Category: The (almost kinda) Daily

Movement. From the perspective of the brain, movement is only ever performed with a functional reason in mind. We are designed to move with a functional, practical purpose. Our modern lives, however, mean that in many instances our movement is far less functional, and much more mentally driven. We use movement not in a responsive way, as a means to meet the needs of our body, and more in reaction to what we think we “should” be doing.

If we then swap from humans to horses, every move a horse makes is for a practical reason. There is no point in your horse’s life where they think to themselves, shall we just walk a figure of 8 together to get our steps up? Or, who’s up for a brisk 5km jog to keep trim? It doesn’t happen.

Our horses are so brave, magical and mystical that they let us do all manner of things where the purpose to them is entirely unclear. My riding adventures this week with Merc have very much been about motivating movement (can we go forward with energy?) whilst making it clear to him that this movement is FOR something… be that to reach a destination I’ve decided on, move the ball around the arena, shift the sheep in the paddock.

I need to consider; can I make the reason for this movement make sense to my horse? Can I make him not only understand it, but be an enthusiastic participant?

As riders, there are many times when we want more forward, more lift of the shoulders, more sharpness in the aids, and yet when we ask this of our horses, we have nothing in mind beyond that particular aid.

Forward to where?
Lift for what purpose?
Why does the movement from walk to trot need to be so exact?

Which might be…

… to reach that destination
… to move up and around these barrels/gate/object
…to move the stock/chase the ball/keep up with “x”

If relation to anything of the above, what can you add to your training that would naturally encourage it? That would make your horse understand a purpose behind the request?

Part of an ongoing conversation.

Onwards.

❤️ Jane

 

We’ve spoken a little bit about the dome of the diaphragm this week, and this particular part of the body is a great launch pad to discuss something that us humans do that causes us quite a lot of challenge at various points along the way- especially when it comes to our interpretations and experiences of fear and anxiety.

Before we get into that though, let’s consider where it is that most of us physically experience the sensation of anxiety. If we took a general survey, there are some common threads that we can identify that lead people to believe they are amid an anxious episode. They are:

 

• Tight chest
• Racing heart
• Lump in the throat
• Butterflies or fluttering
• Upset “stomach” or nausea

 

If you look at all of these, they are centered on the torso/chest area. This is also where all the organs are housed in the body.

From a physiological perspective, we are supposed to be getting feedback from the body all the time. Nothing in the body is static, including the organs. They move and shift around, creating physical sensations as they do so.

They move in accordance with how the nervous system is responding to the environment. In the sympathetic, or survival nervous system, they move and condense towards midline. In the parasympathetic system, they move out and expand in all directions; one is a closing sensation, the other an opening.

Regardless of whether the body is opening or closing, sensation will be experienced. The only way to interpret what is happening is to learn to read the structure of your body to understand which direction it is moving in.

But instead, what many of us have done is attach subjective interpretations to our physical experience- for example this tightness in my chest, this lump in my throat, this shallow breath- to mean something. And running with the example of anxiety, we take these sensations to mean that we are anxious.

Now back to the diaphragm. In the parasympathetic system, the dome of the diaphragm moves up towards the base of the armpit. The dome of the diaphragm is also where the bottom of the heart and lungs rest, so consequently, they move up also. The resulting physical experience is an increase “fullness” in the chest (these are big organs that increase the internal pressure systems), a lump in the throat (the top tip of the lungs sits just under the thyroid), and the experience of a shorter breath (air doesn’t have as far to go, the lungs have more tone so these big deep breaths we are so attached to are not required).

If we have attached the label of anxiety to these sensations we actually interrupt the movement of the body in a more healthful direction. We essentially “map” the sensation into the brain and instead move it into a sympathetic response NOT because of the physical reality but because of our mental interpretations of what’s happening- which is entirely subjective and, in most cases, inaccurate.

Decoupling our interpretations from the reality of our physical experience is a big part of my work, and a game changer when it comes to being able move through the world in a body that’s vibrant and alive; where we aren’t consistently interpreting physical experience and sensation as dangerous.

Onwards.

❤️ Jane

 

The last couple of weeks in JoyRide, we’ve been focusing on the dome of the diaphragm in our movement work. You can gather information about where the dome of the diaphragm sits by locating the widest part of your ribcage. If you are lying on the ground, it’s also the place that you will feel the most contact pressure with the ground.

In the parasympathetic system, the dome of the diaphragm sits higher in the thoracic cavity and maintains a stable relationship with the bottom of the armpit. It also tells us where the bottom of the lungs and heart rest, and consequently their position in this space also.

Despite many conversations around posture centering on muscles and bones, it’s actually organs, fascia and our internal pressure systems that are primarily responsible for postural stability and support.

When the diaphragm sits high, the lungs and the heart sit higher in the chest cavity also, with the upper most part of the lungs sitting above the first rib in the lower part of the neck, just below the thyroid. In this way, the position of the lungs not only stabilizes the cervical vertebrae but adds pressure to the deep front line of fascia, causing it to increase its tone.

When the lungs stretch and move down and the diaphragm drops, pressure is then placed in the upper thoracic, causing it to bulge out behind. This is more often addressed with prompts to strengthen the muscles in between the shoulder blades and lengthen those at the front of the body- an outside in approach- rather than considering organ position as the primary reason our structure is arranging itself the way it is.

And what decides where and how things are placed at any one moment in time?

Your nervous system.

Onwards.

❤️ Jane

A week or so back, I wrote a post about what I consider to be the “goal” of working with the nervous system. Here’s a snippet from that conversation:

“What we are seeking to develop is not calm if we feel anxious. It’s not energy if we feel flat. It’s not the ability to up and go if we’re frozen to the spot. Not exclusively. What we are really wanting is accurate responsiveness; a brain and body that responds to reality of its present moment in way that matches and meets the situation.”

Someone commented on that post, ‘well yes, but who gets to decide what’s accurate?’ which highlights one of the greatest misunderstandings we have about ourselves that gets in the way of our physical and mental wellbeing.

The answer is: No-one gets to decide and everyone gets to decide.

Confusing right? Well, here’s the thing.

That question- who gets to decide what’s accurate?- is based on the idea that we are or should be consciously controlling our reactions and responses. The principle of conscious control underlies many streams of practice when it comes to the development of mental and emotional strength and balance. On the whole, we are obsessed with conscious control; positive thinking, affirmations, controlling the focus. Those are just the first that spring to mind but the well is deep.

It’s also our downfall.

How our nervous system responds to the moment it finds itself in is not under our conscious control. It’s the domain of our autonomic nervous system, which is unconsciously governed. And it’s not a matter of opinion or methodology. It’s just how the body works.

When I’m talking about accurate responsiveness, I’m not talking about making a conscious decision about how to respond to what’s going on, nor relying on the thoughts or ideas that someone else has about it.

I’m talking about a sensory nervous system that is alive and online, feeding the unconscious brain information so that IT can decide and guide us. When this is the case, the conscious brain works in support of the unconscious; as the observer and ‘decider’ of the next action, but NOT as the information gatherer.

Your responses are going to happen before you’ve had a chance to consciously consider them. This is the way it should be. When we’ve lived in our survival system more often than out of it, sensory information coming in starts to get limited. In this way, our brain starts to lack new, incoming data and as a consequence can respond only in ways that it has previously (hello ground hog day loops).

Which brings us back to: No-one gets to decide, and everyone gets to decide.

No-one gets to decide consciously.

Everyone is already deciding unconsciously.

Adaptability and responsiveness is not about controlling the outcome. It’s about working with the body in a way that allows it to listen to what’s happening in the present and to move forward accordingly.

Onwards.

❤️ Jane

One of the things I’m interested in learning about (and consequently teaching others) is how to read the structure of your body, and understand, based on its positioning, where it is your nervous system is sitting at that particular moment in time. In last week’s movement classes, we were focusing on the frenulum, or the tendon of the tongue, and learning how our tongue positioning can give us more information about whether we are in the midst of a parasympathetic, active fight or flight or collapse response.

It’s really easy to fall into the trap of understanding and labelling the various nervous system states as good or bad, with the “bad” usually being given to anything that falls within the survival nervous system bracket (fight, flight, freeze and collapse). But the thing is, there really is no good or bad. In both horses and humans, there’s no one state that we want to avoid, or be desperate to escape from. It’s more a matter of “is this state appropriate for the moment and situation I find myself in?”

What we are seeking to develop is not calm if we feel anxious. It’s not energy if we feel flat. It’s not the ability to up and go if we’re frozen to the spot. Not exclusively. What we are really wanting is accurate responsiveness; a brain and body that responds to reality of its present moment in way that matches and meets the situation.

Onwards.

❤️ Jane

Part of my ongoing “work” as a horseperson involves increasing my knowledge base on really understanding more about my horse’s body and how it is that the work that we do together can assist them in feeling a greater sense of wellness inside the edges of their skin.

Both Dee and Merc have asymmetry patterns that present, even if the specifics of their manifestations are slightly different.

For Dee, the imbalance is most obvious behind. He’s weaker on his right hind, and so much of our work is looking at stabilizing the pelvis before we move onto doing any work that requires more strength and precision.

For Merc, he has more of an oppositional asymmetry; the left shoulder, right hind rest and work differently to right shoulder, left hind.

I’m loving understanding and learning more about the exercises I can do to assist them in bringing their body into balance so when I add the complication of me on their back, I am not a burden. What becomes important from this point forward is marrying together what is presenting on the outer tube of the body (the outer tube being everything that we can touch with our hands) with the understandings I have of the nervous system and how that governs where and how the body is sitting at any one moment in time.

From the perspective of the nervous system, asymmetry in the body is a flight pattern, or a pattern of dissociation. In both horses and humans who are adaptable (whose nervous system is changing to meet the moment) you can notice the flight pattern changing. One person I worked with (they were 16 years old) I noticed their structure change to orient at one point towards the exit, and at another away from their mother; both were in different directions.

As soon as we restrict a horse’s natural movement with a halter or something similar, we naturally limit their ability to respond. If flight is there reflex of choice but this is physically unavailable to them, this is when you start to see the mental dissociation; I can’t flee physically so I will flee mentally, they say to themselves.

We may not apply a halter to a human but many of us feel similar restrictions, depending on our circumstances, and employ the same methods. We check out, distract, lose focus and concentrations. Being anywhere other than where you are now mentally is a flight pattern.

From a structural perspective, the organs shift to one side to support the external body moving in a similar direction. You’ll notice one shoulder blade sits closer in towards the spine, and one closer towards the outside of the body.

One foot will also be the loading foot (matching the side where the shoulder blade is closest to the spine) and the other will be oriented towards the path of “escape” (matching the orientation of the other shoulder blade).

My “job” then as a trainer of both humans and horses is to recognize how the outer structure of the body is presenting but to understanding the neurological template that’s motivating this. Yes, I have physically asymmetry but if I dig deeper, what is happening at a nervous system level that is causing the brain to choose that position for the body in the first place?

And how can I assist it in making a different choice, in creating a different set of circumstances for it to respond to?

All ongoing and ever-present questions.

Onwards.

❤️ Jane

One of the beliefs I have around movement and “training” generally is that “good training” and “good movement” should be a form of therapy. It should ultimately leave both us and our horses in a position where we are physically and mentally “better off” than we were when we started.

If we consider training in this way, what we hopefully create is situation where the further into our training and movement work we progress, the less need we have for interventions or assistance from the outside; we have both more skills to know what should be applied and when to remedy imbalance or “dysfunction”.

We allow the body to inform us of its movement needs, rather than applying a “fixed” program onto what is an ever changing and ever adapting form.

Concurrent to this belief lies another, which tells me that the body is inherently wise, and capable of self-healing and self-correcting. This principle, or understanding, is not new and yet there is often a disconnect between the principles that inform a practice or methodology, and the practice of it.

If I truly believe that the body is capable of healing and self-correcting, then my work and practice with both horses and humans becomes about assisting the unconscious brain to make those corrections, rather than forcing it to assume a particular form through gadgets or otherwise, or abide by a set of rules about exactly what should happen when.

For instance, I was at a training the weekend before last continuing my work with body mapping and understanding how the nervous system and unconscious brain ultimately determine where the structure of the body is at any one moment in time. We observed ten different people, ten different bodies (myself included) and were all given the same points and the same cues to work with. What was fascinating was that how each body corrected of its own accord to find balance was different.

Some moved forward and back. Some move left, some moved right. Some moved in a combination of all of the above. All of this was unconscious change that we were able to consciously observe, rather than us forcing a position or dictating how and where the body should move.

What this highlighted for me was that we cannot consciously know what precise adjustments any one horse or human needs to take in order to find “balance”. We cannot predict the route of “rearrangement” that the unconscious needs to follow. We can simply give it more information by increasing sensory information to the body and then observing the changes that it makes for itself.

When we consider the horsemanship saying ‘set them up and let them find it’, to me, this is so much of what this is about. We create an intention of how a movement might look or where to direct the body. Our aids should essentially be a framework of possibility towards achieving a particular outcome. But HOW the body achieves that outcome is not our concern.

We set the intention… I would like you to move in this way

We take an action… I apply this aid and offer this suggestion

We observe… how the body needs to arrange itself in order to bring itself closer to my intention.

We suggest the action, but we don’t control how that action is taken. Because that is outside our conscious awareness and control.

Onwards.

❤️ Jane

Overthinking can be a real scourge for those of us interested in pursuing a peaceful mind. It’s certainly been something that I have wrestled with in the past, and I have many conversations with riders looking to curb an overactive brain space both in the saddle and out of it.

When I first started teaching and working in the manner that I am now, I really considered things from the top down. I tried to deal with thoughts at the level of, well, thought. The positive thinking, the “training your mind”, the thought replacements, the affirmation, the focus on what you want. The list goes on. All of what I’ve listed here is pretty common practice when it comes to any kind of mental or psychological training.

The thing is though, if it’s your thoughts that are the “problem” it’s a kind of faulty methodology to think that you use your thoughts also as a corrective tool. All that does is leave you in a “chase your tail” type situation where you are course correcting after the thing you want to avoid has already happened; you can only “fix” a negative thought and replace it, for instance, after you’ve already had the thought. It doesn’t change the underlying mechanics of what caused the thought to arise in the first place.

In essence, many of the mental and mind-based struggles that we face are actually secondary “symptoms” of a nervous system that’s out of whack. If we consider overthinking in isolation, it’s part of a freeze pattern. In that space, we feel unable or unwilling to act, and consequently, get trapped in a cycle of thought.

The brain requires sensory input in order to make a decision on what action is the best next one to take. So, I make a decision, I take an action and the information I get off the back of that allows me to modify or adapt my next action. In the case of overthinking, the action is never taken; we never get to the stage where we have the information we need to confirm or negate something and as a result, we are stuck in an endless loop of only imagined possibilities.

We are also using our conscious brain for purposes it’s not designed for. Your conscious brain is there for you to make decisions and observe the consequences of those decisions; it’s not the information collector. THAT is the role of your unconscious brain, in all its sensory glory and possibility. It has so much more capacity for information collecting, and that information is then spat through the conscious brain so it can make a decision, take and action and observe… allowing the unconscious to collect yet more information and proceed forward.

We have been trained out of trusting our innate unconscious capacity and trained into considering literally everything consciously. We think our way through life, rather than feel our way though. And sooner or later, we blow a fuse simply because we are using parts of ourselves for functions they are not equipped to handle.

A huge part of my personal practice these days is allowing things to happen and things to be revealed to me as opposed to trying to force them to happen or to cogitate on possibilities within an inch of their life. The former might take some undoing on my part, but the latter is bloody exhausting. It sucks the soul out of you.

See how often you try to control with you conscious brain. See how often you have trained yourself out of taking action. Don’t stay too long in your head. Make a decision, act on it, and on the other side, you at least have something real to go on to pave the way forward.

Onwards.

❤️ Jane

 

Here’s one for the long gamers.

Dee is my big bay horse that you see in many of my photos. I’ve had him since he was 2 years old and he’s one of the great loves of my life. He’s taught me so much being the first horse that I’ve started under saddle myself, is sensitive, forward and proud.

We’ve had a few stops and starts along the way. Just prior to me beginning our work together under saddle he fell very ill and was out of action for 18 months. I brought him back into work slowly and carefully, and I’m proud of how soft and responsive he is to ride.

Due to his frame- he’s 17.1 + and took a long time to grow into his body- it took a while for all the moving pieces to come together. Balancing the relaxation with the forward was (and is) an ever present conversation, and canter especially has been something that we have been working with for many years.

Up until very recently (and I’m talking over a period of 2-3 years here), the most canter we would do under saddle was the transition and about half a circle. From there, he would tend to get a bit “up” and rushy at trot, and consequently, we spent time emptying out that concern before we tried again.

I’ve had many conversations with myself about this, and the not inconsiderable amount of time it was taking us to get the canter established. Was I not asking enough? Was it me that was shutting it down when I should just “push through”? Did I lack the skills for this piece of the puzzle to come together?

What I understand about the relationship I have with Dee having spent thousands of hours together is to trust what I feel. If it feels tense or concerned, I don’t have to second guess that message as a lack of confidence on my part; there’s a very real communication of dis-ease that I need to pay attention to and meet. And any attempt to ignore that is simply me throwing a penny into the wishing well and expecting things to happen sooner than they were able to.

I had the idea this week to return to the round pen to see if we could play with canter more in a controlled area. The last two days I worked him on the ground and we focused a lot on our transitions. He moved in and out of canter in a lovely, collected, relaxed way and I thought to myself, I would love to ride that.

Today I got on and we played. And for the first time, the canter was truly heaven. On the buckle. Rhythmical, balanced and relaxed. I wanted to ride all day but knew that the best thing to do was to stop, get off, loosen the girth and call it a day.

But that canter was everything I could have wanted and I couldn’t wipe the smile off my face.

We are presented with so many ideas of what should be happening when, and time frames that things should be happening within. But it really is so individually dependent. On the horse, their physical capacity and how they feel within the edges of their own skin. And how we feel within ours.

And when you strike those moments in time when it all comes together, you realise that there was never any other option than to just keep on keeping on. Patience and practice.

Onwards.

❤️ Jane

 

 

Frustration is something that you might find yourself experiencing a little or a lot in your riding adventures. In and of itself, frustration is part of a sympathetic thought pattern for the simple reason that it’s an emotion that’s not truly of the moment.

In fact, if you think about the times when you’ve found yourself frustrated, you’ll find that you’re either been:

1. In a state of comparison (and consequently thinking something should be better, easier, or more accessible based on your experiences before)
2. In a goal-oriented mindset (and finding yourself frustrated that your present moment efforts aren’t lining up with what you’d hoped or imagined the outcome to be).

 

The thing about frustration is that it’s something of a gateway drug to unleashing the Itty Bitty Sh*tty Committee. It usually doesn’t “end” with the simple experience of being frustrated but instead evolves to become whatever our most practiced and dominant story is; how we are no good at this, useless at that, how it’s never going to be this… you get the picture.

And seeing as though every thought pattern we have has a corresponding motor pattern in the body, pretty soon you’re physically and mentally expressing something that has very little to do with the moment that you find yourself in.

If you catch yourself getting frustrated, see if you can observe what is without creating a story around it.

Frustration often has us feeling that what’s going on is:

• Permanent (rather than just something that’s happening in this moment)
• Personal (it’s really not), and:
• Pervasive (like it’s going to colour the rest of your day and life)

Notice the frustration. Observe the moment objectively. Take whatever action you can in the moment to continue on.

Onwards.

❤️ Jane

I always love the beginning stages of forming a new partnership. It’s such a dance of discovery.

I love asking the questions of ‘how do you feel about this?’, and, ‘do you understand what I mean when I ask this?’

Whether they answer with certain or unsure, clear or unclear, the response is always welcome. It’s all just information to clarify the next steps we take together.

No matter how old or young the horse I’m working with. Regardless of whether we would describe them as sensible or sensitive, I never assume.

I never assume they will be comfortable when they land in my paddock.

I never assume they will be the same under saddle as when I last rode them.

I never assume I can just get on and go.

I think in so many instances, we underestimate how destabilizing it is for a horse to arrive in a new home, and how long it can take for them to settle into the edges of their skin.

I’m in the privileged position of having many daily conversations with horsepeople, many of whom are starting out on their journey with a new horse, sometimes after spending many years with a different horse previously.

The conversations are full of many emotions, and sometimes what’s experienced is frustration and disappointment.

“You are coming from a marriage,” I often tell them, “And expecting to experience the same sense of knowing and comfort with your new horse when you’ve only just texted and met for coffee. You have to give yourself a bit of time.”

Every horse is different. You have to let yourself enjoy the not knowing as much as the knowing and build your steps from there.

This photo is of me and Merc riding on the farm today. It’s our two-week anniversary of getting to know each other, exploring together. And I’m loving every minute.

He’s my patchy warrior pony of awesomeness.

I hope he knows I’ve got his back. And if not, in time I hope he learns it fully.

Onwards.

❤️ Jane

In the various photos I’ve posted of late, my horse has been wearing a neck rope (or lariat) and I’ve had several questions asking why I use it. The neck rope is something I put on every time I saddle up, and I use it frequently and for varying purposes, with all my different horses.

In the first instance, adding a neck rope allows me to increase the sensory input to the horse when I am teaching an aid or movement whilst allowing my rein and body aids to remain subtle. My big horse Dee, for example, is naturally more go than whoa, and I use it frequently as part of our downward transition work to reinforce what it is I am asking of him without applying any more pressure through the hand or bit.

In my groundwork and in hand work, I often apply pressure at the chest for various cues, and the neck rope allows me to take some of that understanding and apply it to my time in the saddle.

The actual base of the horse’s neck also contains a large cluster of proprioceptive cells, and their ability to engage this part of the body will also have flow on effects to the back and the entire hindquarters. Given that it’s the unconscious brain that is ultimately deciding how and where the body is positioned at any one time, the neck rope stimulates this area and increases the sensory feedback, providing the brain with more information to be able to adjust itself in space.

The other reasons I use my neck rope include:

 

• Teaching neck yielding
• Encouraging the wither and back to lift in more collected work
• Supporting myself out and about if I feel a certain exuberance and I don’t wish to increase my contact on the rein
• Supporting any work I do with the bridle and bit

 

I’m big on knowing why you use the gear and equipment that you do. Many of us saddle up and use various items simply because that’s what we’ve always seen or been shown. I ride by the principle that less is more, and if I do use something, I want to know exactly what purpose it serves and how it supports the experience of my horse.

Onwards.

❤️ Jane

 

A week or so back, I shared a collection of photos on my own social media page of my horses, and a few “between the ears” shots of rides from that day. One of my friends asked how I managed to keep four horses in work, and I replied that on that particular morning, I’d worked things out so by 10:30 am, everyone had been worked and tended to.

Nothing about what I said here was untrue, and yet later that day I was thinking about the conversation and felt a little uneasy.

Why?

Well, the idea of productivity and “getting things done” is something we so easily beat ourselves up about- especially when we start comparing ourselves to other people and feel like we’re coming up short.

I consider myself to be a pretty productive person on the whole. My days are full and I have a lot of plates spinning at the same time. I have a handful of horses in work, my own business, two young children, a husband I love to spend time with and yet, just like everyone else, I have days where I think, I have no idea what I did today.

And whilst I can’t speak for anyone else that you might compare yourself to to see how well you are doing on the productivity scale, I can speak for myself and say…

 

• I have days where I faff around and know that the only reason I didn’t get out to ride was because I didn’t manage to get myself organized in time
• I have days where I wish not to adult.
• I have moments where I find myself scrolling social media and then next minute, I’m watching some random clip of a dog in Thailand peddling a unicycle that goes for just under ten minutes whilst only moments earlier I complained to my husband that there isn’t enough time in the day

 

How much you get done the day does not in any way give you a higher ranking on the “better human being” scale. It’s such an insidious premise, and one that I personally would like to do away with.

You can be a “productive person” and still:

 

• Whittle the time away on something that would most likely be classified as having no productive purpose
• Throw yourself down on the couch and watch the entire new season of Afterlife in one sitting (this might just be a note to self)
• Not get everything done on your to do list (like, ever)
• Not get all the things done all the time and all the horses worked every day

 

It’s ok. It really is.

We just have to wake up, meet the moment, and do what’s possible within it.

Onwards.

❤️ Jane

This week in JoyRide we’ve been working with the kneecaps and looking at the different movement patterns generally that exist between the parasympathetic and survival nervous systems. Knees are something that many of us have a lot of “stuff” around; we might have injured them, experience/d pain in them, grip or cling on with them.

The knee is described as a sliding, gliding, rotational hinge joint. The “hinge” bit comes last because it’s actually all the other bits- the sliding, gliding, rotational bits- that primarily support and motivate movement in the body, in addition to protecting the joint space of the knee itself.

Fascially, the knee cap is part of the superficial front line of fascia; the train itself begins at the ASIS (the frontal hip bone), runs down to the kneecap, to the tibial tuberosity at the front of the shin and then to the front of the foot. In parasympathetic movement patterns, the knee cap itself moves along with the lateral line of the body and coordinates all the way up on its corresponding side.

The kneecap is affected by something called the tendon guard reflex which kicks in as part of the sympathetic nervous system response. This draws the kneecap up, compressing the joint space, which naturally has flow on affects to the rest of the body.

Consequently, if your survival nervous system is firing, you are going to have some challenges maintain a soft, long leg in the saddle and relaxing the knees. In fact, it’s going to be nigh on impossible; you are amid a sympathetic reflex chain that’s causing your body to do the opposite.

What’s more, any time we grip with the knees, we fire up our survival nervous system; that action is part of fight pattern motor reflex response.

If you want to learn more about your current nervous system state and how it’s affecting your behavior and biomechanics, take my two minute nervous system quiz and you can read all about it.

You can take the quiz by clicking here.

Enjoy!

❤️ Jane

Understanding more about my nervous system has fundamentally affected how I approach movement, and beyond that, exercise generally. We have developed a world view that exercise as a whole is always good, but what I now understand is that exercise in and of itself is not intrinsically healthy or not healthy- it really depends on my nervous system that will cause it to be one or the other. The same goes for our horses.

If I’m in a sympathetic state, exercise and physical exertion is going to have a deteriorating quality on my body regardless of what exercise I’m doing. As my body moves into the sympathetic system, the structure of my body moves towards my midline, reducing the space in my joints and causing the lumbar and cervical spine to work overtime to power movement.

The reason for this is functional. Force equals mass times acceleration; if I want to maximise my force output (as I do in a survival situation), I want to make sure I have as many surface areas to power off as possible. The compression of joint surfaces facilitates this.

From a chemical perspective, if I’m in the active stages of fight or flight, it can be useful to burn off adrenaline, but if I’m in a collapsed state, exercise will directly go against the wishes of my body and trigger an auto-immune response.

We live in a world of “blanket prescriptions”, a one size fits all approach.

The reality is we are much more nuanced. What is beneficial or otherwise will always depend on the person, the moment, and the state of their nervous system.

Onwards.

❤️ Jane

I’ve talked a lot about failure before, and the more I do so, the more convinced I become that failure doesn’t actually exist. It’s just a construct we’ve made up.

What we are talking about when we consider the idea of failure is how far the outcome we created lies from the intention we had in the first place.

For example, if I am learning a new movement with my horse, I have an idea in my head- a map of sorts- for what needs to happen for that movement to take place.

The action that I then take is one in support of that desired outcome.

When I take the action, what I’m left with is information.

My brain then asks, did the action I just took create an outcome that matched up with my intention?

It then assesses what happened and what needs to be tweaked and changed for both intention, action and outcome to all line up.

This process is the nature of learning.

The idea of failure and success, then, is nothing more than a judgement call in the observation phase of the cycle.

We have an intention, we take an action, and that action yields a result.

When the result is neither good nor bad- it’s just the result- it carries no emotional charge.

We are free to simply try again. To revisit our intention, take another action and all the while, our brain is changing, growing, adapting so we can get closer to the outcome we are working to create.

When we have an intention, take an action and label the outcome a success or failure, we interrupt the learning cycle of the brain, and activate our survival nervous system.

In this way, failure is very much a choice. It’s the choice to not allow yourself the required time, repetition or investment that it takes for your intentions to match the outcomes you wish to create.

It’s the choice not to allow yourself to learn by the very means you are designed to do so.

Through constant repetition, observation and adjustment.

Onwards.

❤️ Jane

Whenever we ride in public or are involved in group situations with our horse, there are always so many different dynamics that we need to contend with. If we consider ourselves in isolation, we have the various concerns or thoughts about what riding in a different environment can bring.

On top of that, we have to tend to our horses and make sure that their needs are being met and they aren’t being placed in a situation where the any discomfort they face outweighs the skills they have to be able to emotionally self-manage.

And then we have the instructor or clinician (should that be the situation) who, for better or worse, adds to the dynamic depending on their intention, style of teaching and/or focus.

There’s a lot of moving parts.

One thing that I’ve always anchored myself to on the various adventures I take myself on with my horses is this principle or thought:

At the end of the day, I’m the one who has to keep showing up for my horses.

Not my instructor. Not the people watching or those around me. Not my critics or supporters.

Me.

Tomorrow, it’s me and me alone, that catches my horse, saddles up and gets on.

And as a consequence, I have to take full responsibility for the situations I place both myself and my horse in, and advocate for both of us.

If I ignore my intuition; if I push past our capabilities in the moment in an effort to keep up with others; if I shapeshift to fit the situation instead of being there for my horse, it’s easy to find yourself in a situation where you and your horse lose confidence, or worse still, get hurt.

And pushing on in spite of myself is something that I’m no longer willing to do.

Of course, there are those times when we know that we are ready and it’s time to step up.

But there are equally those times when we need to use our voice and simply say, not today.

Not today as a means to keep showing up tomorrow. Not today as a means to advocate for yourself and your horse.

Bravery exists both in the doing and the not doing.

And sometimes it gets practiced in the simple words of Not Today.

Onwards.

❤️ Jane

If you’ve ever found yourself being able to tell the future in advance, what you are essentially highlighting are your own sympathetic or survival nervous system patterns.

Things like:

When my horse does ‘x’ (raises their energy, spooks, wants to go back to his friends) I do ‘y’ (freeze up, get anxious, just want to get off)

Or

Every time ‘a’ happens (book in for a clinic, am asked to go for a group ride, notice someone watching me riding) I find myself doing ‘b’ (pulling out at the last minute, saying yes when I mean no, overthink, and forget what I’m doing)

When you can predict with a certain degree of reliability how things are going to roll, what is being activated is a survival system reflex rather than a parasympathetic response.

In the parasympathetic system, we are responding to the reality of the moment in front of us; and because each moment is different, our behavioural responses are different also (and consequently can’t be predicted).

If you are finding yourself in ground hog day scenarios that you can’t seem to step out of, what you’re experiencing is your dominant survival nervous system pattern in response to a particular trigger.

Developing the means and awareness to shift from the sympathetic to parasympathetic is vital when it comes to create behavioural change of any sort and stepping out of modes of functioning that see you stuck on a loop.

Predictability of behaviour is always a product of the survival nervous system.

Onwards.

❤️ Jane

My horse Dee is a pretty big unit. I’ve had him since he was 2 years old who just never seemed to stop growing and it feels like I looked out into the paddock a few months ago and was like, huh, I think Dee is filling out. All of five years later.

Dee is the first horse that I’ve started under saddle myself and I feel like I know him inside out. Under saddle, it’s taken a while to for him to find co-ordination and strength, and we are still only doing limited amounts of canter as a result.

One of the biggest things I’ve had to let go of is the idea that I should be going faster than I am with him, and I think that’s a mental burden many people feel. The competitive world has set psychological benchmarks that have imprinted us with the idea that we should be at a certain stage of training by a specific age, and even if competition holds no interest, it’s easy to fall into the trap of thinking, shouldn’t I be further along or moving faster than I am now?

It’s a thought I’m mentally detoxing from all the time.

What I always feel grateful for is how my main interest, focus and fascination is always in the small stuff. I love the training, the learning, the understanding of how to help both myself and my horse feel more ease inside the edges of our skin.

When Dee was three, he slipped in the paddock and was lame on his off hind for a good while after that. Since then, I can sense he’s slightly weaker on that leg and have been really educating myself on exercises and movements we can do to help him find more balance.

He had a few weeks off prior to Christmas and we’ve come back into work using Jec Ballou’s Core Fitness program, which I am really loving. I highly recommend checking her out if you haven’t done so already. Now, we spend a good 25- 30 minutes of our time doing walk work and various exercises both with and without poles, and I can see and feel the difference in his posture as a result.

The slow way is always the fast way.

Onwards.

❤️ Jane

 

The scapula, or shoulder blade, is something that most of us are pretty familiar with, as far as parts of the body go. The position of the scapula not only tells us a lot about the state of the nervous system generally, but dramatically influences our ability to maintain forward, steady and connected hands when riding and maintain a posture that allows for easeful and efficient movement.

As far as riding instructions go, it’s also a body part that gets a lot of attention.

‘Put your shoulders back!’ or ‘sit up straight’ often results in a physical manipulation that involves drawing the shoulder blades in and back. This pinching of the shoulder blades together is one that mimics (and thus triggers) our survival nervous system.

When the medial border of the scapula (the inner edge that sits closest to the spine) runs straight (so the bottom and top tips are parallel) we are assuming a motor pattern that is part of the fight response. We might appear “straighter” but in order for the rest of the body to take shape, the lower back gets shoved forward into the tube of the body, compressing the sacrum and blocking the independent movement of the pelvis from left to right.

In turn, our arms become more rigid (the elbow caps lock as part of the same response), the arms draw back and in order to take the hands forward, the entire torso needs to move.

It’s the chain reaction of attempting to control and correct posture through outside manipulation, rather than considering it from the inside out.

Organ placement, for example, dramatically affects posture, and they change their positioning from the parasympathetic and sympathetic systems; something that is barely- if ever- considered as part of this equation.

Your posture is a symptom of your nervous system state. To address it, you have to look at the underlying neurological patterns that are controlling the entire structure of the body.

Onwards.

❤️ Jane

Our movement work this week in JoyRide has been working with the scapula and looking at the sympathetic patterns that affect posture and performance, both in and out of the saddle. If you want to come join us or check it out, you can do so here.

 

Let’s talk gadgets. The kind of gadgets that I’m interested in discussing are the ones that so many of us human people love to use on our horses, and on ourselves.

Some of us delude ourselves into thinking that we are on a winning ticket by resorting to a gadget because it initially appears that we can achieve an aesthetic that is supposed to take much longer to create.

That aesthetic, often, relates to posture.

In our horses, we seek roundness, and in ourselves, we seek straightness. And that aesthetic, when brought about by a gadget, involves strapping something down or holding something in that wouldn’t be held down or in by nature alone.

Ha! We think to ourselves in our smug cleverness. I’ve done it! Behold the posture I was looking for! And our strapped in selves prance around on our strapped down horses.

Except we forgot something. For the body to be both beautiful and well, it must be given one thing. The opportunity to choose.

Bodies do not hold a posture. They find it. Posture by its very nature is a dance. It responds to the ground it’s travelling over, the weight it’s carrying and the environment it’s a part of.

Posture is dynamic. Gadgets are not.

When we force the body to hold a position that opposes what it would naturally choose and is capable of, there are consequences. To the body and brain, this is a violence. It activates the survival nervous system as a result.

At best, the body degrades. At best, patterns of tension and dysfunction. At best.

This is why when we think of beauty and athleticism, we often also think of freedom. The freedom of the body to choose, adapt and change.

Onwards.

❤️ Jane

The way that I approach physical health, especially in a rehabilitative sense, has changed dramatically over the last couple of years. In the same breath, my approach to movement and exercise has also drastically changed (most notably I don’t practice yoga anymore but that’s a discussion for another day), all brought about by thought processes that revolve around the following, foundational principle:

Your unconscious brain is choosing, from moment to moment, where and how to position your body. It is a choice that is deliberate, based on the sensory information that it has available to it at the time (sensory information being what the brain uses to decide how to respond at any moment in time).

Except for a physical accident where the body has forcibly been taken out of alignment or position (again, another discussion) your posture, the tension (or lack of) in your muscles, the position of your bones, the placement of your organs, the internal pressure systems and pumps are all working by deliberate and intentional design.

The structure and position of your body (and your horse’s body) is not arbitrary, and it’s not a mistake. Your brain chose that for you. Your horse’s brain chose that for them. Your nervous system chose that.

How you are right now physically is the most functional choice for you in this moment, in your current position.

If we keep this in mind, physical wellness and optimisation can only exist if we support the unconscious brain in making more adaptive decisions. But instead, what often occurs is that we attempt to match the body to a pre-designed ideal. A one size fits all approach.

That needs to go here, we tell ourselves. We need an adjustment for this, to strengthen that, to lengthen here and tighten there. We work from the outside in and end up chasing our tails. We become a rubix cube of never-ending and ongoing adjustments.

I often read threads from people who speak of their “back going out” and needing for it “to be put back in” (just as an example). And in the same sentence, they say things like “I have to go weekly, or it just keeps popping back out” and “I wonder how long the adjustment will last this time”.

When we adjust the body without influencing the nervous system or the brain- without it being the CHOICE of the nervous system or brain- the results are always going to be temporary. The brain will always override the forcible adjustment and return the body to the position it chose in the first place.

Any corrective therapy or process of rehabilitation and wellness, both for horses and for humans, begins by influencing the nervous system. It’s the foundation stone that all decisions are made from.

Onwards.

❤️ Jane

In our movement classes this week, we’ve been focusing on the trigeminal nerve, the largest sensory nerve in the body. Activating and re-habituating the sensory nervous system forms a huge part of the focus of my work in JoyRide for a couple of different reasons:

1. The brain relies on sensory input to decide what response to send out (a parasympathetic response or a sympathetic reflex)
2. When we are living or riding from a place of sympathetic dominance (so we are operating for more than 50 % of the time from our survival nervous system), the sensory system starts to go offline, limiting the amount of sensory input the brain receives. When this occurs, the brain has no choice but to respond reflexively, and consequently we found ourselves stuck in predictable cycles of behavior and response.

In the sympathetic system, the trigeminal nerve sucks in towards the centre of the body and away from the surface. This occurs both for functional reasons (we don’t want to feel all the feels in a survival situation) and logistically due to structural changes. For instance, as we move into a fight/flight response, the eye sockets rotate in and down, causing the orbital branch of the trigeminal nerve to stretch and in an effort to maintain its position, stick closer to the bone.

In the parasympathetic, you can feel the nerve respond to light pressure of the fingers with an equal and opposing pressure as it rests underneath the surface of the skin.

Your body is well worth getting to know. It continually and never-endingly blows me away.

Onwards.

❤️ Jane

My life has never really run the conventional path. For the most part, I’ve always worked for myself. So much so that I joke now that I’m largely unemployable should things not go the way I intended them to.

At 18, I got a scholarship to university to study law and communications- something I had channeled all my energy into achieving the years prior- only to discover a few weeks in that it wasn’t really for me. A decision that untethered me from all the expectations and certainties that I had come to rely on and left me free floating and rudderless for a number of years after.

In my 20’s I travelled extensively. I worked as an aid worker all over the Indian subcontinent and middle east and found my way in parts of the world that feel quite unbelievable to me now. As an adult, people tell me I am lucky, that it’s wonderful, and how amazing. At the time, I was seen by those at home as more of a loose cannon. People would look at me and joke, what are you up to now Jane? Or, of course you are! In response to my answer of where or what I was doing next, whilst rolling their eyes and going back to the predictability of their daily lives.

I did not tell them my stories proudly. I told them shyly. Like my adventures where an illegal foray away from what was expected of me.

I thought what fuelled my decisions at the time was a fundamental search for happiness. In my law lectures, I was suddenly overwhelmed with the understanding of how my future would roll out if I continued this path. And I knew, that’s not what I wanted. This wasn’t what was going to make me happy. And so, despite it going against everything that I knew would be supported, easy and expected, I packed up my little car and drove two states across Australia home.

It was the right decision, and yet, still, I wasn’t happy. If anything, I was even more lost.

When I travelled and worked, I reveled in everything that it brought, and I loved to explore. But I wrestled with a constant restlessness. I would often feel sad for not explainable reason. I felt homesick, but I didn’t know for where. I felt disconnected, but I didn’t know from whom.

There are many decisions I’ve made more recently that mirror the fierceness within that’s always guided my way and has served me ever since. If I was to identify one of my positive traits it would be my willingness to change, my willingness to follow what felt right, regardless of where that left me or what I was leaving behind.

Where I went wrong was to understand this voice as one that was guiding me towards happiness. This flaw in my understanding was what created much of the suffering after. I made this decision, I told myself, because what I was doing didn’t make me happy, and yet, here I stand, still not happy.

What is wrong with me? I thought. What is wrong with me?

I understand now that the fierce voice that was guiding me was not the guru in search of the happiness elixir. It was, instead the voice of Not This.

That voice was telling me that this moment wasn’t for me, but it wasn’t guaranteeing me that the ones that came after would be easy. That was not the role of that voice. The role of that voice was solely the reverberance of my bones saying Not This. Not This.

And the only thing I had to do was listen. And then to leap.

The idea that happiness is somehow the goal is what removes us from our ability to leap and then further on from that, to trust ourselves. I leap now not with the idea that my landing pad is going to feel better, but with the knowledge that whatever comes up, I can handle it.

I can handle it.

I walked yesterday and then I sat in the paddock with my horses, and I reflected on the last 12 months. It’s been a big one, and it’s challenged our addiction to certainty that many of us cling to to feel safe.

Over the last few months, I’ve become more and more committed to myself. I’m practicing letting go of the need to allow my thoughts to navigate me through the world and I’m surrendering more and more to feeling my way through.

Feeling your way through the world is not easier. In fact, by definition, feeling more means the full range of possibilities become open to you- of which happiness is only a part.

But as we go into the new year and leave this one behind, I’m not wishing anymore for it to be easier or different. It might be. But it might not be. Instead, I’m resolved to holding on to the fierce flame of self-trust that says, no matter what happens you can and will handle it.

We can handle it.

Onwards.

❤️ Jane

Change is an interesting thing. When we are stuck in a place that we don’t want to be- physically, mentally, or emotionally- it’s the thing that we crave. We can’t do this anymore, we might tell ourselves. We are bored of feeling this way, we are tired of it, sick of this, that and the other.

The thing about change of any sort is that it’s inherently messy. It’s messy for a few different reasons (and this is by no means an exhaustive list):

1. It’s taking you away from what you know. And what we know often provides us with a sense of certainty, and in many instances, a sense of identity (even if what we know isn’t what we want). We have to be willing to let go of what we know to make the shift
2. From a nervous system perspective, shifting out of the more active stages of fight-flight or collapse (especially if we’ve been living here for a long time) involves bringing the sensory nervous system back online. That means you are going to be feeling more, not less. For those of us who have cut ourselves off at the neck feeling wise, this is an important thing to understand and educate ourselves around.

   Many of us have a complicated relationship with feeling and sensation in the body, and as a result, interpret physical changes and experiences negatively. Moving your nervous system in a more adaptive direction involves reconciling this. We need to understand how our subjective interpretations and perception of what’s happening are often creating what we are looking to avoid.

3. Shifting in a direction that indicates more adaptability and responsiveness doesn’t always feel good- at least not in the beginning. In fact, the search for “feeling good” can be precisely what gets in our way. It causes us to measure anything BUT “feeling good” as a bad place to be, prompting us to flee from discomfort and interpret movements of the body in a more healthful direction as negative.

 

From the position of a coach, this transition point where things start to shift is the biggest quit point. We think we want change until the change begins… and then the old patterns and ways of being are particularly seductive.

Making yourself feel better in the moment is a relatively easy thing to achieve. And there’s nothing wrong with this. But creating true foundational change takes work and it’s not necessarily a smooth ride. It’s a vulnerable place to rest in, but an infinitely worthwhile one.

And what’s more, doing the work yourself will make infinitely more compassionate for your horse should they be in the position of navigating their own stuck points. It takes time, and it can’t be forced.

“Courage is the power to let go of the familiar”

Onwards.

❤️ Jane

A frequent conversation that I am having with riders I work with revolves around letting go of the idea that the goal is to reach “calm”. If you identify in any way with living and riding from your survival nervous system; if reactivity, anxiety, defensiveness, or fear form a regular part of your everyday experience (and there’s so much nuance that exists in between), then it makes sense that you just want to be anything but that. You just want to stop feeling those things and you want to feel… calm.

What’s more, many of us are looking for a mode of operating where we are essentially flat lining before we would consider it safe to proceed. And when we are looking for that in ourselves, we are looking for it in our horses also. If you’re stuck in your survival nervous system, everything feels threatening.

All and any sensation you feel in your body is interpreted negatively and adds to the pool of overwhelm.

Any expression or vitality your horse shows also needs to be erased. You don’t want them looking perky and vital when you are in that place. You want them to look like Dorothy could whizz by in the middle of a cyclone and they wouldn’t even notice.

So then we control the environment within an inch of its life, err on the side of riding shut down horses (and then lament that bursts of energy on their part was completely out of the blue), we don’t trust anything. All because we don’t trust ourselves.

If you work with me, I’m not interested in calm. That’s just one place you can land on the spectrum of possibilities. What I’m interested in is accurate responsiveness; where your brain and body are responding to the reality of the moment in front of you, rather than situations from the past, or possibilities in the future.

Calm is not the goal. Adaptability and responsiveness is. And what that looks like changes from moment to moment.

Onwards.

❤️ Jane

We had lots of interesting discussion and thoughts around my post about the jaw-pelvis relationship yesterday, and I wanted to expand on that conversation further because it opens a lot of questions around how it is that we create shifts within the nervous system and how to initiate those changes.

My Sjoholm shared the post to her page, and I saw this comment that she wrote alongside it. She’s allowed me to share it here with her permission:

“I’ve used a mouth guard for over 10 years, every night and been comfortable with it, because I clench my jaw to the point of damaging my teeth.

After starting the movement work with Jane, my body is changing from mostly sympathetic to more parasympathetic and that has changed the shape of my upper jaw so much, that my mouth guard is now too narrow for me! I had no idea the upper jaw could change shape. So, I don’t use the mouth guard anymore because I can’t, but I also don’t seem to need it. It still clench my jaw all the time, but not so much that I wake up with pain and the more I do the JoyRide stuff, the more things change.

My shoulder blades and collar bones sit in a different position too! And none of the movement practices we do are any kind of exercise, no sweating. So fascinating and, well, weird.”

What this demonstrates (and what we often don’t realise) is just how much our structure is changing with our nervous system state. The reason for this is that the autonomic nervous system (and when we refer to the parasympathetic and sympathetic nervous system we are referencing the autonomic nervous system essentially) is under the motor division of the nervous system overall- and all of this is unconsciously controlled.

What this means essentially is:

 

• It is your nervous system that determines the structure and position of your body at any moment in time
• Any changes that occur then also have to occur at any unconscious level

 

This is life changing information.

You cannot change your jaw through conscious process. Telling yourself to “release your jaw” does not alter the underlying nervous system programming.

Shifting your position consciously does not alter the neurological programming that is causing your pelvis to move and articulate the way that it is.

Dare I say it, yoga (along with many other forms of exercise) will not shift your neurological programming in almost all instances that I have witnessed. And I say this as a qualified yoga teacher and therapist who practiced herself for over 20 years. I no longer do.

The unconscious brain has chosen this particular position for your body for a very functional reason. If you try to override that decision through force or conscious manipulation, you drive yourself further into the sympathetic response. Why? Because your unconscious brain perceives this as a threat and activates the alarms as a “just in case” measure.

Your unconscious brain makes its decision as to whether to be in the sympathetic or parasympathetic response based on sensory information. Shifting the nervous system out of any “stuck” modes of operation and changing the dominant motor patterning out of sympathetic involves re-habituating the sensory pathways that essentially go offline when we spend the majority of our time living from our survival nervous system.

The best way to experience this is, well, to experience it. I’m putting together a training to do exactly that which will be ready for you after Christmas. If you want me to let you know when that’s ready and you aren’t on my mailing list already, ping me a message and I’ll add you to the list.

Isn’t the body amazing?

Onwards.

❤️ Jane