Some thoughts about horse riding and relaxation

[IvaMM]

Hi, guys!

I had some thoughts keeping my mind busy the whole afternoon:

Does anybody here ride? I do it lately.

I remember the first several times when I couldn't understand the instruction of the coach - "keep the torso relaxed but the knees tightly to the horse". At that moment I couldn't realize how could this happen? It's like from the waist above to act as you're drunk and on the contrary - down from the waist to work hard. For beginners as myself we still don't hold the rein - the coach leads us, because as I mentioned, it is very important to get used of holding yourself on the horse only by your legs. If you hold firmly the saddle with hands, the erectors start working and you start bumping. What you need to do is just to relax all the muscles from the upper body part. The feeling is so beautiful! The feeling is as you are a centaur who gallops and in the same time enjoys the view.

It got too poetically, sorry for that

The conclusion for me is: Put in work only the muscles which are needed for the situation and enjoy the ride (metaphorically).

[nick_kuchedav]

This topic provokes my mind in one direction. When I observed the elements and movements pattern during riding I was thinking about spine waves. In some mixed sense- combination between slow and awareness targeting (that we can find them in Feldenkrais method) and fanatic high reps-high speed- high range and impact (in Ido Portal’s sense).

Right now I think about riding as an old school body conditioning tool. Just like farming and everyday activities in Bulgaria 15-20years ago. People squat to rest and eat, hang to pick cherries and pears, hinge to give water to the animals, lunge to go through the snow and so on. The physical benefits from the task are side effect. Which isn’t bad because you can do more work without being boring or thinking how tired you are.

I read somewhere following metaphor about meditation: Human mind is like a monkey. It always does something- watch something, make some sounds, remove bugs from her fur and so on. You can’t say to the monkey she needs to stop doing everything, because she won’t ever do it. You just need to give her some task to do, and the simplest way is to ask her to observe her breathing. The monkey forgets for all other not essential tasks and our mind, vision and so on are very clear and the body works better.

When you ride and trying to stay on top of the horse is the task, and your spine moving better after a few thousand spine waves is a good side benefit.

Currently I haven’t even started to work on my practice (relaxation, meditation or spiritual development are incomprehensible for me) but a few interesting activities that I heard about (you know from who [K]  )and can help such a practice are- counting breaths, coloring books, hitting something, I suggest riding can go here too.

[IvaMM]

12 hours ago, nick_kuchedav said:

This topic provokes my mind in one direction. When I observed the elements and movements pattern during riding I was thinking about spine waves. In some mixed sense- combination between slow and awareness targeting (that we can find them in Feldenkrais method) and fanatic high reps-high speed- high range and impact (in Ido Portal’s sense).

It's a mix, absolutely.

An thread popped up right know that it is a kind of a partner-stretch - you have plenty of variations dependent on the speed (from walk to gallop). The body axis is tested over and over again and I think that it's both flexion and relaxation.

Regarding the energy levels, the partnership with the horse could teach a lot. The animals' sensibility is not rudimentary as for most human beings. They sense any emotion - positive or negative. It's good thing to be relaxed on the horse back