breathing

Get your Butterflies in Formation

Published on November 14, 2016

Do you get butterflies in your stomach when working or riding your horse? Do they make you emotional? Do they upset your horse? Do you feel you can’t control their fluttering? If so then maybe these technique can help ‘get your butterflies in formation’ so that you can use that energy and focus positively instead of them distracting you and making you feel overwhelmed.

What I try to do is visualise the ‘feeling’ of ‘butterflies’ in my stomach. To me they are seen as real butterflies with glorious colours all fluttering. When there are many of them due to high anxiety, energy or excitement then I try to make them useful to me and to have ‘control’ over them. To control them I ‘synchronise them and put them into ‘formation’.

I bring all of them down to just 6 butterflies visualised under my ribs towards my belly button in a 2 across, 3 down formation. Synchronising them means they start to all flutter with the same wing flaps and rhythm, this helps me control my energy and getting them into formation helps me create a focus of where to take that energy…this is then picked up by the horse and we start to become more harmonious because I am being more focused.

To help bring the energy down in me, or my horse, I try to visualise those 6 butterflies flapping less and less and when it feels right I go from ‘seeing’ 6 butterflies to just 4.

As my energy, breathing and butterflies become more controlled I visualise just 2 butterflies becoming calmer and more synchronised.

Finally when everything is calm I see just one butterfly, representing a peaceful state. When that one is completely still it is in what I call ‘neutral’ and represents where the horse and I are usually connected standing still.

The single butterfly can flap low or high and it represents controlled connection and can build up to 2, 4 or 6 butterflies again in a controlled manner to help find the inner energy for upward and downward transitions. With this visual and with breathing techniques our horses can find us more harmonious to be with .

Shelley – HorseSavvy

Published on March 19, 2016

I’ve found, through my own journey as a student and now as an instructor, that breathing is one of the main things I think and talk about. Why, I hear you say? we all breathe so why do I need to talk about breathing? Well, funnily enough, quite often we forget to breathe, especially in a calm, soft, rhythmic way, in all sorts of situations such as:

Concentrating on learning something

Fear of something known coming up

Fear of something unknown coming up

Excitement

Intent focus on one thing

We go introverted and many other reasons.

Horses are very aware of breathing and if we hold our breath for any reason the horse feels this, our body changes from soft to slightly stiff. Holding our breath could be interpreted by a horse as us going introverted, thereby they need to start leading, it could be interpreted also as us in a freeze moment before flight and the horse goes on edge ready to flee with us, whatever the reason holding our breath isn’t good. Irregular breathing isn’t good either as it doesn’t ‘flow’ well or give harmony to our movements.

What we need to do when around our horses is to remember to breathe, it helps to relax us and our horses and we can start using our breathing as a cue to what we want. To help us do this there is an exercise we can start doing on the ground that will help us to remember to breathe, start doing this as soon as you are confident and comfortable leading your horse around with the Stick 2 Me principle (see S2M article).

1) You at horses neck (or further back as your progress your Stick 2 Me exercise), horse working in a nice confident, rhythmic walk with you.

2) Get in time with your horses front feet, left to left, right to right.

3) Start counting footfalls, 1,2,3,4….1,2,3,4…..1,2,3,4.

4) Breathe in for the count of 4. Breathe out for the count of 4.

Once you start getting a good breath routine of 4 in, 4 out then start trying to relax your lungs and stomach and getting more breaths in/out without changing the rhythm of your footfalls. You will hopefully find that you can count to 5 in, 5 out very quickly, then 6 in, 6 out and onwards. See how far you can count BUT don’t forget to play Stick 2 Me with your horse and walk lots of patterns to keep him/her interested. Don’t become TOO focused on your breathing and forget other things. It may be good to start practising counting breaths whilst just walking without your horse, maybe while walking your dog or walking down the road. If you find you are forgetting to breathe a lot then maybe sing or whistle as you have to breath regularly to do these.

Start teaching stop/start cues with breathing. From halt to walk breathe in and bring your lungs/chest upwards and forwards for a walk on cue. Big Breathe out (make a noise like blowing out birthday candles) and bring your lungs/chest down for a halt.

Big breath out to halt, using obstacles to refine this to perfection

Once you have the stop/start cues then you can start refining this to where you can breathe out slightly and continue breathing at that level for a transition down without a stop. Each horse/human finds their own levels of breathing in/out that they respond to so you must practice and find what works for your horse and you to become more in harmony. Just remember breathe out for slower/stopa nd breathe in for walk/trot/canter on.

Also remember to breathe and count steps when riding, this can really help you and your horse to relax, especially when doing lateral moves or a dressage test and if you are doing a jumping course you will find you and your horse relax if you can teach yourself to remember to breathe OUT when going over the jump.

Again, as with all the exercises and principles I’ve written about, once you have thought about them, practised them and incorporated them into your way with your horse it becomes instinctive and only when you go somewhere new, or something unexpected happens, do you have to remember to breathe, and you can go straight to counting breaths to bring about relaxation again. All the principles can be refined and refined and refined again…remember, we’re aiming for ‘Invisible Horsemanship’

Shelley – HorseSavvy

Stick 2 Me

Published on March 9, 2016

Stick 2 Me is where a horse and human connect through thought, energy and body cues in a synchronise ‘dance’. I use this ‘dance’ more than any other as it brings together ‘Mirroring’ and ‘Awareness & Focus’ (see previous articles on these).

I start S2M with halt/walk transitions online, then I add backup, then I add trot and often then go to a neck rope and then liberty. I then add canter but only when there is a real connection to the transitions. I take slow steps and never progress onwards until the lower gaits are in place well. S2M is also how I like to lead a horse.

Here are the steps I use to do this:

1) I hold the lead rope in my outer hand, standing by my horses head/neck with my inner hand on the horses shoulder.

2) I breathe in and think ‘walk on’ in an ‘up and forward’ body cue.

3) I count two (or more if a slower thinking horse) before moving off, then breathe normally.

4) If the horse does not follow then I try the steps above again and then tap on the horses shoulder with my inside hand as a cue to move forward. If tapping the horse doesn’t work then I put the lead rope in my inside hand and create some impulsion by swinging the end of the lead rope towards the horses rump. Soon the horse will be listening to my breathing cues to walk on and the tap is not necessary.

5) I try to make sure our footfalls are the same, left with left, right with right so that we are more harmonious.

6) When going up a gait I again breathe in with the thought in my mind of ‘up and forwards’ into that gait, then I wait two seconds before doing that gait in my body. My aim is to be able to simulate the gait I want in my focus and core without having to physically trot/canter myself.

7) When going down a gait I breathe out loudly so that my horse can hear me, this lowers my inner energy for a halt or backup.

8) When going down a gait but not stopping I make sure my breath out is only to the level of gait I want, this takes a while to get right and testing your breath out and breath in and seeing the results your horse gives you is the guide to how much you need to do. Remember that a BIG noisy breath out should be halt and by refining your core breathing you will find those subtle gait changes as you go along.

Once I have a good connection with a horse the techniques of stick 2 me can become quickly refined and will start to look like you are using invisible cues. But to do it well you need a lot of practice to really get into our horses hooves through our thoughts, energy levels and body language.

When starting to play with stick 2 me I often follow the horse in a mirroring style, this helps the horse relax and start to notice me more. Then whilst I’m following him I will put in some of my own moves to see if he will follow me. The horse, being a curious animal by nature when confident and safe, will start to notice that and I continue this exchange of ideas between us until after a while we are following each other and often you can’t tell who is following who, we’re just together.

I start Stick 2 me by standing next to the horses head or neck, then I work from the shoulders, later on I work near the hip and then I see if I can lead from behind the horse with him out in front of me. I also make sure I work on both the left and right sides equally to help with my relaxation and flexibility principles.

Shelley – HorseSavvy