Exploring the Inner Game of Horsemanship
In January I signed up for a class with Jenny Pearce, called "From Your Horses Heart: the internet based lesson program developed BY nervous riders and nervous horses FOR nervous riders and nervous horses". I didn't really consider myself a nervous rider and I didn't consider Gunny to be a nervous horse, but I decided to join the class after reading the description. Now that I am a couple of months into the class, I can say that I am sure this is going to be very helpful for us. Actually, it has already been very helpful for us!
Over the past two years I had been using Carolyn Resnick's ideas and I was happy with the connection that it gave us. But I encountered a couple of stumbling blocks. I have been trying to figure out how to to take the connection "and go on the road" with it and to balance that with Carolyn's Sharing Territory to keep the connection strong or to rebuild it when a difficulty caused it to weaken. The things I had tried were giving me mixed results and I wasn't totally happy with it.
This class is now giving me a way to take that connection into action, to do things like riding. It is also providing a path that will allow me to increase the connection while we are doing those things and working through difficulties. With these techniques, the actual act of working through the difficulty increases the connection. Very cool!
Jenny's background is very parallel to mine too. She was in the Parelli instructor program and ran into many of the same types of roadblocks with her horse, Bobby that I ran into with Gunny.
The reason that I look at this as the inner game of horsemanship is that it is very much about learning how to listen to your thoughts, feelings, emotions, and intuition in an aware and intentional way and use that information on the fly. I have always been very aware of Gunny's thoughts and feelings, but this takes it to a whole new level and uses that information to help change things before they turn into a problem. There is a whole 'nother layer going on that we can tap into to get more information. For Gunny and I, missing out on this layer has led to a lot of our difficulties.
If you are interested in learning more about this course, here is the link:
www.jennypearce.com.au
In the meantime, my future posts will be sharing stories about my experiences as I participate in this program.
Over the past two years I had been using Carolyn Resnick's ideas and I was happy with the connection that it gave us. But I encountered a couple of stumbling blocks. I have been trying to figure out how to to take the connection "and go on the road" with it and to balance that with Carolyn's Sharing Territory to keep the connection strong or to rebuild it when a difficulty caused it to weaken. The things I had tried were giving me mixed results and I wasn't totally happy with it.
This class is now giving me a way to take that connection into action, to do things like riding. It is also providing a path that will allow me to increase the connection while we are doing those things and working through difficulties. With these techniques, the actual act of working through the difficulty increases the connection. Very cool!
Jenny's background is very parallel to mine too. She was in the Parelli instructor program and ran into many of the same types of roadblocks with her horse, Bobby that I ran into with Gunny.
The reason that I look at this as the inner game of horsemanship is that it is very much about learning how to listen to your thoughts, feelings, emotions, and intuition in an aware and intentional way and use that information on the fly. I have always been very aware of Gunny's thoughts and feelings, but this takes it to a whole new level and uses that information to help change things before they turn into a problem. There is a whole 'nother layer going on that we can tap into to get more information. For Gunny and I, missing out on this layer has led to a lot of our difficulties.
If you are interested in learning more about this course, here is the link:
www.jennypearce.com.au
In the meantime, my future posts will be sharing stories about my experiences as I participate in this program.
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