“You know that the antidote to exhaustion is not necessarily rest? … The antidote to exhaustion is wholeheartedness.” ~ David Whyte   Wholeheartedness, you now

Moving has become your anti-freeze practice. I mean, granted, you’ve always moved. For years you’ve done yoga and walked and run and been diligent about

It’s interesting, because a few years ago if someone had asked you to describe the word “anticipation”, it’s like that you would have paired it

With so much going on in the world at the moment, it’s important to realise that you are more resilient than you might give yourself

Well, this year has been quite the time. There’s been stuff come up which has never really crossed your radar in terms of being on

Outsourcing your power to trainers, clinicians, coaches, people at your barn. It’s a conversation that I am having with riders I work with all the

A big little thing that makes all the difference not only to how I evaluate my training sessions but also in my ability to stay

One of the most common “deflation points” I see with riders that I work with are feeling of failure or disappointment around situations “coming back”

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

You know, it can be really tough weighing in on conversations around dealing with fear. There are so many different philosophies that people subscribe to,

How long does it take to come back? One of the most important questions to ask. When you feel afraid, how long does it take

Developing your confidence requires midwifery. Us humans, we have fooled ourselves into thinking that we need to go about things alone. We maroon ourselves on

It’s easy to lose yourself in trainings, theories, and teachings that are focused on finding solutions to your stresses, anxieties, and challenges. But in our

Like many others no doubt, I’ve been struggling a bit recently. The nature of my work means that I spend a lot of time online,

Many years ago, when I was quite young, a cat adopted me and took up residence in my barn. She was wild enough to make

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

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

I love these words: There is no such thing as balance, only balancing. So much of what I do has been transforming what we might

I’ve been thinking a lot about community lately, and we’ve also been having a lot of conversations in JoyRide around belonging, connection, and even loneliness.

Yesterday, I booked in for a dressage lesson in a week’s time and a working cow clinic not long after that. Truth be known, I

Kickback. One thing that’s important to realise is that we train people how to treat us. Just like with horses, if you have allowed yourself

A sense of humour is something that I really value. I know mine has served me well. But I’ve also noticed a tendency I’ve had

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

Maybe 20 years ago now, I sat in the office of someone I had booked in to talk to so I could discuss the struggles

When we come to strongly identify with feelings of anxiety, worry or concern, it’s easy for our awareness to switch on only during the moments

At the moment- even more so than usual- there’s a lot of stuff out there ready and willing to soak up your mental and emotional

I often get tagged in the comments of various posts in response to someone asking for help dealing with riding related fear. Maybe they’ve had

A theory that I’m working on that brings together three different areas of current (and ongoing) fascination for me: brain mapping, riding as an embodied

Let’s talk about the Itty Bitty Shitty Committee for a second (or those little voices in your head that you tell you what you can

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

Want to be able to see into the future? Tell me in a sentence or two about your horse and I’ll let you know the

In a world that idolizes rush, busy-ness and, hyper-productivity, it’s no great surprise that the natural need of our body to rest and cocoon at

At the start of my last clinic, I asked all the women in the room how many women in their maternal line had complete decision-making

Spaciousness. I remember at the beginning of the year, when I was thinking about what I wanted to experience more of, the word that popped

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

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

I was scrolling through my Facebook feed yesterday and a random article about Adele (the singer) popped up, along with some click-baity headline about how

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

The last week, I’ve been working on some new material for my membership pathway that centres around our ability to rest in good feeling and

Way back in the early days of starting down the path I’m on now, I remember having a lightbulb moment when working with someone who

My horse Dee is a very kind soul. He’s one of those horses that you could easily underestimate or put in a compromising position simply

You know something? You can move your body quickly but slow your inner world down at the same time. Being able to move in power

The last month has been a rough one for me. I seem to be playing tag team with a variety of different lurgies that have

Of all the reasons that we fail to celebrate the little markers of progress with our horses, otherwise known as the Big Little Things, comparisonitis

One of the questions I hear a lot is “how to I reset myself after my horse spooks or I get a fright? I find

🌷 Slower: Give yourself a chance to rest in the pause. Notice the difference between the activation that comes with building of energy inside you

There’s a lot of discussion around relaxing and releasing tension- but not so much about what we are releasing into. The fact is that tension

Showing up is one of the lesser talked about and seldom celebrated superpowers. And consistently showing up- making your way out to the arena, stables,

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

Navigating that line in terms of knowing how far to “take things” in training is always an interesting discussion. We all know that in order

Gentle wiggling I hear you say? What’s that all about? Well, let’s start by getting a better understanding of what freeze is. Freeze is the

In a world that idolizes rush, busy-ness and, hyper-productivity, it’s no great surprise that the natural need of our body to rest and cocoon at

Oftentimes, we fail to hear the voice of our intuition, not because it isn’t there, but because the space between the flash of insight and

Any of us involved with working with horses on a regular basis will have something that we are looking to improve. That “something” can provide

Us lot are really very good at making a big deal out of things. We love to inflate, exaggerate and think about what things mean,

I first cast my eyes over these words many years ago and for me, it is one of the yardsticks of training; that the measure

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

I’ve been playing with something recently which is a personal take on the Buddhist practice of Tonglen. Tonglen is slightly different to the usual meditation

When to lean in and when to retreat? Embodied Discernment is a process of tuning into yourself and your responses to a situation and asking:

You know the beautiful thing about belief? It’s learned in relationship. Everything that we have come to understand about the world and ourselves has been

I read something on a post the other day about a horse routinely being given a herbal calmer 30- 40 minutes before riding, which I’ll

I’ve set my space up to allow me to insert as many moments of movement into the day as possible. One of my favourite things

“Every time you think you are broken, know this: you are never really breaking. Noone can break an ocean, darling. All you are doing is

Scene 1: You sit down at your computer and log in to the latest news site. The top five stories are filled with not great

Self-care is somewhat of a catchphrase at the moment, and rightly so. But sometimes I think that the idea of self-care and the associations that

Questions around certain topics seem to come in waves, and at the moment, I’ve been getting a lot of questions arriving in my inbox around

You know what can be helpful to realise? You can’t and shouldn’t seek to be relieved of your humanity. And being human means that you

I had a really interesting ride this morning, and I think that my experience demonstrates the necessity for us to be able to viscerally get

I realized not that long ago that most of the activity that I do was pretty neat and orderly. I didn’t allow myself- at least

I know that for me, one of the most important lessons of the last couple of years has been learning to trust the walkie talkie

Effective horsemanship is as much about learning to be a sustainable presence as it is anything else, and sustainability- the capacity to keep showing up

With a handful of exceptions, most riders I work with have a pre-disposition to the flight and freeze response and as a consequence, I’ve developed

After the webinar yesterday and the Live Q&A in my membership program, I’ve been musing more and more about just how necessary it is for

There’s some stuff that’s hard to talk about when it comes to discussing how you feel as a rider or horseperson, and anger is definitely

There are two phrases I’ve been messing around with lately, and they have really helped me get a handle on what it means to operate

The body has the most beautiful way of organising itself, and many times, our well-intentioned efforts to calm down when we feel we are “up”

In order for us to feel like we are on top of things both in and out of the saddle, we need to feel like

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

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

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

Just take a deep breath. Lengthen your exhale. Slow your breath down. If you’ve ever felt upset or anxious in the saddle, these are all

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

Slow your body down. Anxiety can feel like a permanent state of being when we are outside the window of what we can comfortably deal

If we allow them too, horses provide us with a direct channel to our own aliveness. On the one hand, that’s something we all yearn

I’ve spent a good part of my life not being very nice to my body. It’s kind of been like a low-grade relationship with the

The night before last, my little boys and I all dived into the outside bath and spent a good 90 minutes star gazing. It’s become

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

I was walking back from feeding the horses last night and I suddenly had this acute awareness that I am caring less and less what

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

It’s so easy to bash yourself up. It’s so easy to be hard on yourself, to open social media, and compare yourself to every combination

I’m a failure, I’m ruining my horse, I think I should give up, my horse is feeding off my nerves, I had an accident and

I just looked up vitality in the dictionary just now and it was defined as this; exuberant physical strength or mental vigor; the capacity for

Anger has a bad reputation and frankly, I’m bored with it. So many of us have been trained out of our anger. Trained out of

Of all the things I work with on a regular basis, anxiety definitely ranks top of the list but it’s also one of the most

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

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

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

Outsourcing your power to trainer, clinicians, coaches, people at your barn. It’s a conversation that I am having with riders I work with all the

A lot of the pressure and strain we feel in training comes from approaching things from a linear perspective as opposed to a cyclic one.

Yesterday, I was sitting on the mounting block in the middle of the arena deciding whether or not I would ride. Truth be told, I

Resistance is a natural strengthening mechanism. The specifics of what and how it strengthens can work for and against you.   For instance, resistance combined

Going through the Brave Bucket Challenge has prompted me to post a reminder about the importance of Big Little Things.   Case and point:  

Oh yes, the old mood of the moment. How many of us have set a goal or an intention to work with our horses towards

When I was thinking about what to write this morning, I glanced down at my notes and saw the words ‘the level of tension after

“You have gaits, use them! There is nothing more frustrating for the horse than being held back from expressing his natural gaits” Driving back from

I had a question pop up on Instagram yesterday that I thought would be a great one to chatter about, simply because it’s something that

What if this is all part of it?   What if the heartbreak is necessary   The putting off a part of it   The

Here’s the thing… We can never guarantee the outcome of anything. We can’t even be sure that the time we do put in is going

Some of you are joining me for the Brave Bucket Challenge at the moment and I’ve been inviting you to share with me what your

How’s this for something to practice? When it comes to evaluating or reflecting on a training session, it’s easy to become outwardly focused. “My horse

Yesterday was the first day back at school for Team Pike. I feel like we started strong. 50% of required participants were out of bed

Time spent or time invested? How do you look at it? If we think of our time with our horses as being spent, we are

Want to know a little mantra that I’ve been using this year that has really turned things around for me? Wellness first. The idea of

You’ve probably heard me talk before about the life changing magic of simply showing up, and why it’s so important when it comes to creating

We’ve touched on a few contributing aspects related to anxiety the last few days, but I wanted to throw another into the mix that is

Yesterday, we talked about anticipation anxiety and the delicate process of untangling the experience of it with the necessary next steps to move through it.

Anxiety is such a curious experience, especially when it’s felt in anticipation. The curious part about it is that the trepidation is often felt in