Sometimes we meet riders who don't think they need the mindset piece.
"I don't have any trauma," they say. "Just give me the strategy."
But riding isn't just about strategy, or exercises or technique...
What do you do when you get into a stressful situation? What happens in your mind, and in your body, and in your emotions?
Being a confident rider requires us to have a deep look at our subconscious blocks, that may be hidden from us, but regardless are still there.
And yet, some riders think it's not needed?
Recently a student posted this question:
"The subconscious blocks stuck out. How do we address these? I've done a lot of inner work on myself over the past 10 plus years, and my horse has been a big part of that. We've been together for 15 years, I feel we're in a really good place right now. But somehow subconscious blocks stirred something."
And other student posted this:
"A large number of horses I work with, and my own gelding of nine years and donkey of six years, at times reflect my inner state of emotions, or often my stepping out in quotes emotionally, and I'm unaware I've done this, I'm present enough to read the horse, but not understanding if I'm seeing them and their issue, or them reflecting myself, where would I start to understand this place."
This article will show you how, but if you're wanting the fast route you can find it in our Harmony For the Horse program where we address this directly. Actually, we have a very succinct way and a very successful way to do this...
And we've put these components that we've learned over many years and horses and students into our Harmony For the Horse Program. It's a system for riders where they can learn for themselves, once and for all, how to be a confident rider.
CLICK HERE to discover more about how we can help you to become a more confident rider so that you can have the freedom, achievement, oneness and joy that you most seek with your horse.
In order for the subconscious to feel safe,
it needs familiarity.
In a stressful situation we resort to the familiar!
And, we have a strong tendency to complicate things!
Those two put together erode confidence.
When you get into a stressful situation, you default to the familiar, don't you?
You always go back to the familiar. And this goes for mindset, it goes for the subconscious. But it also goes for also the other aspect of our program, which is the movement, the movement in ourselves, the movement in our horses, when there's stress in a situation, we always go back to the familiar.
And our horses go back to what's familiar in a stressful situation too.
We go back to the familiar in our movement, in the horse's movement, and in our subconscious.
So what we would like to do is create a new pattern for the subconscious.
We want our subconscious to be open and we do this by asking ourselves questions like:
1. How can I allow this much riding success to come into me?
2. How can I have this? How can I have this much joy?
3. Or, how can I allow this much connection from my horse?
Once it's open, then we can condition it.
And that's why in our program, the harmony for the horse program, we do the following...
Doing something just once will not get you there. It has to be conditioned, it has to be repeated. It has to be done over and over and over again.
A lot of the times we don't really even realize that we're not allowing it. And this is what happened with a couple of riders in our group call.
And, riders don't even know what's stopping them or holding them back.
But they have intuitively known that there's something there. But they don't know what or they don't know how to process it. They don't know how to access it, what the horses may be telling them. A rider might know what the horse was telling, but it is blurred.
There wasn't clarity there. Is it from me? Is it from my horse? What is that? Do I listen to it? Do I not listen to it? How do I get clarity around those things?
You can't do this alone, so this is why we're really good at ...
not only hear what our riders are saying, but...we hear what they're not saying
If you don't do get this sorted out, that's when you're going to bounce from coach to coach, perhaps from clinic to clinic, perhaps from horse to horse, because you're not able to surrender to one horse.
And you don't even understand the process that you're trying to get through with that one horse, perhaps you know intuitively that there's something there that you need to address, but you don't understand the process that helps you to know "How do I do this?"
And therefore you won't truly understand your truth and truly understand your horses truth. And you won't understand how emotions, how thoughts, come through your body - how emotions, how thoughts, how movement, comes through your horse's body.
The other thing that we tend to do, which is related to the subconscious is...
We tend to make things too complicated
What if this could all be really simple!
We just tend to find that we enjoy being invested in our own pains. And we make it all more comfortable by staying in our own pains.
One of our students in particular, she saw our program a while ago, and she intuitively knew.
She said, "I need this!" And she didn't know what it was exactly.
She was just, like, I need this. She didn't know what was at the root of her block. She knew she had one. And she had one with a particular horse, not other horses, but one particular horse. And she knew that this was intuitively there.
So until recently, she was really struggling with this. She had no idea what was causing the stuckness. And so it was really impossible for her to articulate and find out what it was that she really needed.
So she couldn't articulate it. And now on a recent group call that we had, we peeled back the layers (and this is what we do in our group calls) and it turns out that she had a horse who she absolutely adored, who seemed ideal for her with one crucial exception...and she just couldn't muster up the courage to do stuff with this horse.
Every day, she would wake up. And she'd say, "Okay, I'm going to definitely work with my horse today." And she'd plan it out.
And she'd go to the barn and go through her day. And who knows, time went by, and she got busy. And she was busier and busier and kept herself busy. And then it was the end of the day... oh, time to go home. She'd go home. And she hadn't worked with her horse.
She'd go to bed, discouraged, overwhelmed, beating herself up
The next morning, the whole process would start again. And she knew she was doing this, but she didn't know why. So in the group call, we pulled back what it was every day that caused her to make so many excuses, one after the other until she noticed something and the truth really came out.
And I asked her how is your relationship with your horse. And she said, Oh, it's a great relationship we've had we've known each other for a long time. And we've really enjoyed each other and we really get along.
So as we peeled more layers, and the truth emerged, she actually hated it, how inadequate she felt when she was interacting with her horse. That's what the root of it was.
And it was this sense of inadequacy in her that she was trying to avoid. It had nothing to do with her horse, but it was with this particular horse, that the inadequacy was being highlighted and presented to her. And so she wanted to avoid that.
And that's so why subconsciously she kept making excuses every day for being with her horse or doing something.
And it manifested as lack of clarity, overwhelm, and inconsistency.
That's what her behaviors were. So we helped her to release that pattern, helped to see that if she could sit with those feelings, we helped her to sit with those feelings of inadequacy, to really feel the sadness underneath it.
And accept herself anyway.
It's okay to feel that sadness.
And when you can do that, then you're able to approach your horse with compassion and acceptance.
And with this rider I was telling you about, she was able to approach your horse in a different way, a totally different way from a different type of compassion. A different type of acceptance that she really hadn't experienced before, instead of a tone of judgment.
So we went right to the root of the problem.
This is the answer to Kate's question, "How have you successfully attracted and manifested your most desired horse related dreams to come true?" is you
Answer: go to the root of the problem, finding what it is that is blocking you.
I'm going to go on to another question from Barbara. And it's totally unrelated.
She says, "I'd love to have you come and teach a clinic in our area when everything settles down? How do we do that?"
I used to teach many clinics all around the world. I stopped doing that, I wanted really to focus my time on to creating a program for riders that had every aspect, that they needed, so that they could go through the program and know that they had everything they needed to be successful.
As I watched clinics taught by others, or as I taught my own clinics, or as I hosted clinics, or as I traveled around the world, I noticed things that really held riders back.
And so I created my program with three pillars that are absolutely necessary for a rider to achieve the success that they want. I'm not talking about success, where you go to a horse show and you get those kinds of results.
This is success, where you (and I know if you're here you want this) want a bond. You want a relationship with your horse, you want to bond, you want to go deep, you want to go to that extra deepness and that level where it's more than a machine or just doing stuff.
And so that's what I was doing over the last thirty years is working towards creating this program. But I've decided because I've had so many questions coming recently, from people wanting this, I will open up a few clinic spots, not many.
My program is up and running and successful and helping riders. And it's a great joy to see that - I saw that today. That's my purpose. That's my vision.
If you would like support in this way, click the link below and we can chat about how we can help you with your process... If you want help with inconsistency with yours, or confusion that you have with your horse, you can book a call with us and we'll see how our program can help you to get over those subconscious blocks or any of the other problems you have.
Yes, we do have a technique in our program. It's all there as well - the technique how to do things - lunging liberty, lateral movements, or strategic warmup - all technical things that we help you and give you support with.
CLICK HERE to schedule a call with us!
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