Articles with the Tag Focus

Get your Butterflies in Formation

Articles
Published on

ButterfliesDo 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’.

 

a

 

 

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.

 

 

b

 

 

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.

 

 

 

c

 

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

 

 

 

d

 

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

Training Tips: Leave your emotions at the gate

Training Tips
Published on

I’ve written a few articles on subjects such as Intent, Focus, Breathing and Space to show ways we can get connected to our horses but the ONE thing we need to learn is to ‘Leave our emotions at the gate’.

xx

Don’t bring your anger, upset or fear to your horse. Try to leave any negative work or home issues at work or home. Being in the now with your horse is what works the best. It also means that whatever happens in your session don’t bring any emotion apart from love into that either. Don’t be angry with your horse for doing something you didn’t ask for, don’t bring frustration or fear to the session and always finish on a relaxed positive note.

Bring confidence, awareness, focus and love in all you do with your horse and most of all ask with clarity and without any emotional baggage.

  • Shelley – HorseSavvy(See Previous Articles for other subjects)

Intent

Articles
Published on

connection

Intent, to me, is the thought and feel behind a request. We need to think about whether we’re asking in a dominant way (move NOW…), or a request (let’s move together…), or is it a plead (please, please move but please don’t leave me…) Trying to be an Alpha to our horses means that we need to request.

There are many types of intentions behind our requests too, such as love, fear, nerves.

Horses are very good at reading our intentions whether they are good or bad but also if we are calm and confident or nervous and fearful.

So, how should we use our intent around horses?

If we hold thoughts of dominating the horse then we have already mentally lost the horses trust and respect and can often be the reason why the horse starts being dominant with us as they feel our intent and defend themselves. (Of course this isn’t the only reason horses behave like this!)

Also if we plead then we are not being an alpha and the horse will be required to step up to do that job herself/himself.

If we hold onto thoughts of love, calmness and confidence then the horse will show calmness and confidence with us. What often happens though is that our mental intent or thoughts try to be calm, confident and full of love but are incongruent or conflicted with our energy and body language which may show fear and uncertainty. The horse can read this immediately and feels unsafe around us.

We must work on having our inside and outside intent the same so that the horse sees, feels and reads us and we don’t confuse them. Horses don’t have this incongruent behaviour, it’s a very human, predatory thing to do.

If we learn to think more of our herd requests as a ‘we’ connection, ‘we are backing up’, ‘ we are moving into canter’ then put some energy out and take the space under the horses feet either with a tool such as a training arm and string, swinging a rope or actually going to the spot and taking the space the horse is standing on then the requests start talking about ‘space’ and how to shape it the way we want our horses to be.

SO, if we start to ‘mirror our horses’, use ‘awareness and focus’, play with the game of ‘stick 2 me’, remember to request things using ‘alpha phases’ from ‘herd dynamics’ we can ‘shape the space’ between us and our horses with confident and positive ‘intent’ to create harmonious connections and ‘invisible horsemanship’ that is so refined, light, soft and balanced that we have the dance partner we always wanted.

  • Shelley – HorseSavvy