Emotions...

I am an emotional person. So, the high word is out; I admit it. A guy of 63, with the necessary experience and baggage. It brings me a lot; I experience life very intensely and sometimes it leads me and those around me to madness. High peaks, deep valleys. I can get intensely sad about the smallest miseries and soulfully happy about a simple loving gesture.

Over the years, I have noticed that, to be a good trainer/coach, being in touch with your feelings is very helpful. It releases passion in you and allows you to better understand students when things are not going so well or to share in their great or small happiness. Often the bond with pupils (or owners) is strong and there is a ‘together’ feeling.

And then we come straight to the flip side... when things go wrong, they can go badly wrong because emotions run high and disappointment is great. That's a lesson from which we can learn anything. It's different for me and everyone else. That equestrian sport involves a lot of emotions is unknown to anyone.

As a rider, however, your emotional side can also often get in your way. Unconsciously, you also want that bond with your horses that you value so much with people. If you enter into discussions, you project your feelings onto your horse and can, in fact, be boundlessly ecstatic or become quite disappointed. What you can solve in relationships with humans by engaging in dialogue, doesn't seem to work at all with your horse and your horse is looking at you with a look of ‘where's my food...?’ Two worlds, miles apart.

A well-known show jumper said in one of his great clinics: “If a horse struggles or something goes wrong, he should be able to get away.” A statement that made everything fall into place for me. If a horse has that feeling, satisfaction will follow. For a horse, human emotions are confusing, simply because he does not have them. At best, the two traits we have in common are fear and contentment. All other emotions we think we recognise are pure projection; we see what we would like to see. And there is nothing wrong with that, as long as you don't act on it when you are working with your horse. Because your own bliss, feelings of love, fear, frustration, sadness and you name it, are too difficult for a horse.

Just ride an exercise that keeps failing and your frustration keeps mounting... your horse will understand you less and less and will only be concerned with one thing: “how do I get out of here...”. However, when you are able to give your horse the feeling that he can always ‘get away’, fear will give way to satisfaction during the exercise. Being able to get away has to do with flight behaviour; flight behaviour contains a lot of energy. Whoever stifles a horse's flight behaviour, stifles a horse's deepest ‘being’.

How to redirect behaviour while retaining the energy behind it and how to get to the bottom of your own emotions; I can help you with that: check out Training for all possibilities!