By day three, I was over it. The mixture of dust and mold and hay and other unknown allergens had me sneezing since the first day. I was exhausted and itchy. It was time to be done. I don't regret going all three days, but I'm glad I wasn't able to make it to Thursday because four days would have been too much.
I attended a demonstration by Barb Schultz on mindset. I'm not familiar with Schultz, but mindset is something I've been learning about lately. She taught four equestrians three strategies for keeping a healthy mindset during competition: scripting, breathing, and visualization.The exercise was fairly basic, but all the riders struggled to apply the concepts. I believe this was partially due to the stress of riding your horse in a busy environment in front of an audience. However, it also says something about how stressed and unhealthy the equestrian mindset can be.
Next, I watched two demonstrations by Jim Masterson. He has a fascinating equine massage method. Basically, you bring the horse's attention to areas of tension on its body so that it can release that tension. You begin by holding your hand a hair's breadth above the skin and move on to gentle and eventually stronger pressure. To return once more to the importance of the sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous systems, you find areas of tension by watching for the horse to blink and hold the pressure until the horse relaxes and uses the parasympathetic nervous system (licking and chewing). I've tried it a few times with Avalon, and she reacts in all the ways Masterson said she would.
Interesting explanation of the Masterson method. I've watched some Youtube videos and tried to do it with my horses.
ReplyDeleteI don't know much about the method, but Masterson described it so simply. What I found most interesting is that he discovered the whole thing by messing around with horses as a professional groom. He figured out what worked and didn't find the science of it until later.
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