Sacred Spaces Giveaway

This was the view out my window yesterday, Epona and Tumbleweed sleeping together. It epitomizes the idea of “Sacred Spaces.” 

It’s that feeling you have when you’re so comfortable with someone else, you have full trust, and all the barriers come down. Your energy meets theirs. Your communication is silent, but stronger than words.

Now that Tumbleweed’s shoes are off and we’re staying home, my focus has shifted to relationship work. What can I do to develop his trust? 

A friend posted the wisdom above, and I liked it and remarked that it sounded like what I’m reading about feel in True Horsemanship. Another friend contacted me and told me that Dr Susan Fay (the quote above) wrote a book called Sacred Spaces, and she really enjoyed it.

I ordered it on the spot, it arrived the next day, and I finished it a few days ago.

This is a book about the rider, not about training. It is about what we bring to the relationship in terms of our energy, intention, stories, labels, focus, and expectations. She said she wrote it to help the horse by helping the human.

And she certainly got me thinking about my own stories, energy, intentions, and labels, especially since that was the last great epiphany of my trail riding season. It was that moment when I said, the problem is me. I need to fix me.

Everything shifted at that moment and I realized I’d focused too much on mechanics (which I’m not good at and probably never will be) and not enough on the feel and the communication and support that comes from it.

A horse will do almost anything for you if you get those pieces right.

Unlike True Horsemanship, this book is available to purchase, and I would like to make it my giveaway today. I can’t send you mine, because mine is now as marked up as a personal journal, but I will send you your own new copy.

For this giveaway, I only ask that you comment with a story or label you told yourself that got in the way of your horse journey. I will draw a name a week from today for the winner of the book.

Personally, I can think of all kinds of stories and labels that got in my way. Most recently, the one about Tumbleweed and hill work. I was so focused on what was going wrong, I failed to see how it would look going right. That movie in my head was creating changes in me, and him, that sabotaged our progress. 

Seeing Katie ride Tumbleweed showed me a different movie, and a better way that focused on feel for Tumbleweed as a completely unique soul. (Dr. Fay brings up that scenario in the book—sometimes we need to see another rider on our horse.) The new movie influenced me in such a drastic way that our next ride was the glorious one I previously wrote about. 

So, how about you? What expectations, labels for your horse, or stories from the past, projected to the future, didn’t serve you and your horse?

Sacred Spaces

 

I just finished the book, Sacred Spaces: Communion With the Horse Through Science and Spirit. Wow. So. Much. Amazing. Insight.

As I was reading True Horsemanship, a friend recommended it to me, and it builds beautifully on the philosophies of the Dorrances, but expands on the idea of the energy/ spirit, visualization, and intention. 

From True Unity by Tom Dorrance:

“I didn’t use to elaborate on the third factor, spirit; I only just mentioned it. But I’ve begun to wonder about it in the last few years. Maybe if people got to realizing the importance of that part of the horse, they could get more feel and understanding from right in the horse’s innards. Then they could try to figure out the mental and the physical parts. 

Riders may want to get an answer to their questions right early—on the surface. I want them to try to figure out something; I want them to work at figuring out the whole horse—his mind, body, and spirit. Maybe they will figure out what they are missing.”

Spirit, energy, intention, stories, visualizations, communication: my head is swimming with all the things the book brought up and how it expands on the concept of feel and connection, taking it even further to communion. 

I will write more tomorrow, but today I am heading to the barn to spend time with Foxy, the passive leader of our herd and the one Tumbleweed loves with every cell in his body. 

I have a lot to learn from her.  

Tumbleweed’s 2nd Ride Bareback (Video)

There’s not a lot to say about this post, except that I did work on feel from the ground first and also a “make believe” visualization last night while I was reading the book, Sacred Spaces: Communion With The Horse Through Science and Spirit. 

It’s Tumbleweed’s second time bareback, and there wasn’t any of the muscle twitching going on that we had from his first experience. 

He did very well. 

I didn’t ask for anything beyond the walk, although, I think he would have been fine at other gaits. 

That’s for another day.  

If you do watch this long video, there is one point toward the end where he’s looking outside the arena for something to be concerned about, and when I checked in with him on the inside rein he was surprised and scooted a bit. I was doing those little check ins the whole time. That’s the feel he needs for support.

My husband sat and took the video with the dogs running around him. Luckily, they didn’t startle Tweed. 

Feel Starts On the Ground

“The more these horses get so they feel of you, why the security they need comes from you, and that gives you more control.”

There’s an easy exercise to do with your horses in True Horsemanship Through Feel, adjusting headset from the ground. You have one hand on the rope below the halter knot and the other on his neck behind the poll and you ask with the halter to drop the head. If they try to look elsewhere, you go with them, then ask again. Do it from both sides.

The point of it is to use a gentle feel to get your horse with you and relaxed.

It’s also a precursor to asking for vertical flexion in saddle. 

I have done a little of this already during my lessons with Regina, but I thought it would be fun to do with more distractions at home.

Sure enough, Epona gave us a big one when she went ripping around the turnout, mad at being separated from her boy  

Tweed looks over and wonders what the ruckus is all about.

Oh, maybe there’s something over there to be interested in.

What’s Epona doing?

I think I’ll incorporate this exercise before every ride. It was easy to get with Tumbleweed, and he didn’t have any resistance to dropping his head. I’m sure that is because after all the work we’ve done together, we have established, finally, a pretty good feel between us.

But everyday is different, and he may be more concerned about something on another day. 

I want to have an arsenal of these simple exercises to do throughout winter, especially when there are days we can’t ride, but want to continue strengthening feel and connection. 

I’m heading out this morning to work with him on bareback. It’s a beautiful day, his shoes are off, and I expect it to go great. And, I will have my tripod set up to get video this time.

 

True Horsemanship Through Feel

“When you can direct a horse’s movement through feel, then there’s understanding taking place between the person and the horse. That is the sign of true horsemanship.”

I’m rereading True Horsemanship Through Feel, and it is so mind-blowingly on spot. 

“When you have feel that goes both ways, you have that horse’s respect and cooperation. Really, it’s just that simple. Anyone with a sincere desire to achieve connection with a horse could develop this ability. They need to have the time to devote to it and someone to help them once in a while.”

That is why Katie riding Tumbleweed was such an important piece of information for me. She is a big believer in this feel that Dorrance is talking about. Each horse is different, and we have to understand and figure them out. 

We tend to think of what horses should be doing or compare them to others we have ridden, but finding our way with a new horse is a creative process with no shortcuts.

“When a person figures out how to present an understandable feel to a horse, then, I’ll say for the most part, that horse’s problems will be eliminated.”

After reading the introduction again, which is the most valuable part of the book, I saw how difficult it had been for me to open up and feel Tumbleweed when so much of my thought and emotion was on my dad passing and then my daughter and grandson’s situation with the divorce.

I sensed that I wasn’t available enough to meet the challenge, and that is why I asked for Regina’s help to keep us going even as I was somewhat sleep walking through life.

“Since feel is the horse’s language, our safety—and his, too—just really depends on us learning how to present what we want him to do, through feel.”

I inherently knew it wasn’t safe to be working without proper feel and connection, but I didn’t want to stop either.

Eventually, enough emotional space freed back up to devote to Tumbleweed, but I’d gotten ahead of myself in the mechanics. I was, at times, too firm, and at other times, too checked out.

“Even if the picture they have is okay, when they handle the horse with more firmness than he needs, they’ll get a wrong response nearly every time and think the horse is at fault. When that’s their thinking, they’re liable to apply a lot more pressure on the horse—which really mixes him up.”

After Katie rode him that first day it was obvious to me I had too much training mindset and not enough feel mindset. When we rode together and I put it to practice, I felt the connection as plain as day. 

I was riding the horse I had at the moment, not the horses I have previously rode or thought he should be. 

And, that feel was happening every second of the ride, not intermittently. 

With connection came courage, but the courage wasn’t rooted in a false sense, it was rooted in the feeling that I had gotten with him and we were working together.

“So many people ask if they’ll know what it’s going to feel like when it’s that better way. Well, there isn’t any doubt that you and the horse will know, because when you get that together feel, it’s not like any other feeling and you’ll know all right.”

I remember when I read this book while training Leah, and she had a big issue with opening and closing gates. (Tumbleweed, by the way, LOVES the gate stuff). But Leah would lose her mind, and once, she almost fell over on me trying to escape the gate.

Finally, I rode her bareback to do it, which allowed me to really feel her body respond. Her heart would just start beating against my leg with anxiety when we approached a gate, so I’d stop right there until she calmed down. We broke it down into small, small steps, and soon enough, we had overcome her fears. 

Enough cannot be said about this feel with our horses. It is the heart of the whole matter and what makes this journey so rewarding.

(To be continued….)