Finally I am able to get on my horse more or less regularly. She has taken so many “letters,” strung them into “words,” and the words are making “sentences,” and so we can start to do things that are approaching where I really want to go…:) (“Paragraphs,” and longer!) Getting pretty fun!
However, the way I’m teaching has changed so drastically from other horses and other years. Thinking about energy direction, flow, and force, rather than simply cues and responses, is way more conducive to joint attention and partnership. At least for me it is. I am using this day to try to show you how Soaking has permeated so many little tasks, and how I’m trying to use its caramel, delicious characteristics to extend calm and togetherness, even during activities that require some movement. Even some coordinated movement. I think I might be on to something here.
I didn’t use to have this label to apply to “together” tasks or time. Now I do, and I love it. Instead of thinking we are wasting time, or bored, or not getting anything done, I’m simply able to say to myself, “Oh! I’m soaking with… ______. This is great!” And it changes the whole rhythm of the day, or hour, or whatever.
Soaking is intrinsically motivating, incredibly nourishing, and super helpful for learning (as a side benefit). The more I place it intentionally into my “lessons,” and more especially into my experiences of relating with anyone else at all, the more good feelings seem to well up and permeate my brain, and memory, of the event.
This is a very much edited little movie of a lesson the other day that was full of Soaking magic and therefore a rather blissful experience for both of us. I didn’t have my phone with me when I brought Tundra back to her “herd,” but I stayed at the gate and watched, trying to feel the moment when she left me, and rejoined them. It took a long time, and after she finally rounded a corner, she turned and gave me a long look, then dropped and had a delicious roll in the dirt, and then we were finally unattached. It was so very interesting to feel this in my Heart and Body, with words to inform my impatient (as a rule) Mind what was happening. Such a lovely extension of consensual togetherness, vs simply her having been a “good horse,” or some such behavioural definer.
There are so very many applications in the human world of this shift in paradigm, and I’ll have to think about that later, because right now I’m still Soaking. It was a really lovely experience.
