From your current Attitude and Awareness to CHANGE
During the upcoming clinic, I will share with you my attitude, my techniques and the approach that allowed me to become the horse trainer and the horse owner I am today.
Although we will take huge advantage of positive reinforcement, clicker training and behaviourism during this workshop, this workshop is not going to be about these subjects and we will not make any artificial liabilities to ourselves. Why? Let me share my story with you.
When, after a long break from horses, I managed to buy a young horse, I made a lot of liabilities with disconnection from Nature and my inner self. “I will never do this and that”, “I will always do things only this way, and never that way”. I wanted to take advantage only of the Knowledge. My new horse very soon proved me wrong. He showed me that the Knowledge is a part of science, and science is a product of human mind. And horses are part of Nature. And when you deal with Nature you have to be absolutely open and prepared for everything. At that time I was not prepared for the things I was going to experience.
With my training, I was addressing the horse I had in mind, and my real horse was not that horse. Because I was not connected with my inner self, and therefore I was unable to see his real inner self, he soon became very aggressive. Being lifted up with his teeth and thrown out from the box is one of the real life experiences he gave me. During that time, I had my head filled with the knowledge of positive reinforcement and my training was absolutely correct. But, again, the knowledge is a part of science, and horses are part of Nature. And nature is a mixture of everything.
Following the knowledge alone with disconnection from the reality and Nature led us to a place in which my horse started to be so aggressive that some people suggested us putting him down. We never did that.
He is with us now, and he is perfectly calm and happy, a balanced and cooperating horse.
Why? Because I understood that to know his inner self, I have to know my inner self first, and to act from the level of my inner self, from the level of the CONSCIOUS MIND. To have the conscious mind, you have to act from the level of AWARE MIND, not from the level of the THINKING MIND, and surely not from the level of the DREAMING MIND that has no connection with the reality.
Acting from the level of the CONSCIOUS MIND is to agree and to be prepared for everything without having any plans, expectations and regrets. It is to be 100% honest with yourself and with your horse. Is to have pure intentions. Is to have a pure mind. And an open heart.
In practice this means not to have any “do-s” or “don’t-s” in your mind. It means to stay open and observe situations that come to you like a child that experiences them for the very first time. With curiosity, openness and no expectations.
Me and my beautiful horse that thought me so much about horses, Nature and the importance of finding the inner self.
The aim of my Online Workshops is to build foundations that will allow you to proceed to all advanced ground and riding exercises, having you and your horse calm, happy and motivated.
The workshops take place on three plans at the same time. We address:
- Awareness, meaning that we discover who we really are,
- Exercises, meaning that we learn how to introduce our horse to the training,
- Fulfilment, meaning that we seek self realisation, for you and your horse.
In all the world’s Religions and philosophical systems the value of knowing one’s inner self is very much stressed. On the other hand, we can see that in all the world’s Universities, Schools and course programs teachers focus only on passing knowledge, teaching exercises and providing training. They don’t focus on helping their students to discover and explore who is the receiver of knowledge, exercises and training. They don’t focus on the experience of one’s self. And According to Maharishi Maharesh Yogi, Vedic philosopher and thinker: “Without the knowledge of the self, the whole base of the knowledge is baseless”.
We are training.
But who is the training addressing? Who is making progress? Who is having difficulties?
Me.
But who am I? Who is the Real Me?
That’s why so many training methods, although meant to bring progress, are inefficient and people change them so often. That is also why some people find themselves led to a point that the training method they were using is no longer working for them and is not bringing any real change to their training.
This is because neither their teachers nor themselves experienced their inner self, and therefore, what they were talking about. The knowledge was being passed, but it didn’t reach the real them. It reached someone, but that someone was not them and that is why their true inner selves didn’t experience this knowledge.
Knowledge passed this way is without its true power. Is is only promotion of ignorance.
The true knowledge can be learnt only in action. True knowledge cleans everything from the ignorance and brings immediately visible change for the better. If we do not have these changes, it means that we’re stuck in the ignorance. Deeper and deeper.
That is why we need to know first who we really are.
In all training systems for horses there exists a phase in which we prepare the horse for later training. It’s called an introductory training. Many schools focus on achieving such properties as: regularity, relaxation, energy etc. I strongly believe that the most important thing before you start any advanced exercises is to have real cooperation, understanding and partnership with your horse. And that is why our introductory training will be focused on achieving these qualities.
I will lead you through phases in preparing your horse for later training. I strongly believe that you can’t skip these phases because skipping them will create large problems later.
I can explain this to you with a very simple example:
Many people want their horse to move regularly, and at the same time they don’t care about calmness. It is really impossible to have your horse moving regularly when he is nervous and tense. No matter how many shoulder-ins and other suppling exercises you will do, the nervousness will not disappear. It will only descend deeper and deeper and start to create emotional and physical tension in your horse and will affect his regularity and learning abilities in all exercises you do together. If you start your training and think “I will skip calmness now” and if you think “I will calm down my horse later”, you have to be aware that your horse will start to associate the training with being nervous. The tension and nervousness will start to be an immanent part of the “training picture” you paint for your horse. “Oh, so it looks like that” your horse will think, and this will be very hard to explain him later on that he does not have to be tense and nervous any more. This is because tension and nervousness will be parts of the “training picture” for too long to be erased easily from that picture.
And you will have to do a lot more than before to calm your horse.
A tense and nervous horse feels as if it’s not understood. Not being understood in life leads to feeling of frustration. And being frustrated and not understood leads either to numbness or to rage. What is more, tension and nervousness lead to irregular and improper movement patterns and that can lead to serious injuries later. I believe this to be one of the main reasons why so many sport horses have problems with joints and muscle tractions.
That is why our first objective will be to achieve CALMNESS.
I am very serious about this, and I will help you to really calm your horse BEFORE we will do anything more. What is very important here is that for a horse to be calm during training he has to have a calm partner. It’s impossible to relax if people around us are nervous. This is against nature. That means that YOU HAVE TO BE CALM first. And this will be our focus at this phase of the training: to calm you and your horse together.
Many exercises at this phase will be for you, and not so much for your horse.
OneHorseLife workshops and clinics are designed to expand your understanding and change your attitude to horses and horse training. What kind of change are we seeking? The most fundamental change we are seeking is to really understand that the only thing that you can change and influence is YOU. But to change yourself, you need to know first WHO are you going to change.
Trying to change your horse or your training method without changing yourself will not work. You will always come back to old habits and old methods. This is because you were addressing others within you, but you were not addressing the REAL YOU. This is what many people experience when they are trying something new and after some time they come to the conclusion that “it is not working”. Why is that so? It is very simple. The only thing that they could have changed was themselves. And at the same time the only thing they didn’t manage to change is themselves.
That’s why my goal is to take you on a journey during which you will change yourself.
But some change is required now.
You have to be open for new possibilities and you have to be open for change.
You will see that this is going to be the simplest and the most natural process, that you will love and throughly enjoy. I promise you this.
I love this. It feels so true.