July 2007 • VOLUME 23 • © HORSES For LIFE™ Magazine

Meditation for the Dressage Rider

One of the alluring features of riding is the "alone" time it allows us away from the more prosaic concerns of life. It can be a breath of spring air, a sigh, an expansive moment in an otherwise hectic schedule. Riding can bring soft focus to our overloaded minds and a sense of nourishment to our bereft souls. It can rejuvenate with fresh meaning and renewed strength, repositioning our lives to open and receive.

But riding can also place us face to face with the unknown. It can remove us from the measurable and the compulsory which serve as guides in everyday life and deliver us to a far less tangible arena where the guideposts are dim or missing altogether.

For each rider, no matter what level of skill or experience has been attained, fear is a demon that darts in and out of our awareness. The horse flings his head up unexpectedly. We tighten. The horse stumbles. We tense and fall forward. In fact, the very act of climbing aboard the horse heightens our senses to a keen edge where we can tumble into the "no-zone" of panic.

What am I doing here? What happens if...? Why is he doing that? Where am I going? Why can't I move?

All are reasonable questions to ask but fruitless from the back of the horse and even dangerous when stubbornly adhered to by the rider. To expect simple answers to questions such as these reduces riding to an uneasy formula and robs it of its very essence: the mutual understanding between two dissimilar creatures each in possession of a complete and unique perception of the world.

So what does meditation have to do with this "understanding" from our point of view as riders?

The act of meditation sends the mind to places not ordinarily visited, given our propensity for logic. The logical mind is the stifled mind. It relies on categories and rules, hierarchical notions of good and bad, right and wrong. Logic, by definition, is obviously quite foreign to the horse though we do force him into the competitive arena and measure him against our artificial and sometimes arbitrary standards.

The meditative mind, on the other hand, seeks truth above all. This is truth without any preconception about what that truth may be. It is open-ended. The meditative mind travels on its journey without end and without censor, merely allowing a continual creation of "what is."

Meditation then, is about the possible; not necessarily the probable, but the possible, and it is in this realm that we are privy to what is, not what we desire. The object of meditation, (if there can even be said to be one), is to stop the mind's confused obsession with "little Me" and enter into the larger sense of "Me" as I am part of something greater and unknowable. The "little Me" vanishes as the mindful "Me" emerges, the "Me" that the horse recognizes as his true partner. It is, again, a "letting go" of the desire to control and an opening outward to the possibility that there is nothing to control but that the whole idea of control is an illusion. Beyond this illusion is the practice of meditation and the space it can provide us with for exploring not so much who we are as individuals, but who we are with the horse.

Meditation then, is a suppling of the mind, an act of continued thought centered on an idea without censure. The path taken by the idea is left to the individual and is thereby unique and particular. The discovery is personal and infinite within that person, limited only by the inherent timidity of the seeker. There is no judge.

Inasmuch as meditation can be entered into anywhere and at any time, it is beneficial for us to make use of this freedom as often and in as many situations as possible. For our purposes, three distinct occasions emerge: away from the horse, in proximity to the horse, and on the horse. Obviously the nature of each will vary depending on the rider's whereabouts.

The following "embarking" ideas are meant as suggestions and need not be strictly adhered to. The journey is individual.

Away From The Horse

1. In a quiet, comfortable sitting spot, imagine you are telling your horse a story about your own inadequacies as a rider. You may begin with physical limitations, (gripping legs, unsteady hands), but should move on to more delicate and private matters suspected only by you.

- Do you demand instant obedience from your horse?
- Are you often frustrated by your horse's "horse nature" and his seeming indifference to your wishes?
- Do you believe a "hierarchy of intelligence" is relevant to you and your horse?
- Where do you place your horse in the "hierarchy?"

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