Ep. 23 - On risk and reward, and resilience as a rider.

Hello, I'm Mary Wanlis introducing you to podcast number 23. Last time we were talking about anxiety and nerves and I'm going to continue that theme, but coming in from a very different starting point. I did one of those psychological assessments recently which looked at both how you were when life was going swimmingly and what happened to you. I under stress. And in the under stress option it came out with four possible scenarios. And a good way to explain this is to imagine we have a mouse and we have some cheese at the opposite end of the room where this mouse has its mouse hole and we have the possibility that there's a cat. Will the mouse go for the cheese? In other words, see the reward as so valuable that it will ignore the cat or run the risk of the cat or will the mouse really perceive the risk of the cat and go, I'm staying in my mouse hole. I'd love that cheese, but no thank you. Will the mouse be totally ho hum about the cheese, the risk, the reward, and just not sweat over it and really not bother? Or will the mouse perceive both the risk and and the reward that might be I really want to go, but there's a cat. I really want to go, but there's a cat. I want to go, but there's a cat. That's actually the most stressful option. But it's interesting as I record this as we're partially at least coming out of lockdown during the coronavirus in 2020 and I think this is happening in society. The option exists now to go out. Some people are going, we're going to the beach. Who cares about the virus? Some people are going, I'm not going out of my house any more than I have to. It's a dangerous world out there. And maybe they've really lost confidence from not being out and about over the last weeks. Some people maybe live in their pyjamas most of the time or they're writing a book and they're so engrossed in that that they've been ho hum about whether you can stay and whether you can go out and, and just not engaged with the whole thing. And then there are going to be people like that mouse. I'd really like to go out, but it's really scary out there. I might get sick, but I would like to go and see my friends, but I might get sick, but I would like to, but I don't know. And maybe they will and maybe they won't. In the same way as that last scenario. It is perfectly possible to love Horses to want to ride, but also to be scared. You could think of those, any of you, that remember force vectors from your maths at school. As a force vector in one direction of I love horses, I want to ride a force vector in the other direction. I'm scared people are living with that, maybe oscillating a bit between the two, finding their way through it. I really do envy the people I've met who can ride a cavorting horse, be absolutely not bothered by that, and carry on a conversation as if it wasn't happening. I can help people expand their comfort zone, expand their stretch zone and push away their panic zone and. And make gradual gains in that direction. But I can't teach the skill of riding a cavorting horse without your heart rate raising or anything like that. And I can remember many years ago in Portugal, being in Nuno Oliveira's riding school and watching him ride one day, and it was a Lusitano cross Arab, and it was cavorting around and climbing the walls. And there's Nuno looking rather like the Buddha, never moving. He's got a cigarette hanging out of his mouth most of the time. It had a long line of ash on the end of it. And I can remember him riding past the gallery, turning towards all of us and smiling while this horse was doing airs above the ground. I can remember Warwick Maclean, Andrew Maclean's son. So Andrew evolved equine learning theory, which I'm sure we'll talk about in another podcast. And we had a horse at the time in for training that reared a bit, and Warwick rode this horse and it was rearing and rearing, and he was having a conversation between my colleague and myself as if nothing was happening. And at the end of that conversation, the horse never reared again, and nothing untoward was ever done. In fact, his action was taken while the horse was in the air, and he rewarded the horse when it came down on the ground, whereas most people would do something to it on the ground, which probably would make it want to stay up in the air. Now, both of those were very solid guys. Sometimes you see this in slighter women. I remember one German girl, young German girl I used to teach, who was actually very talented, riding somebody's young warmblood and saying to me, what is she doing? And actually, she was leaping around and coming down onto the arena onto her knees. So. So these folks had the most unflappable automonic nervous system you'd ever find. And actually, skill is not just how much rightness can you generate. It's also, how much wrongness can you tolerate? How resilient are you as a rider if the horse doesn't get you to back off, to be less present, less stuffed, less bearing down, less breathing, less determined. If he doesn't get any change out of you, he gains nothing from his cavorting. If he does, it gives him a little win. And ideally, that's not where you want to go. Skilled riders and brave riders. And more than anything else, skilled and brave riders have lots of what I call brain space. And brain space is really about your processing capacity. So quite often when we're working in canter with somebody and I can see that they're a little bit worried, I'll say, okay, on a 0:10 scale in walk, how much brain space have you got? And this is to do with how much spare processing power you have, let's say to hear me as your coach, to take in what I'm saying and to have a go at doing it. And in walk, most people give themselves a high number. They're eight or nine. And then I say, what is it in rising trot? And maybe it's a seven. What is it in sitting trot? Perhaps it's a six. And then I say, what is it in canter? And they go, oh, it's a two. And what's happened is that different movement and the increased speed has eroded their brain space. And when that happens, the person has not just less processing power, but also time seems to go much faster. There's a case of bjoong. What's happened to me? Whoa. What's happening? Whereas we all know that skilled performers always look as if they have plenty of time, even when it's a tennis player returning a serve at 120 miles an hour. So being able to do this goes with being in the social connection system and certainly not in that dorsal vagal older reptilian system. It's a great story on this, actually. Many years ago I interviewed Lucinda Green, the very well known event rider. She won badminton six times, I believe, and goodness knows how many Olympic and world and European medals. And I explained to Lucinda the concept of brain space. And I said to her, so how much brain space would you have when you're going cross country in front of a fence? And she said nine. So she gave herself scope for improvement, but it was right up there. And I said, was there ever a time when it wasn't nine? And she went, no, I don't think so. And I said, is there ever been a horse or a situation that would make it less than nine. And. And she went, I really don't like the Vicarage V. Now, the Vicarage V is a very well known fence at Badminton and it's a right angle corner over a ditch and it's scary. So she said this and I laughed and she said, why are you laughing? And I said, well, I'm laughing because so many of the people you teach where you're on a nine would be on a two or a three. And when it's like that, time goes so much quicker, they have no sense of brain space. They can get, whoa, what's happening? And she said, really? And I said, yes. And she looked at me and she said, well, if they feel like that, why do they do it? Which of course is a very good question. And when I'm teaching jumping, I work a lot with the concept of brain space, really trying to increase people's brain space. And some people literally virtually go unconscious over a jump and they come to two or three strides later and by then they're facing the next jump. If you have more brain space, you're going to be so much more skilled. What is also true is that we humans have evolved from earlier humans who were good at perceiving threat because they're the ones who didn't get eaten by the saber toothed tiger and who survived. So as a trait it got selected for, and what these calmer, more centered people can do is with higher brain centers, suppress those panicky type reactions. And that ventral vagal circuit that runs the social connection system suppresses the fight or flight circuit and that dorsal vagal freeze or fold circuit. So it's kind of a question of how easily do you get triggered? When you have get triggered, which way do you go into fight or flight or into freeze or fold? How easily can you get back into the social engagement system and your stretch zone? For all of us, you could imagine us maybe like amplifiers with a whole load of different settings and the different settings have different adjustments for different people. And some folks are more a steady eddy type and some people are more up and down. Maybe they're more creative and brilliant, but yet they lose confidence more quickly. It's another way to think of the settings on your amplifier, to think about the people who ride really well at home, really focused really on the moment, but who lose the plot a bit in competition when they get eroded and scared by being watched or judged. Then there are those who are the opposite. They're a bit blase at home, they're not aroused or engaged enough. But you get them into competition and they're really with it. And some of the very best elite riders I know, international competitors, no names, having hung out on their arenas, I really know that they're so focused and so brilliant at home, but somehow they find a little bit extra in competition. Some of the writers in this whole area add a couple of hybrid systems to the three systems we spoke about in the last webinar. And the situation of competition, which is kind of danger with safety. It's not all out war you're using on, let's say, athletic disciplines, fight or flight, you're going to run or you're going to jump, but we know that there are rules, we know there's safety. Maybe it's a competition, it's boxing, it's wrestling, it's martial arts, it's a danger with safety scenario. There's a referee, there are rules. Performing well in this competitive situation involves both that ventral vagal circuit of the social connection system and the spinal sympathetic circuit which revs you that bit into fight or flight and gets you ready to perform and your muscles absolutely honed. Ptsd, post traumatic stress is what happens when a fight or flight response cannot be completed when movement is thwarted. And within the psychotherapy world, newer approaches to post traumatic stress work with the body realizing that talking therapies don't change anything. And nowadays we have equine assisted learning and therapy and those of us who have horses may be doing that kind of for ourselves without even knowing. We all know how wonderfully healing horses and riding can be. There are new techniques. There's thought field therapy, emotional freedom therapy, eye movement desensitization therapy, which, as it were, work with the settings on the amplifier and they can get you to really change some of the things that you might never have thought you can change. It's remarkable how they work. And I really recommend, as I've said before the website, equestrian confidence. I'm going to tell you now about some of my favourite exercises for doing with people. If you search YouTube, you will find under my name and balloon breathing, a video on a way that we use balloons to teach people how to breathe, how to bear down. And in the process of this, people become incredibly centered. The. The voice in your head quietens down. You find yourself virtually in a meditative kind of state that will bring you back to the social engagement system, as will anything that emphasises breathing and the out breath being longer and a little more forceful than usual. So breathing is an interface between our conscious and and unconscious minds. And by consciously remembering to breathe, you get yourself out of the of a fright and you change your physiology if you elongate the out breath and you really keep yourself pressurized. So you've heard me talk about. And as good ways to do that, maybe one of the ultimate is grr. So if you're riding a tricky horse and maybe there's something scary coming down the road at you, maybe this horse wants to turn around and go home, Grr will often really make a difference. And the question does the horse go because you made that noise or does the horse go because your grr really increased your presence and your bear down. I remember a clinic I taught a few years ago which had a group of what I thought were rather ho hum, not terribly committed, airy, fairy kind of women. And in our workshop on the first day we did the following exercise. I said, right, we're going to go round the room and you're all going to brum Brum. Because when you ride you really have to rev your engines like this. And this is what bear down really is. So I did it first of all, brum Brum. And we went round the room with everybody doing it and there was brum brum brum brum Brum and a variety of brum attempts. And we kept going till every woman in the room could do broom Brum. Now the next day everybody did come out and ride better. And at the end of that course there's a little feedback form and it says what was the most powerful moment for you? And virtually everybody wrote on that form Brom Brum, like it was the big takeaway from the weekend they did with me. So how you keep that power in your body, how you keep yourself bearing down, how you keep yourself compacted into a box, how you keep your foot light, you're really wanting to find the first domino to fall in the way your body loses it. For some people, they curl their toes curling their toes down towards the stirrup as if they'd hang on to the stirrup for dear life. Maybe uncurling your toes is one of the first things. Some people curl their toes when they're coming into a fence and they realise things are going wrong. Some people curl their toes in canter, some people curl their toes in trot. Some people curl their toes when they look at a horse. Some people are walking around the world with their toes curled. It kind of implies they couldn't fight, they couldn't flee. They hung onto the ground for dear life while whatever was happening was happening. Realise though, if this is you that courage is not. Not having fear. If you don't have here and you're just blase about the whole thing, that's just another day at the office. Courage is moving in the face of fear. That's what it is. And that's what you need to give yourself some validation for if that's what you've been doing in your riding. So when people learn to bear down, when they learn to stay breathing, when they need to keep their toes at the top of the boots rather than curling, that all helps. This is another exercise I do with people, especially if they've got that rather dorsal vagal, low tone, give up kind of body. I get them lined up in a really good place and shoulder, hip, heel, all that good stuff. And then I will, as we do normally with everybody below their second rib, put a couple of fingers and say, resist my push. Don't let me push you back. Then I'll go resist a push on their low back and a little higher up their back and a little higher up their back. Then I might put my fingers just below their collarbone, close to one shoulder and go, resist my push there, and then do it on the other shoulder and then push on the side of their waist and the other side of their waist and then do diagonal pushes where I push one shoulder forward and the other one back. And all the time I'm going, resist me, resist me, resist me. And I speed up as I'm doing it. And then I say, okay, keep doing what you're doing and walk on. And after about a circle, I'll say to them, now go back to what you were doing. And they normally go brrr. And kind of fall to bits and look more like a rag doll. So then we come back in place and I do it again and they walk on again, feel the difference. And after a while I get them to let it go again so they get the contrast. And after several times they walk on and they hold it, and then they're endeavouring to hold it in trot. And I'm saying to imagine we live in some kind of Harry Potter universe and I could fly through the air and come and attack you like this at any moment. I call this attack mode. And usually that person will come in the next day and. And the first thing they'll say to me is, will you attack me again? Because this cuts a very long story short and really helps somebody get from the collapse of freeze and fold into really sensing their body having higher tone, being much firmer, being much more resilient and this shows them what to do better than any anything else I have discovered over 40 years of coaching and it's worth doing. Even if you don't think you have this problem. You just need a good friend who you trust, who you can explain how to do this. Meanwhile, that's where I leave you for now. We will be back doing something on the same topic and following on from there next time. And remember, courage is not not feeling fear. Courage is moving forward in the face of fear, learning how to manage your comfort zone and your stretch zone and to gradually expand your repertoire. Have fun with your horses. Bye bye. These podcasts are linked to two other Internet sites. One is dressagetraining tv which hosts a whole variety of webinars taught by myself, Mary Wanlis and my colleague Ali Wakelin, where we're working live with a variety of horses and riders, showing them the basics of biomechanics and helping them build their skill and train their horses and explaining to the audience as we do this. There's also a groundwork certification course on that site based on the work of Dr. Andrew MacLean and Equine Learning Theory and this too gives you a step by step guide to building your skills. We'd also love you to take a look@justgiving.com and then to search Overdale to find the Justgiving page for Overdale Equestrian Centre, which is my UK home base here. In this time of lockdown in 2020 we have 10 school horses eating of course and pooping and doing all the things that horses do and no income to support those horses and whilst they're having a wonderful time for us, this is something of a stress and if you've enjoyed these webinars or enjoyed these podcasts and benefited from them and you're willing to give any small or large amount to our Just Giving page, we would be so grateful. Many thanks to you.