Piercing the Veil

I was stuck.

Not physically stuck, but mentally, emotionally and practically stuck.

How do you get from 'nervous horse person recovering from major surgery with an 8yo mare who has never been ridden' to 'horse and rider'?

Well, I guess you have to want it more than you're scared of it, but in my case that meant wanting it an AWFUL lot because I was incredibly scared. Even the thought of tackling the first few rides was enough to send my heart rate skyrocketing and make my field of vision narrow. How could I master my own emotional state and convince my nervous system that want I wanted to do was actually possible?

At this stage of my recovery I have found myself in a strange sort of golden era. It's like my brain has had a factory reset and before doesn't matter as much. I feel like I have only known summer and safety. Maybe it's from having pretty much all of my blood replaced. Maybe it's from hypoxia or having been on bypass. This reset seems to have erased some of the trauma stored in my brain and body, and has untethered me from many of the things that kept me prisoner before. This gives me a chance to re-wire my own brain.

It's time to make a space jump while the planets are aligned. Time to sneak through a rift in my fear and lead my nervous system in different direction.

I spent the last weekend in February at a two day workshop called The Emotional Equestrian's Labyrinth. I wasn't entirely sure how I thought it was going to help me, but it promised a deep dive in the right direction, so I went with my gut.

The theory was intense, and if I hadn't spent so much time with the topic beforehand I probably would have had trouble retaining most of it. The real-world examples and anecdotes helped ground the theory in reality.

I didn't want to fall into the trap of 'brainwashing' myself. There are a million ways to make yourself think you are more confident, but I didn't want to learn how to do the thing even though I was terrified. I wanted to find a way to reassure myself and work in conversation with my little mare so that we could both be honest with each other and trust each other. And that is what day two gave me.

My brain and my body gave me every excuse in the world. It was too soon, I wasn't ready physically, maybe I'm coming down with something or I'm dehydrated and that's causing my headspins. But when Rylana asked me if I wanted to sit on one of her horses I answered 'yes', because if I couldn't get on a well-trained senior horse under close supervision from an excellent trainer whose number one priority is keeping me safe then what hope have I got of ever becoming a rider again?

A little walk and trot around bareback, on a lead rein, while observing my reactions and sensations and tuning in to the horse. I was successfully reunited with my inner grinning child who felt at home on the back of a pony. The rider in me was finally released from her prison. But that wasn't the end of the lesson.

By pure coincidence, I had arranged for a visit from my oldest friend a couple of days later. We hadn't seen each other in months. As teenagers we spent hours riding together, cantering through the bush, riding bareback to the river, parking our ponies overnight in each other's paddocks. I took the opportunity to enlist her support while I took the first steps on the back of my little mare Ava.

And here is where the rubber really hit the road. Was I able to drown out my fear and climb aboard that pony with complete confidence? No. Did I force myself, shaking and terrified, onto a helpless animal? Also no.

Was the experience something I never expected? Absolutely yes.

I watched my New Forest Pony mare, the one we call 'The Ice Queen' due to her uncanny ability to keep calm and carry on, hand herself entirely to a stranger to help her regulate in a novel situation.

It was as though she said to my friend 'mum's clearly not coping very well, but you seem sensible so how about you run the show today?'.

And look, I'm not a monster, I thought it was a great idea.

So there I am sitting on my previously unridden pony who had entirely outsourced her worries to my friend, while we had a little chat and took a sneaky photo. I felt Ava shift her weight between her feet, observed the casual set of her ears and her low head position, all telling me that she was completely fine with this new state of play. I took a breath, tuned into my peripheral vision, felt my seat in the saddle for a moment and quietly dismounted.

Then I parked her up by the mounting block again, watched her contemplate the prospect of me getting back on, and after a couple of seconds settle in her spot. I climbed back on, took a deep breath and asked my friend to slowly, one foot at a time, lead us forward.

Each step involved a deliberate rebalancing. I tuned in and felt each movement with Ava through her body. This is fine, I told her, it's different but it's fine.

A lick and chew - this actually is okay. We had moved a little forward of the mounting block, but the beauty of ponies is that dismounting straight to the ground is not that daunting. So I hopped off and we headed back to the shed. Mission accomplished.

Two steps is not much, but there was so much more to it. We had all kept our heads and had a positive experience. I had observed my clever little mare adapting and problem solving her way through a new experience without leaving her usual relaxed state. This, of all things, gave me the most confidence, but also made me realise that I owe it to her to be as confident and regulated as she is, at least most of the time. After all, I'm the human and that's my responsibility.

In those two steps I had a vision of what we could become, the two of us secure in our partnership, tackling new things and expanding our horizons, as relaxed in canter as at the walk, moving together through the world as one.

It's a long way from here to there, but I know how to get there now.