Digging Your Way Up

You’ve got a problem and need help

But the help feels foreign, unfamiliar, and that is creating another problem for you: wandering into uncharted territory means you can’t exactly tell if you’re making progress or not for a bit

We tend to fixate on the problem we perceive ourselves to have: bolting, for example. The things we’ve tried haven’t worked to cure the problem and so we seek outside our normal solutions.

Imagine that someone youve sought for help says you have a much bigger problem - say a systemic problem

A problem of basic training being laid incorrectly and the horse responding to not just one aid, but most or all the aids incorrectly

Say you find out your seat is scrunchy, squeezy, pully and grippy

You came in for help for ONE thing and you found the rug pulled out from under you

You want your horse to feel better… but the framework, the entire premise of the solution is so foreign to you, you can’t understand where you’re going with it yet

Your idea of beauty and success have to change

Your idea of what is good work has to change

Your feel has to change or develop

Many find this open space, this trust fall too fearsome, and turn back to their old, dysfunctional but comforting and familiar ways

They really couldn’t be blamed if you’ve ever been in the position of suddenly not knowing what to do after knowing what to do most of the time

It’s scary, wobbly, it brings up a lot of emotions - it’s a whole “thing”

Those who stick through it have to learn to tame their mind, to find the way into calm through the unknowing. To trust what they haven’t felt or seen yet

Their reward is a feeling they never knew could exist, a feeling so lovely they don’t have words for it. An art form all of their own making - a balance between horse and rider they created with their own hard work and trust and body and mind :

Each result is beautiful and carries similiarities in basic principle - but each unique from the feeling inside the rider. Their own art

And my hope is always that those who get through the void to the other side of comfort in unknowing will encourage and support the first wobbly steps of another- to be a shining light and not a critical voice toward the “others”