finding balance

Centered

Jess FilippiLeave a comment

Today’s lesson was a back-to-basics sort of ride and it felt very productive. With the end of the softball season, I’m more focused again on really trying to be an equestrian athlete. No matter what I do during softball season, it seems like a little part of me hangs back; I can’t throw myself fully into other physical endeavors because at the back of my mind is always the thought that I cannot get hurt and miss any games.

With that distraction removed, I’ve also started doing some reading about riding theory. As much of a voracious reader I’ve been for my entire life, I mostly read fiction when I was a kid. I read thousands of stories about horses but I don’t think it ever occurred to me to seek out any books on riding. There was a separation in my mind: sports and the physical world in one area, and words and the world of ideas in another. This was one of the reasons I was so excited to get back to riding as an adult, now that I have learned how to learn and cannot stop doing so for how much I love it. Now riding can occupy both worlds; it can be a sport but it can also be a study.

The book I’ve started recently is called Centered Riding by Sally Swift. Her techniques are focused on reducing stiffness and tense riding in order to connect more fully with your horse through body awareness and the reassessing of habitual responses. It’s a philosophy that makes a great deal of sense and jives with what I was thinking a while ago about how similar riding can be to yoga. I love the feeling when I read an idea that is so simple and obvious that it seems like it should be something I’ve already known, but it takes this particular writer putting it in just this way for it to resonate so perfectly. I’ve only just begun reading Ms. Swift’s book, but I’ve experienced that feeling a couple of times already.

I went into my lesson today intent on using some of the techniques she described, particularly focusing on breathing and centering. Breathing has historically been a big issue for me while riding, particularly while jumping courses. As a teenager, my trainer was concerned that I might be suffering from asthma when I would be gulping and gasping for air after even a short course. But I never had breathing problems in any other context and it was soon discovered that the truth was I was holding my breath. The entire course. So from then on, while she would call out suggestions about my position–“heels down” or “eyes up”, interspersed would be intermittent reminders to “BREATHE!” I still notice myself doing this while jumping and after cantering around the ring for a long time. I think I do it because I’m trying too hard. I can feel my muscles getting tired and I’m focusing so intently on keeping them tense and strong and tight in order to remain in position that I’m actually forgetting to breathe and depriving them of what they need in order to keep performing.

The other technique, centering, made me aware of my body and posture in a completely new way. Swift suggests that our center is in the front of the pelvis halfway down from the navel. There’s an illustration in the book that shows that area in cross section and demonstrates that at that point the spine is so thick that it actually resides in the center of the body.  Being aware of this makes me organize my body in a completely different way, and not only in the saddle. I realized that my posture is often with my shoulders and head pulled forward, leaning in that direction instead of stacked over my hips and spine. This is true when I’m sitting, when I’m walking, at my standing desk at work, and certainly when I’m riding.

The horse I rode today was a medium-sized blood bay named Thibault (blood bays are like regular bays, brown body with a black mane and tail, but the brown part is a beautiful reddish color). He was a little challenging for me, or maybe just not a perfect fit because of the unevenness of his gaits. He had a tendency at both the trot and canter to start off by getting a little speedy. He would respond right away when I half-halted to collect him, but then shortly after he would start flagging and I would have to nudge him forward again, and he would speed up too much, starting the circle over again. He did the same thing with turns, cutting one corner only to go extremely deep into the next one. It was difficult to maintain a steady rhythm with him, as I felt like I was constantly chasing him back and forth to extremes in search of the mean. (As I’m writing this I’m having the realization that that’s another particular challenge of mine, balance. It’s probable that he was just more sensitive than I was aware of at the time and that I was overcompensating slightly in the use of my aids. I hope I get to ride him again sometime soon to test out that theory and try again with him because he was a good boy.) Thibault also had an especially lopey canter; the motion was very down and forward, like he was running into the ground. After my trainer mentioned that he was trained as both a Western and English horse, the pieces clicked into place and this made a lot of sense; throw a Western saddle on him with its deeper seat and longer stirrups and that would have been a lovely canter, but it could be a little difficult to sit perched up there on an English saddle with my stirrups short for jumping.

So while I was riding and focused on doing my best with this horse who, while not an instantly easy match for me, at least was very responsive and willing, I thought that I didn’t have much attention for trying out my new techniques. But actually, the challenges I faced with Thibault today were great for working on both of them.  The off-rhythm of our movement was a little frustrating, but when I remembered to breathe deeply through my whole body there were moments of connection. At the canter, it took a lot of effort to keep his head and center of balance up, but picturing myself weighted down in my newly-discovered center and sitting deeper there rather than just creating the tension on the reins through my arms and shoulders was much more effective. It was the same over the jumps. Sitting back and waiting instead of leaning forward and rushing to the first jump made me able to get into a rhythm with my horse and choose together our take-off point instead of one of us deciding and the other being like “oh now, ok now? OK!”

Today we did not jump a full course again, but rather worked on the basics over a couple of lines. It was a bit more in the realm of “study” and I appreciated it. I’m excited to keep reading this book and to keep applying the techniques in my lessons. I’m just excited about life, really, these days. So much to learn and I feel very open and ready to soak it all in.

Relief

Jess FilippiLeave a comment

This morning before I went to riding, I was filled with dread carried over from last week. I just wanted to stay in my comfortable bed and not get up and make myself confront the overwhelming anxiety I had developed about riding.

But I got up anyway and I walked to the barn in just a t-shirt for the first time this year on this lovely spring day. On the way there, I made myself enjoy the sun, the light breeze, and the pretty flowers instead of dwelling on how many other people would want to take advantage of this weather and would therefore be in the park, posing a threat to my safety.

I got to the barn and watched as all of my usual mounts either came in from a lesson right before mine or went out with other riders as I stood there: Emma, Allie, and Lieutenant all crossed off the list of potential horses I would ride today. All the safe ones, the easier horses I had to admit to myself I’d hoped my trainer would put me back on today. Yet when she handed me Max’s reins, I felt a kind of relief. It might have been relief that she still thought I could handle him, but I think it was also relief that I wouldn’t be allowed to fall back, that even though I was nervous I would be forced to try to push myself.

As we rode out to the ring, Max was in the lead with Emma behind us and my trainer in the back. We always cater to the horses’ preferences for the order we walk in. Max likes to be in the lead. I do not. I prefer that someone goes in front of me to provide a sort of buffer for whatever might startle the horses. I mused about the matching of personalities between horse and rider and wondered if Max and I were just a little incompatible. But that didn’t quite sit right with me. It’s not really my personality to want someone else to lead; it was only my anxiety in this particular situation that caused me to want to defer responsibility.  Naturally, it’s my way to take the lead. Even if I don’t fully know what I’m doing, I trust my instincts enough to carry me and anyone else with me who’s willing to trust them through. So that’s what I decided to do with Max. I bluffed. I told him that I was in control. I pretended to be confident when I was not. And in general, that served me pretty well.

This lesson went a lot better than last time’s. The park, while lively, was full of way less mayhem than last week. Max was lazy and perhaps a bit less playful.  In my attempt to prove to him that I was in control, I clamped down a bit too hard. Of course I always have to overshoot my mark when attempting balance. It was most apparent in the canter, but throughout the whole lesson I was holding on just a little too tightly on Max’s mouth. Even though he was trotting very slowly, I was vigilant, expecting him to try to cut in or buck at every second. Because of this, I didn’t give him enough rein for him to be comfortable and he fought back, tossing his head and getting wound up. This of course made me more wound up and more tense, making it more difficult for me to give him rein and trust.

After several attempts, I was able to relax my hands a little more and we got in a good, collected canter for about half the ring. He has the most comfortable, smooth, easy-to-sit canter of any of the horses I’ve ridden at this barn and really all I want is to be able to enjoy it. It is frustrating to stop and go so much because we are out of sync, especially when I can see that it’s largely my own doing.

In my frustration, there were times when I started getting annoyed at how difficult Max can be. I started thinking that I just wanted to enjoy my ride and that I would prefer a less green, more trained horse. But then I thought to myself that if I ever want to train horses myself, as I believe I do, then that’s crap. I can’t just ride for the enjoyment of it. I have to push myself to learn how to deal with these things all over again. I have to get over my fears and remember how to deal with misbehaving horses like I used to. And I have to do it in an unforgiving environment. Because like Frank says about New York in general: if I can do this here, I can do it anywhere.

Yoga of Riding

Jess Filippi1 Comment

In the past couple of months I’ve started going to yoga the day after my riding lessons. Riding is hard on the body (especially in conjunction with my almost completely sedentary lifestyle) and yoga has really helped with putting my body back together and strengthening my back muscles. Usually I ride on Saturdays and then go to a Sunday afternoon yoga class; it’s also a nice start to the week. This week I ended up riding Sunday morning and therefore will do both on the same day. It got me thinking about how there are a lot of similarities between the two disciplines.

When you ride with equitation in mind, there is a great deal of body awareness needed to not only keep yourself in correct position, but to effectively communicate with your horse. For example, I have a tendency to twist my right wrist about 90 degrees at this one part of the ring that is slightly downhill. This spot is a challenge for a few reasons: 1) it is near the entrance/exit to the ring, which the horses have a heightened awareness of since it is the path back to their warm, hay-filled stalls and 2) because of the slight downhill grade, it presents difficulty in the horse’s footing, balance, and stride. The ideal is to keep your horse at an even pace and stride throughout the ring; on a completely flat surface this is easier. But going downhill, the horse’s weight is shifted unevenly between front and back hooves. Being that this hill is on a turn, they also have a tendency to drop their left shoulders and cut the corner, throwing their left-right balance off as well. As a rider, going downhill can pull you forward. It’s important to keep your back straight, chest open and head up while sitting slightly back on your sit bones. If you keep your balance this way, you can help your horse keep his front-back balance. In addition, slight pressure with the inside leg and a small amount of tension on the outside rein will prevent him from cutting the corner, keeping him left-right balanced and making a nice round bend around the turn. This is where my wrist twist comes in. I was unaware that I was doing it, so focused on all the other elements of the turn. My instructor pointed it out to me. She often makes position suggestions based on first looking at how the horse is moving and then searching for the problem in the rider’s position. She saw that my horse’s gait was not flowing smoothly. We were generally balanced but kind of choppy and awkward going down the hill. Once she pointed out my incorrect wrist position and reminded me to achieve tension on the reins through a give and take from my elbows instead, everything changed in an instant. My horse’s head came up, his weight shifted, and his stride smoothed out. And that made everything else I was focused so hard on much easier too.

That feels so much like what happens in a yoga class. When moving into a new pose, I’m thinking hard about trying to juggle all the pieces of my body into place. Sometimes the instructor reminds the class to bring awareness to a part of the body that might be neglected in thinking about the more obvious parts. It’s amazing when you make one little adjustment, one tiny change and everything just clicks. Your body seems to flow and you stop thinking so hard. You breathe and relax into the position and that, for me, is kind of what it’s all about whether I’m doing yoga, or horseback riding, or anything else I do. That’s the moment where I feel free and powerful and right.

In Aldous Huxley’s last novel, Island, he talks about bringing awareness to every aspect of life. There are talking mynah birds all over the island trained to speak the words “Attention” and “Here and now, boys” as a reminder to sustain this awareness.  He writes:

“Be fully aware of what you’re doing, and work becomes the yoga of work, play becomes the yoga of play, everyday living becomes the yoga of everyday living.”

As I continue to learn to bring awareness to myself and my horse, I feel like I’m engaging in the yoga of riding.

Push for Perfection?

Jess Filippi3 Comments

I didn’t post about last week’s ride because when I got home, freezing and beat up, I fell asleep for hours in a wide swath of sunshine on the bed, still in my breeches. Nothing that bad happened. It was just brutally cold and windy. My horse, a large Thoroughbred named Professor, is a big, energetic boy in normal circumstances. In those biting temperatures, he was ready to GO, charging forward and tossing his head to escape the pressure of my half-halts as I attempted to slow him to a pace reasonable enough for a ring full of other horses. With a martingale and a double rein, he was still simply too strong for me. We ended up trotting in small circles in one part of the ring for the whole lesson, lacking space and strength to do anything else. Then on the ride back to the barn, the wind picked up a stray plastic garbage can and it came skidding across the pavement in the traffic circle toward the horses, freaking them out. Professor wheeled in the opposite direction, which happened to be straight into traffic. It took everything in my arms and back to keep him still and safe. I was dunzo when I got home.

That’s why this week I was relieved to be greeted by a milder, sunny day and a ride on my favorite horse, Aladdin. I just needed a sane, productive ride after last week’s shitshow. But walking to the barn today, hoping for some respite, I wondered about my attitude. Shouldn’t I be pushing myself? A challenging horse can only make me a better rider.

Finding the right balance in how far to push myself has always been one of the toughest things in life for me. I want to push myself so I can get stronger and better. But it’s possible to push myself too hard and risk injury or burn out. My perfectionist tendencies have prodded me too far in that direction before, like when in one weekend I biked 50 miles, had softball practice (at which I also pitched the entirety of batting practice) and then attempted to do level 2 of Jillian Michael’s 30 Day Shred, during which I injured my quad so badly that I couldn’t get up off the floor. My pitching performance in the softball game later that week was piss poor because I still couldn’t put much strain on the muscle. After episodes like that, I vow to go easier on myself. But in my impatience I become a bully. Dissatisfied with my progress, I’ll start pushing myself again, wondering if I’ve been too easy on myself all along and thinking about the success I could have had if I’d only been less of a soft lazyass. And so it seesaws, back and forth. This seems to be the only way I ever acquaint myself with balance: I get a glimpse of it as I pass by while running back and forth between extremes.

I think that it was a good thing to have a break this week. Aladdin is small, quiet, and responsive, so I didn’t have to push myself to contend with a challenging horse. The thing is, I grew up competing with girls who only ever rode immaculately-trained pushbutton ponies and they looked like perfect pretty princesses out there in the show ring, but in my opinion that’s not riding. I rode every horse in the barn, running the gamut from sweet-tempered old friendlies to hot-blooded, tweaker Thoroughbreds, most of them outright batshit crazy in their own individual ways, and because of it in my prime I could handle just about anything.

Today I got to ride a horse that was easier to manage and because of that I was able to work hard on my equitation–my position, my horse’s balance and stride and bend around the corners–all the little things that one would be judged on in a show. Aladdin tends to drift inwardly on the long stretches and then can get stiff on the outside around the turns; so I worked my inside leg pushing him over to the rail and bending him around it on the corners. Then the next time around, I tried to do the same thing with more subtle movements of the reins and of my legs. Instead of just being a parcel on the horse’s back, I worked on uniting us, making us a single entity working in rhythm together.

These things may be subtle, but they aren’t easy. Every horse has his quirks; smoothing them over without looking like you’re doing anything and also maintaining correct position in every part of your body is no small feat. But equitation is about balance and subtlety, not perfection. I think that’s something it would be helpful to remember in the rest of my life as well.

Starting Over

Jess Filippi2 Comments

I started riding horses when I was nine years old. I took lessons and then went to an equestrian day camp. Later, I worked at the day camp, teaching little kids how to ride and everything else there was to know about horses: their care, their anatomy, their habits, their markings and colors. I chose my college based on two criteria: having a good English department (thinking that I should be an English major because I liked to read. Derp.) and having an equestrian team. In college I went out partying until 3 am but still got on the van at 5 am to travel to horse shows at other colleges in our IHSA zone.

All in all, I rode for about thirteen years. And then I stopped.

After college, for a variety of reasons that were only slightly more thoughtful than those I used to pick a college, I moved to Brooklyn. I started my career in the publishing industry. I struggled to acclimate to city life, separated from the things that centered me, like spending non-public time outdoors and driving around and listening to the radio. I felt like I had been put in a zoo. I couldn’t sense the weather anymore, the millions of tiny nuanced scents and temperatures and moisture levels and pressures in the air that had greeted me upon going outside throughout my childhood growing up in the woods near the water on Long Island. But worst of all, I stopped riding. I was too poor and too distracted. Horseback riding is not very accessible in the city. I made excuses, and I didn’t do the thing I love doing most for nine years.

I started riding again about two months ago. Some cash got freed up by moving in with my boyfriend and finally paying off my student loans. I now live only a fifteen-minute walk from the barn. My former excuses didn’t make sense anymore. But most of all, I got sick of not doing the things I love and decided that now is the time to do them.

This blog is about the challenges, the strangeness, and the awesomeness of riding in the city. It’s about the process of going back to something with all of the mental aspects intact–the knowledge and instincts built up over years–yet having to start over physically, rebuilding strength and stamina and muscles that you don’t use for anything else. It’s about returning to something that I mainly experienced in an immature frame of mind and seeing what it’s like to do it as an adult. It’s about horses and how much I love them, about how I can’t believe I let myself go so long without them in my life and about the joy of having them in it again.