Category: The (almost kinda) Daily

Of all the reasons that we fail to celebrate the little markers of progress with our horses, otherwise known as the Big Little Things, comparisonitis surely tops the list. Even if we do experience the flash of joy that comes with expanding your courage muscle, it’s very easy to see it crumble into dust under the brutal lens of comparison.

“This isn’t really a big deal,” we might tell ourselves. “People do WAY more than this all the time. It’s silly to celebrate something that is so clearly nothing.”

Let’s back the truck up for a second. The thing is, there is always going to be something or someone you can compare yourself to. If you use that for inspiration, fantastic. That’s a healthy use of comparison that adds value to your journey and highlights what it is you would like for yourself.

If comparison is used for denigration or diminishment, however, then we need to check ourselves at the gate.

Is this a big deal to you?

Is this important to you?

Does this feel good to you?

Then, my friend, you have just found yourself in the midst of a Big Little Thing, and that is very much worthy of celebration.

Congratulations!

Onwards.

❤️ Jane

Need some help getting your head and heart in the right place to do what you love with your riding? Check out Joyride, the Confident Rider Online Program:

www.confidentrider.online/joyride

One of the questions I hear a lot is “how to I reset myself after my horse spooks or I get a fright? I find it completely throws me off and it’s difficult to find any sort of balance and relaxation within myself after”.

Let’s look at this from a couple of different angles. First up, it’s completely normal (and a sign of a healthy nervous system) to startle or have a reflexive response to something that takes you by surprise- that’s not something we can “cancel out” and nor should we look to do so. It’s another thing, however, to find yourself completely overreacting to the same stimulus and finding you lose your mojo for the remainder of the session.

Why does this happen?

Your motor responses and reflexes mirror where you are sitting in your nervous system. If you are prone to hypervigilance, anxiety and concern, then our motor patterning- the way that we respond to the world and potential threat- becomes over-sensitised and exaggerated. If your horse spooks then, for example, your body takes it a few notches beyond what is necessary and as a consequence it’s more challenging to come back to a relaxed baseline simply because you are further up the chain of activation to begin with.

I use balance work as a means to recalibrate these responses and bring the body, heart and mind into a more regulated and responsive- rather than reactive- place. Even working with blocks or objects really close to the ground, where there is almost zero chance of injury, gives us an opportunity to observe the corrective responses of the body and to connect the dots between feeling “up” on the inside, how that is informing our decisions and actions, and how it is we can create the circumstances for a more integrated and centred state of being.

Onwards.

❤️ Jane

Interesting in exploring movement-based work for nervous system awareness and recalibration? We are all about that in JoyRide! You can check it out here:

www.confidentrider.online/joyride

🌷 Slower:

Give yourself a chance to rest in the pause.

Notice the difference between the activation that comes with building of energy inside you and become attuned to the settling also; the natural dissipation and release that is a part of the same cycle.

Notice the space between.

🌷 Stay with it:

If you feel energy building within- out of concern, worry or enthusiasm and excitement- stay with it.

Stay connected to your body and the environment around you.

Draw on resources to keep you centred and grounded.

Don’t abandon yourself.

Be here now, and if “here” feels too much…

🌷 A little bit less:

Drop it back.

Notice what it feels like as you start to reach threshold,

And give yourself the chance to come back before you cross the line.

It’s happening

🌷 All in the right time:

The unfolding of layers, the integration of stresses and energies from the past are allowed to emerge when our resources outweigh our stresses

And the container of support exists around us that allows us to feel that it’s safe to welcome and process experiences that may not have been welcomed previously.

Onwards.

❤️ Jane

www.confidentrider.online/joyride

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

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

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

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

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

Onwards.

❤️ Jane

Curious to learn more about JoyRide, the Confident Rider Online Program? You can check it out here 👇🏻

www.confidentrider.online/joyride

Showing up is one of the lesser talked about and seldom celebrated superpowers. And consistently showing up- making your way out to the arena, stables, or paddock- day in and day out requires that we let go of much of what we *think* we need and who we *think* we need to be in order to be effective and compassionate riders and horse people.

Showing up for me involves embracing the reality that I am not a project to be fixed, that how I feel on any given day is not right or wrong, and there is no ideal circumstance that has to exist in order for me to be present.

The same is true for my horse.

Showing up and being consistent simply asks that I meet myself in the moment. Then I recognize the complex messiness of being human and do not try to squeeze myself in a box of perfection that neither I nor anyone else is ever going to fit.

Instead, I ask, what is it that I need right now? What it is that my horse needs right now? And how can we meet the energy of the moment in a way that orients us towards growth? How do we meet this moment from a place of expansion?

And how do we let go of any idea that the start point could be any more perfect than where we find ourselves right now?

Consistently showing up means living with less perfection

Onwards.

 Jane

Ready to be less perfect and feel more awesome? We are all about that in JoyRide. You can check out the online program here  www.confidentrider.online/joyride

I know I’m not the only one who has needing reminding about this at one time or another, so in case that’s you right now remember…

Don’t leave yourself off your own list.

At the beginning of last year, I made a pact with myself:

In all reasonable circumstances, I was going to prioritise working and playing with my horses, no matter what was going on or how easily I could convince myself that something was “more urgent”.

I have two young children, my own business and a busy life and no matter how much I love working with my horses or how important they are to me, it was all too easy to place in the “non-urgent” category and bump it off the list in the face of other things that called loudly in my ear. I realized that time to ride was never going to just “make itself available”. I had to carve it out and protect it. I had to claim it.

This didn’t happen without some fiddling. I get up at what would be considered crazy o clock by many and get a couple of hours work done before anyone else in my house is awake. Then, when everyone else is organized and off to school, I pull on my boots and out I go.

We so easily convince ourselves that doing the things we love is “luxury” time, but for me, my horses are a necessity. They are where I receive ideas, words and inspiration that flows into every part of my work. They are where my system decompresses so I can show up for my family as a balanced human. They are where I learn about myself. They are both a luxury AND a necessity. A luxurious necessity.

The list doesn’t fit us in anymore. It fits around us.

Onwards.

❤️ Jane

www.confidentrider.online/joyride

Navigating that line in terms of knowing how far to “take things” in training is always an interesting discussion. We all know that in order to level up in anything, we need to go through a period of resistance that’s synonymous with pushing the edges of our comfort zone and expanding our window of tolerance (or our horse’s comfort zone, depending on which one of us is the focus). What I’ve realized of late is negotiating this area is actually far simpler than I thought; it’s all to do with the connection. The moment that you lose the mental connection between you and that is the moment you know you’ve gone too far over threshold.

This in and of itself is not the end of the world, it just means that any “training” becomes obsolete until the connection is re-established. It always needs to be the primary concern.

It’s interesting to observe this connection within ourselves also. When you feel that you have lost your center or been thrown off course, make returning to that your priority. For as long as we continue to move from the inside out, we will continue to move with the flow of emotion and energy instead of against it.

Nadia (the horse pictured) is one of my gurus of this practice. From a training perspective, it’s possible for us to dance. If I lose the connection, however, I lose everything. The dance does not just slow down, it grinds to a halt. To remain connected to her, I must remain connected to myself. Which is easy, of course, until it’s not.

“Connection: The energy that exists between two people when they feel seen, heard and valued; when they can give and receive without judgment; and when they derive sustenance and strength from the relationship” ~ Brene Brown.

No doubt she would say the same of our horses.

Onwards.

❤️ Jane

Curious to learn more about JoyRide, the Confident Rider Online Program? You can check it out here:

www.confidentrider.online/joyride

Gentle wiggling I hear you say? What’s that all about?

Well, let’s start by getting a better understanding of what freeze is. Freeze is the term we use when our nervous system feels overwhelmed and we lose the capacity to mobilise our body. If you can bring to mind the whole “deer in the headlights” vision, that’s what we are talking about when we are talking about freeze; the body is tight, you’re on high alert and your entire being is oriented towards what you perceive to be the threat.

What we understand about freeze is there is a huge amount of energy coursing beneath the surface. You might appear still, but really you are anything but; you are heart racing, blood pumping, thoughts spinning. If you could hit the button that said “get me the h*ll out of here” at that point, you would punch it for all you were worth- if only you could convince yourself to do so.

The things is, being in freeze is like having your foot stuck on the accelerator and brake at the same time; you’re desperate to move but that’s met with an overriding desire to keep very still; the energy feels too much, like any movement in any direction feels like you are going to blow.

When we are working to come out of states of chronic freeze or where we default to a freeze state easily, we need to work slowly and with great tenderness. We need to soften the edges of our freeze state enough that we can process and integrate the energy lying beneath, but not lift the lid so much that it causes us to blow a fuse.

Gently wiggling, thawing, and unfreezing the edges of our resistance, coming back to our body and the space around us, and drawing on resources that allow us to create a feeling of “I’ve got this” in our hearts and mind.

Onwards.

❤️ Jane

Need some help unfreezing in and out of the saddle? I can totally help you with that! Check out my online program, JoyRide, or shoot me a message and I’ll be on the other side!

www.confidentrider.online/joyride

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

Curious to learn more about JoyRide, the Confident Rider Online Program? You can check it out here 👇🏻

www.confidentrider.online

Oftentimes, we fail to hear the voice of our intuition, not because it isn’t there, but because the space between the flash of insight and the conditioned response is so brief, the latter overshadows the former.

The intuitive voice or message is the one that comes in the first moments after being confronted with a decision or put in a situation that challenges our comfort zone. It’s the yes or no answer that just appears. The feeling in your gut. The understanding about which way to take things. Of course, once you have a practiced connection with it, we don’t require urgent situations in order to hear it, but for many of us, it’s the very clear-cut areas where we first become tangibly aware of its presence.

This ability to see through the situation to what is, is often muddied by the thoughts of what we should be doing.

“No, it’s not a good idea for me to ride right now, but what will everyone think if I don’t?”

“I have the right to own this dream of mine, but then again, they’ve told me I don’t have what it takes, so who am I to think otherwise?”

“I know I need to approach my training this way, but then this is the way I’m being told to do it. It feels bad but what do I know?”

Insight overshadowed by doubt, expectation, and many times, tradition.

The key to reconnecting is to cultivate the wait. To drop back into your body and your heart, and out of your head. To ask how that thought, feeling or decision feels. And if you aren’t sure, to allow yourself time and space.

This is not a weak thing to do. In fact, with all the opinions and judgments that swirl around us, it’s just about the bravest.

Onwards.

❤️ Jane

What to cultivate your bravery muscle and cultivate courage? Come join my online program, JoyRide! Train your body and mind with kindness…

www.confidentrider.online/joyride

Any of us involved with working with horses on a regular basis will have something that we are looking to improve. That “something” can provide us with varying degrees of discomfort; it might be that there’s a little stiffness in a particular movement or a lack of finesse in a transition. In those instances, it’s nothing that really rattles our bubble too much, we are just looking for a greater degree of ease and flow.

There are things, however, that we realise needs to be worked on or improved but we kind of avoid going there simply because it makes us uncomfortable, concerned or even a little afraid. I’m a huge advocate for making sure that all the steps leading up to the “thing” are good; for example, if you are having some issues in trot or canter, then you want to be sure that the quality of what you have prior to that (at the walk or trot) is working for you. Adding another layer of energy to something that is already imbalanced or lacks response means you are going to get more of what you already have, and chances are it’s not going to feel that great.

But there does come a point where the only way that things are going to improve is by doing the thing that needs improving. You can do all the preparatory work, but in order to improve or find balance in the canter (for example), you actually have to canter. Set them up, yes, but don’t avoid “going there” in the hope that dealing with everything BUT the thing that concerns you is going to magically fix it.

The same is true for matters of the head and heart. Once again, take the time to lay the foundations and set yourself up for success, but don’t let endless preparation become a procrastination tool that prevents you from really going to the place that needs the work. On a nervous system level, this calls us to step into a place of embodied discernment.

Am I in the place I am in because this is truly where I need to be, or am I feeding a default pattern that is keeping me here out of concern?

It’s not about throwing you or your horse in the deep end without the tools to cope. But it is about stepping things up when it’s time in the recognition that no matter how prepared you are, you will always feel uncomfortable going to the place that pushes your buttons.

And sometimes, discomfort is just your body’s way of preparing you to do hard things.

Onwards.

❤️ Jane

Curious to learn more about JoyRide, The Confident Rider Online Program? You can check it out here:

www.confidentrider.online/joyride

Us lot are really very good at making a big deal out of things. We love to inflate, exaggerate and think about what things mean, even if at the base of it it’s really well, no big deal.

I play with and use the words “no big deal” a lot when I’m working with my horses or so and have found them to be excellent stabilizers.

When Dee has rockets under his trotters and feels the need to rush forward, I gently turn him and ask for a bend in his body. No big deal, I tell him and feel my body stay relaxed.

When I ask for something new that creates a little brace and resistance, it’s no big deal, I repeat, and let my hands stay gentle.

If I feel myself getting uptight or apprehensive, it’s no big deal, I whisper under my breath, just scale it back for a moment. I feel the tension in my seat release.

It’s no big deal does not mean not paying attention or glossing over the obvious. Instead, it’s a release valve in moments of tension when you feel the first stage in what could become a big deal and instead, you choose to meet it with an air of no-big-deal-ness.

It’s no big deal. Soften. Settle. Diffuse. Repeat.

❤️ Jane

Mindset, movement & nervous system awareness: The Confident Rider Online Program. You can check it out here:

www.confidentrider.online/joyride

I first cast my eyes over these words many years ago and for me, it is one of the yardsticks of training; that the measure of good training shows up in the body of the horse. Train well, and their beauty should increase. I love that we can ask, is what we are doing together causing you to be more beautiful even than you were before?

Beauty as the measure of goodness. Of heading in the right direction. As a prescription for horsemanship.

As I sat with the idea of beauty, I thought about what I had learned this year. If today’s theme is beauty, then you should write a poem, I tell myself.

But, I reply, what if my poem isn’t beautiful?

Ahh, I counter back. The beauty is not in the product but in the process.

Wishing you a day of beauty.

🌷🌷🌷

As the many days before fade into abstract,
I learned
That difficulty is not dissolved with courageous attempts to step with cheerfulness,

Or in closing the door containing the deep exhales of our secrets
Which whisper to us

Stay
With the seasonal invitation of emotion
And experience,
A beautiful and difficult necessity.

Stay
With the fierce wave
Without holding it
Or asking it to move on.

Stay
In its full weight
As the only means to lightness.

Stay
as you sit with friends
and strangers
that sleep within the same heart.

❤️ Jane

www.confidentrider.online/joyride

“If we silence the parts that we find unacceptable, they find other ways to be heard”.

“The parts we find unacceptable” are usually those that make us uncomfortable or lie in opposition to what we would think of as “good feeling”. We are trained to think that success lies in comfort, and so try to move very quickly away from what feels like the opposite of that.

For some of us, anxiety, fear, and concern are unacceptable. For others, maybe anger, frustration. Perhaps not knowing the answer, or being afraid of failing, is unacceptable to us.

The thing is, everything that we feel, everything that comes up, is valid and has something to say, be it unfinished links of activation in our nervous system seeking completion or signal from our internal GPS system to pay attention to what’s in front of us. If we suppress, ignore or brush it off, the feeling doesn’t go away. As the quote says, it just finds other ways to be heard.

Ignore the warning bells of anxiety in the earlier stages and it does not go away. Left long enough, it becomes panic, or we find ourselves in an unhealthy situation and ask, how did I get here?

Ignore the first flush of anger and it doesn’t go away. Left long enough, it becomes rage.

Ignore the fact that you are unwilling to fail, and you become limited and defensive.

Ignore the expressions of discomfort, unease or concern from your horse and they become resistance at best, a buck, a rear or a bolt.

“If we silence the parts that we find unacceptable, they find other ways to be heard”.

Giving how you feel a voice doesn’t mean acting it out in ways that are harmful or stunt your progress. It doesn’t mean allowing the energy of the experience to become bigger than your body. It just means that how you feel is valid. It’s your mind, hearts and intuitions way of alerting you to things that need to be taken care of to navigate the moment, or a call from your body to allow for a corrective emotional experience.

Anxiety calls us to prepare.

Anger calls us to check our boundaries and to connect to our backbone.

Not being willing to fail calls us to reconnect with our intrinsic worth.

Which all have nothing and everything to do with horse training.

Onwards.

❤️ Jane

Mindset, movement & nervous system awareness: The Confident Rider Online Program. You can check it out here 👇🏻

www.confidentrider.online/joyride

I’ve been playing with something recently which is a personal take on the Buddhist practice of Tonglen. Tonglen is slightly different to the usual meditation or visualization techniques where we might look to increase our own well-being by focusing on moving towards better feeling places, and instead asks us to inhale the suffering of the world and send out all that is good in order that other’s may experience it.

Although at first, this way of going about things may be unappealing, what the practice does opens our field to the wider breadth of possibility, which is:

We are not the only ones who feel or have felt this way.

In the current world climate of what can feel like endless bad news and major shifts which can highlight feelings of yet more divisiveness it’s important to connect back to our shared experience and humanity.

If I feel apprehensive or unsure, I play with breathing in the feelings of those who also feel, or have ever felt apprehensive or unsure, and I send them calm and confidence in return.

If I feel overwhelmed or out of my depth, I breathe in for everyone who has felt overwhelmed or out of their depth and exhale clarity and surety.

If I’m struggling with a problem, I breathe in for everyone who has felt stumped, challenged or like they might never make it to the other side also.

Is it curative? No.

Does it remove the feeling? Not necessarily.

But that’s not the point.

What it does do is crack open your compassion and connect you to the invisible threads of connectivity that bind us all together. Here I am, in the midst of feeling this, you recognize, sharing the experience with those who have felt, are currently feeling or are yet to feel how I do now.

And in return, I send them love.

Onwards.

❤️ Jane

www.confidentrider.online/joyride

When to lean in and when to retreat?

Embodied Discernment is a process of tuning into yourself and your responses to a situation and asking:

Is this the time to follow the automatic response of my body?

Or

Is what I’m feeling an indication that I am dancing on the growth edge and consequently, to embrace the discomfort?

When we begin to work at the level of the nervous system, we start to recognize the default pattern of our body in response to stress or systemic activation. For instance, if we have a history of traumatic stress or situations where we were unable to express ourselves or follow our own impulses or we couldn’t respond to our biological needs in the moment, our system copes but installing a default operating procedure. For some of us, it’s a flight response, for some of us, it’s a shutdown response but in both instances, it’s a brace within our nervous system that we drop into when it registers a degree of feeling or activation that it decides is overwhelming.

This happens outside of our conscious control, and often when we are young, but we carry through these bracing patterns to adulthood (unless we do some work to directly unravel them). Integrated unresolved patterns of stress and creating new perspectives involves resensitizing ourselves to when we are reaching our limit. Notice what is occurring that is your body telling you that you are reaching capacity and then honour that WHILE you stay connected to your body.

Resource yourself to lean into experience when it’s necessary, and to honour what’s presenting when you’ve reached your limit in that particular moment.

Embodied discernment.

Onwards.

❤️ Jane

Mindset, movement & nervous system awareness: The Confident Rider Online Program. You can check it out here 👇🏻

www.confidentrider.online/joyride

You know the beautiful thing about belief? It’s learned in relationship.

Everything that we have come to understand about the world and ourselves has been learned in relationship to someone or something else. It’s an endless conversation of meaning-making and comparative analysis that causes us to decide how things are and that, in turn, shapes our perception.

In human to human interactions, our beliefs are heavily influenced through words and dialogue. We get easily stuck in the “meaning” channel, of assessments, and logical dissection that can cause the thoughts to spin around our heads in an endless loop.

And then, we stand before our horses, and this layer is stripped away. Without words, without the ability to relate verbally, what are we left with?

We are left with the task of redefining listening and our relationship to ourselves. Of establishing partnership at the level of the heart and body, rather than the mind.

We are called to drop back in, to hold space for ourselves and another that often lacks certainty and requires a level of subtlety and understanding that is frequently lost in the busyness of modern life.

When I ride Nadia now, I feel happy. I feel the aliveness in her cells and it’s contagious. The feeling starts in my chest and I find the enthusiasm spilling out in smiles on my face. She has taught me to get out of my head and into my body.

A belief and new understanding once again learned in relationship.

Onwards.

❤️ Jane

Want to learn more about the Confident Rider Online Program? You can check it out here:

www.confidentrider.online/joyride

I read something on a post the other day about a horse routinely being given a herbal calmer 30- 40 minutes before riding, which I’ll admit never sits well with me. There are similar discussions that I am having with people all the time who have been advised on comparable lines to take a supplement of some sort or something similar to deal with what is presenting- be that anxiety, worry, overwhelm- to help them navigate something that they are finding challenging. The reason that it makes me uneasy is not because of the supplements per se, but the attachment to this approach being the solution and as a consequence, the causative underlying issues are never really addressed. For the sake of example, let’s work with anxiety.

If I am routinely relying on something- be that a supplement, equipment or a fixed routine- to create a calmer or more relaxed horse or rider, I can be fairly certain that there is a deeper issue that is not being looked at. If we think of anxiety being the overcurrent, or the behavior that is presenting, then the undercurrent to that is a dysregulated nervous system and a horse or human being placed in a situation where their stresses outweigh their resources.

How do I know if it’s addressing the causative issue? I know because when I remove it, there is an improvement. For instance, if a herbal calmer helped the undercurrent of the issue, then it stands to reason that when I removed it, there would be an improvement in the initial underlying challenge.

If a noseband strap actually helped my horse accept and carry the bit happily, when I removed it, there should be an improvement. A real aid is exactly that; it aids and assists the resolution of what caused the initial concern and discomfort and moves horse and rider towards a better feeling place.

The questions to ask are then:

Is what I am doing supportive to myself or my horse? Sometimes, yes- if it’s understood as an acute measure that doesn’t cause additional harm and the work to address the underlying issues is being tended to.

Is what I’m doing masking the issue? I would say, are you reliant on it? Does it remove the personal agency of either horse and/or rider? If the idea of *not* having it fills you with hot sweats, then we might have an issue.

Thinking in terms of overcurrents and undercurrents is useful. Does what’s presenting have a deeper issue? And if so, how can we dive under the surface to make sure that’s the place we are really working from?

Onwards.

❤️ Jane

I’ve set my space up to allow me to insert as many moments of movement into the day as possible. One of my favourite things that I own is this mini-trampoline. If my thoughts are stuck; if my body feels lethargic; if I’ve had a response to something that taken me out of centre, I’ll often leap on and jump around for a minute or two.

We talk a lot about calming down when we are feeling a little too “up”, but not so much about the need to invite activation and energy into the body when we are feeling a little flat. Motivation, momentum, creativity, presence, all require a spark, and it’s easy for that spark to be put out if we are sitting for long periods or have been inactive to the point where our energy follows gravity and becomes a heavy weight pooling in our cells.

Many times, the energy is there, it just needs a little something something to literally and metaphorically shake things up. Call it Chi, prana, life force, life energy. You gotta stir the pot sometimes.

❤️ Jane

www.confidentrider.online/joyride

“Every time you think you are broken, know this: you are never really breaking. Noone can break an ocean, darling. All you are doing is breaking the glass that is holding you back, diving deeper into your own depths, discovering yourself in pockets of the most somber waves, rebuilding your heart with coral, with seaweed, with moon colored sand dust.

So stop trying to hold yourself back inside that glass, it was never meant to hold you. Instead, break it, shatter it into a thousand pieces, and become who you were always meant to be. An ocean, proud and whole.”

~ Nikita Gill

Scene 1: You sit down at your computer and log in to the latest news site. The top five stories are filled with not great news about health, politics and the latest crime committed in your area. You might notice a brick land in your stomach- or you might not- but in any case, you push on because it’s important to be informed. You read everything you can before it’s time to get into the work that you have to do.

Later that day, you find yourself with a lingering feeling of overwhelm. Someone asks you something and you snap at them. You notice that you have an underlying feeling of aggravation to, that it doesn’t take much to “send you over the edge”, but you rationalize it. There’s a lot going on in the world after all.

Scene 2: You jump on for your lesson with your horse. You don’t feel in that great of a space, but you don’t communicate that to your instructor. You don’t want to him to think you’re soft. In the beginning, it feels fine and you go through the motions, but you find yourself with an increasing sense of anxiety that’s making it hard for you to remember the instructions clearly and you find yourself feeling frustrated with your horse. Afterwards, you feel despondent and down and have trouble concentrating. You’re tired, but when it comes to going to sleep, you feel wide awake.

Many of us view increasing strength and resiliency as the ability to withstand more in our day to day life; we see it as the act of increasing the capacity of our cup to hold more so that we can better fit in with the world around us. In my view, the true evolution is learning to recognize the signals of your body and honoring where it is you are in that moment so that you can show up for your life and horses as a sustainable and reliable presence, for the benefit of both you and them. It’s as much about knowing when to step out as when to step in.

Resilience is not about mind over body. It’s not about saying yes constantly because we’ve told ourselves that’s what it means to be a good person. It’s not about deferring to the instructions of another at the expense of what your body is communicating to you.

Scene 1 is an example of flooding. Being informed is not the same as drowning in the news, and yet many of us are overwhelming our system on a daily basis and wondering why our threshold has diminished.

Scene 2 is an example of deferring to the wishes of someone else when you recognize you are getting to the edge of your growth zone. It’s a form of flooding also. This is a fine edge to walk, and one you often only realise you’ve gone over once you’ve gone over it. By tuning in to yourself and learning how your body communicates its increasing movement towards overflow, we can pace ourselves; we can learn when to push the accelerator and when it’s time to take our foot off the gas.

Real growth is about knowing when to rest, when to allow for the settling, as it is about involving yourself in the doing.

Onwards.

❤️ Jane

Mindset, Movement & Nervous System Awareness. Check out the Confident Rider Online Program 👇🏻

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Self-care is somewhat of a catchphrase at the moment, and rightly so. But sometimes I think that the idea of self-care and the associations that we have with it takes us further away from what it truly means to take care of ourselves. I realise that’s a little bit cryptic so let me explain what I mean…

If you say to the words “Self-care”, what comes to mind? Chances are it’s some version of slowing down and doing something for yourself. You might think of the “magazine versions” of self-care, such as taking a bath, reading a book or booking in for a massage. Or maybe carving out a chunk of time in your day to play with your horse or take some time out. What I’ve observed in my own life is that the idea of self-care can become another thing on your to-do list, another box to tick off, another thing that you aren’t managing to fit in to what is already a full day, week or month.

I don’t subscribe to any of that now.

Self-care to me is about, wherever possible, following the natural rhythms of my body and what it needs in the moment. It’s all well and good to take time out for an hour to do something nice for yourself (and don’t get me wrong, I’m all for this), but if you putting off going to the toilet, even though you’ve been busting for the last little while, routinely working late into the night even though you can hardly keep your eyes open, not having a drink when you are thirsty or eating when you are hungry, not letting your body move in ways it’s motivated too then you are missing the true essence of what it means to care for yourself.

Self-care is the foundation stone of following your instinct and intuition. It works on both a macro level- I need to eat or drink something, I need to rest, I need to move- and a micro level- I get a sense this situation isn’t right for me, I’m curious what would happen if I followed this hunch I have about this thing, I want to say no (or yes) to that request.

Many of us regularly tune out to the louder requests we receive from our body and then wonder how to become more sensitive riders and horse people; if the aim is to be more sensitive to our horses, we need to start being with being sensitive to ourselves.

Self-care is not time out. It is a state of being where we honor the requests of our body and wherever possible, move in flow with them.

Onwards.

❤️ Jane

Questions around certain topics seem to come in waves, and at the moment, I’ve been getting a lot of questions arriving in my inbox around the topic of motivation. Let’s talk about this briefly from a nervous system perspective.

For many of us, when we hear the words “sympathetic nervous system”, we automatically think of the flight and fight response. Often what our knowledge is limited to, however, is the response of our system under threat, and we pay little attention to what the “healthy” or balanced version of the same looks like.

The fight and flight response of our body is welcome and necessary; when we are in situations where mobilization and action are required, we want our system to respond in a way that moves us towards safety in whatever way is appropriate for the moment. The fight/ flight response is exactly that; a protective function that allows us to defend ourselves or move out of harms way when if and when the need arises.

In a responsive system- a system that can mobilise when necessary and also relax when in a situation of relative safety- the sympathetic system is what gives us focus, drive, and power. We want a little bit of sympathetic activation in order for there to be enough energy and drive within to move us towards the actions and outcomes we are looking to create.

Finding ourselves procrastinating or lacking motivation means that we need to consider the overall regulation of our nervous system, to ensure we have the right parts “switched on” when we need them, and the right parts switched off. It pays to look beyond some of the more popularized “go-to’s” for ongoing lack of motivation or drive (I’m thinking time management “issues”, accountability or even internalized notions of laziness and not having what it takes) to look at the bigger picture and consider how it is we can soften the edges of the freeze or resistance so we can allow for and hold more energy and activation in the container of our body.

It’s more often than not a case of feeling our way into it, rather than thinking our way out of it.

What shows up in my body when I go to do this thing?

And how can I move forward in a way that feels supported, and where I have resources to draw on that makes it feel safe to do so?

Onwards.

❤️ Jane

Curious to learn more about the Confident Rider Online Program? You can check it out here:

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You know what can be helpful to realise? You can’t and shouldn’t seek to be relieved of your humanity.

And being human means that you will respond to your environment and circumstances in a myriad of different ways.

Many of us are operating on the false premise that comfort somehow is the goal, and if we are uncomfortable, that this indicates a moment in time that we should work to move past in our efforts to get back to being comfortable.

This ideal creates a lot of stress and false hope. Instead, what I believe we are searching for is responsiveness; a state of being that allows us to be alert when necessary but also relax when we are safe. This means we aren’t holding something that isn’t true for the moment, or out of sync with the situation we find ourselves in and instead, allows us to be in flow with our experience.

Embracing discomfort doesn’t mean that you are destined to a life of hardship, but the paradox is that trying to avoid it is as uncomfortable as being in it.

Increasing our capacity for discomfort instead asks us to realise that it’s possible for two different states of being to exist simultaneously. That if I feel tightness somewhere, that lightness will also exist if I open my field of awareness. That every moment I find myself is a blend of many different possibilities all present at the same time, and that allowing myself to oscillate between the what might feel hard and what might feel less hard within the same experience is what expands my capacity to sit with both.

Onwards.

❤️ Jane

Curious to learn more about increasing capacity, holding discomfort and everything in between? Check out JoyRide, the Confident Rider Online Program:

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I had a really interesting ride this morning, and I think that my experience demonstrates the necessity for us to be able to viscerally get in touch with our own strength and power and to be able to channel mindful and healthy aggression as and when it is required.

I will preface this by saying that on the whole, I believe we have a poor relationship with the healthy manifestations of anger, power, and aggression, to the point where we have difficulty even using the words. If we nurture tendencies towards non-confrontation (as so many of us do), then discussions such as these can create a level of activation in the system that’s hard to hold. Our preference for non-directness, however, does not leave us immune from those same energies. Instead, it creates a predisposition towards passive aggression, fawning, or collapse, which are problematic in their own right.

Healthy power and aggression give you the ability to hold your own space and to stand in the knowledge of your capability and personal agency. They are what connect you to your backbone so you can find the ability to do hard things in the moment.

This morning, when I took Dee out, he was really on his toes. He was distracted and didn’t feel as relaxed and with me as I would typically like him to be. I entertained the idea of popping back into the round pen and riding in there, but for some reason, something stopped me. The thing is, I knew that he has enough education now to deal with a little bit of pressure. The questions I was going to ask of him, he knew the answer to. I knew that I was competent enough to guide him through whatever it was that was concerning him.

In that moment, the familiar voice connected to the knot in my stomach told me to let it go, play it safe, and take it down a few notches. Many times, I have listened to that voice, and many times I will continue to listen to it. But on this occasion, I knew that it was important that I worked through whatever it was that was happening in the exact space we were in now; to step up and meet the energy rather than downgrade it.

And so, I find myself being angry with that voice. I found myself connecting to the energy within me that was necessary to meet the moment. That fire of healthy aggression that gave me the strength to do something hard.

I worked with my dancing horse on the ground until he was in a better feeling space. When I jumped on, I sang to him, and I sang to myself, and I let myself be the captain of the ship and not just a passenger.

Before long, the activation in both of us receded and the insides tightly held relaxed as our bodies allowed themselves to be breathed.

Power is an important thing to hold. Not power over. Not aggression towards. Not an emotion that’s become bigger than your body. But the sense of here I am and let’s do this. The healthy manifestations of the same.

Staking your claim and moving forward with purpose and clarity.

Onwards.

❤️ Jane

Curious to learn more about JoyRide, the Confident Rider Online Program? You can check it out here 👇🏻

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I realized not that long ago that most of the activity that I do was pretty neat and orderly. I didn’t allow myself- at least not very often- to follow the instinct of my body in terms of what felt good and allow myself to be wild and uncontained in how I let it move. These days, I consider movement to be a re-wilding process, a process of making friends with energy and activation as much as it is about settling and soothing.

Letting your body drive the movement, rather than the mind, is a great practice for getting more intimate with the Itty Bitty Shitty Committee, or the inner critic. As you begin the process of de-inhibition, you notice the agreements you’ve made with the world and with yourself about what’s ok and what’s not, even to the extent of moving your body in a way that doesn’t conform to a linear pattern or process.

It’s no great surprise that if we find difficulty in allowing for natural expression in movement when left to our own devices, that we find it infinitely more challenging when coupling with such a magnificent creature as the horse whose freedom and depth of spirit is continually expressed through their physicality.

Are you using movement to control, conform and contain, or do you allow, at least in part, for movement to be used as a natural expression of your inherent wildness?

❤️ Jane

Want to learn more about regulating movement for your nervous system? Come join us for JoyRide! You can check it out here 👇🏻

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I know that for me, one of the most important lessons of the last couple of years has been learning to trust the walkie talkie system between my gut and my brain. As I’ve learned to tune into what my intuition and instincts are telling me, I can better discern whether what it is I am feeling is true for the moment, or whether it’s a consequence of skewed perception as a result of past experiences.

This differentiation, I believe, is one of the first things to go when we begin to internalize emotional experiences and own them as part of our personality or makeup. With anxiety, for instance, I see many examples of riders holding so tightly to the idea that they are an anxious rider (or an anxious person) that they can no longer discern when they are in a situation that is unsafe or out of their skill level to safely and effectively deal and instead, immediately assume that their feeling state is a consequence of a weakness or flaw.

When we operate from this space, there’s no difference in how we interpret our body’s very real response to feeling compromised in some way, and the experience of anxiety that’s become a patterned behavior, a necessary skill when it comes to making decisions both on the ground and in the saddle.

I noticed this most obviously with my big horse Dee. He’s naturally very sensitive and forward, and in the beginning, when there were few “buttons” in place to work with, the power and forward made me feel a little unsettled. I mused on my discomfort and wondered whether it was just because I wasn’t used to that level of expression, or whether it was my “stuff”. After working with a trainer and going through some things together, I understood that the way I felt was actually my body recognizing that this was a situation that called for a lot of me and that I had to be on my game. Paying attention to that meant I worked slowly and methodically and didn’t inadvertently put myself in a situation where I was out of my depth- which could easily have happened if I had instead decided that I needed to get over myself and get on with it.

Not all feelings of unease are problems to be fixed. Not all anxiety or fear is your stuff. What we want to make sure of is that when our body responds to the situation we are in by sending off the smoke alarm, that we are attuned enough to pay attention, and haven’t desensitized ourselves to the point where we take on everything as a deficiency on our part.

Onwards.

❤️ Jane

Curious to learn more about JoyRide, the Confident Rider Online Program? You can check it out here 👇🏻

www.confidentrider.online/joyride

Effective horsemanship is as much about learning to be a sustainable presence as it is anything else, and sustainability- the capacity to keep showing up and doing the necessary work- requires that we have a foothold in some kind of joy, ease, or lightness so that we can play the long game.

On the face of it, this doesn’t seem that complicated, but the reality is that many of us have a tough time letting ourselves feel good. In its place, we disproportionately focus on the things that we view as our failings or inadequacies, leading to feelings of overwhelm, immobilization, or collapse.

This doesn’t have as much to do with reality as it does the distribution of our awareness. Under stress, our tendency is to contract around the difficulty or concern, pushing all the separate strands of our experience together into a tangled ball and holding them tightly.

As you move through your day, notice where you are throwing away your power and where it is strengthened. Notice if, in the midst of discomfort, you are able to find something that feels more easeful; a less heavy thought, a more spacious feeling, a moment of gentleness. Notice how it’s possible for more than one state of being to exist at the same time, and within your noticing, if you can allow your awareness to rest on the lightest of the options available to you, if only fleetingly.

Onwards.

❤️ Jane

www.confidentrider.online/joyride