One Hard Thing Substack Podcast

Embers is so CUTE! And very expressive. The mop of a mane. I tell you. Anyway, she is now fully incorporated into our herd and even has recently begun to have grazing privileges out in the yard morning and evening instead of wistfully looking through the bars and chewing on hay all by herself.

Here I am beginning to help her understand my language, my place in the herd as a human, and how I use my “accent” to speak with the horses. She is motivated by treats, but clearly also by social interaction. Tundra is a great teacher, and I want to let Tundra speak horse to horse, letting Embers know what’s what. I also need to start to shake up the routine a bit if I’m going to be able to work with either horse based on my own schedule.

Eclipse and BlueJay are quite aware of my habits, but this is all new for the little pony. I do not want to be “resource guarded,” but there is also a clear seniority thing I want to respect. So I’m going slow, letting the two friends talk to each other, and then joining the conversation. I really enjoy this whole interaction. It’s nice to be part of a little herd, and it’s nice that we can each express ourselves without a lot of “yelling” or acting out. Humans can be bad for that.

Anyway, this is part 1 of another longer session. I’ll post the round pen game next week. That was a bigger deal for Embers as she was just with me, not able to lean on Tundra’s support as much. But she is brave, willing, and curious. So we are making a start together.

Have a go at reading the horses’ language. I’m just guessing, of course, but I went with those hypotheses and we muddled through well enough.

Happy Wednesday!

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This one seems abstract and maybe nit-picky, but boy oh boy it is not. In my constant search for how to be more ethical, congruent, and safe for BOTH myself and others, it seems to me that the quicksand of making up stories as to why other people do the things they do is particularly dangerous.

The thing is, though, people are doing so very much! It does affect me, or could, if I don't approach living in the world with some respect for my own need for protection. I’m trying to do this, increasingly, by paying attention to my centre, my identity in relation to the largeness of “God,” rather than the more equally sized and fast-moving targets that are my peers (even my four-legged “peers”).

I’m suggesting that attributing meaning as it relates to my location and my path of movement and my safety in general is not only okay, it’s flat out crucial. This does not at all require me to go the next step and conjecture what is behind others’ actions. I just need to sort: safe or less safe? And then: what is my next right action to support my ongoing safe travel and home in the oh-so-real world?

The word “judgement” comes to mind. It can extend a short ways, or a very long ways, into others’ “territory,” can it not? I can judge a horse’s trajectory so as to stay out of its way. I can go further, and “judge” the horse as good or bad, simply based on the data I have available. The first judgement is useful for keeping me safe, and is coming from my centre. The second one is way, way less about my centre, and more about trying to peer into the mystery of another being’s interior. Not so cool. Not really possible, either.

Anyway, as I try to become a better horse person, and a better person in general, this fence came up as the one to sit on, with you, today. If you choose to accompany me, I will appreciate it, whatever your reasons. Those are yours.

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This is somewhere in the vicinity of my 15th or 20th ride on Tundra. So yeah, super slo-mo. On the other hand, by preserving an intentional priority on connection, shared enjoyment, mutual learning of each other (instead of a more hierarchical approach to “teaching”) the entire experience is actually relaxing for my nervous system, rather than a sharp escalated jump into exhilaration, and maybe a little stress.

And this gives me so much room to talk with her, wiggle my butt in the saddle, move my legs and arms around, look at the sky and the horizon, and slowly, ever so slowly, start to connect my movements to hers and vice versa. The container of the round pen is really nice for us here, by limiting the sensory input, and giving us room to experiment with motor outputs in such close proximity to each other.

I don’t think I’ll ever get over the feel of riding as a source of joy. It is that for so many reasons, but I want to exclude (from my container) the rush of using the horse to go fast and escape my body. That isn’t fair to either of us. I’d definitely like to go fast (and can’t wait) but I want to do this IN my body, with the horse also in full possession of calm, alert, positive, collaborative fun energy. That’s going to take as long as it takes for ME to unlearn some very bad habits.

Anyway, here is a non-rodeo and a relaxed conversation between me and my equine partner. It’s all here, how we have more tools and options for interaction than we might originally notice in a highly practiced activity. Slowing down, changing the “rules,” and especially, listening to the partner, opens up a completely different experience.

Happy Wednesday!

I slow down. I figure more out. I am able to “hear” my conversational partner with more clarity. She can hear me with more precision. We can lower our voices. We use less energy to say more. The behaviours start to make sense as communication. The resistance to change is felt as simple feelings within a safe container of relationship. I can make mistakes and be forgiven. She can make mistakes, and be just fine. We don’t look like we’re doing anything great, but the depth of connection, understanding, trust, and simple vocabulary that is well learned and easy to access, is exponentially expanding.

I still tip into patterns of needing to be in charge, get it done, “win,” or other ways that even natural horsemanship unconsciously employs a dominance-based, highly hierarchical approach to “training.” And you know, horses can deal with that. What they can’t deal with is when I flip between two paradigms - one: let’s be friends, partners, and trustworthy allies even though we are so different, and two: I need you to show everyone around me how great I am at controlling your behaviour.

I am trying to carry on with the former, even though it’s observably way less impressive. Experientially, and integratively (don’t think that’s a word, but it should be), it is healing my soul and heart and mind and body. I do resonate with a dominated being. I understand what it is to mask my true feelings and just get along to get by. I do not think that even heroic performance equals “success” anymore. I’ve performed too well for too long at too great a cost to buy into that system for one more round.

So…in the round pen, doing small little things, I’m experimenting with changing not just the process, but my whole lens and dialogue and commentary and outcome measures. The entire thing.

If you love slow events unfolding at the rate of trust, feel free to join me here.

While I do resist a binary approach to most topics (except, I guess, on Fridays), this one feels like a pretty sharp divide. If I think back, it’s kind of easy to categorize environments I’ve been in, either receiving, or giving, or (more usually) a complicated mix of both. The thing is, when love (which is the magic) is allowed to be the organizing energy, then an enriching principle seems to take effect that is completely blind to the direction of objective “care-giving.”

On the flip side, if love is excluded, and a transactional, profit-driven model is prioritized, all the care must be quantified, monetized, budgeted, and paid for. This may work in the world of money, but it absolutely does not promote human, animal, or even land-level ecosystem health or growth.

Caring for others can feel very depleting, and this is a real problem in the caring professions, but also in the way we keep our society knit together through unpaid care roles. If we can’t find a way to honour the costs of care and surround carers and the ones in need of care with a protective envelope of energetic flow in from a larger source (which I will say is God - who IS love), then of course all the giving starts to drain the system dry.

Wherever you access your ability to love others, I believe that it is important to flag when it is “in the room.” Love compounds, and it does not discriminate based on the direction of “giving” or “taking.” That’s my thesis, anyway. If we can set up care environments where everyone is assumed to have equal worth, where the goal is relational, the hierarchies are protective, the pace is inclusive, and the outcomes are wholistic rather than zero-sum winning targets, I believe an enormous amount of work can happen with everyone feeling enriched, even as they dig deeper than they thought they could.

I’m trying here to separate the outward difficulty of a situation from the experience of participation. It’s not about the luxury quotient, or the discipline needed to master a skill. It’s all about how people treat each other within those arenas.

Interested in how you find this content and whether it tracks across care environments you currently enter, or which you’ve been affected by…

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It’s been such a busy week. I’ve had lots of ideas and plans and very few of them have happened in real life. On the other hand, other things have happened, and this is one. Thought you might want to meet her. Just the cutest girl ever.

Have a great Wednesday. Go for a walk! I am trying hard to get back to a routine, but also trying not to do too much “Driving” of myself, or others. I don't want to miss any bit of August, and that (counter-intuitively) for me means remembering to do less, so as to enjoy more.

Trying to put words on why some care feels so good, and other care does not…

Non-invasive care practices:

1. Consent

2. Clear circles

3. Clear communication techniques

4. I’ll care for “me first,” so you can care for “you first”

5. Watch for hidden contracts

6. Drop the rope - non-coercive learning

7. Listen for concerns

8. Co-create the plan and pace

9. Celebrate the smallest tries

10. Commit to depth over distance

Super relevant in my life. Hope this gives you more language to apply to yours - whether you’re giving, receiving, or simply contemplating care for other beings.

The best horse lessons are the most boring. You will see what I mean here. I feel like a lot is happening, because the wind has disappeared from my consciousness and I am totally focused on the very slight energetic interchanges between my horse and me. However, the “large movements” are entirely missing. We are “soaking” together, or, that is the goal. I want to help Tundra understand that walking, trotting and even loping or galloping can all be done in this blissful frame of mind.

To do that, I’m trying to drop my drive energy - lower, lower, lower. This doesn’t mean we stop. It means we lower our energetic and emotional state of pushing, and relax into a flowing, easy, calm (and highly repetitive) movement pattern. It’s a question and answer dialogue you will see, but progressively lower and slower and with such slight movements or changes that the overall effect is a hush. This is what I want with my animals - to be able to whisper and have them know exactly what I’m saying, and for them to feel my attention is equally attuned to their small messages.

I want you to see along with me the way a horse can become so very sensitive to my tiny adjustments to my Drive energy, my Draw energy, and this invitation to Soak in our little herd of two together. I think it’s kinda magic.

I’ve edited out a lot, and I may make another video of other parts of this day, because it was quite a lot of fun (and the weather is perfect, although I apologize for the wind noise). However, in my ongoing quest for more Balance and also to stay in the lower stories of the tall building of stress, I am finding that using all three energetic directions strategically, and sparingly, is very effective.

Happy Wednesday!! It’s a great day for very slow walking. :)

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I did this one as a walk and talk, although I pointed the phone away from me so at best you get some glimpses of my shadow, and mostly you walk seeing what I’m seeing, and experiencing the dogginess of the morning.

I don’t know if this medium will communicate better than a typical podcast - I think the frequent interruptions as I praise, or recall, or correct, or simply talk with my dogs are an illustration of the physicality of real life - the need to remember where we are, how it’s going, and whether I’m safe, and also whether the people or animals who depend on me are safe enough. As well, you see how I have to switch between a cognitive concept and an accommodation to what is going on around me. There are layers to the walk, and I’m trying to get all the way to the emotional layer, which for me is buried well below the other two.

As far as fences go, I suppose there is the fence between choosing to admit emotions in to an event (the fence I’m sitting on, pretty regularly), and the choice to leave them right out (probably a frequent choice, if I’m honest). However, I’m aware that any one of our inner team members can be kept in the dark, out of the loop, or muzzled, depending on our particular preferences for handling information.

I’m exploring this IRL, because that’s how we tend to explore these sorts of things, not being AI (thank God). You are welcome to come along and engage with this inner team discussion in your own way. You may be inspired to try your own walk, or find a similarly calibrated Just Right Challenge for inviting all three of your internal aspects to the sum total of your “feelings.” It’s tricky. I tend to have trouble walking and thinking at the same time. Adding in feeling as well is quite brave on my part, and requires a wide, straight, and unpeopled trail (most of the time!). Or maybe just sitting still. There’s that option, too.

On this particularly beautiful July morning, though, I’m giving it a whirl in motion. You are welcome to join and patiently include Kyrie and Joy as well. It’s gorgeous, and comfortable, and safe, and I feel…well, probably quite a few things.

Let’s see.

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Finally I am able to get on my horse more or less regularly. She has taken so many “letters,” strung them into “words,” and the words are making “sentences,” and so we can start to do things that are approaching where I really want to go…:) (“Paragraphs,” and longer!) Getting pretty fun!

However, the way I’m teaching has changed so drastically from other horses and other years. Thinking about energy direction, flow, and force, rather than simply cues and responses, is way more conducive to joint attention and partnership. At least for me it is. I am using this day to try to show you how Soaking has permeated so many little tasks, and how I’m trying to use its caramel, delicious characteristics to extend calm and togetherness, even during activities that require some movement. Even some coordinated movement. I think I might be on to something here.

I didn’t use to have this label to apply to “together” tasks or time. Now I do, and I love it. Instead of thinking we are wasting time, or bored, or not getting anything done, I’m simply able to say to myself, “Oh! I’m soaking with… ______. This is great!” And it changes the whole rhythm of the day, or hour, or whatever.

Soaking is intrinsically motivating, incredibly nourishing, and super helpful for learning (as a side benefit). The more I place it intentionally into my “lessons,” and more especially into my experiences of relating with anyone else at all, the more good feelings seem to well up and permeate my brain, and memory, of the event.

This is a very much edited little movie of a lesson the other day that was full of Soaking magic and therefore a rather blissful experience for both of us. I didn’t have my phone with me when I brought Tundra back to her “herd,” but I stayed at the gate and watched, trying to feel the moment when she left me, and rejoined them. It took a long time, and after she finally rounded a corner, she turned and gave me a long look, then dropped and had a delicious roll in the dirt, and then we were finally unattached. It was so very interesting to feel this in my Heart and Body, with words to inform my impatient (as a rule) Mind what was happening. Such a lovely extension of consensual togetherness, vs simply her having been a “good horse,” or some such behavioural definer.

There are so very many applications in the human world of this shift in paradigm, and I’ll have to think about that later, because right now I’m still Soaking. It was a really lovely experience.