You can reduce fear and anxiety in the saddle greatly by something enormously powerful and you already own it – your imagination!Learning to activate the imagination can increase relaxation and become a powerful confidence building tool. The art of relaxation for equestrians, I believe, is the first and most important step to achieving confidence in the saddle. Secondly, imagery will cause your body and mind to work in unison. The use of guided imagery will give you the ability to imagine in realistic detail the outcome you desire. Through imagery, you can rehearse and imagine your seat, legs, hand position, shoulders, breathing – even yourself smiling! You don't even have to go to the barn for your sessions! You can do this, at home, lying on your couch. Then, next time you ride, you can recall that imagery, and having practiced so many times, recall your video and your body will follow suit into all the correct positions. There are books and audio that will help you get started.I have posted links to my favorites on the “Books and Audio” page of this site.
Of all the confidence building methods I am presenting on this site, imagery was the first step for me.I am a very skeptical person and would never have allowed anyone trying to sell me on NLP to get beyond a few sentences without my eyes glazing over.I view the world from a scientific perspective.If I don’t understand the physical theory supporting an idea, I won’t buy it.(Of course, now I know that NLP IS based on scientific theory.)
I am a great John Lyons fan and have studied and applied his methods successfully. If you know anything about him, you know that he is a no-nonsense kind of guy that isn't going to sell his followers smoke and mirrors. I was listening to one of his audio CD's in which he talked about success in the show ring. I believe the example he gave was canter departs. He talked about how riders in competition can tend to focus on the negative and we might think about and replay a video in our minds of all the poor canter departs we've experienced. Instead, he suggested, we should think about the very best canter depart our horse has ever given us. That's the video that we should replay and think about how we felt that day. Decide that we WILL get a perfect response from our horse -- and chances are, we will!
It was that short discussion from John Lyons that inspired me to research guided imagery. I was intrigued at the idea of getting a response from my horse simply by imagining. But, the idea of replaying a succussful scenario in our minds seems so obvious to me now. Horses are such intuitive, sensitive creatures. They are aware of every little shift in weight, tension in our bodies and even where we are looking. They know our mood. When we become successful with imagery, we can create that successful video in our heads, which triggers our bodies to mimic what the horse needs from us.
As we ask for and get the desired response from our horse repeatedly, our confidence builds. Lack of confidence comes from our imagining getting a response other than what we ask. That may sound like an over-simplification, but isn't it true? . . . . Think about it.
