Tag Archives: yoga

Dec18

riding, dancing

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Photo:  Claire Glover;  Brandi Rivera riding Amadeo

Riding is the hardest thing that I do.  Physically.  Mentally.  Spiritually.

I am a dancer.  Riding is harder.  The intricacy, the communication, the balance, the nuance, the subtlety required in the riding arena are beyond anything I have experienced in a dance studio.  Martha Graham said that it takes ten years to make a dancer.  One of my first trainers, Beach Bennett, said that it takes at least two lifetimes to become a rider. She is right.

I have had to accept that despite my physical skills, my training and my understanding, I am going to need that second lifetime to become all that I want as a rider.  It is humbling. I welcome it.

I wrote yesterday about touching horses, and the way that brings me to my knees.  How I love it.  Riding is that way too.  Sitting in the saddle (my zafu) and finding the first rhythmic harmonics with my horse’s walk is like breathing. Or like stepping into the water, readying for a swim.  Being challenged to seek harmony, softness, clarity and balance throughout a riding lesson is like sitting with a tough Zen master.  Or like my yoga classes with Patricia Walden.  No tuning out, not ever, not for a moment.

The horse, you see, deserves nothing less than my very best.

Rigor and ecstasy.  Could there be anything better?

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Dec3

pony dances

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Escorial from Paula Josa-Jones on Vimeo.

For those of you who have not visited the RIDE site, here is a bit of what we call horse dancing. What I want to call attention to is the attunement, the listening, and the conversation between bodies. That is what has always been important to me about this work.

Escorial (aka Pony, and yes, he has his own page) is the equine performer. He is trained as a liberty horse (no restraint) by the brilliant Sarah Hollis of Tintagel Andalusians.We have worked with Pony and Sarah for nearly five years.  I think of it as the yoga of the herd.  Learning how subtle a signal is required to create a profound shift in Pony’s movement.  Rehearsals are humbling, because despite our  dancerly skills, our ability to communicate in herd-speak is always in need of improvement.  Sarah, being the alpha mare, keeps all of us in line.

Why this might be important to non-horse people: Since 87% of our communication is non-verbal, figuring out what we are communicating with our movement seems like a good idea.

For example, my horse Amadeo is majorly spooky. For a long time, I thought he might be autistic because his reactions seemed so disproportionate to what was happening around him. My godson is autistic, and I have had a similar difficulty in decoding his responses. What I finally understood is that Amadeo’a responses were precisely calibrated to his perception of the situation because he is hyper-aware of movement and the underlying emotional landscape. And in order to be around him, I had to become hyper-aware too, but not tense, not nervous. That is a very nuanced and subtle dance, requiring some deep inner and outer listening. And that is horse dancing.

When and with whom are you horse dancing?

Nov21

light & shadow

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I think that one of the things about becoming older is that the shadows get smaller.  More of me is revealed to myself and others, rust and all.

Riding, yoga and writing practice all help me to bring things forward into the light, illuminating what is hidden in the shadows.  Each time I ride I am seeking more and more sensitivity and refinement in what I feel from the horse and in my own body.  It is the same with my movement practices and with writing.

Taking photographs is teaching me that sometimes practicing is just about waiting for the light.  Or making peace with the shadows.

This week in The Journal I am writing about what happened when I went to have new headshots taken.

Where are you feeling the light today?

Nov15

horse yoga, part 2

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For many years I studied Iyengar yoga.  I loved the precision and rigor of the form and the way that it pushed me into the details of my physical experience.

What surprised me was the way that entering an asana could unlock layers of feeling.  I remember lying in savasana shuddering with tears, as my teacher invited me to soften my tongue, my eye sockets, the soles of my feet.  Opening, opening.

My instructors in horse yoga (the stallion Capprichio, above) are both demanding and forgiving.  They insist that I am present, that I am awake, that I am listening.

The horses ground my experience, both physically and emotionally.  There is nothing terribly abstract about being around a 1200 pound flight animal.  You have to wake up.  Open to the moment.

The yoga is this:  I show up every day and begin again.  (By the way, my daughters teach me the same lessons.)

In her book Adam’s Task, poet, trainer and philosopher Vicki Hearne, says that humans must first learn to become “kinesthetically legible” to themselves in order to become legible to other creatures.  That until we can read our own bodies, we can’t communicate with other beings. I love that challenge.

Here are some questions to chew on:

What is your yoga?

How do you ground your experience?

Are you kinesthetically legible to yourself?