Category: The (almost kinda) Daily

With a handful of exceptions, most riders I work with have a pre-disposition to the flight and freeze response and as a consequence, I’ve developed a fascination around some of the cultural and community dynamics that feed into us responding the way that we do. Horses are such a brilliant magnifying glass for highlighting how we respond under pressure, and as such, give us the opportunity to examine things on a much deeper level than we may have entertained otherwise.

My observation is that the majority of us have been trained out of the ability to respond and mobilise under stress, and in its place, been trained into helplessness and a sense of needing someone or something else to fix problems for us. We see this manifest in a variety of different ways; our voice becomes muted when we find ourselves disagreeing with someone in the moment but unable to express it (freeze). Any sort of activity that calls for expansion or discomfort creates near instant anxiety (flight). In the face of something not quite going to plan- be that in training or otherwise- we dissolve quickly into self-blame and internalize the situation at hand as a personal flaw (freeze).

As a collective nervous system, this is not really surprising. It’s really only very recently that women have had a voice- domestically and publicly- or personal agency. For most of us, we would be the first, and possibly second at a stretch- generation to have that opportunity, and as a consequence, there are few role models and a long lineage of unspoken voices and disempowered actions whose essence we hold in our bodies.

Healing our nervous systems, increasing our capacity involves coming back to your own centre and rooting yourself in your own power; not power over, or power to. Just here I am, taking up all the space that’s owed to me and welcoming you to do the same.

Before we have that integration, it’s impossible to be a sustainable and steady presence. Our horses feel into our lack of steadiness and it feels untrustworthy.

Finding that power is not selfish or indulgent. It’s an essential part of tending to the individual and community collective and of creating a way of being that allows us to be reliable and compassionate partners for our horses.

Onwards.

❤️ Jane

Ready to move on from just “managing” fear, anxiety and shut down? I’ll show you how to increase your capacity and resilience, in both your life and your riding. You can check it out here:

www.confidentrider.online/joyride

After the webinar yesterday and the Live Q&A in my membership program, I’ve been musing more and more about just how necessary it is for us to understand how it is our body responds to traumatic stress and the consequence of that on both a systemic level (in terms of how our nervous system responds) and on the level of experience (our ability to be able to make space or hold feelings of discomfort and unease).

Let’s use a practical example. In a regulated and resourced nervous system, I have the ability to welcome a level of activation into my body and hold that that without it becoming overwhelming, or allowing it to disconnect me from my higher wisdom that tells me what the best course of action is for me and my horse in this situation. This, obviously, is the ideal; where our resources outweigh our stresses and we are able to continue on, even when we are under pressure or stress.

In the case of traumatic stress, discomfort and feelings of being physically under threat are coupled together, meaning that any time I feel a level of energy in my body I immediately feel in peril, and my system responds by taking me straight into a state of fight, flight, freeze or collapse. In order to get to a place where we can increase our resilience and our ability to hold challenging experiences- and not disconnect from ourselves as a result- we need to un-couple that association; to separate discomfort from survival, reset the smoke alarm and teach ourselves that it’s possible to maintain a sense of “I’ve got this”, even when the situation is difficult or challenging.

Increasing our ability to hold our experience without it growing bigger than our body. It’s all about capacity.

Onwards.

❤️ Jane

Are you over your body sounding the alarm at the slightest hint of discomfort? I hear you! JoyRide is all about helping you maintain your centre and your integrity, even in the midst of big energies and experience. You can check it out here 👇🏻

www.confidentrider.online/joyride

There’s some stuff that’s hard to talk about when it comes to discussing how you feel as a rider or horseperson, and anger is definitely one of those topics. The thing is, just because we know that it’s not the ideal state to be in when working with horses, doesn’t mean that people no longer feel it. And then beyond that, you have a situation where those of us trying their best to cultivate the “cool” energy feel ashamed and embarrassed at their seeming inability to generate zen (meaning that it’s talked about and dealt with even less).

Let’s start by differentiating between mindful anger and, well… not mindful anger. Mindful anger means that I can feel a certain level of activation in my body that lives in the fight channel, but that energy doesn’t become bigger than me. Consequently, I am able to channel it into assertiveness, strength, and have a visceral sense of my own backbone- necessary qualities both in riding and in life.

Anger that is bigger than me, however, means that in the moment I am in it, the experience of the emotion has become bigger than my body, and I am no longer tapped into my higher wisdom that can inform me how best to navigate the situation. When we are in that place, we are in sympathetic activation. The smoke alarm portion of our brain is the one in control and we are not in a place to consider the ramifications of our actions until after when the pre-frontal cortex comes back online and we feel remorseful and embarrassed. And so the cycle continues.

Some things to know:

🔥 Anger is an emotion of the fight channel. The higher the intensity of the emotion, the further up the channel you are

🔥 Many of us are hovering at the “charged” end of the scale, nervous system-wise, and when an outside charge is added to that, it’s easy to climb up the chain really fast because it escalates to a point where the activation gets too big for your body

🔥 Creating “Zen” will be hard because your baseline at the moment is set to a high charge

So the work then is:

💧 Regulating in the first instance, so that you have a more stable baseline to come back to

💧 Creating more safety and stability in your body

💧 Getting used to feeling charge in the system without it zooming outside of your window of tolerance

Anger is not dissimilar to anxiety, it’s just operating in a different channel, with a different manifestation. Once you understand that, you can begin the work to bring your baseline back down to a more regulated and balanced place.

Onwards.

❤️ Jane

Want to learn more about harnessing your energy and your nervous system as it relates to your riding? Come join my FREE webinar. You can sign up here 👇🏻

There are two phrases I’ve been messing around with lately, and they have really helped me get a handle on what it means to operate in your own integrity and get to a space where your internal world and external experience are matching up.

They are:

Negative Peace

And

Clean Discomfort

The first (I think) comes from a quote I read from Martin Luther King (but don’t hold me to that), and I’ve thought a lot about the preservation of negative peace, in relation to my horsemanship, my personal conduct, and the community.

My interpretation of negative peace is when there is an outer appearance of peace or calm, but it is preserved only at the expense of something or someone else. Whilst the situation may appear peaceful, there is a huge amount of discord or tension running beneath the surface. If I translate this to the nervous system, I recognize it as a form of freeze.

Some manifestations include:

♦️ Working together with my horse and keeping everything completely quiet or nice, out of concern that “upsetting” them in some way is going to result in a situation I can’t handle. This is negative peace. I am attempting to maintain outer order, but what I have between us is not true calm or understanding, and ultimately benefits me more than my horse. What’s more, it’s the tipping point before an inevitable explosion, regardless of whether that happens sooner or later.

♦️ Personally, negative peace might look like not have a hard conversation. It might look like me maintaining a façade of okayness because I would rather be in that position that potentially involve myself in conflict.

♦️ On a community level, we see examples of this all over. Systems and situations favoring one group of people over the other; the call to “just have things return to normal”; the preference for a perceived veil of calm, even if that calm is not for the benefit of all.

On all counts, you can see how in order to find true peace, there has to be systemic disruption. There has to be a release of energy. With our horses and ourselves, resilience is never found in the total absence of pressure, but it also needs to be created in a context where our resources outweigh our stresses.

Which leads me to Clean Discomfort. I half borrowed this term, half made it up. Clean Discomfort is the necessary discomfort we have to feel in order to expand our capacity and grow. It’s the discomfort of releasing the pressure valve and letting the energy be known, felt, and integrated.

It’s a necessary alchemy.

So, check-in every so often. Is the peace I am experiencing true peace or negative peace? Is the discomfort I find myself in a clean discomfort?

It’s important.

Onwards.

❤️ Jane

Want to learn more about preserving true peace and increase your capacity for clean discomfort? Come join my free webinar! You can sign up here:

The body has the most beautiful way of organising itself, and many times, our well-intentioned efforts to calm down when we feel we are “up” or manipulate what and how the body is presenting gets in the way of that happening.

Part of that has to do with the pressure to conform to what we consider to be socially acceptable presentations. For instance, we may feel a strong emotion to cry in certain settings, but we stuff it down or swallow our tears as we feel they’re inappropriate or not ok for the situation we find ourselves in. The narratives around tears often tell us they are a sign of weakness and fragility, and so we internalise the feeling, along with the story in the hope that it will somehow evaporate. Instead, it mutates.

In order for us to feel like we are on top of things both in and out of the saddle, we need to feel like we have the capacity to handle what might come up and that we can register a feeling of safety in our body. Both of those things are subjective and relative, depending on the person in question and their history and experience up until that point.

Capacity relates directly to the amount of activation we can handle in our system. For the sake of example, let’s say I am about to ride my young and inexperienced horse. As I go to get on, I feel a rush of anticipation that registers not only as physical feeling, but also energy and vibration; I might also play out a movie in my mind and attach a meaning to what it is I am feeling based on previous associations and understandings.

My ability to hold that feeling and stay connected to my body and my environment- and to the resources I have available me- relates directly to my capacity to hold it. If the level of activation does not exceed my body’s ability to hold it, I can still ride effectively, competently and compassionately despite the level of stress. Why? Because my stresses aren’t outweighed by my resources.

If, on the other hand, the stress exceeds my body’s capacity to hold it, I move outside of my capacity and into lizard brain mode, where I am in the domain of flight and fight, and if those options aren’t available, freeze.

This is where it gets interesting. If at some time in the past, I have experienced something similar, but at the point of high activation there has also been a highly charged emotion attached- say in the case of accident, injury or trauma- which has not been effectively addressed or integrated, that energy can stay stuck in the body. It’s possible then that we find ourselves in a situation- sometimes shortly after, sometimes many years down the line- where we find ourselves skilled and able but having a disproportionate response to something in front of us. One that seemingly has no context and appears inappropriate for the moment. If we have enough reactions of this nature, we internalize the experience and instead of understanding it as a result of chronic stress or trauma, we see it as in intrinsic part of us, or what’s more that we are flawed and incapable.

Enter:

I am a nervous rider
I am an anxious rider
I’m not very brave

… and so on and so forth.

Addressing this involves being curious to the response of the body instead of afraid of it; it involves slowing ourselves down and opening to discomfort, resourcing ourselves and moving forward with gentle and compassionate exploration. In approaching the solution with the opposite energy of which it was created.

Over time, we then begin to be less reflexive and soften the edges of our own resistance and patterned responses.

Want to learn more? Make sure you sign up for my free workshop, Presence, Power & Partnership. We’ll be discussing situations such as this and so much more 👇🏻

❤️ Jane

A non-horsey friend came over the other day and said to me, Jane, what are those boots that you have standing near the end of your bed?

I wanted to reply, THOSE boots? Whilst waving my arms around with wild abandon.

You mean, those glorious patent boots that gently catch the sunlight so you are fiercely and firmly reminded on their awesomeness?

You mean the boots that I bought second hand off a friend but couldn’t try on before I bought them, therefore taking a wild risk, only to have them FIT prompting a manic happy dance in the kitchen?

But instead I said, oh, they are my riding boots, dampening the protective flutter within.

She looked at me and I realised how a pair of patent long boots sitting at the end of your bed might look to someone out of the context to which they were meant.

Which led me to coin the phrase, “Contextually Fabulous”.

I get it I said, but THOSE boots are Contextually Fabulous. OUT of context, I appreciate the confusion (and possible stories one could create around them), but none the less, on the back of a horse…

Contextually Fabulous.

More tea anyone?

❤️ Jane

www.confidentrider.online

Boundaries are a complicated subject. We refer them in different contexts all the time without having an embodied understanding of what it really means to hold a boundary, or how to create them.

I need better boundaries. I’m always getting taking advantage of.

I’m so tired, but it’s my own fault. I say yes to everything.

When I lead my horse to the arena, he walks all over me like I’m not even there.

At the heart of it, a defined boundary of the self is a fundamental property of every living organism. In order for us to be able to move through the world in a balanced and regulated way, we need to be able to differentiate ourselves from our environment; to know what is ours and what is “other”; to be clear on what we want and what we don’t want; to viscerally feel and be clear on what is acceptable to us and what is not.

When that definition is clear, our system is able to organically create a space between us and the world that allows us to filter our experiences and hold our own integrity and energy.

Not an armor that blocks everything out (and at the same time doesn’t let anything in).

Not a barrier so indistinct that we can no longer tell what’s ours and what’s yours, what feels good and what doesn’t, what’s intuition and what’s projection.

But a clear sense of self in relationship to our environment that allows us to be distinct and rooted in our own being.

It’s only once we have a clear and felt sense of differentiation that true, conscious integration is possible; with our horses, on a community level and globally.

Onwards.

❤️ Jane

Want to learn more about increasing your capacity for big emotions, energies, and experiences with your horse? Make sure you register for my free Presence, Power & Partnership Workshop at the end of this month! 👇🏻

https://confidentrider.online/presence-power-partnership-with-jane-pike/

Over the last few days, some of my equestrian peers have posted articles about Black Lives Matter, the protests, and shared articles of support. In that, I stand with them.

Inevitably, the comment pops up:

“Another page that’s gone political”

Or

“I follow this for the horse training, not for politics”

And so, I got curious.

What makes something political? I started by looking at what makes it NOT political.

Wikipedia defines apolitical as:

Apoliticism is apathy or antipathy towards all political affiliations.[1] Being apolitical can also refer to situations in which people take an unbiased position in regard to political matters.[2] The Collins Dictionary defines apolitical as “politically neutral; without political attitudes, content, or bias”.

In other words, being apolitical is, in my opinion, not humanly possible. Even choosing to be apolitical, is in fact political. The choice not to make a choice is in fact a choice.

This got me thinking a little bit more.

When we follow a page, we unconsciously assign expectations to the people and processes we follow. As people, we desire certainty and context. We want to know that when we hit the button that takes us to your page, what it is we can expect, and within that, the context of our relationship to you.

When that context is threatened, we feel personally attacked. The comfort that we gained through our own expectations has been violated, and we perceive that as the fault of the other person.

This isn’t right! We tell ourselves. This isn’t what we signed up for!

The thing is, those rules you made were your own. They are a mental construct that you created that allowed you to categorise and organise your own expectations. They have nothing to do with the other person.

So if those rules were broken- those rules YOU created- then that’s entirely OUR problem and not the problem of the page or person who never knew those rules existed.

To be alive is to be political. The people you follow are not puppets.

Every photo I post is a political statement.

Whether I ride with a bit or bitless, the tack I use is a political statement in the horse world.

Whether I ride with or without a noseband is a political statement.

My methods of horsemanship are political. They are open for debate and have supporters and adversaries, no matter how strongly I feel about them.

There’s family politics, horse politics, community politics.

I, for one, follow people because what they stand for is important to me. What they represent is important to me. And every part of that is political.

No-one can be for everyone and nor should they try to be. But if you respect someone enough to follow their methodologies and processes in other areas of their riding and life, then it begs to reason that something outside of what you are used to seeing in that same space should spark your interest also.

You don’t have to agree with it. But to write it off as “political”, ask yourself, does it really offend you because it’s political? Or is it more it’s just not YOUR type of political?

Onwards.

❤️ Jane

Just take a deep breath.

Lengthen your exhale.

Slow your breath down.

If you’ve ever felt upset or anxious in the saddle, these are all instructions that will be familiar to you (or perhaps you’ve even told yourself).

Have you noticed, though, that taking a deep breath can sometimes make it worse? Or actually, seem impossible?

It might contradict popular opinion but focusing on the breath is not always the answer. If your body is frozen and tight, you simply don’t have the means to invite the breath in, and trying to do so can increase the concern.

Instead, think of mobilizing the body to make more room for the breath. Loosening the muscles around your torso. Gently softening the body so it can breathe itself.

Find a way to let your body breathe itself.

Onwards.

❤️ Jane

www.confidentrider.online

It was 8:45 am in the morning when I jumped in the shower. Better get a move on, I told myself, you haven’t even begun the work that you need to do today.

For whatever reason, I caught myself in that moment.

By 8:45 am, I had recorded a podcast, written a short article and posted it, done 20 minutes of exercise, answered some emails and questions in my Facebook group, made my boys lunch for school, got them ready and out the door, and here I was with the voice in my head telling me:

Not enough.

Get moving.

Not enough.

I’ll be the first to admit I have pretty high standards for myself when it comes to productivity. I know what I want to do and for the most part, I get it done.

But man alive, we can be so hard on ourselves. We don’t even realise how black and white our thinking can be when it comes to considering what “counts”, and the unconscious tally we are holding ourselves against that can lead us into a perpetual spin cycle if we’re not careful.

So, I let myself linger a little longer. Laughed at the voice which told me that keep it short. And made sure I left spaces between for the joy to come in. After all, if we hold ourselves too tightly, how will it ever find us?

Onwards.

❤️ Jane

www.confidentrider.online/joyride

Slow your body down.

Anxiety can feel like a permanent state of being when we are outside the window of what we can comfortably deal with, seeing us hovering in the sympathetic flight mode.

Responding to feelings of emergency with emergency speed only exacerbates the feelings of concern and reinforces the voice that screams in your ear you have something to worry about.

Slow your body down.

To begin to come back and be able to tap into your higher wisdom, see if you can become more deliberate with your actions.

Slow your body down.

Infuse slowness into your movements. Move your toes and connect through your feet. Gently, kindly move your ribcage.

Slow your body down.

Onwards.

❤️ Jane

www.confidentrider.online

If we allow them too, horses provide us with a direct channel to our own aliveness. On the one hand, that’s something we all yearn for; the ability to merge with another creature so that their legs become our legs, their muscles move our muscles, their strength and power becomes our own and as a consequence, we are free to experience something that we would never be capable of doing independently.

The catch is, while it’s that aliveness we yearn for, it’s also something we are fundamentally afraid of. Many of us have come to associate any level of activation in our bodies with fear or lack of safety, even if those feelings are an obvious inaccurate representation of the position we find ourselves in.

Your horse begins to move freely, and you shut it down. The power is too much for your body to handle.

Your horse shows expression, and you shut it down. In theory, that’s what you want; in reality, you only feel safe when your horse is close to flatlining.

The task then lies in increasing our capacity; to deal with emotion, energy, and experience. Our capacity to embrace our own fundamental aliveness and meet that of our horses in a way that feels exciting, advancing, uplifting, rather than concerning, worrying, and scary.

Do a little test now- put on some good beats, turn up the volume. Let your feet drop you into the here and now. Let yourself dance.

How comfortable are you letting yourself move freely? How long can you go before you get the feeling it’s too much and need to sit down? Does even the thought of it make you slink away?

Get curious. When you feel life come into your body- be that concern, excitement, anxiety, joy, frustration and anything in between- can you hold it? Or do you turn away?

Something to play with.

Onwards.

❤️ Jane

www.confidentrider.online

I’ve spent a good part of my life not being very nice to my body. It’s kind of been like a low-grade relationship with the schoolyard bully; they might not actively beat you up, but they stole the good part of your lunch, laughed at your hair cut, and called you names that made you want to slink off and hope you were invisible. I think that’s how it was. Convincing myself for whatever reason, this, that or the other was just not good enough.

In the last decade, though, things have started to change. My focus has shifted from aesthetics to function and it constantly blows my mind just how beautiful our bodies are. It’s incredible how when under threat, our lungs move down and wrap around our heart to protect it. Or that when everything feels too much, that we have this ability to tune out in an effort to keep ourselves safe, our nervous system protecting us from input that feels too much or too difficult to manage. That we have this beautiful fascial container that lets us feel into the edges of our skin and communicates to every cell, like a superhighway of sensory information.

It only takes ten minutes to learn about your body to really blow your own mind.

And then- even beyond that- how we can merge with our horses to create as a unit a power and a strength that neither of us could feel independently. What a gift.

So now, in whatever state you feel, in whatever position you are in if you can take a moment to appreciate that. To appreciate the fact that whatever hardships, difficulties or joys you have had, your body has sailed you through them the best way it knew how, and that every response it had was nothing more than its best effort to keep you safe.

What could be more beautiful?

Onwards.

❤️ Jane

www.confidentrider.online

The night before last, my little boys and I all dived into the outside bath and spent a good 90 minutes star gazing. It’s become somewhat of a family tradition to try and spot the International Space Station and I knew that there were a mass of satellites circulating currently that I hoped we would be able to see. As we were lying there, staring up, I was asked so many questions that I couldn’t answer. And at one point, I thought to myself, I like not knowing the answer. I like that probably no-one in the world right now knows the answers to some of the questions about far off galaxies and space and the universe that I am being asked right now. That space of not-knowing is where the magic and the miracles live. I’m not sure we rest in that space enough.

In the field of horses and humans, there is so much knowledge around. We know about the nervous system, training systems, methods of managing our focus, for keeping well, of balancing our nutrition. There is so much that we DO know. But we are also more than systems and reactions and programmed responses and the current torch holders of our genetics. We too, our horses too, hold mystery and magic. We are complex and convoluted. We aren’t boxed formulas and we should never be treated or treat them as such.

So, while it’s important to understand and be fascinated by the reasons why, and how the systems work and why you do this or they do that, make room for the space between also. There are no straight lines. Only circle and spirals and pockets of mystery that we may not understand but holds everything together.

Onwards.

❤️ Jane

Most of us arrive at our riding from 30 floors up and wonder why the whole experience feels a little left off centre.

What do I mean? Well, most of us either lack the tools to bring ourselves back to a regulated state or beyond that are “stuck” at a level of activation where we never truly come back to a balanced baseline. Over the course of any given day, we are riding waves of stimulation, and up-regulation in response to “little threats” or situations that require that little bit more of us that see a shot of cortisol and adrenaline being released into our system.

What constitutes a little threat? For the most part, we aren’t running from Sabre Tooth Tigers anymore. But opening the email you don’t really want to read at work, finding yourself forgetting something that was really important or mediating yet another argument between your young kids all send us into sympathetic activation.

There is nothing intrinsically wrong with this but it does become problematic when that spike of energy has no release and we don’t downregulate on the other side of it. Then we find ourselves in a situation where we have moving through a number of stress cycles over the course of the day, which independent of each other are relatively benign, but cumulatively add up to a volcano.

And then we go and catch our horse and wonder why we feel anxious.

You can’t think your way out of a stress cycle. It is a physical experience and must be processed as such. The key is to find ways to inject small pockets of regulating movement in your day in response to stressors so that we are continually emptying our cups and not leaving them full to overflowing.

Onwards.

❤️ Jane

www.confidentrider.online

I was walking back from feeding the horses last night and I suddenly had this acute awareness that I am caring less and less what other people think. I’ve had a couple of experiences of standing my ground of late where I noticed, reflecting back, that I didn’t apologise for my position, attempt to minimize it, or feel bad about it, which I would have done in the past. It just… was. And I felt strong in that.

And then, for some reason, the words popped into my head:

Not caring what other people think doesn’t mean that you don’t care about other people. It just means that your actions reflect your feelings and thoughts and you are unapologetic about it being the case. It’s not about anyone else; it’s about you.

The words “not caring what other people think” has always sat awkwardly with me, but I realise now that I had confused them with not caring full stop. A hardline approach. I now understand that allowing yourself to move in that way is actually the highest form of reverence, both for yourself, and anyone else involved in the exchange.

It means that I care enough to show you my true thoughts on this matter. About myself and about you, for me and for you. Beyond that, we are building houses with matchsticks.

Onwards.

❤️ Jane

www.confidentrider.online

Mary Poppins talked about a spoonful of sugar making the medicine go down, and to be honest, she was making a pretty huge point.

Medicine aside, a spoonful of sugar- sugar for our focus, sugar in our awareness, sugar in our perspective- is a key element in our ability to cultivate big picture thinking, living and riding.

Think about it this way; as humans, we are geared towards focusing on the negative. This manifests in a number of ways. If I ask you to close your eyes, for instance, and focus on the sensations in the body, nine times out of ten, you would tell me about the tightness, the tension or the pain you feel.

If I asked you to describe your ride, you would first tell me the bits you thought needed some work or could be improved.

When things feel particularly hard, the tunnel vision gets stronger and we are pulled deeper into the harder, darker, denser parts of ourselves.

Being able to integrate our experiences, recover from traumatic circumstances, become embodied riders and effective partners for our horses involves looking for the spoonful of sugar- even when it feels like there might only be a granule or two thrown in.

It’s recognising that while tightness might exist, if I scan further, there is also lightness- or at the very least less tension.

If I reflect back and notice my perceived inadequacies in the saddle, I can also intentionally search for the pieces where we were in harmony, or at the very least not in opposition.

Searching for the spoonful of sugar is so much more than a cool trick; it’s the first step in learning to multi-task our awareness and realizing there is always more available to us that what may capture us in the first instance.

Onwards.

❤️ Jane

www.confidentrider.online

It’s so easy to bash yourself up. It’s so easy to be hard on yourself, to open social media, and compare yourself to every combination that pops up in your field of vision.

It’s so easy to feel shame at the motivating meme; to wonder what’s wrong with you when you feel the desire for things to be different and yet some days, the way you act, feel or behave doesn’t line up with a deeper feeling that seems to express a bigger truth about who you are.

And yet the outsides don’t seem to be matching the insides.

The thing is, we are never knowingly trying to work against ourselves. We are never purposely trying to bring ourselves down, not show up, be inconsistent, compare ourselves to other people, or shut down.

We do those things because on a nervous system level, at the deepest level of our unconscious, that feels like the safest thing for us to do based on our experience and resources. Does this mean it will be like that forever?

No.

But it DOES mean that beating yourself up about it will only exacerbate the feelings and cause the war to be inside you.

Every part of you is working to what it thinks is your best interest based on the intelligence and programming available to it.

If you feel yourself engaging in self-blame or even self-disgust, take a moment. Hug yourself and be kind. Feel what it feels like to meet yourself with compassion instead of despair.

It’s not the endpoint, but it’s certainly the start.

❤️ Jane

www.confidentrider.online

I’m a failure, I’m ruining my horse, I think I should give up, my horse is feeding off my nerves, I had an accident and I haven’t been the same since. I hear all of this on a daily basis, in my inbox, and in posts online.

On the flip side, many of the responses that are offered revolve around changing your thoughts, your mindset, your perspective, and while that is part of the process for sure, I’ve come to realise that this is not the start point. In fact, telling someone to just “think their way out of it” can drive those feelings of despair deeper, and if you’re on the receiving end of that advice, make you want to poke your eyes out with a toothpick.

Why? In the first place, these experiences are physical. They are illustrative of the current capacity of our nervous system and the dial that we currently find ourselves stuck on- be that flight, fight, freeze or collapse.

Confusion, dissociation, a feeling of helplessness, or being a lost cause, resignation, despair… these are the psychological and emotional bi-products of freeze or collapse. Physically, this shows up as a lack of tone in the tissue and the fascia, the literal and emotional container of our body.

Think of the way someone who demonstrates these thoughts will present. Not with a posture of integrity or assuredness, but where the front part of the body has crumpled and lost its own tonality. In collapse.

In order to begin to emerge from that place, we need to invite activation and energy back into the body, and at once, resource ourselves the be able to handle it; to increase our window of tolerance to be able to hold the bigger energies of more active emotional experiences and stay connected to ourselves, our horses and our environment.

From there it’s possible to change our thoughts, but before that? Our whole system tells us it’s not safe to do so.

Establish safety in the system. Activate and contain. Mobilise body and mind.

Onwards.

❤️ Jane

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

www.confidentrider.online/joyride

I just looked up vitality in the dictionary just now and it was defined as this; exuberant physical strength or mental vigor; the capacity for survival or for the continuation of a meaningful or purposeful existence; the power to live or grow; the vital force or principle.

Vitality is the benchmark on which I now base my practice and my work. It’s not enough to be less anxious, less fearful, a little bit more confident- although that may be the start. The true measure comes from asking ourselves, as a result of the practices I am doing, do I feel more vital? Have I increased my capacity to hold more life force in my body and not feel the need to shut down or run away? Does my pulse feel stronger, do I have a bigger sense of self, a sharper awareness off the edges of my skin as a result of what I am doing?

In order for this to happen, we need to be open to the full expression of emotion in our body and not see them as instructions but as information; to be masterful of an experience means to be able to hold it and to choose where to take it, rather than feel at the mercy of it. As an example, I wrote a post on anger a couple of days back which resonated with many of you and confused others. Does anger have a place on our horses back? If I asked this to the masses, “it does not” would (and likely, should) be the cry. But the vital force of anger is the same energy that feeds determination, strength, and sharp focus. To deny that is to cut off an essential part of ourselves. To immediately interpret anger as violence or unfair use of force is to confuse the essence of the energy with a lack of skill in being able to hold it. They are not the same thing.

What’s more, our interpretation of many traditional and ancient practices have us skipping straight to acceptance and compassion and cause us to form a tunnel vision of what’s ok and not ok to feel. Defaulting there immediately can be a form of spiritual bypassing that desensitises and desensualises us from our own intuitive world, and overlooks the reality that we all exist in relationship; to ourselves, each other and our environment.

The art of any practice is to increase your ability to hold feelings, sensations, and emotions within the container of your body. As soon as the experience feels bigger than your body, it is at once bigger than your capacity to handle.

Use vitality as your benchmark. Ask yourself, does this practice make me feel more vital? Do I feel more alive? And have I increased my ability to hold that force in order that the full range of experience be available to me when I am alone, with others, and working together with my horse?

Onwards.

❤️ Jane

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

www.confidentrider.online/joyride

Anger has a bad reputation and frankly, I’m bored with it. So many of us have been trained out of our anger. Trained out of the essential energy that gives us a backbone. Trained out of the zest that lets us feel a level of intensity in our body that commands that we hold our ground, be taken seriously, are not available to be pushed around, or talked out of what our instinct and intuition are telling us.

We are told countless times that it is not appropriate to be angry. That our fierceness has no place. That it is unkind. Uncalled for.

We confuse anger with abuse. With violence. With causing harm.

But it is none of those things.

Anger is fire. It’s activation. It’s power.

It’s a state of being that says,

I am not available to be treated that way.

I do not agree with that.

That says,

Here is the space I am holding, and it is mine to hold.

Anger is the warrior.

It’s the uprising of breath that assumes the

Posture of integrity and dignity and says

Come on, let’s do this.

We are no available to be made small

And,

That does not sit right with me.

Anger is an essential uprising if we can learn to hold its fire.

We need more warriors.

❤️ Jane

www.confidentrider.online/joyride

Of all the things I work with on a regular basis, anxiety definitely ranks top of the list but it’s also one of the most socially acceptable states to defer to when it comes to labeling and recognizing how you feel. I’m coming to realise that, for the most part, any level of activation in the body that feels uncomfortable or takes us outside our window of tolerance is more often than not described as anxiety, but when you start to fossick beneath the surface, that’s not always the case. In fact, our internal walkie talkie system between our nervous system and our brain can be so unclear that it can be hard to pinpoint what we are actually feeling, even when we are in the midst of it.

For example, anger and frustration have a similar energy, but our culture and relationships have often deemed them shameful or overly negative. If we have no understanding or experience with healthy or mindful anger (which is necessary for us to be able to channel an energy of assertiveness and strength), then it’s easier to feel the experience of it and chuck it in the anxiety bucket for good measure.

Many of us have become so frozen and muted, that any level of vitality in our system feels dangerous. So even if it’s excitement or joy we are feeling, our nervous system cannot hold or contain the experience in a way that allows us to feel in control of it, and so we feel ourselves boiling over.

In order to be effective partners for our horses, we need to be able to hold the bigger energies without moving into flight or freeze. And we need to recognize that the uprising of energy in our system is not always anxiety, and to begin to track how it is we feel in relation to certain events and situations so that we expand our capacity and can stay rooted to ourselves in the midst of big emotions.

Onwards.

❤️ Jane

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

www.confidentrider.online/joyride

I talk about how important it is to exercise our superpower of showing up a lot, and someone recently asked me what I think the biggest impediment to showing up is.

Before I answered, I asked them what THEY thought it was.

Discipline was the first answer, or a lack of.

Who gets to decide?

Who gets to decide if Jane Pike is good enough as a horse person?

Good enough full stop?

Today, I want to tell you about flicking people off the edge of the world. It’s fabulous, trust me.

Here’s the deal. When we feel overwhelmed, intimidated or overshadowed in some way by someone or something, the way that we perceive them in our mind’s eye gives them a lot of power. Our tools of perception mean that we focus on visual, auditory and kinesthetic elements (and until we become conscious of this, we are largely unaware that we are profiling people and situations in this way).

A lot of the pressure and strain we feel in training comes from approaching things from a linear perspective as opposed to a cyclic one. Theoretically speaking, we jump on at the start of a session with our horse, move through a basic warmup and then really “get to work”. The level of intensity builds progressively as if to follow a straight, upward line on a graph, reaching a crescendo before we call it a day.

The problem with this way of going about things is that it assumes that a relaxed start point and an ever-increasing build of intensity and energy is the best way to progress and make the most out of the time we are training. In reality, though, it’s almost impossible to produce quality work within this dynamic, simply because quality action requires equal periods of quality inaction, and it’s the inaction or the downtime that we often don’t allow for.