The Confident Rider Podcast

The interwoven thoughts of a New Year.

Happy New Year,

❤️ Jane 

Beautiful people, it's been a hot minute since we were last on the podcast airwaves. I'm super excited to be back for Season 3, and to share with you all the thoughts, musings and conversations that are swirling round my brainspace.

Before we get into that though...

At this time of year, it can be really easy to fall into "achievement energy"; the feeling that we have to set our resolutions, refine our goals and have things sorted out for the new year. The conversation I want to have with you today is an invitation to, well, not do that.

And the framework I want to offer in its place is one I stumbled upon recently and have been practicing in the moments since. 

Omen Days are an ancient Celtic tradition that were practiced in the 12 days from the 26th December to the 6th January. They rest on the foundation of bearing witness, and of deep noticing. Of the land, the animals we share it with and the greater world around us.

In this podcast, we discuss the nature of Omen Days and how we can use it as a reminder to slow down, observe and begin the new year from a place of enoughness.

I hope you enjoy it!

Much love,

❤️ Jane 

Kate Sandel is back on the podcast! In less than a week’s time, Kate and I are co-teaching at a three-day clinic called Camp of the South, in Devon, UK. Initially we had the idea to record a conversation together to send to participants of the camp as a “here’s some helpful information” type spiel but it quickly became obvious that our chattering extended far beyond the limits of those three days to encompass the broader expectations we might have in learning environments, what it takes to be open to learning and what we consider to be “the best way to show up” as a student.

In this episode, we discuss:

🌷 What is takes to develop a “teachable mindset"

🌷 The necessary mess of the learning process (and how to embrace it)

🌷 How there is no such thing as failure

🌷The benefit of honesty and vulnerability in teaching environments

🌷 Discovering the joy (and challenge) of movement for both horses and humans

 For those of you yet to discover the delight that is Kate Sandel, Kate runs a thriving equine business in the UK and internationally. She had trained for several years with French classical master, Philippe Karl, as well as honing her horsemanship skills with a variety of incredible teachers. She is also a qualified equine sports massage therapist and her background in mental health means she values the wellbeing of both humans and horses in a riding partnership.

You can find Kate at www.softandsound.org

Happy listening!

❤️ Jane 

It’s a party people! A few weeks back, I had the hankering to have a pod conversation talking about energy, the mystical and the magical, and the two people who immediately sprang to mind were Denise Elizabeth Byron and Kathy Price.

Denise I have known for a few years now, meeting her for the first time when I went to stay with Robyn Schiller and skipping along to an astrology session that blew my mind. After that, we all convened at the chocolate shop in town and well… if there’s a better way to cement a friendship, I’m not sure I’ve found it yet. 

If you are yet to be introduced, Denise is a psychic, visionary guide, and mentor with over 30 years’ experience, using astrological patterns to illuminate each client's unique pathway to embody the magic of their life purpose more confidently.

And if you’ve been around the tracks on my podcast for any amount of time, you will already be acquainted with the fabulousness that is Kathy Price- what would this conversation be without her! Kathy's business is called Point of Balance, and she has been studying and researching the world of energetic modalities for a number of years now.

The aim of Kathy’s work is to help human and animal systems that she's working with, whichever of those applies to find its own unique point of balance and to help itself come back into health and vitality on every level, be that physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual.

Over the course of our conversation we cover:

-       - Their different approaches to working with people, the tangible aspects of energetic connection and how information “shows up”

-       - Parsing apart “what is mine and what is yours” when working with energy

-       - Allowing time for creative expression, rest and rejuvenation

I hope you enjoy it as much as I did!

You can find Denise here: www.deniseelizabethbyron.com

You can find Kathy here: www.kathyprice.co.uk

 ❤️ Jane

There are so many ways to introduce Barbra Schulte. You could start with the incredible work she does coaching riders, helping them develop mental strategies to get the best out of themselves and their horses. Or you could talk about her many outstanding accolades in the cutting horse arena, including her induction in the National Cowgirl Hall of Fame in 2012. But what I love most about Barbra is the warmth, love and kindness she exudes and the way she’s shows up in the world. Beyond everything, that is what impresses me the most.

I was fortunate to meet Barbra relatively recently, at the Journey On Podcast Summit in November of 2022. Listening to her talk, and then later having conversations with her, I instantly fell in love. I was so thrilled to have her agree to come on the podcast because there were things I wanted to talk about with her that extended beyond her work, her horses and what she teaches.

I wanted to hear more about the behind the scenes of her life, about her beautiful son Zane and their story, and what made her tick.

Over the course of our conversation we discuss:

•          Her life growing up with horses, her discovery of the Human Performance Institute and the impact that had on her life and work

•          Her son Zane, the impact of his life and death, and her journey with the experience of grief

•          Navigating life with trust and love

I hope you enjoy listening to this conversation as much as I enjoyed having it.

❤️ Jane

As many of you who follow along with my adventures will already know, at the start of this year I lost my beautiful Irish horse, Bear. Following on from that day, I shared my experiences and thoughts in series of Facebook live sessions that spanned the course of a couple of weeks, which led me to conversations, understandings, and a level of awareness that I would never have gained if I had chosen to keep my feelings to myself.

This experience was overwhelming in the best possible way. People shared with me their stories of loss and their personal experiences of grief. But was I felt most acutely was the love. Love not only sent to me and my little Irish pony, but a love that was unifying, gratifying and uplifting.

 I guess death is funny like that. It brings into sharp focus everything that’s important and allows the superfluous to simply drop away.

 I thought to record a separate episode on grief and I’m sure I will still do this. But the live session captures an “in the moment” experience that is impossible to emulate from a different vantage point. So, in an effort to continue to send conversations on grief, loss and death out into the ether- conversations we are intrinsically terrible at in western society- I offer them to you now in the hope that they will land where they are supposed to, with whoever it is that needs to hear them.

 The nature of the live recordings means that the audio is imperfect at times, but hopefully their value extends beyond that. Amongst other things we discuss:

-       - The duality of experience: how grief and loss can co-exist with happiness and joy (and why it’s important to understand this)

-       - The invitation of loss and hardship

-       - Dealing with guilt within the loss

-       - My personal experiences with loss and death

Much love to you all, 

xx Jane

Are you ready for us?! I’m joined back on the pod this week with two of my besties who you no doubt are well familiar with already- the most amazing Kathy Price and the infinitely regal Tania Kindersley.

 Kathy, Tania and myself are regularly chattering about all things life, horses and the universe, and whenever one of us is stuck or needs an ear, the call goes out over the WhatsApp airwaves saying, I need a DollyLama conversation! And when one hears this cry, one knows that they need to pay attention.

The Dolly Lama talks began a couple of years back when we were discussing what a superb human Dolly Parton is, and how the perfect cross between a human being would be Dolly and the Dalai Lama. Thus the phrase “Dolly Lama” was coined, and the Dolly Lama chats was basically us doing our best to make sense of this whole human-ing experience.

On that thread, when we all got together for this podcast, I couldn’t really do anything else other than to call it a Dolly Lama session. And with most of our conversations, we cover a lot of territory with much giggle snorting in between.

 Amongst other things, we talk about:

•   The movement away from seeking outward validation and people pleasing patterns
• The liberation of living with authenticity and integrity
• How your perspective creates your reality

I hope you enjoy it! 

Happy listening!

❤️ Jane

The subject of vitality is on my mind because in a couple of weeks’ time, I’m teaching a workshop with Rupert Isaacson on that exact topic. It’s a workshop that I’m really excited for because at the heart of my work lies the desire for the restoration of vitality. The pathway there might look different for everyone; the challenges each of us experience may hold their own unique flavor; but ultimately, we are all looking to feel the essence of our own aliveness and to be able to hold that energy without turning away from the conversations that are important to us. Horses provide us with a portal to have conversations that we would not be brave enough or supported enough to have without them. They free us to say, I am experiencing anxiety or I feel lost or I can’t find my way or I’m struggling in my relationships, by allowing us to think that it’s about them, just enough, that we can turn towards what it is that is happening and begin the conversation. They teach us different ways that we can save our own lives. Ways that ultimately become more graceful as we become more skilled at holding the energy that’s required.

In this episode, we discuss:

• What vitality is (and what it isn't)
• The many ways we seek to save our own lives
• How vitality allows us to face towards the conversation, instead of away from it

I hope you enjoy it! You can learn more about the Vitality Workshop I'm teaching with Rupert Isaacson or sign up on this link:

https://confidentrider.online/vitality-online-workshop/

Happy listening,

❤️ Jane

Elsa Sinclair is a human that I have looked up to for a very long time. In the horse world, she is a rare light who explores a way of partnering together with horses that is seldom explored and practiced; one that is rooted entirely in freedom.

When I consider my own life and horsing adventures, I know that I am traversing a time where our consciousness of our relationships with our horses is undergoing a seismic shift. Whilst the majority may still work and ride with the traditional methods we have always known, there is a groundswell of others who are seeking something more. And beyond that, are starting to ask themselves the question, is what we’re doing here really ok? Is how we are approaching our horsemanship and riding of true benefit to our horses?

Diving into Elsa’s work gives you real possibilities when it comes to finding those answers. And as with any new learnings, it’s a process that involves unpicking and discarding some of your current beliefs or ways of going about things in order to make room for some new, that is as much about the human as it is about the horse.

In this episode we discuss:

• The different forms of leadership; what it means to be a passive and supportive leader and a dominant leader
• My takeways from my 4 day clinic with Elsa
• How we can work in a way where the horse trains themselves to be a better partner
• What’s required for emotional stability in our horses

 I hope you enjoy it! Let us know what you think!

❤️ Jane

Fabulous humans, it’s a party of awesomeness on the podcast!

I am joined today by the incredible Crissi McDonald and Mark Rashid who are not only incredible horsepeople, but beyond that have a collective list of skills and accomplishments that make them a unique force of goodness in the horse world.

Crissi has spent over thirty years working with many different horses and people from all over the world, as well as learning herself from some of the horse industry’s top leaders in our current understanding of humane horse practices. 

She teaching at clinics with her husband Mark Rashid, is a certified Masterson Method® equine bodyworker, and an instructor for the Masterson two-day Beyond Horse Massage workshops. Crissi is the author of a number of books exploring the human/equine bond, as well as a fiction series that we discuss over the course of our conversation.

Mark Rashid is an internationally known author and horseman, he has earned a third degree black belt in Yoshinkan aikido and now teaches the “way of harmony” in the local dojo as well as in his Aikido for Horseman workshops, which are known also by the name of “Aibado.”

He is the author of fifteen books, is an accomplished musician  with three music cds, and his novel Out of the Wild is now featured on Amazon Prime.

Before I release you to our conversation together, I wanted to let you know that all three of us- Crissi, Mark and I are teaming up to bring you a three part Zoom series called Come as you are, an exploration of mind, movement and the nervous system in horses + humans that we would love you to join us for! We will be discussing topics such as how to create a productive learning environment for horses and humans, how to create new learning patterns, how the mind and the nervous system shows up in movement and so much more.

You can learn more about that here:

https://confidentrider.online/come-as-you-are-sessions/

And you can get in touch with Mark and Crissi and find out more about what they do on www.markrashid.com

We would love to have you be a part of it!

Happy listening!

❤️ Jane

If you listen to the podcast regularly, you'll know that I was recently in Texas as part of Warwick Schiller's Journey On Podcast Summit. 

The summit itself was a mindblowing experience in every way, and I'm yet to adequately find the words for my experience there. I definitely didn't come out of it the same person I was going in.

I wanted to chat about my time there from the position of a presenter, but it didn't feel right to do that alone... so I've brought in some of my favourite people to do it with me! Today I am joined by Robyn Schiller, Kathy Price and Christine Dickson, incredible individuals in their own right and each a key part of my own summit adventures. 

We chatter about how the idea for the summit came about, our thoughts leading up to it, and of course, how things played out over the course of the actual summit.

I hope you enjoy it!

You can find out more or get in touch with Robyn here: www.warwickschiller.com

To find Kathy, jump on www.kathyprice.co.uk

And you can find Christine at www.onthepathcoaching.net

Happy listening!

❤️ Jane 

Fabulous humans!

Ready to riff with me on all things mind, movement, and the nervous system?

This week’s episode is a recording of a live Q&A I held yesterday to answer some questions and continue on discussing the topics I talked about in my presentation at the Journey On Podcast Summit.

I've had a lot of emails come in post-summit that vary from general questions on movement and the nervous system to more specific questions on various challenges that people are currently facing and I thought what better way to talk about them than to jump on a call, share space, and get into it together!

We cover a lot of territory ranging from the structural changes that occur in the different nervous system states, the effect of the nervous system on emotions and mindset and the relationship of the nervous system overall to riding biomechanics.

So here it is for you… I hope you enjoy it! Please feel free to share!

❤️ Jane

Want to check out JoyRide? You can do so here:

www.confidentrider.online/joyride

Last week, an email landed in my inbox that asked a very specific question.

“I get much of what you talk about, this person told me, but I still can’t make the connection between how the movement work you teach relates to mindset. Can you explain this to me please?”

Now at this point there are two things you should know about me:

1. I’m a self-professed movement and nervous system nerd. This question lights up my insides in a similar fashion to when I see dark chocolate, and I really like dark chocolate.
2. I have trouble narrowing things down into short, bullet point form. I err on the side of big conversations rather than succinct snapshots

… so, with those two things in mind, I’ve dedicated this week’s podcast to answering that exact question.

We all know that movement, exercise and being active generally is important for our emotional and mental well-being, but I want to dive beyond that more superficial understanding and consider movement from a nervous system perspective, and how we can use that knowledge to better understand ourselves both in daily life, in our riding, and when it comes to moving on from experiences we might label as upsetting, stressful or traumatic.

In this episode we discuss:

• The connection between our nervous system and our movement patterns and habits
• Dominant Patterns of Use; what they are, how that affects us and why they hold the key to moving past trauma and upset
• The interconnection of thought, movement, and experience

I hope you enjoy it! Please feel free to share and review the podcast- I really appreciate you taking the time to listen.

❤️ Jane

www.confidentrider.online

I first became aware of Kate Sandel after reading one of her most excellent blogs that she shared on her Facebook page ,Soft and Sound, and from there launched into “quiet stalker mode” to find out more about her on her website.

I was fortunate enough to become one of the early members of her online membership program, and from there, she has become not only one of my go-to people for help and advice about my horses, but beyond that a much-cherished friend.

If this is your first introduction to Kate, she runs a thriving equine business and teaches in the UK and internationally. She trained for several years with Philippe Karl, French classical master and founder of the Ecole de Légèreté, as well as honing her horsemanship skills with a variety of incredible teachers.

She is also a qualified equine sports massage therapist and her background in mental health means she values the wellbeing of both the human and horse in a riding partnership. 

She also recently released her book Riding In Release: A Practical Guide To French Classical Equitation & Horsemanship that is well worth having in your library!

You can find out more about Kate via her website www.softandsound.org

I hope you enjoy our conversation, happy listening!

❤️ Jane

www.confidentrider.online

Finding the right environment and teacher to learn with can be really messy territory to step into. On the one hand, we want to open ourselves up to the learning experience and put ourselves out there for the betterment of both ourselves and our horses. On the other, the vulnerability that creates means we want to make sure that we are doing so with the right people and in the right situations.

From the student perspective, we want to know that the ethos of any trainer or coach we work with aligns with what’s important to us. We want to make sure that our voice is respected and considered, and that the learning container is one that allows us to navigate our comfort zone artfully, empathetically and skilfully.

We also want to step into the mode of self-responsibility; to commit ourselves to the necessary level and to do the work required in order fully understand and embody what is being offered to us.

From the coach perspective, we need to have done enough work ourselves to allows our students their own learning experience, without seeking to control or override it. We need to let go of the need for others to agree with us and our patterns of perfectionism and likeability in order that we can be honest and clear.  

At the end of the day, truly being teachable, I believe, comes down to self-trust. The self-trust that allows you to open yourself up to new things whilst maintaining your voice and advocating for yourself and your horse whenever the situation requires it.

In this episode we discuss:

• The difference between boundaries and barriers (and how they apply in learning situations)
• What to do when things go wonky and you realise you’re not in the right place for you (I share my own clinic experiences to this effect!)
• What it means to be teachable and take responsibility for your own “stuff” (which applies to both coaches and students)
• How the different nervous system states affect our capacity to learn

I really hope it's useful to you when it comes to navigating your own experiences in the arena and beyond! 

Happy listening!

❤️ Jane

To learn more about my work or find out how we can work together, visit www.confidentrider.online

In the last episode, we launched into the topic of biomechanics and how understanding the role of the conscious and unconscious brain in movement can empower us to find a different way of moving and being in the saddle that sits outside of the traditional riding lesson model.

One of the things I find challenging about these conversations is that the work I practice is highly experiential and so explaining things from a purely cognitive or “thinking about it” perspective can make it difficult to appreciate what I’m going on about.

With that in mind, when I recorded today’s podcast I had it in mind that you could ride along with me- a ride along audio session- so if you want to do that, you’ll need to grab a pair of blue tooth ear buds or a speaker, your phone with this podcast on it and set yourself up so you can listen to it while you ride.

We cover some basic terms at the start and then launch into the practice together!

Along with the ridden practice, in this session we also discuss:

- Movement arcs and their role in movement in the parasympathetic system

- The basic anatomy of your centreline, and how to use your centreline to match the balance point of your horse

I hope you enjoy it!

If you are interested to learn more or join me in my membership program JoyRide, you can do so here:

www.confidentrider.online/joyride

Happy Riding! 

❤️ Jane 

Those of us interested in the art of horsemanship and riding find ourselves on a constant quest for harmony; a way of being and moving with our horses that allows both of us to find an ease of movement not only in our bodies, but also in our minds.

My adventures into the nervous system have led me to some specific understandings of how the nervous system impacts our movement, and how we can use this knowledge to not only move through the physical challenges that we experience as riders, but optimize our balance and effectiveness in the saddle.

This involves letting go of models of control and embracing ways of working with the body that honour its inherent wisdom and capacity for ongoing adaptation.

In this episode we discuss:

• The relationship of biomechanics to the nervous system
• The role of the unconscious and conscious brain in movement
• How we can use these understandings to work with the body rather than against it

I hope you enjoy it!

You can learn more about my work by visiting my website at www.confidentrider.online

❤️ Jane 

It’s one of my favouritist (yes, that is a word) humans ever joining me for the podcast this week. Kathy Price is in the house and we are talking about the… well, basically all. of. the. things.

It’s impossible when chattering to a person like Kathy to keep things at surface level, so we cover a lot of territory. Before we get into that however, let me introduce Kathy to you!

Kathy comes from a scientific background gaining a BSc (Hons) degree in Zoology. Her mindset then was always based on the scientific paradigm of you had to be able to “measure it, replicate it and explain it” for it to be true. If those criteria where in place Kathy was happy. If they weren’t she didn’t want to know. That was until in 2003 when with her horse Midnight she went to a horsemanship clinic with clinician Len Judd. For her this clinic was the moment of transformation, a spiritual experience that changed her life.

From that weekend forward as she stepped into and embraced the world of energy and connection, her need for scientific explanation fell away and her mind set became “My experience is my Truth.”   Now nearly 20 years on, after many years of studying energy, quantum physics, healing, spirituality and training in several energetic modalities, Kathy is well-established in her work which she calls Point of Balance.

Through this purely energetic work her aim is to help the person or animal she is working with move back into balance at all levels - physical, mental, emotional and spiritual. This move back to balance not only helps them to heal themselves, but also helps them realise their unique power and potential.

In this episode we talk about:

• Kathy’s personal journey that led her to the work that she’s doing now
• The importance of movement to health and well being
• The beliefs that we have about our body and the nature of change
• Stories and experiences from working in the field of energy and movement

I hope you enjoy it as much I did!

You can find Kathy through all of the following channels:

Website: https://kathyprice.co.uk/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/pobwithkathyprice

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/kathypricepointofbalance/

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/KathyPrice333

❤️ Jane 

www.confidentrider.online 

Hands in the air if you feel like you never have enough time?

This “time conundrum” is something that I’ve wrestled with for a long time and has created a lot of stress and struggle along the way. I recognize now that my own relationship with time has been caught up in a somewhat toxic relationship with people pleasing patterns, the need to get things right, and that somehow my self-worth was inextricably linked to how much I could get done in a day.

What’s more, the idea of being endlessly busy is something that is socially supported and as a result, normalized.

But at some point, this no longer cut it for me. I was sick of juggling balls and feeling like more balls were being thrown my way.

So instead, I threw all the balls on the ground so I could step back and ask myself, what’s happening here? Do I really have no choice in my experience? How can I renegotiate my relationship with time so that I could release this feeling of being overwhelmed or flat out bonkers?

In this episode we discuss:

• How your nervous system impacts your relationship with time
• How embracing your limitations is a liberation
• How the ability to make choices and be decisive impacts your experience of time

I’d love to hear your thoughts! You can learn more about my work or get in touch via my website www.confidentrider.online

❤️ Jane 

How would things change if we looked at our horses and the first thing we thought was, you are brilliant?

A Confident Rider Sound Bite on the place we begin from.

www.confidentrider.online 

Do you know the difference between the action of fear and the emotion of fear? Because there is one. And being able to discern between them is vital when it comes to understanding not only how your nervous system works, but how your perception of different situations and experiences create sympathetic or fight flight responses. When the fight flight nervous system is working as it’s designed to, it produces the action of fear in response to something it perceives in the environment to be threatening. In the wild- in their natural environment- this is what animals are experiencing. They are experiencing the action of fear, but not the emotion of fear. That’s quite a different beast. The action of fear is unconsciously driven and kicks in as part of our survival reflexes. The emotion of fear is the conscious awareness of an experience and the labelling of the event, that is both subjective and perceptual. In other words, it’s specific to us, our experiences, our nervous system and how we see the world. In this episode, we discuss the difference between the two as well as:

- How the emotion of fear is not necessarily accurate nor responding to reality. But it can trigger the activation of our survival nervous system and send us on a reflexive loop that’s not necessarily in our best interest. - How a  nervous system functioning in sympathetic dominance (where we are more often than not living from our survival nervous system) results in overthinking and recurring negative thoughts, and how they can leave us in a catch 22 cycle.

- The relationship of trauma to both the emotion and action of fear

The experience of the emotion of fear is real, but whether we are responding to something real is a very different thing altogether. It’s our job to become curious about our own experiences and to begin to decouple emotional associations and labels from reflexive bodily experiences that don’t actually match the moment. I hope you enjoy it! You can learn more by visiting my website at www.confidentrider.online

Onwards,

❤️ Jane 

Fabulous humans! I’m baaaaaack! The Confident Rider Podcast is back on the airwaves for Season 2, and I have to say, I’m pretty excited about it!

It seemed only fitting to give you a rundown of where I’m at work and life wise, but beyond that, to discuss some of the changes that have happened in my work over the past 18 months and how that has informed my own practices and understandings.

So, let’s take it from the top! In this episode, we go down the rabbit hole of the nervous system and discuss:

• The difference between the parasympathetic and sympathetic nervous system function
• The motor reflex chain of the sympathetic nervous system, and its relationship to movement and emotion
• Understanding the relationship between trauma, motor patterns and dominant patterns of use

I hope you enjoy it! If you love it, hit the subscribe button.

Looking forward to continuing the adventure with you,

❤️ Jane

A couple of weeks back, I got tagged in a post on Facebook where the person in question had been bucked off and now found herself in the midst of two different riding experiences; when she is in company or with her instructor, she is fine to get on and ride. When she is alone, it’s a completely different story.

Given I had quite a lot to say on this subject (more than I could include in a Facebook comment!) I asked if I could use the question for a podcast episode, and the answer was absolutely yes. Here is an edited version of the original post:

“I bought my first horse last year. I had a few rides on her and everything was great-then one day she bucked me off.  It’s the first time I’ve ever been bucked off and I’m pretty sure I gave her mixed signals and was the cause of it. I sent her to a trainer and she has been going beautifully. I also took some riding lessons with her and it seemed like we were doing ok again- until I get by myself with her.

I can’t seem to make myself step up on her when no one else is around. If someone is with me then I’m fine. She does great when I’m working her from the ground and responds to even just voice commands. But I can feel myself get nervous and tense when it’s time to step up on her. I know she can feel my nervous energy and that makes her nervous and then she won’t stand still and acts scared of me. Any ideas on what I can do to get my confidence back? And get her confidence back in me?”

In this episode, we discuss the difference between these two scenarios- and what’s changing at the level of the nervous system- and I share my thoughts on the approach I would take to move beyond the reflexive responses created in the aftermath of an accident and injury.

So here’s the current state of play.

Over the last little while, all three of my horses have had some time off. This definitely wasn’t in the game plan- they have all for different reasons had some physical niggles from unrelated incidents that made me think a few weeks of paddock rest was a good idea- and now I am finding myself in the position where we are needing to begin again.

This transition space is one that I’m in conversation frequently with other riders. There are so many reasons why we might find ourselves in the position of having to regroup after an extended break. It can be weather or seasonally related; it can be due to injury; it could just be that turning your horse out at specific times of the year is something that you do. Whatever the reason, there are some pretty common stuck points that rise up when it comes to picking up from where you left off including:

• Overwhelm (and consequently procrastination)
• Anxiety
• Confusion about where to start and what to focus on

In this episode, I share the process that I have been going through and talk in more detail about what’s going on in your brain space when such happenings rise to the surface!

Happy listening!

❤️ Jane

A little while back, a friend of mine sent me a video of a trainer working with a horse who was suffering from significant anxiety. I watched them work together and loved not only the principles he followed but his thoughts about what was happening, and his intentions for creating trust and connection.

Josh Nichol was the horseman in that video, and I had the great pleasure of sitting down together and having a conversation about his work, and our shared passions and interests.

Our time together covers a lot of ground; we discuss Josh’s Relational Horsemanship approach, his definition and thoughts on leadership, and the body-mind connection.

“I look at relational horsemanship and reactive or emotional horsemanship. To me, relational horsemanship means that when a horse's needs are unmet, they will demonstrate that through their physical being.

It’s our job then to exemplify what leadership feels like. So for any of us, when we feel when we have someone who we desire to be around or we look up to, it's generally not just because of the things they've done. That may be what draws us in at the beginning. But the people we see or feel a desire to be around the most are usually the ones that emanate something we desire to have within ourselves.

So I look at leadership, at its essence as a sense and confidence, an awareness that we have within ourselves, a piece that the horse desires to have within themselves as well.”

~ Josh Nichol

In this episode, Anxiety has stepped forward as our volunteer to show us just how important context is!

Case and point:

Say I am a rider who has come to recognize anxiety as a fairly familiar part of my riding experience. In fact, I am so intimate with my particular brand of riding anxiety that I’ve started to view it as a part of my personality and identity.

This presents a few different problems for me. First up, I’ve taken something that is intrinsically mercurial- an emotion- and given it a sense of “fixed-ness”. Owning it as a part of me creates a sense of permanency.

Secondly, when I DO find myself in the midst of an anxious experience, I see it as a flaw or weakness on my part (enter the Itty Bitty Shitty Committee from Stage Left), rather than something I can learn to understand and work with.

And thirdly, I cut myself off from developing true understandings as to the nature of emotions and what it is they are trying to tell me.

In this episode, I provide three possible contexts for the experience of “free-floating anxiety” (you know, that anxiety that just “appears” in situations that seem to have no justifiable reason!) beginning with intuition, and ending with understanding the nature of traumatic stress and the formation of memory at both a conscious and unconscious level.

I hope you enjoy it!

It’s a raw, uncut, unedited podcast for you this week! I had planned to release a different episode, but we made an executive decision to hold that off for a couple of weeks’ time (super excited to bring that to you then!). In the meantime, I had two options:

1. Leave the podcast for this week and have a two-week gap
2. Roll with whatever came up even if I didn’t have time to present it as a perfect package

Given this is here with you now, I have gone with the latter. So here it is for you, my Sunday morning conversation around the nature of sensation and the relationship it has with our emotional brain and motor patterns and function (isn’t this what everyone muses over when they are having their Sunday morning coffee?).

What’s the deal with all of that? Here’s a brief breakdown.

Many of us find ourselves in groundhog day experiences with our horses based on certain feelings or sensations that arise in the body. Whilst those sensations can feel concrete and absolute, they are inherently subjective. Think of them as a mash-up of everything you have thought, experienced, or been told in relation to a similar experience in the past.

What then happens is that our body registers a certain feeling in response to the environment, and we label that feeling based on something that has happened in the past. That labeling or thought process then triggers a motor response and we find ourselves acting out the same experiences on a repetitive loop.

In order to move away from that, there are some key things we need to consider:

• Our associations with sensation and discomfort in the body as a whole, and the decoupling of stories and labels around them
• The secondary gain we experience from what we would primarily understand as negative behavior or experience
• The true meaning of sensation and how we can use that to bring ourselves more into the present

We discuss all this and more in this episode!

A little while back I was interviewed for the Whole Horse Podcast and for the first time “properly” had a chance to talk to the host of the show, Alexa Linton. I found our conversation before and after the interview so fascinating and enlivening that I knew I had to turn the tables and invite Alexa to speak to you all on my own podcast!

Aside from being one of life’s inspiring and engaging people (two of my favorite things!), Alexa is a wealth of knowledge when it comes to all things body-based; from the energetic to the nuts and bolts mechanics, she has spent over 14 years working as an Equine Sports Therapist, is in the final stages of studying Osteopathy for humans, has a degree in kinesiology and extensive experience in the energetic and healing arts.

Our time together is a winding discussion on horse and human connection, exploring the body from the skeletal to the emotional, sharing personal experiences of both, and highlighting just how incredible this structure is that we call the human form.

Over the past few years, I’ve noticed what I am learning from my horses is taking a much bigger and more expansive form.

The same dreams remain; to create a harmonious and energetic relationship together. To learn what I can about behavior, biomechanics, and horsemanship so I can be the best partner possible. But beyond that, I’ve noticed that my work with horses has gifted me with an increased capacity, strength, and resilience to show up in other areas of my life in bigger and bolder ways.

In short, horses have allowed me to access and find my voice in ways that I have never experienced previously. They have prompted me to redefine what it means to be brave and to understand the different forces at work that exert their influence on us and keeping us playing and feeling small.

In this episode I reflect back on my experiences and discuss:

• The importance of strengthening our voice and developing a healthy relationship with the fight channel of our nervous system
• Letting go of the rigid, masculinized view of bravery and offering a different viewpoint that allows us to ride and move with integrity
• Horsemanship as a practice of everyday activism, that allows us to enter the bigger conversation on structural and systemic inequities

I hope you enjoy it! Happy listening! 

Sitting down to write the blurb for this podcast, I pinged Tania and Kathy a message:

I have no idea how to condense our conversation down into a few sentences.

That remains the truth some time after as I attempt to gather our “life, horses, and the universe” into a palatable description!

So here is the truth of it! Kathy and Tania are two of my closest and most trusted friends and I couldn’t think of a better way to muse over the last 12 months and ponder the next 12 than to gather around the microphone together. This episode is a fly in the wall listen-in on our ponderings covering everything from “Tania’s Top Tip” for dealing with difficult people to getting down to the nitty-gritty of what it means to show up for our horses (and ourselves) in an aligned and authentic way.

I hope you enjoy it!

For someone who spends a lot of her day discussing various aspects of confidence (and what’s more has it featured as a keyword in her business!), it may surprise you to hear that I think we have things a bit mixed up when it comes to understanding what confidence actually is… and what’s more, what we *actually* mean when we say we want to feel more confident.

Over time, I’ve come to understand the complex relationship so many of us have with the word “confidence” (let alone our feelings around it) and from the place I sit now, I think we are focusing on the wrong end of the stick. While we may want to experience confidence, what we need to be focusing on as a practice is increasing our capacity.

So, what, then, does that mean? When I say, “increasing capacity”, what’s that all about?

Well, think of it this way.  Every experience that we find ourselves in the midst of holds a certain energetic blueprint, or activation level. If I’m feeling Zen, there’s a relatively low level of activation present, and I can easily contain that experience within my body without it feeling like it’s a problem.

Anxiety, on the other hand, has a much higher charge. Our ability to hold that charge before it moves to a place where we feel disconnected from ourselves and no longer in control of the energy relates directly to our capacity.

Capacity is basically how much energy and activation you can hold without overflowing.

Exceed it and you move into survival mode.

Stay within it and you feel like you have a handle on things- even if those things are hard.

In this episode, I dive into our associations and misconceptions around confidence, share some personal stories with you… and get you to consider that it might be capacity that you are looking to increase rather than confidence.

I hope you enjoy it!

❤️ Jane

You know, confrontation of any kind can be a hard thing to handle. In JoyRide, we’re talking all the time about the various communications (and miscommunications!) that happen within all the different types of relationships that we find ourselves in- both within our horsing life and outside of it.

I know way back when I was in my early twenties (when I was also reading a lot of different spiritual texts and throwing myself headlong into my own studies of body and breath), I convinced myself that if I was serious about this whole “mastering myself” malarky, that I needed to take myself off and live in a cave (spoiler alert: this definitely did not happen and actually sounds kind of ghastly to my present-day self. So cold! Those hard floors! But I digress…). What I’ve since understood is that the real learning happens in relationship. With yourself first and foremost, but beyond that with those we choose to surround ourselves with, and with those who temporarily, for a little while, or fleetingly cross our path.

When we are presented with the many faces of relationship, we get to see what our “stuff” really is. And it turns out, well… we have quite a lot of it. Stuff that is.

Enter at A our horses, and we are gifted with a magnifying glass that allows us to see things from a slightly different perspective. And in order to create a conversation, we have to approach things from a different angle, and with a new set of understandings; ones that require us to get out of our head, to let go of the stories we’ve told ourselves, and to be present to our direct experience.

In the last week or, I had an experience that allowed me to practice yet again. A confrontation that jolted me and temporarily knocked me off-center. It is in these moments I am grateful for the lessons that came before that allowed me, however briefly, to create a space between what I was feeling and experiencing and how I wanted to respond… which was ultimately with my integrity intact.

In this episode, I talk about exactly this and more. How we can manage the choppy waters of confrontation and discomfort and do so in a way that allows us to maintain perspective, integrity, and self-compassion.

You know, when things get tough, usually one of the first things to kick in is the commentary of the Itty Bitty Shitty Committee. The “You should have done this, or you didn’t do this or why did you do that or what were you thinking-ness” in all its hues and colours and variations can pretty quickly throw a wet blanket over any feelings of hopefulness or possibility that we hold for ourselves or our horses- or at the very least suck the joy out of it.

The thing about the Committee is they convince you of things that simply aren’t true. They tie your worth to the outcomes that you create, your value to how much you can get done, and your ability to feel good about yourself to a series of outside metrics that see you constantly chasing the carrot on the string. Those little critters can make life exhausting.

So it’s for these reasons and many more, that I now understand that being able to meet yourself with kindness- being able to separate the essence of who you are from the remarks of The Committee and to treat yourself with self-compassion is the highest form of practice there is.

In this episode we discuss:

• Why kindness and self-compassion is essential for ongoing motivation and momentum
• How meeting yourself with kindness gifts you with a clear perspective and the necessary understandings to decide the next best step for you and your horse
• Why kindness is the necessary antidote to low self-worth or feelings of not-good-enough-ness

I hope you enjoy it! 

A couple of weeks back, a collection of members of JoyRide gathered together on a Zoom call. The purpose of the call was simply to get together and find out what was going on for everyone and get some help and support if needed. Sarah, a member of the group, spoke up about her concerns about her students and if there was a chance we could possibly create something that would help them develop some strategies that would help them cope with what were sometimes significant stresses within their working life and ways to better manage the more difficult client relationships.

As an equine veterinary surgeon, a veterinarian, and clinical professor at UC Davis, Dr. Sarah Le Jeune is well versed in the pressures of the job. The veterinary field as a whole has some worrying and frankly heartbreaking statistics around mental health that speak to just how significant that stress can be. Dr. Sarah and I decided to team up in this episode to extend support to vets that might be struggling, help raise awareness and share our thoughts on how as horse owners and clients we can be more mindful and considered at our end within the relationship.

Beyond that, we are also interested in creating resources and hosting a round table discussion with equine professionals who would be interested in being part of this conversation. If you are interested in being a part of it, please get in touch. We would love to hear from you!

Please feel free to share this episode around. Although the conversation covers some difficult topics, it’s an important one to put out there and hold in our broader awareness.

I’m always blown away by how simple changes to posture; how tangibly connecting with where feeling and sensation sits in the body in relation to a specific thought; how accessing experience through the body can allow us to not only shift our perception but integrate and metabolize experiences from the past that are showing up as challenges in the present.

It’s one thing to see this play out in real life and another to understand the mechanisms and systems at work that explains why working at the level of the body is so powerful.

Why is it that shifting things in the body changes our thoughts?

How does it work that we can make sense of traumatic or stressful events through body-based practices?

The answer lies in understanding the nature of memory and also the function of the somatic, interoceptive, and proprioceptive nervous systems, and how they work together to create templates of our experience.

In this episode we discuss:

• Explicit and implicit memory; the basic differences between the two and how understanding their functions and role helps us integrate traumatic stress and change any unwanted patterns and behaviors
• The somatic, interoceptive and proprioceptive nervous systems; their role and function in memory and why it’s necessary to begin at the level of the body for us to make sense of past experiences making themselves known in the present
• How our nervous system functions as an integrated whole, with body informing mind and mind informing body

Happy listening!

❤️ Jane

A storytime episode for you today! These last 12 months have been a period of big transformation for me (and if I’m honest the 12 months prior to that also). I talked in a previous podcast about a personal experience that was really the catalyst for changing lots of things up- for moving from a more mind-based approach to a body-based one, to diving deeper into nervous system understandings than I had previously, and to really committing myself to “doing the work” so that I had the tools to renegotiate and make peace with some things that I knew were really holding me back.

Horse wise, I felt like I’d come a really long way- not necessarily in terms of outward shows of success, but in my ability to be present and to hold my ground and my centre so I could show up for my horses in the way they needed me to show up.

In this episode, I talk about two similar experiences of attending clinics 12 months apart. I discuss my journey, what I’ve learned in between, and what changed as I came into a week-long learning experience with my horses.    

What is Surge Capacity?

Surge Capacity is the amount of energy and fortitude we bring to a situation that is challenging. You know when something happens that really requires you to step up and you gather yourself to rise to the occasion? That’s what we are talking about here; the surge of power that allows you to be able to do something difficult and make the most of it, even if it feels really hard.

In the ideal world, this would only be required of us every now and then and then we would have time to regroup, replenish our resources, and build ourselves back up. But what about in situations- like Covid or any long-term situation where we are being called to access our inner resources in more unusual, taxing, and unexpected ways… what happens then?

Our Surge Capacity decreases. We find our ability to muster energy growing less and less. And as a consequence, our feeling of resilience can be compromised, our attitudes become increasingly despondent and our mental, emotional, and physical health all suffer.

In this episode, we talk about Surge Capacity and how an awareness of it can help us make better decisions and take proactive steps to ensure we are looking after ourselves in times when we need to be in it for the long haul. I discuss three things that I consider vital to pay attention to maximise our resilience and ensure we are showing up for the things that are important to us.  

It’s interesting how, when we’re fed something over a period of time, we don’t stop to question that there might be another way of going about things. That’s certainly been the case for me in the past when it’s come to goal setting. Despite recognizing that it’s a system that doesn’t work for me; despite not having used the traditional model that we are taught for a couple of years now, I never really gave much thought to the fact that a whole new way of planning and creating a framework for yourself to live and ride by was possible.

The reason for this is pretty much everywhere I looked it was all very much the same. If it’s a system that works for so many, I thought, it must be me who is the problem.

Set SMART goals! They yell from the rafters.

If you don’t write your goals down, you are already behind! The tell you pointedly.

What do the top 1% of the world’s achievers have in common? Goal setting! They enthuse.

Side note: Who is this elusive 1%, I ask myself, and who is deciding that?

The other thing? Having worked with literally thousands of riders up until this point, I knew it wasn’t working for a lot of them either- so much so, that I have coined a couple of phrases to describe what so many people felt. Goal Shame and Goal Panic (I describe what they are in the podcast).

So, I sat down and got to work. I haven’t set goals for years, and yet I have my own successful business, 3 horses in work a husband, and two young children. I took everything I knew and distilled it into a completely different approach that I could share with other people- a non-planning plan- that combined all of the important elements that we need to pay attention to that allow us to be a sustainable presence in our own lives and create a framework for living and riding that allows us to follow our curiosity, tune into our intuition, and is full of the essence of what’s important to us.

In this episode, we discuss:

- How your nervous system is impacting your planning style (and your ability to dream and vision ahead in the first place)

- The origins of the traditional goal-setting process (and why it might clash with how you approach your riding life)

- Elements that are important to consider when creating a training framework for you and your horse

I hope you enjoy it! 

A week or so back, a message pinged into my inbox from a rider in the recovery period of an accident that was really affecting her riding. She used a really common phrase that I often hear alongside descriptions of traumatic stress which is:

I feel like I’m living in the past.

I know so many of us can relate. It can be upsetting, frustrating, and frightening to find your mind and body looping around in a spin cycle of concern, worry, and anxiety in the aftermath of an injury and what’s more, easy to convince yourself that the chances of making it back to a good feeling place are slim to none.

Maybe this is just how it is now, you tell yourself. Maybe this is my lot.

The good news is, this is very far from the truth.

When the body holds trauma, what it is essentially holding is unintegrated activation, energy, and experience. If we think of ourselves as an interconnected puzzle, trauma is a piece of that puzzle that fits in somewhere- we just haven’t found out quite where. As a result, it floats in our orbit, out of context with what is happening in our present-day life and wholly misunderstood.

When we experience a “trigger” what we are in the midst of is the invitation of the body to have a corrective emotional experience. An unfinished cycle of activation and energy seeking out completion. It is that missing puzzle piece in our orbit searching for connection and reintegration.

While this experience sounds romantic, it is far from easy. Allowing ourselves to accept and process experiences of the past means that we need to have established a felt sense of safety in the body and have resourced ourselves with the tools and skills to ground and centre in the midst of discomfort. It’s a body led experience of increasing capacity and of accepting and allowing for the parts of ourselves and our experiences that felt too hard for us to hold to be welcomed back into the fold.

In this episode, we talk about the nature of injury and how traumatic stress is held in the body. I expand on the hows and whys of what I teach, and the process I follow that allow us to integrate the uncomfortable, expand on the good, and resource us to meet ourselves and our horses in the moment.

Happy listening!

xx Jane

So as it goes, I had a very specific idea in mind for what I was going to talk about in this week’s episode, but as soon as I hit record, something very different came out! When it came time to give it an actual title, the only thing I could think of was, well, it’s kind of a mash-up of a few different things so I’ve decided to roll with exactly that- a combination episode of a few different things all rolled into one!

Here’s a brief snapshot…

⭐️ The role of social and systemic frameworks and their influence on us “doing the work”

⭐️ Why comfort isn’t the goal (I go into this one in quite a lot of detail!)

⭐️ The joy of movement and the role of movement-based practices in my work

I hope you enjoy it! 

Ok team! Let’s think about what it means to be responsive and to have cultivated a way of being that allows us to respond appropriately to the moment and doesn’t see us stuck in any one spot in our nervous system for longer than we need to be.

What does it mean to respond appropriately? It means that whatever comes into our experience, we are still able to mobilize our body- to stand our ground, to move away if necessary, or even to move towards the object or situation in question should that be required- and simultaneously be able to anchor and centre in the midst of that.

It means there is an intentionality to how it is we are in relationship with the energy- that even if what we are feeling is big and powerful, we are still able to contain it within the edges of our skin, and as a consequence, we can choose to direct how and where that energy is going to be channeled.

Responsiveness, then, requires familiarity and the ability to still have access to our own personal agency under pressure or stress. Familiarity means that we can hold power without it causing us to feel frightened by that experience and move into shutdown (for example).

How do we train for that? By intentionally creating experiences that are novel or unfamiliar so we can observe our responses, learn to control the physiology of the experience (how it shows up in our body), and develop a flexibility and adaptability to the world around us and how we move within it.

We talk about all this and more in this episode!

Let’s talk about nervous system capacity and how it relates to the experience of being afraid to canter. Before we get into it, I just want to put this out there- some of you will explicitly relate to this example and for others, it’s not going to register on your radar. If you fall into the latter group, take out “being afraid to canter” and drop in there any challenge of choice that you fill like is a sticking point right now. Chances are the same principles will apply….

Back to the canter…

All of the work that we do with our horses exists on an energetic continuum. The walk, for example, produces less energetic resonance than a big trot or a canter. Typically, we think of the gaits from a rider perspective as very compartmentalized but how I prefer to think of them- and what is infinitely more helpful when it comes to learning how to match them- is to think of them as existing on an energetic sliding slide, beginning with lower power states and moving through to experiences of higher power and energy.

Our comfort level and ability to integrate with the energetic experience our horses offer us is wholly dependent on our capacity to hold that energy. I refer to it as activation and from a nervous system perspective, the amount of activation you can hold in your body equates to how much of the same experience you can handle before the experience gets bigger than you, and consequently, you move into a survival response of flight, fight, freeze or collapse.

In this episode, we are going to talk about exactly this and more including:

• The necessary process to increase our ability to hold activation and energy in the body so we can work in higher power states with our horses
• The coupling together of that same energy with the feeling of being under threat or in danger (and how to parse those apart)
• Relaxation Induced Anxiety: Where the experience of opening and release in the body creates a reflexive response back into tension (and what you can do about it).

I hope you enjoy it!  

Stuck points! We all experience them, we all understand them as part of the learning process but what we also know is there’s a big difference between reaching a blip point and feeling like you’re continually running up against the same brick wall day in and day out.

And what’s more, if we do find ourselves stuck in a pattern of behavior without the context of understanding how our nervous system operates, it’s very easy to start to internalize experiences as personal flaws or weaknesses, rather than direct expressions of our capacity and our body and minds best attempt to keep us safe.

In this episode, we discuss how it is you can move beyond a stuck point in your riding or training and how it is we can begin to understand our responses and resource ourselves to better deal with challenging or uncomfortable circumstances that habitually send us into flight, fight, freeze or shutdown.

We look at:

• The hallmarks of traumatic stress and the common default responses that occur when we are extended out of our zone of “I’ve Got This”
• How showing up is your superpower (and why the key to it involves living with less perfection)
• The “dead zone” of awareness and the path between “I’m ok” and “I’m really not ok!”
• Looking out for your own calming signals (as well as those of your horse)
• Parsing about habitual responses to better understand when to keep going and when to drop it back

Ever thought to yourself, I wish I could think more positively! Or what’s more, found yourself catastrophizing about every situation that comes your way until you’re mentally drowning in worst-case scenarios? It’s a vicious loop to get caught up in and one that can feel almost impossible to step out of.

Most conversations around this topic approach it at the level of the mind, which at first glance makes a lot of sense. After all, if it’s the mind that’s causing the “issues”, surely that’s the place that we need to be doing the work?

What if, though, the thoughts that we were having were a symptom of underlying nervous system dysregulation, and we were approaching things from the wrong angle?

Think of it this way: When we are operating from a place of chronic hypervigilance or stress, we are operating from the smoke alarm part of our brain. When we are in that place, we are primarily interested in safety and survival. It makes sense then that if this is where our nervous system is sitting, that our thoughts will be demonstrative of that also. Trying to change your thoughts without addressing the underlying dysregulation then means we are always going to be chasing our tail. At best, our system is always going to override our best attempts in its ongoing quest to keep us safe and we will also be stuck in an ongoing war between what we THINK we should be thinking, how we actually feel, and what we are projecting.

We discuss all this and more in this episode; a bottom-up approach to negative thinking and how it is we might be going about things the wrong way around.

The belief of not being good enough. The endless quest to be “better” than we are now. The constant busyness….

What we understand about all of these things is that they are not specific to only a handful of people but have come to be a predictable part of our shared psyche and habits. Consequently, when it comes to looking at new ways of going about things, we need to go beyond individual assessments and understandings and look at how our community and cultural beliefs are informing us and influencing our understandings and behavior.

It’s my belief that we are at a transition point in our collective and individual consciousness which leads to us navigating two different tensions; the one we are emerging from tells us that motivation and empowerment come from continual striving towards a future marker, the belief implicit to this telling us we aren’t good enough as we are now; the other calling for more introspection, presence, and responsiveness to the moment. This leads to a struggle between heart and mind as we seek to reconcile the conditioned thoughts that tell us how we should be or how things should look if we were successful according to the traditional paradigm, and a more intuitive sense of our place and how we would like things to be.

In this episode, we look at the intersection of self-care, the concept of flooding, or systemic overwhelm and how this feeds through to how we are showing up for our horses.

What’s your relationship to mindful anger, aggression, and power? When you read or say those words to yourself, how do they sit in your body?

We all have a somatic, or body-based relationship to language, and it’s a big part of why the words that we choose matter and how describing something from a slightly different angle can open up a new perspective for us. In the first instance, when I think of anger, aggression, and power, I think of dominance and force. My associations with these words have, in the past, led me to lean away from any demonstrations of them in my own life, rather than towards. After all, if our connections to what they mean don’t represent something “positive”; if we don’t have healthy role models or cultural contexts for what they represent in an empowering form, why would we seek to include them as part of our experience?

The thing is, the experience anger, aggression and power are part of what it means to be human. Our preference for them doesn’t remove them from our lives. If we don’t develop a healthy relationship with these parts of ourselves- and it goes without saying not every presentation of them is healthy- then we inadvertently get ourselves into a situation where they are the master of us, rather than us being the master of them.

The key lies in being able to harness the physiology of what it means to hold activation in the system and to be able to contain the energy within the container of our body so we have a choice about how and where to channel it.  

When we talk about the mindful versions of anger, aggression, and power, we are talking about your inner connection to determination and strength; a feeling of something in you that connects you to your backbone, and a restoration of integrity and dignity in the body in the face of what can be challenging circumstances.

Within this, we understand that truly harnessing the power of these energies mindfully does not exist at the expense of the less hot emotions, such as kindness, compassion, and love, but in partnership with them.

The ability to cultivate a healthy sense of your own power is an internal circuit system that allows you to step up that allows you to say “come on, I can get through this part that’s currently challenging me and do this thing I want to do”. It’s a necessary, welcome, and intrinsic part of our humanity.

Let’s consider for a moment that our nervous system exists on more than just an individual level; it exists on a collective level as well. Not only are we working within the context of our own, personal experience but we are also living within the dynamics of the social and cultural nervous system also, creating a broader ecosystem of feeling, response, and reaction that we are all in constant relationship with.

Having an understanding of how the nervous system functions and the tendencies that we all share that lie under the umbrella of “being human” is vital in order that we can zoom out from our individual experience and recognize the context that informs much of our behaviors and responses. Without context- without recognizing how we are set up to survive and thrive as creatures on the planet- it’s all too easy to internalize challenges or feeling states, such as anxiety or fear, and own them as an inherent part of our personality, rather than an understandable response of our nervous system in the face of traumatic stress.

This is where it gets interesting. Let’s say that at some time in the past, I experienced a high-stress event, but at the point of high activation there has also been a highly charged emotion attached- say in the case of an accident, injury or trauma- which has not been effectively addressed or integrated, that energy can stay stuck in the body. It’s possible then that we find ourselves in a situation- sometimes shortly after, sometimes many years down the line- where we find ourselves skilled and able but having a disproportionate response to something in front of us. One that seemingly has no context and appears inappropriate for the moment. If we have enough reactions of this nature, we internalize the experience and instead of understanding it as a result of chronic stress or trauma, we see it as in intrinsic part of us, or what’s more that we are flawed and incapable. Enter: I am a nervous rider I am an anxious rider I’m not very brave … and so on and so forth.

This internalization of experience as some sort of weakness or flaw is problematic in many ways. Firstly, if we believe a “problem” is “inherently part of us”, we distance ourselves from the ways and means to move through it.

Secondly, we desensitize ourselves from our intuition and instinct that gives us true and real indications of how to navigate the situation that we find ourselves in.

And thirdly, if you want to fast track to feeling down and out and even hopeless, this is a great way to get you there.

In this episode, I talk all about context and understanding and why both will help you reassess the areas where you may have confused an emotional experience or behavior with a part of your personality or identity.

Capacity is a word that’s entered into my work in a big way. But what does it mean to increase your capacity? And why is this an important consideration when it comes to being effective, compassionate, and creative horsepeople?

Capacity, the way I teach it, relates to the amount of activation we can hold in our body before we go into a place of flight, fight, or freeze. It’s a dynamic conversation based on our experiences up to that point, how much our mental, emotional, and physical energies have been drawn on over the course of the day and where our current thresholds are.

When we turn our attention to increasing our capacity- to increasing the ability of our body to hold and maintain the energy of the experience without disconnecting from ourselves or our environment- then we can move beyond just “managing” fear, anxiety, overwhelm and frustration and create a way of being that allows us to hold more.

In order for us to do so, it’s important to educate ourselves on the way our nervous system works and understand within that why mindfulness techniques may not always be the most effective answer in the moment.

Of all the emotions we think of when it comes to horses and riding, anger would be up there with the seemingly most inappropriate. I totally get it. After all, most of our associations with anger link us directly to outbursts that cause harm and upset to someone or something else.

Our limited understanding of anger, however, causes us to shut ourselves off from a very important and powerful experience; one that allows us to harness a potent energy that’s necessary for forward momentum, passion, and assertiveness and gives us to tap into our own strength, in whatever way we might need it in the moment.

In this episode, I discuss mindful anger and its role in our riding and our life. We look at how we may have been conditioned out of its essential essence and how we can go about inviting more of it into our experience, for the benefit of ourselves and our horses.

Like many of us, I’ve found the last few weeks to be a continual wave of constant and intense experiences. The general atmosphere we are operating in is charged, and as a consequence, we are approaching everything in front of us from a place of heightened activation also.

Everywhere we go, there are hard conversations. Everywhere we look, there are polarising opinions and calls to ask us to take a side. It can be confusing, inflaming, overwhelming, and at its worst, destructive.

What I love is that follows me, especially in my member’s group, JoyRide, are here with the central, unifying reason of horses. For many of us, the work on ourselves has begun with and for our horses. But what has become more and more obvious to me is the flow-on effects to other areas of our life; how we can also see that these skills- the ability to hold our centre; the ability to not shut down or run away; the ability to maintain a sense of self that we are all working on- allows us to have a social discourse and to talk about big issues BEYOND our horses in a way that is loving and mutually respectful, and for that, I am so, so grateful.

In this episode, I explore how it is that our horses provide us with a training ground for life, and how the skills that we develop are transferable to every other area that we involve ourselves in, whether we are aware of it or not.

Olivia Towers is in the house! Olivia is so many things (all good I might add), but amongst her many talents, she is a Grand Prix Dressage Rider, entrepreneur, Vlogger, and blogger with a passion for mindset and really getting the best out of yourself.

I’ve talked to Olivia before on her podcast a little while back, so it was super fun to get to switch seats and be the one asking the questions! Aside from the obvious bonding point that we both have a horse named Sausage #sistersforlife, Olivia and I chatter about

- Her journey from self-doubt and anxiety to diving into the world of mindset and self-development

- How she uses her social media platforms to show both sides of her equestrian journey, and be “the voice of real-ness”

- Her competitive aspirations and path with her own horses

I hope you enjoy it! 

Is it ever NOT appropriate to calm down? We talked about this in a post a week or so back and I’m exploring more in today’s podcast!

Let’s break it down…

Whenever we move into a sympathetic response that brings a lot of energy to the surface (anger, fear, and anxiety are all examples of this) we are often taught that we need to calm down; that the goal is to move from a place of reaction and activation to relaxation by changing our thoughts and perhaps taking a series of deep breaths.

In order for us to find true relaxation, however, there needs to be a discharge and an honoring of the energy that’s present. This does not mean channeling anger towards someone or something in a harmful way or melting down in a pool of panic but it does mean meeting the energy where it’s at and finding ways to release it from the system so it’s not driven down to a darker and deeper place.

In order for it to be a corrective emotional experience, however, the energy needs to be integrated, not just released. What does that mean? In this episode, we explore exactly that. I give you two examples of how we can work with that- one horse and one human- in response to nervous system activation.

I hope you enjoy it!

❤️ Jane

Intuition and instinct: how often do you allow yourself to follow yours? And what’s more, do you feel like you are connected to that internal sense of self enough that you are able to hear when it expresses a desire or impulse to you?

Many of us don’t. But that doesn’t mean we can’t cast off the layers of social and cultural conditioning that tell us it’s not ok to trust ourselves or to follow our own instincts and curiosity. Reclaiming our intuitive selves requires reconnection and re-embodiment; it’s a process of following our own impulses, of understanding our own boundaries and recognizing that being with our horses and engaging in life is not a pass/fail test.

Working together with our horses takes us through a master thesis of developing feel and inner knowing. Our society and educational system values and applauds rational and logical thought above all else, and as a consequence, we have an overdeveloped thinking mind and have left our emotional and instinctual bodies depleted and dehydrated. Our horses- if we allow them too- pull us out of that space and ask that we reconnect to a much lesser understood but equally valuable part of ourselves that is generated both from within and through tapping into a bigger, universal pool of intelligence that’s available to everyone.

In this episode, we explore how you can reignite the flame of your intuition by paying attention to three areas of focus; your curiosity, your boundaries, and free, organic movement.

I hope you enjoy it! 

Team, I am so thrilled to be able to share this conversation with you today. I’m talking with Jim Masterson about the Masterson Method and how it is we can work with our horse to release underlying patterns of tension and promote optimal health, relaxation, and connection.

Many of you will have heard me talk about this integrated bodywork practice before and it’s something I’m utilizing on a near-daily basis together with my own horses. I’ve found the results to be fascinating and profound, and I really believe that the Masterson Method is something that all horse owners need to have in their knowledge bank.

Over the course of our conversation we talk about:

⭐️ The what, how and why of the Masterson Method: How you can apply it to bring awareness to, relieve and release underlying patterns of tension with your horse

⭐️ The role of awareness and intuition in allowing for relaxation

⭐️ The signs of tension and signs of release: How to recognize both and create space for optimal release and balance

We are also throwing down the challenge to you to watch the Bladder Meridian Video that Jim mentioned over the course of our talk (I’ll share the link in the show notes of this episode) and try it out for yourself. Set up your phone, hit record and share your experiences with us! Make sure you tag us in so you can share the magic also!

I hope you enjoy it! 

Beating yourself up for not maintaining a solid baseline of calm with everything that is going on? You’re not the only one! But the thing is, we aren’t designed (nor is it preferable) for us to be calm all of the time. In an environment where there are lots of triggers ringing our nervous system alarm bells- from the sounds of actual alarms in our physical environment if you’re in the city, to a flooding of pandemic social media posts, to more distressed looks on the faces you see- it’s a very functional response of your nervous system to be moving more into flight and fight, and for some of us freeze.

All of these functions have healthy expressions, it’s just that for most of us (in my work and experience anyway) we have come to associate energetic activation in the body with fear. That also means that when we are presented with a horse with a big amount of energy or a situation that requires us to embody more energetic charge, we find ourselves unable to cope with it- physically, mentally and emotionally.

The learning, then, is to begin to condition (or re-condition in the case of any pre-existing trauma) ourselves to a higher energetic frequency in our bodies as a vital response of the body; vital in as much as it’s an expression of vitality as much as it is communicating a message. I believe this to be of fundamental importance not only in successfully navigating the global situation that we find ourselves in but in developing the emotional and energetic agility needed to work with our horses.

In this episode, we discuss this and other points including:

⭐️ Healthy ways of meeting and discharging the flight and fight response

⭐️ Understanding freeze: When to take energy away and when to add it

⭐️ Stuck on a channel: Why we need to develop our physical and energetic range for the sake of ourselves and our horses

I’m so passionate about the messages I’ve shared in this episode and would be so appreciative if you shared this post or the podcast episode in whatever way you see fit with your friends or riding buddies.

I hope you find it useful!

❤️ Jane

Aye kaboosh! What’re the feels out there currently? From where I sit, it’s certainly a mixed bag. One thing I do know is that we need to be even more intentional than usual in looking after our own sanity and wellness so we can ride out the waves as easefully as possible.

The other thing? Whether or not you are able to hang with your horse currently or not, many of us have a niggling voice in the back of our minds telling us to hold onto our horsey plans by whatever means possible (even if that’s in a drastically modified form!).

The beauty of the kind of work I do is that I work with what I call transferable practices. This means that you can apply the principles that I teach in your riding AND your day to day life circumstances… which ALSO means you can practice your mindset for the saddle in your everyday life too.

A lot of what is happening right now is emotional amplification, meaning that if you are familiar with operating from a baseline that includes a certain amount of anxiety, concern or worry, those tendencies are going to be magnified now. The good news is that getting on board with what you can do to manage that (and be kind to yourself in the process) means that when you step foot in the arena next, you are going to be in an all-round better position to manage yourself for the sake of your horse (and yourself, obviously). It’s a total win-win.

So in this episode, we expand and chatter more about that. Five transferable practices that you can utilize and get better at wherever you find yourself sitting or standing now that will strengthen your mental and emotional muscles when you’re out there with your horse.

Routine! It used to be a word that I turned my nose up at, but these days, routine and I are pretty much BFFs. With so many of us finding ourselves well outside of our normal routines currently, it’s important that we seek out and create some form of structure in our day so we don’t find ourselves floating around in free-form, crazy-making territory!

What it comes down to is this: When you have a lot of time on your hands and not a lot of variety in terms of how you can spend it, it’s easy to get into a routine that follows the path of least resistance and leaves you feeling under-nourished mentally, emotionally and physically (hello endless watching of TV and scrolling the internet!). As humans, two of our base needs is to have a sense of purpose and to experience a sense of progress. Both of these are possible to cultivate, we just need to be intentional in how we are using our time.

The other thing that I consider uber important? Taking care of your nervous system. Right now, I believe self-care is part of our community and global responsibility. This is a time where our considered responses, our creativity and our ability to care for each other are needed more than ever. We aren’t able to do any of those things in any constructive way if we are anxious, overwhelmed and strung out.

In this episode, I run you through some important things to consider to create purpose, structure and structure wellness your day, and how you can go about creating a routine in a somewhat routine-less world right now.

A gift for you!

I thought we could take a little moment together and do a shared, guided meditation. Be aware that within the aloneness, you are very much not alone, and within the non-idealness that might be happening right now, we are very much together in this.

And that it’s possible for us to find new ways of going about things, new ways of connecting, of understanding our minds and our hearts so that we are not only better equipped to navigate the situation that we find in front of us, but we’re better equipped to be able to reenter the fold with our horses, with our loved ones, with our work, with whatever presents as we shift out of this phase also, and into whatever lies ahead.

So here it is- your invitation to spend ten minutes of calm, balance and connection with me as we go about our day.

And if you want to spread the love, please share this! I would love to get this out to as many ears who need it as possible.

xx Jane

In this episode, we talk about:

- How to create nervous system calm: I run you through a practical process for re-embodiment and getting out of your head and back into your body

- The importance of self-care: Why self-care is not only vital for you as an individual right now, but is part of your community and global responsibility

- How to reestablish control in an environment that feels the opposite

I hope you get a lot out of it, please share with anyone you think would benefit! 

Equine Assisted Learning is something that has become more and more common to hear about both in and out of horsing circles, but despite that, exactly what it entails and how it all works remains a mystery to those of us not already initiated into EAL life! Having received my certification as a Facilitator myself a couple of years back, I knew there were no two better people to bring on to share the awesomeness that is EAL than the dynamic duo behind Equine Connection, Kari Fulmek, and Carolyn Charles.

In this episode, we talk about:

- The horse as the teacher: what Equine Assisted Learning Is and the principles behind it

- The differences between Equine Assisted Learning and Equine Assisted Therapy

- Stories of transformation and change from the EAL process

- The beauty, benefits, and clarity that arises from experiential learning with horses

I hope you enjoy it! Please feel free to share and leave a review! 

Last week, I wrote an article on one of the common tripwires that see many a rider combusting from within- the emotional discharge of anxiety to anger. It resonated with so many of you that I’ve decided to dedicate today’s episode to exploring it further, both from the position of someone in the midst of it as an emotional experience and someone on the receiving end (and let’s face it, both places are tough ones to be in).

We adventure through:

• How emotions travel in groups. The complex interaction of feeling and intuition
• The energetic component of emotions and how this can contribute to explosive, seemingly irrational or disproportionate behavior.
• The close relationship between anxiety and anger; why and how they serve you
• Some tips to deal with the emotional discharge as someone going through the experience and someone on the receiving end.

Please feel free to share and leave a review! 

What’s the difference between a horse that dances when you are on him and one that doesn’t? This is the question that this week’s guest, Visconte Simon Cocozza answers in his fabulous book, Core Conditioning for Horses, and the launching point for our conversation around how to mobilise and optimise the core when working together with our horses.

Simon himself is a performance coach, an examiner for FFE (La Fédération Française d'Equitation) and one of Europe’s leading biodynamics researchers. His methodology is based on yoga principles for humans applied to a ridden system for the horse that conditions their core and allows for optimal mental and physical harmony.

I hope you enjoy it! Please feel free to share and leave a review!

Patterns! We all have them, we all repeat them and most of us don’t use them to our advantage. I’m always saying that if you have a pattern of behavior or experience that’s coming up time and time again, then what you essentially have is a crystal ball… you can predict the future in advance! And THAT means that you can get to thinking about how it is you would LIKE things to go and dedicate yourself to actioning a solution.

This episode is a storytime one where I take you through my most recent clinic experience and identify a pattern in myself that I have since called Day Two Syndrome. We go through the steps I've taken that allow me to not only recognize the process sooner but navigate it more easefully and skillfully when it does.

It's all about being aware of your own internal resistance and how you can soften the edges to move through to the other side. 

Happy Listening!

It’s another person of radness in this week’s podcast! A professional trainer and clinician, Ellie O’Brien has been a longtime friend and support to me in my horsing life, and we both share the passion of how to work with our horses in a way that preserves their natural spirit and curiosity.

When I first decided to bring Dee under saddle myself, I went through Ellie’s Start Your Own Horse Course (highly recommended to anyone in a similar position) and we spent many hours chatting about different approaches, techniques, and ways of going about things. In this episode, we discuss what inspired Ellie to put together this course in the first place and the different considerations that go into working with a horse from the beginning.

Another thing that I find particularly fascinating is how it is we can encourage our horses to release tension in subtle and non-invasive ways. Ellie tells an amazing story of a troubled horse she worked with and how he inspired her to a slightly different approach that she’s developing as her mind and body technique.

All that and more in this week's episode! 

Comfort zones! We are all aware that in order to expand or progress, we need to gently elasticize the edges of our comfort zone. The thing is, most of us are unaware of both the subtle and not-so-subtle forces at play that we need to overcome in order to do so, and as a consequence, we can find ourselves engaging in self-sabotaging behaviors or simply not doing what we need or want to do.

In this episode, I talk about:

• The importance of letting go of old ideas of progress as a linear progression, and instead understand the expansive and contractive nature of forward movement.
• Why it’s impossible for you to “go backwards”: How to reframe your understanding of experiences that feel like they are repeating
• Understanding anticipation anxiety as a call for preparation
• How to stand in the power of what it is you are feeling

Please feel free to share and leave a review! 

If horses were given a choice, would they let us ride them?

Two documentary movies and a whole new way of approaching things later, that question was somewhat of a sliding doors moment for Elsa Sinclair and one that I and many others have infinitely benefitted from.

In this episode we explore:

- The principles and practices behind Freedom Based Training

- The leadership scale: Passive, assertive & dominant leadership

- Width and depth in training; relationship and skill-based training

- Flow and harmony in horsemanship

- Pura Vida: The adventure of crossing Costa Rica with two rescue horses

I hope you enjoy it! Please feel free to share and leave a review! 

In this episode, I team up with one of my besties, Katy Negranti, to share with you something we've both been discussing lately that I feel is relevant to everyone…

...the expectations we put on ourselves to show up a certain way.

...the fear of failure or of somehow making a fool of ourselves.

...the pressures we face when it comes to literally and metaphorically stepping into the arena.

This episode is a fly-on-the-wall experience; Katy and I bring some of our own murky fears to the surface and share what our own hang-ups have been in the past, and how we are breaking free of them moving forward.

If you’ve ever felt like you are getting in your own way, have been hamstrung by what other people think, or can see that your own expectations are hindering rather than helping you, then this one is for you!

In this episode, I talk with horseman and trainer Ben Longwell on:

• How to create a transferable conversation from the ground to the saddle using your position, life, and space
• Horsemanship with purpose
• The Vaquero tradition and the Californian Bridle Horse; the history and training progression

We would love to hear your thoughts! Feel free to comment and share this post, and screenshot the episode and share it to social media (be sure to tag us in!).

Enjoy! 

In this episode, we chat about exactly that including:

• The importance of being discerning about who you share your dreams with (and why it’s important!)
• Infusing the spirit of play and no-big-deal-ness into your actions moving forward
• How and when to create your plan so you aren’t ruled by the mood of the moment

Let me know what you think! What are some common stuck points for you in bringing your dreams to life? Let’s chatter about it and I will see if I can help!

In this episode, Tania and I chatter about something dear to both of our hearts- writing, creativity and how that spills over into and informs our horsing lives also. As a professional writer and teacher, Tania has a liberating view of creativity and how we can inject more of it into our lives and riding for the benefit of ourselves and our horses.

I hope you enjoy it! Comment and tell us your thoughts and please feel free to share the love around!

It’s very easy for the last moments of a year, and the first of a new one to drive you into a slight panic-nee-existential-crisis about what it is you have been doing with your time, what it is you ARE going to do with your time, and what it is you have or haven’t done. In other words, instead of celebrating what has been and relaxing into what is, we see the end of year deadline as a point of looming judgment as to whether or not what we’ve done- and even more than that, who we are- is enough.

With that in mind, what I’m encouraging you to do is celebrate your enough-ness. To understand that where you are now is the perfect place to continue from and to rest in for the moment- even if that point is far from what you had in mind for yourself.

I hope you enjoy it! Happy Holidays! 

In this episode, I’m talking with Kelly Wilson, one third of the dynamic team that is the Wilson sisters and an accomplished author, photographer and wild horse trainer.

Kelly has just released her 13th book, Taming The Wild, that details all of the knowledge she's gained through her extensive work with wild horses, and that she shares over the course of her month long wild horse workshops. On her home turf of New Zealand, Kelly and her family have done an incredible job bringing the plight of the Kaimanawas, New Zealand's wild horses to the attention of the public and she continues to be an advocate and voice for wild horse’s across the world.

We are freestyling again this week! I had the inspired thought before recording this to ask the in my JoyRide Member’s Group what was front of mind for the peeps in there and said I would roll with the first comment that came up. Running with that, this episode is all about where to take things when you’ve lost your purpose and drive (but still have the desire).

In this episode, I talk about navigating that line in training of when to push through and when to hold back, as well as:

• How to recognise the difference between pre-patterned emotion and emotion that’s true for the moment (so you don’t go to war with yourself)
• Training with kindness (training yourself that is!)
• Moving out of your head and into your heart

If you enjoy it, please feel free to share away, or leave a review on iTunes!

Combining horsemanship and classical dressage, Patrick King is a wealth of knowledge and experience when it comes to a holistic approach to training. Some of you will have caught my conversation with Patrick live a couple of weeks back on Facebook, but I am super excited to bring it to you again in this week’s episode.

Among the many things we cover, Patrick discusses:

• The difference between groundwork and in-hand work
• Better understanding contact, and the relationship of the jaw and tongue connection to relaxation
• The primary and secondary function of the aids
• How in hand work translates to under saddle

I had different plans for this week’s episode but then a couple of conversations I’ve had this past week or so made me change course and want to talk about how easy it is, firstly to get stuck in a story of our own creation, and secondly, why sometimes the best course of action is to seek relief rather than a solution.

For the most part, all of the thought loops that we cycle through are stories that we are telling ourselves. When we lose our objectivity and are unable to understand our thoughts as experiences rather than absolute truths, it’s easy to lose yourself in a story that serves little constructive purpose.

The other thing is that when you have got yourself into a stuck place, your headspace is such that it can be really hard to be open to solutions. This is why seeking relief- anything that moves you towards better feeling thoughts- it’s often the best start point to soften the edges of your resistance and open you up towards positive possibility.

I hope you enjoy it! 

In this episode, I am talking with Karen Rohlf, internationally recognized horsewoman and clinician and founder of Dressage Naturally. We discuss what it means to create a happy and empowered partnership with your horse by bringing together the best of the worlds of dressage and partnership-based training.

If you enjoy this episode, please feel free to share and leave a review!

The Double Down method started as a personal process to bust through a limiting belief that I uncovered and evolved to become the latest course that I’ve added to JoyRide, my online program. It encompasses the four main areas that I always seek to pay attention to in my work; the spiritual, the emotional, the logical and the physical and centres around the thought

In this episode, I share the story behind the Double Down Method and lead you through the beautiful alchemy that is taking aligned action.

If you enjoy this episode, please share it!

In this episode, I am talking with the very lovely Rhea Freeman, equestrian and country business coach, on how to supercharge your equestrian business and get yourself out there! This is a must listen for anyone working within the professional sphere, or riders wanting to make the leap up and connect with brands and owners and expand their reach online.

If you enjoy this episode, please feel free to share and leave a review!

In this episode, I share the various elements that blend together to create mental strength, resilience and confidence, but beyond that, how it is we can gift ourselves with the skills to move towards better feeling spaces and show up for our horses in a way that is congruent and aligned.

There’s quite a lot in this one, but at the heart of it, it describes the movement away from a transactional approach to working with and riding horses, and towards understanding our partnership together as one of transformation. I hope you enjoy it!