Category: The (almost kinda) Daily

I’ve has several conversations with people the last few days and a personal experience yesterday that all relate back to a similar core theme:

Many of us have been trained out of following our instincts and intuition, and beyond that, actively discouraged from following similar instincts of self-protection.

Let’s backtrack slightly.

When we talk about balance or a nervous system that is “regulated”, we aren’t talking about a perpetual state of calm or zen. What is meant by that is the ability to occupy different energies and states of being so when it’s appropriate we can move away from something (healthy flight response), when it’s appropriate we can move towards something (healthy fight response) and similarly, that we don’t get “stuck” in a place of hyperarousal or activation when it’s not necessary. The essence of it is about being able to take the right action in the right moment and to be able to return to a rested baseline when that moment is over.

Although I have done a lot of work and had a lot of reparative experiences that allow me to hold my centre and meet experiences where previously I may have frozen or removed myself, this morning, at about 5.30 am, I realized something about myself.

The overriding message I received growing up in response to expressing someone treating me badly, or deciding how to meet a situation where I disagreed with what was going on was this:

Just ignore them. Ignore them or it will get worse. Don’t make a big deal. Just walk away. Don’t add energy to it.

Granted, this can often be the right approach. But when we are taught it as the ONLY approach and alternatives aren’t offered in the face of different experiences such as:

Hold your own. We can take action to meet this differently. Let’s find strength to meet this situation…

…then we prevent ourselves from developing a healthy relationship with the fight response.

Many of us have had the familiar experience of expressing something that was true for you, finding yourself in the midst of behavior that is not ok, or being on the receiving end of unwanted attention and defaulting to freeze or flight.

Deleting the comment.
Not showing up to something.
Changing the subject.
Changing course completely.
Sucking it up even though you know the situation is unhealthy for you.
Doubting yourself and taking on more than is your fair share to take on.

Constantly turning away entrenches the pattern, does nothing to heal the energies, and sees us further disconnected from our own backbones.

It’s true: Knowing what’s right action is not always clear cut. The choice to leave or not to act IS sometimes the best one (and certainly in the climate of the moment, we need to value and protect our energy).

But there is a difference between conscious inaction and inaction that results from habituated response or the inability to stand in your own power.

Notice your patterns.

Get the support you need.

Notice the power dynamics at play and observe where you position yourself.

Onwards.

❤️ Jane

So this picture here captures one of the most fun days I have had riding since I was a kid.

I just felt… joyful.

I was riding a horse that I started myself, who is so important to me and whose company I enjoy.

We were out and about finding our feet in a new environment doing something that neither one of us had done before and I loved every minute of it.

The other unexpected bonus was just how much these two days at a working cattle and stockmanship clinic have benefitted every other aspect of our training. In my Goals, Horses, and the Nervous System training, I talked about how the traditional goal-setting process can limit curiosity and close you off from possibilities that you had never considered in the position that you are in currently. This clinic is one such example of that. Something that came into my peripheral vision with a horseman I respect and I was like, that sounds fun, let’s do that.

So there it was we found ourselves.

What I loved about this day- one of the things I loved- was the need for precision. This wasn’t about transitions in specific spots because that’s what the test sheet told you. It was about partnership and communication with a truly functional purpose. Where moving your hind in here, your shoulders there; where stopping, and slowing and moving back had a very clear and real-time purpose- creating an understanding not only between horse and rider but horse, rider and cow(s), so the aim could be fulfilled in the most easeful and fluid way possible for everyone concerned.

Now we are back at home in the arena, we are practicing with the same understandings. Our overall body control has improved. We are practicing transitions within the gaits and between them ten times more than we were previously. The stockmanship clinic showed up where our communication could be improved with a startling clarity and our overall relationship is all the better for it.

Have you done something lately that took you outside your normal zone that surpassed your expectations?

Onwards.

❤️ Jane

I love these words:

There is no such thing as balance, only balancing.

So much of what I do has been transforming what we might perceive to be fixed destinations into active practices.

From this perspective, confidence is not an entity but a practice.

Courage is not something you find but something you create when your thoughts, feeling, and projections are all in alignment.

And that elusive state of balance. Maybe the reason we struggle to find it is because balance too is not a place we land, but a practice we are constantly engaging.

One that is dynamic, adaptive, and ever-transforming.

There is no such thing as balance, only balancing.

Onwards.

❤️ Jane

I’ve been thinking a lot about community lately, and we’ve also been having a lot of conversations in JoyRide around belonging, connection, and even loneliness. I’m always fascinated by the roots of particular words and how they have been adapted into our understandings over time, and when I looked up “community” in the dictionary, it seemed outdated and a little hollow.

For the most part, the concept of community is based around living in the same place- a shared location- and certainly, up until relatively recently, that was certainly the case. Your community was your village, town, area, neighbourhood, and your place within it was what helped to define your identity. When I dug a little deeper, I found this definition from The Atlantic, in 2017:

“Community,” … is rooted in the Middle French communité. The word may have come to suggest a “body of people who live in the same place,” but, initially, it meant something much simpler and much more powerful: “joint ownership.”

For many of us, our geographic location is no longer the primary definer of our identity or our sense of community. For a long time, I realised my struggle with community was based on this older definition; I had mistakenly assumed that my sense of community would be derived from the people who lived around me, and for the most part, I neither fitted in, was accepted nor related to these people.

So where was my community then?

What I love about my work is that I am always called to challenge my own perceptions. If my community was not the people who lived around me (with the exception of a tiny few) who were they? And if we let go of the old definitions of community, does that liberate us to think and connect in new ways?

For me now, community takes shape around feeling; the feeling of belonging, the feeling of caring, and the feeling of mutual interest.

Once I wriggled out of the rules that had limited my understanding of what community meant, I realised that my true community is connected by those threads, but our feet stand on different locations all over the world.

Yes, it’s joint ownership. But not of land and space. It’s joint ownership of the feeling of care and belonging. And when I think of it this way, community is not limiting nor binding, but transcendent.

Onwards.

❤️ Jane

Yesterday, I booked in for a dressage lesson in a week’s time and a working cow clinic not long after that. Truth be known, I had been considering booking in for the lesson for a couple of weeks but had avoided sending the email based on the fact that… I was afraid something might go wrong.

The last 12 months, things have been a bit stop-start with Nadia. We’ve worked through a bout of allergies, thrown in a couple of abscesses, added a dash of a couple of other random things, and finally- finally- I feel like we are getting our groove on.

It feels great and I’m marinating in it for all I’m worth.

And when I fossicked around in why I hadn’t just booked the lesson already, I realized that the only thing holding me back was the little thought:

But what if you book it and then something happens and you can’t go?

Wouldn’t that be too disappointing?

This phenomenon is actually one of my pet hates. It’s the process of robbing yourself of joy and potential in the present moment based on imagined possibilities. It’s a process that keeps you stuck.

Fact: Yes, dealing with ongoing ups and downs can be a tough hand to play.

Fact: Yes, this absolutely produces a hangover effect where you are naturally a bit cautious about getting your hopes up

Also fact: Playing to a negative future possibility when things are actually good in the present serves no good purpose other than to rob you of the good stuff… which is the stuff you have been waiting for as you negotiated your way through all the muck.

So hits a spot with you in some way, look at what’s in front of you and make your future plans based on that reality. The other is nothing more than an imagined projection that’s neither protective nor useful.

Lesson booked.

Onwards.

❤️ Jane

Kickback.

One thing that’s important to realise is that we train people how to treat us. Just like with horses, if you have allowed yourself to be walked over, never taken up all the space that’s owed to you, and consistently acquiesced to the wishes of others in deference of your own then changing things up- asserting yourself, saying no to things you might have previously always said yes to or simply taking time for yourself- is not necessarily going to be met with a round of applause.

It creates kickback.

Kickback is the reflexive response to changing an energetic or relational dynamic. If we identify as passive, a people pleaser or someone who is all give and no take, inevitably there is someone benefitting from us behaving in that way. Humans place a high degree of value on certainty; in relationships that are familiar to us, we develop unconscious understandings that when I engage with you in this way, this is the way that you are likely to respond.

Mixing things up creates instability in these understandings and the reaction is often a fervent attempt to re-establish the original way of going about things to restore “normal” order. In other words, if you are the one changing things up, people are going to try to talk you out of it.

If you are the one creating a boundary where previously there wasn’t one, someone is going to hit the edges of that and potentially… not like it.

It’s important to understand kickback, and even more important to prepare for it. The feeling of anxiety that can come with moving in alignment with what’s true for you is not necessarily a warning signal that you are moving in the wrong direction. Ensuring that you have resources to draw on and support to turn to is key when establishing a new kind of normal for yourself so you can ground and centre in the midst of the challenge for long enough to experience the transformation.

Onwards.

❤️ Jane

A sense of humour is something that I really value. I know mine has served me well. But I’ve also noticed a tendency I’ve had to use humour as a survival strategy. As a means to avoid confrontation, to soften the edges of a conversation that I find difficult or to deflect attention away from myself.

In the past, I have preferred to make a self-deprecating joke in favour of accepting a compliment.

I’ve chosen to lighten a situation with a quip in the face of someone disagreeing with me rather than stand firm in what I believe in.

In the face of unwanted attention, I’ve used humour as a barrier of defense before swiftly making an exit.

Humour has been my shield and my sentinel.

Over the past little while, however, I’ve noticed a shift. As I continue to do the work to regulate my nervous system, the more connected to my backbone I’m becoming.

Humour can be a fawn response. Fawning is a strategy we employ for safety. When we are in a fawn response, we forfeit our own needs in deference to those of another based on the unconscious understanding that that is the price of we have to pay to be ok in the situation or relationship we find ourselves in.

A healthy connection to the fight response allows for a felt sense of your own worth. When you can stand in your own self-worth, you are grounded in the understanding that you matter. That what you have to say matters. That what you think matters. And that how you feel matters.

The more viscerally connected I become to this understanding, the less I feel the need to deflect.

I can say thank you to the compliment and let it be that.

I can stand in what I believe in the face of disagreement and not feel the need to lighten the load.

In the face of unwanted attention, I can say, this is not ok with me.

I can use humour as and when I want, but not as a scapegoat to rescue me from standing in my own truth.

I am practicing releasing humour to its rightful place and allowing strength and integrity to take theirs.

Onwards.

❤️ Jane

Capacity is a word that I frequently use in my work. Much of what I do revolves around finding ways to increase it…

To increase our capacity for big experiences.

To increase our capacity for big emotions.

To increase our capacity for life and riding generally.

In my training session I taught yesterday on Goals, Horses & The Nervous System, I defined capacity as:

The amount of energy and activation your nervous system can hold whilst staying grounded and connected to yourself and your environment.

We are “at capacity” or “outside of our capacity” when our experience in the moment has exceeded the ability of our nervous system to hold it without moving into a survival response (flight, fight, freeze, shutdown or collapse).

When we think of increasing our capacity for experience, we typically think of doing so in order that we are better able to hold the more difficult stuff- anxiety, fear, frustration to name a few.

But equally so, increasing our capacity relates to our ability to hold the good stuff also. Success, things going well, dreaming about what you want, being able to plan ahead… all of that creates a level of nervous system activation that can feel unsafe if our container isn’t big enough to hold it.

The work of increasing your capacity is about making your cup big enough to hold the complexity and intensity of life in full HD colour, not just a single shade of red.

Onwards.

❤️ Jane

Maybe 20 years ago now, I sat in the office of someone I had booked in to talk to so I could discuss the struggles of someone close to me whose behavior I was struggling with also.

The skillset of this particular person involved a lot of guided imagery. You closed your eyes and they talked you through a journey of sorts, where you met the source of your challenges and were invited to release your attachment to them.

The only thing I remember of the experience was telling them that I was carrying a backpack, and my backpack was full of rocks. It was heavy and my back was sore and I knew that those rocks and that backpack didn’t belong to me. They weren’t my rocks. But I was definitely the one carrying them.

The person working with me asked me to take the bag off and set it down. She said that I could even throw the bag away if I wanted, hurl the hag over the metaphorical cliff. Free myself of the rocks.

But I couldn’t.

The tears started to flow.

The lady tried to coax me into putting the bag down.

But I couldn’t, wouldn’t take it off.

I left her office that day still carrying the bag full of rocks on my back.

When I look back on this moment, I still get the feeling of tears pooling in my stomach. I know now that the younger version of me understood carrying the rocks to be a demonstration of love. That if I set the rocks down, I wasn’t freeing myself of a burden that wasn’t mine to hold. In the laying down of the bag, I was saying, I no longer care. And maybe I no longer love. And neither of those things were true.

I share this because I often have conversations with people who are carrying bags full of rocks too that aren’t theirs to carry. They too believe that holding the rocks means they care.

But carrying someone else’s rocks cripples both of you. When you take rocks that aren’t yours, you don’t lighten their load; the load multiplies. Now you both carry rocks. You both buckle under the weight.

I’ve since learned that being loving and caring means giving the rocks back to the person who they belong too. You can help them figure out how to lighten the load. You can let them understand the consequences of all those rocks so they decide to set them down for themselves. You can walk beside them as they throw the rocks away one by one.

And in some instances, maybe they try to force you to carry their rocks the rocks and you have to walk away.

No option is the easy one.

But you don’t have to, can’t carry their rocks for them.

At the end of the day, that equation does not equal one man liberated. It equals two men down.

Onwards.

❤️ Jane

When we come to strongly identify with feelings of anxiety, worry or concern, it’s easy for our awareness to switch on only during the moments when those same sensations are present in the body. This hypersensitivity to feelings of tightness, contractions or dis-ease can lead us to believe that this is the only state available to us, attaching a sense of permanency to what is essentially a mercurial experience.

Often times, the way in is not through focusing more on that which you are already aware of, but in broadening your awareness to notice the times when those feelings are absent.

As you read this now, notice the quality of feeling in your body. If your awareness is immediately drawn to areas of tightness or contraction, see if you can find a place that feels less tight, less contracted and allow yourself to sit there for a time.

Train your brain to recognize there is more available to focus on than what immediately captures its attention.

Onwards.

❤️ Jane

At the moment- even more so than usual- there’s a lot of stuff out there ready and willing to soak up your mental and emotional bandwidth. Whilst some of it is unavoidable- the reality of living in a world that’s navigating a pandemic, political conversations (and arguments), the stresses that come as part of daily living- it’s easy to martyr yourself to the system and feel like you have no choice but to surrender to the tumble dryer of thoughts in your head.

Whilst those experiences might be our truth currently, we can still be responsible for what we are consuming and how much. Part of claiming your space and owning your time and energy comes with eliminating distractions, giving yourself what you need, and recognizing where you are leaking energy (and doing something to fix it).

Yes, some of it is out of our control but if we are brutally honest, we’ve trained ourselves into distraction. The habitual logging on to news sites, even if our body is screaming at us that we are at capacity. The mindless scrolling of social media that takes up any white space that might be available in our minds for creative thought and instead jams it full of well… crap.

Claim your space.

Recognise what drains you and what’s in your control to do something about.

Safeguard your energy like the precious resource that it is.

And for anyone who might need to hear it- for at least part of the day- turn your phone off, put it out of sight, and put your hands on the earth instead.

Onwards.

❤️ Jane

I often get tagged in the comments of various posts in response to someone asking for help dealing with riding related fear. Maybe they’ve had an accident and find themselves feeling completely out of sorts. Sometimes it’s a crippling anxiety. Whatever it is, the person in question is finding themselves in a tough spot that they really, really want to get out of. Naturally, a lot of different people weigh in with their thoughts, and I always like to scan through and see what sort of advice is being offered.

This is a selection from the latest post:

“The only thing you have to fear is fear itself.”

“Leave your fear with the situation that created it”

“Don’t stress about it”

“Just keep getting back on”

I’ll be honest and tell you that I have to sit on my hands a lot when I read the comments. Not because I think anyone is ill-intentioned or has anything less than the person’s best interest at heart, but because I know what a vulnerable place it is to be in that person reaching out for help in the first place and how meeting a person in there- and leading them to a better feeling place- requires empathy, compassion and skill.

The problem I have with a lot of the advice offered? It assumes that how the person is feeling is a choice. Feeling afraid is not a conscious decision. If it was, we would be able to overcome it with willpower and the simple truth is that in most instances we can’t.

Fear is the word often used to describe a heightened anxiety response, and arises from two main scenarios:

1. Finding yourself in the midst of a situation you don’t have the skill or expertise to deal with, or that places you outside your capacity to feel like you can effectively cope and feel safe

2. Unresolved traumatic stress that is triggered by a present-day situation, which in many times is disproportionate, out of context, or over the top for what you are actually dealing with in the moment

Softening the edges of fear and getting to a place where you feel like you have access to your body, skills, and agency in the midst of it is not a mind led process; it’s led by the body. It occurs by getting yourself to a place where your resources outweigh your stresses; where you have things to draw on that allow you to down-regulate when you find yourself in a state of heightened activation so the experience doesn’t get bigger than your body and you have choice as to where to direct the energy.

It’s more than an idea. It’s a felt experience.

If you are in the honoured position of having someone share their fear with you, please hold their concerns with gentle gloves. How they are feeling is not a choice. Don’t diminish their experience by assuming such.

Onwards.

❤️ Jane

A theory that I’m working on that brings together three different areas of current (and ongoing) fascination for me: brain mapping, riding as an embodied art form and synchronized movement. Here’s my (massively) simplified breakdown. See what you think…

Let’s start with movement.

Humans are primed to move. From an evolutionary perspective, our brain rewards us for moving (part of the reason exercise is so protective from the point of view of mental health) with “green movement” (moving in nature) being even more beneficial due to the co-regulating benefits the natural environment has on our nervous system.

Not only are we primed for movement, but we are primed for synchronized movement. You think about how important dance and story telling has been throughout our collective history and how it is we naturally come together as a group to express, share and move.

Synchronised movement between humans creates the sensation of unity. As we move in space, our brain maps inform where it is we are in relation to everything around us, holding an awareness not only of the edges of our skin but also our peripersonal space- the bubble around us.

When we move together in synchronized movement, we see others performing the same movement along with us and our brain merges both of our experiences together as a unified field of perception, enhancing our connection to those we are in relationship with.

This is true of human to human movement practices, but what about human to horse? When we sync up with the movements of our horse- through practices such as matching steps, ensuring we are in tune during in hand work, and of course in the saddle- it makes sense that the same experiences emerge. An enhanced sense of connection. A unified field of perception.

I love that connection is such an embodied experience. I love that as I ride, my brain maps my body to not only include just me, but the wholeness of me and my horse together. Togetherness is not just a nice idea. It’s an energetic, neurological, physical and biochemical reality.

Maybe that’s what they meant by the word horsemanship.

Onwards.

❤️ Jane

Let’s talk about the Itty Bitty Shitty Committee for a second (or those little voices in your head that you tell you what you can and can’t do). Most conversations that centre around the inner critic focus on solutions that start at the level of the mind.

Think positive! They perkily profess 💁‍♀️

Remind yourself of your value! They fist pump into the air 👊

Which is all well and good. Except that when it’s coming at you as advice, it either feels like an impossible ask, or a load of BS (because let’s face it, when you are under attack by the committee makes it hard to think about anything other than what they are shouting in your ear).

I, too, used to attempt to conquer thoughts with thoughts. But I’ve since realized well… that’s the tough road.

Why? Because soapbox that the committee stands is resting on nervous system dysregulation. When you are feeling out of whack- hypervigilant, anxious, frustrated or angry- and that feeling has become bigger than your body, you are operating from the smoke alarm part of your brain and not plugged into your higher wisdom and logic (which is happily supplied by the pre-frontal cortex). As a consequence, your self-talk is going to be demonstrative of where your nervous system is sitting and mirroring the sense of threat that you feel like you are under.

The solution?

Meeting the committee with empathy and kindness.
Feeling into the edges of your skin.
Resourcing yourself to come back down inside your window of presence.

Onwards.

❤️ Jane

In one of the last sessions of the day I had over the weekend, I was asked a question about dealing with pressure at competition.

The problem, they told me, was that I go in with a plan for how I’m going to jump the course, and I know that’s the best one for me and my horse. Then I watch some of the riders before me and I see them making a sharper turn or taking a shorter route and I think, maybe I should do that? Maybe they are doing it better than me and I should change things up?

So I change my plans and more often than not it lets me down and I’m left thinking that I should have stuck with my original plan all along.

I get it, I said. Competition is essentially a seduction. It seduces you into thinking that someone else has better ideas than you, more skills that you, a better understanding of how to approach things. The real test of competition has nothing to do with winning. The real test is seeing how much you trust yourself in the midst of the many calls to distraction. If you can stay with yourself, you are already ahead.

The answer, I went on, lies in your body, not in your mind. You need to ask your body for consent. We can learn a lot from watching other people and maybe on some occasions, they will do something that’s a good idea for you to learn from and even adopt. And then there are those times when you just need to stick to your plan and not let yourself get thrown off course.

It’s easy for the mind to doubt itself. But the body will tell you straight. Don’t ask your mind, ask your body. When I think about changing the plan now, does that feel like a good idea? Or does that trigger a warning bell in your gut?

Get out of your head and into your body. Ask your body for consent.

Onwards.

❤️ Jane

Want to be able to see into the future?

Tell me in a sentence or two about your horse and I’ll let you know the direction things are likely to take.

It’s become more and more apparent to me that how we talk to our horses and the words that we use to describe them are fairly accurate indicators of what’s to come.

My horse is really naughty.

He knows that I’m not that confident and he uses it against me.

He’s nutty, feral.

Tries to buck me off on purpose.

Language like this limits empathy, curiosity, and understanding. When we use words that position behaviors as personality traits we remove ourselves from the ability to ask why and to dive underneath the surface to investigate further. What’s more, we come into the conversation with a hard edge and an us-and-them, win-or-lose mentality.

It’s also the understanding that will separate the horsemen & women from the riders. They are not the same thing.

Every word that you use holds energy in your body. It produces its own resonance. It shapes your perception of who or what you are describing, which in turn informs your decisions and actions and the tone of the space you hold together.

Words matter. Don’t be careless with them.

Onwards.

❤️ Jane

In a world that idolizes rush, busy-ness and, hyper-productivity, it’s no great surprise that the natural need of our body to rest and cocoon at certain stages of the day, month, and year is often the hardest to follow through on. Alongside that, hyperactive conditions of the nervous system- modes of operating that see us moving through the day in a chronic state of activation or constant alertness to the detriment of our natural rhythms- are also commonplace.

Given that speed and energy are so often supported- even unbalanced or unsustainable versions- any indications of freeze or shutdown are the states that we most struggle with. More often than not, our response in these situations is to “add more”.

Feel like you need to cocoon on the couch? You need to go for a run!

Thoughts of hopelessness or despair running through your brainspace? You need more discipline and purpose!

Inactivity makes us uncomfortable. And what’s more, a lot of us have been conditioned to think that rest equals laziness.

In our current situation, we need to be mindful of demonstrations of the freeze response and become curious about their origins.

If you feel overwhelmed and exhausted, curling up in a ball and wrapping yourself in a blanket would be the right course of action.

Tiredness and lacking energy from sitting at the computer all day (more common at the moment than ever) requires activation, not rest. In this situation, it’s listlessness and lethargy that’s dominant; rest here would compound it, not relieve it.

In our horses, we often see the pendulum swing from being hyper-alert, spooky, and reactive to almost lazy. One minute they are kites on the end of the line and the next, we can barely get them to move.

The patterned oscillation from flight to freeze indicates nervous system imbalance. Making them “do more” or getting them going may not be the answer.

In order for us to metabolise any experience we find ourselves in, we need to be in our bodies first. Moving into flight or freeze takes you outside of the experience and away from the ability to process the moment.

Ask yourself, what energy is needed here? Is it one of activation? Or do I need to gently bring the focus back, to allow the nervous system to reset and recalibrate and then begin again from that place?

Get curious and meet the energy where it’s at.

Onwards.

❤️ Jane

Spaciousness.

I remember at the beginning of the year, when I was thinking about what I wanted to experience more of, the word that popped into my head was spaciousness. At the time, everything felt busy, like there wasn’t much of a buffer zone from one activity to the next.

To be honest, not much has changed; life is still busy and that zone hasn’t widened a whole lot. But I’ve come to redefine my ideas about spaciousness and realise what I actually craved was not so much a slowing down of life on the outside, but a slower sense of myself within it.

For one, I recognized that as it stands at the moment, I’m in the rush hour zone. Little people in my life for one, ideas for what I want to do and create, 3 horses. None of which I want to change. Instead, I’ve come to understand that spaciousness is a feeling state, and one that is assisted by small moments of not-doing, and a gradual whittling down of things that create mental clutter.

Social media and how I use my phone are one such example. Neither are inherently bad but engaging in them in a mindless way makes my head feel full. This feeling of fullness means that I have less capacity to engage in things that really matter and have created a level of internal pressure that doesn’t need to be there.

Intentionality in how you are using your time creates spaciousness. It creates definition from one moment to the next, and it’s that definition that allows for brief moments of pause. The pause is where the magic is; a momentary suspension that allows you to realign and recentre and to remind yourself everything you are doing is, in fact, a choice.

So, I’ve adjusted my understanding about what spaciousness really is to settle on this:

Spaciousness is carrying a feeling of expansion in the midst of closely packed action.

Onwards.

❤️ Jane

It only takes a few moments to check in with yourself and to feel into the edges of your skin.

I take some time to do this as the start point.

Then, I look to my horse and I let myself get a sense of the being that lives behind the eyes.

The other day, I was sitting on the mounting block in the middle of the arena deciding whether or not I would ride.

Truth be told, I was feeling kinda ick. My nerves were frayed around the edges- not from anything sinister, just too many late nights working which caught up with me that morning.

I had worked Dee in hand and on the ground and was musing whether or not to call it a day. The decision wasn’t stemming from any “can’t be bothered-ness” or “I don’t want to-ness” but genuine consideration about whether my headspace was such that I could bring my best self to the saddle.

I was scrolling through my Facebook feed yesterday and a random article about Adele (the singer) popped up, along with some click-baity headline about how her fans feel betrayed by her recent weightloss and transformation. Earlier that morning, I had recorded a training session for JoyRide on success thresholds, and self-sabotaging behaviors, and some of the less obvious reasons why we might derail our best efforts to get ahead.

Before I go any further into this, I want to say that I don’t actually believe there is such a thing as self-sabotage. While it might appear that we might do things that are frustratingly out of sync with our ultimate desires, at the heart of it all, it’s just a fervent attempt of our unconscious to keep us safe. Until we get ourselves into a position where our resources outweigh our stresses, you’re going to find it hard to elasticize the edges of your comfort zone.

A message pinged into my inbox:

“Can you tell me more about the mind-body connection? I don’t feel very connected to my body at all.”

I think for a moment and want to reply:

The last week, I’ve been working on some new material for my membership pathway that centres around our ability to rest in good feeling and expand our capacity for the good stuff. It seems kind of ironic that we need to pay attention to this side of things as much as we do increasing our capability to hold space for experiences that we would typically view as more challenging- anxiety and fear for example- but it’s equally as important. Think about something as basic as receiving a compliment and you will have an idea about what your thresholds are for letting the good stuff flow your way.

Way back in the early days of starting down the path I’m on now, I remember having a lightbulb moment when working with someone who was afraid to canter their horse. At this stage, we were still working on the ground and I watched as her whole body shrank in response to bigger energies from her horse. It’s was almost like an exact science; the “bigger” her horse became, the smaller she tried to make herself.

At that time, I “got it” without having an understanding of what exactly was happening on a nervous system level. On a physical level her body literally couldn’t receive or process the energy from her horse when he became more expressive. The moment she became aware of that energy mentally, she fused together the feeling that she registered with the story that she was actually in some sort of peril- even if the reality of the situation showed that this was very far from the case.

My horse Dee is a very kind soul. He’s one of those horses that you could easily underestimate or put in a compromising position simply because of his good naturedness. He’s also naturally “people-ey” and likes nothing more than to be part of the action.

Along with all of that, however, he’s very sensitive and I’ve got better at observing the subtle signs of discomfort that he shows, especially under saddle. His big one when you get on is to be very interested in everything that is happening outside of the arena. It’s not a big deal in that you could “push” your way through it and still get stuff done (even nice stuff), but I find that approach to not only be dissatisfying but ultimately, problematic.

You know something? You can move your body quickly but slow your inner world down at the same time. Being able to move in power but stay in conscious relationship to ourselves and our horses requires this of us.

 

Much of the movement work I’m exploring of late is all about creating a felt sense of what activation and energy feels like in our body- where it sits, how that informs us, what we feel compelled to do when we are operating from a place of activation – as well as what it feels like to ride that wave back down to baseline. The synergistic process of activation and settling.

 

Being aware of both of these is vital if we are to engage in the work of increasing our capacity to hold bigger energies and experiences with our horses without being thrown off centre or feeling physically or energetically displaced by the momentum.

 

Your body as a container for the power. Your energetic and internal world operating from the settling.

 

Stillness within the vortex.

 

Onwards.

 

❤️ Jane

 

Want to learn the movement tools that allow you to harness the power and not let the experience get bigger than your body? We are all about that in JoyRide! You can check it out here:

 

www.confidentrider.online/joyride

The last month has been a rough one for me. I seem to be playing tag team with a variety of different lurgies that have wiped out my energy and at one point caused me to completely lose my voice (if you’re wondering why the podcast has been a bit sporadic the last couple of weeks, that’s why! I’m hoping to have enough of a voice back this week to get back behind the microphone!).

It’s interesting watching what comes up when for whatever reason, you cannot do, produce, or create what you normally do. I’m used to a high level of productivity; I always have a number of balls in the air at the same time and for the most part, I totally accept this. I’m in what I often describe as “the rush hour” of life; I have young children, a cohort of animals, my own business. All of these require something of me, and those requirements don’t end just because in any given moment I don’t feel like it or feel like I need a break. I know I am far from alone in this- and it’s also not a complaint. I have chosen them. It’s more an acknowledgment of what is and an understanding that life moves in cycles and the one I’m in just happens to be all systems go, all hands on deck.

I do believe, however, it’s possible to be anchored to an internal steadiness, even if life is moving fast on the outside. Two words I use a lot in my work are “activation” and “settling” and the movement practices I teach are all about sensitizing yourself to the energetic rising of activation and similarly, the steady return to baseline with the settling. What’s important to realise, however, is that operating from a settled place does not mean you are static. It’s possible to be moving fast but not hold a similar “speed” on the inside. To find the settling inside you within the busy-ness on the outside is the key to staying grounded during rush hour.

When I find myself concerned, worried or feeling like I’m letting people down (a common go-to I visit when I feel like I’m not doing everything I *should* or *need* to be doing), I know that I have transferred rush hour from the outside to the inside. I’ve swallowed it whole. And that the simple practice of inviting an intentional pause- a moment before I decide, speak or act- reinstates the somewhat revolutionary act of returning to yourself and ensuring that any busy-ness you are experiencing on the outside is not also carried within.

Onwards.

❤️ Jane

www.confidentrider.online/joyride