Some centering exercises

A series of exercises to help find your center

These exercises come with an apology to all those people who find it difficult to visualize a picture inside their heads as these notes are written with a visual reader in mind. On clinics we can work with kinesthetic people and do these same exercises in a different way but space does not allow me to write the full details for this here in these notes.

Finding your central axis

Before locating the specific point which is your center its useful to get an idea of your central axis. Dancer Andre Bernard said “ideal posture can be found when you allow the parts of the structure to balance as close to the central axis as possible”.

Choose one of the following exercises that works best for you.

1. Visualize a line of light and energy coming down from the sky and going through the dead centre of your crown, brain, neck, chest and abdomen, then exiting between the middle of your legs and continuing down all the way into the centre of the earth. Spend a short while aligning your body around this central line of energy, which you can think of as the core of your body. If you like you can gently rock your body a few millimeters from side to side in order to find the central point of right-left balance around your core, and then rock a few millimeters forward and back so that the front and back of your body can find their point of balance around your core. (Qi Gong exercise)

2. (Alternative to exercise 1) Visualize a miniature searchlight positioned between your feet, coming up through the horse and shining a bright contained beam of light up through your central axis. Imagine the light shining out of the top of your head. The place where the light touches the sky or the ceiling is directly above the place where it originated. (From Eric Franklin)

3. Visualize your central axis as a guitar string extending from a point centered between your feet to a point at the center of the top of your head. Pluck the string and see and feel its vibration in the core of your body. Hear the sound, what is the tone. (From Eric Franklin)

Exercises to help find your center

I was working with Vicki who was riding a rather worried Icelandic horse. This little horse was hell bent on going as fast as he could while his owner was equally determined to go slowly. I’ve got to be fair to the horse here, on balance he generally had the edge in terms of speed control, and his choice was fast. We helped Vicki to breath a little more deeply first of all but right after that we talked specifically about how you can focus your attention on your center. Vicki had a number of different thoughts going on her head and she wasn’t that centered when we started out so this was a big change for her and the difference was almost immediate and profound. The horse started to breath and he slowed down as if someone had flicked a switch and found a new gear. From here we were able to progress to some other areas of horsemanship with this new calmer horse.

Here are some exercises to help you find your center.

1. Follow the core line, light or energy of your body (see exercise 1 or 2 above) to the lower belly area, about 3 or 4 fingers width beneath the naval. This is your center.

2. Find your center. Visualize any image that you like and mentally locate that image in your center to help strengthen the feeling of this place. Examples could be a luminous point of light or energy at this place, an image of the sun or a coloured ball of some kind. Some people like to choose an image from nature that they enjoy. Choose the size of this image that suits you, this could range from something the size of a golf ball to something much larger.

3. If you find it difficult to make a mental picture you can feel the center, it may have a temperature, warm or cold, a feeling of spaciousness or a comfortable sensation. This works just as well as an image for many people. If you really want some fun you could imagine some kind of sound or music associated with your center!

4. Imagine yourself as the core of a tree. Imagine a cross-section of that tree taken horizontally just below your pelvis, the trunk is surrounded by concentric growth rings. The rings become smaller and smaller as they approach your centre, feel the power concentrated around your center (Adapted from Eric Franklin)

Introducing movement in your center

Once the idea of your center as a static image has become familiar to you, and you are comfortable with a few of the exercises above, (its ideal to work with an image on and off your horse for about a week before moving on), you may enjoy adding some kind of movement to your centre. The advantages of this are to strengthen the image and feeling of centering yourself, to incorporate the idea of energy flowing in this area and to start to bring your horse and his movement into the equation. You may well find that, with some practice, you can start to influence your horse’s movement with these images and so reduce the amount of physical cues that you need to use.

1. Imagine the breath traveling all the way down to your center, remember to do a long out breath first. What influence does the breath have on the center? Some people imagine that it grows or changes in some way as you breath out. Our minds are attracted to things that sparkle, is there a way that you can bring some “bling” into your image?

2. Its natural that as your horse moves underneath you, your center of gravity is challenged and may move away from the neutral, center point we have been practicing. Visualize the relationship between the neutral point in your pelvis and your actual center of gravity during movement, during a transition for example. Merge your center of gravity back to your neutral center point once again. The relationship between the neutral point and the centre of gravity is like a yo-yo. The hand holding the yo-yo is the neutral center, the yo-yo moves away but returns again to your hand. (Adapted from Eric Franklin)

3. If you visualize your center as being round then it could potentially roll as your horse moves. Centered riding teaches that the ball at our center rolls backwards as we move forwards. You can experiment with three plastic water bottles of the same size. Place two on a table and rest the third on top. Hold the bottom two bottles as you push them along the table. What is the direction of movement of the third bottle resting on top?

I have had some great results visualizing my center rolling backwards as I prepare to move forwards and then releasing energy forwards, in the direction I want to go as I want to move off. This image/feeling works well in reverse for the back up. You can also use the same idea for lateral work. This image is interesting because it starts to release the energy stored in the center outside the body in the direction of travel.

Some people think about their center moving in the direction of travel, this can work really well for some horse and rider combinations as well. There is no right or wrong with this stuff, it just depends what suits you.

4. Move from your center. It is most beneficial to initiate every movement from your center, often we move with our head leading the movement. This exercise helps to initiate movement from the center and clarifies your intent as to where you want to go. Imagine a winch is attached from your center to the destination you are riding to. Design the details so that they are right for you. What’s your winch line made of? How does it attach to your center and to the place you are riding to? When you are ready, ride your line with the help of your winch. (Adapted from an exercise used by Mark Rashid)

Exercises to develop connection to your horse

The horse’s center of gravity is on a line from the point of the shoulder to the point of the buttock. Its just below the 13^th or 14^th thoracic vertebrae, but thats going to depend on whether and how the horse is moving. If you draw a line down from the COG it falls closer to the front legs than the hinds so the front legs take 58% of the weight and back 42%. As the head and neck move forward so does the COG.

So where is a horse’s center of energy? Well a lot less is written about this than about the human center! Sally Swift writes in her book Centered Riding 2 that the horse’s center of energy is in the same place as a human’s, that is underneath the lumbar spine. However a lot of people find it useful to think about an area underneath where they are sitting (the horse's physcial COG) as they explore these ideas.

1. As you ride imagine the horses COG or center of energy and explore the connection that this allows you to feel with your horse.

2. In his DVD, Understanding Footfall, Mark Rashid describes 3 circles of energy that are useful to think about as you are riding. Two cover the horse and one covers the rider. The front circle of energy of the horse includes the front legs, neck and head and intersects with the rider. The back circle of energy on the horse covers the hind end and legs and also intersects with the rider and the front circle. Then the rider herself has a circle of energy which will intersect with both of the horse’s circles.

As a rider we have a choice as to whether we help the horse to connect the hind and front circles by allowing the movement to come through us or we can inadvertently block this by poor balance, poor breathing, excessive body tension or a poorly fitting saddle.

Getting a feeling for the horse’s circles of energy as you ride can be an extremely useful exercise to connect the horse and rider. Remember, there is no right or wrong here, this is simply a question of what the circles might feel like to you. The idea of our own center helps as we think about our own energy circle and our responsibility to help the horse with the connection from back to front.

A trip to New England to see Mark Rashid

This summer my family and I traveled over to the White Mountains in New Hampshire, home of Tim Harvey, friend and regular host of Mark Rashid. I had a really enjoyable week assisting Mark and Crissi on a group format clinic and here are some thoughts and discoveries that arose from that experience. The group format means that 9 riders, in this case, rode at the same time while focusing specifically on their own objectives. The clinic was 6 days long and that gave everyone plenty of time to work on their chosen goals, the format created a really relaxed atmosphere and seemed to allow for a very organic type of learning. By that I mean that people had some really significant breakthroughs and made these for themselves and in their own time, having time to digest and process information in a way that really seemed to enhance the learning.

Breathing, centering and teaching the feel of connection
Its hardly surprising at one of Mark’ clinics that we should open with some discussion and exercises about breathing. Building on this we also discussed connection between horse and rider in more detail than I had come across at Mark’s previous clinics. When two living things are connected a subtly of communication is possible that far exceeds spoken language between humans or techniques and cues between horse and rider. When you experience this with another person you know how they are feeling, which way they want to move or what their intention is without them having to express this in words. I am learning about this intimately from my daughter Katie. With a horse, this connection is experienced when the rider feels that they didn’t need to use an external cue, the horse “heard” or “felt” their thoughts and responded as that thought formed in the rider’s mind. I don’t mean to say that there is anything weird or magical going on, its just that incredible sensitivity is available when we are grounded, focused, aware and connected.

Mark showed us a number of exercises from Aikido which illustrate the power of establishing a connection. For example, with one foot forward we gently moved our whole body backwards and forwards on a straight plane with the motion originating from our center. The point of this exercise is to use the gentle movement to connect our center with our nervous system and with the mind. You could think about this as reconnecting the mind and the body. We did this with a partner as well, one person placed a hand on the other’s arm. The purpose of the exercise was for one person to imagine moving their arm to one side, backwards or forwards and to see if the other person could feel which way they were thinking about. First of all the two people found a connection as discussed above and then one of them just thought about moving in a particular direction. Every group experienced that the lead partner in the pair didn’t need to move at all, once a connection had been made, and their partner felt which way they wanted to move. They were able to just think about moving and have an impact on the other person. This exercise showed very clearly that once you have a connection the most subtle imaginable communication is felt by both parties. This would be a very great feel to consistently replicate when riding a horse.

We also worked with some exercises with the reins to show that if we focus on breathing, centering and our connection we can work with braces offered by our partner (or the horse) with a quietly consistent feel that was very effective indeed.

The exercises that Mark’s showed us at this clinic were reminiscent of some exercises I have done at NLP workshops with Robert Dilts. In order to teach us to achieve a connection with our clients we work through an exercise of breathing, centering and then focusing on our heart center and finally our “third eye”, a point in our forehead. The intention is that we become grounded, open and aware of ourselves so that we are able to be connected with what is around us. The objective seems to be the same as with the exercise we were working on with Mark in that by becoming connected to ourselves we can open to the possibility of a subtle connection with others. If this works between humans who are relatively dull, as animals go, then there is no question in my mind that this works between a horse and a human. Anyway, if we don’t give it a go and offer this feel then we’ll never know.

While we were talking about connection between people and horses I was really interested that Crissi raised the subject of mirror neurons. Mirror neurons have been the hot topic in the psychology world for the last decade as they may explain imitation, empathy and language acquisition. A mirror neuron is a neuron in the brain that fires both when an animal acts and when the animal observes the same action performed by another. The neuron "mirrors" the behavior of the other animal, as though the observer were itself acting. The original experiments showed that one money watching another monkey eating fired the same parts of the brain as if it were also eating, in other words we can watch someone doing something and have similar brain activity and sensations as if we were doing that thing ourselves. These neurons have been directly observed in a variety of different parts of the brain in primates, humans and other species including birds.

Is the horse breathing?
Its not just humans who adopt poor breathing patterns. Its relatively common that horses are not breathing very well at all when they are working. This is especially apparent during the canter because at that time we should be able to hear the rhythmical out breath in time with the outside hind leg pushing off the ground. There were a couple of horses on the clinic who were not breathing well and Mark worked with each of them on the lunge at the canter to ask them to move until they could find a way to breath well. Sometimes this takes a little while and its not an entirely easy process for the horse but the benefit is that the horse is going to feel a lot more comfortable once its found a way to breath properly. Once the horse is breathing better it is able to hold the canter more easily and can quite quickly find their way back to a good breathing pattern again when the exercise is repeated over the course of a couple of days.

Since getting back from New Hampshire this is something that I have emphasized quite a bit more in my own clinics and the results have been very positive. More often than not the humans are not considering the breathing of the horse at all but its really easy to spot a problem once we start to talk about it. In one example we were working with an older polo pony, she was not moving that easily and there was something short and a little tight about her movement. It was not so much a physical issue, more that she looked as if she was holding herself tight from the inside. We asked her to trot and canter on the lunge and we all listened …….... and heard absolutely nothing at all. We waited and still heard nothing. After quite a few rounds of canter she did start to slightly blow her nose, and then nothing. After a few more rounds we started to hear a very shallow breath about once every three strides. And we really needed to stain our ears to pick that up. Shortly after that she did a large amount of nose blowing and we heard a few rhythmical breaths where she did manage to breath out on each stride. We called it a day with that exercise and repeated it for the next two days of the clinic. The second day we saw a definite improvement as it took far, far less time for her to blow her nose and start to breath out and on the third day we heard a lovely rhythmical breathing pattern from the moment she started to canter. I can’t help thinking that she is going to be a lot more comfortable breathing like this.

Openings
Maybe its just me but sometimes its really useful to hear things again …… and again…. and again! I have heard Mark talk about openings on many occasions and it was nice to have openings be the “word of the day” on the second day of the clinic so that we were all reminded to focus on what this means for us and our horses.

Think about making a simple halt to walk transition with two different frames of mind. Here’s the first example: Say we want the horse to move away from his current position. We pick up the reins and use our legs to let him know that we want to move forward. Our emphasis is on moving him away from where he is standing right now.

And the second example: To make the same halt to walk transition we could think about creating an opening into which both the horse and the rider are going to move. In order to do this we need to pay attention to what happens before we start to make the usual physical cues. We can create an opening by thinking about where we are both going to go, what’s the space that we are going to move forward into together, is there a focus on where we are going? We will very likely still use the same physical cues (at least to start with) but they are directed towards what it is that we do want, which is to move together in the opening.

The interesting point here is that the feel changes because offering an opening is such a totally different way to go about things, its generally a less confrontational option.

I felt a really amazing physical example of what openings are all about when we were doing the dismounted exercises. Mark showed us a number of exercises along the same lines but the one that really stuck in my mind was very simple. One person braced themselves ready for their partner to try to push them backwards by placing thier hands on their stomach. The first time we did this the person just pushed at the stomach and most people were pretty strong and able to resist the pushing pretty well. In the second part of the same exercise the person doing the pushing imagined an opening behind the other person into which they were both going to move. The difference in feel was absolutely amazing, it was almost impossible to resist the energy of the second push and both people moved as one into the opening.

Time and again with my own horses and when I am teaching I have found that people do much better when they think about creating an opening rather than just pushing on the horse in the direction in which they want to go. Its something really simple that affects the way to approach the situation, usually to the benefit of both horse and rider.

My thanks to Mark and Crissi for giving me the opportunity to come and assist, to Hilary Lecluse for the photos used in this blog, to Heidi Uhlman of Deer Creek Farm for hosting the clinic, to all the riders for riding and to Peter and Katie for coming with me to enjoy New Hampshire.

Finding your center

How heavy is a 2 year old child?

Well that should be a simple, empirical question. My daughter, Katie, weights about 12.5kg and, most of the time, my husband or I have no problem at all picking her up. Hum… but then there are the other times. When she does not want to be picked up she seems to attached to the ground in some way and when she really wants to be put down I feel as if I can’t physically hold her any more, I don’t mean she is throwing herself around in any way or that she is tight and braced in her muscles, its just that she is strangely heavy. I think this effect comes from her completely unified physical and mental intention and that’s the interesting part as we can use the same principle of engagement of the power of our core to be more effective with our riding. In the example above Katie has dropped her center of gravity and you could argue that I’m feeling an application of what martial artists understand as “life energy” coming from her center.

So what’s going on and what does Katie’s weird weight gain have to do with horses?

A simple exercise that Mark Rashid frequently uses on clinics illustrates the power of finding our “center” and the impact this has to our balance and how we feel to another person. Working in pairs, one person places a finger on their forehead and puts all their attention on that place. Letting the finger and arm drop down but keeping their attention on the forehead, their partner then gently places both hands on the shoulders of the first person and tests their balance. The object is not to flatten them but to just gently see how stable they feel.

Next we repeat the process, this time focusing on the area of the heart by touching an area on the sternum and again focusing entirely on that place. As above, the partner tests the balance gently by placing both hands on the shoulders.

Finally, the focus is placed on the “center” which is found about 3 or 4 fingers width below the naval. Sometimes people need a little time to focus and concentrate on this, dropping their attention down to their center, when they are ready the partner again tests their balance.

Whenever I have shown this exercise to riders in clinics, they have found more stability when they place their attention in the area below the naval than either in the forehead or the heart area. Very often the difference is dramatic, to the extent that it is actually hard to push them over in the third exercise whereas they topple easily when the focus is on the forehead. It follows that learning to ride from our center could help to improve balance and reduce the amount of muscular tension we need to do the job of balancing on top of a horse.

Centers – our physical center, center of gravity and center of energy

We could mean a few things when we talk about our center. Our physical (geometric) center is a point in ourselves which you could find if you imagine dividing your body in half from left to right, in half from front to back and in half from top to bottom. These three planes meet in just one point, that’s our geometric center.

The geometric center is not necessarily the same as our center of gravity. For most of us the center of gravity lies approximately in front of the second sacral vertebra at about 55% of our height. The exact location for each individual depends on their build and alignment. A man with a very muscular torso and long, thin legs would have a higher center of gravity. Another person who habitually stands with shoulders raised and leans slightly to the left would have the center of gravity up and to the left. We become more stable and balanced if we can lower the center of gravity.

I also want to explore the idea that our center is also a center of energy that is more than just our center of gravity. In Eastern culture and disciplines such as Aikido, Tai Chi, Qi Gong, Yoga, Chinese medicine, acupuncture and meditation there is focus on our center of energy which is located pretty much in the same place as our center of gravity, that is about 3 or 4 fingers width below and behind the naval. This is referred to as the dantien, tan t’ien (Chinese), one point, hara (Japanese), manipura (Indian), navel or solar plexus chakra. The center is the place where our chi, or life force is stored. It is a reservoir for our energy and a place of inner strength. Eastern disciplines teach that if we can learn to live, move and act with our attention on our center then we will be more balanced physically and emotionally. We need to learn to see from our center, move from our centre, breathe from our center.

Although modern science has not proved the presence of energy centers in the body, there are several interesting things about the center from an anatomical point of view. It has been proved that the solar plexus (and heart) is surrounded by cells that are very like those contained on the cortex of the brain. These have been shown to allow some form of “intelligence” and may account for the intuition that some people attribute to “gut feelings”. Also there is a major branching of the nervous system along the spinal cord close to the naval center and it is linked to the glands of the endocrine system, specifically the adrenal glands and pancreas.

Depending on which discipline you study, there are other energy centers in the body which are connected by meridians allowing energy to flow around (and beyond) the body. Qi Gong refers to three energy points; the forehead (the third eye or Ajna), the heart (Anahata) and the pelvic center or many other disciplines, such as Yoga, refer to 7 chakras running up the spine from the perineum to the crown of the head. This also includes a chakra close to the naval. In the most simple terms these points are different ways of dividing up the energy in the body.

In a New Jersey State prison, muggers were shown videos of people walking along the road and asked which they would have mugged. Usually the prisoners were in complete agreement, it was those who where out of balance or out of sync in some way that they chose. Those who were centered were hardly ever chosen.

So what does all this have to do with horse riding!

What part of your body do you associate with strength? Upper body? In fact the strongest muscles of the body are below the waist, the muscles that attach to the pelvic girdle. By focusing attention here we can move in the most efficient way which means only using the muscles that we need to do the job in hand. Often people move with large amounts of muscular tension in the whole body, horses can feel this and will usually respond by matching this with tension in their own bodies. This is neither efficient for movement nor healthy in the long term.

There is also a connection between to extent to which we are mentally present and quiet in our mind when we are riding and whether we are centered. Focusing attention on the center stills an over active mind and improves our ability to communicate with the horse.

It generally seems to be the case they when a rider gets very analytical they are “in their head” and they quickly become unbalanced with a high center of gravity and no awareness of their center of energy. Its not surprising that we have such a focus on our heads, we have a big, heavy brain and many of our sense come from ears, eyes and nose which are located on our head.

We are often distracted with thoughts of the future and “what ifs”, fears or thoughts that are totally unconnected with riding a horse. In the exercise described at the start of this blog that’s like the first test of balance where the person is totally focused on a place on their forehead.

Instead, learn to focus on your center when you are riding. Not only will this help to improve your balance by lowering your center but also you will learn to still your mind. Focus on the center is so much more useful to the task of riding then many of the other unconnected thoughts that arrive, uninvited, inside our heads.

My next post is a series of exercises to help with centering, moving from the center and connecting with your horse by centering.

Take control of Fear

You are walking down a dark alley late at night when you hear footsteps behind you.  You take a quick look around and see a powerfully built stranger swathed in a large black coat gaining on you with long strides.  His face is partially hidden in the shadows.

You quicken your pace.  But so, it seems, does he.

Now you start to feel very apprehensive, you wonder why you are walking down a dark, deserted alley late at night.  The alternative route is better lit and more frequently used.

Thoughts run swiftly through your mind as you briefly debate the possible scenarios. “I was stupid.  How far is the other end of the alley? … If I started running now would I make it? ….. Suppose I started yelling?   That’s stupid….. He’s just someone walking down the alley going home like me … Then why is he speeding up when I do?

You cross the road

So does he.

Then you run.[1]

This story is an example of a real fear and most people can associate pretty quickly with what something like this feels like.  But for a lot of people this type of dialogue, and the fear response that goes with it, is not just restricted to a fear of powerfully build strangers on a dark night.  There are so many people that suffer some anxiety, apprehension or outright terror when they are riding their horses.  If one of those people is you, don’t despair, there are practical things you can do to help yourself control fear and ensure that you are on control of it rather than the other way around.

The purpose of this blog is to jot down some notes about how fear works, the physiological responses that it triggers in the body and, most importantly, what you can do about it so that you can start to feel better when you are with your horse.

At the outset its important to distinguish between real and unreal fears.  Real fear comes from an immediate danger in the present, we have a rapid response system designed to keep us safe by responding immediately to what’s happening and learning from the situation.  For example, imagine that you are walking along in the country, thinking about nothing in particular.  Dusk is falling and you almost stumble into a deep pit.  You pull back just in time, jolted back to the present moment, your heart thumping.  It all happens in half a second.  This is an example of real fear and the rapid response that you body automatically makes (pulling back just in time).  There is nothing at all wrong with our response to real fears, we need it and it keeps us safe.

The problem for riders is all about unreal fears.  An unreal fear is where we create the fearful situation in our imagination, its not something that is actually happening in real time.  What you are imagining might be something that did actually happen once in the past or it may never have taken place outside of your own mind.  You might think that you are keeping yourself safe by anticipating problems that might arise when you are riding.  While safely is paramount when we are around horses, anticipating potential problems is not the best way to avoid them.  Often by thinking hard about something and ‘putting energy’ into that thought it is more likely that the feared thing will actually happen for real.  Horses also pick up on our mental state because of the impact it has on our breathing and heart rate (as well as other changes) and are more likely to take over and respond unpredictably if we have disappeared into an unreal fear inside our mind.

Unreal fears paralyze us because as far as our mind and body are concerned we don’t know the difference between a vividly imagined internal image and reality.  As far as your brain is concerned the very thing you are fearing is actually happening already.  Your physiological response to unreal fear is exactly the same as to real fear.  The problem is that unreal fear goes on for longer as nothing ever actually happens for the body to respond to because there isn’t a real problem (until your horse picks up on the way you are feeling!).

But don’t despair, if you understand how unreal fear works it is relatively simple to make some changes to the pattern.   Unreal fear is based on a learned reaction to certain triggers, if you can take responsibility to changing those responses then you are going to feel much better pretty quickly.

Its worth having a basic understanding of the physiology of fear. When we suddenly stop ourselves falling into the deep pit in the example above the fear response is activated.  The autonomic nervous system (ANS) is in charge of this and the sympathetic branch of the ANS triggers our flight or fight response.  The body is prepared for immediate action by releasing noradrenalin to activate our body organs. Heart rate, blood pressure and respiration rate are all increased.  Adrenaline is released which has a widespread effect on the body such as boosting the supply of oxygen and glucose to the brain and muscles and stopping non-essential processes such as digestion.  Adrenaline is released from the adrenal gland, located just above the kidneys, which is why you get sensations in that area when you are frightened.  This system triggers quickly but is designed to go back to normal quickly as well once the dangerous situation has passed.

As well as the ANS we have a second system designed to cope with long-term stresses and fears.  The hypothalamus in the brain is activated which triggers a chain of responses that leads to the production of cortisol.  The crux of the problem with unreal fears is that they are, well, unreal and imagined.  So, as far as our body is concerned, they don’t go away until we stop imagining them, its not like the pit in our example where we either fall in or we don’t in a split second.  So if we start imagining the worst case scenario when we arrive at the yard and continue with this all the way through our chores and then our preparations for riding and then all the way through our ride, this is a long enough period of time over which the body will release a cocktail of hormones into the bloodstream, including cortisol. 

Cortisol is responsible for giving the body a quick burst of energy by increasing blood sugar and lowering sensitivity to pain, the significant downside of cortisol is that is lowers the body’s level of immunity, raises blood pressure and impairs cognitive performance.  The other problem is that cortisol takes a long time to leave the system once it has been produced. 

So enough anatomy, what simple and practical steps can we take to help ourselves to control an overactive imagination that’s busy thinking up disaster scenarios?

What are your the triggers?

The first step to controlling your unreal fear, rather than letting it control you, is to start to observe what initially triggers your fear response.  Unreal fear is generally a learnt behaviour and all learnt behaviours have a stimulus, or trigger, which tells us to start doing that behaviour.  That applies even though the fear response comes from an imagined image or scenario playing inside our head.  What starts that dread and foreboding and imagination running away with you?  Lets take an example.  Now, I really don’t like flying very much and that’s been a great test bed for me to understand more about my own fears and to help other people work with theirs.  What is the trigger for me to start my fear response?  It could be any number of things, packing my bag, arriving at the airport, getting on the plane, taking off or turbulence while flying.  But none of those things are triggers for me.  The thing that really gets me is a change in engine pitch, that’s my trigger.   As soon as there is an unexpected change in engine pitch my heart is racing in a millisecond and my breathing changes, and, now I am looking for it, I am aware of the vivid, moving, colour picture inside my head of a specific disaster situation.   Note that this is the trigger for me, if I spoke to another person who has a fear of flying we would almost certainly have different triggers for the fear response.  There may also be more than one trigger.

Now I know what the trigger is I can be ready to consciously keep breathing deeply and to change the image inside my head so that I can reduce or stop completely the fear response to an unreal fear.

As a first step its really worth taking a good hard look at the precise triggers that start your fear response.

Be in control of your imagination, not the other way around!

Whether you are aware of it or not, once the trigger has been activated you create an image or images inside your head that make your mind and body think that the fear is real and present right now.  Your physiology does not know the difference between a real problem in the outside world and one vividly imagined inside your own head. 

If you can start to control the images inside your head you really can make a huge difference to your fears.  Psychologists have discovered that our internal images give instructions to the brain as part of our cognitive processes. For most people this is going on without any conscious awareness but once you get wise to what’s happening you can learn to have full control over the images.

As a rule of thumb, most people are very motivated to act on internal images that are big, bright, colour, moving (like a movie) and seem as if they are located in front of our eyes and quite close to us (its hard to describe that as the image is inside our head but if you imagine a beautiful scene of a situation you really enjoy you will get a sense of where that image is in relation to you).   These are generalizations and not true for everyone but they are a good starting point.  Be aware that there are quite a few people that can’t see their internal images or they can only see them very briefly.  If you are one of those people, don’t worry.  Leave this section and move on, there are ways to change the way you are imagining your fears but that is beyond the scope of this blog.

In contrast, the brain is not going to pay too much attention to an image that is small, unfocused, black and white, still and low down in relation to us. 

So, guess what the attributes are of an internal image that is creating an unreal fear?  Yes, big, bright, colour, moving and usually very close to us.  Those need to change! 

You can play around with these images by choosing a food that you really like but perhaps it would be healthy to eat a little less, be careful what you choose as just this simple exercise might change the way you feel about the food.  Imagine the food in your mind’s eye and observe where it is, what is the image like?  Most likely, its colour and big and bright.  Where is that picture located?

Have some fun with changing the attributes of the picture.  Can you move it so that it is close to the ground and maybe to one side of you if it was previously in front of you.  Can you reduce the size, how small can you make it, can you push it further away from you?  Can you change it to black and white?  If it was a moving image can you turn it into a photo?  Have a play with these ideas and see if you feel any differently about the image as you change its attributes.

It takes some practice to get good at this but once you have the hang of it you have all the tools you need to start to take the power out of the image that is creating your fear.  A small, black and white, still image, close to the ground and the size of a tiny dot does not have the power to create a huge, great big fear response.

Learn to disassociate to reduce the emotion

When we create a picture in our mind’s eye we can do that in one of two ways, either we are viewing the picture as if it was through our own eyes or we see ourselves in the picture as if it was another person looking on.  When we see things as if we are looking through our own eyes, that is called associated and if we can see ourselves, as if through another’s eyes, that is called disassociated. 

Another useful exercise is to learn to manipulate an image inside our head so that we can either see it as associated or disassociated.  It is most common for people to create powerful, fear creating images that are associated.  This is usually more frightening as it is clear to the mind that its ‘me’ that is in this bad situation.  The emotion connected to a disassociated image is just not as powerful.  If you can learn to disassociate this is a great tool to reduce the emotion connected to a particular image and to put you back in control.  You are learning to view things as if you are an onlooker to the situation.

State management

State management is NLP/coaching talk to describe our ability to influence our mood and state of mind.  You may have noticed that some days, when everything is going well and you are having a really good day, you are not troubled by fear when you are riding, while other days are awful and you feel anxious about everything.  On the good days, when you are in a really good “state” you are almost certainly more positive and there is little space for your imagination to get to work planning negative outcomes.  On the bad days the opposite is true.  Learning to manage our state is a very important skill so that we know how to navigate from a negative frame of mind to a good state where we function at our best.  A huge part of this involves us taking responsibility for the way that we feel, if we are a victim at the mercy of what life throws at us then we are not in good shape to get ourselves to a positive frame of mind.  Even if we are not in control of everything that goes on around us we can be in control of the way we feel about it.

Practice your breathing

The physiological response to fear is an automatic, innate response but we do have some power to override it and return the body back to normal as fast as possible.  The most powerful tool that you have is conscious control of your breathing.  If you practice some of the breathing exercises in my previous blog called “A survival breath or a thriving breath” this will be a very big help in a fearful situation, unreal or real.

Learn to be in the present

One of the most powerful ways to control problems with fear and anxiety in riding is to live more in the present moment.  I have got to be honest, this will fundamentally change the response to fear and anxiety but takes a lot of commitment, work and awareness.

Its probably clear by now that an unreal fear comes from our imagination.  The imagination is not based in the present moment because it is not a real situation but anxiety about something that might happen in the future, it has not happened and is not happening NOW. 

It you want to learn more about living in the present get one of Eckhart Tolle’s books, I would highly recommend the Power of Now. 

[1] Story adapted from Free Yourself from Fears by Joseph O’Connor

A survival breath or a thriving breath?

One time I asked Mark Rashid why it is that he very rarely talks to riders about their riding position.  His reply really got me thinking; he said that 90% of the issues of position and alignment are fixed by getting the person to breathe properly.

Could it really be that simple?

And there is even more to breathing as well...  When people (and animals) get frightened they breathe more quickly and more shallowly than when they are relaxed.  Horses can detect this a mile off, I’d argue that they know exactly when we are frightened by changes in our breathing patterns (and from other physiological changes that take place when we’re anxious).  They are programmed to be sensitive to things like that as they are prey animals.   But to add another challenge, people don’t just breathe poorly when concerned about something, it gets to be a habit and a huge percentage of us don’t breathe very well at any time, even when we are relaxed. 

You could think of this shallow breath as a “survival breath”.  It gets enough air into the body so that we don’t keel over but not enough to thrive in what we’re doing. Its hard to ever really be relaxed when survival breathing is the norm.  We get into bad habits when we are children and learn, develop and practice poor breathing patters as the result of copying parents or peers or as a response to stress or physical discomfort.  I asked my chiropractor, a specialist in working with babies and children, when the little ones stop breathing deeply and switch to a survival breath.  He said it started at the age of 2.  So some of us have been practicing for a little while!

 

Breathing and anatomy

The muscle groups that we need to use to breathe can be split into two; first of all the primary muscles of which the most important is the diaphragm and then the secondary muscles, which are located in the upper chest and neck, which are designed to be called into service in times of stress.  They are strong and adaptive but only designed to be used for the short term.  The problem is that due to our lifestyle, and factors discussed above, we tend to get into a habit of overusing the secondary respiration muscles (chest and shoulders) and under using the primary respiration muscles (diaphragm). 

The balance between these muscle groups should be such that 80% of the work is done by the primary muscles and 20% by the secondary muscles. In my experience, the majority of riders are completely reversing this pattern and 80% of the work to breathe is being left to the secondary muscles which are not designed to do this job long term.  If you want to see if you fall into the survival breathing majority then bring your awareness to your shoulders as you breathe in.  If your shoulders move upwards as you take an in breath this is a strong sign that you are overusing your secondary, upper chest muscles for breathing.  Instead your shoulders should move slightly outwards, widening the shoulders as you breathe in.  Other check is to put one hand on your stomach and the other on your upper chest.  Which moves the most?  If you upper hand on your chest is moving the most there is every chance that you are practicing survival breathing.  The stomach should be the place that moves the most, out on an in breath and back in again on an out breath.  Confirmed survival breathers may find that there is very little movement of the stomach during breathing.  Read on to find some exercises to change this pattern for the better!

Its worth getting familiar with the location and size of the parachute shaped muscle that forms the diaphragm.  This should be the star of the show when it comes to breathing.  Its really useful to be able to visualize the diaphragm so that you can have a go at the exercises below.  Note that the diaphragm is not symmetrical, its higher on the right to make room for the liver.  Its attached to each of the lower 6 ribs and to the lumbar spine.  The lower part at the back runs close to the psoas muscle which is one of the most important muscles for riders.  The psoas is the only muscle that attaches to both the spine and the leg, its main function is to flex the hip joint.  Poor breathing adversely affects the way the psoas works which comes right back to Mark’s words about breathing and alignment at the very start of this blog.  Correct breathing also rocks the pelvis slightly with each breath, rotating forward on an inhalation and backwards on an exhalation.  The exhalation straightens the lumbar curve and effectively puts you in a more “collected” position.  I think this is one of the reasons that an out breath serves very nicely as a half halt and helps with all transitions.  Good breathing also creates some motion at the sacroiliac joint (where the pelvis meets the lumbar spine), another critically important joint for riders.

A good breathing habit and full movement of the diaphragm is really important for our overall health.  The downward movement of the diaphragm gives the organs a massage with each breath and the diaphragm is attached to the heart by ligaments so correct breathing is also good for heart function.   Scientists have even proven that cancer is anaerobic and does not survive in high concentrations of oxygen (see www.breathing.com).

Breathing and fear

Fear, anxiety, anger, frustration and other negative emotions tend to cause shallow breathing.  This is part of the natural physiological response.  If we can learn to recognize when we are feeling these sort of negative emotions, and we know how to breathe deeply, then we can consciously calm ourselves down and, at the very least, stay in control of a situation.  While breathing is an unconscious process (we don’t need to think at all about breathing most of the time) it is one that we can consciously override for the better if we choose to.

A horse is very aware when we are not breathing well.  Survival breathing gives him the message that all is not well and we are preparing for some kind of emergency.   As we tighten the secondary respiration muscles to drag air into the body the horse will tighten corresponding muscles and it affects the way horse moves as well as his mental state.  Often times this negative cycle can be reversed simply by the rider remembering to breathe properly!!!

Exercises

If you get at all dizzy during any of these exercises then stop right away. You are getting  more oxygen into your body than its used to and you are perhaps doing too much to start with.

1a) The general principle of breathing practice is that we focus on the out breath and the in breath will take care of itself.  For example practice breathing out through a straw.  Just take a normal breath to start with, no need to take an extra-deep breath before you exhale.  Push the air through the straw until you naturally reach the end of that breath.  Make sure you hold the straw in a relaxed way.  Practice for about 5 minutes and note the difference in your breathing when you have finished.  After a bit of practice with the straw try the same exercise without it, just imagining that you have a straw (from The Breathing Book by Donna Farhi).

1b) As an alternative you can imagine that your out breath creates a thin golden thread that winds and spirals away from you as you breathe out.

2) Lie on your back on the floor and put a book on top of your tummy. When the diaphragm is working properly the book will raise up with your in breath and down again as you breathe out.  Check that you are not using your stomach muscles to deliberately move the book, it will move naturally as you breath deeply.

3a) Imagine the diaphragm moving up on an inhalation and down on an exhalation.  The motion is going to be in line with your central axis.

3b) Imagine that the diaphragm as a lift (elevator) moving up and down in its shaft (your ribs).  As you inhale the lift goes down and as you exhale it moves up.

3c) Imagine the diaphragm to be a parachute.  As you inhale the centre of the parachute drops downwards, the sides billow and the strings loosen. As you exhale the parachute expands its dome upwards and the strings become taught again.  (3a to c from Dynamic Alignment Through Imagery by Eric Franklin)

3d) Visualize that you are breathing to a point below your belt line, this helps the diaphragm to descend.  (From Centered Riding by Sally Swift)

4) You can see in the diagram above that the diaphragm extends downwards at the back in two “cords”.  These are called crura and these attach to the lumbar spine. Imagine these two crura reach all the way to your tailbone.  Visualize someone pulling these cords as you inhale and releasing them as you exhale. (from Dynamic Alignment through imagery by Eric Franklin)

5) Try feeling that the air is going through a big, flexible tube, right the way down through the center of your body all the way to your feet.  It helps to imagine this tube any colour or texture that appeals to you. (From Centered Riding by Sally Swift)

6) When you are frightened or anxious you can imagine breathing in something that will give you the courage or relaxation that you need right now. You could imagine anything you like that might help the situation, whatever is right for you. The idea is to breathe in lots and lots of tiny versions of this object so that in every breath you will take many of them into your lungs and then breathe them out again.  It sounds a bit odd but can be an extremely effective technique. (from Denise McCluggage The Centered Skier)

7) Riding in walk, count how many strides your horse takes on one of your out breaths and one of your in breaths.  If its easier you can just count the number of times front legs move.  Are you able to lengthen the out breath and stay comfortable? What impact does this have on the way your horse is going? (Riding exercise from Mark Rashid)

You will find many, many more exercises in The Breathing Book by Donna Farhi which is a must for every breathing enthusiast!

If during any of these exercises you find that either the in breath or out breath feels a bit uncomfortable or “stuck” don’t panic! Sometimes people find that they can release the out breath but the in breath still feels like it is restricted in some way.  I think this is because the trachea in the upper chest, which leads air to the lungs, gets distorted by muscular tension.  That makes the in breath uncomfortable and often people describe some kind of stuck feeling or blockage in the upper chest.  This is the type of thing that we can resolve easily in lessons and clinics using visualization and NLP techniques.