Monthly Archives: August 2013

Aug31

mark your calendars!

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Embodied Horsemanship Workshop!

Sometimes the reason we were first drawn to horses gets lost.  In our hurried lives, we can lose touch with the playful, joyous part of simply being with our horses.  We can get automatic and fragmented in our relationships with them. The rush of preparation, the push of riding goals and the pressure of competition sometimes comes at the expense of our first and most precious desire to savor and enjoy their incredible grace, strength and beauty.

Learning to slow down, focus our intention and become more present not only improves our horsemanship, but we can recapture that original dream.

This workshop will also show you how to:

  • Keep your horse ‘tuned up’ mentally, emotionally and physically
  • Prevent injury by stimulating the natural flow of oxygen in your horse’s body as well as your own.
  • Enhance flexibility, softness and resiliency in your horse and in you…no matter what disciplines you want to master.
This workshop is for those who would like to become more attuned, mindful and improvisational in their relationship with their horses on the ground.   We teach a simple-six step practice that you can use with your horses on the ground and in the saddle. 

 

 By expanding mindfulness, embodied consciousness, softness and authenticity, and learning basic movement awareness and listening skills, you will create greater physical and emotional balance and ease for you and your horse.  AND…we believe you’ll discover how this practice can bring a greater sense of attunement, harmony and presence to your relationships with the other four and two-legged creatures you have in your life.

 

This is an unmounted workshop for those with all levels of experience.

SIGN UP HERE

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Aug28

after the storm

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Photos:  Pam White

Walked to the beach around 4:30, after the torrential rains in Aquinnah.  The water was sluicing down from the ponds above the beach, cutting new sculptures into the sand, exposing new stones, brilliant colors.  The waves were big rollers, looming up from nowhere.  I sat this one out.

I thought about the storms that children bring in – rogue waves, big stinkers that explode out of the blue and leave you gasping for air, unable to think or move.  In April when the s___t hit the fan with our youngest daughter, we went into mourning and into shock.  Watched marathon Netflix of “A Touch of Frost,” (there are 13 seasons), anything to not feel it, to hold the grief and hurt at bay.

Now we are carved like this beach, but the waves will come in and out and smooth us.  I gotta believe, for her, for us.

 

Aug26

big sea

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This morning on the beach in Aquinnah – the fierce face of the sea mother.  I could hear her roaring when I woke up, and could not wait to see her wild self.  Jacob, my autistic godson, felt her too.  All day he was turbulent, changing, moving.  It felt like there was no real trough in which to settle – all crests and foam.

I am feeling stormy some days as well, but more and more I am finding the depths, the sea floor stillness in myself.  I like to think about that – the fury above, and the holding quiet far below.

Mary Oliver always has a way to see.

I Go Down to the Shore

I go down to the shore in the morning
and depending on the hour the waves
are rolling in or moving out,
and I say, oh, I am miserable,
what shall—
what should I do? And the sea says
in its lovely voice:
Excuse me, I have work to do.

Breakage

I go down to the edge of the sea.
How everything shines in the morning light!
The cusp of the whelk,
the broken cupboard of the clam,
the opened, blue mussels,
moon snails, pale pink and barnacle scarred—
and nothing at all whole or shut, but tattered, split,
dropped by the gulls onto the gray rocks and all the moisture gone.
It’s like a schoolhouse
of little words,
thousands of words.
First you figure out what each one means by itself,
the jingle, the periwinkle, the scallop
       full of moonlight.
Then you begin, slowly, to read the whole story.


Aug26

one day, one step at a time

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Thirty four years ago when I got sober, this was the mantra that I said to myself over and over.  Many times it was one hour at a time, one minute at a time, because the anguish of being present, of not running away from myself was so great.

Today, I am repeating that mantra.  My lovely therapist said to me, “Just for today you are powerless.”  I don’t like being powerless, particularly when it comes to my children.  I want to be able to save them, to help them, especially when they are a terrible danger to themselves.

This morning I awoke from a nightmare about my daughter with a terrible headache, a feeling of foreboding, “It is a wave,” I kept repeating.  “Let it pass, dive under it.”  Then I walked down to the sea and let one small wave after another wash over me.  The water was cold, I could not get enough.  I wanted to be the water, I wanted to dissolve.  The sea felt anesthetic, cleansing, alchemical.

I am taking steps.  Most of them do not have to do with my missing daughter.  They have to do with swimming in the waters of my own carnal experience, of wading into my work with devotion and delight.  With listening, appreciating, praying.  Being present, one precious day, one step at a time.