Equuality: Reflections on Life with Horses

Directing Our Gaze

About the Book

It's not what's happening to you now or what has happened in your past that determines who you become. Rather, it's your decisions about what to focus on, what things mean to you, and what you're going to do about them that will determine your ultimate destiny. -Anthony Robbins

Soon after they begin riding, we introduce our students to the idea of navigating a hunter/jumper course. Of course, they are not ready for actually jumping at this point, so we simply lay the poles on the ground. The course gives the riding a purpose and helps the student build focus. Students learn to understand the need to look ahead toward the next obstacle or turn, while still keeping track of their immediate surroundings. For example, when they are going over the first pole in a line they need to be looking over the second, toward the corner, while still knowing exactly what is occurring at the current obstacle.

At first, this is a challenge in mental coordination. Students are maintaining their seat, managing their reins, remembering what comes next, and tracking what's going on right now, all at the same time. To help them, we break it down into simple skills and then positively reinforce each part individually until it is ingrained, then move onto the next. For example, we might first focus on going straight over the center of the poles. Then we stop, regroup, discuss, and then start a new round of focusing on looking to the corner. Again we stop and discuss. Stopping between each exercise resets the mind. Next we might focus on maintaining a neutral rein, then finally on picking up the correct posting diagonal. When we are focused on the neutral rein, we let everything else go so that the learning can be strong and concentrated. After all, you can only truly focus on one thing at a time.

While we're building up these individual skills, students are gaining overall confidence and coordination. Soon they begin to feel the difference in their horses depending on their attention: a wandering attention leads to needing to correct with the reins a lot, while a direct focus seems to make steering happen with magical ease.

These concepts gel fairly quickly in the context of an open arena with one or two riders working at the walk. The space is large enough and the pace slow enough that there's plenty of time to keep track of all the details. The next challenge involves increasing the speed, starting to work at the trot and canter. Changes come sooner and need to be dealt with more quickly. We teach our students that if they begin to feel overwhelmed, they can just slow things down, get situated, and then speed back up. As Pat Parelli is fond of saying, "Slow and right is better than fast and wrong."

The real test of this work happens when students begin to ride in larger groups and with other people who aren't part of our program. It can be very challenging to keep focused in a busy arena that is full of people who are doing a variety of exercises. However, if we've laid the groundwork right and prepared our students well, they adapt extraordinarily quickly to riding in an overwhelming situation.

Of course, there will always be the odd foible. Just yesterday we had three students working on trotting courses while two other riders were using the arena for different exercises. At one point, one of our girls was tracking the rail while the other made a turn onto a line of poles going the opposite direction. They both drifted off of their courses significantly before they realized they were headed right toward each other and quickly corrected away. I asked them where they had been looking and they both sheepishly smiled and replied that each had been looking at the other. We want them to keep other riders in their peripheral vision but to look where they want to go. We all laughed, and they went back out, a little more focused than before.

Any lesson regarding focus is a big one, because focus extends far beyond the bounds of horsemanship. In fact, I believe it permeates our entire existence. Just as our horses follow our gaze, our lives follow the path of our directed energy. Our focus becomes our intention, and our intention gives shape to our actions, both conscious and unconscious.

Like our young students in the busy arena, we can easily start to focus in the wrong places without realizing what we are doing. Even when we do realize, it's natural to stare straight at the impending collision rather than redirecting our energy away. As we focus on the negative, we get sucked down into it like a black hole. The only way out is to look away, to turn our intention back onto the positive path. Then the rest takes care of itself.

In our lives, we can cultivate this skill just as we can while riding our horses. Focusing on the negative things that are happening in the moment is like looking right at the horse we are going to hit. We must glance at these things and keep them in our awareness, just as we must track the other rider as they pass by, but at the same time keep our gaze up. Our gaze should be directed towards the horizon of our goals. Gazing into the horizon, it becomes clear that directing our intention allows us to deal flexibly with all the surprises, junk, and obstacles life throws our way, while maintaining a positive path towards the big picture.