This is Mark Rashid and his wife Chrissie in the dojo up in New Hampshire where we are studying Aikido and horsemanship.

Today we learned the rest of the horseman’s kata, which is a series of movements based on approaching, mounting, riding, dismounting and honoring the horse.  The spiritual underpinnings of this kata are about forgiveness, “wiping away” the past and moving/focusing forward.

In our riding, we are focusing on the same things.  By seeking softness in our hands, legs, backs and minds, we are in a sense asking for forgiveness.  Each time we try to soften, to be clearer, more subtle and precise, we are moving forward, wiping away the past.

Today one of my lessons was about completion, so that each movement with the horse – backing up, halting, softening, was complete and full before going onto the next thing.  It is a continual practice of opening; to ease, to flow, to connection, to the horse, to ourselves.

Up here in the White Mountains of New Hampshire with lovely Sanne, studying Aikido and horsemanship with Mark Rashid.  In the Aikido class this morning, we practiced circling our hips like stirring a big pot.  Then we circled our hips from the “inside wall” of the body, and then from the organs.  Then we came to stillness while still maintaining the feeling of circling the organs inside the body.  To me, this felt like a dynamic, soft stillness.  We practiced breathing laterally, expanding our ribs sideways.  We learned the horseman’s kata – more about that tomorrow. We practiced transmitting softness to and through our partners.

Riding in the afternoon was about bringing the lessons from the morning’s class into the horsework.  It was amazing to feel how the habitual patterns of riding pushed away the newer somatic information from the morning. I felt as if I had to wade through my busy-ness, my “doing something” to get quiet enough to feel myself and my horse. I thought about re-patterning and how learning a new pattern can take hundreds, even thousands of repetitions.  I thought about how learning softness – because it is not really a pattern, but a way of being – is slipperier still.  Part of that is because our human tendency is not toward softness, but resistance and tightening.  It is reflexive, protective, fearful.  Sanne, on the other hand, tends toward softness.  The minute he feels an opening, he is soft.  That is his gift, his teaching, his desire.

My job is to look for and create that opening. Breathe in, breathe out.  Repeat with attention.