Category Archives: moving, breathing, feeling

Aug12

riding lessons – part one

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Picture 3Capprichio, ridden by Sabine Schut-Kery

These two ideas are excerpted from a book that I am writing called The Common Body:  Horses and Humans Sharing the Language of Movement and the Body.  There are four “installments.”  Stay tuned!

  1. Arriving

It you have been sitting at your desk all day or have driven through traffic to get to the stable, you body and mind need to transition and arrive fully. When you get out of your car, take a few minutes to stand, breathing fully as you drop your weight into your legs and feet. Then stretch your arms up and open and take in the sky. Slowly turn around to your right and then to your left, taking in the whole panorama of your surroundings. As you enter the barn and begin your time with your horse, can you consciously expand your focus to include the whole physical and emotional landscape, rather than narrowing your focus?

Using our peripheral vision is another way to arrive by expanding our senses, to what is at the edges of our sight, sound, taste, smell and touch.   Horses are peripheral beings. Their eyes, unlike ours, are set to the outsides of their faces, so that they can take in their surroundings. If you are walking a horse with your focus straight ahead, you are missing the big picture of their world. Try walking with your horse opening your vision and awareness out to the periphery.

  1. Aligning

Alignment is not static, but dynamic, changing and fluid. Consciously aligning with yourself and your horse is a good way to begin your horse time. Begin by simply paying attention to the flow of your breath. Placing your mind on the breath gives us a single focus, anchoring and stilling the mind.

Instead of inadvertently tuning out or going into an automatic routine of preparation and riding, see how focused and attentive you can be, how fully engaged and involved with what you are doing. Use your breath to connect with yourself so that you can more effortlessly and fully connect with your horse.  Have the goal of coming back to the breath throughout your time with your horse, using that soft awareness to align with yourself and him.

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Aug6

fluid riding

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IMG_1620Amadeo, ridden by Brandi Rivera

Today in my studio, I was playing with movement that originates in the body’s fluid system, specifically cellular fluid, transitional fluid and extracellular fluid.  I had been watching Bonnie Bainbridge Cohen’s videos on the fluid systems of the body.  According to Bonnie, “The fluids are the transportation system of the body. They underlie presence and transformation, set the ground for basic communication, and mediate the dynamics of flow between rest and activity, tension and relaxation. The characteristics of each fluid relate to a different quality of movement , touch, voice, and state of mind. These relationships can be approached from the aspects of movement, mind states, or from anatomical and physiological functioning.”

In Body-Mind Centering,understanding the fluids means

  • Distinguishing the qualities of specific fluids through movement and touch.
  • Initiating movement from each of the fluids.
  • Identifying individual psychophysical characteristics of each of the fluids and their various combinations.

So back to my studio.  The cellular fluid has a quality of simple, presence, of being “home” where everything comes into a state of rest, similar to the savasana pose in yoga.  Tuning into the transitional fluid means finding a way to move from that parasympathetic state into action without a sympathetic activation.  Extracellular fluid can be any fluid that is outside of the cell membrane and has a quality of moving in a direction, like the flow of plasma, for example.

Today, while riding my always complicated Andalusian Amadeo, I decided to experiment with those three fluid states in my ride.  Deo is recovering from bilateral hind suspensory injuries, so we are taking things slowly.

At the halt, I looked for that state of rest, tuning into the stillness and presence of the cellular fluid.  Then, instead of “popping” out of that stillness into forward movement, I looked for a subtle, transitional feeling (in my own body) of the fluids beginning to “stream” into motion.  Then I added the light activation of my leg to move us into going more actively forward.  The difference I felt in Deo’s body was profound.  He felt much more open and soft as he walked and then as we moved into trot.  There was none of the bracing that I often feel as I ask him to move from halt to walk or trot.  I felt that in the halt (pause), feeling for the “coming home to rest” quality of cellular fluid, we were able to open to each other and then move together in a more attuned and expansive way.

At the same time, I was excited to be creating this bridge from the studio to the arena to this page.  Ride, dance write!

 

Aug1

and today . . .

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DSC02358Photo:  Pam White

Yesterday I wrote about my great lifelong collaboration with the astonishing Pam White.  And today, I offer you this (imperfect) video, from us, from Venice.  Work-in-progress, still finding its most perfect self.  Like all of us. . .

Traveler Doorway from Paula Josa-Jones on Vimeo.

Jul31

mille grazie mi amor

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DSC02565 - Version 2Photo:  Pam White

I am so lucky.  She has been shooting me for 28 years.  We are not close to stopping.  Yesterday, we shot nearly 600 frames at the marvelous studios of our friend the sculptor Gillian Jagger.

Today, she wrote me this poem:

This Earth

You were put here on this earth

to drive me nuts. Only that, oh,

and your shadow devouring you in the earthly

last light of day in my film of your movement.

Motion shivers your amazing body, shadows, body, dipping

tangling with yourself in realtime and slow mo.

And me, I can see me in the shake of the camera,

when the great angle is made, when the dove flies

up the wall with your shadow. I can feel your

movement in my aching arms, my ant-bitten ankles

as the camera does its job. In Italian – where we each

live parts of our days – camera means room.

There is room in our hearts for this shake

that is us, this flight on the wall, the light

on your face walking backwards to me.

I have to be so still when I get the great shot, you

have to keep going when you ace the phrase: movement

perfection, body lit. As we work the tangle of our lives

the light reaches its peak and retracts, we go on.