Podcast 200: Can you relate to any of these struggles or success stories?

Episode 200_ Can you relate to any of these struggles or success stories_.mp3: Audio automatically transcribed by Sonix

Episode 200_ Can you relate to any of these struggles or success stories_.mp3: this mp3 audio file was automatically transcribed by Sonix with the best speech-to-text algorithms. This transcript may contain errors.

Announcer:
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.

Stacy Westfall:
Hi, I'm Stacy Westfall and I've been successfully podcasting for 200 episodes with over 1 million downloads and counting. So first, thank you. Thank you to everyone for downloading, listening, calling in your questions, and listening some more. When I started this podcast 200 episodes ago, I wanted to explain my ideas and thoughts on a deeper level. I knew I wanted to help anyone who would listen, and the challenge was going to be, how do I explain the overall challenges in a way that's not overwhelming? And if you go back and listen to those first four seasons, you'll see that I created the four-square model, and that was my attempt at breaking any problem down into more doable parts. So the first two parts are always clear when people are thinking about themselves and their horses because it's the horse and the rider. But the four parts the rider's mind, the rider's body, the horse's mind, the horse's body. That's not quite as clear and intuitive. But the place where it really gets more tricky is how one issue can weave in and out of those four quadrants. Figuring that out is where people really struggle, and that is what I have been explaining for the 200 episodes as well as in my courses. I really set out on the podcast to add clarity simply by discussing things in those different quadrants, because then when you start to weave the questions and answers, you can start to see how there's this dance between how the rider thinks about what the horse did and how that affects the rider's body, and ultimately how that's affecting the horse's mind, which is all being interpreted through the rider's mind. So there's this dance that happens that can be challenging for riders to untangle.

Stacy Westfall:
Today on the podcast, I want to share success stories. I want to share success stories from inside my riding bundle. And you're going to need just a tiny bit of back story. So here goes. At the same time that I was structuring this podcast, I was also restructuring my teaching. I was moving away from DVDs, and I knew I wanted to move online into a completely different format. And because I'm a student myself of many programs, I knew I wanted to change the entire system of how I presented stuff and how my videos were being delivered. So I wanted to be able to include PDFs. I wanted to be able to include short videos so that you could easily return to a small portion and watch that one section over and over again. So as I created these online courses, I kept the videos really short with the majority of the teaching videos less than 10 minutes. Now the Zoom calls, they're an hour or more. And that brings me into knowing that I also wanted to show actual students working their horses at home. I knew that this would help all the future students who were going to be using these courses and training their own horses at home. Because sometimes it's just easier to see that other people are having the same struggles. So there are examples of students in the main teaching, but at this point, there are so many student videos that have been submitted by current students in the programs and reviewed by me. I've been doing this every month this year with student video reviews, so the library of student videos just keeps growing. And a lot of the times the students are live on the weekly Zoom call and that means that while I review the video, I can actually bring them on and we can talk about my view, what's happening, what their questions are. Not only does this help the student who submitted the video, but it also helps everyone who's on the call and everyone who's going to watch that recording later. It has been amazing, and what I'm about to read is a small sample of the success stories that the students have shared inside the program. To me, these transformations are examples of why I started the podcast and why I created the programs and why I'm showing up live on the Zoom calls all this year and all next year in 2023 to continue the journey. Now let's hear from the students.

Stacy Westfall:
Until I started using the four-square model, I didn't realize how many choices I made out of fear. As I started to look at my thoughts, I became aware of a pattern of avoidance. I avoided anything that caused anxiety in either my horse or myself. The other day, I planned to lunge and ride the four-leaf clover pattern. However, my horse sensed a moose nearby. (People in the program are from all over the world.) She became very alert and started asking big questions like, Do I have to stay with you? Can I escalate? As the moose came around the corner into my awareness, I had a choice. Do I quit and avoid the scary, escalated situation? Or do I take a deep breath and tell my horse it's going to be okay? Keep moving in the pattern? I chose to breathe and keep her moving in the pattern. I was aware that I answered her question with confidence. This communicated to her that she didn't need to escalate. She quickly dropped into work mode. We were able to lunge the four-leaf clover and even ride it with exhilarating moments of roundness and attunement. This was a huge win that touched all of the quadrants of the four-square model.

Stacy Westfall:
I have truly loved and appreciated the recent Zoom calls. They are so full of valuable and helpful tips. I greatly appreciate the specific verbal information as well as the excellent visual presentations, videos, diagrams, etc. Today I'm celebrating successfully feeling the difference between using the inside rein, to ask for the turn versus going forward. It felt like I was able to make it clear to my sweet horse what I was asking and she followed nicely, moving from turn to go straight forward to turn as we practiced wandering circles at the trot. Though the response was subtle, it was fun to be able to establish a contrast for her so she could tell the difference between the cues. And I could, too.

Stacy Westfall:
Wow, wow, wow. I love how you did this format and thank you for taking the time to do all the reviews, tips, and advice. I know that I was able to take away something from every one of them. However, the ones that really helped were Kylie G., Katherine G., Christina S., and the review of the one I sent. So many light bulb moments, details, thoughts, and ideas. I was madly taking notes in the journal I am keeping. I think I watched and rewatched the videos several times. Thank you for this course. I love it so much. Actually, you were answering my questions before I realize I have them. Listening to others it's so nice to see that we're having the same doubts. It makes me feel normal and less shame. Thank you for the passion and all the work you put into the course.

Stacy Westfall:
Stacy, Stacy, Stacy. The zoom call you did on Wednesday was life-changing for me. I'm not kidding. That was the one. And I cannot not (I know it's a double negative) write to you about the change I experienced as a result. Since my start in January, I've been doing all the things. I've been reading, watching videos, making videos, reviewing everything, writing, thinking, and working with my horses. I've been floundering a little. I've been questioning myself. My horses have been questioning me. I love to be in control. I love to be organized. I love to have a plan. I love to know how things work. I was feeling less than in all of these areas. You clarified all of that Wednesday. Your communication with us allowed me to finally see how all of this fits together. I could finally understand your plan for us, and I'm so thankful. Thank you for the gift of you. Thank you for being willing to share. My success story isn't an event or an action or something I can check off a list as an "accomplished." My success story is that now I understand. It's not just pieces. It's not just checking off exercises. It's how all of the little things repeated consistently over time will work to produce the whole. I understand your process. I understand, ride with faith. Thank you so much for everything. The light bulb has now come on and I'm so excited with where I am and where I know we are going.

Stacy Westfall:
Dear Stacy, I would love to share with you my light bulb moment. It actually happened the first time trying your technique, inside rein only. I watched your video and explanation about the technique and my inner dialog was I will never do that. This is so hard. Please note that I didn't even try yet. I will never succeed. I threw my money away. But then I forced myself to give it a try. The cones in the arena seemed so close together. I mounted my horse and at first he was, What do you want from me? I started with perfect circles and the first few were very small and part of me wanted to sacrifice the technique for the pattern. But instead, I continued riding and both of us got it. After a few minutes, I could make the circles and even did a few wandering circles. My horse followed incredibly well and didn't toss his head once. This has been one of his problems that he had before I bought him and I'm working to minimize it. He became softer and softer. After some time doing the technique I had the feeling he had become quite tired. In the end, I circled the arena and could feel the improvement. He was soft and relaxed. The steering quality improved drastically. I got a better feeling when to use the gas pedal and how this can help us. The ride wasn't perfect, but I enjoyed the process. I'm overcoming my self-doubt.

Stacy Westfall:
Stacy, thank you so much for this program. It's just what I needed and I'm learning so much. I started out with the collection course and not too far in you recommended the neck reining course. I didn't think I needed this, but I was so wrong. My horse has improved already in less than two weeks, and you have brought awareness to so many things regarding the horse and rider. Just amazing. Thank you again. Well worth the money.

Stacy Westfall:
I didn't believe in the value of repetition. So boring. But now I do. Thanks to repeating patterns, I can now shift my focus more easily and I can evaluate the ride like layers of an onion, one thing at a time. I used to be overwhelmed with all the things I wanted to focus on at once. Repetition now gives me the opportunity to be able to evaluate everything I want without getting blurred in the bigger picture. I am a glass-half-empty person and taking notes after every ride revealed to me that it actually often turns out better than it felt after getting off. I find that I can easily fill out the, "what went well" column at length, even after rides that I didn't particularly like. So the taking notes is a useful tool to align my often biased feeling with the reality of the ride.

Stacy Westfall:
You touched on the idea of consistency on today's Zoom call, and it made me think of a huge success I've had using this powerful but underappreciated tool. A while ago, you mentioned that we could see and feel improvements in our horses and ourselves if we were willing to increase the time we spend just trotting and just loping. My first thought was that I already do this. Haha. However, when I actually timed myself and trotted for a full 5 minutes, followed by loping for a full 5 minutes, I realized I had not been working my horses or myself nearly enough. We can now do this for a full 10 minutes in each gait. It doesn't seem like it, but that's a lot of trotting and loping. I now understand why you run. I think I'm in good shape, but adding this to my routine proves to me that I can be much stronger. The dividends from this simple piece of advice are tremendous. My horses have all gotten stronger and even appear more muscular. I have gotten stronger and feel more coordinated. My horses feel so much more balanced in these gaits, but also in all of the exercises that we do. We are all much more relaxed. All of the gaits have more rhythm and cadence. It has made my horses much more confident in the way they move. Repetition is so valuable. My previous thoughts were that I needed to keep my practice sessions full of new exercises and challenges. I have since learned that what the horse needs from us is to be sure. It is easier to be sure when things are kept simple and done with consistency. This is such a simple exercise, but I've experienced profound changes since including it in our routine. Stacy, once again, thanks so much for being a great teacher and in helping us understand the why in everything we do.

Stacy Westfall:
I was really struggling with getting a straight line, the Walk the Line exercise this week. As we have been coached by Stacy to video and self-evaluate I made a video and self-evaluated by watching the video over several times and even slowing down the movements on the video. I was able to see what I was doing to make her sort of leg yield to the left instead of coming straight down the arena with all of the aides. I made the changes on my next ride and we made improvements. It felt so good to be able to have the knowledge I needed to find my own mistakes and correct them. Making videos and studying those videos has been a game changer in the way I train my mare. Thank you, Stacy.

Stacy Westfall:
My success with the program and I am just beginning, is with the ride assessment form. The questions have really helped me be more aware and pinpoint why my horse is asking me questions. They have helped me come up with a different training plan. I was able to pinpoint things I have done that could have led my horse to be asking these questions and explains why they're offering them in a specific way. I was able to break down what I'm asking and add clarity, and both of my horses have improved on the basics through this. Thank you so much.

Stacy Westfall:
After the Zoom call about effectively evaluating a ride, I decided to narrow down my plans to more specificity. Often, a plan "would be about what was needed to be learned or fixed." Today, I picked the three things to focus on. One, upper body looseness with confident riding, and I did some twists, Rodney Yee styles after mounting up. Number two, anger awareness. It really only shows its ugliness unexpectedly when a situation comes up that I know my horse knows better. Again, honestly, really? And three, looking and turning that upper body looseness in the direction of desired travel. What a difference those three out of the possible hundreds of focus areas made. It certainly comes as no surprise to you, Stacy, that merely being aware of the anger made a world of difference. Chuckle. Chuckle. We calmly went through the areas on the trail where in the past my horse would become tense and uptight. He was softer and more responsive than typical and was overall a happier horse receiving loads of good boys. And I didn't growl, cuss, or grit my teeth at all. I will continue these three focus areas until they become muscle memory and begin adding the hundreds more one by one. Thank you.

Stacy Westfall:
My understanding has been deepened. Looking at failures as something that happens regularly, completely makes the amount of frustration I feel as I struggle with the old and the new concepts, make sense. I can see how the understanding and acceptance of failure frees my mind up to be present and open to failure as a stepping stone to a new understanding and better communication between my horse and I. As I accept failure as part of the journey I don't experience frustration, the angry, reactionary kind, nearly as often. When I do get frustrated by failure I recover more quickly because I know to expect it and where to go for help.

Stacy Westfall:
My biggest win has been clarity and confidence that I'm headed in the right direction. This has been reflected in my horse as he still is asking questions at times, but they are a lot less and the thing that makes me the most happy is he is not stressed or worried. I can actually calm him down when he gets a bit upset or a bit uptight because it's windy or something, as opposed to me being the one upsetting him. This is a massive achievement for me.

Stacy Westfall:
We've been riding the wandering circles and you're saying, "the horse has questions," has saved me from a lot of frustration. I've understood that my horse is not used to working for long without a break on a smaller circle. So he was looking hard for a place to stop and basically offering everything he could think of: getting really slow, offering to canter, bobbing the head, running out over the shoulder, falling in. Without the idea of him asking questions I would have been devastated, as in, "After four years of riding, he isn't able to do such a simple thing?" Now I understand his view and can adapt and add rest earlier, for example.

Stacy Westfall:
I can't type fast enough. I'm so excited to share this story with you. Yesterday I had one of my worst rides yet attempting the spiral out for the first time. Stacy read my question related to that on the Zoom call last night and offered a variety of helpful suggestions. I was excited to try them today. Yes, all three of my horses had the light bulb go on today and quickly. They didn't change, I did. The horses went from being resistant, frustrated, and sluggish to being energetic, willing, and smart. They all found it easily when I was able to help them find it under Stacy's guidance. It feels like magic, but it was nothing more than changing my attitude and the approach by asking for less of a bend to the inside, establishing a cadence rhythm, floating my hand out, leading, not pulling, using more leg, and looking in the new path. I wanted the shoulder to travel everything clicked. I asked for just a step at first, letting them float back to the circle or even stop and offered praise and gentle release. Then we added steps. They can all do full spiral out circles now in both directions. It was so fun. I told myself that I would try all of the suggestions today and keep a playful attitude. If anything started getting frustrating, I planned to stop and return to the basics, walk, trot, lope, stop, and transitions. The right attitude combined with the active coaching from Stacy turned one of my worst days yesterday into one of my best days today. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, Stacy. You are the best.

Stacy Westfall:
Submitting a video is my success story. I've been giving myself the out of submitting a video, telling myself I should really work on it more. I should exhaust every idea I can come up with before getting insight and help, and I should wait until I can do it on my own horse who's currently injured. But truth be told, I'm afraid to let anyone else see what I do. Tons of self-judgment. You are a wonderful coach. I have never heard you say one thing that would make me feel this way. It's all on me when it comes to my massive self-judgment and insecurity. It infiltrates every area of my riding and everything else. I kind of knew this already. This course has been giving me some ways to change, as opposed to just saying, This is the way I am. So here's the step. I'm facing the fear and putting it out there, but still keep me anonymous, please. Baby steps.

Stacy Westfall:
Dear Stacy, again, I find myself amazed at how much this course has impacted my whole life. I knew when I signed up that my horse and I would benefit a lot, and we have even beyond my expectations. But I continue to be amazed at how the principles I'm learning here are making such an impact in so many other areas of my life. One of my goals was to get into the regular habit of videoing my rides. This proved to be hard for me mentally. When I watched those first rides, I could only see all the problems. My first thoughts were about my weight, my mare's weight, and then I got into all the things that weren't working. I had a hard time being objective at all and not just coming out feeling mean and snarly. Over time, this has changed so much that the other day I realized that without thinking about it when I reviewed my latest video, what I saw first were all the things that were working. This hasn't been just with my riding, though. It has transferred to my kids, everything. Boy, life is more fun when you see what's working first, not to mention how much more pleasant you are to be around when you see and comment on the good first instead of diving into the fault-finding as had been my previous habit. I just spent a week at a summer camp helping teens and staff with their skills. One of the teens commented on how he loved that I noticed and commented on all the things that were working and didn't just pick on the faults. I smiled and told him that it had been a huge mind shift for me and that it was a great segway into talking about thought coaching. These courses and your coaching have been a huge blessing in my life. Thank you so much.

Stacy Westfall:
This is my success from the mindset coaching regarding consistent behavior and pre-planning. You coached me to consider that I was faulting my horse for the reactive behavior versus me taking responsibility for my own experience. From this coaching I realize it was up to me to help us achieve peace, resulting in future pleasurable times and increased refinement which took place faster than I could have ever set as a goal. My horse has been consistently progressing and passing so many milestones that I'm running out of paper to write them all down. And I have nicknamed him, Mr. Milestone. One of the most important things I found in this was when I stopped blaming him and took responsibility for the kind, confident, happy coaching. That the magical results were not because of him, not because of me, but because of us together. Whenever I tell him, good boy, I retract it and say, Good us. Look what we did together. In an amazingly short time, my horse and I have truly become partners. He has proven himself trustworthy, and apparently, I have proven myself trustworthy as well. We are literally doing this together. He is only four years old and has not even had a year of hands-on experience with humans. Yet he has proven himself smart and capable in the many pop quizzes that have surprisingly arisen in real-world situations. We together have discovered the answers and are together refining and building onward. Thank you, Stacy, for guiding us.

Stacy Westfall:
Thank you for allowing us to go through the course with our own rhythm by having the courses available forever. What you're explaining to the other people is very helpful for me too. For example, how to gradually start the canter in the four-leaf clover pattern. Because my horse can't canter the pattern yet, and doing the wandering circles in the whole arena makes so much more sense. Thanks again for lifetime access.

Stacy Westfall:
I love your program. I'm taking it all in slowly and deeply and feeling so energized with a burst of renewed confidence in my riding. I mentioned that I had questions other trainers have not been able to answer. Well, in your first module you hit all the challenges I've been having and then some. I would like to take time and feel through your entire riding program with my horse and get back to you with questions. Thank you for being a real professional in your work. I really appreciate your knowledge and finally feel freed from the never-ending questions about the inside rein and the outside rein and collection, which no trainer has been able to truly explain when it comes to the Western Horse. This program was hands down, worth every dollar.

Stacy Westfall:
Who would have thought that a horse trainer would be the most influential therapist in my personal psychological healing? You Stacy have enabled me to overcome obstacles that were blocking healthy relationships in my life with humans, horses, dogs, all living things, and especially with myself. I have learned to be more aware of what I and others are doing and why the mind and how the body I am doing it, resulting in the realization that I am my own agent and I actually know how to make intelligent choices, though they may be difficult. You have no idea how enormous the change has been in me, which naturally flows out and pours onto the relationship with my horses. Thank you.

Stacy Westfall:
If there was a success story in here that inspired you, please come join us in my online course, the riding bundle. It's full of amazing people and the resources to transform your riding. Thanks for listening and I'll talk to you again in the next episode.

Announcer:
If you enjoy listening to Stacy's podcast, please visit stacywestfall.com for articles, videos, and tips to help you and your horse succeed.

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