Category: The (almost kinda) Daily

On holding fast,

Or when life gets life-ey and you’re not sure you’re down with it.

I’ve had some questions, some swirling of feelings expressed in my membership recently that spoke to the life-ey-ness of life that we are all familiar with. How it can sometimes be a lot to hold. That there are disappointments, people not behaving the way we hope they might (or perhaps we, ourselves, doing that). Grief. So much grief and loss. Ugh. And then that niggling undercurrent that can manifest in feelings of invisibility, or beyond that, sometimes even hopelessness.

It’s destabilising because it should be. A life well lived is a life of curve balls and disruptive energies. Experiences that cause you to question and think and wonder and ultimately, change. To evolve.

But it’s these qualities that are also the hardest to hold. They call things into question, and to change, and you can be left with a feeling of discontent. They can make you feel a little crazy if your bodily container is yet to figure out how to embrace them.

I was marinating on these conversation this morning and remember had some words spoken to me a while back by a very dear friend and mentor that I thought might be helpful to share with you now. This was taken from a time when I myself was really struggling. I sought her out as an ear to listen to my woes, and as a person I trusted to hold my hand as I ventured forward into the unknown.

She said, your container is expanding fast, Jane. With every conversation and interaction, it’s getting bigger and bigger. As she spoke to, she held her hands in front of me and began to move them out to the side, as though holding a beach ball within them that was expanding every second.

Your work then, she said, is to focus on this energy.

She took her hand and traced from her head, down the centre of her body to the ground.

‘The expansion is occurring. Your work is to stay connected and grounded within it.’

It might seem weird to group lots of what I’ve said together with the concept of expansion. At the time, as we lie in the metaphorical (or perhaps not so metaphorical) foetal position, expansive can be the last thing it feels like after all. But I believe anything that shatters the fabric of how we know our current selves in doing exactly that- expanding us. Even if it’s (whatever ‘it’ is) is doing so seemingly against our will.

But let’s get down to the big stuff.

The purpose of this writing is ultimately to share what staying grounded and connected looks like to me in the midst of rapid change. Or perhaps more so, what it doesn’t look like.

It doesn’t look like comfort.

It doesn’t look like calm.

It doesn’t look like clarity, even.

What it does look like is openness. Even if that’s just a splinter of light. A slight opening between your ribs that lets your heart peak out, if only for a moment.

It looks like holding fast. Holding fast like a piece of sea kelp in the ocean that stays anchored to a rock.

It looks like waiting for the spinning ideas and possibilities to land in a way that informs my next right step. Knowing that they will land. They will.

In the midst of new ideas, conversation and possibility, you don’t have to force what comes next. Your only job is to be with it. To be open to it.

And then within that, to stay present in your life. To keep moving. Literally keep moving.

To get your toes in the earth, whenever you can.

To be with your horses if you are fortunate enough to have the opportunity to do so.

And to be ready. For whatever the greater world has planned for you next.

To be expectant that there IS a next for you. Of course there is. You’re fabulous.

If your world is rapidly expanding sideways, keep focused on the up and down.

Hold on to your beach ball for all its worth.

Onwards.

❤️ Jane

6 things to think about when you are short on time but still want to work with your horse.

1. Choose one thing

If you only have a limited time to work, choose something which is possible and achievable to work with. The number of times that I have started playing with my horse, only to come in some time later and remarked to my husband “I only meant to be out there for 20 minutes” is, well, a lot.

I’m pretty sure Einstein was working with a horse when he figured out his relativity of time theory. We may not understand it fully when we read it but as soon as we hit the barn we are like, oh! Of course. Makes sense.

Anyway, I digress.

It’s a wonderful luxury to have lots of time to play with, but the reality for many (or most) of us is that we don’t. The benefit of NOT having much time is that we can be very intentional and specific about what we DO do.

Intentional and specific leads to less faffing, more clarity, and a more obvious understanding of what’s working and what isn’t.

2. Make something (or someone) a priority (in the case of more than one horse)

This is a weird one to write, especially when it relates to the “someone” part- so I’ll add the note that making someone the priority does not make the other someone’s any less important. What is DOES mean is that there is some sort of order, however temporary or permanent, to how you go about things. Kind of along the lines of doing one thing well, rather than lots of many things more half-baked.

Anyway, let’s keep going. I have five horses in total; I’ll list them for you here:

Merc, who I refer to as my Patchy Pony. Ada, who is my Irish Draught yearling. Saffy, my five-year-old Irish Sport Horse. And Nadia and Dee, who are both warmbloods.

Two of those aren’t in work; Dee, owing to soundness, and Ada, who is just a babe and free to roam as such (I do little bursts of ‘lessons’ with her every so often to establish the life skills!).

For me, looking at this on paper, it’s easy to find it overwhelming, but in my mind it’s very clear. Merc always gets worked first. He is my priority. Both for my work and for my sanity, I need one horse in full work and Merc is my main man and beloved sidekick who I have chosen for the job.

The others I have a well-defined idea of where I’m up to and what I’d love to be working with next but to look at them as a group can sometimes feel overwhelming; prioritising one creates momentum and a start point that my mind can easily latch onto, and from there, I make my way further down the line.

3. Don’t waste time wishing that you had more time.

Chances are time with your horses is your love and your passion, but it doesn’t pay the bills, or directly affect anyone’s wellbeing (and least from your perspective, but I can argue this point all day!) aside from you. Because of that, it’s easy to both put things ahead of time with your horses and / or wait for pockets of time to ‘open up’ / ‘that thing’ to change when you will ‘definitely have more time’. Please don’t do that.

The thing about spending time on the things that you love is that we are trained out of taking it. And sometimes actually berate ourselves when we do. With that in mind, taking time to do something you love means you have approach it with the same degree of dedication that you would squeezing through a gap in a window to retrieve the keys to the tack room you left on the other side. This happened to me recently, and believe me, the commitment it took was unquestionable and intense.

THAT’S the kind of dedication we’re looking for when it comes to making time for what you love, even if you have to snatch it in the dark.

4. Do something in service of your horsing and / or riding

This is actually a principle I work to as part of my writing practice, but it’s directly transferable to here. On the days (weeks) where it might be impossible to do all that much with your horse, think about what you can do ‘in service of’ of them instead.

It could be watching a training series, reading that book that’s sitting in the pile you haven’t quite got to. Moving your body in a way that increases your awareness.

‘Acting in service of’ is one of the most useful mindsets I’ve taken on. It helps me keep creative and think outside the box when the ideal feels far away or things get stuck.

5. Know when to quit (and when to abandon your plans for other things)

Knowing when to quit is perhaps the most important part. If you have a limited window, you don’t want to start a discussion it’s not possible to finish. We want to end with things more harmonious, more clear, with the feeling that more things will be possible tomorrow.

Along the same lines, going in with a clear intention and plan does not necessarily mean that plan is possible; your horse will always ultimately decide that. Like knowing when to quit, knowing when the time ISN’T right to begin a new conversation is equally important. It’s ok to leave thing for another day if the time isn’t quite right now to fully commit. You’re not a failure- you’re just being discerning.

6. Be creative

Sometimes, we can develop a very narrow window of what ‘learning’ looks like. It doesn’t have to mean saddling up and there’s a lot that you can get done standing still. Take the time to pay attention to the details (for example how comfortable they feel about the bridle; doing some bodywork; just, well, hanging out) is always, always worth your time.

What do you focus on when time (or light) is short, and you have limited time to be with your horse?

❤️ Jane

On pressure or,

How tightly do you hold things when only lightness is needed?

I was sitting on some bizarre exercise machine whose official title I do not know to name, when the words were said to me that changed my relationship to my body and my horse from that moment forward.

‘You don’t have to hold the handle like that’, my teacher said. ‘You don’t need to use any pressure. If you just understand the direction that you want the movement to take, then you can just allow your body to follow. You don’t need to force or push.’

I sat for a moment, stunned by what probably appears to be a fairly run of the mill observation. Little wires inside my brain started buzzing with the creation of new circuits. I finally ‘got’ something- not as a basic understanding, but in the cells of my body awareness of my relationship to pressure. Sitting in a beige and boring room, no horses within sight, and yet everything about how I would approach them moving forward being changed.

I realised: I had a habit of applying pressure, in everyday situations, in life where it absolutely wasn’t needed.

I repeated the exercise again, this time without the force. My body flowed. There was no restriction or compression. I had been adding energy to something that didn’t result in an addition but only ever took away.

Since then, I have become obsessed with noticing our everyday use of pressure. How lightly (or tightly) we grip a pen. How we hold onto our mug. The sound of other’s footfalls when their going up the stairs. The type of grip a person uses when holding onto the steering wheel. It all matters. It’s all energy consuming (and energy conserving when we start to reconfigure our habits and movements a different way).

It all flows through. How heavily you hit the stairs correlates to how much pressure you put into the stirrups in the rising or posting phase of the trot.

If you hold a pen with a lot of unconscious force, what is the pressure you’re applying down a lead rope?

Do you grip your tea the same way that you hold onto the reins?

I’m convinced that we would have so much energy at our disposal, would find ways to make so much of what we are challenged by more easeful by examining the ways in which we push. By looking at what force we are using when no force is needed. By looking at what we are gripping onto, when it would lie easily in our palm if left alone.

Take out your pen and write. Can you create a new story, but use less pressure to bring it to the page?

Onwards,

❤️ Jane

Training while holding a tea-light candle, otherwise known as:

Going against the grain.

I truly don’t think I would ever have started my own business if I didn’t live in the location that I do. Isolation, combined with a healthy appetite for learning, the willingness to figure things out and take consistent action, and never really entertaining the thought that, well, I couldn’t, played not only a formative role in the creation of my business, but is also an essential ingredient in progressing with my horses in a way that feels natural and humane to us both.

We all know about the benefits of community, and the obvious advantages that this has. I’m not suggesting that friends aren’t important (they absolutely are), or that you don’t need a teacher or a mentor (you do), or a second pair of eyes when you get stuck (please definitely seek this out); what I am saying is that this needs to be balanced with alone time where you are free to bumble on and make mistakes.

Where you can figure out how to hold your hands and coordinate this part your body with that without referring or deferring to someone else.

Where you can let yourself learn, free of the lurgies of comparison or not-so-great-wonderings that accompany us when we are individually doing our best to figure things out in the context of a lots-of-opinions environment.

When I was first invited to speak within summit setting, I was launched into a container filled with other professionals much more skilled, more well-known, and more accomplished than myself. I looked around and thought, I’m so glad it’s taken me so many years to get here. The a-few-years-earlier me would not have been deeply rooted enough in her own understandings. She would have spoken words that were yet to live in her heart, shared knowledge that lacked a point of difference or uniqueness.

And that’s totally ok. The a-few-years-earlier me needed more space, more time, to figure some stuff out. She needed to dive in to learn, to gather knowledge, and to listen to other people’s thoughts and understandings. And then she needed to retreat. To play; to practice. To get oh so many things wrong so she could maybe get a couple of things right.

A similar, slightly different situation:

Once, when I was on a training week for some horse bodywork, I went to a stable that was home to at least a hundred horses and then counting. I looked around, at the comings and the goings. I thought how difficult it must be to learn here, if what you are playing with is different, new, or against the grain. How you are always witnessed, always under the gaze of another person’s eyes.

And so, I say: new learnings, new understandings are like holding a tea-light candle. The flame needs protection to get big. Once it has; once it’s licking the ceiling and not easily extinguished, you can carry it around in all manner of weather and situations and it’s unlikely to go out. But until then, it needs protection. The protection not only of people who are looking to also nurture the flame, but alone time where you get to stare at it, marvel at it, figure out how to make it grow.

My personal challenge is not so much alone time to play with new ideas, or space with my horses to apply new understandings, to figure out what goes where and how this connects with that. My challenge is community; the second eyes, the people around and on hand to help me out.

But if you find yourself in the context of many, YOUR creative challenge might look quite different. Because going against the grain, new learning, and the chance to apply what you have been told to the point where it has practical benefit means you must have time to think things through- alone.

You must have time to figure out how to figure it out in a way that lives in your body, which requires you go through the process of letting yourself learn.

At the end of the day, the ultimate in any learning situation is a balance, between mentorship and independent learning. Between opinions and the space to figure things out. Sticking to something you recognize is right for you or your horse but goes against the ‘most practiced and familiar’ can be tough, even when we know that it’s the right thing for us to do.

Protect your tea light candle insides until they’re a strong and solid flame. At that point, alone or in a group, the flame is sure enough of its own heat to not go out.

Onwards.

❤️ Jane

In the early hours of Sunday, the clocks changed. Time- the ability for someone to make a decision about it, the ability to fiddle with it- is a fascination to me. That I can be sleeping, my horses are grazing, the moths flying around, navigating by the moon. None of us notice a difference in that moment. None of us stop, look at each other and say, did you feel that? Did you feel the clocks go back?

We still sleep, we still graze, we still fly.

In the past, I have resented, pushed up hard against this artificial changing of the light.

‘I would much prefer it,’ I said, chopping tomatoes in the kitchen, talking to my husband ‘if they just let it be. I’d rather have it be dark in the morning and light late into the night’.

But I know, at the end of it, my opinion doesn’t really matter. Whoever it is that makes the final decision about the clocks, who presses the button to decide the time we run our lives by doesn’t really matter either. The days will still have the same number of hours, the seasons will still become darker and then lighter and the darker again, regardless of our schedules or our will.

This year, however, I’ve noticed myself feeling different. The dark, instead of something to resist, feels welcome, like being wrapped up in a warm, familiar blanket. I am grateful for the ability to retreat. To be less visible. To compost in contemplation of my thoughts.

I crave rest. To be allowed to have slightly shabby edges in a way that’s not available for all to see.

There is a dignity to darkness that cannot, is not, shared by the experience of light. It gives us time and space to exist within ourselves without the glare of a harsh spotlight.

Conversations at night around the campfire foster an intimacy not experienced in the middle of the day. Walks shared in darkness allow for spaces absent of the fierceness of visual attention. Overnight stays rather than day trips lead to comradery and deeper knowing of each other often for the simple fact that we, together, shared an experience of the night.

Darkness is often seen as something to avoid. Dark emotions. Dark experiences. But we have all had experiences where darkness is exactly what we craved.

The darkness of refuge. Of a warm bed, of by-yourself-ness, hidden out of sight. The darkness of being able to share a truth, where, in the space of being fully seen would remain hidden. The darkness to figure things out where light feels complicating and too bright.

I wonder, in whatever season we are in, we could give ourselves the space just to exist? And to ask what that particular season, that particular moment, asks of us? Regardless of whether we’re heading into summer or into winter?

Whether a shortening, reducing of the light, could expand our view in other ways?

And if you are in the season of the sun, what you could bring forward, that is ready, desiring to be fully seen?

I will contemplate along with you.

Onwards,

❤️ Jane

On Soak Time: The process of thoughts and attention becoming embodied understandings.

—-

As a culture, we have developed strong patterns of believing that we are consciously in control of everything. In theory, we delight in the thought that our body is wise, intelligent, and intuitive. In practice, our true beliefs (and perhaps beyond that, our control patterns) show something quite different.

Most of the work I do involves using our conscious awareness to support unconscious processes, via a practice I refer to as sensing. Sensing is not a new word, but it can mean something different depending on the context that it’s taught. For me, sensing is the mothership; it’s the process of reactivating our sensory system via body-based processes that allow us to develop a different relationship with the patterns we find ourselves stuck in, the relationships we are a part of (including our horses) and the wider world at large.

If this seems like a big claim, I guess it is. But that has been my experience, and the experience of many hundreds of people that I’ve worked with, for the simple reason that: as humans, we are sensing creatures. The way our body is designed is complicated in its detail but simple if you break it down in blocks.

If our sensory system is compromised- as is the case when we get stuck in repeating patterns, have experiences we label as trauma that see us spinning round in loops, or can’t see the forest for the trees- we become victims of our own story, a spinning loop of everything that came before. Without a sensory system feeling out into the world, our body struggles to relate us to ‘what is’- to our horses, ourselves, each other.

We are mechanically misfiring, spluttering up and down the streets in a simple effort to drive a few miles to the supermarket.

My work is based on this understanding. If you come to me, we begin with sensing practices almost straight away, the catch being: If you are new to sensing, as so many people are, in the beginning the practice can seem fluffy, and like nothing is really happening.

You are ready for the big shift, and I tell you to do something seemingly ridiculously subtle! Gah! Tell you to hang in there, that things are going on behind the scenes that lie outside your conscious awareness.

Noticing something changing and something changing are two different things. The outcome of sensing can be instant (OMG! My life has changed overnight!), to a very slow build, that creeps up on you like a slow atmospheric shift until you notice that something is different. It’s the latter that is the biggest struggle with getting anyone to commit to ‘doing the work’.

Reaping the benefits requires trust. But how do you trust something when you can’t see exactly what it’s doing, or when you don’t really notice a big change?

Why SHOULD you trust someone like me, when they / I tell you it can take a while to notice the change?

How DO we get to a place where we trust in the unconscious wisdom of the body? Where we understand is to be something that desires, homes in on vitality and wellness, if only the circumstances allow for it?

If you need a reminder that the body is constantly working, adapting, changing beyond what you are consciously aware of, then the best analogy I can think of is the idea of “soak time” with our horses.

Why is it, when working with our horses, that we allow for breaks in between activity?

How is it, that after a rest, or a holiday, following a stint of more intensive work that a horse can come back ‘better’, provided that the processes they were taken through before were ones that were mutually understood?

Whilst we might not have deliberately labeled it as such, soak time is conscious learning being transferred to the unconscious. It’s the process of thoughts and attention becoming embodied understandings. The conscious supporting the unconscious.

Biomechanical change, change to patterns and behavior all fundamentally happen at the unconscious level. When we understand this and put it into practice, we are left to trust, observe, and decide what next action supports our intentions best.

There is practice and action, and there is also trust and allowing. All are essential.

Onwards,

❤️ Jane

Things I’m thinking about:

1.

Riding Merc yesterday, I was thinking about how the more stoic horses, or those we might consider to the heavier types, can lead us to make assumptions about use of pressure. That is easy to assume that they will be less sensitive, or mobile or responsive because of a more solid body and a tendency towards freeze rather than flight.

I think about how, with humans and with horses, I’m always considering balance and wellbeing elementally. That a predominance of earth, for example, within someone’s constitution does not need more of the same heaped on top. In fact, what they need is to have that met with appropriate amounts of fire and air.

I look at the constitution of Merc’s body and see physically, he’s predominantly the earthy type. Bigger bones, a more solid frame. Wide, cupped feet that travel easily over ground. Observing this, it would be easy to overlook his sensitivity, and the accompanying predominance of air.

Air in a constitution, as the state itself suggests, travels quickly. It is light, ethereal, prone to change. A balance of air allows for lightness; too much and we become most likely anxious. We literally and metaphorically lose our anchor to the ground.

Understanding this about my lovely horse, allows me to ride and be around him with more nuance. I need to offer lightness, in order that physically he may find it in return. His appearance of the strong and solid type need not delude me that I need to cultivate an energy of the same.

At the same time, his lightness of mind means I need to act with a grounded-ness and certainty. Hands on the body to keep him within the edges of his skin. Clarity of intention. Allowing for generous amounts of time to work things out.

2.

I continually remind myself that thoughts are instructions. That my brain is designed to cue my body to behave in specific ways. That I do not have to force or coerce; I simply have to ask.

Bringing attention to a particular part of the body is not an exercise in bringing consciousness to that place, as we so often think; it’s a remembrance of the consciousness that’s already there.

When I make requests of my body in this way, I am reminded of the inherent and benevolent wisdom that’s ever present within me.

When I sense into my body, my conscious thought and my unconscious knowing meet.

As I ride a circle, I tell my centreline, the balance line of my body, to arc in the same way as the horse. She does her best to follow my instruction.

3.

I’m thinking that our body is a container that can be breached. How many of us think that accepting, recognizing limitations is a failing, or a product of limited thinking, rather than a necessary acceptance of the reality of life that we’re all in conversation with.

The nervous system itself is not a plateau but an edge. We do not rest on flat and stable ground. Instead, we are traversing fault lines, climbing valley’s, looking out over the peaks of mountains.

We look out over the edge and decide, is it safe for us to step over or should we go back?

The nervous system as an ever changing edge.

Onwards,

❤️ Jane

Things I’m thinking about

1.

I was poo picking in the paddock yesterday and thinking about our relationship to time. How we can so easily develop ideas about what we need to do or change that can result in ways of living that to my mind are inhumane.

I look around at my horses and even in their domesticated state, the way they structure their day follows a natural order. What would it look like to move through a day where I moved at a natural pace? Just the idea of it makes me take an exhale.

For one I know there would be a lot more space. I would daydream more. I would spend more time just pootling in the paddock. I would write more, ride more, hang out with people I love more. The time that I got out out of bed would change most of every day.

To follow a natural rhythm feels like a series of hours that holds its tasks with more levity, regardless of what specifically they might be.

I think of my people in JoyRide and our conversations around time, and fitting things in. How even those with bright hearts and good intentions, as they all have, struggle with the rhythm of the day. I tell them, I don’t believe this is something for you alone to hold. We are trained into busy-ness meaning goodness. This is no longer an equation I want to play with or to hold.

I will think about humane time. I will think about natural time. I will continue to consider how it is my life can live by both. I will continue to hold our human-ness to a far greater value than our productiveness could ever be.

2.

I’m thinking about decisions, and what it takes to be able to make one. Decisions, it seems, are the mother of everything. If you can’t make one, there is no action that you take, and no action results in, well, nothing. Or even worse, a situation where you are stuck up in your head.

I’m thinking of the words my lovely friend and nature writer, Janisse Ray, shared with me recently:

“There is a huge cultural divide between the sexes when it comes to making decisions. Men make decisions. Most women are not taught to make decisions. They’re not given permission to have a choice. Women do what men decide.

Every day I see examples of this—a woman doing what a man decides.

I’ve been training myself to make my own decisions. In situations where I would normally ask my husband or a friend what they think, I’m forcing myself to stay quiet.

It is wretched. I hate it.”

I wonder about this. I have talked about it with many of my professional friends, those who have students whose love are horses also and we see it as a familiar thread. The action taking component, the ability to make decisions is a struggle that is familiar to most.

Our lack of decision making can be a protective action. An “if I don’t do this in the first place then I can never prove to myself that I’m not capable. It will always be hanging as a question”. It can be because we don’t feel good enough or skilled enough. That we don’t back ourselves enough.

But I see our lack of want to make a decision come up in the most basic of circumstances. Where there would be no fallout or judgement, aside from the one that exists inside our heads.

I have a rule for myself, which is the bringer of great peace. I don’t let myself rest too long in indecision. And there is no such thing as a wrong one. The decision that you made is the only one you ever could.

Liberation exists in the body of decision that is made and moved on from.

3.

I’m thinking how fragile life is. This morning, I found the robust and delicate body of a Bellbird lying on the concrete path. Her fifty shades of moss feathers against the greyness of behind was like an abstract work of art. I picked her up and whispered to her, placed her within the bowels of the Flax, the long grass shielding her from the light. I thanked her for being a bringer of such beauty, wished her well along her way.

4.

Picking up poo, I found a feather, of a design that would be almost impossible to draw. I picked it up and placed it in my pocket. Even the most mundane tasks bear gifts that appear like apparitions on the soil.

The feather was a smile-maker.

Take care of your gentle selves,

xx Jane

Things I’m thinking about:

1. At the moment, the entirety of our herd is grazing the front paddock. This feels like a delicious and wholly visible luxury. The paddock has dried off enough that it’s forming standing hay, the green underneath sufficiently dried to the point that I’m no longer bobbing my head up and down considering its sweetness every time I see them nibbling at the shoots.

The luxury exists in their immediacy to my senses. I no longer have to hike many minutes up the farm. I can glance them, catch them in my eyesight as I wander from the house up to my office; watch their arguments, and games and intergenerational politics as I make a cup of tea. I can hear them snort as they make their way around, notice the moments when they stand just taking in the view.

The paddock that they’re in is a big one. The bottom edge borders the tidal estuary, which, with enough footsteps forward, flows out to the Pacific. It rises to the foothills of our house, which itself rests at the bottom of the old volcano, Mopanui. Embraced by the arms of fire, cooled by the curtains of the sea.

I love to see their space wandering, when they have the means to do so. They graze where the sunlight first hits in the morning, and then rest an hour or so later at the very top, just dozing, dreaming. Once awake, they venture to the farthest reaches of the paddock, winding their way from left to right depending on the timings of the day.

I love to notice their time keeping. That when the space allows, they have habits and routines that maintain order and spatial relationships in their day.

There’s not a lot that is random, when we are present to witness their daily living for more than a snapshot, more than a postcard amount of time.

2. Friendships. Dee and Nadia have a deep and solid friendship. Two big horses who would exist in harmony in a very confined space, should the circumstances call for it. A few weeks back, Nadia was kicked (the likely suspect was Saffy we all think), and I took her out and put her in a different paddock so she could rest without being moved around.

The thing was what was good for her leg was misery for her mind. She was heart sore for the company of her herd, and things went from worse to worse. Allergies sprang back up that had been absent for years. She kicked out at the fence. The horse that I most trust to be handled by anyone was fractious and unhappy.

I thought to myself, how health and healing is such a balance. That we can get hyper focused on one area, like nutrition, or in this case, the healing of a leg, and we lose something else in return. Sometimes, it’s absolutely necessary for the greater good but often it is not. We can underestimate the emotional lives of our horses in our quest to ‘manage something’ or ‘get it right’, underestimate the presence of their friends, and the impact this has on their wellbeing.

So, I surrendered, in what I think was the best possible way. I decided happiness was the ingredient needed to make her feel better. And that if I got it wrong, and did the wrong thing for her leg, I would at least have a horse who was balanced on her insides and whose heart could find some peace.

Incidentally, her leg is looking great.

3. The other night, I went to check the water in the paddock, and Saffy came over to hang out with me. She was so engaged and wanting to be present that it felt really wrong to leave. And so, I didn’t. Instead, I stayed with Saffy on the hill, and we watched the world go by.

From the position we were standing, I saw an angle of the view that I hadn’t seen before. From where I stood, the mountain of Mopanui was framed by the moving of the clouds in a way that made the entire skyline look like the doming on the earth.

Saffy had brought me to a position where it felt like we were watching the edge of the universe together, as the weather had so framed it in that moment.

And who’s to say we weren’t. Horses have always taken people to the edges of the world, and sometimes further.

Onwards.

❤️ Jane

This photo is from two days ago when I decided the weather was so lovely and the horses so close that I dragged my chair and computer to the edges of the paddock. Merc found this to be a fascination.

What are you looking at?

Otherwise known as:

What are you going to ask for or do when you look at me that way?

Growing up, my father was the armchair expert of our family. An ex-competitive athlete (he was a 100m and 200m sprinter) my dad knew how to commit himself to something and how to train. The same accident that put an end to his running also prevented him from ever riding himself, but despite that, he was at every lesson we went to, was there on the side of the arena when we worked horses whenever he was able and was the person behind the video camera filming when we were competing.

A mannerism that I have picked up from him is when I am watching something or someone and I am concentrating, I cock my head to the right-hand side. I saw a photo of myself once and remarked: I look exactly like my dad.

My dad had very specific gazes that preceded an action, feedback (cough cough) or a request. I knew when he looked at me “that way” how my efforts were tallying up in his mind, and more or less what was to follow. We all have this skill of “reading” people’s gaze. The intensity of it, or lack of. Whether it feels inclusive or dominating. A gaze where we know we’re being watched. That look where an instruction (or perhaps a criticism or adjustment) is likely to follow.

Our horses feel the same. The way we use our eyes is often the first communication received from the unconscious about the information and action that’s to come. If we have become habituated to looking at our horse a specific way or in a specific place when we are about to make correction or to alter something we perceive is “wrong”, then our horse will become sensitized to that look, and reflexively seek to remove themselves from the pressure before it increases or overwhelms them (if the look itself hasn’t done so already).

How does your gaze differ when you are looking for something that pleases you, compared to when you are searching for something to correct?

What does the intensity of your gaze become when you are deciding what it is you’re going to do next? And how might this effect the insides of your horse?

Some of us only truly look- and some of us are truly only seen- under the gaze of criticism, or where our needs are not being considered. This prevents us wanting to be seen and sends us spiraling into reactive ways of being.

Our gaze and the way we look at something or someone is an action in and of itself. The action of seeing and the experience of being seen is a powerful one. Let the act of truly looking not automatically be coupled with the action of correction.

Onwards,

❤️ Jane

With the unclipping of the lead rope, she begins to wander round the salt and pepper surface of the arena. On first impression, she appears black but the dark caramel on her flanks and underneath her stifle suggests this might not be true.

I look with more attention, see she’s the colour of deep and burnished toffee. The light falls in such a way that one side is accentuated in its brownness; the shadows magnify the black. She is far from one colour but a cacophony of many that, if I look with lazy eyes, my brain merges into one.

The rails of the arena are one, two, three rails down and then the ground. A foot drop, maybe two, enough to angle the head at 45 degrees and take a well-intentioned snatch at the grass that spans the perimeter underneath. She snatches and walks, snatches, and walks, consistently lapping the arena in a pattern we aren’t sure is pre-designed. But who knows really; it may be only the limits of our perception that suggests this is the case.

I sit within in the bowels of my dark green fold up chair, and I watch. I am observing at a clinic with Elsa Sinclair, and we are in the early stages of our time together here. These moments are just for observation. We are looking out for patterns of curiosity and concern, and if we are clever, to notice the signals that are communicated before. The uprisings of sensation and feeling in the body that choose to travel to the place of comfort or a place of worry. The skill on our part is to begin to discern which.

Is it possible for us to get more active and distracting before the worry settles in?

Can we be in relationship with our horses in a way that encourages activity of their senses, to create movements towards cooperative patterns, rather than acceleration towards places of fight flight?

The observation stages, whilst seemingly inert, can be a telling moment on the inside of a human.

How comfortable are we with our horses choosing to leave us, and pay us no attention?

What ultimately is our relationship with control?

What images are conjured in the shadows of our brain if we see them run, or buck, or frolic?

What are the behaviours we would ultimately like to shut down, and what are the ones we want to encourage? And why is this the case?

How willing are we to try something new, to allow ourselves to learn, to not understand or mess it up or experiment in situations where we are witnessed?

Observation of our horses when they are free of our control brings us face to face with all of this. Just as we need to learn to identify pre-concern in the minds and bodies of our horses, we need to learn to become familiar with our own.

Identifying patterns of pre-concern, to use Elsa’s term, is not about being perfect or having your insides sorted to the place where you feel like you’re a solid human, because this will rarely, if ever, be the case.

Instead, it’s about maintaining agency and the possibility for action.

What’s possible right now? What takes me half a step beyond the current moment?

And at what point do I lose my ability to act?

Onwards,

 Jane

“Having good boundaries requires a willingness to lose”.

When I first heard this in a training session, I couldn’t really make sense of it. Up until that point, I understood boundaries to be the opposite. They were the willingness *not* to lose. To stand your ground like, in my case, a slightly more feminine version of Gandalf in Lord of the Rings, proclaiming thou shalt not pass to the world.

To have good boundaries, I needed to prepare myself. To get ready to face whatever was *out there* and meet it in a way that was clear that I was not a person to be messed with. Such is the pendulum swing of someone who spent years with a porous layer between her and the world and some fairly well practiced people-pleasing skills.

I had made, like so many others, the classic mistake of confusing a boundary with a barrier, and they are not the same thing. So, what is the difference? And what does it mean to say that boundaries are the willingness to lose?

A true boundary is not something that exists prior to the moment it’s required for. Instead, it is responsive. A living, breathing, fluid entity that allows us to both step closer into a situation or further away from it, depending on what’s required.

To create a boundary means that I have recognized a pattern of behaviour in someone or something- a human, horse, or situation- that does not work for me. Perhaps it’s in conflict with my needs or values; perhaps a dishonouring of my time; perhaps it’s physical, a breach of personal space. We can conjure up a variety of examples.

But in response to the situation, I offer choices. I communicate what it is I am noticing about the situation, and I say (hypothetically speaking) that Option A and Option B are available to follow. In other words, I hand over power to the other party and say, in response to your choices I will act in “X” way.

And this is where the willingness to lose comes in. Boundaries require the willingness to lose for the simple reason that in response to the choices we’ve offered, the other party might pick the one we don’t want them to. They might NOT change their behaviour. And the holding of the boundary means we have to follow through on what we said and change OUR actions in response.

Boundaries do not require the other person or situation to change. They require WE change in response to a boundary we created.

A barrier, in opposition, does not offer choice. It says, this is the situation, you absolutely can’t do “x”. A barrier is not always the wrong thing. If my horse is about to run over the top of me, I am not offering choices. I’m saying you absolutely can’t do that. It’s a safety issue. If my child is about to run out onto the road, I, again, am not offering choices. I’m going to grab their arm and create a physical barrier to the behaviour.

But what I commonly see is people behaving in ways I described at the beginning- psyching themselves up with the don’t mess with me attitude- and proclaiming that from now on, they’re going to have good boundaries. But what they have created instead is a defensive mode of functioning that is not responsive but closed down. Instead of meeting the world and making decisions based on what presents, they are presupposing that it needs to be met in a certain way and they brace themselves as a result.

This next little while in JoyRide, my membership program, we are working with an exclusive focus on boundaries. Elsa Sinclair is giving a guest workshop this morning discussing boundaries from the perspective of her work and experience with horses, so if you want in, come join us sooner rather than later (we are kicking off in just over 90 minutes time)! It’s all recorded if you can’t make it live.

In addition, over the course of the next couple of weeks we will be looking at:

– The relationship of boundaries to your physical structure, including body mapping movement sessions and understandings of how pre-existing fight flight patterns can contribute to challenges with setting appropriate boundaries

– Workshops exploring the nature of boundaries and behavioural patterns

– Boundaries and their relationship to working and playing with our horses

What are your experiences with boundaries? And what are your challenges? I’d love to hear about them!

And if you want to join us, you can read more or sign up for JoyRide here.

Let me know if there’s anything I can help with,

xx Jane

What’s your relationship to tension?

I know when I started my adventures understanding more about the body, the main preoccupation was in developing softness, pliability, and flexibility. Tension was something we wanted to get rid of, or that served no purpose other than to indicate areas of stress, dis-ease, and potentially even pain.

This narrow lens that framed my understandings of tension often prevented me from seeing the bigger picture and I would even go as far as to say, got in the way of my body moving towards more optimal ways of being.

To better understand this, let’s consider the concept of tension from a couple of different viewpoints.

In the first instance, the body requires the interplay of various tensile forces to support itself from the inside out. My work understands posture, for instance, to be the product of different internal pressure systems and structural forces that all work together to support the magnificence that is our physical body from the tubes of our blood vessels to the surface of our skin.

Take, for instance, the neck. If we want to take a log of physical complaints, neck pain is way up there. If we understand the relationship of biomechanics to the nervous system, this is, often easily explained.

In the fight flight system, the body uses the cervical spine to power the movement of the shoulder girdle. When the nervous system is adaptable, we would only do this for limited periods of time. But in modern life, we find ourselves “stuck” in this operating system and it causes wear, tear, and pain as a result.

Contrary to popular thought, the neck is not designed to be super mobile and “soft”. Instead, it’s designed to be quite a “tense” structure. The top of the lungs, when operating in the parasympathetic system, sit in the neck tube and press on the deep front line of fascia, stabilizing the cervical vertebrae and the entire structure of the neck.

When people I work with start to develop more stability in the neck, one of the things that they will experience is the subjective experience of “tension”. But this tension is necessary, “normal” and desirable.

Once this position has settled, we no longer experience it as tension (we only consciously experience something for as long as it’s novel). But in the interim, we can get in our own way through the assumption that something is wrong by massaging, poking, and manipulating our way out of it.

The point I want to make is that our experience of tension is subjective. And it’s not always “bad”.

The other thing is that regardless of whether we perceive tension to be positive or negative, tension is always functional. It exists because:

– The brain lacks the necessary sensory information to bring the body into the present moment and consequently leaves it physical buttons of “stuckness”

– Tension has been created as a compensatory or protective pattern to support the body in some way.

– The muscles have developed patterns around supporting the body to be stable rather than mobile.

Simple “releasing tension” is not desirable if it not the decision of the body in question to do so. We need to provide the brain with more information about its current position so it can make any changes that are relevant (should they be relevant), which happens through the stimulation and activation of the sensory system.

When I look at the body know, be it horse, human or otherwise, I’m full of reverence. At that moment in time, regardless of my perception of what’s going on, the brain has made choices with the information available to it that is always in that being’s best interest. My “job” then is to support it to make its own changes at the pace and depth that it so chooses.

Onwards.

❤️ Jane

Don’t let your quest for ‘nervous system regulation’ become another outlet for perfectionism or control. Another movement towards the ever illusive idealized or better self.

‘Nervous system’ is simply the term we use to describe how the body- your body- understands its place in the world. How we relate to things; our experiences, each other, the universe as a whole. And because we acknowledge that all these thoughts and feelings we’re having from moment to moment exist within this human animal skin, we know that there are some things we must take care of in order to operate in a way that is true to our basic design.

In truth, considering how our nervous system is functioning- which is just a fancy way of saying how WE are functioning- shouldn’t be something we have to think about or do anything special for. But it is, for the simple reason that we aren’t living in a world we are designed for- and neither are our horses.

What we are designed for is collaborative, communal living, not just with our human friends, but with the non-human and the animal. Where life is a reciprocal arrangement with the land, and where movement is an expected and intrinsic part of our day. In this way, the nervous system takes care of itself.

And because this is no longer the case; because the modern world has separated us from ways of being for which we are designed we now have to choose and act our way into wellbeing, an onus of responsibility that we’ve never previously had to carry.

And a paradox of burden in that we are essentially asking the same body, the same system that is experiencing the dysfunction to also find their way back to a state of health, which is a tricky thing to do.

But outlining the difficulties does not make it any less true.

What learning about your nervous system should provide you with in a remembering and reclaiming of your intuitive, sensual self. Not in a stereotypical way, but one that allows you to recognize your inherent creativity; where you become more adaptable, less controlling of your circumstances and surroundings; where you are able to maintain a sense of rootedness in what’s important to you without being swayed or buffeted with each opposing thought; where you allow other people to have their experience without the need to convince or coerce them into agreeing with what you understand to be true.

It is not a call without- to another bio hack, another step-by-step process but a call within. And not in isolation but in collaboration. In recognition of your wider place within the world and the relationships that form a part of it.

It is the reclamation of choice, that you are the change agent, instead of waiting or insisting that the world around you adjust to fall in line with your desires.

We will feel more, sense more, act more. A handing back of agency, of potency, of understanding the wider web in which we live.

If you are looking to be perfectly balanced or calm with your nervous system work, then what you’re moving towards is not regulation. It’s another loosely disguised box that really just control.

Onwards

 Jane

You are not entitled to success.

You are not entitled to things working out.

A horse, even one you label as your own, neither requires nor demands you to continue being a horse. They have fulfilled their remit by virtue of who they are. They have nothing to prove- to you or to themselves.

You are not entitled to their attention, nor the attention of others.

It is us alone with the questions, the appeals. But the answers, the filling in of all the blanks, is not something that is promised to us.

It is a decision, an adventure, we open ourselves up to, to occupy a third space, that is neither solely human nor solely horse. Instead, it is a little bit of both, and something of another we are unable to grasp fully or identify.

The space of a horseperson.

Horses make no appeals that we dance with our shadow side. That we reconcile our need for control. That we meet the lingering fears born of a body we occupied for decades previous creating an atmosphere of concern in our cells. That we elasticise the borders of a comfort zone preferring to identify as stone.

It is a life with horses that asks this, requires this.

You can make your way through life experiencing success, even happiness, without ever meeting any of these things.

But if it’s a life with horses that you want, the space of a horseperson you want to occupy, then at some point you will find you need to face yourself within a conversation that calls to reach for something deeper than you initially present.

But your horse makes no demands for it.

—

 Jane

What do we feel we need, to be ready to begin?

Which we could rephrase as, what’s getting in the way of us starting?

This question I always find to be a thorny one to answer, not because of the obvious nuance that’s real and present in a human life, but because of all the ways that we argue against ourselves. We have a fierce and fast tendency to rise to the defence of all the reasons why we can’t do the thing that we want to do, which can make for sticky conversations as we start to unpick why that might be the case.

If you feel yourself bristling, perhaps you can identify.

The reality is, to get started, you need practically nothing except the willingness to do so and the commitment to taking some form of action. This is true regardless of your start point, financial resource or current state of health and wellbeing. And that’s because the art of “getting going” can be reduced to a startlingly simple equation:

Getting Going = Decision + Action

The acceptance of where you’re at and figuring out what’s possible within what’s possible. Which is going to be different for all of us. Identifying the next available step and taking it.

So why, for many of us, is this such a hard thing to do?

Here’s a pick’n’mix assortment of common things I see getting in people’s way.

1. You’re waiting for it to be easy, or at least ‘easier’.

Easy or hard, it doesn’t matter. If you are creating momentum where there is none, or doing something that is currently outside your skillset or comfort zone, then there’s no way around it other than committing to some form of action. Doesn’t have to be huge, and it’s not about putting yourself in an unsafe position. But it most probably is going to involve some sort of sacrifice.

You are going to have to NOT do something else to do the thing you want. You are going to have to say no to other things and realise that there is some level of hardship involved to committing.

It has rewards, but they aren’t necessary instant. You have to give yourself time. But the only person who can bridge the space between doing and not doing is you.

2. You somehow think there’s going to be an energy shift and you’ll naturally be compelled to do ‘the thing’.

This isn’t about forcing or pushing through. Again, it’s about finding what’s possible within what’s possible. Which will change from day to day, moment to moment.

I can speak to this endlessly from the level of the nervous system, but it can be useful also to consider it from the point of energetics.

Consider things elementally: earth, air, fire and water. Earth is heavy, grounded, lacks movement. Someone lacking motivation, get up and go might need to consider how to introduce more fire, emotionally, nutritionally, functionally.

Conversely, anxiety is predominantly air. A head detached, floating away. Ungroundedness, concern. How do we earth, how do we ground?

How can you balance your natural, elemental tendencies? How can you create a system of support that naturally includes a movement towards taking action?

3. You are getting too far ahead of yourself.

Showing up and getting started is surprisingly easy. What often stops us is the attachment to showing up and getting started *in a specific way*. If you are attached to how things have to be or how they need to look (hello perfectionist and control patterns) then you are going to have a hard time motivating yourself to get out of the literal and metaphorical gate.

Beginning is just that: beginning. It’s not beginning perfectly or having it all together. It’s acceptance. This is the start point. What’s possible from here?

What to chatter about what I’ve shared above? I’m more than happy to ping some thoughts around. Let me know below!

xx Jane

The other day, I was asked, how do you stay true to yourself, live a life that is connected and creative?

I replied that I’m not sure, but I understand it to be a daily practice of dissent.

And then she asked, what is it you mean by dissent?

I paused for a moment, attempted to bring up the formal definition in my mind, but it continued to desert me.

Dissent, I began, is the constant process of deconditioning. The daily re-commitment to what’s important in your heart and in your mind.

And I recognize, I faltered, that to even consider this conversation means I am answering this question from a place of privilege. That I have the choice to be something, to do something, in ways that many others don’t.

But as I’m answering regardless, let me take you on an adventure of my yesterday.

Yesterday, I woke up already feeling not ok. I was tired, the cumulative result of broken sleep. My mind was tight with all the things it was usual to be concerned about. The pressures of running a business, the constant feelings of keeping up. The responsibilities involved in caring for people other than yourself.

In that moment, as tired tears started to roll, I thought to myself was what I really craved was space. I wanted to go sit on my log in the back paddock and talk to trees.

Wanted to remember my own unimportance, to reduce myself in the context of the natural to my meant for and intended place; as just another creature treading this earth in this human, animal skin.

And a voice piped up, “well you can do that. You can go and do that now.”

So I’ll take you with me, together now, on a walk of nothing and everything, a day filled with much the same.

A re-commitment to what’s important in what I first described as counter-intuitive, but that’s not really right at all. What it is is counter-conditional; all the conditional beliefs that attempt to wield and rule my day.

As I walked outside, I saw a parrot, her body heavy against the horizon and resting on the flax. Before this year, flax has always been just that- flax. But I took up the habit of nature journaling and drawing and I see her now as so much more.

There is the mountain flax, herself a different colour to her low lying cousin friends. The more olive-y greens juxtaposed around the burnt red and brownish hues. Each plant a universe, an ecosystem, providing sustenance for birds and animals alike.

As the plants break into blossom it’s the nectar feeders that come first. The Tuis, the Bellbirds, all feasting on the sugar. But now with the flowers gone, the parrots break into the pods.

Later, when feeding the horses, I walk pass, analysing the seeds. I can see where strong and sharp beaks have made their entry, of the seeds that lie within.

I’m walking now, up the hill and over the crest of a gentle rise. Below me, I see the movement of three of my horse friends. They are all following each other, nose to tail, and one by one, they turn to face the sun.

They see me, acknowledge me with their eyes, and I call back in adoration, walking on.

The next paddock that contains life holds two more horses. They nicker to me as I make my way up the path, with the expectation of hay and feed. The next ears and eyes I see are Ada and Merc. We commune, scratch and breakfasts are doled out in the expected order. The air feels with the happy munching sounds of horse’s eating hay.

Now on to my intended destination, Bear’s log that sits within the paddock we call the twisted gums. My eyes relax here, take a long soak in the green of the surroundings. I notice a feathery grass I cannot name that I have not given much attention to before. In their sea of family kin, they all look golden, but on closer inspection, I can see the edges tinged with pink, as though gently dipped in watercolor paint.

I look down at my feet; my shoes now feel inappropriate. I take them off, my socks too, and lie down on the log. It doesn’t feel right so I get up, and start to walk on further still, making my way to the farthest corner down the back.

Despite the rising heat of the day, each place atop the land has its own specific temperature. At first I walk amongst the grass covered with dew, the cold so clear and strong that my bones inside my feet begin to ache. I think two things:

I am so glad we are no longer cutting hay. The days with intermittent rain and the mornings with already present dew would guarantee a seasonal headache.

Two: This cold feels like the sea. A plunge, a surprise, a body that reacts.

And then warm. Up the rise and the grass feels in comparison like hot pools. It’s not surface level heat, but underneath. The earth feels like freshly baked and newly taken out cookies. My legs fill with gingerbread delight.

I hear sounds of birds I cannot place, and I look upwards. I can tell the birds are many, but I can’t make out exactly what. My eyes and ears do their best to strain together, but today that knowledge is not theirs for the taking. I thank them and continue on my way.

My hand reaches in the pocket with the expectation of my phone but it is absent. Left, on purpose on the bedside table many steps away at home. I look at the watch I quickly borrowed in it’s place: 8:12 am.

I need to go. I have a call at 8:30, a commitment that sees me turn in the direction of my home.

When I speak of dissent, this is what I mean.

Not necessarily outward flourish. No big announcements or protests that involve the masses or stepping somewhere else other than the place you currently stand.

It’s really simple. A remembering. A recommitment. An action in support of both those things.

The daily practice of your smallness in the vastness of the land.

Onwards,

 Jane

In response to being told to leave my emotions at the gate, or find a point of operating we might call neutral…

Dear friend,

I really don’t think there’s any such thing as leaving your emotions at the gate, or even finding a place within yourself that you would call neutral. What even is that, I ask myself, besides a damping down of everything that makes us human?

I don’t expect my horse to turn off their horse-ness when I am with them. To do so, I think, is what we would refer to as shut down.

It would be unfair, unrealistic to expect the same thing of myself. For Jane to be less Jane.

So, I simply don’t.

I carry them with me. Me and my emotions, we arrive at the paddock, to the arena, we adventure on the trail. I don’t try to escape them- we both know that would be futile- but we dance in a way that is dynamic, ever changing.

My horse is emotional, not in a human way, but a horse way.

A human is emotional, not in a horse way, but a human way.

The true building of relationship and understanding comes through an alchemy of both these forces, not by pretending or turning off the enlivening part of me in an attempt to present as something I am not.

In writing this, I recognize this is a nuanced conversation. Some musings that spring to mind that maybe led us to this point:

Humans are often led by emotion rather than informed by them. We easily find ourselves hijacked, taken over by the experience of what we would label an emotion, which removes us from the ability to be present, to be effective, and sometimes, to be compassionate and fair.

But this, my friend, is not the emotion, but the story, and alongside it, a fixed idea of outcomes. The story and the judgement- not the emotion- is what we need to leave behind.

Emotion, sensation is the body’s communication network, a lively conversation between the body and the brain.

Emotion is the body informing, relating, understanding its place in the environment it finds itself, its current situation.

To be empty of emotion, simply put, is to no longer be alive.

So where does that leave us then? If we are humans, full to the brim, a complex sea of ever-present emotion?

It leaves us with the truth of ourselves and the moment we find ourselves in.

It leaves us with the opportunity to reconcile the patterns of people pleasing, the pressure of what we feel like we should do instead of what we are able and willing to do, to understand the presence of emotion is not fixed, but ever changing, constantly fleeting.

To learn to act within the experience of emotion in a way that feels do-able and kind.

To learn to trust and advocate for ourselves, and for our horses.

To reconcile our triggers from the past that push to the fore old experiences that are no longer relevant to our present moment.

To observe our emotions and understanding the choices we make within them, as exactly that: a choice.

And if we can’t. If we find ourselves in the position where we feel like our capacity to be clear, consistent, and kind for our horses is removed, then we can choose to walk away, if only for a moment.

To get off. To take a break. To hand the rope to someone else.

But we practice, every day, letting go of the story, allowing ourselves to be new.

Bringing the fullness of ourselves to conversation and allowing our horses to be free to do the same.

Onwards.

❤️ Jane

Can you learn to read a body?

Every body expresses a story. The story of everything that came before.

I’ve had many conversations with trainers and riders, where in theory we seem to be on the same page, but their horse’s bodies show me our approaches are quite different. I have been surprised, caught out on more than one occasion, found my feet shuffling uncomfortably in the sand where I think I have a good thing going on as far as training conversations with another human, only to have the reality revealed by the body of their horse. Once your eye and hand are trained to patterns of force and tension, it’s impossible to unsee.

The curve and bulge of certain muscles, the deficit and atrophy of others. The little, knotty balls you feel under your fingers as your run your hands down the length of their neck.

The fullness- or lack of- that sits under the saddle.

The freedom of movement, happiness in the jaw and mouth, contentment in the eye, looseness, and pliability of the skin.

The horse does not need the command of words to gift you with their story.

The same is true for humans, despite our presentation patterns and attempts the cover up the truth. Learning to read the structure of a body- how it changes in the different nervous system states, how the body rearranges itself- will tell you more about a person’s state of being than their words ever will.

Our bodies are the canvas on which we paint our life. There is much to be learned through its careful observation.

Onwards.

 Jane

At 4pm yesterday, I threw my laptop in a bag, along with a notebook and some pens, and jumped into the car. My eldest son who’s 12 was with me, we were heading into town for the 3rd day in a row of training for his PADI scuba diving license.

The bags under his eyes show he’s a little tired but he can’t stop talking all the way. He’s chirping like a little sparrow in the background, speaking of things I neither understand nor keep up with.

“When we get to this level mum, the pressure in the tank changes to “x” amount…”

“When you work with your buddy, we have to double check each other. That’s the only thing I really struggle with, it’s hard to lift the tanks.”

He’s fires at me questions he knows I cannot answer, delights in the fact he can correct me, inform me of the things I do not know.

We park outside the pool, and he streaks off, leaving me standing alone in the car park. I follow inside, feeling like I’m wearing a sign on my head announcing myself as the land dweller amongst a bowl of happy fish.

My boys, my two babes and my husband, are most at home amongst the salt and the sea. They’ll spend hours in the water whose temperature is not for the faint hearted. Our stretch of coast is a cold, open and beautiful part of the Pacific, where five people on the beach feels like a crowded day.

His love of diving began, I think, not 20 minutes from home in the flowing tendrils of a Kelp forest. I remember him arriving back, cheeks flushed, eyes much wider than the norm.

I asked him what he loved about it.

“It’s just so peaceful down there mum”, was what he replied.

One of the most beautiful lines I’ve ever heard.

I don’t have to understand the activity to understand the feeling. I know what it’s like to be called back to something, a pull that sits beyond the logical and the rational. It’s the feeling so many of us share when sharing movement, space, and energy with a horse.

I carry my bag up the steps to a dark mezzanine room that sits above the diving pool, some many meters deep. I can hear his voice in the background, chattering away to those around him, his heart and mind on equal ground with those around him despite the many decades of living that space between them. He is by years and years the youngest.

I hear the trainer give the instructions.

“Tonight, we are going to do a 200-meter continuous swim with your weight belt, a minute or so rest, and then treading water for another ten. An hour’s diving after that.

There’s no touching the bottom and no resting. I’ll let you know when you are done. We need to know that if something happens out there in the water you have the capacity to swim.”

My heart feels the tightening of concern. I text my husband. I am worried with the weights and the lack of stops that it might not be ok.

I go down to the water’s edge and speak to my boy.

“Are you feeling ok to do this?”

I can see he does not mirror my concern.

“Of course”, he replies, “I have to do it. It’s just part of it.”

Matter of fact.

The other divers around him smile. I attempt one of my own, secretly ready to jump in.

I watch him swim, up and down, up and down, the many lengths of the short pool. I feel like I’m watching the Olympics. My eyes start to cloud right over.

On the final length, they all cheer for him. The small body of my boy making his way back down the stretch of pool. He’s giggling at the end, cracking jokes, pulls up on the side in a way that’s pleased with himself. Then he bombs back in the pool and plays around.

Driving home, I tell him how proud of him I am. He said it was hard, but an important thing to do.

“I understand why they do all these tests”, he said, “and I agree with them. I don’t want to be treated any different. I want to show them I can do it just as good as them.”

I admire my child’s steely determination, his absolute self-trust that he can do it. A resolve that floats under the surface of his skin, surprising all the adults around him.

I post in my JoyRide Facebook group a little video of the swim.

A lovely member comment:

“Honestly, the stuff we humans can do when we don’t have the baggage of not being able to do the things.”

Exactly what I thought, I reply.

“Imagine what we’ll see when we dive out there in the ocean”, he enthuses to me at home.

“Imagine”, I reply, and give him a little hug.

❤️ Jane

When it comes to our organs, we appreciate them in the context of life functioning systems (and rightly so), but we rarely consider their role in movement and postural support. If we want to think about them in relation to the latter (movement and posture), we must invite another glorious player to the conversation, our fascial system, or specifically the deep front line.

Fascia forms in many different configurations. Fascial trains are part of the movement system of the body; the deep front line is one of these fascial trains. As the name suggest, the deep front line lies within the deepest parts of the body’s universe, winding its way through the very core of our beings.

When we consider fascia and function, we automatically consider tone. The tone of fascia is based on pressure relationships; in essence, fascia requires a certain amount of pressure to maintain tone, responding with equal and opposite pressure.

In the parasympathetic system (and I highlight this because how we move is different between the fight flight and parasympathetic nervous system states), the organs originate our movement. Part of this function is through the pressure applied to the deep front line so it’s able to move, shift and slide.

The lungs are an excellent example of this. When they sit high, in the parasympathetic system, they are part of the stabilizing function of the neck. The top lobe presses on the deep front line, helping to maintain the length of the cervical spine and preventing it being vulnerable and loose (spoiler alert: the neck is supposed to hold a degree of positive tension. It’s not supposed to be soft and loose, which is counterproductive for support).

Posture is the domain, kingdom, and queendom of the nervous system. If we are looking to the muscles, in my opinion, we are starting from the wrong direction. What we are observing is the end result of my brain and my nervous system and consequently, my organs telling my structure where it needs to be, and my body arranging itself as a result.

Onwards,

❤️ Jane

• Here is a video of a (partial) deep front line dissection. From our horse’s point of view, the tongue tendon is part of the deep front line (the same is true for us) and connects all the way to the hind legs, which is why freedom of the jaw and tongue (nosebands, cough cough) is so important not just to happiness, but posture and movement.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DjGzalkfY1E

• Organ and nervous system consideration is part of the work we play with in JoyRide, considering biomechanics through a nervous system lens. If you want to join us, you can check it out here– we’d love to have you be a part of it!

So much of the success we experience in training is about creating environments that support the outcomes we are trying to teach. This is different to control; it’s intentional curation that changes from context to context that increases the clarity of what we’re asking, our accuracy in asking it, and consequently, the capacity of our horse to understand.

This is Ada. She’s an Irish Draught who turned one just before Christmas. Her natural propensity is to move the world round with her shoulders, an unsurprising biproduct of the natural strengths of her breed. I watch her in the paddock, and I giggle; the way she maneuvers the other horses, her first thought being not to go around but through.

In our handling though, this means I have to be particular. I am cautious not to yield my ground, not to allow for passages of movement where my space is not considered. This is true of every horse I interact with, but in these early stages, where learning is amplified, and the energetics of engagement are being newly established the air around these asks moves faster, the consequences clearer and more acute.

Any sessions we do together are short and sweet. I want her basic handling established, for her to lead happily, move her hindquarters and her shoulders, load up into the trailer to create both a harmonious living situation together, to set the stage for the future, but beyond that for emergency. It seems that the latter does not discern whether your handling is ready for them or not.

Ada has been quick to learn and delights in our interactions, as do I. Consistent with what I’ve described above, she finds the backup challenging. She’s a little sticky, not as light as with my other requests. If she gets flustered, things can unravel quickly, so I’m careful to only ask in situations that can support her; along fence lines, in the yard, when she’s emotionally focused and in her body.

If we walk around the farm, I do my best to give other alternatives to backing up to make sure I don’t create a situation where she thinks the best option is to go through me. Is this ideal? No. But we are in the very early stages of learning and we’re working where we’re at. You could argue it’s not time to wander out at all, but I find the real world the best for practicing things that are important and having it make sense to your lovely horse.

The best way to avoid things you don’t want to happen is to do your best not to let them happen in the first place. This means being smart, thinking ahead. It means creating situations where the horse can answer yes, where you set them up to win. And then expanding the context of how and when you ask gradually from there.

Onwards,

❤️ Jane

A couple of decades back when I was studying health science, my class group was told a story about peanuts. Peanuts are prone to a black growth called aflatoxin, which you can also see on occasion on the inside of a capsicum or bell pepper.

The government had a percentage that the peanuts had to pass- an aflatoxin test if you will- to deem the peanuts fit for human consumption. That year, most of the peanuts failed the test. Faced with the option (not to mention the opposition) of disposing of a huge number of peanuts (and the economic flow on effects), they instead lowered the percentage requirement and kept those peanuts sailing through.

You might be thinking, well, what has this story got to do with anything you might teach or share here? But I feel like it’s a metaphor for so many things, especially when it comes to our wellness and our health.

So many humans and horses are dealing with dysfunction that the dysfunction itself has become normalized. Like the effected peanuts passing the test, the bar has dropped on what we consider to be ok and then we come to consider that state of being as the norm.

But a normalized bar on a dysfunctional state of being does not equal wellness.

I could go on all day to the factors that contribute to this being the case, much of which you already know, and many of which are not necessarily our fault. But even if it’s not our individual fault that we landed here, it’s our individual responsibility to somehow find our way out. To look beyond the plight of ‘most’ and ‘many’, to refuse to accept it as the end goal.

And beyond that, we need to recognize that if we or our horse have spent any number of years in a state we recognize as un-ideal, then it’s going to take some time to ease our way out of them.

Most practices dedicated to well-being are not quick fixes, and don’t pretend to be such. At their essence, they are a way of life that do not prioritize temporary comfort over the reality of the work and time it takes to truly help a horse or human find vitality.

A moment of ‘feeling better’ is easy to create, and these moments have their place. But changing the way that a body is functioning at a deeper more foundational level is much longer and more intensive work. Work that is not necessarily instantly gratifying or fast rewarding, simply because we don’t get to consciously decide how long it takes. The body does, a process that is unconsciously and intuitively driven.

As a coach and someone dedicated to the latter, that’s a hard package to sell. It’s a process that only proves itself over time, which means time must be actively given.

Onwards,

❤️ Jane

This week, I’ve been reading lots of articles about women in the wild. Adventurers, hikers, campers, who set out to the mountains and forests in solitude, setting up their camp at night and sleeping where they land.

In my mind, these women are intrepid and fearless. Their bodies, expanded and spent by the fullness of activity in their day, is fed at twilight and then they fall quietly asleep, their camp a peaceful pocket of rest as the busyness of nature surrounds them.

Except, this is not what happens at all.

The more common experience is that camping, sleeping alone at night away from lights, electricity and other people is anything but relaxing. It’s not even just ok. For many, it’s nights of wakefulness, of fear and of a mind that’s playing tricks.

Of tiny noises played to human ears at 100 x magnification. Of perhaps the ultimate concern (especially for a woman)- that what you hear is another human. Of your mind’s eye seeing your face on the front page of the newspaper, gone for 100 days.

We all know what it’s like for our mind to run away in the darkness of the night. And outside, alone, without the usual comforts or distractions, we are left only with ourselves.

The whole point, and simultaneously, what so many of us spend our days running away from.

Curiously, I found this reading, these other women’s stories, to be a fascination and a comfort. I crave solitude, love being alone in the wild, and yet when I do, for anything beyond and hour’s walk, it’s not a state that is relaxing. Quite the opposite: I am more switched on, more alert, the spikes and lows of adrenalin peaking and troughing with frequent regularity.

If we think of animals- not the domesticated kind, but those that are free- they are in a constant state of awareness. For the birds in my garden, I am the local dealer, half a dozen nectar feeders hanging in the tree. I watch them as I write. They land, sip on the feeders, but the spaces of feeding last only a second, never more. Their eyes are darting, looking round.

They feed, and notice, feed, and notice. They aren’t tuned out. They are tuned in.

Growing up, I had a pony that never missed a beat. My mother used to say, if we had to go bush, Minnie is the one we want to take with us. What she meant was she pays attention. And paying attention is the number one rule of survival. Of making it out the other side.

I wonder, at what point we decided that we had to remove all feeling that we labeled as discomfort in order to understand ourselves as being ok?

That as humans, we are entitled to a life of ease and comfort that sits separately to what the rest of the animal world experiences?

I wonder, if there’s a normal level of doubt, of anxiety, of even fear that as humans- as a human who is vital, connected, and alive- we are supposed to experience?

And in our domesticated lives, we have convinced ourselves of this idea of being able to find neutral, or that much of our state of being should be one of relaxation and rest?

That’s certainly not the case for any other creature on the planet.

I am finding, that to accept that things may be difficult, that it’s normal to feel the peaks of fear in this situation or that, is an act of compassion and kindness to myself.

That to expect the opposite is delusional at best.

The positive thinking movement has its benefits for sure, but I sometimes wonder if it’s created more of a deficit in our ability to meet reality, less ease in accepting the natural, normal level of hardship that is part of being in life.

In my membership program, JoyRide, so much of the work that we do there is about renegotiating our experience of what feeling and emotion feel like in the body. So much of it is not about removing discomfort, but more so, learning not to freak out about it and act within it.

Which on first reading, might not sound appealing, but the truth is, it’s a liberation.

Naturally, help is advisable and available when we find ourselves managing an emotional life that is non-functional and removes us from the ability to act. But beyond that, entertain there is a level of discomfort, of hardship that just… is.

I think back to my women camper friends, the one who explore out in the wild. I am comforted by the thought of their minds who are as busy in the dark as mine is.

That we all have the spikes of anxiety, the doubt, and the concern.

That this is not necessarily something to escape from. It’s confirmation of humanity.

Universal reminders of the animal skin of which we’re in.

Onwards.

❤️ Jane

These last few days, as life sometimes demands of you, I’ve spent many more moments than planned away from my computer and from work.

For the most part, I restrict my playtime on social media. I have a chrome extension on my computer that blocks my Facebook news feed, only allowing access to pages and groups I intentionally visit.

I no longer have social media apps on my phone.

But occasionally, after extended absences away, I reinstall the app and spend some minutes seeing what’s been happening.

I stumble across a post from my very brilliant friend Kate Sandel at Soft and Sound, go down the rabbit hole of investigating the dressage test to which she is referring.

Yet again, a horse in the not so delicate hands of a human. A Grand Prix dressage test. A well performed warmblood, a much-lauded rider, receiving commendation for a questionable performance.

I pray to the universe that if I’m to come back to this world a horse, let me be one without athletic vigor. It appears us humans struggle to do little more than extort this for our own benefit.

Sometimes, I feel like I’m operating in a parallel universe. I know a handful of people there that join me.

I really don’t get it. I struggle to understand. I don’t fully grasp why this is something we have to explain or argue for.

That horses are sentient.

That they have an elaborate and complex emotional life.

That it’s an everyday miracle they let us get close to them, let alone ride on their back.

That we need to take more care. The most care.

I think back to the last Black Friday sale. I click on a link, get taken to a page selling bridles.

I can’t find a single one without a crank noseband. My eyes, now used to the vision of noseband-less horses finds the cascade of thumbnails and strapped tight mouths confronting.

I forget this is the norm.

I make an enquiry. If I want one- one without a noseband- I am told, it will be a special order. To modify the bridle to remove it. It will cost extra NOT to have the noseband.

I sink into my seat.

Just now, I decide to change my cover photo on my Facebook page. I choose one with my young horse, of no more than five or six rides, being ridden in a halter.

I wonder to myself if this is the right image. Maybe it might pigeonhole me I think, place me in a stereotype.

I counter myself moments later. If that is the case, I think to myself, let the halter going rider be the box in which I’m placed. I would claw my way out of most of the others.

Yesterday, I’m told a pocket of land close by to me that might be for sale soon. I feel bereft. I often wander the tracks there, am friends with the Fuchsias, the Manukas and the Ferns. I talk out loud to them with the expectation of hearing back.

‘I talk to trees too’, my friend said recently, ‘but I don’t tell anyone else, in case it’s weird.’

‘I think it’s weirder not to’, I say back. ‘To assume the landscape we’re a part of exists without the capacity for reply.’

I worry about the next custodian of the land, that they might take it upon themselves to clear this ancient stretch of bush that’s so alive.

I understand the people that lay in front of diggers and tie themselves to trunks. I think I might be one of them.

My son rang me yesterday, he’s at the top of the South Island camping. A wilderness that’s pristine. He took his fishing rod, planned to sit on the docks and see what happened.

Did you catch anything, I ask him?

‘No mum’, he replies. ‘There are no fish in the water this close to the shore, you have to go out in the boat.’

Those waters should be teaming.

‘That’s sad’, I say to him, and he agrees.

We are not sad that no fish are caught.

We are sad the waters are empty of fish to catch.

The trawlers are out early. Evidence of unsustainable quotas leaving spaces in the sea.

To my mind, these aren’t a series of divided stories without connection. The dressage test and the bridles and the trees and the fish and all the things.

They all interrelate.

And perhaps it’s not the norm to ask,

do you know what the phase of the moon is currently

or how many wild foods can you identify in your area that are safe to eat

or where is due north

or can you point out different star constellations and outline them in the sky

or do you know what the clouds are telling you about the weather

or what the grasses are in the paddocks where your horses eat

If we are looking for the cause of our apathy and our entitlement, this is it.

So many of us do not know the answers to these questions.

We have lost our wider sense of connection, forgotten the intended context of a human on this land.

But the clay of our body remembers, and it’s her whispers that we hear that creates the quiet and unyielding discontent.

The insistent and persistent voice that tells us to stay with the search for better ways.

So with that in mind, to the search for better ways, the process of remembering, and to horses, who one and all are Saints.

Onwards.

❤️ Jane

Sometimes, our body is expressing things that our mind is choosing to be blind to, a constant tap-tap-tapping at the door of our consciousness of situations or circumstances in our external reality that need to change.

If we’re unable to sit with these problems and address them, then it’s unlikely we’ll experience changes beyond small, fluctuating shifts on a physical level also.

My work with the nervous system focuses on adaptability, the aim being to get our body and brain to a place where it’s responding appropriately to the situation it finds itself in.

What is appropriate? Appropriate could also be translated as accurate responsiveness, a state of being where I’m able to meet the situation I am in- the horse I’m working with, the conversation I’m a part of, the person I’m engaged with- and stay true to what that moment requires of me without defaulting to a pre-patterned mode of operation.

This means there is no good, bad, right, or wrong, just the response that is appropriate for that moment. If it’s appropriate to be in fight flight, or my sympathetic nervous system, then I absolutely want that. And equally so, I want to be able to transition out of it when the circumstances causing the threat has changed and I no longer need to be there.

Our bodies are the ultimate truth tellers. Sometimes the hardest work is not about addressing a set of physical symptoms or circumstances but getting you to the place where mind is able to accept the truth of what’s going on, rather than the story that’s getting in the way of seeing it. And beyond that, is willing to act of these understandings and make changes.

If what you’re experiencing in your body is reflecting reality, then the only thing that’s going to help at a foundational level is making shifts to your life and circumstance, leaving your body free to express something different.

Flee patterns are great examples of this. If we are in a relationship or job that we loathe or is compromising us, our body will express that unhappiness often before the mind is willing to accept it. The structure of our body will be set in the flee pattern, ready to leave the building, even if the mind insists everything is ok. And it’s not until the problems are addressed or we have changed our circumstances altogether that we will truly return to physical wellness.

The same is true for our horses. You can have the best of intentions, use all the supplements, even train with a focus on wellbeing, but if their true needs are not accounted for and met, forage, freedom, and friends (and I would argue so much more), their bodies will always reflect the truth of how they feel.

I can see now, over the years I’ve been practicing this work, how many stories I’ve been holding on to and let go of. I really feel this is the hardest part. Our body is constantly and always making movements towards vitality. It’s our beliefs, the stories we cling to, the should’s and the have to’s, the defense of our old ways that prevent things changing as fast as we are able.

Onwards.

❤️ Jane

One of my mentors once said to me, Jane, people don’t need more information, they need more experiences.

She was referring to the movement work I teach; how the benefit, the transformation is in the doing of the work, not the knowing of the work.

This is a challenge that I’m presented with frequently; providing enough information to satisfy hungry and curious minds balanced with enough encouragement to dive in and do the work.

I believe this to be true of horsemanship in all its manifestations also. That we have to take care not to become theory heavy and experience poor, and beyond that, use ‘the need to know more’ as a way to avoid taking action.

The ‘need to know’ pattern is the favourite of those of us who love to intellectualize our way through situations. It can prevent us from committing to a decision or practice before we feel like we ‘know everything we need to know’ and be used as a procrastination technique to get started on something that perhaps takes us out of our comfort zone.

I’m not suggesting that information isn’t useful or needed- quite the contrary. But what I am saying is that information needs to be paired with action and experience- quickly and close together- the combination of the two creating an alchemy that we understand to be skill.

The reality is both your body, and your horse don’t care about correct terminology or scientific names. What they respond to is how that information lives in your cells and expresses in your action. At some point you have to recognize the learning process as inherently messy. You will get it wrong. You will get confused and frustrated. That’s all part of it.

So, if you recognize yourself in this pattern, don’t let yourself get too far into your head before you put what you are learning into practice. Do it imperfectly. Stay observant. Repair your mistakes. But keep going.

Learning what I now teach was one of the most frustrating experiences of my life, for the simple reason is I couldn’t use the techniques I had in the past to “smart” my way through. I’m a good student and a great swot. I can get my head down, bum up in a book and burn my way through those words in a weekend. But for the first time, this movement work didn’t let me do that. It didn’t really matter how much I knew if I hadn’t practiced.

And the true knowledge- the stuff that sinks down to the level of the marrow- only comes with the doing. I didn’t get to ‘decide’ how long that took because it wasn’t a cognitive process. Knowledge as a combination of lived, felt experience as well as intellectual understanding.

You don’t get to skip the doing part for that to happen.

❤️ Jane