Photos: Lory Hopkins

---

“I have not failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work.” Thomas Edison

---

 

I didn’t plan on writing a blog today. I’ve known I wanted to write, but to be honest, the inspiration gods haven’t come knocking recently. Now it’s March, but when I went to bed last night, I swore it was December. 

If I’m honest, I’m waiting for that perfect idea. I don’t know what it is, but if I wait long enough and pay attention, surely lightning will strike on a sunny blue day and there it will be. The Blog. 

How often do we feel this with our horses? We want to wait until we have the perfect solution for addressing an issue. We want to get it right (mostly, too, because of benevolent reasons), we want it to look perfect and by the way? Please let it not be messy. 

Unlike writing, where I can stare at a blank page while I sip tea, horses prefer guidance, usually now. They need a response – any response- and the sooner the better. 

Where we get hung up is we want to give them the RIGHT response. The perfect, mistake- free answer. So when our horse (for example) trots faster than we want, our thought process might go something like this:

“Why is he trotting faster?” 

“Is he scared?” 

“Does my saddle fit?” 

“Am I out of balance?” 

“What if I’m not feeding him right?” 

“Did I give him too much leg? Maybe I need a different trainer.” 

“I like my trainer.” 

“But maybe a second opinion would help?” 

“I need a second opinion on my arthritis.” 

“I wonder if there are supplements that help arthritis?”

“I probably shouldn’t have had that fourth cup of coffee.” 

And so on. 

You can see how off track we get, simply because we think we don’t have the perfect answer for the horse. 

Now, part of this is because we are spectacularly talented at rapid fire thinking and consistent distraction. This isn’t bad news. The counterbalance to this, though is that I also believe horses can help us slow down. Take a breath. Reconnect with our internal landscape that resonates with the wildness of nature. 

In the space it takes for the thought of that fourth cup of coffe to flash across your mind, there is a gap in communication. It’s very similar to having a conversation on a cell phone and the call fails. 

“Hello? Can you hear me now?”

Four, five, ten, twenty-six strides later, maybe we let the horse know about that trot that’s too fast. But by then the horse has been doing something else. Maybe he’s thinking about stopping, or cantering, maybe he’s feeling the saddle pad rucked up by his withers. It’s difficult to say, but what I can say is that when we choose thinking over doing, the horse is connected to himself, not necessarily doing something with you.

This isn’t personal. Horses are masters at connection but we’ve got to give them something to connect to.

When we live in our brains; sorting, judging, worrying, etc, it’s a powerful disconnection. The horse is saying “Hello? Anyone out there?” Because we are wrapped up snug with our hamster wheel mind, there isn’t any reply.

I don’t think horses are fans of one-way conversations. Everything in their environment (especially other horses) gives and receives communication of some sort. And whether we know it or not, we do too. The question is, what am I saying (and even if we aren’t saying anything, that means something) to my horse during any given moment?

Before this starts feeling like too much, or too big a responsibility, consider that we are also talking about creatures who can send and receive messages in less than the time it takes to blink. Those messages range all the way from we cannot fathom how subtle (I’ve seen one of our horses move another without as much as an ear twitch), to overt physical actions (biting, kicking, etc). The miracle of horses is that as much chatter as we must unknowingly send them, they are able to sort out what they need to listen to, and what they can let go of.

So, what can we do?

Take a breath. A big, knock-the-dust-off -your ribs-inhale (and exhale). Put your hand on your belly and feel your feet in the stirrups. Take another breath. When your horse does something unexpected, have an answer. Maybe it’s to turn him in a smaller circle. Maybe you stop doing what you tried and go do something different. Maybe ride a figure eight, or a serpentine. You will definitely take another rib-cracking breath.

Smiling would also help – I mean, one of the fastest creatures on the planet lets us ride them – what isn’t fun about that?! The point is, your horse will tell you if your answer was effective, or not. If it was: great! Build on that. If it wasn’t, we can try something else. Or ask someone to help us figure it out. The right (or perfect) answer is a mirage.  While I admire our intention to do what is right by the horse, I also recognize that there’s a whole lot of freedom in letting go of needing to give a perfect answer, at the perfect time, with the perfect feel.

As an example, take a look at the photos at the top of the blog. Here, Rocky and I are practicing simple lead changes. On a circle to the right, he would pick up a left lead, and vice versa. By the third photo, we were on the right lead, going to the right.

Now, to be fair, I was mostly out to have fun, and Rocky was willing. But I would also like us to be balanced. So, we practiced until the correct lead came through and I learned that I would like to become more accurate about my timing and feel going into a canter/lope.

The mistakes I made during that process allowed for a couple of things: for Rocky and me to learn something about each other, and for me to learn that not only do I feel confident about cantering once more but now it’s time for me to explore the accuracy of that gait. I wouldn’t, however, have known any of this had I not decided to explore simple lead changes and had Rocky not been willing. In my search to set us up for the correct lead on a circle, I tried four different ways, all of which didn’t help. But the fifth adjustment? Bingo.

---

“If you do nothing, you’ll never know when you’re done.” Benjamin Franklin 

---

Just like writing, when you’re with horses, the answers arrive once you begin. However, if we are always thinking of the “best” way to begin, we end up going nowhere. A response – right or wrong-demonstrates listening. And it is feeling heard that starts us on the path to change.

I see Mark’s face,  telling me to wake up. The ground is warm and so is the air, and I wonder how it was that I went to sleep last night and woke up fully dressed in the middle of the afternoon. On the ground.

I ask what  happened, and am told that my horse, Bree, flipped over backward and landed on me, crushing my right leg underneath her, and then stepping on my right thigh in her panic to get up.

After that, the memories are snapshots: I’m in our truck, being driven to the hospital. I’m sitting up in the back seat because lying down makes me nauseated. I’m looking at email on my phone, making sure I know the names of the people I see, making sure I can still read.

At the hospital and after the drugs, I’m in and out of consciousness. I know Mark is with me. I know when I am being scanned, because the tables are cold and hard. At one point I start crying and shaking. I’m offered a blanket, but I know this is the shock finally coming home to roost. The shaking and trembling ebb and flow, then disappear.

Snapshot: a young male doctor telling me I have a small bleed in my brain and I’m staying over night in the hospital. Then a sedative through my IV line knocks me out again.

Once out of the hospital, it’s three months before I can walk without a cane. It’s another year before the pain in my right thigh has receded to a manageable level. Two-and-a-half years later, I’m physically stabilized and used to the quirks of my right leg which – thanks to localized nerve damage – occasionally goes rogue. 

Although I was able to move almost immediately after getting out of the hospital (often getting up in the middle of the night to pace back and forth), sustained movement – the kind that made me breathe deeply – wasn’t possible for months. 

During those months, I knew what I needed to do. But knowing what you need to do, and being able (and even more difficult, willing) to do it are two different beasts. If I wanted to ride again, my commitment to healing had to be at least as great as my commitment to horses.

Since my accident, I’ve discovered that the way I get back to feeling less fearful of horses, is to do most of the work away from horses. In the months after the accident, it became clear to me that the paradox of loving horses since I was in diapers, while simultaneously feeling a fear around them that bordered on overwhelming, was one I couldn’t navigate by myself. My days of rabid independence were over. 

Living with paradox is not something we are good at. Horses absolutely don’t tolerate it, and are far more honest in their expression of this intolerance than we are. One of the many lessons I am grateful to have learned from horses is just this: either do one thing or do the other.

If I wanted to feel afraid and avoid the work that would alleviate that, then I needed to choose that.

However, if I wanted to reduce the feelings of fear and find out how far down the road to confidence I could get, I could do that too.

But not both.

So I chose to see if I could get close to confidence again. No healing modality was ruled out. Acupuncture, Craniosacral, Somatic Experiencing, EMDR, massage therapy, Reiki, castor oil packs, lasers, hydrotherapy, homeopathy, essential oils, physical therapy, loving and generous support from family and friends, swimming, regular check-in’s with my doctor, diet and supplementation were all on my play list. This exploration was integral to regaining function of my right leg, as well as in helping my brain heal. 

“Most people think of trauma as a ‘mental’ problem,

even as a ‘brain disorder.’

However, trauma is also something  that happens in the body.

Either way, trauma defeats life.”

Peter Levine

In an Unspoken Voice: How the Body Releases Trauma and Restores Goodness.

 

Six months later in physical therapy,  jogging slowly on a treadmill for the first time, I realized I had more work to do when intense fear washed over me, and I started shaking. I grabbed the handrails at the side, the sweat of my palms slicking the metal,  and kept jogging. I breathed as best I could. After several minutes, I felt calmer than I had in months.

After that, I walked briskly or ran every day. It was never very far, but I could wring out enough speed to make it effective. The movement reset my breathing. It shifted from shallow and fast to deep and regular. For hours afterward, I felt calm and internally balanced.

Before this accident, I had come off of horses. A lot. The first thing I always did was get right back on and ride through it. Except, it turns out, I was never “through it.” Years later, this accident broke the dam I’d built against fear.   The resulting flood changed my interior landscape, and I had to figure out how to channel the water, rather than fight to dam it up. My old strategies weren’t going to work, which meant that I had to.

Movement, and deep breathing, turned out to be a life raft that buoyed me during the flood. All the other therapies I pursued were arrayed around moving and breathing. 

Let me say at this point that I don’t believe everyone has to follow the same map, since there are many many ways to heal. What I am suggesting, and what I’ve learned is that if you observe a few basic principles, you will, at the very least, feel better.

 It’s a simple recipe, but certainly not an easy one. Moving after we heal from being hurt, and digging around in the dark corners of our own mind is not the definition of fun, but it has a payoff that will surprise you with its richness. 

I like to think of it this way. Elizabeth Gilbert says, “Possessing a creative mind, after all, is something like having a border collie for a pet: it needs work, or else it will cause you an outrageous amount of trouble.”

We could replace “a creative mind” with “a fearful mind” and still have an accurate metaphor. I’ve learned the hard way that if we don’t look at fear, and have a plan to address it, it will cause an outrageous amount of trouble.  The trouble fear creates is sneaky, a chameleon.  It shows up as impatience (with other people, for example, and certainly with ourselves), it shows up as despondence, it shows up as giving up easily. It changes color as it makes its way from inside of you into the world, and is as varied as each of us are.

While we may think we are suffering from too much fear, what we are in fact suffering from, is an inability to channel it. We are afraid of fear itself, preferring to shove it under the cognitive rug, and hope that it goes away. This isn’t a character flaw – it’s an evolutionary design that has kept humans alive for millennia. 

If we don’t give our fear a job, if we can’t find ways to engage its message to remain safe and alive, it will run wild in our inner house like a bored border collie. Fear will exercise itself, and anyone who’s experienced this knows that’s not good news. 

The inherent vitality of movement and using your body in different ways (hence the transformative power of yoga, qi gong, dancing, etc), is a cornerstone to reducing anxiety and fear. If you doubt this, I invite you to do an experiment. The next time you feel afraid, or anxious, as soon as you can, walk. Go up and down stairs. Jump rope (personally, I haven’t done this since I was a kid, but I’m thinking it’s time to change that). Lift weights. Wave your arms. Do a dance. Something! Move in some way, for as long as you need to, and then see how you feel.

Movement is vital to feeling alive and experiencing ourselves in new ways. Ways that anchor and reconnect us not only to ourselves, but to all of life. 

With some movement and deep breathing, along with help from skilled and compassionate people, it’s possible to start feeling better. One of those compassionate people, by the way, is yourself. Because, after all, we aren’t broken vessels to be repaired, but rather treasure maps to be explored. 

“To become a welcome vessel for the breath is to live life without trying to control, grasp, or push away.” Donna Farhi

---

I believe breathing is magical.

Why?

Because it’s the only bodily function that can either run on its own, or we can consciously influence it. If we don’t pay attention to the breath when we are anxious, it will often keep us in a place of feeling afraid and overwhelmed.

If we’re thoughtful, and focus on the quality of breath (inhalations and exhalations) that is long, slow and deep, we can help ourselves feel (and be) calmer. Slower. Less frantic.

Although we can’t feel it, slow and deep breathing facilitates the movement of our internal organs. When we breathe deeply, our diaphragm (the muscular partition that separates  our hearts and lungs from our stomach and guts) rises and falls. As it rises and falls, it either creates space, or fills space. Since we have organs both above and below this space, those organs move to accommodate the diaphragm’s movement.

If you’ve watched the ocean, you’ll notice that the waves roll in and out  at a certain rhythm. This rhythm may alter if there’s been  a storm (or a storm is on the way), but the waves always come in and go out again. Every minute, every day, every week, every month. Waves rise and fall, advance and retreat.  If we quiet our minds and bring our attention to the water’s pattern, we might find that our breathing gradually synchronizes with the rhythm of the waves.

Here’s more magic: you don’t need to go to the ocean to feel as though you’re on the beach.  A breath that first expands your ribcage, and then fills your chest, has the potential to induce the same sense of calm. (Here’s where you’re thinking I might mention those colorful umbrella drinks, aren’t you?) When your internal organs are moving, when your diaphragm is doing it’s job of rising and falling like ocean swells, your body will relax. You will feel less anxious, and your thoughts will slow down.

Let’s try this: put your right hand under your collar bones and your left hand over the bottom left of your ribcage.

Take a breath. Which hand moved? Did your right hand rise and fall and your left hand remain still? If so, the way you are breathing is the way you breathe when you’re close to or in an anxiety / fear state. By extension, this means that when you go out to your horse where  fear and/or anxiety may arise, it’s going to feel more intense because your body has been set up for tension by this breathing pattern. 

Now move your right hand down so it is opposite your left, bracketing your ribcage. Can you breathe deeply enough to cause both hands to move?  This is the type of breathing that sets us up to feel calmer and more relaxed. It’s the way we need to breathe most of the day, because when we get to our horse (where we are going to feel more nervous), we want to give our body a way to turn off the alarm system. Breathing slowly and deeply is key to this.

Another way to think about breathing effectively, is filling your lungs with air the way you would fill a glass with water. When we pour water into the glass, it doesn’t start at the top and hover there. It flows to the bottom of the glass and fills up to the top. So it is with air and our lungs: we are designed so that the air goes to the bottom first (ribcage breaths), and inflates our chest last.

Feeling better in general is great motivation to become more mindful about how you breathe. Another highly motivating reason is that for horses, the holding of their breath signals their body to go into alarm.  This is so the other senses (smell, hearing and sight) can all be intensified, to let them know if there is danger or not. I don’t know about you, but I would prefer my horse to feel as though we are walking in a park, not being chased by lions.

What kind of effect must it have on them, when we show up and we aren’t breathing? I have seen countless times that even quiet horses will startle easier and move with tension if the person around or on them isn’t breathing deeply. Conversely, I have also seen how reclaiming our innately nourishing deep breath can also help a horse calm down.

Breathing is free. You can do it anytime, anywhere, and almost no one will notice. There’s nothing to sign up for, no equipment to buy, and it won’t make you more susceptible to spam, internet viruses or phishing scams. The benefits are far reaching, and no matter how many times you forget it to do it, you can always reconnect and breathe more deeply, right now. Your nervous system, and your horse, will thank you.

Below is a link to Donna Farhi’s website and her excellent book on breathing. There are other good books too, if you care to search around. 

http://www.donnafarhi.co.nz/wp/product/the-breathing-book/

In the next blog we will chat about movement. When movement is coupled with breathing deeply, it can help you process and release  a tremendous amount of fear. 

Until then, as an experiment, pick a day.  It doesn’t matter which one (though I am a big fan of the day we have staring us in the face), and explore how much breathing you can do. 

You might be surprised. Who knows? It might possibly even be magical.