weaving in the threads

Right about this time last year, I was still quite intoxicated from that first Centered Riding® Clinic, which was attended when I could almost still count my riding lessons on one hand, and I had to think about how to hold the reins each time I got on the horse. I knew that Centered Riding would change my life, but could never have imagined the depth of the process which was initiated over those four days.

Many of the patient teachers I met then have become my instructors at Lord Stirling Stable and the clinician, Gail Field, has become a friend, Alexander Technique colleague and riding mentor. The early entries on this blog document my meeting with the infamous Annelie, now my dear friend, horse riding idol and most recently, aikido protégé. More than one fellow aikidoist has been inspired by my stories of learning to ride. One has started Centered Riding lessons herself, riding again for the first time in over 30 years.

Last year, one of my aikido women role models, Karen De Paola (Skylands Aikikai), visited me at the Lord Stirling clinic and immediately saw the correlations between the groundwork tools and aikido principles and began making connections to specific aikido techniques. She gave me the timely opportunity to teach at her dojo that evening – a precious hour to take some of what I had been so eagerly absorbing in the riding arena onto the aikido mat. And so the year continued -- with synergy and synchronicity abounding.

It has been a year full of new friendships, renewed relationships, reconnecting important pieces from my past, and integrating parts of myself. I have been very fortunate to attend a variety of Centered Riding clinics and to meet the founder, Sally Swift, last November at the International Symposium in Vermont. So, it was a very happy anniversary last week as I once again attended Gail’s annual clinic at Lord Stirling. This year she asked me to assist her with some hands-on Alexander Technique, I traveled back and forth with Annelie and hosted her at my house, we spent each day in an arena which has come to feel like home and I rode a now-familiar horse.

This process of learning to ride seems to be weaving together all the various threads of my life. It has reminded me of long-forgotten childhood experiences, reconnected me to old colleagues and friends and enhanced and reinvigorated my aikido training. A recent email from a new Alexander Technique mentor, Tommy Thompson, spoke to me about “following your thread carefully” – it's a metaphor which has particular meaning for me now.

Karen De Paola is shown in the video above. Karen has always been a great inspiration to me – she embodies the qualities of calm, relaxed concentration and stillness within movement which are so important in martial arts, horse riding and living!