tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-42583721101233304732024-02-20T20:01:10.535-08:00 Two Contrarians Learn HorsemanshipMarian the Contrarianhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17692753447558233510noreply@blogger.comBlogger45125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4258372110123330473.post-62453590698274727192016-08-27T06:30:00.004-07:002016-09-21T11:29:01.263-07:00Control of the Roll<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">One of the things I have most enjoyed in my time studying with <a href="https://www.facebook.com/Considering-the-Horse-Mark-Rashid-203862299523/">Mark Rashid</a> this August has been learning rolls in our aikido dojo. </span></span><br />
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhqP5o5TP4yyK2KVQCjkWFArDfAkrTBPy3f8cH4Retuyn3l6ENNEw0grU_0PNF1AEMN7YzBJStkBYrHQCNiV2Wr8wzLAo_67f_UGn6ebg5oN-EEeZU4SyQ7K36Wc-4xzKoEB1bbV38nQmEH/s1600/roll.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="179" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhqP5o5TP4yyK2KVQCjkWFArDfAkrTBPy3f8cH4Retuyn3l6ENNEw0grU_0PNF1AEMN7YzBJStkBYrHQCNiV2Wr8wzLAo_67f_UGn6ebg5oN-EEeZU4SyQ7K36Wc-4xzKoEB1bbV38nQmEH/s320/roll.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Many thanks to the lovely Vicky Devlin for demonstrating.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">
Mark teaches aikido alongside horsemanship because so many key elements
of horse work are present in this martial art form: internal softness,
blending, finding openings, directing energy, feeling what your partner
is doing inside, and many more. Aikido translates as "the way of
harmony" and that is exactly what we are trying to find with our horses:
a way to work with them rather than against them. (Mark has recently
coined the term aibado, which means "the way of harmony with horses," to
explain what we study in the dojo.)</span></span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"> But there are more
mechanical reasons to pair horsemanship and aikido as well, and one of
the most empowering skills we can learn is how to fall.</span></span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"> If you
ride horses for a decent chunk of your life, you are going to fall off.
My grandmother used to say you're not a real horsewoman until you've
fallen off at least three times. (Being an overachiever I've fallen a
substantially larger number of times than that.) </span></span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"> Sometimes
falling is no big deal, but as we get older it's easy to feel less
comfortable about the idea, particularly as we hear stories of injuries
or become seriously injured ourselves. And fear, once it has a small
foothold, tends to keep growing whether we're conscious of it or not.</span></span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">
The fear of falling is, Mark explained, the reason that most of us are
so intent on controlling everything when we're in the saddle. Fear can
lead us to micromanage our horses and be overly quick to shut them down.
It leaves us in a slightly wary, slightly tense state that makes true
connection with our horses almost impossible because we don't trust them
enough to let go. </span></span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"> What we need to trust, however, is not so
much our horses as ourselves. If we don't believe in our ability to take
care of ourselves, we will never be 100% relaxed no matter how steady
the horse that we are riding. </span></span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"> And part of our ability to take
care of ourselves is knowing that we still have choices even when the
wheels come off, as Mark would say. Even when we're flying toward the
ground at a rapid speed, we still have choices about how we will land.
Even when someone comes at us with a weapon, we still have choices about
how we respond. The key in both of these situations is knowing that, no
matter what happens, we are never simply victims of external
circumstances with no say at all in what happens from here. </span></span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"> Mark
said that once we recognize that we have control over how we fall, we
don't feel such a strong need to control every other piece. We know that
we can be okay even if the worst happens, so we can allow things to be a
little less certain and ourselves to be a little less in control. </span></span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">
As Mark was explaining all of this, I couldn't help but think how we do
the exact same thing in the rest of our lives that we do in the saddle.
We fear that, when the worst comes to pass, we will be completely
powerless. We believe that we have no control over the really critical
stuff like a serious injury, or a partner leaving, or losing a job. So
we try to control everything else in an attempt to prevent these
situations rather than learning skills that might help us cope with them
better. </span></span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"> Knowing that we can choose to be soft and responsive in
any situation instead of bracing and defending ourselves has been one
of the most important lessons I've learned in the dojo. We can always
choose to move into and blend with whatever is coming toward us--choose
connection and relaxation over resistance and reactiveness. In the
things that really matter we have the kind of control that really
matters: we have control over how we respond. Will we roll with what
comes our way? I love that aikido teaches this skill in its most literal
sense.</span></span>Marian the Contrarianhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17692753447558233510noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4258372110123330473.post-37556813051249335402016-08-14T06:43:00.000-07:002016-08-27T06:45:08.111-07:00Having Faith in Doing Good<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"> I have spent the past week participating in the first half of a 10-day course with <a href="https://www.facebook.com/Considering-the-Horse-Mark-Rashid-203862299523/">Mark Rashid</a> and <a href="https://www.facebook.com/heartlinehorsetraining/?fref=ts">Crissi McDonald</a>. For this course all the riders have been borrowing horses that live here at <a href="http://www.happydogranch.org/">Happy Dog Ranch</a>.</span></span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">
For the first few days we practiced aikido in the mornings and rode in
the afternoons. But on the fourth morning we were getting ready to ride
both morning and afternoon.</span></span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"> As we had our post-breakfast meeting
before heading to the barn, one of the women in our course said that
she was a bit dreading riding twice that day. She said she'd been
feeling guilty all week because her horse didn't seem to enjoy being
ridden and now she was feeling even more guilty to ask the horse to go
out with her twice in one day. </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"> When Mark asked her why she
thought the horse didn't want to be ridden, she cited the horse's
unwillingness to be haltered in the paddock, resistance to the bit being
put in, and refusal to stand by the mounting block. She added that she
had encountered these issues with some of her own horses and had been
unable to continue riding them because she couldn't enjoy riding if the
horse seemed unhappy about being ridden.</span></span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"> I wish that I had an
exact record of what Mark said in response because it profoundly changed
my perspective. But here at least is what I remember.</span></span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"> First and most importantly Mark said that we don't know the horse doesn't want to be ridden. </span></span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"> Just that one statement changed the whole conversation. </span></span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">
We tend to get a bit lost in our own stories about what is going on.
But as Mark went on to say, all we really know for sure is that the
horse has certain behaviors (like putting her head in the air when the
bit is offered). </span></span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"> It may be that the horse was handled roughly at
some point in her past and developed these patterns of behavior as a
defensive response. Our job, however, is neither to suss out the horse's
past history nor to figure out what her present behavior might "mean."
It is simply to help her do the things that we are asking in a way that
feels better to her.</span></span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">We don't achieve this by backing off when
she seems resistant to something. Nothing changes that way. We achieve
it by having a clear idea of how we would like the thing to feel both to
the horse and to the human and then staying with it until she finds
that feel.</span></span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"> Ultimately yes, we require our horses to do things
that they might not choose to do. However we also have the opportunity
to help them find softness and relaxation by finding those things first
in ourselves and then offering them to our horses. And if they then tap
into their own softness and relaxation, we can be fairly confident that,
whether they would have chosen to do that thing or not, they are no
longer bothered by doing it. They might even be happy about doing it.</span></span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">
In short, we have to believe that we can be agents of change in our
horses' lives--that we can be a positive force to help them rather than
just something they put up with because they have no choice. </span></span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"> And
this belief carries over to the whole of life. What if we work from a
space of assuming that we are making a positive impact? What if we keep
in the front of our minds the joy that we have to offer others? What if
we look at the sky at the end of the day and say, "It was a good day. It
started out good, and then I was able to make a couple of things a
little better," and then we enjoy some dinner and go to bed?</span></span>Marian the Contrarianhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17692753447558233510noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4258372110123330473.post-68442508937199262162016-03-24T19:03:00.000-07:002016-03-31T19:04:27.958-07:00Why Doing It Right Is So Wrong
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<br />
<div style="margin-bottom: .1pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: .1pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS";">I took a workshop in <a href="https://www.mastersonmethod.com/">Masterson Method</a>
bodywork for horses last weekend, and there was SO MUCH GOOD. For one thing, it
was a privilege to work with the Thoroughbreds we learned with, who were so
willing and who showed so much improvement in their musculature and their
relaxation after just one day. It felt great to be doing that kind of good for
horses in need of it.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .1pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: .1pt;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .1pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: .1pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS";">But by far the most good done was the good
done to me. </span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .1pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: .1pt;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .1pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: .1pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS";">The Masterson Method can have the positive
effect that it does, I believe, because it creates a space where there is no
wrong. </span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .1pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: .1pt;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .1pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: .1pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS";">The horse can do no wrong because everything
he does is just part of his process of moving from defending himself to letting
go. Whether he chews on things or fidgets and moves around or seems to be
completely ignoring you, all of that truly is just information by which you get
an idea of where he is in the process of letting go—not a behavior that needs
correcting.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .1pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: .1pt;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .1pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: .1pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS";">And the human can do no wrong because the
Masterson Method can only do good for the horse. Even if you’re only “in the
neighborhood” of where you’re supposed to be, you can help the horse release.
Even if you don’t wait for the release, you’ve helped the horse to start
processing. Even if you can’t do all the techniques perfectly, you can do a
great deal of good.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .1pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: .1pt;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .1pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: .1pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS";">This is a radically freeing space in which
to exist. By contrast, how often do we feel that we are screwing things up or
aren’t good enough to perform in some way? That we don’t know enough, don’t have
the skills or the discernment? And how often does the need to be and do things
right leave us isolated in our own heads instead of connecting with others?</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .1pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: .1pt;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .1pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: .1pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS";">The amazingly cool result of being in the
space of doing no wrong is that you can listen phenomenally well. When your
ego-driven need to do things right isn’t running the show, you can suddenly
hear all sorts of things your horse is telling you. And the amazingly cool
result of THAT is you find yourself truly working with the horse. </span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .1pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: .1pt;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .1pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: .1pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS";">In fact, that’s what the Masterson Method
is: a process the horse and human go through together, each guiding the other
in an endless back and forth of offering and receiving suggestions. It
absolutely defines doing things *with* the horse.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .1pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: .1pt;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .1pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: .1pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS";">Of course many of the people I’ve studied
with have emphasized the need to do things with and for the horse rather than
to or at him. And I’ve agreed every time. But actually living in that space has
been hard for me to do. I may in general have a goal of, say, helping my horse
overcome his fear, but when I ask him to do things to build his confidence, I
find myself stuck in my own agenda of asking him to confront his fears instead
of in a conversation with him about how best I can help him feel better.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .1pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: .1pt;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .1pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: .1pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS";">So my experience last weekend was almost
wholly novel to me. I saw that the horses were just where they were, doing the
best they could to manage in the lives they’d been handed. I saw that they were
going to struggle some with the process of letting go of their defenses just as
I was going to struggle some with the process of learning how to help them do
that. And I saw how willing they were to go through the process with me despite
all of that. </span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .1pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: .1pt;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .1pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: .1pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS";">All of this made me feel great compassion
for everyone, animal and human and myself included, who has built defensive
patterns to keep themselves safe and yet yearns to let go of those patterns. As
our instructor said, a horse saying, “No, no, no, no,” is really saying, “Help me,
help me, help me!” True for horses, true for people.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .1pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: .1pt;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .1pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: .1pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS";">And in this context, worrying about doing it
right just doesn’t even factor in.</span></div>
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<br /></div>
Marian the Contrarianhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17692753447558233510noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4258372110123330473.post-71142784624322612442016-01-29T18:58:00.000-08:002016-03-31T18:58:49.160-07:00Peace
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<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS";">Before I left for Florida I had come to the
conclusion that peace--your own internal sense of being calmly centered--is the
most precious thing you can offer to someone you love. </span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .1pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: .1pt;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .1pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: .1pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS";">In Florida I began to see that it’s even
deeper than that: peace isn’t a gift you give so much as it is the environment
necessary for love to truly flourish. Without peace, love just doesn’t come
through the same way. </span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .1pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: .1pt;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .1pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: .1pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS";">I have loved Lupin his entire life. That
love has kept me with him through times I felt like there was no way we were
going to work things out between us, through times I felt overwhelmed by
everything I didn’t know about how to help him, through fear that both of us
would get hurt. I’m a stubborn person, but I don’t think you can be that
stubborn over that long a time without love lying at the root of it.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .1pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: .1pt;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .1pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: .1pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS";">At the same time, though, I have rarely felt
like that love really came through to Lupin very clearly. In a certain way we
were pretty strongly connected, but not in a way that often felt great to either
of us. For my part I was always cranked about all the things I didn’t know yet,
about not doing it right, about screwing up my horse. Lupin was more often than
not only half engaged and pretty quick to shut down. I’m not confident that
either of us were truly keen on spending time together. But I kept at it,
because I love him.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .1pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: .1pt;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .1pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: .1pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS";">And I’m not belittling that kind of
commitment. Sometimes that’s what love is: working hard and gutting it out for
someone you care about. </span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .1pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: .1pt;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .1pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: .1pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS";">But I also think we make love into this far
more often than we need to. We have this immense amount of love for someone,
but only a tiny bit of it manages to trickle through the wall of tension that
we’ve built around it. Tension created by the fear that we’re not good enough,
or worry about what will happen, or stressing over what the other person/animal
thinks or feels, or focusing on things that we perceive to be problems in the
relationship.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .1pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: .1pt;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .1pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: .1pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS";">I think it’s a lot like what Mark says about
physical power: our power is far greater than our actual muscular strength, but
power doesn’t come through if we are tense. We need to be soft internally for
our power to be anything close to fully effective.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .1pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: .1pt;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .1pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: .1pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS";">To me it’s the same relationship between
love and peace. We can have vast amounts of love, but if we aren’t peaceful, it
just doesn’t come through. </span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .1pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: .1pt;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .1pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: .1pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS";">The best part about my time in Florida was
that everything was peaceful. Learning was peaceful, connection to my horse was
peaceful, being in general was peaceful. Not only do Mark and Crissi foster
this kind of atmosphere; they teach their students how to cultivate the peace
that’s within themselves in the form of softness, calmness, and staying
centered. </span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .1pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: .1pt;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .1pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: .1pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS";">The first day I spent in Florida I lay in
the sunshine enjoying how good it felt on my skin and how beautiful Lupin
looked in it. As the two weeks went along, it felt more like that sunshine was
inside me, inside Lupin, and connecting the two of us together in a soft,
relaxed, golden feeling that I can only describe as deeply peaceful love.</span></div>
Marian the Contrarianhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17692753447558233510noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4258372110123330473.post-61608459270132885262016-01-22T18:55:00.000-08:002016-03-31T18:56:17.170-07:00Getting to the Goal
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<div style="margin-bottom: .1pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: .1pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS";">I realized as I was packing up to leave for
Florida that I was scarcely even thinking about my Florida trip beyond its
logistics. In fact, despite knowing that my trip would be wonderful on many
levels, I was thinking right on past it to when I got back. Because then I
would be done. </span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .1pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: .1pt;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .1pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: .1pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS";">I’ve discovered a similar tendency in my
horsemanship and in most of the things I do. I’ll call it the exam mentality:
that looking forward to when the thing that you’re about to do is in the past
tense. </span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .1pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: .1pt;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .1pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: .1pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS";">It’s a habit that has been exacerbated when
it comes to horse stuff by some of my past learning--in particular the idea
that the moment the horse does what you want you take all pressure off and
quit. That technique, designed to give the horse a clear reward when he does
what you ask, has the side effect of causing both you and the horse to look
toward the moment of being finished as the happy place. In short, you both
celebrate the moment when you can be done with doing things together. Not
exactly a recipe for enhancing your sense of connection.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .1pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: .1pt;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .1pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: .1pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS";">Mark has been pointing out time and again to
me that it’s counter-productive to quit just when everything is feeling good.
You and the horse both just made an effort to get things going well: why would
you just drop it the moment you do?</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .1pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: .1pt;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .1pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: .1pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS";">Yet the only area of my life I can think of
where I don’t do just exactly that is dancing. I don’t dance to get to the end
of the dance: I dance for the joy of dancing itself. In every other area,
though, I am looking for the end/result/stopping place/point of achievement.
And that is generally true of positive things as well as stressful things. </span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .1pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: .1pt;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .1pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: .1pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS";">I’m not sure exactly how this mentality
emerged. Maybe it has to do with lack of confidence, an intolerance for
existing in a space of uncertainty, an assumption that effort is negative, or a
need to check things off a list to feel successful. But however it came about,
I have no doubt that it is just that: a mental pattern, a mindset that can be
changed. </span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .1pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: .1pt;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .1pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: .1pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS";">And what I’m discovering this week is that
how you change it is to focus on feel rather than result. It’s a beautiful
thing for my horse to float softly sideways when I just think sideways, but if
I’m just admiring the accomplishment, I am losing almost all of my connection
with my horse, and with joy, and really with the whole point of doing any of
this.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .1pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: .1pt;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .1pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: .1pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS";">Joy lies in feel. It lies in feeling your
own insides hum in harmony with your horse’s insides, in the feeling of
relaxation in both of you, and in the lightness of existing in the realm of
softly doing rather than the realm of thinking. </span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .1pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: .1pt;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .1pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: .1pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS";">Until now the only way I have found peace is
in not doing. For the first time this week I’m starting to feel how there can
be peace in doing. How doing things without a physical or mental brace lets you
be light even in the midst of effort, and how doing things for the feel in the
present can erase the weight of needing to achieve.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .1pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: .1pt;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .1pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: .1pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS";">And I’m discovering that true peace does not
come from having done. You may find relief from having done, but peace comes
from finding joy in the doing, and living in that joy. That’s the realm we are
meant to live in. Not a state of mere satisfaction with our achievement, but a
state of active joy in living itself.</span></div>
Marian the Contrarianhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17692753447558233510noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4258372110123330473.post-27018332415041245362015-12-14T18:47:00.000-08:002016-03-31T18:47:58.788-07:00Softness Is Always the Answer
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<div style="margin-bottom: .1pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: .1pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS";">One of the things that most appeals to me
about the art of Aikido is that it develops the ability to soften even – in
fact, especially – when under attack. Softness disarms your enemy internally:
it melts the brace that is inside him. And even if it doesn’t achieve this, it
gives you some space to work because you are more fluid, and it allows you to
be more powerful because you can use your energy more effectively when you’re<span class="textexposedshow"> not tense.</span></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .1pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: .1pt;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .1pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: .1pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS";">Until I learned about all of this, life
seemed divided into two areas to me: times when you could be soft and peaceful,
and times when peace wasn’t going to cut it and you had to fight. </span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .1pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: .1pt;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .1pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: .1pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS";">The idea that softness is the answer even in
the most extreme and threatening situation was a game changer for me. If
softness is the best answer when your life is at risk, then what reason can
there possibly be for anything other than softness the rest of the time?</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .1pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: .1pt;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .1pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: .1pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS";">I guess I should be clear that being soft
doesn’t mean being a pool of jello on the floor. It means that you are not
tensed – in body, spirit, or mind – against what is happening. </span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .1pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: .1pt;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .1pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: .1pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS";">Acceptance, releasing tension, and breathing
are all components of softness, but it’s so much more than that. Most
importantly, it is an attitude of opening yourself to others, looking for
openings and opportunities to blend with others, and using joyful energy
instead of strength. </span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .1pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: .1pt;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .1pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: .1pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS";">Softness is dancing with life.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .1pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: .1pt;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .1pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: .1pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS";">Generally I am predisposed to be tensed
against life. If I feel bad physically, I tense against it, achieving nothing
except escalating and prolonging the pain. If I feel tension in those around
me, I tense in response, upping the tension one more level. If things aren’t
going the way I want, I brace against them, trying to regain control, instead
of flowing with them to find a new opening (which I can’t see because of my
control-induced tunnel vision). </span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .1pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: .1pt;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .1pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: .1pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS";">Now, however, I don’t just believe that
softness is always the answer; I know it. I also know that softness is a
practice – a practice of embodying that belief every day, of translating it
into a physical reality inside yourself. It’s an alchemy waiting to happen in
every moment that I choose to practice it. </span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .1pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: .1pt;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .1pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: .1pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS";">I am far from mastering this practice, but
now at least I know that life is divided, not into when softness is appropriate
and when it's not, but merely into this: when I am practicing softness, and
when I am not.</span></div>
Marian the Contrarianhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17692753447558233510noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4258372110123330473.post-21977262423560638742015-11-04T06:23:00.000-08:002016-08-27T06:25:44.873-07:00To Thine Own Self Be True
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<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS";">This past January (was it really only this
past January??) my horse guru Mark Rashid </span><a href="https://www.facebook.com/mark.rashid.92"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS";"></span></a><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS";">shook my world a bit
with his very simple advice: do what feels good. </span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .1pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: .1pt;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .1pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: .1pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS";">Mark wasn’t advocating hedonism or following
your bliss or any of that sort of thing. He merely proferred the suggestion
that if we do what genuinely feels good inside us, it will probably feel good
to others, and then look, there’s a whole bunch of us feeling good together. </span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .1pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: .1pt;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .1pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: .1pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS";">A radical notion. Especially for one with a
life-long habit of doing things the hard way, complicating things
unnecessarily, stubbornly clinging to her own clearly ineffective methods, and
thinking—rather than feeling—her way through life. </span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .1pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: .1pt;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .1pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: .1pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS";">In the intervening months I’ve gotten a lot
better at following the path that feels good. And I’ve generally found that
when I do that, I’m still going where I both need and want to go—I just get
there with a lot less drama, agonizing, analyzing, and head banging than I used
to. And way less second-guessing and obsessing.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .1pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: .1pt;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .1pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: .1pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS";">I’ve noticed, too, that how I feel gives me
a lot of helpful advice about where I want to go. I used to think that feelings
were just things that got in the way of where I wanted to go and that I should
be able to tamp them down and carry on. Now I get that my feelings are probably
much more valuable as information than my thoughts.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .1pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: .1pt;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .1pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: .1pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS";">For instance, I’ve been to horse clinics
with three different teachers this year. I enjoyed and learned something from
each teacher. All of them were very engaging and had an interesting perspective
to share. But when I started thinking about how I *felt* after each clinic, the
difference was staggering. </span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .1pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: .1pt;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .1pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: .1pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS";">After Mark’s clinics I felt calm and clear
and as if the path in front of me was a simple and happy one. Perhaps not
entirely easy, not without some difficult moments, but still peaceful in the
way that moving forward in harmony with who you are gives you peace. </span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .1pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: .1pt;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .1pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: .1pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS";">After the other two I felt excited at the
hope that there might be a better answer out there than what I had found so
far, but I also felt fairly cranked up about all the things I had been doing
wrong, all the things I felt I had failed at. And even my successes in those
clinics didn’t feel right to me, despite the fact that they got results. I
didn’t realize this, though, until I stopped thinking about the ideas at the
clinics (which sounded very good) and started thinking about how I felt as I
responded to them. </span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS";">I want to be clear that I’m not saying this
to dis anyone in any way. I say this because it’s a fairly radical notion to me
that my mental and emotional state tells me something about the influences
around me rather than just being something that I need to sort out, dammit, so
I can get on with what I’m trying to do. </span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS";">I react differently to different people and
different ideas, and that’s not a judgment on them or on me. What it is is
information about the best way forward for me—the opening that I can move
through with softness and peace, hopefully bringing that softness and peace to
others as I go.</span></div>
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Marian the Contrarianhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17692753447558233510noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4258372110123330473.post-44991962294152838752015-08-19T15:36:00.000-07:002016-03-02T19:26:25.607-08:00Finding an Opening<style>
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</style><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms"; font-size: 10.0pt;">When I first met </span><a href="http://www.markrashid.com/"><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms"; font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="color: blue; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">Mark Rashid</span></span></a><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms"; font-size: 10.0pt;">
a year and a half ago, he talked about creating openings. He said that horses
are like water and will flow through whatever openings we create.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms"; font-size: 10.0pt;">This image really struck me because of
the beauty, ease, grace, and peace of it. I had gotten used to having fights
with my horse, and I had been assuming that he wanted, not necessarily to have
those fights, but at least to resist what I was asking. It was beyond refreshing
to consider that there was an entirely different way and that, if I gave him
the opportunity, my horse could be an entirely different (and happier) horse.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms"; font-size: 10.0pt;">One hugely wonderful part of my 10-day
course was learning more about openings. In the dojo, I learned not only to
soften myself from the inside, but to allow a connection to happen that in turn
allowed my partner and myself to move together with our insides connected.
Opening myself like this became the first step, always, for finding and
creating openings with the horses.</span></div>
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<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhug49-tgdyMb8P-LGZx9hZ-niixLga6TewcneenI4vPdoMgyrPd9fYP24Sqz_rsmpdDo8zisCXnpscfNhiOI2iEEJFycEz0XeatbJRlsJYYmvzRVM4nX-sLm1Xvgpo-OE-U10KFCZ8rUC1/s1600/vicky.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhug49-tgdyMb8P-LGZx9hZ-niixLga6TewcneenI4vPdoMgyrPd9fYP24Sqz_rsmpdDo8zisCXnpscfNhiOI2iEEJFycEz0XeatbJRlsJYYmvzRVM4nX-sLm1Xvgpo-OE-U10KFCZ8rUC1/s320/vicky.jpg" width="240" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Masterson Method instructor <a href="https://www.mastersonmethod.com/find-a-certified-practitioner/course-instructors.html?view=employee&id=13">Vicky Devlin</a><br />
showing us how to help horses feel better.</td><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><br /></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
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<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms"; font-size: 10.0pt;">The <a href="https://www.mastersonmethod.com/">Masterson Method</a> work, geared
toward helping the horse release tension and allow his joints to be moved
freely in a state of relaxation, then taught me how to look for openings in the
horse. I learned to feel for where the horse *could* relax and to start there,
instead of focusing on the area that I felt he needed to relax or on the
technique that I was trying to do. Any place the horse was able to relax was
the opening to creating more relaxation.</span></div>
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgitUIvsLgZMqFn9WzHMFDMpZcvFfIHxUtCcJRF44FG4cCEhhcHoq1ErkBQaoGitv3YFQUVIPod9gr4LTYLObco7vxCenReHLwnKLrjQy5VQ97CqFlsPee1jmPW5UzvmwxFs5bqpvndW2aP/s1600/vicky2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgitUIvsLgZMqFn9WzHMFDMpZcvFfIHxUtCcJRF44FG4cCEhhcHoq1ErkBQaoGitv3YFQUVIPod9gr4LTYLObco7vxCenReHLwnKLrjQy5VQ97CqFlsPee1jmPW5UzvmwxFs5bqpvndW2aP/s320/vicky2.jpg" width="240" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms"; font-size: 10.0pt;">And this idea carried through to the
riding too. If we focus on what the horse can't/won't/doesn't want to do, that
generally means that we're focused on where the brace is, which means that
movement is difficult and, if it does happen, filled with tension.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms"; font-size: 10.0pt;">But if we focus on where the horse is
already moving with ease, we can go through that opening together with him and
build from there. That may mean turning left instead of right, or walking
instead of trotting, or backing up instead of going forward. But what it means
above all is being truly dedicated to listening to what the horse is telling us
feels okay and blending with and building on that instead of pursuing our own
agenda of what we think he should do.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms"; font-size: 10.0pt;">This doesn't mean that we do whatever
the horse wants. But it does mean that we let him tell us how we can get where
we're trying to go instead of just pushing him into it. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms"; font-size: 10.0pt;">The moment this really became clear for
me was when I was working with Comet on backing. Comet tended to put his head
down and brace defensively against going backward. Mark showed me how to lift
his head to where he didn't have a brace and ask for a soft backwards from
there, rather than continuing to focus on backing from the point where he was
braced. And then Comet and I moved easily and beautifully backward.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms"; font-size: 10.0pt;">Maybe if we want our horses to move
like water, we need to be willing to have a little of the ability to flow to
where there's an opening ourselves.</span></div>
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</span>* * *</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms"; font-size: 10.0pt;">On the last day I realized that looking
for openings is my own opening to a better perspective. I tend to focus on what
needs fixing, what still needs work, what we can't yet do. In short, I see only
the negatives. And it's all well and good to say something like, "Focus on
helping the horse relax," but it takes my critical brain only a nanosecond
to turn that into, "My horse isn't relaxed!" And then we're right
back to focusing on the negative.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms"; font-size: 10.0pt;">If I am looking for openings, however,
I don't have room to see negatives. If it isn't an opening, then I am simply
moving on to what is one. There's no point in making judgments because I'm not
interested in judging: I'm interested in finding. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms"; font-size: 10.0pt;">And it's pretty amazing what you can
find when you're not wrapped up in focusing on what isn't working. Among other
things, Comet and I found a little bit of harmony and joy. And *that* is
something worth building on.</span><br />
<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg93FtnkWae-xgntSolqUDYfZkjBgo3TBwF-EH5-THheTSwqZDJ_fvV-TWAjMHH8Qda8lNYmlcV1A1SMc6yhLY0XIHIyG-tTtQOSPhx5KRJDwYDNkLm8s8-l9LOhfpfDIrI2yut6mP8BBrU/s1600/comet.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg93FtnkWae-xgntSolqUDYfZkjBgo3TBwF-EH5-THheTSwqZDJ_fvV-TWAjMHH8Qda8lNYmlcV1A1SMc6yhLY0XIHIyG-tTtQOSPhx5KRJDwYDNkLm8s8-l9LOhfpfDIrI2yut6mP8BBrU/s320/comet.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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Marian the Contrarianhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17692753447558233510noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4258372110123330473.post-59142166662744778002015-08-13T15:31:00.000-07:002016-03-04T14:44:15.268-08:00On Goals and Struggle<style>
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<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms"; font-size: 10.0pt;">I've spent a good deal of time over the
past several years pursuing goals--willing myself into doing things, aspiring
to do things better, etc. And boy are there a lot of people out there with
strategies to help you change your life and achieve your goals.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms"; font-size: 10.0pt;">Generally these strategies involve big
money words like courage, determination, heart--and what all of that implies:
struggle. And the people who are promoting them generally have lots of positive
things to say about struggle and how it is healthy for us to do the work, face
our fears, develop our emotional fitness, etc.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms"; font-size: 10.0pt;">Before I go further, let me be clear: it is a hugely
valuable thing to know how to persevere in challenging situations and extra
bonus points to you if you have a good attitude while doing it. </span></div>
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<br />
<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms"; font-size: 10.0pt;">But if this becomes our normal
operating procedure for life--if we're always on some quest, always turning dreams
into goals so we can chip nobly away at them--well, for one thing, that's not
very much fun. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms"; font-size: 10.0pt;">It's becoming clear to me that there's
a much better way. Mark calls it doing what feels good. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms"; font-size: 10.0pt;">Here's an example. As I was riding
Gracie, I was having trouble with finding softness at the walk. Mark asked if
any part of me was tense. Lo and behold my legs were, from a long-time habit of
believing that I needed that tension in them to keep forward movement.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms"; font-size: 10.0pt;">As our ride continued I had a choice. I
could say to myself, "I need to change that habit and create a positive
new pattern. I need to have constant vigilance on this and do it better."
Or, I could just carry on riding and when things weren't going quite right, I
could check in with how I felt inside. Could I feel better in myself? Why yes,
I could let go of that tension. Which of course made things better with Gracie
too. And then carry on.</span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjuHSvVVcbdcO-dDZHS5GiRfYSRV2J5M3wXatZ9ot6jUojqD-Yh5paVhkJknsCkKvPQlQbj6jB7koTFSjhU2EL5SbKZKfs65EBKZGMd4x2lI-hlRwUvlNbbfkmrILFVmub9Lf5qU3PhR37D/s1600/jackson.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="213" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjuHSvVVcbdcO-dDZHS5GiRfYSRV2J5M3wXatZ9ot6jUojqD-Yh5paVhkJknsCkKvPQlQbj6jB7koTFSjhU2EL5SbKZKfs65EBKZGMd4x2lI-hlRwUvlNbbfkmrILFVmub9Lf5qU3PhR37D/s320/jackson.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms"; font-size: 10.0pt;">A more mundane example is my late-night
Facebook habit. I can set a goal of getting off FB and going to bed by a
certain time and do all sorts of external things to make this more likely and
then stay up anyway and berate myself for it. Or I could just pay attention to
whether I feel good staying on FB when I'm exhausted and do what would feel
much better: go to bed. But, of course, I have to be willing to listen to what
my insides tell me and not over-ride them.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms"; font-size: 10.0pt;">And this is true of larger dreams as
well. At one point my goal was to do an externship with Parelli. But a big part
of me wasn't having it. I thought I was being lazy and fearful about hauling my
horse to Colorado and that I needed to get to work on my attitude and
confronting my fears. But a friend finally helped me see that actually, I just
didn't want to do it that much.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms"; font-size: 10.0pt;">Conversely, at the end of one clinic,
Mark thanked us all for making the effort to come to the clinic and all I could
think was, "What effort?" I dreamed about studying with Mark for
years and it is all I hoped it would be and more and all I feel at the prospect
of going to a clinic with him is happiness. "Effort" in this context
seems irrelevant.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms"; font-size: 10.0pt;">Now, I'm not saying this to either bash
Parelli or make a plug for Mark. Different things feel good to different
people. I'm just saying that maybe, just maybe, doing what feels good is the
answer. And dreams coming true might maybe should feel good most of the way
through and not just at the end.</span></div>
Marian the Contrarianhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17692753447558233510noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4258372110123330473.post-33140657596471177992015-08-12T15:20:00.000-07:002016-03-02T18:47:53.268-08:00Feeling Good is the Reward<style>
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</style> <span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms"; font-size: 10.0pt;">Mark has been talking a lot this week
about our tendency to quit just as the horse softens. A lot of us have been
taught to quit frequently as an antidote to the all-too-common tendency to just
keep asking more and more of our horses: we are trying, by quitting, to give
our horses a reward/release for doing what we ask.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms"; font-size: 10.0pt;">But Mark has been showing us how little
sense this makes from the horse's perspective. We ask them to soften and then
we just kind of drop them. It would be like going up to a dance partner,
smiling, getting in a nice comfortable frame with them and then stopping before
you ever start dancing.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms"; font-size: 10.0pt;">I think that that's the key right
there. We are <i>not</i> thinking about our horse time as dancing. We are thinking
about it as training. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms"; font-size: 10.0pt;">And looked at from a training
mentality, we are asking our horses to do things that are, on some level and to
some degree, challenging for them. So we don't want to ask too much and we want
to give them a big reward when they do it well. And those are both good things
to bear in mind.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms"; font-size: 10.0pt;">But what if, as Mark said of his border
collie Ring, the reward <i>is</i> to do things with them? </span></div>
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<br />
<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms"; font-size: 10.0pt;">It's true that if we just want our
horses to "do stuff" and if we are doing things with our horses
without softness and awareness it probably does feel like work to them and the
only reward they'll be interested in is getting to quit. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms"; font-size: 10.0pt;">But if we really are
thinking of our horses as dance partners--if we're interested above all in
finding that space where we both feel good moving together--then why not, you
know, dance?</span></div>
Marian the Contrarianhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17692753447558233510noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4258372110123330473.post-62631057515935080412015-07-20T11:58:00.000-07:002016-03-02T16:18:40.431-08:00A Few Musings on My Horsemanship "Journey"<style>
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</style> <span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms"; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">If I've heard once
that horsemanship is a journey, I've heard it 132 times. </span><br />
<div style="margin-bottom: .1pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: .1pt;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .1pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: .1pt;">
<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms";">Until this year, what that phrase meant to
me was that horsemanship was like one of those mythological quest journeys,
full of wonder and new worlds, yes, but also fraught with hardships, set-backs,
and some seriously ugly monsters. </span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .1pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: .1pt;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .1pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: .1pt;">
<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms";">You manage to sail through the narrow strait
with scary-ass perils on either side--hooray!--only to be blown back through it
again because some moron decided to open the bag that contained all the winds. </span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .1pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: .1pt;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .1pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: .1pt;">
<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms";">This was the nature of my horsemanship
journey for the past 14 years. It involved a lot of people telling me,
"It's about the journey--not the destination," and me trying really
hard not to be dispirited by the fact that there were a lot more monsters in my
future and that I would spend the rest of my life, apparently, sailing into the
wind. Happily, I guess, digging deep is my most fundamental, my most
unfaltering skill. And boy did I get to use it a lot.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .1pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: .1pt;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .1pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: .1pt;">
<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms";">But all of that changed when I met <a href="http://www.markrashid.com/">Mark Rashid</a>. Suddenly I realized, Hey! Vacations are journeys too. Why not let
horsemanship be *that* kind of journey?</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .1pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: .1pt;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .1pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: .1pt;">
<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms";">There's the same flash of new understanding
on vacations, the same exhiliration of adventuring in unknown lands, but the
difference is that we don't have to constantly remind ourselves that it's
"about the journey" -- of course it's about the journey! That's the
whole freaking point! To enjoy the trip!</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .1pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: .1pt;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .1pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: .1pt;">
<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms";">With Mark, this is obvious, because studying
with Mark is exactly like being on vacation. I feel all the mental burdens that
I've placed on myself lighten. I move easily into the present moment and
delight in being there. I feel how simple things can be when I just let them
be. I pay attention to how I feel, and I do a lot more of what feels good.
Things become easier, simpler, truer, and more clear. I go to sleep thinking
about the amazingly cool vistas that opened up before me that day, and I wake
up keen to experience more. </span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .1pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: .1pt;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .1pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: .1pt;">
<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms";">And the monsters and the winds? Funny how
those things pretty much disappear when you're on vacation . . .</span><br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi9hz80M1fruN-JJzM95_nz-mbcQZNtt6JWgCfyXyLPETKA93u6X8FvNDQJhTAR2mdBaWL8r8CKHVGpeP5wtkw3KuDv5SZYyUeNJPsncmTS5KJDwtIh611G6IDr3Dj224wMuOY0AE3uyquK/s1600/vacation3.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="239" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi9hz80M1fruN-JJzM95_nz-mbcQZNtt6JWgCfyXyLPETKA93u6X8FvNDQJhTAR2mdBaWL8r8CKHVGpeP5wtkw3KuDv5SZYyUeNJPsncmTS5KJDwtIh611G6IDr3Dj224wMuOY0AE3uyquK/s320/vacation3.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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Marian the Contrarianhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17692753447558233510noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4258372110123330473.post-64535733100324514812015-07-07T11:34:00.000-07:002016-03-02T15:15:32.106-08:00Just Breathe
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<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS";">One thing I've become really aware of since
studying with Mark in February is how much I hold my breath (which is to say,
how much I'm either not breathing or breathing very shallowly in the top of my
chest). Basically, most of us walk around in a semi-adrenaline state all the
time because of this tendency. Here are the reasons I can think of that we tend
to hold our breath:</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .1pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: .1pt;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .1pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: .1pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS";">--We are actually fearful or on adrenaline.
Sometimes we really are in a scary situation that demands action, though at *least*
80% of the time, I'd say, these fears are imagined responses to all the scary
stuff we see in the news and in the movies and to our general culture of fear
that tells us every day all the many different ways we might die.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .1pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: .1pt;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .1pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: .1pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS";">--We are waiting for something. The original
"holding your breath" phrase derives from the tendency to hold our
breath whenever we're waiting for something to happen. This can be on a large
scale, as in, "I'll relax when the semester's over, I've finished this
project, etc. etc." or it can be on a tiny scale. I learned that we
actually hold our breath when we take a bite of food because we're waiting to
taste it and chew it. Since then, I've caught myself holding my breath while
I'm waiting to start the car, say, once I have the idea that I'm going to do
it. This goes beyond just living in the future in our minds: we are literally
waiting to live (i.e., breathe) in the future.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .1pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: .1pt;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .1pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: .1pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS";">--We are concentrating on something. Try
learning a new physical skill, for instance, without holding your breath.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .1pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: .1pt;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .1pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: .1pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS";">--We are braced against something, either
physically or mentally, or, more likely, both. If there is something that we
don't like or don't want to happen, we tend to clench up against it, which
naturally restricts our breathing. So we’re getting less oxygen *and* a bunch
of tight muscles.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .1pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: .1pt;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .1pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: .1pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS";">It's gonna take awhile to change this habit,
but I think it will be a huge piece of both getting more grounded/centered and
actually being able to perform better, not to mention live more calmly, happily,
and healthily. I'm starting just with awareness and reminding myself to breathe
in a way that expands my lower rib cage in all directions and also to breathe
out fully. (Mark: "Some of us have some breath left in there that we've
been carrying around since 1967. I mean, that was a good year, but . . .
") Anyone who wants to chip in further suggestions, feel free!</span></div>
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Marian the Contrarianhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17692753447558233510noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4258372110123330473.post-14706307869502134372015-07-03T11:49:00.000-07:002016-03-04T09:10:52.040-08:00The Limits of Strength<style>
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<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms";">"In muscle there's strength, but in softness there's power." — Mark Rashid</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms";">You learn through aikido that strength is
based in muscle, which means that you are only as strong as your muscles. But
power comes from energy and transcends your physical strength. If you are using
power rather than strength, advantages of size and weight are nullified.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .1pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: .1pt;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .1pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: .1pt;">
<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms";">The key here is softness because energy can
only move through you when you are soft. When you are using your muscles with
tension (which is what most of us do most of the time), you are actually
blocking your energy and so reducing your overall ability to be effective. (Not
to mention doing things in a way that is hard on your body.)</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .1pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: .1pt;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .1pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: .1pt;">
<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms";">Another advantage of using energy instead of
strength is that it eliminates resistance in others. If you are tense/braced,
then others brace in response. (And rightly so because that’s when you’re
likely to hurt them.) But if you are soft, they soften.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .1pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: .1pt;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .1pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: .1pt;">
<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms";">The difference became very clear to me in
the dojo. When my partner used physical strength only, it had a completely
different feel than when he used softness. Both moves resulted in my arm being
twisted behind my back and the rest of me lowered to the floor, and both were
effective in disabling me. But one felt good and one felt like something was
about to break me. If you're going to achieve your goal--in this case to protect yourself--either way, why not pick the route that feels good to others? Aren’t
they more likely to take a better perspective on things if they’re feeling
better? </span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .1pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: .1pt;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .1pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: .1pt;">
<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms";">And obviously when we’re talking about
horses we are only working against ourselves when we use strength instead of energy.
A horse is stronger than we can ever dream of being. We get away with what we
do in part because of leverage, but that only works up to a point. Mainly we get away with it because horses are beings looking for connection rather
than a fight. I think a nice way to repay them for this is to stop fighting on
our end and instead offer them a connection that feels good.</span></div>
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Marian the Contrarianhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17692753447558233510noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4258372110123330473.post-22731439032728807462015-06-28T11:23:00.000-07:002016-03-02T15:13:30.088-08:00Not a Problem
<style>
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<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS"; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">Auditor: "But
there's a right way and a wrong way." </span><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS";"></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .1pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: .1pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS"; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">Mark: "No,
there's a right way and a *long* way."</span><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS";"></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .1pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: .1pt;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .1pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: .1pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS"; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">One of the most
refreshing things about Mark Rashid is that he doesn’t see problems. He sees
how he would like things to be inside him and inside the horse and between the
two of them, and then he does what he needs to do to communicate that to the
horse. He doesn’t get lost in what the horse is doing. </span><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS";"></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .1pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: .1pt;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .1pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: .1pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS"; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">Of course he’s
aware of what the horse is doing, but that isn’t his focus, and he doesn’t see
it—whatever it is—as a problem. Nor does he go to analyzing it or
troubleshooting it. He just calmly stays with what he’s asking the horse to do.
If the horse needs him to do something different, he will, but it won’t be a
big deal.</span><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS";"></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .1pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: .1pt;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .1pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: .1pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS"; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">Lots of people
talk about looking for solutions instead of looking at problems, but Mark lives
it. His mindset and the very words he chooses just don’t admit problems. </span><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS";"></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .1pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: .1pt;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .1pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: .1pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS"; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">I will always have
in my memory an image of Mark at a demo with a fairly substantial person
holding onto his wrist and putting their entire effort and strength into
holding Mark in one spot. Mark, however, was calmly walking around where he
wanted while the person who was holding him strained and twisted and wound up off
balance and in a mess. </span><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS";"></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .1pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: .1pt;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .1pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: .1pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS"; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">Mark first
explained and demonstrated that, when he thought about the fact that another
person had his wrist, he literally couldn’t go anywhere. However, when he
remembered that he had control of all the rest of his body and focused on that,
he could move easily. </span><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS";"></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .1pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: .1pt;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .1pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: .1pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS"; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">It was more than a
mental trick. When our minds identify a problem, two things happen. First, in
thinking of something as a problem, we tend to brace, which usually just makes
us part of the problem. Second, when we focus on a problem, our minds go to
where the problem is. When this happens, we have lost our center and therefore
our ability to shape what happens next. We are off balance both emotionally and
physically.</span><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS";"></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .1pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: .1pt;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .1pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: .1pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS"; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">When we come back
to our center, we are at our ground zero for both making decisions and moving
our bodies, and we have, at that point, a lot of options.</span><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS";"></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .1pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: .1pt;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .1pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: .1pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS"; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">Studying with Mark
has made me realize how often my mind is out, not just finding problems, but
hanging out with them, developing a nice cozy relationship with them, and
quickly forgetting that there is any part of the world that is not a problem.
If my horse does something—anything—that I didn’t ask for, my mind immediately
lights up with, “Ooo, a problem!” And so derailment begins.</span><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS";"></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .1pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: .1pt;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .1pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: .1pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS"; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">Obviously the
first key here is that I am finding the behavior problematic. Labeling it a
problem means that I am braced against it. I have also lost, not only my
center, but my connection with my horse because my mind has disengaged with him
in order to engage with the “problem.”</span><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS";"></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .1pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: .1pt;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .1pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: .1pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS"; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">The second part of
the deal is that, once my focus goes to the “problem,” that leaves exactly
nobody focusing on the original plan. So we started out with my having one idea
and the horse maybe having a different one, but now that I’m focusing on what
he’s doing, then we're both having the horse's idea instead. And he wasn't
necessarily all that married to his idea, but now that I'm over there in it
with him, where else are we likely to go? </span><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS";"></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .1pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: .1pt;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .1pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: .1pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS"; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">Here’s an example
of what that looks like: I was working with a horse named Sebastian doing
transitions from inside of me using just a change of energy. Sebastian would
generally shift his energy in response to mine, but not always to the point of
changing gait. So I would change my energy from, say, trot to walk, and
Sebastian would change his noticeably but still be in the trot. At this point I
tended to focus on the fact that he was still in the trot, which meant that my
brain was where? On trotting. Which meant that we stayed doing what? Trotting.
Mark explained that the key was for me not to get distracted by what Sebastian
was doing but keep my idea and energy at the walk until he found it. </span><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS";"></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .1pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: .1pt;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .1pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: .1pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS"; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">Once again, as
always, this stuff applies way beyond horsemanship. Show of hands: how many
people spend the majority of their time seeing and solving problems? (Those of
us who are particularly advanced in this field have even been known to *create*
problems from time to time.) What would life be like if, instead of letting our
attention get sucked into the problems, we calmly carried on with a positive,
happy focus on what we originally intended to do?</span><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS";"></span></div>
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<br /></div>
Marian the Contrarianhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17692753447558233510noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4258372110123330473.post-11967159152208676682015-06-27T11:16:00.000-07:002016-03-02T19:08:12.833-08:00Feel It, Baby!<style>
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<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms"; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">As I might have
mentioned in my <a href="http://twocontrarians.blogspot.com/2015/02/the-remarkable-mark-rashid.html">last
post</a>, basically what Mark teaches is how to live through feel rather than
the mind. We all did this as kids, but then we started analyzing and looking
for results instead of experiencing and, well, feeling. </span><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms";"></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .1pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: .1pt;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .1pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: .1pt;">
<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms"; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">I'm not talking
about being in touch with your emotions here, though I'm sure that helps; I'm
talking about having awareness and intentionality about what's going on in your
body, what it takes to move your body, how you change your energy to do
different things, etc., and then having awareness about those same things in
the horse. </span><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms";"></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .1pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: .1pt;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .1pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: .1pt;">
<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms"; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">So much of the
horsemanship out there is physical application of an external technique learned
through the mind. It is mechanical in nature. And Mark will be the first to say
that there's nothing wrong with that: technique, mechanics, and knowledge are
important things. </span><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms";"></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .1pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: .1pt;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .1pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: .1pt;">
<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms"; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">But horses
themselves don't operate like that. They are feeling creatures. They don't
analyze; they just act and react. You're not going to be truly in harmony with
them if you're using your mind instead of your feel. For one thing, you're
always going to be at least a second or two late in everything you do. (And if
you're an academic by training, you can add several more seconds if not some
minutes onto that.) </span><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms";"></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .1pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: .1pt;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .1pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: .1pt;">
<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms"; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">This weekend I'm
learning to let the inside of me talk to the inside of the horse and vice
versa. We're having a conversation entirely through what we feel happening
inside each other. Which sounds mystical, but it isn't: it's what happens if
you pay attention to what's going on in the parts of you that aren't your
brain. It's what happens if you stop analyzing and judging what your horse is
doing and just feel what he's doing.</span><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms";"></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .1pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: .1pt;">
<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms"; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">As it turns out,
it feels pretty darn good to feel. And it feels even better if you have a horse
under you to feel with. And at that point you don't have to think about being
happy either, because that's just the way you feel when you feel.</span><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms";"></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
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Marian the Contrarianhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17692753447558233510noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4258372110123330473.post-32202007747756899702015-02-27T20:29:00.001-08:002016-03-04T09:16:34.363-08:00Following a Feel: The Remarkable Mark Rashid<style>
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</style><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; font-size: small;">If you were to draw a line at the point in this blog that
symbolized my most major horsemanship shift, this would be the place to draw
it: right at my first clinic with Mark Rashid.</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; font-size: small;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; font-size: small;">I’ve been reading and loving Mark’s books for years, and
last year it suddenly occurred to me: I could study with him. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; font-size: small;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; font-size: small;">So I did. <span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; font-size: small;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; font-size: small;">And wow.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; font-size: small;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; font-size: small;">There have been a lot of wow moments in my history with
Lupin. In fact, my mind is kinda blown by the amount that I have been privileged to
learn and grow with him over the years, and by all the amazing teachers we’ve
had. But studying with Mark has been the Wowest of the Wows. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; font-size: small;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; font-size: small;">It’s not that Mark is some fancy hotshot who does
jaw-dropping things with his horses. In fact he’s quite the opposite: he’s
understated and quiet. And it’s not that he says so much that is so radically
different from what other horsemen say, though certainly he does say a lot of
fascinating things I haven’t heard before. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; font-size: small;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; font-size: small;">In fact, in a lot of fundamental ways his approach is very
compatible with that of others in terms of its content. But the feel that’s
behind it is, well—did I say this already?—wow. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; font-size: small;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; font-size: small;">Feel is a challenging thing to convey through words. It’s
not designed to be talked about, but to be felt. But since words are what I’ve
got, I’ll give it a go, and I’ll start with the feel coming from Mark that I
experienced myself.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; font-size: small;"><br /></span></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">*<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>*<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>*</span></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; font-size: small;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; font-size: small;">I actually met Mark for the first time at a demo he gave
last year while I was in Florida. I was in the middle of my
Horsenality/ Humanality course when I learned that Mark was just down the road.
All I could make it to was the demo, but that was enough. That was all it took
to make me absolutely determined to study with Mark. Here’s why:</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; font-size: small;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; font-size: small;">Mark uses his demos to talk about the principles of the
martial art of aikido—principles that he incorporates into his horsemanship. He
gets auditors up and participating in pairs or groups, and he has us do
exercises that are literally hands-on: he asks us, for example, to try to move
someone by pushing them, and then to try again by starting, not with the idea
of moving the other person, but with the idea that “we” are going to move. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; font-size: small;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; font-size: small;">It’s hard to believe without feeling it what a difference
this makes. It puts your center of gravity and focus and everything else back
in the center of you, and it dismantles the tendency to look at things (like
other people and horses) as obstacles and problems. Indeed, it completely
rewires our tendency to focus on what’s “wrong” and gets us to envision instead the
positive outcome that we’re looking for. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; font-size: small;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; font-size: small;">This sounds like semantics, but it isn’t. And it isn’t just
psychology either. It’s also physiology. You soften and relax, not only because
you’re centered in yourself, but also because you’re no longer in a “me vs.
them” mentality; instead, you’re doing things together with others. The brace
in you melts, and that feeling travels through your hands into the other
person, and even to the person beyond them if there’s a third, starting a chain
reaction of irresistible relaxation. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; font-size: small;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; font-size: small;">When you’re on the receiving end of this process, the
surprise is no longer how easy it suddenly becomes to initiate movement in
others; the surprise is the sense of internal ease and happiness that floods
through you out of the blue, leaving you smiling and a little stunned at how
good it feels just to relax and go with.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; font-size: small;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; font-size: small;">And if you’re lucky enough to get to do a few exercises like
this with Mark one-on-one, you will know that this is not just profound
awesomeness, but game-changing, world-changing awesomeness. And I don’t just
mean with horses.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; font-size: small;"><br /></span></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">*<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>*<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>*</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; font-size: small;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; font-size: small;">My desire to learn as much as I could about this
awesomeness led me back to the same clinic this year, this time with
Lupin. I didn’t need the opening demo to get me fired up about being there, but
it was fantastic all the same. </span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; font-size: small;">Mark explained that when aikido works, you have
a positive impact on the other person, even if they have an aggressive intention
toward you. Your internal softness changes their outlook and intention, even as
you send them tumbling to the mat (which, however, will feel good to them if
you are doing aikido with real softness). </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; font-size: small;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; font-size: small;">“How do you change the inside of you,” Mark asked, “so that
you can affect your partner in a positive way?”</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; font-size: small;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; font-size: small;">I got the answer during one of my lessons with Mark when he demonstrated feel on a rope to me.
Holding the other end of the rope, he showed me how it feels when you lead with
hardness (usually unconscious hardness that we might even think feels fairly
soft), and then he showed me how it feels when you have the internal softness
that comes from relaxation.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; font-size: small;"> </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi8wCxdmZsLr_oGC2y4RA0mqX-oR5uAQRA_Tx7y7egsFbLOlmog0VxRihtHXcUfslNuGtgQD0UivylQ46OSUARCG7UfTy1aGFPh125CRDFGBRGpcYAZzgQYPVDGzhaLmcS7NlD2ve4BGpO1/s1600/soft.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi8wCxdmZsLr_oGC2y4RA0mqX-oR5uAQRA_Tx7y7egsFbLOlmog0VxRihtHXcUfslNuGtgQD0UivylQ46OSUARCG7UfTy1aGFPh125CRDFGBRGpcYAZzgQYPVDGzhaLmcS7NlD2ve4BGpO1/s1600/soft.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr align="right"><td class="tr-caption"><span style="font-size: xx-small;">photo courtesy of Jeane DeVries</span></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; font-size: small;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; font-size: small;">One moment I was standing there with my hand braced on a
taut rope; the next moment, without any external change on Mark’s part or any movement
of the rope, I felt my entire insides relax and I involuntarily let out a deep
sigh. How do you change the inside of you so that you can affect your partner
in a positive way? You soften inside, and you communicate that softness through feel, thereby creating softness in them. Amazing. And so beyond
any concept of a “soft feel” that I’d ever even thought of, let alone
experienced. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; font-size: small;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; font-size: small;">We’re not talking lightness here. We’re talking about a
profound feeling of peace. <i>That</i> is the essence of softness. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; font-size: small;"><br /></span></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">*<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>*<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>*</span></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; font-size: small;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; font-size: small;">Mark communicated this same sensation to me on the day of my
first lesson in a different way. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; font-size: small;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; font-size: small;">I felt more at ease at the prospect of studying with Mark
than I have with any other new instructor. I trusted him implicitly and knew
with certainty that it would be a hugely positive experience before I ever even
showed up with my horse. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; font-size: small;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; font-size: small;">Nonetheless, I still had a bit of the “first day of
something new” jitters. We started out by chatting a bit about what I wanted to
work on, and in doing so we touched on a topic that I have developed something
of an emotional charge about: leadership. Decades of going back and forth
between trying to do things peacefully and having others tell me that I’m not
being assertive enough have wreaked some havoc in my brain around this topic
and made me incredibly self-conscious about any apparent lack of “leadership”
with my horse. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; font-size: small;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; font-size: small;">I could go on and on, which is, in fact, what my brain began
doing as I talked to Mark. Though I was doing my best (and succeeding decently
well) at keeping it together, I have no doubt that Mark could tell I was in a
heightened emotional state. What he did about it was really impressive, and it
was this: he did nothing. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; font-size: small;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; font-size: small;">Actually, that’s not true. I’ve been in that same scenario
with other people who did nothing—people who, like Mark, just continued calmly
talking with me until I settled back down and then carried on. But Mark did
something more than that. I can’t tell you exactly how he did it, and I didn’t
realize until later on that he <i>had</i> done it. It wasn’t just that he stayed calm.
It was that he held a center of calmness that he waited for me to find, and
when I did, I was at peace again. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; font-size: small;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; font-size: small;">It was the feeling of peace that let me
know that Mark was doing something different. In that same scenario with other
people the external trajectory would look the same, but as I got back to
whatever we were working on, I wouldn’t return to it with a sense of
peace. I would still be right on the verge of getting emotional again the next time I
felt challenged. I might finally earn some hard-won peace by having a
breakthrough with my horse or reaching a new understanding, but I would be
exhausted by the process.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; font-size: small;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; font-size: small;">With Mark I felt just the opposite: I felt lighter and more
peaceful with each lesson. There was no feeling of the weight of great learning at the end of the lessons—just a sense that something had shifted. But it wasn’t a
shift I needed to analyze or work to keep. It was just a shift I needed to feel
and continue to allow to happen. I have never felt less exhausted at the end of
a clinic. In fact, I felt good.</span><br />
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEimV2kq2zCzYlKQlU5fhyphenhyphenwpwyHxFZI0cvd9BpMGMBgiGwePGAP8fAi526YXE-460azFsHG3N2-fGtFXTnyppq8m4VFC9HfzJmMU8ERMqpr0-wtOKplUN2l73ET4OvwL_xPrGqgU8rPvjs9z/s1600/lupeandme.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="214" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEimV2kq2zCzYlKQlU5fhyphenhyphenwpwyHxFZI0cvd9BpMGMBgiGwePGAP8fAi526YXE-460azFsHG3N2-fGtFXTnyppq8m4VFC9HfzJmMU8ERMqpr0-wtOKplUN2l73ET4OvwL_xPrGqgU8rPvjs9z/s1600/lupeandme.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr align="right"><td class="tr-caption"><span style="font-size: xx-small;">photo courtesy of Bo Reich</span></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br />
<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; font-size: small;">That’s not to say that I moved into a zen bliss trance where
nothing could bother me. Periodically another emotionally charged subject came
up—our lack of motivation/impulsion. But again, this was charged for me because
of my past experiences and perceptions, not because of Mark. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; font-size: small;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; font-size: small;">Indeed, it was Mark’s calm presence that gave me the space
and tranquility to realize just how charged I had allowed the issue to become
for me. Because my lessons with Mark were predominately peaceful spaces of finding
a new kind of feel rather than chaotic spaces of processing information and
trying to perform well, I could more easily recognize the baggage that I was
carrying around when it showed up. And I could more easily let it go and move back to a peaceful state myself.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; font-size: small;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; font-size: small;">I imagine that this is also how horses feel around Mark.
They may have histories that have created some emotional baggage for them, but
when they get in that emotional space, Mark doesn’t make a big deal of it, or get them busy, or do a bunch of things to “fix”
them. He just keeps his own calm, peaceful center and lets them find it. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; font-size: small;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; font-size: small;">It’s a remarkable thing to experience. And what is more
remarkable is that Mark can teach it. Am I going to find every opportunity I
can to learn it from him? You bet!</span><br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; font-size: small;">*Note*: To clarify, Mark is not a Parelli instructor. He does his own thing, and he writes delightful books about it. You can find all of them <a href="http://www.markrashid.com/for-sale/books-j2-product-list">here</a>. I have yet to read anything by him that wasn't fascinating and enjoyable, but if you're interested in the topic of this blog post, his newest book <i>A Journey to Softness</i> will blow your mind—in a calm, understated, and subtle way, of course! </span></div>
Marian the Contrarianhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17692753447558233510noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4258372110123330473.post-43396091565030686672014-08-06T12:48:00.000-07:002015-02-26T12:59:49.581-08:00Comfort & discomfort<style>
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<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; font-size: small;">I just attended an amazing clinic on emotional fitness with
<a href="http://linda.parellinaturalhorsetraining.com/">Linda Parelli</a> and <a href="http://www.jennyrsusser.com/">Jenny Susser</a>. Comfort and discomfort were definitely central
themes as Jenny taught us to embrace discomfort in ourselves as an opportunity
for growth and as Linda talked about how to help our horses find comfort. But that’s
not why I’ve titled this entry “Comfort & Discomfort.”</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; font-size: small;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; font-size: small;">Instead, today I want to muse on a very
specific comment that Linda made. She was talking about how the heart of
horsemanship lies in figuring out what your horse needs, and about looking for
ways to help him be calm, connected, and responsive. At one point she added quite
intriguingly that the comfort/discomfort model is, by current standards, “caveman
horsemanship.” </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; font-size: small;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; font-size: small;">She was referring primarily to the way that, for instance,
in the past Pat would work on trailer loading a horse by making the area outside of the
trailer uncomfortable (via movement, noise, pressure, etc.) so that the horse
started hunting the inside of trailer as the place where all of that pressure
was removed. Now, however, Linda said Pat will instead think about what that
individual horse needs in order to be able to get on the trailer.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; font-size: small;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; font-size: small;">Most people who practice or teach natural horsemanship are
familiar with the idea of making the desirable behavior easy (or comfortable) and
the undesirable behavior difficult (or uncomfortable). Just this morning in my
news feed I found this quote from Buck Brannaman: “<span class="usercontent">As a
rider, you must slowly & methodically show your horse what is appropriate.
You also have to discourage what is inappropriate, not by making the
inappropriate impossible, but by making it difficult so that the horse himself
chooses appropriate behavior. You can't choose it for him; you can only make it
difficult for him to make the wrong choices.” </span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; font-size: small;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; font-size: small;">As Buck implies here, the appealing idea behind the comfort/discomfort model is
that you don’t take away the horse’s ability to choose; instead, you guide him
toward making “better” choices. Or, in Pat’s terms, you “cause” your horse to
want to do something rather than “make” him do it. In an ideal scenario, then,
you are empowering your horse while simultaneously getting the result you are
looking for. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; font-size: small;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; font-size: small;">This is, undeniably, a step above just making your horse do
what you want without caring whether he is on board with your plan or not. On
reflection, however, it does seem that the horse must feel as if he is simply being
channeled between banks of discomfort when he’s with his human. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; font-size: small;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; font-size: small;">For example, say that we want our horse to go in a straight
line. When he’s on the line, we leave him alone. When he goes off it, we get
busy with our aides (rein, leg, stick, what have you). Again, this is a step up
from just micro-managing the whole time because there is a reward (being left
alone) when he’s doing what we want. But it seems to me that the horse’s main
perception would be that, when he’s with his human, there’s a lot of discomfort
that he has to find his way to avoiding. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; font-size: small;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; font-size: small;">What’s good is that we have provided a way for him to do
this—it is no longer a lose-lose situation for the horse as it is when the human continues to pressure the horse even when he's on focus. But nonetheless, it seems like the best deal the human is
offering is a cessation of discomfort. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; font-size: small;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; font-size: small;">Now, many people agree that this is pretty dang motivating
for horses. While other species, like dogs, are motivated by praise, horses
really are motivated simply by being left alone. But they have that already when the
human isn’t there. So what are we adding, then, that will cause them to really
want to be with us? Just a lack of being an asshole means that they’ll like us
okay, but as Linda said, we want our horses to be passionate about being with
us—to love being with us. What would inspire them to feel <i>that</i> way?</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; font-size: small;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; font-size: small;">I’m thinking today that the real limitation of the
comfort/discomfort model is that, traditionally, our focus has been much more on
the discomfort side. Sure, we are careful to offer, in Buck Brannaman’s terms,
“the good deal”—which is to say that we start with just our focus and an invitation
for the horse to follow it. But most of our effort and attention then goes into
creating the appropriate level of discomfort to inspire our horse to accept
that good deal. Hence, we focus on a line for the horse to follow, then pick up
the rein, stick, etc., then tap with a rope, stick, etc., then tap harder,
etc., until the horse finds our focus and we quit. Most of the process has to
do with discomfort.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; font-size: small;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; font-size: small;">What if, instead, we put more of our effort and intention
into the comfort side? What if we made that focus delicious for the horse to
follow by being positive and enthusiastic about it ourselves? What if we worked
on tuning all of the static out of our focus by having a clear idea and not
getting sucked into distractions so that it’s easy for the horse to see it? What
if we softened our focus by asking with relaxation and mental lightness rather than determination and direct-line thinking? What if we
envisioned the good feeling of harmony with our horse and invited them to join
us out of <i>that </i>space?
What if we asked our horses, “Can you do this with me?” instead of “Can you do
this?” What if, while asking our horse, we also radiated gratitude for all that
our horse has already done? </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; font-size: small;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; font-size: small;">I’m not suggesting that we focus exclusively on comfort, and
I don’t espouse the “positive reinforcement only” model of horsemanship; sometimes you need to apply some form of pressure. But I
think we’ve let our obsession with how and when and how much to apply pressure and when to
stop applying pressure hijack the other side of the equation. I think there’s a
space for positivity, not only in our release, reward, and gratitude when the
horse does the right thing, but in the way we ask in the first place. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; font-size: small;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; font-size: small;">If we put half or more of our attention on envisioning the
different kinds of comfort our horses need, then we’ve begun to balance the
equation. What does comfort mean to your horse? Is it really just a lack of
pressure? Or is it having a companion who speaks his language, understands his
needs, seeks to create harmony, and helps him feel better mentally,
emotionally, and physically? And how can we help our
horses with all of these things? </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; font-size: small;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; font-size: small;">These are the kinds of questions that, I think, will bring
the comfort/discomfort model from a “caveman” level to a level that is present,
immediate, and highly relevant to our larger horsemanship goal, not of
getting our horse to do—or even to want to do—what we want, but of getting
truly in harmony with our horse.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; font-size: small;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; font-size: small;">First, I’d like to give a big thank you to
<a href="http://www.markrashid.com/">Mark Rashid</a>, who has done a lot of thinking, writing, and teaching about
softness and harmony with horses. (See, for example, Mark’s excellent new
blog: <a href="http://consideringthehorse.wordpress.com/">Considering the Horse</a>). </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; font-size: small;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; font-size: small;">Second, I am excited that Parelli seems to be evolving in
the direction of really emphasizing the comfort side of the equation and all of
the things we can do to be positive presences in our horses’ lives. That
element has always been in Parelli—in fact, “putting the relationship first”
is, as any Parelli student knows, a central tenet of Parelli. But it’s a
concept that needs a lot of fleshing out for people to be able to practice it
successfully.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; font-size: small;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; font-size: small;">The good news is that, based on the things Linda and Jenny talked about this weekend, I believe the methods for doing so are
about to come much more into the foreground, and I can’t wait! </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; font-size: small;"><br /></span></div>
Marian the Contrarianhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17692753447558233510noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4258372110123330473.post-46070914058592596852014-07-24T19:36:00.000-07:002014-08-12T08:19:20.849-07:00Horsenality/Humanality course notes (part 3): Horsenality & Strategy<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; font-size: small;">For the horsenalities, one really instructive thing that Linda did
was to show videos of the different horsenalities having, ah, challenging
moments. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; font-size: small;">The LBE was having a grand time: he was standing up on his
back feet practically dancing whenever his human approached, and you could tell it was
all a big game to him. The LBI would plant his front feet and buck with his back end and land actually
going backwards whenever the rider asked him forwards (you could just here him
saying, “Shan’t!”). The RBE was
identical to Linda’s drawing of RBE’s on wheels (with the rider at about a 45
degree angle to the ground as she got left behind), and the RBI was, as Linda
hardly needed to note, by far the scariest of all: he was all over the place,
explosive, and completely unpredictable.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; font-size: small;">Here’s an overview of what each type tends to do when
they’re pushed, upset, or, as Patrick would put it, triggered—and what each one
needs in that situation:</span></div>
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; font-size: small;">
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">
</span><br />
<table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="MsoTableGrid" style="border-collapse: collapse; mso-padding-alt: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-yfti-tbllook: 191;">
<tbody>
<tr style="mso-yfti-firstrow: yes; mso-yfti-irow: 0;">
<td style="padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: 221.4pt;" valign="top" width="221"><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; mso-background-themecolor: background1; text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="background: none repeat scroll 0% 0% white; text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: x-large;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"><b>LBE</b></span></span></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; mso-background-themecolor: background1; text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; mso-background-themecolor: background1; text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">go UP</span></span></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; mso-background-themecolor: background1; text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"><u><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;"><span style="text-decoration: none;"><br /></span></span></u></span></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="background: none repeat scroll 0% 0% white; text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">needs: play</span></span></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; mso-background-themecolor: background1; text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
</td>
<td style="padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: 221.4pt;" valign="top" width="221"><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; mso-background-themecolor: background1; text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="background: none repeat scroll 0% 0% white; text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: x-large;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"><b>RBE</b></span></span></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; mso-background-themecolor: background1; text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; mso-background-themecolor: background1; text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">go<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>FORWARD</span></span></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; mso-background-themecolor: background1; text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="background: none repeat scroll 0% 0% white; text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">needs: focus</span></span></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; mso-background-themecolor: background1; text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
</td>
</tr>
<tr style="mso-yfti-irow: 1; mso-yfti-lastrow: yes;">
<td style="padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: 221.4pt;" valign="top" width="221"><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; mso-background-themecolor: background1; text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="background: none repeat scroll 0% 0% white; text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: x-large;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"><b>LBI</b></span></span></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; mso-background-themecolor: background1; text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; mso-background-themecolor: background1; text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">WON’T move</span></span></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; mso-background-themecolor: background1; text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="background: none repeat scroll 0% 0% white; text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">needs: a reason</span></span></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; mso-background-themecolor: background1; text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
</td>
<td style="padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: 221.4pt;" valign="top" width="221"><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; mso-background-themecolor: background1; text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="background: none repeat scroll 0% 0% white; text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: x-large;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"><b>RBI</b></span></span></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; mso-background-themecolor: background1; text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; mso-background-themecolor: background1; text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">CAN’T move</span></span></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; mso-background-themecolor: background1; text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="background: none repeat scroll 0% 0% white; text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">needs: gentleness</span></span></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; mso-background-themecolor: background1; text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
</td>
</tr>
</tbody></table>
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; font-size: small;">Linda also explained the idea of spirit—as in, horsenality
is determined by innate characteristics, learned behavior, environment, and
spirit. While the first three are pretty self-explanatory, I’ve always been
unclear on spirit. For instance, it can be a bit confusing to think of what a
high-spirited introvert would look like.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; font-size: small;">But Linda clarified that spirit is, essentially, an
amplifier—or a volume control—on a given horsenality’s traits. So whatever the
behavior is, the higher the spirit level = the more effort the horse will put
into the behavior. A resisting LBI might lie down if he’s got a high spirit
level, but depending on what he’s doing, he might also move his feet a lot.
However, the movement will be in the service of being a more extreme LBI—which
is to say, pursuing his own ideas and resisting yours. (This is why
to be successful with LBI’s, you have to make it their idea, because that is
when they are motivated to move.)</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; font-size: small;">Ideally, we learn to harmonize with our horses so that they
don’t need to exhibit extreme behaviors, just as we try to communicate with
other people in a way that doesn’t trigger them into being reactive. In
addition to outlining the needs of the individual horsenalities (which I’ll
discuss below), Linda gave two general pieces of advice about our own attitude that
will help with our ability to harmonize with any horse:</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; font-size: small;">(1) Before a session with your horse, visualize not so much what
you want to do with your horse, but more <i>how</i> you want to do it and how you want your horse to look/feel.
Primary goals are things like trust, responsiveness, confidence, relaxation,
and we should be looking to reward these things as much as, if not more than,
the specific movements we want from our horses.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; font-size: small;">(2) Warm-up is <i>not</i> training—it’s play time. <i>Really</i> don’t
be critical here; just let them go and let them express themselves however they
need to. The goal of a warm-up is to get them calm, confident, and responsive,
and if you correct them, they won’t get there. If you plan to teach something
new on the ground, that’s fine, but have a clear idea in your head about when
you’re warming up and when you’re teaching. Until they’re connected, you’re
still in warm-up, and zero brace is the concept you need here, as well as the
belief that the horse can do no wrong.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; font-size: small;">The other big thing you’re trying to do during warm-up is to
match your horse’s energy. The introvert/extrovert axis is more important here
than the right brain/left brain, and you identify this by looking at the energy
the horse is projecting. Is it inward, or outward? Where is his focus? Up and
around, or more internal? That’s the first big question you need to answer so
that you can harmonize with your horse.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; font-size: small;">After that, you can move on more to particulars. Here’s what
Linda said about each horsenality type:</span><br />
<br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; font-size: small;">LEFT BRAIN EXTROVERTS (i.e., Highland)</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; font-size: small;">Quite often, LBE’s aren’t the most dominant: they’re more
interested in playing than in dominating. But often they go into fight mode
with us because they are allergic to suppression. We tend to brace against them
because we’re trying to control them, and when we do this, they can fight for
hours. But it’s over in minutes if you don’t give them anything to fight/brace
against. You have to take a leap of faith and really believe that zero brace is
the key.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; font-size: small;">You also want to mentally engage/challenge LBE’s from the
start. You’re not trying to calm them down or control them: let them play!
However, this doesn’t have to be change, change, change; it’s more that when
you ask them to go, have them GO! Don’t be afraid of the bigness. You can use
this same attitude to embrace their ideas (“Yeah! That’s a great idea! You
should GO!”)</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; font-size: small;">Also, praise them a lot. LBE’s love to hear an enthusiastic
“Good boy!”</span><br />
<br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; font-size: small;">RIGHT BRAIN INTROVERTS (i.e., Hot Jazz)</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; font-size: small;">In an RBI, willingness is a measure of trust/confidence, and
hesitancy is the opposite (they may be going forward but they’re thinking
backwards because they’re not really confident enough to be going forward yet).</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; font-size: small;">RBI’s want to do the right thing and get stressed when they
don’t know how to. They don’t tend to play much, and they may not look at you
much either. Linda: “if he can’t look at me, that’s the worst time for me to
send him off.” RBI's</span><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; font-size: small;"> are often most
comfortable with you in Zone 3, 4, or 5, and sometimes that’s a better place
for you to rest with them than Z1.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; font-size: small;">But RBI’s generally want to be in physical proximity to you, and
doing things further away from you is hard for them.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; font-size: small;">With RBI’s you want to take it slowly, and the attitude of
“they can do no wrong” is crucial. Don’t be afraid to ask RBI’s to do things,
but do give them lots of time to process and build gradually. For example,
circles further away and at liberty are hardest for Jazz, so when Linda
started, she would let him come in whenever he wanted. As their training
progressed, she asked more and more for him to find relaxation (blowing out,
more rhythm, lower head, etc.) out on the circle and in movement. (During the demo my class watched, she asked him to keep trotting on the circle until he blew out, which
was a progression from letting him come down to the walk to blow out.)</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; font-size: small;">The biggest thing with an RBI is to wait until they’re able
to do what you’re asking to do rather than going up your phases. Trust takes
time, and particularly if you’ve got damaged goods, it’s a long road. Think
about how to make what you want a more comfortable thing for your RBI (for
example, if your RBI doesn’t want to go over poles, make the pole the comfort
place by doing more away from it and letting her rest by it).</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; font-size: small;">When you’ve asked your RBI to do something hard and
stressful, follow it up with something easy and relaxing, like Stick-to-me.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; font-size: small;">On a side note, Linda has followed Luis Lucio’s lead and
started using a heart monitor on her horses, particularly with Jazz. This gives
her an indication of what the horse’s stress level really is, since RBI’s will
try quite hard for humans even when they’re stressed. Linda rode Jazz around
further away from and then closer to his herd mates while calling out his heart
rate, and though he looked practically the same, the heart rate varied wildly
just at the walk. Luis waits for the heart rate to go below 70 before he does
anything, even walking.</span><br />
<br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; font-size: small;">LEFT BRAIN INTROVERTS (i.e., Na’avi)</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; font-size: small;">LBI’s are slow on the outside but very busy inside. We tend
to think it’s about getting the trot, canter, etc., but what it’s really about
is getting the mind: the higher gaits and the responsiveness will come when you
have the mind. In fact, as Linda put it, “LBI’s only look LBI’s when we’re
doing it wrong.”</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; font-size: small;">With LBI’s, we tend to get sucked into nagging; we often
start above phase 1 and stay around phase 2/3 for a long time, both of which
really annoy them (which means they go forward even less). Our goal with LBI’s
is to be soft and clear, and you always have to start soft yourself if you want
your horse to be soft. That’s true with all horses, but it’s particularly
important to remember with LBI’s, who often cause us to get forget it.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; font-size: small;">The worst thing you can do </span><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">is to try to prevent them from
getting slow or micromanage them. (Linda’s definition of micromanaging is, in
fact, preventing mistakes, because then you are also preventing them from
learning.)</span> The next worse thing </span><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"> you can do is push them when they slow down,
or get out ahead of them. </span>Don’t get into a fight: think in terms of allowing them to zig, and
then zagging them back—don’t resist the zig.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; font-size: small;">Break the cycle of nagging by staying true to the
progression of your aids. When riding, try not to use your leg. Start with your
seat, tap on the shoulder, and then do whatever motivates them (maybe this is
tickling them in the ear) and then release quickly. Then start again if you
need to. Don’t hang in there, nag, or try to control.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; font-size: small;">If you ask for a trot and they trot, stop them and make a
big fuss praising them (but don’t mess their mane all up rubbing them—you do
that with extroverts). Then repeat. Pretty soon they want to trot because they
get to stop. </span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; font-size: small;">Same concepts apply if they’re veering off course. Don’t
pull on the rein; instead, reset them quickly with the rein, then reward. Repeat as necessary. So rather than, “Gooooooooo theeeeeeeere,” it’s, “GO THERE! Good girl. GO THERE!
Good girl.”</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; font-size: small;">Your mantra with an LBI is, “Don’t get mad; get
even-tempered.”</span><br />
<br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; font-size: small;">RIGHT BRAIN EXTROVERTS</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; font-size: small;">We didn’t actually get to see Linda work with one of these.
As with LBE’s, however, you want to avoid saying ‘no’ to them and correcting
them a lot or trying to suppress them; instead, give them a direction in which
to expend their energy.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; font-size: small;">If they’re on adrenaline, ideally you want to be able to
encourage them to move around and burn it off: “you’d better go!” If you’re not
in an environment where that’s possible, use constant and snappy disengages and
changes of direction until the adrenaline’s gone.</span><br />
<br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; font-size: small;">At the end of the day, what’s true about each horsenality is
this: “Horsemanship has to be about the horse’s needs. The perfect horse is
there, right in front of you, and you’re either bringing out the best in them
or the worst in them.”</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; font-size: small;">I’ll close with a few audio clips of Linda and Patrick
reprising their delightful Savvy Summit roles as horses and humans of different –analities paired
together. The last video is of Linda speaking the part of a fellow student’s
LBI horse. When Urszula asked a question about her horse, Linda asked if she’d
like to come up and have a conversation with her horse (i.e., Linda). What
ensued was hilarious in the way that only Linda impersonating an LBI horse can
be. Enjoy!</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">(Video images once again courtesy of Becky Shewchuk.)</span></span></div>
Marian the Contrarianhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17692753447558233510noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4258372110123330473.post-46108143942565602042014-05-21T11:55:00.000-07:002014-05-21T12:46:52.515-07:00Horsenality/Humanality course notes (part 2): Triggers and reactions<style>
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</style> <span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS";">I spent most of the <a href="http://twocontrarians.blogspot.com/2014/03/horsenalityhumanality-course-notes-part.html">last post</a> talking about the different humanality types, and I think it's easy to see from the descriptions how each type has the potential to be both attractive and frustrating to others. In this post, I'm going to linger a bit on the frustrating part, because that's where we usually get all tripped up in our interactions with people and horses. </span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS";">One problem most of us have is that we allow ourselves to be triggered by others—often by others who are in different quadrants than our own. We don't understand or empathize with their priorities or modes of communication, and we take their behavior personally. </span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS";">As Patrick defines it, a trigger is something that sends you into an emotionally reactive place. You don't even process the trigger: you just immediately get defensive or upset, judge, blame, attack, retreat, shut down, etc. In this state, it's very hard to have meaningful communication or make good choices. But it's very easy to alienate and hurt others, and to make things worse for yourself.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS";">Some common triggers among humans:</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS";">—rolling eyes (read as lack of respect)</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS";">—walking away (read as rejection)</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS";">—staring/intense eye contact (read as creepy/predatory, or a power play)</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS";">—no eye contact/looking away (read as not caring)</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS";">—yelling or raising the voice (read as a sign of anger or emotional upset)</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS";">—finger-pointing (read as blaming)</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS";">—silence (read as coldness)</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS";">—smirking (read as mocking/laughing at the other person)</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS";">—blaming or saying "you're wrong" (read as a personal attack)</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS";">—putting words in your mouth (read as presumption or condescension)</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS";">—being left out (read as being intentionally excluded)</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS";">—not being acknowledged (read as dismissal) </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS";"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS";">The problem, as this list shows, is not so much with the action itself as with the meaning we place on it . . . and the assumption that the other person did it on purpose. </span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS";">Yet while many of these actions could be rudely intended, many of them would be easy for certain humanality types to fall into without meaning anything negative by it. An LBE might tell someone they're wrong in the process of trying to fix a problem without any thought that the person might feel hurt. An RBI might look away, not because they don't care, but because they can't handle the intensity of the connection. An LBI might be silent because they are thinking about what to say. And an RBE might roll their eyes out of sheer over-expressiveness.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS";">Understanding the behaviors of the different humanalities is a good starting place to help us avoid taking things personally in the first place. </span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS";">We can go a step further by becoming aware of the specific kinds of things that trigger us, so that we can begin to respond more consciously. If we also know the triggers
of others, we can become more effective in communicating with them and
working with them rather than against them. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS";"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS";">The following charts lay out some triggers and reactions that are typical for the different quadrants.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS"; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><u>Triggers
for each quadrant</u></span></div>
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<b><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS";">LBE</span></b></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS"; font-size: 9.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">Being
out of control.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS"; font-size: 9.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">Feeling
minimized or</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS"; font-size: 9.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">disrespected.</span></div>
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<b><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS";">RBE</span></b></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS"; font-size: 9.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">Feeling ignored,</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS"; font-size: 9.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">unheard, or left out.</span></div>
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<b><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS";">LBI</span></b></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS"; font-size: 9.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">Having
their system</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS"; font-size: 9.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">or
schedule messed up.</span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<br /></div>
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<b><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS";">RBI</span></b></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS"; font-size: 9.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">Not
having their needs</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS"; font-size: 9.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">understood
or cared about.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS"; font-size: 9.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">Being
pushed.</span></div>
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<u><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS"; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">Go-to techniques for each quadrant:</span></u></div>
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<u><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS"; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">what they
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<u><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS"; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">when under stress or dealing with
adversity</span></u></div>
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<b><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS";"> LBE</span></b></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS"; font-size: 9.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">Lead/Take
charge</span></div>
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<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: -18.9pt; tab-stops: 179.1pt; text-align: center;">
<b><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS";">RBE</span></b></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: -18.9pt; tab-stops: 179.1pt; text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS"; font-size: 9.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">Connect and</span></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: -18.9pt; tab-stops: 179.1pt; text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS"; font-size: 9.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">express themselves</span></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: -18.9pt; tab-stops: 179.1pt; text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: -18.9pt; tab-stops: 179.1pt; text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: 179.1pt;">
<br /></div>
</td>
</tr>
<tr style="height: 74.7pt; mso-yfti-irow: 2; mso-yfti-lastrow: yes;">
<td style="background: white; height: 74.7pt; mso-background-themecolor: background1; padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: 207.9pt;" valign="top" width="208"><div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<b><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS";">LBI</span></b></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS"; font-size: 9.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">Make
a system</span></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
</td>
<td style="background: white; height: 74.7pt; mso-background-themecolor: background1; padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: 2.75in;" valign="top" width="198"><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center; text-indent: -18.9pt;">
<b><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS";">RBI</span></b></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center; text-indent: -18.9pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS"; font-size: 9.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">Be
diplomatic</span></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center; text-indent: -18.9pt;">
<br /></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center; text-indent: -18.9pt;">
<br /></div>
</td>
</tr>
</tbody></table>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; mso-background-themecolor: background1;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; mso-background-themecolor: background1;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; mso-background-themecolor: background1;">
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS"; font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">
<style>
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<br />
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; mso-background-themecolor: background1;">
<br /></div>
<table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="MsoTableGrid" style="background: #76923C; border-collapse: collapse; mso-background-themecolor: accent3; mso-background-themeshade: 191; mso-padding-alt: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-yfti-tbllook: 191;">
<tbody>
<tr style="mso-yfti-firstrow: yes; mso-yfti-irow: 0;">
<td colspan="2" style="background: white; mso-background-themecolor: background1; padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: 405.9pt;" valign="top" width="406"><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: -18.9pt; tab-stops: 179.1pt; text-align: center;">
<u><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS"; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">What they do when that doesn’t work</span></u></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: -18.9pt; tab-stops: 179.1pt; text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
</td>
</tr>
<tr style="mso-yfti-irow: 1;">
<td style="background: white; mso-background-themecolor: background1; padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: 207.9pt;" valign="top" width="208"><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<b><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS";">LBE</span></b></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS"; font-size: 9.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">Fight!</span></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS";">(and
then fight harder—</span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS";">get
even louder and bigger)</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
</td>
<td style="background: white; mso-background-themecolor: background1; padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: 2.75in;" valign="top" width="198"><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: -18.9pt; tab-stops: 179.1pt; text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: -18.9pt; tab-stops: 179.1pt; text-align: center;">
<b><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS";">RBE</span></b></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: -18.9pt; tab-stops: 179.1pt; text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS"; font-size: 9.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">Flight!</span></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: -18.9pt; tab-stops: 179.1pt; text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: -18.9pt; text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS";">(for humans, it’s a flight </span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS";">into out-of-control emotion)</span></span></div>
</td>
</tr>
<tr style="height: 74.7pt; mso-yfti-irow: 2; mso-yfti-lastrow: yes;">
<td style="background: white; height: 74.7pt; mso-background-themecolor: background1; padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: 207.9pt;" valign="top" width="208"><div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<b><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS";">LBI</span></b></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS"; font-size: 9.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">Resist/Refuse</span></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS";">(become
even more </span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS";">attached
to doing it their way)</span></span></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
</td>
<td style="background: white; height: 74.7pt; mso-background-themecolor: background1; padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: 2.75in;" valign="top" width="198"><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center; text-indent: -18.9pt;">
<b><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS";">RBI</span></b></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center; text-indent: -18.9pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS"; font-size: 9.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">Freeze
or Leave</span></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center; text-indent: -18.9pt;">
<br /></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center; text-indent: -18.9pt;">
<span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS";"> (hide,
disengage, give up,</span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS";">back
off, avoid conflict) </span></span></div>
<span style="font-size: x-small;">
</span><br />
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center; text-indent: -18.9pt;">
<br /></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center; text-indent: -18.9pt;">
<br /></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center; text-indent: -18.9pt;">
<br /></div>
</td>
</tr>
</tbody></table>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; mso-background-themecolor: background1;">
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS"; font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">
<style>
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<br />
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">Under stress, we tend to over-use our strengths. When the pressure
continues to build as a result of the fact that we're being ineffective
with our go-to technique, then we often flip to the other side of the
chart. As Billy Joel would put it, sometimes we go to extremes: </span><br />
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; mso-background-themecolor: background1;">
<br /></div>
<table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="MsoTableGrid" style="background: #76923C; border-collapse: collapse; mso-background-themecolor: accent3; mso-background-themeshade: 191; mso-padding-alt: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-yfti-tbllook: 191;">
<tbody>
<tr style="mso-yfti-firstrow: yes; mso-yfti-irow: 0;">
<td colspan="2" style="background: white; mso-background-themecolor: background1; padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: 405.9pt;" valign="top" width="406"><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: -18.9pt; tab-stops: 179.1pt; text-align: center;">
<u><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS"; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">What they do when THAT doesn’t work</span></u></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: -18.9pt; tab-stops: 179.1pt; text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
</td>
</tr>
<tr style="mso-yfti-irow: 1;">
<td style="background: white; mso-background-themecolor: background1; padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: 207.9pt;" valign="top" width="208"><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<b><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS";">LBE</span></b></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS"; font-size: 9.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">Shut
down/Walk away</span></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS";">“Fine.
Screw it.”</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
</td>
<td style="background: white; mso-background-themecolor: background1; padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: 2.75in;" valign="top" width="198"><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: -18.9pt; tab-stops: 179.1pt; text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: -18.9pt; tab-stops: 179.1pt; text-align: center;">
<b><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS";">RBE</span></b></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: -18.9pt; tab-stops: 179.1pt; text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS"; font-size: 9.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">Go cold</span></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: -18.9pt; tab-stops: 179.1pt; text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: -18.9pt; text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS";">“You don’t love me, </span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS";">I don’t love you.”</span></span></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: -18.9pt; tab-stops: 179.1pt; text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
</td>
</tr>
<tr style="height: 74.7pt; mso-yfti-irow: 2; mso-yfti-lastrow: yes;">
<td style="background: white; height: 74.7pt; mso-background-themecolor: background1; padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: 207.9pt;" valign="top" width="208"><div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<b><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS";">LBI</span></b></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS"; font-size: 9.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">Have
a tantrum</span></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS";">“I’m
tearing up the system!”</span></span></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
</td>
<td style="background: white; height: 74.7pt; mso-background-themecolor: background1; padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: 2.75in;" valign="top" width="198"><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center; text-indent: -18.9pt;">
<b><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS";">RBI</span></b></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center; text-indent: -18.9pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS"; font-size: 9.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">Explode</span></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center; text-indent: -18.9pt;">
<br /></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center; text-indent: -18.9pt;">
<span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS";">“AAAAAAAAAAAA!!!”</span></span></div>
<span style="font-size: x-small;">
</span><br />
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center; text-indent: -18.9pt;">
<br /></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center; text-indent: -18.9pt;">
<br /></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center; text-indent: -18.9pt;">
<br /></div>
</td>
</tr>
</tbody></table>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; mso-background-themecolor: background1;">
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS"; font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">
<style>
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<br />
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">If we go on long enough with our unconscious reactiveness, at some point we kind of calcify into a not-so-fun-house mirror version of what used to be our personal strengths:</span><br />
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; mso-background-themecolor: background1;">
<br /></div>
<table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="MsoTableGrid" style="background: #76923C; border-collapse: collapse; mso-background-themecolor: accent3; mso-background-themeshade: 191; mso-padding-alt: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-yfti-tbllook: 191;">
<tbody>
<tr style="mso-yfti-firstrow: yes; mso-yfti-irow: 0;">
<td colspan="2" style="background: white; mso-background-themecolor: background1; padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: 405.9pt;" valign="top" width="406"><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: -18.9pt; tab-stops: 179.1pt; text-align: center;">
<u><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS"; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">When it heads toward being pathological </span></u></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: -18.9pt; tab-stops: 179.1pt; text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
</td>
</tr>
<tr style="mso-yfti-irow: 1;">
<td style="background: white; mso-background-themecolor: background1; padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: 207.9pt;" valign="top" width="208"><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<b><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS";">LBE</span></b></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS"; font-size: 9.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">Narcissistic</span></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS";">self-important & self-admiring<br />
condescending & bullying<br />
no empathy with or gratitude for <br />
others<br />
fantasize about unlimited <br />
power, success, and love</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
</td>
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<br /></div>
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<b><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS";">RBE</span></b></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS"; font-size: 9.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">Histrionic</span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: -18.7pt; tab-stops: 179.1pt; text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS";">rapidly shifting & extreme <br />
emotions<br />
Drama Queen, Princess, or <br />
Victim<br />
must be center of attention<br />
believe that they are critical to <br />
you & you are critical to them</span></span><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS";"></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<b><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS";">LBI</span></b></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS"; font-size: 9.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">Obsessive
Compulsive</span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS";">obsessed
with rules, lists, order, <br />
schedules, & cleanliness<br />
perfectionistic & judgmental<br />
reluctant to delegate<br />
inflexible & overly conscientious<br />
emotionally stiff & unadaptable</span></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<b><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS";">RBI</span></b></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS"; font-size: 9.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">Withdrawn</span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS";"> avoid
intimacy & social situations</span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS";"> because of a fear of being shamed, </span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS";">ridiculed, criticized, rejected, or embarrassed<br />
vigilant, anxious, & isolated<br />
feel inferior, inept, & unappealing</span></span></div>
<span style="font-size: x-small;">
</span><br />
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<br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS";">It is useful to be aware of
the fact that people who are in extreme or moderately extreme emotional states will often try to induce us to join them. As Patrick noted, people who are angry or
upset don’t have fun being that way by themselves, so they try (usually unconsciously) to hook us into an emotional state as well. </span></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">Here are some common strategies they might use on us (or we may find ourselves using on others):</span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">
</span></span><br />
<div style="margin: 0.1pt 0in;">
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">—blame (so that we defend)</span></span></div>
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">
</span></span><br />
<div style="margin: 0.1pt 0in;">
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">—exaggerate/tell it wrong (so that we feel the need to set the record straight)</span></span></div>
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">
</span></span><br />
<div style="margin: 0.1pt 0in;">
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">—guilt-trip: "You don't
care!"</span></span></div>
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">
</span></span><br />
<div style="margin: 0.1pt 0in;">
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">—name call: "You're just like
________!" [your mother, my ex-wife, your no-good Uncle Doug] or more
general things like princess, slob, coward, etc.</span></span></div>
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">
</span></span><br />
<div style="margin: 0.1pt 0in;">
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">—threaten (to leave, stop doing
something, etc.): "If you don't do X, I'm going to do Y"</span></span></div>
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">
</span></span><br />
<div style="margin: 0.1pt 0in;">
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">—order</span></span></div>
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">
</span></span><br />
<div style="margin: 0.1pt 0in;">
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">—ask a question (so that we'll explain, which will give them an in to arguing)</span></span></div>
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">
</span></span><br />
<div style="margin: 0.1pt 0in;">
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">—use the silent treatment/mope</span></span></div>
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">
</span></span><br />
<div style="margin: 0.1pt 0in;">
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">—complain/go negative</span></span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">However, rather than getting sucked into escalating the drama, we can opt to put our energy into helping others stay calmer instead. Here are some strategies my classmates came up with to put each quadrant at ease:</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS"; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><u>Advice on how to treat each quadrant</u></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<b><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS";">LBE</span></b></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS"; font-size: 9.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">Have fun. Be playful, competitive, and speak up. Say what you think and don't sugarcoat it.</span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<b><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS";">RBE</span></b></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS"; font-size: 9.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">Accept us, include us, </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS"; font-size: 9.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">and direct us.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS"; font-size: 9.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">Smile and be friendly. </span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<br /></div>
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<br /></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<b><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS";">LBI</span></b></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS"; font-size: 9.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">Get to the point, be logical,</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS"; font-size: 9.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;"> and keep emotions in check. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS"; font-size: 9.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">Keep voice low. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS"; font-size: 9.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">Respect my bubble </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS"; font-size: 9.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">and my privacy.</span></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
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<br /></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
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<br /></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center; text-indent: -18.9pt;">
<b><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS";">RBI</span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center; text-indent: -18.9pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS"; font-size: 9.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">See us, invite us in with </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS"; font-size: 9.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">eye contact, wait. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS"; font-size: 9.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">Don't interrupt. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS"; font-size: 9.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">Be gentle and sincere. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS"; font-size: 9.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">Keep energy low. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS"; font-size: 9.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">Ask permission. </span></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center; text-indent: -18.9pt;">
<br /></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center; text-indent: -18.9pt;">
<br />
<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS";">
</span></div>
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<br />
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; font-size: small;">While it's not our job to manage or prevent other people's reactiveness, learning how to flex and meet them halfway (or sometimes more than halfway) is a gift that we can give to those we love. It's also a practical skill to have, for, as Patrick pointed out, "A lot of times your spouse will not sign up for the personal development program." </span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif; font-size: small;">Indeed, family members are the most challenging for us. They know all of our buttons, and family dynamics are generally deeply rooted. Patrick, once again: "They throw us off more than the angry and upset people because they <i>make </i>us angry and upset, and we want to shake them and become normal." </span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif; font-size: small;">But, of course, it's ourselves that we need to shake into a less reactive state in order to feel normal again, even when it seems more satisfying to shake others. We can always attempt to change others, but we have a radically greater ability to change ourselves. And once we manage that apparently daunting task and let go of a little of our judgment/blame/resentment, we often see that there's a ripple effect in those around us</span><span style="font-size: small;">. <span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"> </span></span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; font-size: small;">By then, however, we will care less about others being reactive, because we will have learned how to manage our own reactiveness better. And the world will seem, at that point, a much less stressful place.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; font-size: small;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; font-size: small;">I hope some of this information contributes to the understanding and awareness that will help on that journey. In the next post, I'll move into the horsenality side of things. </span>Marian the Contrarianhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17692753447558233510noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4258372110123330473.post-71144761332893488562014-03-03T12:00:00.001-08:002014-05-09T07:23:02.117-07:00Horsenality/Humanality course notes (part 1): The four humanality types<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">As I mentioned in my <a href="http://twocontrarians.blogspot.com/2014/02/its-gotta-be-about-horse.html">last post</a>, I just finished the Horsenality/</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">Humanality course with Linda Parelli and Patrick Handley a few weeks ago. In a way, I've been waiting for this course for years, ever since I tried to piece together a little more information—particularly on the humanality end of things—after my Fast Track. (<a href="http://twocontrarians.blogspot.com/2011_01_01_archive.html">Here is the blog post</a> where I made some decent headway with that effort.)</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">I was even more inspired to keep learning about humanality and horsenality after Patrick and Linda's excellent savvy club DVD of April 2013. </span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">There are two things in particular I love about that DVD. First, the information in it has been huge in helping me to understand myself and others in a more positive and accepting way. And second, Linda and Patrick are uproariously funny and delightful together. When I heard they were teaching a course, I didn't so much make a decision to attend as just do the only obvious thing: sign up and go!</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">And the course did not disappoint. I soaked in information as fast as I could, and I thoroughly enjoyed the anecdotes and humor throughout. It feels greedy to keep so much wonderfulness to myself, so I'm going to do my best to share a lot of it here, including, as much as possible, the bits that really tickled me. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">But first I want to start with what Pat said. He was sitting on his horse and rambling on, as he does, joking and talking about nothing in particular, when he suddenly turned serious and said, as he does, something really amazing. And it was this: "Horsenality/Humanality is not an excuse: it's a strategy and a starting point."</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">I think we can all worry about being pigeon-holed or about having our depth and complexity minimized by schemata like the humanality types. Conversely, we can all be seduced by the possibility of establishing a clear identity and then never stretching ourselves beyond it. </span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">Yet the horsenality and humanality types aren't intended to limit ourselves or others. Rather, they are meant to give us, as Pat said, a starting place—a springboard to greater understanding and compassion for both ourselves and others, be they human or equine. They give us as well the tools—the strategies—we need to be able to communicate effectively with those who are different from ourselves. And at their very best, they give us the opportunity to live more expansively by creating an understanding of our starting point and mapping out where we might want to go next in our quest to be our best selves—as well as how we might get there. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">Everyone has their own journey and their own maps to follow, and I'm a big believer in letting folks get on with their journeys in the way that suits them best. So I don't want to insist that studying things like humanality is the only way. </span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">But I'm also a big believer that awareness about things like the different humanality types can make a real difference—especially in the amount of human kindness out there—and it's to that end that I'm sharing this information. (And also because I just freaking love this stuff!).</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">I'm going to start with an overview on the humanality side of things in this post, and then in future posts move on to my notes about interactions, triggers, and strategies, as well as the horsenality stuff. </span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">Here's the basic humanality breakdown: </span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="-webkit-text-decorations-in-effect: underline; color: #0000ee;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial; font-size: 130%;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 16px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Cambria; font-size: 100%;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 12px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: black; font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 16px;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiISWTwV6c7SSZt5koBvQfNGTXjNLa4YtOQDIHcmk7gn4LPQNeQoKHrjJAagwMRSONexetArowY9MXUbbjKUaGU1ELN3Gt4KJeQTFTt5qXRbz5vVHLX6I5VsiFYZS7CpVXx_bgD8O97NWb5/s1600/10.png"><img alt="" border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiISWTwV6c7SSZt5koBvQfNGTXjNLa4YtOQDIHcmk7gn4LPQNeQoKHrjJAagwMRSONexetArowY9MXUbbjKUaGU1ELN3Gt4KJeQTFTt5qXRbz5vVHLX6I5VsiFYZS7CpVXx_bgD8O97NWb5/s400/10.png" height="384" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5562986622123121986" style="height: 384px; width: 400px;" width="400" /></a></span></span></span></span></span></span></span> </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"> <b><span style="font-size: large;">Left Brain Extroverts<br /><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj87XOJuO78Q_HK9Xij0pnu_FJO1gx5ZpdXEsfFDON5yrxpuFz2hi7RFU_E0503nC1c67RvrkcZ0MbQV6H-Bozh0NZqM1q5MUzUV6jbfU9X4yDvG71Myq_MqF9IVCHbwO0Bnqrc6dLK63vW/s1600/iron+man--LBE.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj87XOJuO78Q_HK9Xij0pnu_FJO1gx5ZpdXEsfFDON5yrxpuFz2hi7RFU_E0503nC1c67RvrkcZ0MbQV6H-Bozh0NZqM1q5MUzUV6jbfU9X4yDvG71Myq_MqF9IVCHbwO0Bnqrc6dLK63vW/s1600/iron+man--LBE.jpg" height="133" style="cursor: move;" width="200" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">Robert Downey, Jr. as Iron Man<br />is like a double helping of LBE.</span><b><br /></b></td></tr>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">LBE's are motivated by achievement and focused on results: "Get to the point and do it now!" They are active ("When things are happening, we're having a good day!") and competitive ("You play to win! Who cares if the kid you're playing against in Monopoly is only 4?"). They are confident and assertive and have a great capacity to believe in themselves, and generally to convince others as well . . . even when they're wrong. Patrick described a trail ride with his wife where they got lost, except that she didn't believe she was lost: "She was lost and convinced that she knew the way home. That's a bad combination." Patrick, having been married to an LBE for a long time, did not, at least, fall into the trap of believing that, because she was confident, she was also right. This is a big danger for other people around LBE's, to whom the other types often defer.</span></span> </span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiw7Kulf6Q7NIFnilpYJq14VkxDAFO28y6s3rSO1tCP1p-ae2Rs7BaA4mtY2idM4pu5tvF6BOtn-eFgBQx1Y9eYG6WCinOPZxjShAWVi-SgdnDc6ainJUPmcZ-vzi1SkwpU6DQcUoaDLZNp/s1600/leia--LBE.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiw7Kulf6Q7NIFnilpYJq14VkxDAFO28y6s3rSO1tCP1p-ae2Rs7BaA4mtY2idM4pu5tvF6BOtn-eFgBQx1Y9eYG6WCinOPZxjShAWVi-SgdnDc6ainJUPmcZ-vzi1SkwpU6DQcUoaDLZNp/s1600/leia--LBE.jpg" height="150" width="200" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><b><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">Princess Leia gives fellow LBE Han<br />Solo a run for his money in Star Wars.</span></b><br />
<b><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">(notice the direct eye contact)</span></b></td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">Because LBE's are so direct and assertive, it's easy to know where an LBE stands. But sometimes the rest of us have trouble responding in a big enough and direct enough way that the LBE knows where <i>we</i> stand.</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">In a debate this situation is even more obvious. LBE's love to debate because they know they're going to win—if only because they keep turning up the volume and getting more forceful the more you debate them. Whereas an RBI can't think of what to say in a conflict, an LBE thinks of several things they shouldn't say and says them anyway. An RBI isn't likely to get in a fight with an LBE, though, because an RBI could have two whiskeys and a massive amount of caffeine and <i>still</i> not be able to get big enough to keep up with an LBE. </span></span><br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgyutY4QqAtiay2MwKXacR7Ytz_6lRfIPmlpt6JrFlw9s1wKOK9S0OpaWlrf1Im0TWQ6WYI41hBJzlEJjmkiTebPtpMNkn2YDUxzlSiTmRXwgxRINHUW13xDWpFRh7yM-btHnCEDBxy4q8i/s1600/emma+as+lbe.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgyutY4QqAtiay2MwKXacR7Ytz_6lRfIPmlpt6JrFlw9s1wKOK9S0OpaWlrf1Im0TWQ6WYI41hBJzlEJjmkiTebPtpMNkn2YDUxzlSiTmRXwgxRINHUW13xDWpFRh7yM-btHnCEDBxy4q8i/s1600/emma+as+lbe.jpg" height="200" width="140" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><b>Beatrice in Much Ado:<br />"Her wit values itself so<br />highly that to her all <br />matter else seems weak."<br />(notice the confident body<br /> posture and cocky smile)</b></span></span></td><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><br /></span></span></td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">LBE's, however, are not just willfully pugnacious; for them, engaging in a fight is a key part of connecting and if you fight with them, it means that you care. Patrick says of his wife: "So I engage in fights sometimes. It seems like a total waste of time to me, but it's meaningful to her. Though if she were here now, she'd say, 'What fight?' because what feels like a fight to an RBI isn't even on the radar screen of an LBE." Often this is because LBE's can appear angry when they're simply passionate about doing something:</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"> They're focused on results. </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"> Sometimes there's roadkill.</span></span><br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgElcrfkt99dpTRpE9xdphnRBY5vmJZuMq7wD0Pnki2GwOcsH-fMcCHpEK91I55PUDD48HhuG_mqdR65ExYlASyrdpc0NmCMzFamEFV8HI43UO2JMDE4Gv5ZiHKn9Bjj94UNznJoVwWsqjJ/s1600/Goldie_Hawn--rbe.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgElcrfkt99dpTRpE9xdphnRBY5vmJZuMq7wD0Pnki2GwOcsH-fMcCHpEK91I55PUDD48HhuG_mqdR65ExYlASyrdpc0NmCMzFamEFV8HI43UO2JMDE4Gv5ZiHKn9Bjj94UNznJoVwWsqjJ/s1600/Goldie_Hawn--rbe.jpg" height="200" width="139" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"><b>Goldie Hawn in almost every<br /> role: loved and in love with <br />others and with life. </b></span></td><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"><br /></span></td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><b><span style="font-size: large;">Right Brain Extroverts</span></b></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">"Tell me what you want and give me a couple of hugs and smile!" RBE's are the golden retrievers of the human world. They are focused on relationships: they like people and they want people to like them. And they enjoy demonstrating their affection both physically and verbally. (If you receive an email with a whole string of smiley faces, it was probably sent by an RBE.) Given their great love for interacting, the most painful thing for these playful, engaging people is to be left out. </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">Their energy is of a happy, bouncy, but somewhat scattered nature. It doesn't shoot out like a highly focused laser the way an
LBE's does; rather, it tends to project out chaotically in multiple directions. </span></span></span></span></span></span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEij2vjaJ_6GtP2FAdglMZbU_6KQoXzb7FHJaDJOW2p-fjy8eTHXOydNcFiuSnSVWiUbzw3qQ9BUJ1jbHmHpgXllrvFQQ8rkoEptyKfCC6PsWFfBiMiht6521XfWuBoMqeNq7dVOAlO6omKb/s1600/meryl--rbe.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEij2vjaJ_6GtP2FAdglMZbU_6KQoXzb7FHJaDJOW2p-fjy8eTHXOydNcFiuSnSVWiUbzw3qQ9BUJ1jbHmHpgXllrvFQQ8rkoEptyKfCC6PsWFfBiMiht6521XfWuBoMqeNq7dVOAlO6omKb/s1600/meryl--rbe.jpg" height="144" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"><b>Meryl Streep's character in Mamma Mía being enthusiastic & expressive.</b></span></td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">An RBE's enthusiasm can make it
difficult for them to settle down and stay focused and on-task. Their
physical environment might reflect this internal state: while an LBI </span></span></span></span></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgfC5F4LPU_2-NQac_iozU4WGWYwe1eD3Ic78RkpERObj9s2YLTXqV_s0HjnphiwgZhbyeeq7meclqIn0j_jCCpNAslkLfE1mRzh8hXoQ5bLiUOubEquKlxbvNsV1t57PakcfcVFCjacQhm/s1600/nathan+lane--rbe.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgfC5F4LPU_2-NQac_iozU4WGWYwe1eD3Ic78RkpERObj9s2YLTXqV_s0HjnphiwgZhbyeeq7meclqIn0j_jCCpNAslkLfE1mRzh8hXoQ5bLiUOubEquKlxbvNsV1t57PakcfcVFCjacQhm/s1600/nathan+lane--rbe.jpg" height="200" width="154" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><b>Nathan Lane's character<br />in The Birdcage is the<br />definitive RBE drama queen.</b></td><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><b><br /></b></td></tr>
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will have a very specific system for, say, hanging up their halter, an
RBE won't even be able to <i>find</i> their halter.</span></span> </span></span></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">RBE's see everything through an emotional lens. T</span></span>he saving grace for them on the emotional roller coaster that can ensue is that they tend to be optimists, sometimes to the point of being a bit Pollyannish. However, they can also veer toward the drama queen end of things under duress</span></span>.</div>
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<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;">Whether RBE's feel high or low, they want to talk about it. They enjoy emoting, connecting, and expressing themselves, and conversation gives them an opportunity to do all of these things.</span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgadzYV10ZwLvzjkPzFZbnkzsF3Z3to15FpyzcxjY-a4__-Ridruh54IsGaBwmwlzq7wO37Ktlhe4lX5unKS6FrwMEeEYRFVfeu0_f1_hBThnq8Wtb1StFiikk45MKKuMFhjMy_gRWJnAdk/s1600/shrek+and+donkey.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgadzYV10ZwLvzjkPzFZbnkzsF3Z3to15FpyzcxjY-a4__-Ridruh54IsGaBwmwlzq7wO37Ktlhe4lX5unKS6FrwMEeEYRFVfeu0_f1_hBThnq8Wtb1StFiikk45MKKuMFhjMy_gRWJnAdk/s1600/shrek+and+donkey.jpg" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><b><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">The donkey in Shrek is a perfect example of how<br />all that happy chattiness can drive an introvert berserk.</span></b></td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><b><span style="font-size: large;">Left Brain Introverts</span></b></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-size: small;">The opposite of the emotional RBE's, LBI's pick a few key emotions and then say, "That's enough. No reason to have <i>all</i> of these emotions. They are totally unnecessary and get in the way." <table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhjc94rmSP8j4YiLkdtONTdarWQLEiPaPo8IgQHNHhPEzWuFjvEiAcsYYMgaej_fL691Mwk5uau-lMnXZh3Vzi1xQmJfp57nXcqLr5_Btsw7J3cbLcCXjp556ogRsdJq6syHXB79mJODM3t/s1600/tlj--lbi.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhjc94rmSP8j4YiLkdtONTdarWQLEiPaPo8IgQHNHhPEzWuFjvEiAcsYYMgaej_fL691Mwk5uau-lMnXZh3Vzi1xQmJfp57nXcqLr5_Btsw7J3cbLcCXjp556ogRsdJq6syHXB79mJODM3t/s1600/tlj--lbi.png" height="200" width="133" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><b>Showing the bare minimum <br />of emotion, Tommy Lee <br />Jones in Men in Black is <br />the quintessential LBI.</b></td></tr>
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As Patrick put it, "These people are like Elvis—when too much emotion comes out, they have left the building."</span></span></span><span style="font-size: small;"> </span><br /><br />Whereas RBE's like to give and receive constant</span><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-size: small;"> reaffirmations of affection, LBI's take the stance of "I told you I loved you when we got married twenty years ago. I'll tell you if something changes."</span></span></span> </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">The passion of an LBI (<span style="font-size: small;">yes, they do have passion, though some might call it obsession</span>) lies in systems. They are highly logical problem solvers and vastly prefer to solve their problems by inventing new systems. They also tend toward the perfectionistic end of things: they've never met a system that couldn't be improved on (unless, of course, it's one of their own).</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">LBI's make wonderful researchers because they like to have plenty of facts and numbers to support their systems. And in an argument, you <table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEijIuEnW6MsDmGncJ9HmdCMguXnoEorZmk5gu-tFmVy-jL7ToiS2TsCNIFzptmNQWErrj5-4H6XQ9-KcLGshDC7tSaS8aT8F5HEv9RGIbu-C5k8KQ65Ynh8mmz_PadvtdsxlB5gdST4xoKV/s1600/hermione--LBI.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEijIuEnW6MsDmGncJ9HmdCMguXnoEorZmk5gu-tFmVy-jL7ToiS2TsCNIFzptmNQWErrj5-4H6XQ9-KcLGshDC7tSaS8aT8F5HEv9RGIbu-C5k8KQ65Ynh8mmz_PadvtdsxlB5gdST4xoKV/s1600/hermione--LBI.jpg" height="200" width="171" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><b>In the Harry Potter books,<br />Hermione can solve any problem <br />with a little more research.</b></td></tr>
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cannot budge them off their data: "I've got the facts and numbers on my side and I'm not changing that just because someone's emotional." However, they won't make it personal while they're telling you how wrong you are; they'll just calmly reiterate in a detailed way for the 58th time why you are, in fact, incorrect.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">But their favorite thing to do with their facts and numbers is to analyze them. And then analyze them some more. As much as they love systems, LBI's love perhaps even more the theories behind systems. These are the "why" people who want to understand every aspect of a project before they begin. </span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjdh2zB8PuB3eo44HwqdF97qGQ_LTjpe_fUwqY92xrauJfgGM9LzmeOY01jPCujzPAGA2jsMoUSyWPNGYo20IfuwhHQRbhawYL95PJBl4czKCOXWYDblpAgJsneCIXkZgRhV_iDhzMUqMpr/s1600/bates--lbi.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjdh2zB8PuB3eo44HwqdF97qGQ_LTjpe_fUwqY92xrauJfgGM9LzmeOY01jPCujzPAGA2jsMoUSyWPNGYo20IfuwhHQRbhawYL95PJBl4czKCOXWYDblpAgJsneCIXkZgRhV_iDhzMUqMpr/s1600/bates--lbi.jpg" height="200" width="144" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><b><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">The private Mr. Bates, who operates <br />by his own lights in Downton Abbey.</span></b></td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">LBI's might talk animatedly about the ideas with which they're obsessed, but it's often a fairly one-way conversation. As Linda said of Pat, "If we have company, he'll talk non-stop, but he's really auditioning his ideas." Otherwise, LBI's can tend to be a little aloof. This is because LBI's are generally reserved and reluctant to share a lot of personal information. Nor do they have a great need for interaction: LBI's are usually happiest when left in peace to think about and perfect their systems.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-size: small;"><b><span style="font-size: large;">Right Brain Introverts</span></b> </span></span></span></span></div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"><b>Frequently cast as an RBI, Hugh<br />Grant turns hesitancy into charm<br />every time.</b></span></td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-size: small;">RBI's are modest (sometimes to a fault), unassuming, and conflict-averse. For RBI's no conflict is a useful conflict, and it's amazing what RBI's will consider to <i>be</i> a conflict. Already a little muted by nature, RBI's tend to downplay their own feelings and needs in an effort to avoid that much-dreaded conflict. This often leaves them waiting for others to read their minds, although RBI's would say that you don't need to read their minds—just their subtle signals: </span></span></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-size: small;">"I think I've been perfectly clear: I was looking at the clock, and</span></span></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-size: small;"> that clearly means it's time to go." </span></span></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-size: small;">"Well why didn't you just tell me it was time to go?" </span></span></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-size: small;">"Because I didn't want a conflict!"</span></span></span></span></div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"><b>In Pride & Prejudice, the only time Jane <br />Bennet argues is when she tries convince <br />her sister to take a kinder view of others.</b></span></td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-size: small;">The strength of RBI's lies in their ability to be diplomatic, a skill which most RBI's have honed in their efforts to avoid conflict. But when diplomacy doesn't work, they tend to get steamrolled by other people. Generally the only kind of fight they can win is a freeze out, but they're usually well gone before it reaches that point. While LBI's might leave because they don't want to deal with emotion, RBI's leave because they can't handle it. Patrick's father, for instance, tended to run for the hills when his mom was mad: "You could just barely see Dad out mowing the North 40 . . . if you used binoculars." Although given that Patrick's mom was also an RBI, she probably only showed her anger by raising an eyebrow or shutting a cabinet door a little more firmly than usual.</span></span></span></span></div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"><b>Although the situation in The King's Speech<br /> is an extreme one, George VI's literal <br />inability to speak up for himself is <br />emblematic of the struggles of many RBI's.<br /> </b></span></td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-size: small;">RBI's can get a bad rap for being passive aggressive, but this tendency generally stems from the fact that they don't feel they can assert their needs directly: first, because it might create conflict, and second, because it feels immodest to put their needs before those of others. </span></span></span></span><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-size: small;">RBI's tend to worry about what others need and put themselves out for everyone else, and are generally waiting (usually rather fruitlessly) for others to do the same for them. </span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">Their default response, therefore, is "I'm fine" or "That's fine," and you may have to repeat your question several times before they will admit, "Well, um, really, if you're very sure it's not <i>too</i> much trouble I might possibly rather do this—but not if it will put you out at all!"</span><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"><b>Juno's Bleeker is the classic RBI nice<br /> guy (I don't think you can have a nick-<br />name like 'Bleeker' if you're not an RBI).</b></span></td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">They</span></span></span></span><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-size: small;"> may then feel a little guilt over the possibility that you <i>were</i> put out but, like them, were too nice to say so. </span></span></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-size: small;">Though challenging for others to read, RBI's are nonetheless some of the sweetest people you will ever meet. If you give them time and space and understanding, and if you're gentle and patient with them, they will share their very large hearts with you.</span></span></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-size: small;">I'll close with a video we watched in class that purports to be about the different ways men and women communicate, but I think is more accurately a portrayal of two different humanality types trying to communicate (I'm thinking, in particular, LBI and RBE): </span></span></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">Tune into the next post for more on how the different humanality types interact with and irk each other. . . .</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">**Special thanks to <a href="http://www.insightinstitute.com/about/patrick-handley.html">Patrick Handley</a> for his excellent teaching, and to my H/H course mates, who contributed a lot to the descriptions and archetypes that I included of each humanality.</span></span></div>
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So I'll start where I always tend to start, with the lessons that Lupin shows me are the important ones.<br />
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One of the truly wonderful things about the course was getting to watch Linda play with her new horse Highland, a Left Brain Extrovert, and hearing her talk about her approach with him. The first day we saw Highland, Linda was riding Jazz and several of her students were riding their horses. Highland and Remmer were loose amongst all of this, and having a grand time gadding about and stirring up trouble and generally stealing the spotlight. (Highland's mission in life seems to be to get a rise out of people—by running at the audience, biting the butts of the other horses, and generally putting himself in the forefront of whatever is going on.)<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Highland front and center and very self-confident<br />
(photos taken by Becky Shewchuk) </td></tr>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Extrovert energy just shoots out from Highland</td></tr>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Highland and Remmer competing for 'Top Punk' status (Highland won)</td></tr>
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My first thought was, "Good grief that horse is a punk! I'm glad I don't have to deal with him!" (Which, apparently, was what his previous owners thought as well when they sold him to Linda.) But after watching Linda interact with him for a few days, I saw that he wasn't nearly as extreme as he looked as long as he was approached with understanding. His former owners had made him into a mental mess by trying to repress all of that behavior, which did look alarming but which, around Linda, just melted into nothing on its own when she didn't react to it.<br />
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One of the main lessons that got imprinted on my mind during our course—not least because of Highland—was "don't correct." Just as on that first day Linda left Highland to his own devices while she played with Jazz, on the second day we watched Linda warming up an almost equally punky Highland, and she took much the same approach. She explained that during warm-up she isn't interested in what her horse is or isn't doing physically; she is interested in him getting connected to her mentally, which isn't going to happen if she's making him feel wrong. So she's not going to upbraid him for punky behavior.<br />
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Along those lines, someone asked a question about a horse that kicked out when changing direction on the circle, and Linda advised them just to maintain a safe distance and then let the horse do whatever he wants. She said that the horse is either playing or expressing himself, and telling him, "No!" is inappropriate in either case: if he's playing, then you're being a great bore to him, and if he's expressing himself, then you're telling him he can't have an opinion. Either way, you're going to shut him down so that he won't connect. Whereas if you hang in there without being judgmental, he'll start to get curious and connected and the behaviors will go away on their own.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Highland connected and asking a question<br />
(photo courtesy of LeeAnn Walsh)</td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEichmP3VQOyUWLycMC8juSncJh6CC0iQuLsbHyvcO-sepSpQnMQUjV13fa_jslHbKMPuIMLOl_UgBSB40CfrrR1pW7oop78YG019NYs3JjSr2aVDC2VOeke9npy2p2JkAeGjF-n2iYkQUIP/s1600/1025523_10201689299130645_1190635747_o.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEichmP3VQOyUWLycMC8juSncJh6CC0iQuLsbHyvcO-sepSpQnMQUjV13fa_jslHbKMPuIMLOl_UgBSB40CfrrR1pW7oop78YG019NYs3JjSr2aVDC2VOeke9npy2p2JkAeGjF-n2iYkQUIP/s1600/1025523_10201689299130645_1190635747_o.jpg" height="300" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Highland bonding after he was done playing</td></tr>
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To illustrate, Linda said that she used to have to spend 4 hours with Allure dealing with all sorts of unwanted behaviors before she could ride. Then one day she went out when she was tired and a little demoralized. When Allure went left instead of right, she said, "Okay." Then he changed direction and she said, "Okay." And then after a few more minutes he was connected and curious and done with opposing her . . . because she wasn't opposing him.<br />
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So now Linda's definition of a warm-up is just getting connected to your horse—doing whatever he needs you to do for him to be able to settle down and focus. That will be different for different horses, of course. Some, like Highland, need a chance to play. Others, like Hot Jazz, a Right Brain Introvert, need you to go slowly and be consistent until they gain enough confidence to be able to look at you without being overwhelmed. But the point is to think about the horse and his needs rather than your goals and what you want him to be doing (or, as is often the case, what other people tell you you should or shouldn't be allowing your horse to do).<br />
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During warm-up, then, it's all about the quality of the connection: observing your horse's emotional state, listening to what your horse is saying, and asking yourself what your horse needs in that moment. Focusing on these things will lead you away from an attitude of correcting.<br />
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But even when you move into the "goal" part of your session after your horse gets connected to you, there's really no place for correction. Linda quoted Luis Lucio, who tells his students, "Don't correct; just repeat." The vast majority of the time that our horses do something different than what we ask, it's because we ourselves were unclear. As Pat says, horses are like computers: they may not do what you want, but they do exactly what you ask them to do. Given this reality, there's just no reason to say, "No! Wrong answer!" Instead, just calmly ask again.<br />
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I have been a recovering perfectionist and a recovering direct-line thinker for quite a while now, and all of these ideas worked together to emblazon on my mind the phrase, "It's gotta be about the horse." If you put <i>anything </i>else first—your goals, your self-image, your need to do things "right" or be in control—you just won't get where you want to go.<br />
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This point was driven home one more time during our last session at the ranch. Pat had a new toy that he and his protegés were having a lot of fun with: a black and white quilt cow which was hanging on two long horizontal ropes, which were in turn on a pulley system that was hooked to a car battery and remotely controlled by Pat. Pat moved the cow back and forth, and his proteges' horses learned to focus on the "cow" and cut left and right in response to Pat's movements of it.<br />
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Highland, standing outside the round pen, had never seen the cow and had quite an issue with it, and I immediately got curious to see how Linda would deal with the introduction of this scary thing. During Pat's presentation, she just stood there and gave Highland slack to move around. Despite the fact that his behaviors were pretty big, she only responded as much as she needed to keep him off the top of her. Otherwise, she just kept leaning on the rail and watching Pat. After Pat was done and most of the audience had left, she took Highland into the round pen and played with him to one side of the cow. It took a little while, but finally he got noticeably calmer and began ignoring the cow.<br />
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The next day in class we asked Linda about her thought process. She said she didn't care about Highland being confident around the cow; she just cared that he got to where he connected with her despite the cow. That was why she hadn't asked him to go up and look at the cow or touch it; she just kept playing with him a little away from the cow until it ceased to be a factor in how Highland was (or was not) responding to Linda. When he reconnected to her, she ended the session. He was probably still somewhat bothered by the cow, but he was listening to Linda again, and that was her top priority. Once again, it was all about the horse and his ability to connect to her.<br />
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This idea is, I realized, another level of Linda's now famous assertion, "It's not about the ___________." We want our horses to build confidence, but if we focus on The Big Scary Thing, whatever it is, we are negating the means by which they will build confidence: their connection to us. And after watching Linda, I realized just how often I have made the scary thing more important than I am, in my mind as well as my horse's.<br />
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Generally when Lupin and I come across a Scary Thing, my tendency is to want to make sure, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that Lupin gets over his fear of it. Therefore, once I discover a fear in him, I will spend hours playing friendly games, endlessly approaching and retreating. I will play squeeze games, and I will even do what Linda did: play other games near the scary thing. But my focus has always been on the scary thing. Essentially, I keep shoving it to the front of Lupin's consciousness, saying, "Is it okay now? How about now? Now?" And, needless to say, I have not been very successful.<br />
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Like everyone, I've heard Linda say not to make it about the thing (for instance, in her excellent discussion of Allure and the water in the October 2005 <u>Savvy Times</u> article "The Science of Confidence"). But I never quite understood how to take the emphasis off the thing in the mental realm. I've only done it in the physical realm by asking Lupin to move in ways that did not directly engage with the thing (like going sideways along a trailer rather than into it, or doing figure 8's near a cow). My focus, though, has still been on getting him to accept the thing, not on getting him connected to me. Consequently, the Scary Thing always becomes and remains the most important thing, both for me and for Lupin.<br />
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Last week, my brain was still mushing around what I had seen with Highland when, as luck would have it, Lupin and I stumbled upon yet another Scary Thing. We had had a lovely snowfall, and Lupin and I were out and about the farm at liberty. Basically we were playing point to point by finding bits of grass that weren't buried under the snow, looking for them beneath the cross-country jumps or over-turned canoes.<br />
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Some folks had been sledding on the dam, and I saw a dual possibility there: for Lupin to eat the grass exposed by the sled tracks, and for me to get in a couple of go's on a sled. It never even occurred to me that the sledding might bother Lupin, or that, if it did, it was a hell of a long way to chase him back to the barn.<br />
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You see where this is going.<br />
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While I was half-way down the hill on a much faster sled ride than I'd anticipated, Lupin took off. I flopped off the sled and took off after him, calling to him in a vain effort to get him to reconnect with me, but eventually his high-held head disappeared over the next hill. I jogged on, pretty certain he'd go straight to the barn, but I didn't want to get too far behind just in case he went somewhere else.<br />
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As it turned out, he did not go all the way back to the barn. That was evidently his plan, but he had cut across a field and crossed a stream where, on the other side, there was just a tiny bit of space to pace back and forth next to a fence. There was no way out except for him to re-cross the stream, but he had gone up quite a steep bank to get there, and re-crossing the stream would take him in the opposite direction of the barn, so he was doubly disinclined to go back across.<br />
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Luckily, I had on good boots for wading. I didn't, however, have anything else left to work with: I had never put his halter on that day, my carrot stick was at the top of the dam, and even my scarf had flown off as I ran after him. I managed to get him about halfway back down the steep, snow-covered bank just with my hands, but he wouldn't go past that. Finally, I found a more gradual descent that I could clear of thorns with just a little work, and he accepted that alternative. We got across the stream and started retracing his steps, as we had to backtrack a good way to get to the gate that would let us out of the field.<br />
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It was getting late, but I was still tempted to ask him to go all the way back to the dam with me. At that point he seemed fairly connected and not inclined to leave me, so I thought we had a good chance of making it despite his recent scare. But then I thought about it, and I realized, Holy cow! Providence had just handed me a huge gift: because Lupin had gone the route he had, I had gotten to help him back to the path he wanted to be on, and I was the one who was now taking him back to the barn. The good feeling of getting back to his comfort zone was therefore pretty certainly going to be connected to me in a way that it absolutely would not have been if he had gotten back to the barn on his own (and also wouldn't be if I tried to make him go back to the dam and he got bothered again).<br />
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And that was when I realized: it's not about the dam! Or the sled! I didn't need to make him go back to the spot he'd left, and I didn't need to go get the sled and start sledding in his pasture to desensitize him. He was connected to me and I was having a rare moment of really solid leadership by having helped him out of a sticky situation and by leading him back to his pasture. Why on earth would I not end on that note?<br />
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And so I did. We walked on back to the barn, his head low and relaxed. It didn't matter in the least that I had no tools: he stayed with me with no effort on my part, even while we were backtracking away from the direction of the barn. After we got back, I turned him out, and he slowly ambled out to his herd. Then I went and collected my scarf and carrot stick, had a couple more go's on the sled, and called it a very successful day. I didn't even care that there wouldn't be enough snow left the next day to play a friendly game with the sled, because you know what? I quit while my horse was calm and connected to me, and that is all that matters.<br />
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<br />Marian the Contrarianhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17692753447558233510noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4258372110123330473.post-22002552199135687512013-11-13T08:06:00.001-08:002013-11-13T11:06:10.793-08:00Managing emotions—your horse's and your own<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">This blog post continues exploring the key leadership elements that I introduced in the <a href="http://twocontrarians.blogspot.com/2013/09/leadership-essentials.html">previous entry</a>, picking up with #3:</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"><b>Don't react emotionally.</b> </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">Boy, can this one be tough. There are so many ways that our horses tempt us into doing just this, and since they're pushing buttons in our predator selves that are centuries old, some days, yeah, it's just going to happen. You're going to get emotional. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">You may feel afraid, angry, frustrated, insulted, hopeless, ashamed, inept, impatient, or any of a number of other emotions, but whatever you feel, the underlying reality is that you've wandered off into a space where it's you vs. your horse and you're the one who's losing—the connection, the game, and your sense of perspective.<br /><br />The first key is to not beat yourself up for becoming emotional, however ugly that emotion in you may be. All that's happened is that you have fallen into a natural dynamic with your over-sized prey animal who, domesticated or not, on some level still considers it his job to frustrate predators so that they will leave him alone. That impulse is just as innate in him as getting frustrated is in us, so frankly it's surprising that we don't spend more of our time in this kind of dynamic with our horses. <br /><br />A wise friend suggested that when I find myself in these emotional stand-offs with Lupin, I turn to him and say, "Nice one, dude. You definitely got me that time. Score one for Lupin." Because, after all, by getting me emotional, he is being a very clever prey animal. When I acknowledge this, it restores a little perspective and reminds me that, hey, I'm just human, and Lupin's just equine, and we're both just doing what comes naturally to us. <br /><br />When your horse is being obstinate, snarky, or fearful it may also be helpful to consider, as Pat and Linda remind us, that if horses didn't have these kinds of impulses, they would have become extinct long ago and wouldn't be here for us to enjoy today. (For a deeper appreciation of the psychology of prey animals, the surprising adaptability of horses, and the remarkable gifts that horses have as a result of being prey animals, I recommend <a href="http://www.robertmmiller.com/">Dr. Miller's</a> book: <u><a href="http://www.robertmmiller.com/anseofhomi.html">Understanding the Ancient Secrets of the Horse's Mind</a>.</u>)<br /><br />I've also found it very useful to accept my horse, not just as a prey animal, but for who he is as an individual horse. This is another area where <a href="http://www.danandgretchen.net/">Dan Thompson</a> has been hugely helpful in giving me a different perspective. For example, I was talking to Dan about Lupin coming to me in the pasture, which he does, but only in a slow, uninspired way which suggests that he's thinking, "Oh, all right. I might as well come to you—I haven't got anything better to do." </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">I asked Dan if there was any hope of him ever cantering to meet me at the gate. Dan said, "Well, does he canter back out to the herd when you turn him out?" </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">"Not very often." </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">"And what about you? Do you jump up and down and hug people you like when you see them?" </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">"Not very often." </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">"Does that mean you aren't happy to see them?" </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">"Not at all." </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">"Then maybe you need to think about the fact that this is just who Lupin is and how he expresses himself. For him, coming to you at a walk is a really positive thing." </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">Now when Lupin comes to me at a walk, I smile instead of wishing for more. (Hint: whenever you're really wishing for your horse to do or be something different, you are setting yourself up for an emotional reaction.)<br /><br />On another occasion, I played with Dan's right brain extrovert Ricki. I was asking her to go sideways, but man did she want to go forward! A lot. And for a long time. Dan explained that, being an extrovert, forward is easy for her. It's what she does. It doesn't cost her anything at all to try that answer, so she's inclined to try it first and try it often. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">Similarly, what's easy for Lupin to try is getting into my space and being dominant in zone 1. He'll do this same thing for long periods of time with his herd mates, playing the game "I try to bite you, now you try to bite me." (In fact he recently acquired big honking permanent dent in his throat from playing this game.) That's who he is no matter how much respect he gains for me. Over time as he's grown up a little and I've gotten more effective, he does it less often and with less enthusiasm, but it's unlikely that he's ever going to give this behavior up completely.<br /><br />Part of me, of course, was taking this personally and therefore getting irritated with him whenever he did it. And part of me was thinking I should have "fixed" this problem, or that I'm not a good enough leader if my horse still occasionally gets nippy, so I was also frustrated with myself. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">That's two things I was getting emotional about, when the truth is that that's just a lot of how Lupin both plays and communicates. Unless my leadership is through the roof every moment of the day, he's going to try it on sometimes. I'm not a failure because I haven't changed that in him. It's just him being who he is and doing what comes naturally to him. The more I accept that, the less likely I am to get emotional about it.<br /><br />(By the way, if you want a quick course in how to think in ways that help you accept others for who they are, have a look at the seriously excellent April '13 Savvy club DVD with Linda Parelli and <a href="http://www.insightinstitute.com/about/patrick-handley.html">Patrick Handley</a>. If you have access to it, I highly recommend it. This DVD made such a profound shift in my thinking, in fact, that I'm going to do the course with the two of them in January. I am super-excited about this and will post about what I learn here!)<br /><br />Another way to find equanimity has been made famous by Linda Parelli: get curious. <br /><br />When you find yourself in a frustrated huff yelling, "Darn it, horse! Why don't you respect me more? Why won't you just do what I want?" or "How can you possibly still be scared of that garden hose?", try turning those demands-phrased-as-questions into genuine questions. Well, why won't your horse do what you want? Is it fear? unconfidence? lack of motivation? lack of understanding? </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">Become really interested in why your horse is acting the way he is, but without being desperate to know the ultimate answer to what his problem is so that you can fix it already. Because it's not a problem; it's an opportunity for both of you to learn. (I realize this last bit can sound like hokey psycho-babble—"Oh right, it's not a problem, it's an oppor<i>tun</i>ity!" But from personal experience I can tell you that never-ending learning, which is what any horsemanship journey entails, is going to be really hard on you if you treat everything you need to learn like it's a problem that must be fixed.) <br /><br />I've also found it very helpful in general to follow <a href="http://www.eckharttolle.com/about/eckhart/">Eckhart Tolle</a>'s advice: when you feel yourself getting reactive (angry, defensive, judgmental, fearful, etc.), instead of giving in to that feeling, use it as a convenient reminder that your life could be a lot better right now. How could you shift your perspective to make it so? What would be useful to remember right now? </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">My fellow Fast Track student Juliette Watt suggested one option: think about the fact that you're there to help your horse, and ask yourself what you can do in this moment to help him. (It's not, in other words, all about me and my goals.) <br /><br />Along similar lines, you can remind yourself about the reason you're doing all of this in the first place: is it really so that you can have your horse canter 20 laps on the circle, or is it because you want to have a better relationship with him? What would help with that right now? What could you do to make it fun for him?<br /> </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">And if you're still having trouble backing off your goal, or letting go of your opinion about what your horse *should* be doing, you can usually afford to take a break. Exhale. Sit down. Maybe let your horse eat some grass. Look at the sky. It'll all be okay.<br /><br />(You'll want to keep your focus here—to go back to some form of what you were doing after you re-group. But if you need a break to de-fuse, that's not the end of the world, and it's more effective to stop and get perspective than to keep going when you're upset. Stopping and re-grouping sooner rather than later—when you first feel yourself starting to lose it—is also a good idea.)</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"><b>Really release.</b> </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">And finally, it happens! Your horse makes a positive move in the right direction. This is it! The moment you've been waiting for for two hours (or for two minutes, which can feel about the same). A feeling of hope rushes into you, and the most natural thing in the world is to want to continue with that feeling by doing more. But, of course, we all know better than that, because Linda and Pat have taught us to stop and reward the try, which is what we do.<br /><br />Or do we? <br /><br />Okay, you've stopped asking your horse to do more, and you're waiting for the lick and chew like a good Parelli student (by the way, if you are doing this, all sarcasm aside: serious props to you!). But while you're waiting, what are you thinking about? <br /><br />Are you second-guessing whether that was actually a try? Maybe he was seeing if he could get away with doing less and you should have held out for more. <br /><br />Are you wishing your horse had given you a slightly more obvious sign that he really got it? Maybe he only moved that foot because a fly landed on it. <br /><br />Or are you happy with the move, but a little critical about his attitude or how long it took him?<br /><br />If these thoughts are in your head, you haven't really released. You have quit what you were doing physically, but you haven't quit mentally and emotionally. This is the scenario I lived in for a long time, and to which I still regress periodically. I would release, but I would still be thinking very critically, and after a few minutes of deep analysis I would wind up saying to Lupin, "Well, okay, that was pretty good." <br /><br />Now, granted, my horse is a master at not giving it all up. He rarely gives a really committed, "I'm with you!" kind of answer. Instead, he specializes in giving 80% answers, or just enough to get me off his back (did this phrase originate with left brain introvert horses?). Be that as it may, my standing there giving an 80% release is not going to help the situation. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">Maybe my horse <i>is</i> trying to frustrate me by doing as little as possible; if I get positive and enthusiastic, that's great reverse psychology. Or maybe he <i>did</i> only move because a fly landed on him—he still got the right answer, and if I get really positive and enthusiastic about it, he might get curious about what he can do to generate that response again. (Watch Linda's savvy lesson from June '13 to see how a naughty, uninterested horse became curious and connected when her human started saying "What a good girl!" in response to every answer the horse gave.)<br /><br />But whatever is going on with your horse, any way you slice it, being critical is not going to help the situation. <br /><br />Put yourself in your horse's shoes for a moment. Imagine that you do a project for someone and bring it to them, and they say, "Hmmm, well, okay, I guess this'll do. Thanks." How do you feel? Maybe you didn't put your all into it, but is that kind of response going to inspire you to do more next time? Whereas, if you do a half-hearted job, and the person is very enthusiastic and grateful, you don't think, "Ha! I certainly pulled one over on her! She was grateful and I didn't work that hard." No. You think, "Wow, she's so positive, I would like to do more for her next time." <br /> </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">Granted, horses don't care as much about appreciation as we do; to them it's much more important to have the pressure taken off. But for them to feel like the pressure has really <i>been</i> taken off, we have to give a whole-hearted, non-critical release. If you're still standing there nit-picking in your mind, your horse might not fully process it as a release. And he'd be right, because you haven't let go. You're still judging whether or not you should have released, but the moment of judgment has already passed.<br /><br />So experiment with being enthusiastic about what your horse does, even when—especially when—you don't think it was all that impressive, or you're second-guessing your own timing. I think this shift in attitude is much more important than what your horse actually does, or even than the timing of your release. Because if you're not really releasing, the timing and the horse's degree of try both become largely irrelevant. It is, after all, the release that teaches. <br /><br />Plus, it will feel better to <i>you </i>to be wholly positive. You'll find that <i>you </i>are more motivated, and that <i>you</i> feel better about the relationship, and that will help your horse as well. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">So tell him he's a good boy, and smile, and enjoy the fact that he's your horse in that moment. After all, if you have a horse, it's a pretty cool, amazing, awesome life that you've been handed, and your horse is a pretty cool, amazing, awesome animal when you stop to think about it. And if you think about that while you're waiting for the lick and chew, you're much more likely to give your horse the kind of release he needs. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">By the by, it's pretty darn likely that your day will get immediately better, too.</span><br />
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<br />Marian the Contrarianhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17692753447558233510noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4258372110123330473.post-81823615941300543672013-09-25T12:04:00.001-07:002013-11-13T09:04:05.048-08:00Leadership essentialsIn my <a href="http://twocontrarians.blogspot.com/2013/09/on-loving-left-brain-introvert-and-why.html">last post</a> I wrote about a different way to view what I call a left-brain freak-out: the angry response that LBI's sometimes give and that looks a lot like a temper tantrum. "Okay, fine," you might say, "but while I'm taking a rosier view of my horse's behavior, what am I supposed to do about it?" <br />
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I had a big realization when I was watching a friend with two of her horses, one a right-brain and one a left-brain. Both had a tendency to over-react when she asked them to do things: the right-brain horse would get explosive quite quickly, while the left-brain horse would pretty much just leave. Though I am a horsenality junkie and love the different strategies for the different analities, in this situation I found myself putting together the same solution for both horses. Which got me thinking.<br />
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It seems to me that when your horse is getting lost in emotion, whether fear or anger or confusion or what have you, there are a few basic things you do pretty much no matter what. These aren't earth-shattering, and they're not some major breakthrough in horsemanship, but I think they're worth emphasizing all the same. To me they are the most important components of getting your horse calm and back on the same page with you, particularly when his over-reaction is caused by something that you're asking him to do rather than an environmental stimulus (though these basic leadership skills will apply as well if he's spooking). <br />
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Here they are:<br />
1. Be clear about what you want.<br />
2. Keep your focus.<br />
3. Don't react emotionally.<br />
4. Really release.<br />
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All of these are things that sound obvious but don't come easily. I'm going to break them down and talk about the first two in this post and the next two in the following post.<br />
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<b>Be clear about what you want.</b><br />
If you don't have a clear idea in your head of what you want your horse to do, there is no way you can communicate it clearly to him. It's amazing how often we *think* we know what we want, but our idea is so vague as to be meaningless.<br />
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I was at a clinic with <a href="http://danandgretchen.net/">Dan Thompson</a>, who is provocative in the best sense of the word, and we were all playing around on line with something or other when Dan's voice rang out, "Why are you playing this game?" And of course we all said, "Because you told us to." He smiled in the way that lets you know you have another think coming. "That's a good enough reason when you first start Parelli, but by now you should have your own reasons for any game that you play." He waited expectantly. We stared blankly. "Because I want my horse to get better," someone offered. "In what specific way?" Dan asked. It was then that we began to have a notion of what he was driving at. <br />
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If you send your horse out on the circle with the vague idea of getting it "better," what are you actually waiting for your horse to do? Be snappier in his departure? Maintain gait more consistently? Ask more questions? Bend his body more on the circle? Be more responsive when you ask for transitions? Go out on a larger circle? What? <br />
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We learned at that clinic that, if you don't know what you're looking for, (a) you can't communicate it to your horse clearly, and (b) you won't know when to reward him. And if you're waiting for him to improve on all those fronts before you reward him, you'll be waiting a long time because he's going to give up if he tries several things and still hasn't gotten a release. So it's best to pick one manageable thing, focus on it, get it better, and quit. <br />
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That's not to say, of course, that you can't reward him when he offers something really cool that you didn't ask for. When I started Parelli I was so focused on my horse getting the "right" answer that it took a while for me to learn to be flexible when he offered something equally positive. But if he's truly lost and freaking out, he needs a clear direction to head in. And the more lost he is, the clearer and simpler it needs to be.<br />
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I realized that one reason the Touch It pattern is early in the sequence is because you can make it very black and white: did my horse touch the thing I was focusing on or not? Once your horse learns that you consistently do have a goal, and one that he can be successful finding, he will start to look more to you to find out what you're asking. He is gaining confidence both in your leadership and in his ability to problem solve, and from there you simply build in more and more complexity. But most especially as you get more complex, you need to keep asking yourself if you know why you're playing the game: what does my horse need to do for me to say "game over" right now?<br />
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<b>Keep your focus.</b><br />
I've written before about how I learned at Fast Track <a href="http://twocontrarians.blogspot.com/2010/09/your-focus-determines-your-reality.html">the importance of maintaining focus</a>, most particularly when your horse is upset by external stimuli or is unmotivated. What I've realized since then is that focus is equally if not more important when your horse is resisting or reacting to what you are asking him to do, though it can be highly difficult for us to maintain focus in this situation.<br />
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When a right-brain horse is exploding, or a left-brain horse is pitching a temper tantrum, our first impulse is to stop what we are doing. This makes sense: the horse is over-stimulated or upset, so we try to take away the thing that's upsetting him. However, if we do that, we wind up training our horse to be reactive because that's when he gets the release. <br />
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I have struggled a lot with my LBI because he tends to get big and scary when I do things he doesn't like (generally these are things I'm asking him to tolerate being done, like oral dosing, although sometimes they are things I'm asking him to do, like leaving his sweet spot).<br />
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I find myself in these instances walking a fine line between backing off enough that neither of us gets hurt and persisting enough that he doesn't get a release while he's resisting. And I can tell you that, at this stage, we're both on a fair amount of adrenaline in some of these situations, which makes both of us quick to get angry and defensive (more on that in the next post). <br />
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It's a tricky situation, but I stay in it because I know one key thing: once I push one of my horse's buttons, it is only going to be worse for both of us if I don't hang in there and finish things on a calm note. My reward happens when it's easier the next day, which it usually is. (That's not to say he won't still pitch a temper tantrum, but generally—don't always say always, usually say usually—he's not as committed to resisting and we move through it more quickly.)<br />
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But there's also something else that I know, which is a bit more positive: when your horse is upset, whether they're scared out of their mind or fighting you or both, your focus is like a life line to your horse, helping them find their way out of emotional chaos. If you abandon your focus, they will think that you don't know a way out of the chaos either.<br />
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While it can feel to us like we're asking a lot out of a clearly distraught animal by persisting in our focus, what we're really doing is proving to him that he can find a way out of distress by listening to us. We're not being mean; we're demonstrating leadership. And we're helping our horse learn how to cope with things that cause discomfort—to learn how to be braver and calmer when facing the demands of living in a human world.<br />
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It's possible to over-focus, however—to put so much pressure on your horse that he can't calm down. I learned this with <a href="http://twocontrarians.blogspot.com/2012/04/listening-to-your-gut.html">tying near the cow</a>, where Lupin was too emotional to learn. In these instances, it's necessary to find a way to back off without abandoning your focus. Depending on the situation, this may mean you play a less adrenaline-riddled version of the game you were playing (with the cow, I continued to play with tying and extreme friendly games, but I took the actual cow out of the equation). <br />
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Or it may mean—if, for instance, your horse is hyper-sensitive and freaking out at pressure you are directly putting on him in the form of a stimulus—that you briefly reduce your phases down to a thought, which is a form of approach and retreat. This is very different, though, from taking all the pressure off when you retreat, even if all you're doing is still holding your goal in your head until he calms down enough to re-approach. It may look to an outside observer like you have quit playing the game, but your horse will feel the difference if you're still thinking about your goal rather than getting sucked into his emotional chaos and worry. And if you hold out until he does the appropriate movement in response to your stimulus rather than wigging out, he'll learn to understand and appreciate positive pressure.<br />
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Or it may mean that you break down something complex and focus on one smaller part where your horse can find success. The important thing here is that you then put the whole thing back together again once you've gotten his confidence better on the smaller piece. (Unless, of course, you've figured out that thing is way more challenging than you thought and you need to break it down over several sessions.)<br />
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Or it may mean playing a different game altogether for a little while. Often Lupin's resistance isn't about what I'm asking him to do, but about his druthers—what he'd rather be doing. In those instances Dan has shown me that it's much more effective to play a quick, high impulsion game to get his focus back on me generally, or to play a form of passenger lesson to show him that while he can go where he wants, it will be more comfortable for him to be where I want. The critical thing again, however, is that once the druthers are in better shape I go back to the game I was originally playing, so that he doesn't learn he can change my focus. <br />
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The number one way that horses get us to change our focus, of course, is by causing us to get emotional. As Pat Parelli has explained, they are masters at frustrating the predator. I'm no zen teacher when it comes to this stuff and I still take the bait and get emotional sometimes, but in my next post I'll share a few things that have helped me be less reactive myself.<br />
<br />Marian the Contrarianhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17692753447558233510noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4258372110123330473.post-69979298215593520402013-09-11T12:21:00.002-07:002013-11-13T11:15:06.081-08:00On loving a left brain introvert — and why it can be hard<span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: x-small;">"Horses and humans have very similar emotions, but I think why they have them is very different. Horses are quite simple: they are pretty much driven by fear or dominance. They can get confused, frustrated, fearful, anxious, angry, maybe even sad or unhappy, but the reasons are very black and white. It is based pretty much on the moment, and while they can have past memories that drive their behavior today, they do not hold that against humans the way humans can." —Linda Parelli</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;">At one point during my Fast Track course, I was corrected by an instructor when I said that one characteristic of Left Brain Introverts is a tendency to get angry. "Horses don't get angry," she said. "They don't have that emotion." Since then I've heard Linda Parelli talking about horses getting angry multiple times, but I think there's a level on which Linda and my instructor are both right, for, as Linda suggests, horses don't get angry in the way that humans understand the emotion. </span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;">What my Fast Track instructor seemed to understand at the time (though I didn't) was the all-too-human tendency to attach lots of meanings to emotions. I believe she wanted me to see my horse without all the baggage that I was attaching to the idea that he was angry, and I've written previously (<a href="http://twocontrarians.blogspot.com/2010/09/never-say-never-dont-always-say.html">here</a>) about how liberating that was. </span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;">But I think it's important to go a little further now because the fact is that horses—left brain horses, anyway—do get angry (sometimes quite angry), and they can be very dominant, and humans have negative associations with both of these characteristics that impede our ability to empathize with and appreciate our left brain horses. (Not having worked with a Left Brain Extrovert, I will restrict my comments from here on to Left Brain Introverts [LBI's], though I imagine some of this might apply to both). </span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;">Humans tend to view dominance as an aggressive, negative thing. We react defensively and judgmentally when others behave in a dominating way, or at the very least we see it as a challenge we need to answer by asserting our own dominance. Anger is even more difficult for us. If someone is angry at us, we tend to take it personally, once again becoming defensive—often by blaming or ridiculing that person—and in the process we become angry ourselves.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;">When LBI's show anger or dominance, we project a lot of these feelings and motivations onto them, and it tends to trigger our defensiveness and with it our blame, judgmentalism, aggression, etc. </span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;">It's interesting because right brain horses might exhibit more extreme emotion and more dangerous behavior than LBI's, but it's much easier for us to learn to accept their behavior. Once we get a little understanding about prey animal psychology, it's clear that when right brain horses are behaving in a dangerous way they are, quite simply, terrified, and once we have some Parelli skills, we can help them safely through that fear. This brings you and your horse closer as partners, and makes you feel like the hero who helped a small, distraught child find her parents. Good feelings for everyone. </span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;">But when your horse's unconfidence or intolerance manifests as anger, it feels bad to the human. We take it personally ("how dare he!") and we get defensive: "Look, dude, I may not be the perfect human, but if anyone else had to deal with you, you'd be at the auction already." Good feelings, indeed. </span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;">The problem is that, while right brain horses tend to say "I can't," left brain horses more often say "I won't." They may still be simply protecting themselves from what they perceive as a bad situation, but their refusal has a more defiant feel to it. Furthermore, while all horses are honest, LBI's are honest in a particularly ego-shredding way. Right brain horses might show you clearly where your leadership is lacking, but there's a part of them looking at you with eyes that say, "Please figure out how to do this better so we can both be happier." They are, as the Parelli's explain, looking for a leader, and as a result they're much easier to impress. It's almost like they want you to succeed.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;">Trying to impress an LBI, on the other hand, is like trying to impress your chain-smoking, tough old bird of a grandmother. LBI's don't particularly seem to care whether you get it right or not; they just tell you the truth in a kind of disinterested way, and there's always plenty more truth where that came from. And that's on a mild day.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;">On an extreme day, when they decide they do care, it comes out in the form of a temper tantrum. At this point your LBI is basically saying to you, "Oh no you <i>didn't </i>just push my button!" And things can proceed to get downright scary for the human—which is, of course, the LBI's intention: for you to be intimidated enough to drop the idea altogether. At these moments, when you feel that your horse is threatening you and you're concerned for your own safety, it is very hard to look at your LBI with love.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;">But there are a few key things to remember here:</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;">(1) Though a horse having a temper tantrum feels more confrontational and therefore more personal to us than a horse that is simply driven out of its mind by fear, the LBI doesn't want to be in that emotional place of extreme intolerance any more than the right brain horse wants to be panicked. It looks more deliberate, more calculated, and therefore like something they are choosing to do, but they are still being overwhelmed by an emotion that they are not enjoying having. We associate a temper tantrum with bratty children and see it as a manipulative strategy. But even if bratty children are being somewhat calculating, if it's a genuine tantrum they are also the victims of their own excessive emotion and don't know a better way to cope with it. I believe it's the same with horses, and it is therefore just as incumbent on us to help our LBI's learn more tolerance for the sake of their own well-being as it is for us to help right brain horses learn how to be more brave.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;">(2) A horse pitching a temper tantrum is, still, a prey animal reacting. It is an animal that, having assessed the situation, does not feel that whatever thing is being asked of it is in its best interest. When your horse starts getting punky with you in response to such a situation, it's hard to know exactly what to make of him—it's hard to trust his intentions and to trust him with your well-being. But that is exactly what he is saying to you: "it's hard for me to trust you with my well-being right now." He behaves in a dominant fashion because he is taking responsibility for his own well-being. No, he is not respecting you in that moment, but it isn't personal the way we imagine it to be when other people are what we perceive to be rude or disrespectful. It is simply a fact: I don't respect your leadership skills enough to believe that you will take care of me in this moment and so I am going to take care of myself. (Side note: in humansville this is called being responsible for yourself and is generally seen as a good thing.)</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;">(3) Finally, whether they are people or horses, LBI's are not warm and fuzzy. Their area of specialty is most definitely not blowing sunshine up people's asses to make them feel good about themselves. They are often, in fact, honest to the point that it is painful. As an LBI myself, I understand that this is actually one way of showing love. If I love someone, I want them to be the happiest and the best that they can be, and I know that only by facing up to the facts is that possible for them. So although it may not feel that way to them, I am actually trying to give them loving support when I am brutally honest with them.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;">Whether they intend it as a gesture of love or not, all horses will tell you the—sometimes brutal—truth. This is what makes them such valuable teachers. But right brain horses make this process a little more palatable by giving you a lot of extra credit bonus points for showing them that you care. LBI's, by contrast, want to know up front and in no uncertain terms that you both care and know—a lot. And they want daily proof. LBI's are more like those extremely demanding teachers who have such high standards that, if you get an 'A' in their class, you know you really earned it. </span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;">It's only recently that I've really started to appreciate the favor that my LBI horse does me every day by being this kind of demanding teacher. Now that I've started playing with other horses, everything Lupin has drilled me in is there at my fingertips without my having to think about it at all. And I realize now that what he has been doing is teaching me, not just unconscious competence, but excellence, and if this is not exactly proof of how much he loves me, it is proof of how much he cares that my leadership is solid, which in horseville I think may be almost the same thing. </span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;">In closing, I'll say one other thing for LBI's, which is that their seeming indifference goes both ways: Lupin may not be easily impressed by my leadership efforts, but he is not radically affected by my leadership failures either. As an example, I've been learning how to play with my donkey from Lupin's back. On our first trail ride, I was all kinds of spazzing out while I tried to manage the donkey, and Lupin calmly soldiered on, paying no mind to my frantic twisting and turning and—I'm embarrassed to say—cursing and swearing. Indeed, it was in large part owing to the fact that Lupin, at least, kept his head that we all came through okay.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;">The moral of the story? When your LBI remains completely non-plussed as you try to advance your skills, remember that he will also remain non-plussed in circumstances that could easily cause other horses to freak out. And when he does lose it emotionally and pitches the mother of all temper tantrums, try to remain calm and don't take it personally. Because when it's your turn to lose it emotionally, your LBI will be there, calm and not taking it personally.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;">Note: I am greatly indebted to Dan Thompson for changing my perspective on temper tantrums, and for helping me work through some of Lupin's tougher ones.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span>Marian the Contrarianhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17692753447558233510noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4258372110123330473.post-18663853818720625202012-04-12T21:49:00.003-07:002015-02-28T10:30:38.071-08:00Listening to your gut<div class="MsoNormal">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">In the days since my last post, here’s what I’ve learned: sometimes you need to manage your internal state—and changing that can make a lot of difference—but sometimes your internal state is telling you that something external needs to change. Translation: sometimes you need to listen to your gut.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">While Lupin and I did make some progress with the cow, the tying, and ourselves in certain ways, our sessions did not continue to head in a direction that felt right to me. For one thing, no matter how much progress we seemed to make, Lupin continued to pull back day after day. We were definitely being successful in conjuring a primal fear to confront, but we seemed to be less successful in actually dealing with it.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">I began to sense, in fact, that things were unraveling. I knew I couldn’t walk away from this issue now that it was in front of us, but I was concerned that it was going to start to destroy our relationship, and I could see us going back to <a href="http://twocontrarians.blogspot.com/2010/08/and-in-short-i-was-afraid.html" target="_blank">the brief and bizarre period</a> during which things had gotten so bad that, while I could do highly advanced moves with Lupin, I couldn’t lead him in from the field.<o:p></o:p></span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">So I retreated some. We started working on tying in a totally different location. Once again we used the blocker tie so he could move his feet, and I confronted Lupin with a series of potentially scary things, each time starting small and close and then getting to where I could run at him with the thing from a distance. I used violently flapping plastic bags right up in his face; I had a friend run at him shouting and wearing a tarp cape; we took turns banging trash can lids right next to him.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">I had done some of this before with Lupin without much effect; now, re-energized by his encounters with the cow, Lupin pulled back—sometimes quite violently and for several repetitions. We kept the stimulus up each time until he came back forward, lowered his head, looked directly at the thing instead of turning away, or licked and chewed. Since we were able to control the stimulus (and therefore both the extent of Lupin’s fear and when the stimulus stopped), we began making rapid progress.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Not only did Lupin pull back less and less far with each repetition, he began to get curious and mouth/lick the objects after he came back forward, even though they continued to scare him a little when they were in use. He also stayed very connected to me and looked to me for reassurance in a way that he hadn’t done much around the cow: there, he tended to stay focused on the cow and on getting away. That was what my gut had been responding to.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Being a recovering perfectionist, I try not to get too hung up on progress simply for the sake of reaching a goal, but sometimes a lack of progress is a good indicator that your strategy needs to change. Ultimately, it was the lack of progress that confirmed what my gut had been telling me and gave me the incentive to try something different. </span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">The resulting change in Lupin has been huge. As soon as I saw the difference in the way he responded--not without fear, but with the ability to work through his fear--I finally understood what my gut had been telling me. The cow experience didn't look like learning; this does. And that gives me the motivation I need to commit to a long-term program (with plans to include bicycles, fake cows, llamas, and every potentially scary thing I can think of). I’m even resigned to the fact that I’m just going to have to buy a cow at some point. </span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">But if we can work through a major confidence issue for Lupin, it’s worth the time, the effort, and even cow ownership. And the day that Lupin walks up and licks a cow? That will be priceless.</span><span class="Apple-style-span"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
Marian the Contrarianhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17692753447558233510noreply@blogger.com0