Category: The (almost kinda) Daily

This morning, when I sat down to write, I fell into a familiar feeling that sometimes meets me when I’m thinking of what to share. My mind runs with the questions that I’ve been asked over the last few days and washes round with a spin cycle of possible solutions, and then, on occasions like today, the lotto draw of exactly which question and what answer to pick is not exactly clear. When I’m met with that lack of clarity, I’ve come to realize that today is not the day for an instructional, but for beauty finding. So, I’ll share this with you instead.

A little while back, I’m sitting in a workshop exploration ancestry, gender and somatics. We are being told to write and I’m feeling a little wiggy about it. I know this wiggy feeling- it’s the one that comes when I’m trying to get something “right”. It’s really easy to feel like you have nothing to say, even though that’s not actually the case. This feeling feels like that.

The thing with this writing is that it’s supposed to be for nothing and no one and yet there I find myself writing for someone… and that someone is the judge of whether or not my post is going to get a like or a love or a laugh or any other measure of approval that I find myself looking for from unknown sources.

So, I ask myself, if you were to give yourself advice about this, what would that advice be? How would you navigate your way around this?

If you were asked to really sink in and examine what it is that is getting in your way, what is stopping the words, how would you find a start point?

And I found the words saying…

Dear child, if you are searching for your own truth, for the start point that’s not clear, reach back. You have may have to reach back further than you realise but your hand will always grab onto a tree root that is anchored in the soil. And under that same tree has sat the child of your past who did not need to spend her days for others, as the others and the means simply didn’t exist yet.

Instead, she spent her day eating the stars.

She spent her day marveling at the vastness of the universe that was too much and too big to fit within the edges of her skin.

She spent her time thinking about all of the extremes, and how the confines of her mind could not possibly hold all that she was meant for.

So, if the you today is stuck or overwhelmed or looking too much to the outside, tell her to reach back. Reach back and begin from that place.

Onwards.

❤️Jane

p.s. This photo is from a week or so ago when we woke up and saw the shafts of sun beaming through the trees on the hills above us. I had to pause for a few moments to appreciate how beautiful it was and my husband managed to capture this before the sun’s rays shifted their focus.

So many of us have a complicated relationship with sensation, energy, and activation in the body, meaning that any time we feel the stirring of energy in our belly or a little bit of something-something coursing through our veins, we automatically feel concerned or worried. In other words, we take any indication of aliveness in our system as a warning signal that sets off the smoke alarm in our brain.

If we want to take it a bit further, sensation, in and of itself, is a very subjective experience. The registration of sensation in the system is tied to the meaning we attach to it and the story we create behind it. If we understand then that everyone thought we have and every emotion we experience has a corresponding motor pattern in the body, it’s easy to see how easily we can carry the past forward.

The formula is:

Sensation (which in and of itself is a present moment awareness of something that has occurred in the past, at least neurologically speaking) + thought about the sensation (which we can only create through referencing a past experience) = motor pattern that has tied into those two things previously.

How does this affect us?

Well first up, it means for as long as we are focused predominantly on sensation, we are always going to be recreating our past experiences. In fact, the only way that our brain can make sense of sensation is to compare it to something that has already occurred- hello groundhog day- which then triggers the motor pattern which then sends us only a familiar loop.

Secondly, what usually happens is that we tend to have very little tolerance or capacity to handle bigger energy, which means that when we do register it, it sends us into a default response of flight, fight, freeze, or shutdown.

Thirdly, if we are coupling together the same energy with feelings of concern, life and riding are always going to have finite possibilities. You find yourself bouncing within your limited range and struggling to extend the limits of your comfort zone by even a hairbreadth.

So much of the work I do involves resensitising ourselves to the different forms of activation and what they actually mean- parsing apart our habitual responses and separating them out- because it’s not all a signal that you are heading in the wrong direction. In fact, most of the time, it isn’t.

Being uncomfortable doesn’t mean you are necessarily heading in the wrong direction.

Onwards.

❤️ Jane

Any resistance that you have in your mind has a corresponding pattern in the body.

If you are finding that you have no idea where to start.

If you feel stuck or blocked.

If there feels like no progression…

Forget for a moment your solution finding ways that call you to move beyond what’s showing up right now and instead get to intimately know the point that you find yourself at.

Where you are is an opportunity to deeply know your start point. We don’t get to “choose” the perfect start point; it’s simply the place that we find ourselves now.

Instead we can ask…

How does the position I find myself in show up in my body?

An invitation to get intimate with your particular brand of resistance.

What do I need to let go of in order to take the next step?

What are all the ways that I am trying not to be here right now?

Space clearing happens when we allow ourselves to be whatever we are in this moment.

And in that space, the next step comes to us rather than us searching blindly for it.

Onwards.

❤️ Jane

If there’s one thing that I am continually reminding myself of, it’s that you have to play the long game.

The long game is not about goals, destinations, or ultimate outcomes. Instead, it’s a reminder that what you are doing now is about more than “today’s ride” or even “the next ride”. It’s the ability to zoom out and see where you are on the map currently in the overall expanse of everything that has come before and everything that you hope will come after.

When things become challenging in the moment– maybe your horse gets injured (or you do); maybe things are a bit wonky in training; maybe there’s a point that you feel stuck on—the details can draw you in and consume you. From that place, from that place of contraction, it’s hard to search for the doors that are open; it’s hard to seek out possibility or consider an alternative route from the one that you decided on. You are drowning in the detail.

It’s hard to ask yourself more beautiful questions beyond “why is this happening?” and “what are we going to do now?”.

If you find yourself in that spot, reminding yourself of your long game is a necessary transition to make. It lets you take a breath out. Your shoulders will drop. Your perspective will return.

The long game will tell you, it’s ok. This is only a page in a book made up of thousands.

Let’s find the doors that are open to us right now. Who can we reach out to for help? What do we need to know to get us moving forward? What’s the closest step we can take?

Long game focus is a necessary place to rest in for short term stability.

Onwards.

❤️Jane

You know, Dee, I’ve realized something. I used to think that to be mentally strong meant that you didn’t deviate from the plan. That you didn’t let your focus be interrupted. That you could decide what it is you wanted and stay true to that course. But you know what? I’ve changed my mind.

I know, replied Dee enigmatically. What do you think now?

I think, I told him, that the ultimate form of strength is shown in kindness. That the real art is being in life and remaining kind to yourself. That may be the hardest thing of all.

Yes, Dee says, it is.

We paused for a moment.

You know, he continued, it may be that some confuse being kind to oneself as self-indulgence but actually it’s a revolution.

A revolution? I ask.

Yes, he says. When there are so many ways to be called to complain, denigrate or despise to continue to practice kindness is really the ultimate radical act. It takes bravery to expand into kindness when it’s easier to shrink into despair.

I think you’re right, I tell him. I think you’re right.

❤️Jane

When you think of being calm and centered, what comes up for you?

How do you picture this experience in your mind’s eye? How do those words land in your body?

The more conversations I have around this, the more I notice that people equate quiet energy with a static body.

And maybe this is the start point. But remember— the body can be moving dynamically and gymnastically and still embody calmness.

Centered energy has no relationship to how fast your body, or your horse’s body is moving through space.

Calm and centered energy is dynamic energy. It’s a state of readiness.

It says:

If I need to add energy to this situation, I am available for that.

And if I need to lower energy in this situation, it’s possible for me to move in that direction on the continuum also.

Being calm and centered is a state of anti-anticipation.

It doesn’t seek out a movement in a certain direction or foresee it. But it can move in any which way as and when it’s required.

Onwards.

❤️ Jane

I thought I would share a little story with you, because I’ve had a couple of 1:1 sessions with people lately who needed to hear this, and chances are there might be someone else out there who could use it too.

If you are new to following me, this here is my glorious pony Dee. I say pony but he’s actually around 17hh, and appears by all assessments not to have finished growing yet.

Dee is the first horse I have started under saddle myself, and the decision to do so was a big deal for me. For the first…hmm, I would say 18 months, our rides were satisfying but not what I would describe as enjoyable. Most of every ride I had to continuously train myself to keep my focus in the moment; to only go as far as the next good step and to ask for help early, frequently, and often (the key to not staying stuck).

Under saddle he was (is) forward, sensitive, and at times, unbalanced. All to be expected.

I also had to decouple the associations that I had with energy in my body to realise that feeling some activation in my belly and chest was not always a warning signal and a cause for concern; it was simply my body preparing me to do hard things and to make sure I was on my game.

Every time I could, I showed up. I prioritised riding Dee first so if anything else came up, we had our ride in.

For many, many days and months this is what we did. And then, the shift came. For the last little while, I have noticed my body feels peaceful when we ride. The jangling has gone.

Any moments of upset on his behalf cause me to laugh and croon to him, to tell him he’s ok. And we are. We really are ok.

Today, I caught myself singing as we trained. Not deliberately. Not as a means to calm myself down. I just felt so happy riding it was spilling out of me.

We are still training the basics. We are still early in our journey. There is still so much adventuring to do. I know we’ll have our moments.

But it’s nice to connect the dots looking backwards. And to think of the days where I forced myself outside, forced myself to get on. When I took a moment and wondered if this whole process really was for me.

It was just all necessary moments for the song to find us. And I’m really glad it has.

Onwards.

❤️ Jane

In the podcast that was sent out today, I talked about how my horsemanship for me has become a practice in everyday activism.

As I work to gain better understandings of my horse, I have gained better understandings of myself.

As I work to ground and center myself in the midst of big experiences and emotions, I am able to access this as a transferable quality that makes itself known in every other area of my life.

As a consequence, the story that I’m about to share with you here becomes relevant in this space as well.

I recently have been part of a trauma training that incorporated some different modalities. There were about 12 of us in the group, a couple of women who identified as queer and another who was gender non-binary.

Over the course of our training, one of the outsourced teachers (who was separate from the main organizer/teacher) used some language that caused upset for the gender non-binary member of the group. They were incredibly brave in vocalizing this and the leader of the session had the opportunity to correct her languaging. She chose not to.

Changing a single word would have made them comfortable to stay, and yet this felt beyond the ability of the coach to extend to them.

The person in question then chose to leave the group.

Witnessing this was incredibly confronting and upsetting- everyone had some unpacking to do after and it’s something I continue to throw around my mind. At the same time, it was also inspiring- the strength it takes to advocate for yourself in those situations cannot be underestimated. I take my hat off to them.

And so I wanted to say…I recognise the challenges that marginalised groups face every day, and I consider part of my work as breaking down systems of oppression in myself, my horses, and those around me. Naturally, my own circumstances mean that I will be blind to many things that I can’t know until I know. This got me thinking about the times I may have unknowingly caused exclusivity or otherwise in the way that I have framed things, and I’m deeply sorry if that’s the case.

I have shared this in my membership group but it has a place here also. I share this not in the expectation of anyone who might feel this is relevant to you coming forward, or to expect you to educate me should I unknowingly slip up. It’s more to say that if I do use language or do something that creates the feeling of exclusion and you want to tell me, you are free to do so.

I am open to being corrected and doing better, and all platforms that fall under my wing- be that on social media or paid groups that I run- are inclusive spaces for everyone regardless of colour, creed, gender, or orientation.

It’s part of the work, and my work.

❤️ Jane

Just before Christmas, I jumped on the phone to talk to my friend, and she asked the standard question we all do in those moments:

 How are you?

 Not being one for small talk, I told her the truth.

 “Well”, I said, “I actually feel a bit down.”

 I paused for a minute and then went on.

 “But you know what? I don’t actually think there’s anything wrong with that. I more think what is happening is I’m going through an introspective phase- a few things are reconfiguring. And basically, my inside world is out of sync with the speed we are required to move at on the outside. If I had full choice right now, I would cocoon myself away. I would rest and read. But my reality is I have small children and horses, a business, and people who rely on me that I have to keep showing up for. I could easily think something’s wrong with me, but I think what’s really hard is that my inside wants to run at a different pace to the outside. And sometimes it’s tricky to know how to honour both.”

 As soon as I said it, I knew it to be true.

I’m having conversations frequently with people who are beating themselves up or looking for ways to “fix” themselves, simply because in that moment they don’t feel as sunny, buoyant, or productive as they’ve been trained to believe they “should be”.

Think of it this way: Nature moves in cycles. We have the extroverted summer and the productive spring. We have the introspective, deep slowing of winter and the gentle easing down of Autumn or Fall. Nature participates in all of these knowing that each is necessary for the other.

We humans, however- at least in the cultures and the societies that most of us move in- are expected to be existing in an eternal spring and summer. We’ve become disconnected to the point where the experience of winter or autumn in our internal world leads us to believe there is something wrong with us as we marinate in guilt about our lack of ability to “get out there and do”.

What we want is to participate in the expansion and contraction. To be available for the blooming and for the rest. And to find ways to build those into our experience.

Is it easy when everything around us is making demands on us, and holding us to ridiculous and unattainable standards? No.

 But even the awareness is a liberation.

 You aren’t a puzzle to be fixed. You are part of nature and should be honoured as such.

 Onwards. 

❤️ Jane

You can’t train a horse out of their horse-ness.

You can’t train a human out of their humanness.

Let’s think about spooking.

A question I get asked a lot (and I’m paraphrasing):

“How do I reset after my horse spooks? Once I’ve been upset by that, I find it hard to come back.”

This often runs in parallel to another question I see in horse training groups which is:

How do I stop my horse from spooking?

First up:

The startle response (which essentially is what a spook is) is not something you want anyone to be trained out of. The ability to startle is actually the first stage of sympathetic activation in the system and is a responsive and healthy reaction to something unexpected or surprising coming into our environment.

Presuming that we are moving from a place of relative balance, the startle or spook would look something like this:

• Something arises which gives me a temporary shock
• I orient towards the point of alarm visually whilst moving physically away from it
• I investigate and continue on (provided it’s nothing to be worried about)

This is very normal, healthy, and wanted.

What typically happens from a human perspective is that there is already a level of anxiety and the system prior to the spook occurring. Adding the energy of a spook onto a body and mind that already feels full up means that we have no residual capacity to process the energy, with the only felt option at that point being to get off or to remove ourselves from the situation altogether.

If we are riding with the physiology of concern (tight muscles, feeling worried, collapsed front) our orientation is also wired towards threat, meaning that we are both pre-empting and interpreting what are essentially neutral circumstances and events as potentially harmful to our well-being and safety. We, therefore, ride defensively, communicating to the horse our lack of ease, and signaling them that there is something to be concerned about as a consequence.

This same experience occurs for our horses in situations where we might describe them as “looking for things to be worried about or to spook at”. In fact, that is actually what they are doing. Their body, in a state of dysregulation, is feeling into their environment and looking out for things that might impact their safety. This creates a vicious cycle of jumpiness and feeling on edge as the energy of hypervigilance and concern builds.

In essence, our capacity informs how we cope with a spook, emotionally speaking. If our baseline is relatively easeful, we find it easy to come back.

If we identify with being anxious or hypervigilant, the level of activation present means we have a smaller window to work with to dissipate any external energy added.

The work then is to find a way to come back; to increase our capacity and to have resources and tools to dissipate the energy when we find it moving to a place that pulls us out of the ability to be present and effective.

Onwards.

❤️ Jane

Something for you to play with, should you fancy.

In my work, whenever I begin a discussion with someone and it’s clear to me that there’s a disconnect in the conversation, I’m curious to find out about the somatic resonance of the words I’m using.

What does that mean?

Well, words have an effect on us. They create a feeling of expansion or contraction. They land in our body in different ways for different people, depending on what our previous experiences have been and what we’ve come to associate with that topic.

For instance, (ironically) I don’t use the word confidence that much anymore. It’s a pretty loaded word that for many strikes an image of a certain kind of bravery that for many feels inaccessible.

I work with embodied dignity and integrity instead.

“Goal” is another example. Most people who sign up to work with me don’t have good feelings associated with the word “goal”. It feels heavy, overwhelming, restrictive.

Understanding the effect your phrasing is having on someone and choosing language that ensures you share the same start point is important. Words alone don’t guarantee that. It’s the feeling behind the word that provides the power.

Following on from this, I’ve also become curious about aspects of my language or phrasing that have their origins in either warfare or oppressive systems. When I started to be really conscious of this, it blew me away just how often metaphors of combat crept into my conversations.

Rally the troops..

Uphill battle…

A loaded conversation…

(Naturally, when I come to list examples, my mind goes totally blank!)

I ask myself, if one of my intentions is to cultivate ways of being that are about power to (the individual, our horses, each other) as opposed to power over; if I am seeking to be more compassionate and develop partnerships, what effect does using adversarial language have on me?

And beyond that, how as a society has war and violence become such a normalized part of our history that we have infused these daily terms into the way we describe things without actually realising?

It’s interesting to look at language that has roots in oppression also (sidenote: the origin of many words are points of contention but I figure if it’s easy to choose another, why rest on options with potentially harmful histories). These examples are used in sports frequently.

– Blacklisted: a tarnished reputation, a mark against someone that has associations with “black as bad” and “white as good” (thinking of whitelisted as the opposite)

– Sold down the river: Black slaves were literally “sold down the river” to plantation owners further south

– Uppity: A word used during racial segregation to describe black people not showing enough deference to their white counterparts.

I wonder how these words have lodged in our bodies and nervous systems; how they’ve become such an accepted part of our collective unconscious that they pop up so frequently in our day to day. And how they might affect a Person of Colour in ways that have sat outside my awareness.

And I wonder if our commitment is to moving differently- with ourselves, our horses, each other- whether we could be more selective about the language we use and choose words that truly exist in support of that.

Of course we can. We can always do better. We have a responsibility to do so.

Onwards.

❤️ Jane

What my horse has taught me about… dealing with confrontation.

Let’s start by defining what I mean by confrontation. Confrontation in the context of this conversation refers to any moment where you’re required to hold your ground in the midst of an opposing energy. That could look like…

• Having a conversation with someone and them disagreeing with what you’re saying
• Making a decision that you believe is in the best interest of you and your horse and having others around you chime in with their unwelcome thoughts that challenge what you are doing
• Finding yourself in a situation that you realize isn’t healthy for you and needing to get yourself out of it

Imagine then for a moment what it feels like to be in throes of a confronting experience. As you stand there…

• Your body registers a potential “threat”
• It creates a sympathetic response or activation in the system
• You feel a mobilization of energy

There are two options that are possible at this point (well, there are way more than two but for the sake of discussion, let’s keep it simple):

• You understand this energy increase as the natural response of your body to meet the moment
• The activation in your system automatically triggers a fear response, sending you into your “favourite” modus operandi in the face of discomfort or dis-ease, which will assume some variation of flight, freeze or shutdown.

In order for us to be able to negotiate confrontation effectively, two things need to happen.

1. We need to have a healthy and robust connection to the fight response. A healthy fight response is what allows us to connect to our backbone, to hold our own in the midst of discomfort, and to have a felt understanding of the basic essence of our humanity: I matter.
2. We need to be able to hold activation and energy in the system without it feeling unsafe, and consequently triggering a survival response. Many of us have coupled together with this sympathetic uprising with an automatic feeling of concern. This takes us out of our own agency and means we are no longer discerning about when to stay, when to leave, when to use our voice, and when perhaps the best option is to call it a day. We no longer get to choose; our body essentially takes over.

What I have described above is an essential piece of what I teach and what I practice. My horses have taught me all of this.

My work starting Dee and noticing my concern at various points has taught me that activation in my body is not necessarily something to be afraid of, but simply my entire being preparing to do something hard or that challenges me.

Nadia has shown me that I can create space in my body to allow energy to flow to ensure I stay active in the moment and don’t freeze up or shut down by letting things get stuck or contracted.

All have taught me how to separate out the responses of my body from the stories of my mind. And it continues to be a work in progress.

Working with horses can be a transactional process or a transformational one. For me, the joy exists in the latter.

Onwards.

❤️ Jane

When we feel safe, we play.

When we feel concerned, we control.

If you find yourself clinging to the need to control, seek out more play.

Onwards.

❤️ Jane

How about this?

How you feel about your body is learned.

Those parts that you don’t like?

You learned to think of them that way.

Those parts that you desperately wish you could change?

You learned that too.

That thing you never let yourself wear because it highlights (or lowlights) something that you think is better hidden away?

Yup. You learned that.

Let’s go deeper.

That emotion you feel sometimes that’s embarrassing or shameful?

You learned that.

That thing you stop yourself doing because what if you fail or can’t hold it together?

Yup, another thing you were taught.

The apologies you make for tears. The way you try to hide what you feel. Compartmentalize emotions. That mask you put on? for yourself, your horse, the world.

It’s just something you were taught to do.

It’s all learned.

It’s all exhausting.

What we deem unacceptable, ugly, not ok—- what if that was just stuff we’d been taught?

What we learn we can unlearn.

What we think we can change.

What we believe is always open for discussion.

Onwards.

❤️ Jane

The other day, Sausage and I decided to go for a walk on the inlet together. It’s been an exciting time for us- she was starting towards the middle of last year, fell ill for a little time after and so was allowed time for rest and recuperation until she was back to feeling 100 %.

She’s been back in full work this last couple of weeks and despite having owned her since she was a weanling, this was actually the first time that we had been on the inlet together under saddle.

I led her down the road and jumped on once we hit the sandy flats. It’s soft and squelchy underfoot so she let her whiskers do some exploring, took a breath out, and let her eyes scan the horizon. We were marching along in fine form and then- we saw them.

Sausage froze. I could feel her heart beating through the saddle and her entire body went stiff.

The terrifying creatures in question were a small flock of migratory birds called Spoonbills. Pure white with spindly black legs and long, flattish black bill, they scoop up and down the water, as if wading for gold.

To Sausage, there was no time to mess around. One must save oneself at all costs.

The moment I could feel her heartbeat pulsing through my own body, I knew it was time to get off.

My intention, to the best of my ability, is to create successful experiences for both myself and my horse. At that point, Sausage had gone into a state of high activation freeze. She was concerned past the point of being teachable. If I had added energy to the moment by asking something of her, chances are it would have resulted in a little explosion. And frankly, I don’t really see the point of it.

I got off and we spent ten minutes walking in hand until she came back down.

And then, I got back on, rode to the furthest point of the inlet, got off, loosened her girth, and hand walked her back home.

Could I have ridden her through that moment? I would say yes. She knows enough answers to the questions I ask for it to be ok.

But I was out there, in a big space, with a horse who has little experience in this environment, and chances are I would have had to use more force than I wanted to.

In that moment, she needed me. And the best place for me to be there for her was on the ground, by her side.

I share this story because so often I hear feelings of shame or embarrassment for getting off your horse when either one or both of you feels overwhelmed about something. I’ll tell you straight- if I don’t feel like the saddle is the best place for me to deal with something, I get off.

With my young horses, I’m off and on all the time. Adding energy, meeting it, diffusing it. Off, on, off, on.

As your capacity grows together, you’ll find that the equation shifts. But we need to let go of this “push through” mentality that sees us stuck in unnecessarily stressful situations that could have been remedied from a very different place that are more easeful for everyone concerned.

There are no rules. Make decisions in the best interest of both of you, that allow for gentle movements towards better feeling places.

Onwards.

❤️ Jane

Where is the point that you stop yourself?

At what stage does the self-consciousness arise?

What is the thing that you don’t allow yourself to do?

What is the line that you don’t cross, not because you can’t or shouldn’t, but because at some point you told yourself that wasn’t for you to “go to that place”?

What are the words you don’t let yourself write?

At what stage of the dance do you stop?

When does your voice get stuck and why?

What are the ways you have trained yourself into smallness?

When we talk about being able to access energy around our horses, what we are really talking about is channeling vitality and aliveness.

So, if we step back, it’s interesting to notice…

When do we take our creative and vital energy and halt its flow?

As we feel an opening, an expansion, at what point do we allow the contraction to shut it down?

And as we feel into that transition, how does it show up in our body?

Where does the block make itself known? And what is the story that supports it?

Get to intimately know the answers to these questions.

These are the places where the deep pools of aliveness wait.

Where we can learn to gently massage the edges of our resistance to release the stuck points and let power and vitality flow.

These are the questions that I want to know the answer to.

“To trust in your own aliveness, in your own ability to sustain and be sustained – there are times when there is no greater act of defiance.” ― Jessica Fechtor

Onwards.

❤️ Jane

I’m fascinated at how quickly you lose rapport with your horse when your attention deviates. Many a time, I have been working on something and then picked up my phone to film it and the moment is completely lost. My intention has shifted, and my lack of presence and focused attention means that I no longer have the mental bandwidth to hold both my horse and the filming with the integrity they require; and consequently, off my horse goes.

Working together in ways that focus on building relationship means that you are fully present in all moments and are seeking to make decisions for the both of you with the intention of lowering stress. The beginning stages of this require that we flow with them in order that we build enough depth of relationship and skill in timing, rhythm, and understanding that we can not only flow but begin to direct the flow in ways that allows for subtle changes of thought or focus that allow for better feeling.

Working at liberty is very telling because there is no room to pretend. Your horse will tell you if you are too clumsy or if you are in an area that they are non-accepting of in very clear ways; they will leave, and you don’t have the ability to stop them.

I find this work fascinating because it constantly holds me to account. I’ve been frustrated, despondent, elated, joyful, and cross. I’ve taken things personally and then made myself stay with the feeling so that I can better understand myself and my motivations. When I remove my ability to make things happen, what I am left with is only allowing things to happen; to creating the conditions to allow good feeling to arise. That is the skill of an artist.

At the base of it, this is the foundation I want to lay with all of my horses. Artistry, beauty, and friendship.

“Artistry is to a large degree, simplicity”.

❤️ Jane

Here’s an example of how this story unfolds:

Person A- let’s call her Suzie- has a question. She starts to type and finds after a few moments that there are many more words than she intended appearing on the page in front of her.

Ugh, she says to herself, that’s way too much. She deletes them, feeling stupid, and tries to condense everything in front of her into a single sentence.

A thousand other words hide behind that sentence. But still, that’s better. The other was… too much.

Person B- let’s call her Margie- is listening to her instructor. She doesn’t completely understand what’s being asked of her and she’s finding the whole experience a little overwhelming.

She starts to talk and then realizes how ridiculous she must sound.

Sorry, she says, I have this habit of waffling on.

She stops what she’s saying, hoping that she made at least a tiny bit of sense. She feels the heat rising in her cheeks and looks down at her hands.

Person C- let’s call her Bridie- has gone to a clinic. She had a great time and really learned a lot. On the drive home, she starts to think…

Maybe I was a bit over the top. Did I talk too much? I did ask a lot of questions. Are people going to think I’m bit much? I was a bit much. Ugh! Why can’t I just tone it down and not embarrass myself each and every time I go out!

There are many ways we silence ourselves. Many ways we believe ourselves to be too much, or over the top. Many ways we apologise for being inarticulate, or “waffling on”, for overtalking or oversharing.

The silencing exists in many layers, the strongest being the one we likely give the least consideration to and is perhaps the most uncool to mention.

It is, well… patriarchal structures. And whether we like it or not, we all still live under them.

For many years, conversation of this nature- that takes a longer form, that expresses emotion, that is like a walk through the woods rather than a short trip to the supermarket- has been looked down on.

Get to the point! We are told.

What are you going on about? We hear.

Silencing voices under the guise of them being less valuable, less worthy, too long winded or overemotional has for many years been used a method of control. So much so, that we forget it’s a set of rules that have been placed on us and have pulled it into our being and owned it as a personal problem, a deficiency, and a weakness.

Conversation and questioning in the first instance often doesn’t appear as succinct sentences. As our conscious mind attempts to know things that aren’t yet clear to us, our thoughts make their way out into the world as long sentences that stop and start and twist and turn and loop back around on themselves.

We need to express to understand. Reclaiming your voice involves working through the internal dialogue that says you are too much. It involves speaking out during the moments it feels like your throat is closing over. It means holding space for the anxiety that kicks in after when you feel foolish or embarrassed for speaking up.

This is all part of it. This is doing the big work.

This is not all on you. This is what you were trained into.

And like all training, it’s possible to let go of and learn something new.

Don’t accept situations that are too small for you. Your voice matters.

Onwards.

❤️ Jane

I came to a really great definition of learning recently: Learning is not the process of accumulating, but the process of giving up.

The bigger the learning, the bigger the letting go.

Maybe, when we engage in the learning process, it’s not so much the assimilation of the new that is the tricky part, but the letting go of the stories, associations, ideas, behaviors- everything- that keeps us fixed in our previous versions of understandings.

Our previous version of “what we know”.

As someone that loves to learn, I am constantly seeking out new information. I spend thousands of dollars on training each year, and every time I find something that takes me down a new and fascinating rabbit hole, I have what I’ve come to recognize as my “Oh Sh*t” moment.

“Oh Sh*t” moments are categorized by the following:

🤯 Recognising how little you know, followed by an intense period of consideration of whether you should completely throw the towel in because you can’t believe an ignoramus such as you are allowed out of their bedroom

🧐 Feeling excited about all this new-found amazing knowledge whilst also realizing that you will now probably need to update everything you have ever produced, done, taught, or practiced… again.

🦋 Running around like a butterfly catcher of ideas and thoughts in the hopes that they don’t leave you before you’ve at least written them down on paper.

That’s the thing about learning. It’s a massive, steaming mountain of undoing and sometimes that can feel like a lot

(**heads up, this is also the “quit zone”. Don’t do that. You have to keep going. This is part of it).

The thing to hold on to is that the Oh Sh*t moment is inevitably followed by the “Oh Sh*t YES” moment, which has quite a different tone and is fueled by a feeling of excitability

You can’t have the “Oh Sh*t YES” moment without the “oh sh*t” part.

So with that in mind, don’t be afraid of the undoing. The frustration. The bits where you can’t coordinate body parts or momentarily forget your name (I mean, so I’ve heard… ).

All THAT is my friend is your undoing. And undoing is where it all begins.

Onwards.

❤️ Jane

In the beginning, a dream is a fragile thing. When it’s felt in your belly and makes itself known in your mind, it can feel invincible, but as its silvery wings creep out into the world, you realize that your dream can be easily damaged, or at worst, completely destroyed.

As you hand your dream over for someone else to look at, you notice that not everyone takes care of it with the same love you intended.

Some people have clumsy fingers that damage its wings and make it much more difficult for it to fly.

Some people haven’t yet mastered the art of being still enough to listen, and so the whispers of your dream get drowned out and aren’t properly heard.

Some people don’t notice that you have gifted them with your dream to hold for a moment, and they accidentally drop it.

None of this is purposeful. A dream is a delicate thing and its only real guardianship belongs to the person from whom it came.

So, in the early stages, give your dream time to grow, and be careful who you share it with.

Only hand it to those with delicate fingers, listening ears, and an appreciation of what is being offered.

And if that person is yet to make themselves known, it doesn’t mean your dream isn’t real, or unimportant.

It just means it’s yours alone to care for a little bit longer.

❤️ Jane

You know, Dee tells me, it seems to me that humans worry about failing a lot.

We ride softly across the sand.

Huh, I tell him. You’re right. That’s definitely a thing.

Do you know, he continues, what the only true failures are?

I pause to let him go on.

Failures of kindness and failures of courage. Those are the only failures that really pain the spirit.

You’re right, I tell him, you’re right.

But you know the beautiful thing? He adds after a moment.

Those are both things that the heart can control.

We’re silent for a moment.

I feel like my heart just relaxed, I whisper to him.

It did, he tells me. It did.

Find the little moments that steer you towards joy, he drops in. Don’t let the big-ness of reality convince you that you have to be anything more than you are right now.

I won’t, I tell him. I won’t.

Onwards, Jane.

Onwards, Dee. Thanks for everything.

❤️ Jane

Investigating the source of our nerves is secretly a call to ask more beautiful questions of ourselves. It’s an opportunity to observe those parts that we might consider to be unacceptable that live in our psyche, to view our responses through the lens of curiosity, and to practice training ourselves with kindness.

To observe your nerves and to apply a one-size-fits-all approach is to do yourself a disservice. The answer will never be clear without first knowing why we need to seek an answer in the first place.

The first beautiful question might be, what is it that motivates this energy that’s coursing through my body? How is this showing up for me?

So, we pause. We don’t rush to understand our nerves. Rushing drives them deeper into tight corners that make it hard for us to see.

Pausing for your nerves allows them simply to exist without the need to be fixed- if only for that moment. When we pause and observe, we say, we see you. We may not understand you, but you are welcome here.

It’s important for your nerves to be welcome. When we welcome something, we create space for its presence. When we welcome something, we allow our entire being to begin the process of metabolizing what it is that is there. To let the natural intelligence of our body guide us.

Place a hand on the epicentre of your nerves. Find the point of origin, the source. Place a hand there. You don’t have to do anything special other than see it and feel it. To create a safe container for it.

Invite a sense of resilience into your body. If I was to invite resilience in, how would that show up for me? Ask it of yourself. Notice how your body takes shape around feeling.

See how it’s possible to exist in two realities: one where you feel nervous. One where you feel resilient. Practice holding space for both.

Wait for your body to climb down the stairs a flight or two.

Then ask:

What need is not being met in this situation?

Is what I feel relevant for the moment, or does it feel disconnected?

Are my nerves a call to pay attention?

What is the closest step I can take to shift me out of this spot?

Nerves are an adventure. An adventure towards better understanding what you need and how to have those needs met.

An adventure in understanding how we can integrate and metabolise stresses of the past so that we can feel more connected to the present.

An adventure in making friends with energy in the body so we don’t feel the need to run when we get in touch with a strong sense of aliveness.

There is no one-size-fits-all approach. But the answer always begins with a series of more beautiful questions.

Onwards.

❤️ Jane

One of my favourite parts of JoyRide, my membership program, is the weekly Q&A session that we have. It’s such a great platform for discussing the rich and diverse questions that come up in relation to our horsemanship and life and gives us an amazing opportunity to unpack the many and varied experiences that are a part of it.

During the last session of the year, I was asked:

Can you please share your thoughts on repressed anger?

Half an hour later, the discussion was still going on. After we wrapped up, a few people asked if I would consider sharing part of our conversation outside of our closed group. I’ll be honest and say that I’ve sat with this for a while. The JoyRide group provides such a safe container for discussion and I’m aware of the possibility of things being taken out of context or inferences being made that are out of alignment with the true nature of what I would like these thoughts to represent.

As such, posting this video makes me a little nervous… but that lies beside a strong feeling of purpose and conviction that we need to be having more conversations around emotions and experiences that are deemed unacceptable or not ok and blow apart the veil of fear and shame that we can have around them.

When I speak of mindful anger and emotions of that nature, I often receive messages and emails that blow me away. Stories of hardship, trauma, abuse. It breaks my heart. And within those stories, incredible experiences of courage and strength. Plus the words: I have lived with these feelings of anger or struggled with them for years. This is the first time I have heard the conversation around anger presented in this way.

Those words fortify me to keep having these conversations.

In the horsemanship world, we talk much of peace, relaxation, and harmony. This is obviously the aim. But all of those experiences are dynamic. And we can’t truly experience any of them without having a healthy connection to our own internal flame and backbone, which involves a healthy connection to anger.

Before we get into it, a couple of words about what this isn’t:

When I talk of mindful anger, I am in no way advocating the use of force or “power over”: of horses and humans. That lies in direct opposition to my practice.

This is instead a conversation about connecting to our internal strength and backbone and the role that healthy anger plays in that, and our responsibility to learn how to channel that in a useful way.

I would love to know what you think! Please feel free to share your thoughts.

Onwards (with a deep breath!)

❤️ Jane

Another conversation I have been reading online that I’ve been musing about and wanted to chime in on. Let’s break it down into two parts:

1. Thoughts on intentions, affirmations, the law of attraction, putting your intention on what it is you would like your horse to do

And then how does this relate to:

2. Dealing with negative thoughts or self-doubt that might pop up in training.

Taking it from the top- and be warned, this is kind of a mash-up that doesn’t follow a linear train of thought.

In my practice, I talk a lot about intention, but I see that as a very separate component to affirmations and then further on to that, the law of attraction. This is how I define intention:

Intention is the mental and emotional blueprint we set up to establish the quality of connection and create a clear impression of what is it we would like to see manifest in the physical. It occurs on the macro and micro level.

As soon as we engage our horses, we’re influencing every moment. Establishing how it is we wish to be as riders and horsepeople prior to setting eyes on our horse and what qualities we wish to cultivate between us is part of our generalized setting of intention.

Who is it that I need to be today? What does that require of me?

Instead of waiting for outside or external experience to inform how we feel or operate, intention calls us to step into the cultivation of behaviors and ways of working with our horses as an active practice. We don’t wait to feel calm. We practice calm. We don’t wait to feel confident. We practice confidence.

Intention as the expression of our creative force.

On a more micro level, intention allows us to create an experience of the ideal in our mind’s eye that creates fertile ground for its physical manifestation. For instance, if I am wanting to ask for a transition from walk to trot, I create a sensory blueprint for how I want that to look.

I see my horse effortlessly and softly move into the transition with engagement.

I feel the connection between us and the relaxed way of being we both share.

I hear his footfalls on the ground, even and regular.

I create the ideal vision of what it is that I want in my mind’s eye then wait for the physical to catch up.

When we move from this place, our body reponds in ways that are barely perceptible to us- but not to our horses. When we create a visual template in our minds, our body responds by firing off the neural pathways and muscle triggers that support the physical creation of what we’ve imagined. This is one of the key reasons visualization is so successful in improving physical performance even in situations where the only practice that’s been engaged is an imagined one.

Intention also translates to a purposeful plan, a course of action that clearly and deliberately outlines the way forward. It begins with cultivating a mental landscape that sees what you want come to life but also outlines the progression of steps necessary to achieve that end.

The application of any aid and the quality of the connection you establish with your horse begins always with your intention.

Here’s the catch:

Intention that actually lines up with what we want requires that we have the capacity- on a nervous system level, mentally and emotionally- to be able to hold that vision. Stepping into a place of future possibility ignites a certain level of activation in our system, and if that exceeds what we are able to hold, then we will find our intention being hampered by thoughts of negativity or self-doubt.

I’ve talked extensively about the role of the nervous system and how it impacts our ability to “think positively”. If you want to get into the hows and whys, then jump over and listen to this podcast. It’ll give you a good idea of how your body is informing your mind and what to do about it.

Right, on to affirmations. Affirmations can be useful as a supportive practice, as part of a training plan that is reminding your brain that there is more available for it to focus on than might currently occupy its attention. For instance, if you are finding yourself habitually contracted around anxiety or nerves, it can be a gently redirect for the mind towards what is available and what you do have working; a way to remind yourself that two different versions of the same reality can exist at the same time while we are doing the work of restoring, unraveling and integration on a nervous system level.

The glitch is that affirmations are often used to veneer over and mask the truth of what is actually happening. For example, if I am feeling out of sorts, saying to myself “I am confident” is not really that useful, and can actually exacerbate the challenge as we feel a broadening valley of shame and despondency between what we actually feel and what we think we should feel.

It can also further propel certain emotions further into “unacceptable” territory. Until we are able to honor, be with, and take what we need from how emotion is showing up in our hearts, body, and mind, the emotional energy will only mutate and seek other ways to be heard (spoiler alert: those ways are usually undesirable).

Where does this leave me with the Law of Attraction then? Well, in kind of a few places. So yes, on the one hand, we do create our own realities… kind of. But those realities are impacted by many things that don’t see all of us on an equal footing. My squirmy-ness with the LOA is that it’s often used as a means of spiritual bypassing and a means to justify one person’s position (usually of privilege) when juxtaposed against that of another.

If you want to get super big picture and see things from a “universal level” then maybe we have chosen this life, this body, this horse, and this position to be in. But regardless if that’s the case, when we are in a position of such luxury to consider the law of attraction a thing, or to spend time thinking about it, then we have a responsibility to ensure that to the best of our knowledge, we are creating an equal playground for everyone; horse, human and beyond.

We can talk about creating our own reality and use whatever powers at our disposal to put it into practice in our own lives, but this does not absolve us of responsibility to seek to correct disparities such as:

Racial and gender disparities and inequalities

Trauma histories

Structural and social inequalities

Yup. We can’t wild card our way out of those.

So all of that together, how does that leave us on the day to day level of working with our horses? Kind of like this:

Intention is important. It provides clarity of direction and establishs the quality of connection and create a clear impression of what is it we would like to see manifest in the physical.

Affirmations can be hit and miss. You can use them as a way to affirm your intention certainly, but if you are trying to gloss over a very different feeling reality and aren’t “doing the work” at the same time then you’ve kind of lost me.

Law of Attraction: If it’s a thing, in any case, it’ll take care of itself. Honestly, I’m probably not the best person to talk to about it but I would say be discerning and be self-responsible and you’re all good.

Shining lights into dark corners. Seeking out practices that affirm aliveness. Clear is kind. Ambiguity and indecision breeds uncertainty. Understand yourself and what it takes to not only create an intention but to develop the capacity to hold it. Learn to ground and center in the midst of big energies and emotions. This is my practice.

Onwards.

❤️ Jane

Over the Christmas break, I got tagged in a post of a group I am a part of that was considering the concept of “free-floating anxiety”. The person who had asked the question found themselves (and I’m paraphrasing) dealing with a ball of anxiety that never seemed to go away, and what’s more, there didn’t appear to be any reason that she observed in her riding and horsing life that gave the anxiety validity.

For any of us (and I know that there are many) who have experienced something similar, it can be a frustrating and bewildering experience. There we find ourselves fundamentally ok and yet there is a part of us that is… not. A fragmented piece of emotion circling and swirling through our orbit, broken off from the whole and yet influencing our responses and interactions.

When we lack context and understanding of what it is happening, it’s very easy to internalise our confusion and interpret it as a personal weakness or flaw.

This is ridiculous, we might tell ourselves, there is clearly nothing wrong!

…and yet our body screams at us a very different set of experiences and understandings that ultimately have the upper hand.

Anxiety- or any emotion- that appears out of place, random or decontextualised is typically the product of traumatic stress. It doesn’t make sense to us logically because its origins lie outside of our conscious awareness. The story of how the anxiety came to be is not stored in our logical mind, but in our somatic and interoceptive nervous systems, and as a consequence, the entire experience feels disconnected. It follows then that the triggers that would cause the anxiety to surface lay outside our conscious awareness also.

I use the word “integration” a lot in my work and this is a beautiful example of why it’s so important. When we have a seemingly disconnected part- in this instance the “free-floating anxiety”- we can only metabolise the energy that’s present when it is integrated. And in order to integrate the energy, we need skills that will allow us to ground and centre in the midst of it so that the intensity of the experience doesn’t become bigger than our body and pull us into survival mode as a result.

So in essence, anxiety that apparently doesn’t make sense is only confusing to your conscious mind. To every other part of you, its appearance is a valid and necessary part of completing whatever unfinished energetic business caused it to arise in the first place.

I have a couple of podcasts on this topic if you want to dive more into the “behind the scenes understandings”- you can check them out here:

Have you ever had any experiences similar to the above? I’d love to hear about them!

❤️ Jane