Episode 335: The Rider’s Body – When Your Body Tells a Different Story (Part 2)

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Episode 335.mp3: this mp3 audio file was automatically transcribed by Sonix with the best speech-to-text algorithms. This transcript may contain errors.

Speaker1:
At this moment where the horse’s skill set is low, it impacts my physical state. Notice I didn’t say it impacts my physical skill set. My technical ability is the same. So how does it impact my physical state?

Speaker2:
Podcasting from a little cabin on a hill. This is the Stacy Westfall podcast. Stacy’s goal is simple to teach you to understand why horses do what they do, as well as the action steps for creating clear, confident communication with your horses.

Speaker1:
Hi, I’m Stacy Westfall and I’m here to help you understand, enjoy and successfully train your own horses. In the last episode, we started exploring the rider’s body quadrant of the four square model. In that episode, I focused primarily on the mechanical skills or the cue system. Today, I want to dive deeper into how your entire body communicates with your horse. Beyond the technical skills, let’s start with a non horse concept. Think about learning to swim. You probably walked into the pool or the water and walking around was fun. Maybe you made some giant leaps and you could feel that moment of being suspended. And then someone said it was time for you to learn how to float. Maybe it was your swimming instructor or your parent and they said, just relax. You’ll float. Which sounds magical. So you give it a try. But the first attempt usually doesn’t work because you don’t know how to float. So your body tenses up when you’re trying to float. So you sink and you start to panic a little bit. Or at least that’s what I did. Which causes you to tense up even more. So you start to sink like a rock. And then they say, that’s okay. Try it again. And they sound absolutely crazy. When you’re struggling to keep your head above water, it feels like relaxing would lead to drowning. Now, scientifically speaking, the instructor is correct. A relaxed body literally has better buoyancy. When you relax, your lungs can fill up more.

Speaker1:
And that makes those air pockets that help you float. Plus, strange fact, tense muscles actually weigh more relatively than relaxed ones. But knowing this doesn’t make it any easier to learn to trust the process because your body has survival instincts and your lack of experience overrides that logical understanding. But once you experience even just a moment of floating, it gives you a way forward. And eventually, when you learn how to float, you can’t believe how hard you were working against yourself. I love this analogy because there’s an element of this that’s happening when you ride your horse, and I’m going to call that element belief. I remember teaching my own kids how to swim, and I chose a quiet body of water, not a raging river. My arms were underneath them and I would hold them up, and then I would slightly reduce how much I was holding. This allowed them to experience both the safety of my support underneath them, and the sensation of whether they were truly floating or not. And that moment when they realized I’m doing it was really magical, because even though they almost instantly sunk, because they got excited, their bodies felt it just long enough for them to be able to recreate it. And suddenly Floating became effortless. I hope you’ve had the experience of riding a well trained horse, one that was confident in the situation and confident in what was being asked of it. The opportunity to ride a horse like that is like floating in the swimming pool with the instructor’s arms under you.

Speaker1:
Riding a horse like this makes it easier to believe that you’re capable of riding, because if you have wobbles in your belief or in your skills, that horse has a steadiness that comes from experience. What makes riding challenging is that you are navigating your own skill set and your own mindset or belief, as well as interacting with a horse who brings their own skill set and their own beliefs into the conversation. But before we go there, think about the loop in your own body when you were learning to float in the water, your body physically reflected your lack of experience and your lack of understanding. But every time you experience just a fleeting moment of floating, it became easier and easier to believe, which made it easier to physically execute. This feedback loop between a physical skill set and belief is exactly what’s happening in the rider’s body quadrant. Your mind creates a feedback loop with your body, and your horse is reading your body. Your body reflects what’s happening internally for you. It reflects your confidence or your doubts or your intentions. You might actually have the technical skills that you need, but if you have emotional patterns like fear or uncertainty running beneath the surface, I like to say they’re going to ooze out of you. They will color the experience, they will distort or influence the way your horse physically receives your cues.

Speaker1:
When I think back to learning to float when swimming, the first step was believing it was possible. After the first time you tried it and you sunk. The first step here in writing is becoming aware of your physical experience so you can determine whether you have a skill set gap in you or in the horse, or whether you have a mindset issue that’s reflecting in your body. Let me wrap that up in one word awareness. Let’s keep going. If you’ve had the chance to ride a well-trained, experienced, reliable horse sometimes called a schoolmaster, it’s easy to believe because that horse carries a high level of skill and experience, which gives the horse’s mind a lot of confidence. And this confidence transfers to you as the rider. Just like my confident arms under my son, I’m confident he can do it. And I’m confident that he’s safe. And that is actually a felt experience between both of us. But for a moment, let’s go to the other extreme. When I’m starting a horse under saddle, which means I’m the first one to ride them, no matter how high my physical skill set is and how much I believe there will still be an imbalance or a wobble. Because the horse is part of the equation and the horse lacks experience, the horse’s lack of experience is a reality, no matter how much I do to prepare them for that moment, I can do ground work and ground driving and ponying.

Speaker1:
There’s still going to be a difference for the horse when I mount up. And I know most of you aren’t starting horses under saddle for the first rides, but don’t tune this out because this is critical for understanding the rider’s body quadrant. At this moment where the horse’s skill set is low, it impacts my physical state. Notice I didn’t say it impacts my physical skill set. My technical ability is the same. So how does it impact my physical state? Here’s what happens when I get ready to ride this horse for the first time. My mind tries to anticipate what the horse might do. My mind offers me challenges that I might experience and solutions. My mind focuses on every possible problem based on everything the horse has done in groundwork and up to this point. My mind weighs the options of mounting up today, or waiting until another day and even two minutes before my foot goes into the stirrup, and when I swing my leg over their back for the very first time, my mind is still weighing all of this as I sit on top of the horse for the very first time. My mind is making a quick evaluation of the horse’s physical and mental state, as well as my own physical and mental state. Another way to explain this is that I’m in a state of high awareness. This is not a state that I want to stay in permanently, but it’s very beneficial in those first few rides.

Speaker1:
Or anytime the horse reports to me that they are concerned. This heightened awareness allows me to detect subtle changes in the horse’s confidence or understanding or responses. This also explains why I frequently dismount during this stage. I literally ground myself by dismounting on purpose and double checking the situation. I’m not dismounting because something went wrong. I’m dismounting as part of the process. Every time I dismount, I redecide whether I’m going to mount up again, which puts me right back at the beginning of this cycle of evaluating everything I know up to this point. And this deliberate check in process helps me maintain that clear, clean energy that’s so important when I’m working with a horse that has minimal experience. If the horse is showing signs that they don’t understand something, I would rather address it. I would rather recognize it and choose to help them instead of ignoring it and pressing on. Whenever I’m in new territory with a horse, my mind engages in this dance of evaluation and decision making. I don’t take this as a sign of weakness or doubt. I think it’s a normal and necessary part of recognizing how my body and mind work together, especially when the stakes are high. I often remind riders, so here’s your reminder. When you mount up on your horse, you are trusting them with your life, evaluating how things are going, and making decisions based on what you’ve been observing is smart. I don’t ride fearless.

Speaker1:
I ride prepared. What I see with riders a lot of times is that they don’t separate these two different experiences. They don’t separate the physical skill set, as in, what would I physically do if the horse startled or spooked and they don’t separate that from the physical state? Am I in an appropriate level of readiness for the situation? Instead, a lot of times what riders do is they feel their body get tense and then they assume it’s purely a technical skill. I need to put my leg in a different position, or I need to work on my timing. And technical skills do matter, but so does your physical state. I also like to remind riders like you that your emotions are literally oozing out of your body, becoming part of your communication system with your horse. This is backed up by science. Emotions aren’t in your head. Your thoughts are in your head. Your emotions are in your body. They physically show up in your body with the hormone releases, the muscle tension, your breathing pattern. It even changes your digestive function. Emotions create measurable physical changes. Fear increases your heart rate and your adrenaline. Anxiety often causes shallow breathing and muscle tension. Confidence relaxes your body and improves your coordination. Your horse is reading these physical manifestations with remarkable accuracy and it is influencing how they respond to your rein, or your leg. When I explain my high level of awareness in the context of starting cults, it doesn’t sound that unreasonable.

Speaker1:
But when riders experience a very similar cycle to what I just explained, they often think something’s gone wrong. So let’s look at this from a few different angles. First, let’s look at that high level of awareness I was in with the cult. Because when I’m in that, I look at it like it’s what I need to keep myself physically safe. I accept it. It feels like it’s appropriate for the situation. And because of that, it feels like preparedness or readiness. But for me, it also has an element of that feeling of floating. It’s not a negative experience. I’m highly focused, highly aware, but I’m balancing all of that physical awareness with belief and deep breathing. Now again, most of you aren’t going to be starting Colts, but I use this extreme example because it makes the challenge easier to see. However, I do talk to a lot of riders who are dealing with fear, specifically the fear of falling off after they’ve already experienced a fall. So if you’ve ever had a fall or an unplanned dismount, think back. Was it a skill set gap or a mindset gap? In my experience, it’s almost always a skill set gap, and it’s often a skill set gap that the rider is now trying to close by believing more. That would be like me climbing on a colt without proper preparation. Now, when I prepare, I can’t guarantee how the first ride’s going to go, but I can get it pretty darn close.

Speaker1:
Or let’s say it this way, that first ride can be made a whole lot worse by not preparing the horse. If that’s true, that indicates a skill set gap on the horse’s part. With most falling off stories that I hear, there’s either a skill set gap for the horse or the rider. So that means the horse may have needed more skills, or the rider may have needed the skills to support the horse in that moment of confusion. Here’s how I separate them. The physical skill set. That sounds like what would I do physically if the horse. Fill in the blank. Spooked. Bolted. Bucked. Whatever that is. Do you have a physical skill set? Answer to that. And also physical state. Am I in the appropriate level of readiness for the situation. Can you see how there’s two separate things going on here? The appropriate level of readiness actually changes with the skill level and the situation. So when I’m riding the Colt for the first time, I need a high level of awareness compared to riding a horse that I’ve known for the last five years, who’s proven to be predictable in the situation that I’m in. In that case, my level of readiness is dialed way lower than it was on that horse’s very first ride. Look at it this way belief isn’t just in your head, it’s in your body. Again, I’m not saying that you should ride every ride with a high level of awareness, but I am saying if your horse has given you warning signs, believe your horse.

Speaker1:
Those warning signs or whatever led to you falling off, there’s a good chance that that’s your horse expressing their concern, or their lack of understanding, or you expressing your lack of awareness and your lack of how to support the horse in the moment. You have to remember that your body is a feedback loop, not just for you, but also for your horse. Because your horse reads your body, not just your rein, cue or your leg cue, but your actual physical state. So let’s go back to that list of all the things my mind is offering me during that first ride on a Colt, and look at how this loop is present for me all the time. Even in less heightened situations, I’m anticipating what the horse might do. My mind is offering me the possible challenges and the possible solutions. In that heightened sense, I’m focused on every possible problem based on what the horse has done in the past, because I really want to create a solution. I’m weighing the options about what I’m about to do, and I’m making a quick evaluation of the horse’s physical state and mental state. My physical state, my mental state. So now let’s go into a totally different example. Let’s say I’m showing in western dressage. And let’s say that I’ve practiced the test before or I’ve shown in this before what this loop looks like here is, as I’m preparing for the next time I show, I’m anticipating what the horse might do based on facts from the past.

Speaker1:
Using this knowledge, I’m also predicting possible challenges and I’m creating solutions. So I’m weighing the options. I’m evaluating the horse and myself inside that moment. Now let’s go really specific. Let’s say that I’ve shown this horse, and the last time I showed the horse, I went home and I realized that there had been this heightened sense of energy for both of us at the show. And I also realized that it really impacted our trot to lope transition. So now as I prepare for this next show, I recognize that I’m going to need to be more focused during that trot to lope transition. I might even recognize that last time, I didn’t even focus on the transition because I was trying so hard to remember the whole pattern. So actually, during that first time I rode the test, I just kind of assumed the trot to lope was going to work. But because of the added excitement and the show and me, something didn’t really work. The horse actually needed more support. They got rushy. And because I didn’t give the support, the horse rushed or got quick and uncollected during the transition. This is something that hasn’t been happening at home, but it happened here and I’m thinking back on that. So I use that knowledge and the cycle of awareness as I’m preparing for the next show.

Speaker1:
But I also use it as I’m showing. So again, let’s say that I had that show where I was excited or nervous and I didn’t support the horse. When I say I didn’t support the horse, I want you to also hear that I was not evaluating my horse and myself in the moment. Let me illustrate that. So let’s pretend the next time I go to show this horse, I’m more focused and more present because I’m anticipating the possible problem of rushing. I’m also creating solutions. So even though my main focus might be on improving the trot to lope transition, this next time I go to show, I’m probably evaluating myself and my horse as we enter the arena. Is my mind rushing ahead on the pattern? Which is what it did last time? Or am I here with my horse, feeling them in the moment and supporting them. So if I trot down the center line and halt, did they stand willingly during the halt or did they feel nervous? Do I feel nervous? Am I rushing that transition? Do I need to adjust how I leave that halt and better prepare for that first corner that I’m about to ride? Can you see that long before I ever get to the transition? That didn’t go well last time. The trot to lope, because I’m thinking about how to solve that. I’m actually much more present because I’m evaluating the horse and myself in the moment.

Speaker1:
What I hope you take away from this episode is that there is an ongoing feedback loop between your thoughts, your interpretation of those thoughts, and how they physically manifest in your body. And remember, this feedback loop isn’t private. Your horse is experiencing it too. Think about it this way when I’m on the colt for the first time, my heightened sense of awareness doesn’t register as fear because I interpret it as necessary information. My interpretation of this high level of preparedness shows up in my body as readiness instead of restriction. But when a rider feels that same high level of awareness and labels it, I must be doing something wrong or this shouldn’t be happening. The interpretation that they create creates the tension pattern and that communicates this uncertainty to the horse. So the thoughts themselves aren’t the problem. It’s actually how you interpret them and how that interpretation shows up in your body. Your technical skills absolutely matter, but they are not the only thing that your horse can feel when your aides say move forward, but your physical state says, I’m not so sure about this. Your horse receives mixed signals. The first step is recognizing the difference between your physical cue system and your physical state. The skilled riders that you admire aren’t just technically precise. They’ve learned how to float between the physical cues and the internal belief. That’s what I have for you this week, and I’ll talk to you again in the next episode.

Speaker2:
If you enjoy listening to Stacy’s podcast, please visit Stacy Westfall. Com for articles, videos and tips to help you and your horse succeed.

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