Body control is obvious! Few people may acknowledge “brain control”, but I know that it is essential for riding! The skills we need are the same as our body control skills. We must work on our ability to:
-empty the brain ie relax/calm it entirely;
-flex the brain between thinking and feeling ie balance it;
-strengthen the brain by developing thinking skills and cultivating a positive frame of mind
What I am aware of is that I can use my brain in different ways.
I can use my brain to gather information and think (what affects what; what happens if I do X or Y; what is the best way forward). I can also use it to structure what I have learnt so that I can share it more effectively. I used this brain mode a lot in my work as a business consultant.
I can use my brain to store information – often vast quantities. I know this because I taught myself to do this at school and university. Getting results was all about memorising huge quantities of information, so that was what I did! Today I mainly use this function to store what I might call “links” – where I can find more about a topic.
I can use my brain to influence my body – to feel how my weight is distributed and to control my muscles. Harris (20) states that we also store “feels” – our brain is capturing a video of what we have seen and felt at every point in our life!
I think that we can choose how we section our brain between these three uses. Storage space is taken up by whatever we are storing and the more we store the more we grow our storage capacity. The rest we can choose to use in either thinking or feeling mode and we can partition (not literally!) our brain between these two uses. When we ride we are mainly in feeling and body control mode. However, we also think and store. The partitioning is, say, 80% feeling and 20% thinking. Then when we are off the horse but thinking about riding in the evening the percentages change to say 20% feeling and 80% thinking.
Thinking enables us to make better decisions. Typically we have to think through options and consequences to make the right choices. When we think through consequences we simulate forward – this can create fear! For example, seeing something spooky in the ditch at the side of the road on a hack. If we think about it, in no time we will have a major accident in our heads and this will affect our feel and our body.
This is negative brain energy. Negative thinking switches us into defensive mode. We lack confidence. We expect the worst. Our horse is right to stop trusting us! Adopting a positive attitude means that we are aware of the possibility of potential bad consequences but we don’t dwell on them. Instead we focus all our energy on making positive things happen. We can use this force, this power of positive thinking, in all areas of our life. But with horses it is invaluable!
We must not be negative when we ride. We must concentrate our brain activity on feeling, relaxing and positive beliefs. If we are unable to do this we must use distracting techniques for our brain. Talking to a friend or singing can help. I discovered that my riding improved in lessons when I stopped thinking about what I had to do and just did it and talked to my teacher about other things.
Inger Bryant told me that she uses the same technique both in her own riding and in her teaching. She partitions the brain into two parts; “front of brain” and “back of brain”. The thinking goes on at the back. The horse can “read” (feel) what makes it into the front. This means that to avoid the self –fulfilling prophecy we must not allow our negative thoughts to pass into the front of the brain.