Recently I’ve been in social situations with my horse and other riders where I’ve been faced with how differently I do things.
I have come to a rift in thinking with most people who ride or work with horses. The popular jargon states that we must “make our horse do things” and “keep the feet moving” and “don’t give up on the activity or the horse will have won.” “I run my horse around in the round pen so I know what kind of horse I have before I ride.”
Last year, my older gelding Khami, at 24, was diagnosed with Cushings. This is common for older horses these days. But there are many things that can be done to maintain the health of an older horse so that his organs and other body parts function well, in spite of the aging process.
Riding is the next step in our relationship with our horse. Working with relationship on the ground comes first, then the saddle.
Continue reading Better riding through Ortho-Bionomy on horseback
This is a refrain that I heard recently from an owner who was startled by the news. It’s not new; I’ve heard it many times before, spoken to owners with horses who have some behavioral issue. What is going on here?
I have recently written about the trail in The Trail as a Metaphor for Life.
Continue reading Sharing heart and mind with your horse on a trail ride
Horses are fearful by nature; they are flight animals. How we address fear in the horse has to be a very fluid and dynamic thing because not all horses will respond to the same approach. A frightened horse is potentially dangerous because they are hard wired to flee or react suddenly when frightened.
For a number of years now, I’ve been doing distance bodywork on horses and people. Honestly, it doesn’t matter how far away those horses are, they can still greatly benefit from this help both anatomically and physiologically.
Horses and their honesty, which sometimes translates to their inability to be polite, is energetically one of the things that differentiates horses from people and also from dogs. With horses, mostly what you see is what you get. But it takes time to know what you are looking at.
I recently became aware of how the Liberty work I teach really expose to us not only our greatest strengths and weaknesses, but also what parts of the work we are drawn to.
From the standpoint of a bodyworker, when the horse has “had enough” is pretty obvious. But even so, students will continue to press on an area and worry over it even when the horse has moved away. Why don’t they see it? Feel it?
