To be Challenged
When facing a challenge in life, a way to rise to the occasion is to set a goal and then put in place mechanisms to achieve that goal.
Competing brings with it both success and failure and each should be treated in the same way.
| As I loved show jumping when I was a teenager, my horsey life helped bring out confidence and courage (NZ). |
| The one mare that I had my closest horse relationship with, when we used to do cross country, I’d would, I almost know she was looking for the flags for the next jump (yeah). After we were over one jump, she was well, ‘where’s the next one’, right and she would take me (yeah) and I wouldn’t have to even point or even push (mmm) because I would just have to sit and be a passenger and it was wonderful (yeah) (Central Districts, NZ, in conversation) |
Can you imagine as you read this trusting in another being to take you at speed and safely negotiate solid obstacles over a metre high, it is a very transformative experience. In the excerpt above the storyteller shares an internal dialogue with her horse and anthropomorphise the question ‘where’s the next one’ as if we are both searching the landscape for the flags which indicate the location of the next obstacle. The verbal account of this notion of one-ness in an optimal or peak experience is expounded in the section on one-ness.
An equine psychotherapist provides a cogent quote to describe the experience of riding “Keep your body fully in the present and your mind in the recent future. Don’t let your past get in your way”. The use of ‘recent future’ was interpreted to provide an insight into the relativity of time, suggesting past and future were interchangeable.
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Gisele Bundchen in ‘A Sense of Freedom’ became hooked on speed after her first ride on a tall gelding, Carrochero, at her aunt’s farm. A cowboy had hit the horse on the butt and as it sped off she held onto its mane and loved it. She says ‘to me it is so exciting to be on horseback’ (Bundchen, cited in Rappaport & Wilkinson, 2004, p. 4).
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To Improve
Such as trying to achieve a better dressage report card each time - competing against self
To Face Fears
| I remember thinking sometimes before I go cross country, I think, just everything was dry and everything was tense and yet as soon as you set off and over the first jump and it was as one with the horse and off you go and you enjoy the course (Central Districts, NZ, in conversation) |
The physiology of 'flight and fight syndrome' in operation. Dry mouth, muscles tense in preparation for action. The energy in the body mobilised and then released.
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