

Those Days might be when you feel unproductive and procrastinate-ey.

Those Days might be when you feel heavy and everything feels overwhelming.

In the past, I used to look at Those Days and let them swallow me. I used to worry that Those Days were the predictor of Every Other Day and that this was it. This was my lot now.

I know not to let Those Days trick me anymore. Those Days aren’t predictors of the future. Those Days don’t have special meaning.

Those Days are just an expression of what is in the moment. I don’t need to add to it or make a story around it. I don’t need to fear it or feel concerned about it. I can just feel how it is to be having One Of Those Days and let myself have One Of Those Days.

And the thing is, the less you fight against Those Days. The less you resist them or exaggerate them, the quicker you realise that Those Days have their place in the natural order of things, along with the yesterdays, tomorrows, and the really very good days.

Onwards.

❤️ Jane

When I started playing the Ukulele, there were some chords that were easy to get my fingers around and there were others that… weren’t so easy. The B chord, for instance, made me feel like I had lost any ability to coordinate my fingers.

You have to smush down two strings with one finger, and then kind of extend the next two fingers at an angle no two fingers are designed to go at, higher up and further across. And then just at the point where you get all three of your fingers in the place required for this magnificent masterpiece you are about to unleash on everyone’s ears, your first finger turns mutinous and refuses to have anything to do with it. It only wants to be used to eat cake, even though you tell it this is NOT a cake-eating time, and in fact, this is the time in your adult life where you are supposed to be making magnificent music. If only your fingers would cooperate.

So, the thing about the Ukulele is that it is not attached to anything else in my life. I don’t get paid to play (thank god). If I sound awful, I’m unlikely to break myself, damage anything or otherwise put myself in peril. No one has any expectations of my Ukulele playing (in fact, everyone looks quite shocked that sometimes the sounds I make seem ok. I’m not sure I appreciate them looking quite so shocked). I don’t need to understand what makes my Ukulele tick and it’s unlikely to buck me off. So far, I’ve never heard of such a thing happening.

And so, I tinker. I tinker without expectation and I tinker while I’m also doodling around with something else.

And then, all of the sudden, I can play B. It just happens. My brain and my fingers have connected. My neural pathways have risen to the glorious place on high that shouts “LET THERE BE B!”.

Magic.

So, the thing is, at no point is my emotional brain involved.

I don’t curse the B chord. Not much anyway. I don’t think about the rest of the chords that I might never be able to play. I don’t turn my Ukulele out into a paddock with other abandoned Ukulele’s while the Itty Bitty Shitty Committee has its way with me, convincing me that I am utterly useless.

I just let myself learn.

There’s magic in letting yourself learn. You are supposed to repeatedly not get it right. In fact, your brain relies on it. You might see the failure, but your brain sees the learning.

It says, thank you! Now we can adjust. Now we can tweak. Now we can practice again.

Until one day, you hear “LET THERE BE B!!!”

And the thing that happens that you’ve let not happen time and time again takes up residence in your body, and now you can play.

Onwards.

❤️ Jane

And to answer your question: yes, this will be the photo I’m using to submit to my agent in Nashville (NB: if you are an agent in Nashville I don’t have one yet).

The thing with much of what I’m teaching now is that it’s not really a quick fix. I’m cool with that. I’m not sure anything that lasts is.

There are definitely things that bring relief- temporary or even slightly longer- but to really get to the good stuff, you have to fossick around a bit and you actually have to commit and work at things.

That’s the reality.

When people ping me their questions via email or messenger, I talk to them about my process and I tell them the thoughts and methodologies behind why I do what I do. And sometimes, people respond, well, that sounds kinda hard.

“Hard” in and of itself is very subjective, but I always think, well, isn’t everything.

You have to pick the right kind of hard for you.

Doing the work to unravel patterns of behavior, change things up or get yourself in a position where you are more responsive and adaptive to what life throws at you does take something.

That might seem hard, but what seems way harder to me is the opposite; getting buffeted around by emotions and patterns that make you feel like you have no control over your experience.

At the end of the day, you have to choose your hard.

Training your horse requires commitment, patience, and even when we love it, can be hard.

Training yourself calls for the same.

And as much as we like to complicate it, what’s required is simple. Learning, applying, observing, noticing, adjusting, repeating. At the base of it, that’s all we are required to do.

So, we have to pick the right kind of hard for us. The one we are in control of. The right kind of hard for you.

Onwards.

❤️ Jane

I’ve got to reading another book recently called The Electricity Of Every Living Thing. It’s by Katherine May- you might remember a couple of posts ago I referred to another book of hers called Wintering. Well, the other night I was all in a huff whilst suffering from a book hangover (that horrible feeling when you’ve just finished reading something really super fabulous and then you enter a period of mourning on the final page) when my Kindle read my mind and said, seeing as though you have read this (cue the book Wintering), we think you might like this.

Because I’m easy as 1,2,3 when it comes to being convinced of a good book (and in my defense, having a book hangover puts you in a vulnerable position) I clicked buy and went on my merry book-guzzling way.

Over the course of our time together, Katherine describes her bubble. She describes how she feels other people as a form of electricity, and as a child, even saw people’s moods as different colors. At one point, she went to see a meditation teacher who told her that her aura filled the whole room (she finds these types of descriptions repellant for the most part), but then he went on to say that her need for personal space was “Queenly”; that she would be able to feel immediately when someone broached her zone.

In her words, it was the first time anyone had described her sensitivities as something to be respected. As Queenly. As a gift.

She then said:

Imagine if, instead (of ignoring people’s needs), it was considered a basic politeness to observe other people’s responses to our social overtures, and adjust accordingly. Imagine if we accepted that there are a whole range of personalities out there and that one size does not fit all”.

I loved this. I’m sure Katherine never dreamed of her considerations being likened to horse behavior, but in my head, that’s what I’ve done.

Imagine, if for ourselves and our horses, their need, our need for space, was seen a Queenly and Kingly need. One of sovereignty. And if we, ourselves, saw it as such, how it would change our perception of the world.

Onwards.

❤️ Jane

p.s. My friend Em made me this crown. I thought it deserved its own Queenly moment.

I was told once that failure is nothing more than a blind spot in our awareness where new information can enter. I love this definition.

When we think of failure this way (if, indeed, there is such a thing in the first place), we can reclaim, renegotiate and reconfigure what failure means to us.

Failure for many of us is something not working out the way that we planned, hoped, or “needed” it to. And this is where things start to go a little funky.

Instead of observing, reorganizing, and reapplying ourselves based on the information we received, we dive deep into our emotional brain. We diagnose, get swallowed by the sensation or feeling that the outcome produced, and we use this as evidence of our abilities, both now and in the future.

It’s no good, we tell ourselves. I’m not cut out for this.

Ugh, I bombed again. I’m never going to get this right.

We fall back into the past, back into our reflexive patterns.

So, let’s flip it. “Failure” or perceived failure is just us visiting territory we haven’t adventured to before.

It’s a space that knowledge can now enter into.

An opening in our awareness where new possibilities can live.

Onwards.

❤️ Jane

If I have the belief that there is a right way to do something, I’ve eliminated all possibilities for learning.

My quest for “right-ness” can only ever be based on comparatives; we compare this action we are taking or want to take with an action we have taken in the past OR we compare that same action to the action or idea of someone or something else.

In both of those situations, my brain is no longer responding to present moment sensory input; instead, I’m responding to input, sensation, and experience that lives in the past. I am now in my head and out of my body.

From this place, I can only operate reflexively.

Simply put, the brain learns everything in movement, through the process of trial and error. If I only ever do something in a controlled way or “correctly”, I can never learn new motor patterning.

Learning occurs when we are responding to real-time sensory information and allowing the body to choose the most adaptive response to what is happening. I have an intention that I allow to express through my body, and I observe the response as and when it is happening.

The outcome is neither good nor bad; it just is what it is. And I try a new action, a new process based on the feedback it gives me.

Let go of the idea of “right-ness”. It can only ever exist as something that came before.

Onwards.

❤️ Jane

I’ve been playing with this definition of resistance for myself.

If I understand learning to be a releasing of old patterns as much as it is embracing new ones, I can ask…

What behaviour am I holding onto…

What practice or method have I got stuck on…

In what way is holding onto this way of being serving me…

What is showing up here that I’m unwilling to let go of?

And perhaps beyond that:

Am I willing to release my grasp to see what lives on the other side of it?

Sometimes yes, sometimes no.

Always good questions regardless.

Onwards.

❤️ Jane

On Saturday, it began again. I went outside, grabbed the halters, and one by one, I worked all three of my horses in the arena.

It’s been three months since I’ve done that. And while I didn’t slide into the period of rest gracefully- each one of them had physical niggles from one thing or another that made me decide that rest was the best thing- I can see now on reflection that the decision was a good one.

And herein lies the curiosity: I was nervous to start back up again. I wasn’t nervous of my horses, or nervous of my riding. I was nervous of my knowledge- or perhaps better stated, my perceived lack of it.

I didn’t want to cause harm. And my desire to work in a more precise way- to learn more about biomechanics and the likes- had frozen me in space as I grappled with the amount of information out there and the seeming lack of it in my brainspace.

This situation- this overwhelm- is something that I hear about a lot. We are blessed with an abundance of knowledge at our fingertips, and we are cursed with an abundance of knowledge at our fingertips.

So, let’s think of it this way:

When this knowledge lives in our head and not in our body, we find ourselves stuck.

No matter how much book knowledge we have, the only knowledge that is useful is the knowledge we take and translate into action.

With this in mind:

• I have a choice to do something, try something, practice something based on my current understandings
• The intention to practice that choice involves actually activating it in my body. Trying the thing, applying the aid; taking the choice and bringing it alive through my bodily action
• The observation phase is my brain asking me, did that work out? Was the result I gained aligned with my intention?
• My brain then maps the action to get me closer to my intention next time

When we find ourselves in overwhelm, we are drowning in the Choice phase. Moving out of it involves disconnecting from the idea that there is ever any set result we are after, and instead practicing the with the information we have, observing and then readjusting as necessary.

If you stay observant and curious, if you facilitate rather than force, you are good.

But for as long as knowledge only lives in our heads, it’s of no use to us. Take what you DO know and apply it. Let it live out through you and lead you on to the next step based on the information that you gather.

Onwards.

❤️ Jane

Those of us in the southern hemisphere are noticing the days becoming gradually shorter and the light change from a white milky brightness to a much softer gold. This weekend, the clocks change also, ending any delusions that I might be trying to hold onto that summer could somehow linger.

In the past, I have found myself to be “seasonally resistant” (I made up that term just now), which basically means I don’t want it to become winter and find myself constantly yearning for summer and sunshine. I’ve noticed a curious thing in myself though in that the more accepting I am of my own seasons- my moods, emotions, experiences- the more accepting I am of the seasons shifting around me. And I’ve decided that my practice is just to let myself “be in winter” and see what comes of it.

I had a “moment” that stuck with me a little while back when talking with someone I was working with. Their horse had recently passed away and they had enlisted the help of an animal communicator to help them make sense of things. They asked them to pass on their apologies for the harsh winters they had been made to endure in their part of the world, and what was communicated back was that it had instead been an honour. To be outside to see the moon rise and the earth move through her cycles.

That hit me in the heartstrings.

I’m not trying to romanticise what I know has its inherently tough moments and I also speak from a place of privilege with warmth and food and shelter- where I can make a choice to engage with the outside world or not. Instead, I’m letting myself be moved by the seasons instead of holding on madly to the previous, warmer version.

I read “Wintering” recently by Katherine May (a truly beautiful book) and she speaks of how the more nature-based traditions have rituals based on the seasons and cycles; and how what this afforded people was “markers” on the calendar that broke the season down into parts and provided mental and emotional comfort in the darker months that the cycles were indeed continuing to move through. It’s prompted me to think of the role of ritual in my own life (I don’t have any formal rituals that spring to mind) and how I could engage in something similar.

What are your thoughts? Do you embrace winter? Or find yourself trudging through?

Onwards.

❤️ Jane

Who’s had a chance to listen to this week’s podcast?

I’ve plucked this quote out of the conversation because whether or not the actual subject matter is relevant for you right now- bringing your horse back into work after a break- this particular part certainly is.

Here it is for you:

As soon as we move into comparison (be that comparing one experience to the next, or our experience to someone else’s) we activate our sympathetic nervous system. As soon as we invest in the story and the labels instead of the experience in real-time, we activate our sympathetic nervous system.

How so?

Well, all of the above require that we reach into our emotional brain. Our emotional brain can only ever make sense of things based on past experiences- in our search to understand this moment, we seek out experiences that are similar or hold a likeness from the past.

Every thought and emotion that we experience has a motor pattern attached to it. Consequently, as soon as we move our attention away from observation and into a thought or experience from the past, we activate the same motor pattern attached to it.

Sympathetic responses are reflexive responses. Investing in the story or comparison pulls us out of the ability to pattern a new response.

With that in mind, how often do you find yourself buying into the story? And as you move throughout your day, how often do fall into the comparison trap?

Observe yourself over the next 24 hours and see what comes up.

Did you listen to the podcast? I’d love to hear your thoughts!

❤️ Jane

Changing your future experience is simply a matter of paying attention to your present experience.

If it’s change you are seeking, figure out how to make that happen in the moment you are in and let the future moments take care of themselves.

❤️ Jane

“I just want to get back to normal”

A sentence that I hear all the time. But in this instance what truly does normal mean?

Normal for most of us means a time in our life when we felt things were easier than what we perceive them to be now.

Normal is before the accident.

Normal is before the grief.

Normal is when I didn’t feel this pain.

Normal is when I didn’t feel this anxiety.

So many versions of normal.

The thing about normal is that it can only ever represent the best of before. Normal, then, can only exist for us as a comparative; a state of being that we have landed on as the ideal when we compare it to our library of experiences.

Comparison is the love child of a system that is sitting in sympathetic. When we compare, we automatically activate our emotional brain. When we activate our emotional brain, we pull ourselves into the past. From that place, “normal” can only ever be the repeat of an experience that existed before.

So, if you find yourself wishing things were how they were before, remind yourself of this. A new normal is possible for you. One that your body and mind has yet to experience. And in order to allow yourself to step into that, you have to be willing to let go of every other normal that came before.

Onwards.

❤️ Jane

I was making up horse feed the other day, listening to the radio, and they were discussing various the various funding cuts and allocations being made to different things in light of the different economic concerns around Covid. This particular interview centered on funding cuts to the arts and resulted in a fairly animated discussion around what people considered to be “essential services” and where money should be channeled when things are a bit tight on the ground.

A couple of the speakers were quite dismissive of the “necessity” of the arts (NB: my opinion on this couldn’t be more different), which got me thinking about what we attach value to in our industrialised society, and what is considered purposeful. So, for the fun of it, let’s take something like knitting and playing the guitar and place them under the microscope of what’s happening at the level of the brain when we engage in these activities.

Studies from Eric Kandel, a neuroscientist, tell us that just as you can train yourself to be afraid (through the experience of trauma), you can also train yourself to feel safe.

The striatum, which is part of the basal ganglia in the brain, is activated during safety and reward and feeling good generally and is also activated when we learn a new skill, or by performing organized, patterned activities. Aside from other benefits, it’s thought that the physical process of patterned, repetitive activities activate the striatum, creating a feeling of safety, and reorganizing the pathways of our brain that create disorder and unrest.

It also satiates our pleasure/ reward system; when knitting or playing music, sometimes it “works” and sometimes it doesn’t. Unpredictable rewards most effectively raise dopamine levels in the brain that influences our entire system as a whole. It’s satisfying, pleasure- inducing and helps us organize potentially chaotic thoughts.

If there was ever an argument against it, I would like to throw this on the table as the argument for.

Onwards.

❤️ Jane

Something that you hear a lot around discussion of the nervous system are the terms regulation and dysregulation (and if you’ve read my posts or listened to my podcasts for any length of time, you will know these to be words that I use frequently myself). The truth of it is, however, that there really is no such thing as dysregulation.

There’s no such thing as a dysregulated body.

There’s no such thing as a dysregulated system.

How so? Well, the unconscious brain holds wisdom that extends well beyond our conscious awareness. Every choice that it makes- the choice to align our bones a specific way, move in a specific way, respond in a specific way- is a reflection of the most regulated response available to it in that moment.

Granted, our responses might not be as adaptive or as fluid as we would like. But within the capacity of what information is available and what is possible in that moment according to your unconscious, how the body presents chooses to respond is the most regulated response for that moment in time.

The use of the term “dysregulation” is a reflection of us comparing ourselves to an ideal. And there is standard for this. What is ideal for you and ideal for me from moment to moment presents very differently.

What we are ultimately aiming for is responsiveness, and beyond that, the ability to trust that the processes of the body are and always have been working in our best interest.

Onwards.

❤️ Jane

What if every moment you find yourself in is not about having to fix yourself or get better or be better…

What if instead it was about living the fullest version of life that’s available for you within the parameters of what’s possible now?

Your version of life that fits the situation now.

I find that to be a softening thought.

Onwards.

❤️ Jane

Micro-dosing is my new favourite word.

I don’t use it in relation to medication. Instead, I think of micro-dosing as a means to increase vitality and resilience and as a way to learn to stay with uncomfortable experience before it grows bigger than the edges of your skin.

If you find something challenging, micro-dose.

Before you push that emotion to the side; before you distract yourself or engage in the activity that pulls you out of the repair… learn to notice how your body responds as it edges towards threshold.

What are your patterns? Where does your mind and body take you?

And are you able to stay with it- to give more space to the feeling, to allow for it, to stay grounded in the midst of it- so you stay with it long enough to experience the transformation on the other side of it?

And if you need to leave- to move away from what is happening, physically, emotionally or both- can you do so with consciousness and connection, rather than in haste?

Moving away from habitual self-abandonment and instead inviting responsiveness.

Onwards.

❤️ Jane

I get a lot of questions asking if my programs are suitable for someone who isn’t currently riding, is returning from injury, is “just” working with their horse on the ground. And the answer is always and emphatically, absolutely.

The thing is that even if we identify as having challenges that are directed related to an experience in the saddle, our particular brand of struggle will be making itself known in many other ways.

Anxiety, if we’ve come to identify that are somewhat of a “feature” for us, is very rarely contained to a singular experience in our life. It leaks in to all other areas.

If we find ourselves losing our tempers or consistently frustrated, I can lay money on the fact that’s not just happening in the arena.

And if we feel like we’ve lost a sense of ourselves and feel fragile and afraid, that same loss of agency is not compartmentalized.

The skills that I work with have their practice grounds in all areas of life. As we increase our capacity overall, we find our resilience and robustness hold weights in situations and circumstances that we never expected to be positively impacted.

We get to play wherever we find ourselves standing.

Onwards.

❤️ Jane

We are all products of so many things. The school systems we were a part of. The cultures we grew up in. Our particular family unit and dynamic and what that created for us. And all of these things inform how we approach things.

The same is true for the schools of thought that we were introduced to when it comes to working with our horses, and even how we approach a singular session together with them.

For many riders I work have an unconscious map of a training session that follows along a very similar line. It goes something like this:

• {Optional} Ground-work/ in hand work / lunging
• Get on and warm up
• The training from this point follows a very linear path than becomes increasing challenging as the session progresses
• Session ends and we cool down

It also tells us that if we get on, we stay on. That if we find something too much and have to stop, that’s the end of it. That working on the ground is somehow inferior to the work that we do in the saddle.

I know this because I work with people that feel like they have failed if they have to do any of the above, or aren’t at the point where for whatever reason, their work together with their horse doesn’t involve ridden work.

So let’s lay it out there. There are no actual rules. With the exception of needing to make sure your horse is physically prepared for what follows, a session can look however you want. However. You. Want.

You can get on, and if that’s not working, get off again.

You can just work on the ground.

You can start with in hand work, move to under saddle and then go back to in hand.

You can take long rests.

Training shouldn’t be an endless endurance test. There are peaks and troughs. Rest and activation. And we need to participate actively in both.

Onwards.

❤️ Jane

A lot of what we perceive as “personal problems” or “weaknesses” are more often than not explainable reactions and responses that we lack context and understanding for.

The manifestations of traumatic stress are primary examples of this- let’s use free floating anxiety (that pervasive feeling of anxiety that creeps up in seemingly disconnected moments) as our case and point.

In this instance, we have three primary options that could help us make more sense of what we are experiencing:

Possibility 1: The sensations your body is communicating to you is a call to pay attention. They are instinctual and intuitive messengers tapping on the door and saying that there is something that you need to notice and prepare for.

Possibility 2: The anxiety is a symptom of a nervous system in a state of dysregulation and discombobulation. Over time, for whatever reason, your baseline has shifted and you are finding yourself consistently living outside your window of capacity. Life, for the moment at least, feels bigger than the edges of your skin, and your thoughts mirror where it is your nervous system is sitting.

Possibility 3: What you are experiencing is the product of traumatic stress (that ties in closely to what we were talking about in the previous option). A combination of incomplete stress cycles and seemingly random spikes of emotion (thank you implicit and unconscious memories!) that leaves you living in the midst of a seemingly disconnected and decontextualized experience.

All three are understandable. All three are figureoutable. All three are workable.

And what’s more, understanding that can liberate you from internalising and personalising what is instead a very explainable pattern of the body and mind. You just have to know a little bit about how it works.

Onwards.

❤️ Jane

When it comes to working with my own horses (and really, we can expand that out to encompass life generally), I don’t set goals anymore.

I know that saying this can cause the odd person to mildly freak out and equate the idea of not having goals with being completely directionless.

For others who like to have clearly outlined plan, the thought of it might cause some hot sweats.

And so, when I had a question come in like the one I’m about to share with you, I thought it would be a good opportunity to outline how I do work and how that fits in with my overall training ethos:

“How do you fuse together listening to what your horse wants and actually making progress together? Or getting ahead with some of your training goals?”

First up, training or progress that doesn’t hold the welfare and concerns of the horse in the highest regard is not training or progress. Dare I say it but… we have normalized a lot of situations that are essentially abusive to the horse in the pursuit of human goals, and it’s not something that I am interested in participating in. It’s kind of like saying, how do I take into account what my partner wants but still have the relationship of my dreams?

Well, the relationship of your dreams should be mutually inclusive of your partners hopes and desires and if it’s not, you might as well be sharing your life with a carefully curated Instagram profile.

When I think about working together with my horse, I have an overall aspiration of the quality of feel and communication that I want us to create together, and my feeling is that once we have the foundations established, we can shapeshift into any direction that we wish. If I have something in mind that I would like to aim for- a competition, a clinic, a particular movement- then I can hold it in my mind without getting attached to it. After all, who knows what might make itself known between the place I am now and then that I couldn’t possibly have conceived of within the current position I find myself in?

The crux of it comes down to this. You can have your goal or an outcome that you are heading towards for as long as it doesn’t compromise what’s important to you.

What’s Important To Me is something that I am re-establishing every session. Communication & connection. These are my What’s Important To Me’s. If any training I’m involving myself in causes me to lose those then it’s game off until we get them back.

Because without them, it’s not progress or movement forwards for anyone. It’s just you ticking boxes on a theoretical timesheet that has nothing to do with the reality of what’s in front of you.

And ain’t no one got time for that.

Onwards.

❤️ Jane

There’s a lot of discussion around relaxing and releasing tension- but not so much about what we are releasing into. The fact is that tension is held in the body, heart and mind for a reason- it’s protective- and in order for that to be released, there needs to be a container of support that allows that unfolding to occur.

Safety is the first pre-requisite. If we think of tension as a form of holding and contracting then releasing requires the understanding that there are resources that can be drawn on that can safely hold what comes up when we let go.

Containment is the second. If we think of relaxing and releasing as expanding and opening then doing so requires that we have enough of a safety net to break the free fall and ensure we are adequately supported.

Before seeking release yourself or before asking it of your horse ask, for what purpose is this tension being held?

And am I creating the circumstances that make releasing it the more attractive option?

Onwards.

❤️ Jane

How’s this for something to practice?

When it comes to evaluating or reflecting on a training session, it’s easy to become outwardly focused.

“My horse did this…”

“They said this and it caused me to do this….”

“This happened because of this situation/person/scenario and as a consequence, I had no choice but to do ‘x’”

For the next 24 hours, see if you can evaluate any training sessions or interactions that you have with your horse and remain entirely self-focused throughout.

An outward-focused example:

“Most of the ride was ok, but he spooked at something unknown in the bushes down the far end of the arena and for the rest of the session, we worked on emptying out the tension. He was a bit behind my leg too- it felt like he was sucking back when I was asking him to go forward- and he definitely had a tendency to drop his shoulder when we were going to the right.”

A self-focused example:

“I needed to be more aware of where I was holding tension and to make sure that any tension he was holding wasn’t originating from or being mirrored in my own body. At times, I let my focus get ahead of me and I became more concerned about what was concerning him, rather than focusing on what I could do to facilitate relaxation. Overall, I’m going to practice doing less and seeing if that decreases the resistance to forward and make sure I’m evenly placed in the saddle to encourage that straightness in him also.”

Being self-focused brings your attention back to your ultimate point of influence: yourself. It also ensures that you are operating from a place of full responsibility and with enough discernment to understand that you are always a primary agent in the equation.

Onwards.

❤️Jane

My relationship to rest is such a curiosity to me. I am in the enviable position of being passionate about the work I do and the various aspects that take up my life as a whole. This means that it’s easy to be swallowed by the various aspects of my existence that contribute to all of those pieces, the propulsive energy that they create often leading to a place that sees limited opportunities for rest.

Free moments of time are seen as opportunities to devour that training video I’ve been meaning to watch, that book I had wanted to read; to create that thing I wanted to create, to answer that question, or to ask one. To play with my horses.

But along the way, all of these well-intentioned time expanders mean that stepping off the wheel of activity- of doing something- becomes a curious phenomenon. In the space created by the gaps, I notice the loudness of all the messages that tell us that rest is not productive. That it’s not allowed. That to rest for anything longer than the stock standard, pre-approved amount *says* something about us. And the something that it says is never good.

Some of you reading this will say, that’s why I meditate! But still, even meditation is an activity with a purpose, even if that purpose is inaction in and of itself.

These days, to rest can feel similar to falling into a crack. Around you, everyone is going about their business. And when you go about your business together, you experience a subliminal kinship in the momentum of your activity.

Rest, or to take rest, however, feels solitary. It means for a moment you’ve pressed pause on your participation in the expected events of the world and now you are a watcher. You have time to notice the seasons of emotion and how quickly one can move from winter to spring if you don’t add your opinion or investment to it.

You notice how tidal our movements are, from waking up to being swept out to work, to being returned to shore at home again.

Rest puts you back in sync, but it also requires that you disengage from what’s expected, what’s required and what’s asked of you. And it’s because of that we rest can hold some discomfort as it carries the tensions between complete surrender to observation and the training we’ve undergone that tells us what it means to be an acceptable human.

I hung my body over the fence yesterday and watched my horses. They are equal participants in rest and activity. They move seamlessly between both.

The nature of productive rest and my participation in it. Something I’m allowing myself to be embraced by more and more.

Onwards.

❤️ Jane