by penny | Jun 8, 2021 | Find Yourself on a Horse, The Horsey Life
Whether you’re an adult new to horses and horseback riding, or you’re returning to the equine world after a long break, there’s a bit of a learning curve to understanding a horse. (Trust me – I’ve been a professional for over 40 years, and I’m still learning :-).
There are some easily recognizable signals, such as the horse nickering when he sees you coming (and he knows you have a treat), or putting his ears back when he’s cranky (it pays to learn this one early on in your Horsey Life!); but there is also a myriad of other signals that you may be missing. And the best way to learn them may surprise you. Learn to understand yourself first.
Self is a four-letter word
There are a lot of times where “self” has a negative connotation: self-absorbed, self-centered, selfish – even self-confident has been given a bad rap.
Self-Awareness, on the other hand, is a good thing. By becoming aware of our bodies, our thoughts, and our emotions, we’ll not only gain insight on how we’re perceived by horses, but also why we perceive horses the way we do.
We all have built-in self-protection behaviors – it’s how we’re wired. They spend their days toiling away deep in our subconscious. They have a huge part in running the show in our lives, and we don’t even realize we’re relying on old habits of processing fear, anxiety, or doubt. Our sneaky subconscious has become pretty good at hiding in plain sight.
With a smile and denial
Think about a time when you were around a horse and you felt a little fear tugging at the edge of your mind. You brush it off. Why worry? This is a horse you’ve taken lessons on for a year – why the sudden whisper of fear?
You finish tacking up and hide behind a smile (and in denial). Everything’s fine – at least that’s what you tell yourself. You’re just being silly. After all, it would be too embarrassing to tell your riding instructor that you’re afraid, and you wouldn’t share that with your family – they don’t even understand why you want to ride in the first place.
But by pretending everything is OK, you’re setting yourself up for more discomfort down the road. Without acknowledging and working to understand your feelings, the fear will keep coming back and you will feel more and more powerless to combat it.
Bring your fear out of hiding
If you’re going to continue working with horses, you’ll need to do some inner work.
- Extend grace to yourself. You are not hopeless, idiotic, pathetic or any of the other nasty adjectives you use to label yourself. We are ridiculously unkind to ourselves – beating ourselves up over things we likely wouldn’t even notice in a friend. So – no self-flagellation allowed.
- Acknowledge the emotion. You are entitled to your emotions and no one else has the right to belittle you or gloss over your feelings. This extends to your instructor, your family and yourself!
- See and feel the emotion. Enter journaling and visualization. I know – journaling has become the new black. I think the only thing I haven’t heard people insist journalling can cure is male pattern baldness. But – I’m saying to journal anyway. Write down the instance when you felt the fear – put in as much detail as you remember. Now, visualize the experience in “slow-motion”. Take it one frame at a time and see if you can pinpoint when and how the fear showed up. Were you picking out the horses’s feet? Were you getting ready to tighten the girth? Once you’ve identified when you first noticed the fear, now connect with the what. What did the fear feel like in your body? Did you have a mini-flashback, so brief that you hardly noticed it? Did you feel a catch in your breath or a tightening in your shoulders? Sit with that feeling. You’ll most likely want to skip this or do a very cursory job of it. Resist the resistance. Acknowledging your emotion is the first step in understanding it, and understanding yourself.
- Visualize the scene again, but this time, imagine you acknowledged your fear. Imagine you spoke with your instructor and explained your fear. Imagine she listened and worked with you to find a way to work through the fear. How does that feel in your body? Did you experience the same tightening in your shoulders? Did it stay the same, intensify, or lessen? Being able to feel the physical manifestation of fear stops the downward mental spiral that can quickly spin into a much greater level of anxiety.
- Gradually work through your body, head to toe, and consciously relax each body part – the jaw and shoulders are often where the fear pops up, but check the rest of your body as well.
- Repeat the second visualization a few times and you’ll see your fear start to dissipate.
Visualization is a great way to “pre-treat” anxiety and fear as well. Visualize in great detail that you’re tacking up the horse, you and the horse are calm and relaxed. Feel the silkiness of the horse’s neck as you pat him, smell the peppermint that you gave him. Feel yourself leading him to the mounting block and mounting him quietly as he stands perfectly still. You take a deep breath and exhale, and carry on with a great ride.
Until the next time, love your horse, love your life, and love yourself!
Are you interested in a few more stress-busting exercises? Grab your free copy of 60 Seconds to Calm and learn 3 simple exercises you can do in 60 seconds or less to help you nip anxiety in the bud and fully enjoy your Horsey Life.
by penny | Apr 5, 2021 | Find Yourself on a Horse, The Horsey Life
I don’t know about you, but I sure as heck don’t need a Stress Awareness Month to become aware of my stress!! Seriously, between losing my Mom in February, COVID, furloughs, loss of my job, and having to drop my husband off at the ER when his doctor called at 7:30 am and said he needed to get to the hospital because his kidneys were failing. It turned out to be something fixable, but for 2 1/2 days, I didn’t know if I’d ever see him again. Then my own brief visit to the ER (again, easily fixable), and leaving my job in September – 2020 is a year I certainly hope remains in the record books as Worst Year Ever (I don’t know how we’d cope if there was a worse year!!)
I think that, as horsewomen, we have an advantage over so many people during this anxiety-ridden time. Our horses become our safety nets, our confidants, and our warm shoulder to cry on when we need to just let it out. Horses have an innate sense of when we need emotional support, which allows us to go to them for comfort (which I have done hundreds, if not thousands, of times). But sometimes even our horses(or a steady diet of Stouffer’s Mac & Cheese) aren’t enough – sometimes we need help in figuring out where to go from here, wherever “here” may be. You just need that next best step…
If you’ve ever had riding lessons, your riding instructor probably helped you with your position, your aids, and how to communicate with the horse you’re riding. That’s all vital information about riding, but honestly, it’s never just about the riding!
It’s layer upon layer of goals, dreams, fears, and hopes. It’s about understanding why you want to have a horsey life. It’s about reaching your dreams and discovering who you are, in the barn & beyond. Sometimes you need someone to just hold a flashlight to illuminate your next step. That’s where The Horsey Life Coaching programs come in.
As a coach, I’m able to help my clients understand stress, anxiety, fear, lack of confidence – all those fun emotions that seem to appear when you consider trying something new. I also facilitate a path forward for women who wish to explore and deepen their connections with their horses, their lives, themselves, and the Divine.
I want to be straight with you right here and let you know that I am NOT a therapist. If you need to heal from past trauma or have clinical depression – go to a medical provider. There is absolutely no shame in needing help. When you need help with the really hard things – please go to the appropriate person/people for help. I can help you figure out your goals and your next best step to achieve them, but our starting point is always where we are right now.
In case you’re wondering about the name: The Horsey Life Coach, I came up with it almost by default. To be honest, I’ve kind of shied away from the term “life coach”. It’s generic and has become a bit of a cliche. I like Confidence Coach, but that’s too limited – I help women discover so much more than confidence. I finally decided that adding “Coach” to the end of The Horsey Life was a nice segue into the coaching part of my business. I’m excited about the service I’m offering horsewomen – I believe I can help you live your best Horsey Life!
If you’d like to learn more about coaching, please fill out the form below. By joining my mailing list you’ll get special promotions on coaching packages, courses, etc. You’ll also get my monthly newsletter, where I share more in-depth content than I do on the blog.
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by penny | Dec 6, 2015 | Find Yourself on a Horse, Foundation
You’ve had a long day – perhaps even a long week, month, or year – and you’re ready to head to the barn to see your horse and de-stress. Before you pull on those barn boots, take five minutes to run through these 3 simple exercises. You and your horse will both be glad you did.
1. Take a Few Deep Breaths.
It may sound trite, but taking a few deep breaths really can help you get centered and de-stress. There are a few reasons for this:
- When we’re tense, we typically don’t breathe fully. When we don’t breathe fully, less oxygen travels to our brain, and we’re more likely to make decisions based on habit or our subconscious rather than conscious choice.
- We often carry tension in our upper bodies, particularly our shoulders, neck and jaw. That tension can make us less comfortable when we’re grooming, less effective when we’re riding, and most importantly, can be transmitted to our horse.
- The act of stopping to take a few deep breaths has the effect of slowing you down and bringing you into the present moment – which is the best place to be when you’re with your horse.
Once you’ve taken a few deep breaths, do a few shoulder rolls and neck rolls, open your jaw wide (as if you’re yawning) and then let your mouth close and your jaw relax. The minute or two you’ve taken to do these are the first step.
2. Have a Goal
It’s a good idea to have a goal any time you head to the barn. Having a goal will make you clear on why you’re spending time with your horse, and give you a chance to pat yourself on the back for accomplishing it.
If you’re visiting the barn to destress, your goal can be as simple as, “I will spend 45 minutes enjoying the company of my horse. I will be fully present, and if I find my mind wandering to work or things that are stressing me, I will release those thoughts until I return home from the barn.”
Sometimes giving yourself permission to delay dealing with life’s problems while you’re with your horse is hard, but it gets easier with practice – and it’s worth it! As I covered in this post – you’ll get more enjoyment from your visit if you’re fully present – and so will your horse.
If you find it very challenging, try setting aside a half hour after you get back from the barn to deal with the situations that are stressing you. Make an actual appointment with yourself, and then when you’re at the barn, you can let go of those thoughts a little more easily by knowing that you have a specific time set aside to deal with them later.
3. Leave Your Troubles at the (Barn) Door
One of my students used to arrive at the barn stressed, and she found it very hard to unwind during her lesson until I made a suggestion. When she arrived at the barn, I asked her to imagine taking her stress and leaving it in a box just outside the barn door. She found this hugely helpful.
It became a little ritual for her to stop just outside the door, close her eyes, imagine her stress as a physical object, and “see” herself putting it in a box. Although slightly self-conscious about the whole thing at first, she soon discovered that once that stress was in the box, she always “forgot” to pick it back up on the way out, and the rest of her day was more enjoyable as well.
I had another student who felt her stress was wrapped around her, like a cloak. Once she started using visualization to remove her “cloak of stress”, she also found it easier to unwind and enjoy her time at the barn.
So the next time you need some equine therapy to relax and recharge after a tough day, take 5 minutes to prepare for your visit using these 3 simple exercises, and you and your horse will both get much more out of the visit.
