Monthly Archives: June 2013

do one thing

During my recent Aikido/Horsemanship with Mark Rashid, at one point he said, “Do one thing instead of 20.”  Returning home to ride on my own, I could feel myself starting to do 20 things with Amadeo, getting too busy with the reins, leg, mind.  I stopped.  I let the reins all the way out and we just stood there.  The one thing I focused on was feeling the inside of me connecting to the inside of him.  When he tried lowering his head, i said “good” and after a few moments, he relaxed all the way down.  When I picked up the reins again, the one thing was maintaining a feeling of internal softness in the contact.  And breathing.  We did that several times, with some walking in between.  I could feel him settling, looking around, calming, his whole body seeming to change texture.  Mine too.  When we started to trot, I needed to firm up a little, because for Deo, too much softness feels like no direction or structure, which is ineffective.  But the firming up has to have the softness all the way through it.

My daughter Bimala is getting very good at doing one thing.  Being with a baby is a lot like being with a horse.  Both require feel, timing, blending, balance and breath.  When we get too busy with Laila, she lets us know right away that we have lost one of those things.  Deo is the same.  The interesting thing is that with both of them, I am finding a deep quality of grounding and stillness.  One breath at a time.  Repeat.  Repeat.

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staying in the saddle

Staying in the saddle means that regardless of how rough the ride, we try to maintain balance.  I am not talking just about riding here.  When our youngest daughter ran away and cut off all communication, dropping out of the college and basically shattering her family and mucking up her life, we all came unseated.  It took me about two months to even find my horse and try to get back on. I am back in the saddle, but there are days when my balance is poor, when I do not want to ride or even get up.

Those days a fewer and farther between.  The universe, curiously, has delivered me two great gifts:  An artist’s fellowship from the state of Connecticut and a fellowship from the Bogliasco Foundation in Italy.  I take those gifts to mean that not only must I ride forward, but I have to be firmly seated in my own life, my own work, moving into the days with a courageous heart.  When Mark Rashid told us to ride with “feel, timing, blending, balance and breath,” I took that as an instruction for living.  His idea is that those elements result in softness – the kind of irresistible Aikido softness that can move mountains.  My horses already feel the difference.  So do I.  My daughter may be lost, but it is that softness, if anything, that will open a way for her to return.

don’t tell a story

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Sometime during the Mark Rashid Aikido and Horsemanship clinic, someone started to tell a long story about how difficult their horse was.  He looked at them and said, “Don’t tell a story.”  From then on, all week I noticed the stories.  They were all tethered to the past, to stuff that was probably going to go wrong because it had gone wrong in the past.

Sometimes it is hard to remember to tell the story of what we want instead of what we don’t want.  Focusing on what we want can feel counter-intuitive and require some heavy habit breaking.  Aren’t our conversations usually grounded in our problems?

Today riding Amadeo, I focused on what I wanted, and on getting quiet and soft enough to let that come through.  Instead of paying attention to all of his clatter (which after all is only mirroring my clatter), I kept coming back to breathing, offering softness, and being consistent about what I was doing.  So every time he grabbed the bit (think every 5 seconds or so), I asked him to be soft.  I took long breaths, and after a short time, so did he.  New story, good ending.