best friends

Among the special new friends I have met this year through riding, is my intrepid traveling companion, Helene. She teaches me through her constant example of kindness and great sensitivity to animals. She is always thinking of our equine friends – what does this one need, how is so-and-so feeling…and she takes action – purchasing items to make them more comfortable or starting a small campaign to help a horse find a new home.

Helene shared her generous spirit this Christmas by sponsoring a rescued horse for me at Best Friends Animal Society in Utah. Please take a moment to look at their inspiring site – you might fall in love with some special friends there and be moved to do some sponsoring yourself, as was I:

Shown above is “my” horse Dee. He is certainly the oldest horse I have heard of! Now he is living out his remaining years with love and good care, along with the 1,500 other animals to be found at the sanctuary on any given day. You can read about him here:

G.I. Gurdjieff said that we should practice loving plants and animals first so that we might eventually develop the capacity for truly loving other human beings. He also said that horses and dogs are the only animals that realize they are not, but long to be, human.

you never know

Captured above is the hypnotic movement of the Mevlevi Order of Whirling Dervishes. Founded in the 13th century by Sufi mystic Mevlana Jalaluddin Rumi, the order has preserved the tradition of whirling for 800 years. An expression of faith, the rhythmic rotation of the ancient sema ritual focuses on the relationship between body and soul, man and God, lover and beloved. Sacred music performed live by Turkish musicians enhances the ritual performance. This photo is from the UC Riverside website announcement of their performance.

Years ago as a young woman, feeling wise for my age but with little life experience behind me, I read the Sufi stories collected by Idries Shah. I found them charming, interesting, but I put them aside. Once such story, “Fatima the Spinner and the Tent” was brought back into my awareness several years ago by a dear friend who was attempting to reassure me that my hard work, perseverance, and many and varied interests all fit together into some kind of grand scheme which would soon be revealed to me. Fatima discovers that the challenging experiences in her life are really blessings in disguise, which ultimately lead her to great happiness. Click here for the full text.

Periodically I would return to the story – I understood the concept, but exactly how did it apply to me -- how was I meant to weave together the various and varied aspects of my life into a coherent whole? Frustrated and impatient, I thought the best plan would be to “choose a direction and pursue it.”

Just about the time I thought I might make this big choice, I took that first riding lesson. Initially it was just a thrilling new experience, a feeling of beginning to fulfill a long-time dream. "Try it and see what happens, see where it might lead you" I said to myself … I soon discovered that I had waded into a flowing stream, or actually more like fallen into a river with a strong, swift current, which carried me away, almost against my will – except that I was more than happy to go along!

Already my involvement with horses has brought many facets of myself into perspective. Each day brings some synchronous event, or another piece of the puzzle falls into place, an “aha!” moment, or insight. I know this is a time of grace, where my openness and effort have found some equilibrium.

My sister Carolyn is famous for two stock expressions, spoken often and rendered with feeling in deaf speech -- one of them is “you never know.” You can imagine the multitude of uses for such a phrase.

it's not what you think

“Humans are born communicators; we don’t have to wait until we acquire language skills to get our point across. We have awareness before we have spoken language . . . Wordless communications happen all the time . . . so subtly that they often go unnoticed while the constant noise of conscious thoughts and emotions claim our attention. But intuition is no less real for its subtlety. We don’t need words to hear what our hearts are saying.” --Excerpt from The Language of Animals by Carol Gurney (emphasis mine)

“When we interact with our horse the most important part to the horse is the metamessage – the part that supplies the context and meaning to our messages. They read that in our body. Ease or fright, fun or work, alert or sluggish – how we say it. The extent to which our whole body sends the same message is what the horse looks at to figure out whether or not we’re sure. It’s a lightning fast, intuitive, visceral level of communication between bodies."
--Excerpt from the T'ai Chi for Horsemen page on the Prairie Winds Equine Massage website of Sarah and Michael Stenson.

All the “threads” on this page of the Prairie Winds site are great. The EMT (equine massage therapy) program offered by Prairie Winds has me totally intrigued – it is a two-month, 350 hour immersion and is based in an energetic perspective.

Dawn Harris and her horse “Valentine” pictured above certainly personify the heart-to-heart connection. I met Dawn at a Centered Riding Clinic in Pedericktown, NJ this autumn. She was very excited to hear that I taught the Alexander Technique, as she would like to incorporate it as part of her continuing ed as a Centered Riding Instructor. Dawn loaned me her sweet Appaloosa “Danny Boy” to ride at the CR Instructors Clinic in North Carolina. She patiently helped me tack him up and shared generously from her wealth of knowledge and experience. Dawn grew up in Texas on a working ranch. She tells me she learned many things “the hard way” – now she is approaching her riding and teaching from the Centered Riding perspective; her big heart and hard knocks experiences are serving her well!

so i've heard

Growing up as the only hearing child in my family, the oldest daughter with two profoundly deaf sisters has, I know, given me some unique communication and perceptual abilities -- verbal, visual, spatial, kinesthetic and some synthesis of modalities which I appreciate more each day. I have always been the person who can understand the incomprehensible accents and "hear between the lines" of less eloquent speakers. Of course I am ever more curious to discover how this may manifest in my relationship with horses.

I began playing the oboe at age ten when Carolyn was eight and a half and Barbara was just four, possibly around the time when the above photo was taken, and I continued on to earn my degree and play professionally. My sisters always struggled to understand what in the world I was doing...but they used to find it very, very funny as well and would do hilarious imitations of me. This poem attempts to assume their point of view.

A wonderful book by Oliver Sachs called Seeing Voices beautifully describes American Sign Language (ASL) as a complete spatial language and also documents deaf culture and history. My sisters were raised at a time when deaf children were either taught sign language, or they were schooled in the "aural/oral method of communication" (speech and lip reading). My parents chose the latter method. Two deaf children learning to speak and read lips -- they might possibly read my lips, but you can imagine the difficulties reading each others lips. Not only were they not being taught ASL, sign language was not allowed in our house. Needless to say, we developed our own!

Today most deaf children are taught through "total communication," a combination of methods. My sisters grew up to learn ASL, to marry deaf men and bear children with perfect hearing (two each) -- all gifted communicators, who can speak and sign simultaneously. My sisters also developed excellent speech and lip reading skills -- however, despite their fluency in ASL, they are recognized by the deaf community as "non-native" signers.
I continue to try to understand the complexity of my relationship to my sisters, to expression and communication, my place within the family and how it all has influenced my place in the world. An interesting article here, contains an extensive resource list at the end.

embodying a dream

I guess that is what I am trying to do … we use the vehicle of our physical form to realize our dreams -- by refining and clarifying ourselves.

More than ten years ago I first read a book called The Intuitive Body by an aikidoist named Wendy Palmer.

Here is the excerpt which planted the seed in me that “some day” I too would ride horses…it is from the Introduction and is called "Embodying A Dream."

The photo shows my Swedish friend, Annelie Andersson-Beck partaking of the awesome power of her Swedish warmblood gelding, Sober, at a Susan Harris Centered Riding (& Centered Jumping) Clinic. Annelie has told me that she and Sober like nothing better than to ride out into the wind when it is snowing, Sober tossing his head with delight -- I like to visualize that!

a walk in the park

A recent newsletter from my State Senator began with this bit of understatement: “Dear Friend: New York City is known worldwide as an exciting, vibrant city. Those of us who live here know that day to day challenges come along with that excitement.” No kidding.

Having been transplanted into this environment from the Midwest almost 30 years ago, I have become adept at negotiating my daily journeys through busy streets and crowded subways.

The first few years found me often frightened, upset by a scene of homelessness or chaos or unusual behavior from types of people not encountered so readily out in the Heartland. Time and experience have helped, but aikido training has been particularly useful, giving me a new sense of myself and expanding my perspective on my surroundings. Now it is not often that I lose my composure on the street or feel unsafe or uncomfortable anymore.

Recently, my toolbox of urban coping techniques has expanded to include many powerful images from Centered Riding®, and even more recently Eric Franklin’s work. The hierarchy of techniques seems to start with centering -- a sense of my whole self, facilitated by using soft eyes which expands awareness and brings in a tremendous amount of information about my surroundings. Invoking soft eyes also has the effect of releasing tension in the primary head-neck relationship, which puts me more in touch with my breathing and my grounding. So a kind of chain of awareness events begins to unfold and it is almost as if I become an observer, yet I know that I am also orchestrating my experience.

Because I have relatively limited time actually riding a horse, I have found renewed motivation to use my City life in any way which might contribute to becoming a better rider; of course the practical application of body awareness techniques has been part of my way of life since my early Alexander training with Marj Barstow in Nebraska. Remembering to apply what you have been learning, or slowing down enough to apply – finding the spaces and moments within your activities – these are the challenges to growth, and change.

And application while safely inside your practice room, or even on the aikido mat may seem easier than having the presence to overlay some of the imagery in the midst of a noisy and crowded city street or sidewalk or on a packed subway platform. But, it can be done and to great effect. By starting simply and returning gently to basics, I am discovering that I can continue to experiment, adding more layers of images and awareness. Then, if something unexpected or startling does occur I am in a much more responsive space to deal with it.

Everyone must find the awareness tools which work for them and the moments to apply them within their lives. A few examples from my morning commute: Subway stairs – lots of them, and a great opportunity to use the “bubbling spring”, the balance point in the center of each foot, just behind the ball. Place it on each step and notice all your joints working more easily – ankle, knee, and hip – and notice the spring it gives you; contrast that with trudging flat-footed up the steps. Negotiating crowds – lots of these too. First invoke soft eyes and then use an image of your center guiding you easily through the chaos; sometimes my center is a large glowing sphere (give it a color!), which is spinning to generate my movement. In order to turn, my center changes its rotation – I notice that sometimes when I try to negotiate a turn without my center, I find my neck tensing slightly and my chin jutting forward.

Allowing the center take you through is a different experience altogether. Feeling the pressure of tense and hurried people (a way of life in NYC). I sometimes experiment with becoming s-l-o-w-e-r and allow my weight to also sink down (weight underside); I consciously resist the urge to jump ahead, instead allowing people to go in front of me, or holding a door for someone coming up from behind – I find this certainly improves my experience, but I have also had encounters where I felt others calm down as well. I recently had this experience while riding – for me it was a waiting, an expanding of time, a not rushing ahead or trying to make my horse do something – much more of a cooperative kind of leadership.

So, the photo above is the view from my office – I am near Central Park, so close that I can take a little walk there each day and create another small piece of sanity in the City. Of course, I often work through my lunch time and do not take this opportunity, so my entry here is to remind myself that this might be a good use of 15 minutes of my time – even though life in New York City is not “a walk in the park!”