In control
Riding in the French Classical tradition is not just about a hobby on horse back or a day out in the fresh air.
Classical work demands-- and offers-- so much more. I am daily awestruck- more- filled with gratitude- at what the engaged interaction with the horse offers the honest rider. Both horses AND riders are so beautiful at the core.
To ride well means to be in control of another larger animal.
"In Control".
As a riding mentor I find that students subscribe to one of two forms of thought around 'control.' There are riders who think that taking control means "And now I will become the most dangerous animal in the room",
or there are riders who think that taking control means "be so weak and sweetly appealing that the most dangerous animal can't waste its time on bullying you."
Riders are stuck being either the bully or the victim. Each is the mirror of the other but they’re both stuck in the same paradigm.
In the form of work we practice at Blue River Farm we learn another option that leaves that old grotesque lurching dance of opposites to wither on the vine.
The rider discovers that effective leadership means listening so profoundly that you can find the opening to guide the connection in a healthier, stronger, more beautiful direction than you OR your partner could imagine alone.
It’s bigger than ‘riding’ and it’s bigger than ‘being nice to your horse’ and it’s bigger than ‘haute école’… it’s the best in the horse and the best in the human being finding and calling out something truly extraordinary in the other.
We are as an animal a seriously skillful listener, we come pre-installed with deliciously sensitive sensations, and we also have a tendency to block out the most sensitive of our connections to the world in favor of what we already ‘know.’ We want certainty. We are drawn to shutting the door and tying the knot and bolting things into place:
This Is What’s So. (WHEW! I can stop engaging! I don’t have to feel all that uncertainty and I don’t have to wonder any more. I. Know.)
But if anything the last few years have taught us that we had better wonder, and we’d best wonder effectively and with deep curiosity and with our whole hearts. We better wonder and ask questions and be ready to hear new ideas and to surf changes out of a deep, honest sense of principles—not out of a code of righteous arrogance but out of a sense of humbleness at the enormous potential all around and within us.
We had better know that we have NO idea what the whole picture is, we are personally inconsequential… and at the same time (like all living beings) we are as worthwhile as the mountains or the stars themselves, we are only made so small by our blindness, our unconscious biases and our limiting beliefs. Not by who we were born to be.
And we can, and really truly now we must, get seriously good at being present right now to what’s here, in this moment, and to acting with integrity and balance and compassion into the right here right now.
So the thing is that this work tends to do that. It's riding horses. It's also cracking open the lock box we have around fear and courage and balance and leadership. And this world NEEDS that box unlocked. We NEED to stop siding with bullies or with victims. We NEED to be better than that-- and we are.
When your deepest study is about perfecting dynamic balance, truly controlling yourself and staying present and whole in potentially life threatening situations, AND we're doing this study while in the presence of something we love as much as we come to love our horses...
something intense and truly real starts to happen.
And that reality? Yes, it gives us a wonderful riding experience. But also...
That being present to what is so can bring us truly home.
This is a good thing.
And...
Even if you just want a day in the fresh air...
You'll find we see your beautiful self, and you are truly home here.
