It was the closing of the Warrior sequence in the Namaste yoga dvd that had me thinking about the deeper connections. "If you were to take on one small challenge, one tiny awakening, what would it be?" Awakening isn't a term one typically associates with horsemanship but one that easily applies to leadership.
As I moved through the poses and listened to the suggestions of Potters voice, the closer the words related to my pursuit of horsemanship. Breathing, reaching for what is comfortable, seeing how far I can go looking for that release in my rather inflexible feeling body.
I envision myself on a colt asking for the same things. Ray Hunt said everything comes down to "feel, timing and balance" and had he tried it, I'm sure he would say the same about yoga.
"Don't worry about how it looks, notice how it feels." the next phrase that resonates as I reach up lengthening my body to her words, trying to look a margin of what I am seeing on the tv screen. I certainly don't reflect the hard, flexible bodies of the women demonstrating the poses - and she is smiling while I simply try and breath! I breath deeply and reach, it feels better as my muscles relax. I am slowly getting there.
As someone who rides mostly on my own I rarely get caught up in how I look, in fact I often think I should video tape myself to see what I look like. Watching riders at a recent clinic some appeared to be consumed with what others were thinking but as they start focusing on the feel of the horse they too seemed to lose sense of the audience and false expectations they were placing on themselves.
In my view horsemanship, yoga and leadership are all intrinsic activities, I do what I can for others and I do them for me and that makes me feel good.
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