Bluebird Lane Blog

Here’s a Challenge for You: Go Complaint-Free!

by Lori Albrough on February 22nd, 2012

A while back I was in this seven week program on creativity, and on day one they started off by presenting us with a challenge. It was a contract to sign, and the contract said that for the forty-nine day duration, we would commit to totally giving up the following:

Complaining, Criticizing, Gossiping, and Whining.

Whoa! Stop and think about that for a moment.

Think about, and watch through your day for, how many conversations involve — or are initiated by — complaining or whining or gossip or criticism. Think about how ubiquitous these elements are in our society. As one small example, whole segments of the entertainment industry are founded upon kvetching, ranting, and trashing!

And, while we can all agree that complaining, gossiping, et al, aren’t “nice”, this challenge isn’t about being nice. This challenge is actually about the power of our attention.

I think we all know deep down that what we focus on, what we give our attention to, grows. The plants you focus on with water and care, grow. The ones you ignore, wither. You get that intuitively.

But I think we’ve kind of forgotten that our attention is actually THE MOST powerful tool that we have. So, remember this: what you focus on grows. Or, if you’re like me and like rhymes: “Energy flows where attention goes.”

So once you realize, or remember, the power of your attention and your focus, you will want to be meticulous about where you place it. And when we engage in complaining, criticizing, gossiping and whining, we are focusing so much of our attention on problems, and the verbalization of problems, that we are sending an unending stream of energy to the very things that aren’t working. We really do not want this!

And, yet, we all think it’s okay. Society says it’s perfectly normal. When you think about it, it’s the way most people spend much of their days and their energy. Well, how about joining me and saying “Not me, not any longer!”

The thing is, at its root, complaining is just an easy, socially acceptable way of staying stuck and distracted. What is easier than trudging down those same well-worn neural pathways that you’ve already gone down day after day? Maybe you’re thinking, “But I’m just facing reality! And the reality is that a lot of stuff in my life sucks right now!” Well, maybe so! But you cannot create a better reality by focusing on your current unhappiness and complaining about it. Sometimes complaining is just the way we have of distracting ourselves from taking the action that we know we need to take to effect a positive change.

The exercise of going Complaint-Free teaches us to find solutions instead of staying mired in the problem. Our ego, the part of us that wants us to be “right”, loves to push the blame for everything “wrong” in our lives onto external circumstances. Letting yourself complain is like weight-lifting for the ego! The more we complain, whine, criticize, and gossip, the more our ego can focus on anything and everything “out there” to blame and justify what is less than ideal in our lives, rather than letting us take personal responsibility for the way things are, and figure out what we are going to do to improve things.

Here’s how the Complaint-Free Challenge works. The technique is simple. Every time you find yourself complaining, whining, gossiping, or criticizing, stop! Take a deep breath, forgive yourself, and move away from the negativity. Start your count over at Day One. Continue until you have achieved forty-nine consecutive days Complaint-Free.

I’ve heard that it takes anywhere from three to four weeks of consistent behaviour to form a new habit. But you will probably notice that after about two weeks this starts to gets easier, and you will begin to recoil from negativity and negative situations. You will be learning to request what you want, instead of complaining about what you don’t want. You will stop tolerating people who want to dump negative gossip on you, and begin to attract people with a more positive outlook.

When I started my Complaint-Free challenge, I already had this image of myself as a positive person, so I thought, Hey, no sweat! I can do this! To help me really get into the challenge, I went and bought a bracelet to use as a reminder. If I slipped up, I would move the bracelet from one wrist to another and start my count over. You can buy official purple Complaint-Free World bracelets for this purpose, but I just got an inexpensive red plastic one at the dollar-store. Mine has the word Love printed on it .

Truthfully, in the early days of the challenge, that bracelet did a lot of moving from wrist to wrist! It was harder than I thought it would be, even going into it thinking I am a positive person. I don’t remember how long it took for me to complete the full forty-nine days, but doing so taught me so much about the power of my attention.

Horses can be the ultimate teachers and testers of our in-the-moment emotional control. Giving yourself free rein to verbally express frustration and impatience throughout your day, and then expecting yourself to stay positive, detached and rational in the face of challenges during your ride, is probably not the best plan for success. It’s like sitting hunched over the computer all day, and then expecting to have tall elegant posture on the horse. It’s your off-horse training that is going to set you up for success.

I was interested to read Courtney King-Dye’s article in the March 2012 issue of Dressage Today, titled “Emotion: Stay in a rational, pragmatic frame of mind when you ride.” She tells the story of training with Steffen Peters before the 2008 Olympics, when she became so frustrated with a young horse she was also training at the time that she begged Steffen to get on. Steffen went six rounds with the horse trying anything he could to get out of work, but Steffen never ever showed any anger or frustration, he just calmly kept asking for what he wanted. Courtney says, after three days you could have put your Grandma on that horse.

I had a horse teach me this very lesson many many years ago. This mare was tense and anxious, but she was my own and I really wanted to train her myself and be successful with her. While growing up in Pony Club I had internalized the belief that problems are never the horse’s fault. So whenever my mare would start getting quick and tense and acting up, I would immediately start thinking to myself, “Oh boy, here it comes again! WHEN am I EVER going to get through to this horse?” Even though I was frustrated with myself, the horse just felt this as negative energy and she would become even more tense and anxious, causing me to become ever more frustrated.

I took the mare to my coach with a laundry list of problems (all caused, at root, by the tension). When mounted by a professional rider who didn’t take the mare’s tenseness personally, and just calmly began using exercises to make the horse feel more comfortable in her body and hence her mind, my little mare transformed literally in front of my eyes, in one ride!

By allowing myself to take the horse’s behaviour as a personal affront, despite my perhaps admirable motivation of caring so much about being successful with the horse, it had actually prevented us from achieving a successful partnership. This mare taught me to keep my focus on the solution, not the problem, by always calmly asking for what I wanted and not taking problems personally. She and I went on to achieve big goals together, and I look back on the mare’s teaching as being pivotal in my development, not just as a rider, but as a trainer.

Going Complaint-Free is excellent mental training for developing yourself to think like a trainer. So, who else is in for the challenge?

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Training the Canter with Your Young Horse

by Lori Albrough on February 15th, 2012

I remember way back in January 2005, Dressage Today magazine had an article called “Closing the Gap” with the tagline: When will “North-American bred” have the same cachet as “Imported from Europe”. The article was geared towards sporthorse breeding and training, and quoted Scott Hassler who said:

“Our good horses are not given the chance to compete against Europe’s good horses because of the training. It’s that simple. We need to get our young horses ridden better.” In particular, Hassler says, “Our young horses are not ridden in a way that is safe, competent, or marketable. We see them in a very strung out frame. They don’t canter for the first time for six or eight months.”

That last sentence is the one I want to focus on. I believe that once your horse starts his formal under-saddle training, whether that is at three years or four years old, he needs to be taught to canter from the beginning.

I have seen horses that have been ridden walk-trot only, as Scott Hassler refers to, for months and months or even years and it really comes as quite a surprise to the horse when the canter is finally asked for. Some horses react by getting freaked out, bolting or bucking, some by refusing to actually canter, instead just trotting faster, Faster, FASTER!

Years ago I bought one of these horses who had been ridden walk-trot only for a long time, and it took three very determined people and two lunge whips to convince her that she could, and she would, canter under tack. From there she did fine but I think it is kinder and makes more sense to teach the horse what your expectation is from the beginning. Take your time, but don’t waste time.

There is nothing very mysterious about cantering with a rider, but if we don’t train it, how are our young horses supposed to have the knowledge, and the strength, required to do it in a correct balanced fashion? “Begin as you mean to go on” is a logical approach that makes the most sense to the horse.

The photo to the right shows a young horse learning the canter, jumping nicely into soft contact with the rider in a light seat.

The first step to teaching your young horse to canter under saddle, is to teach him to canter with tack on the lunge line. Your first prerequisite before you start is that you have good footing, and the second is enough space. Hard, frozen, bumpy, uneven or unlevel footing is not going to give your horse the confidence that he needs in his own ability to stay balanced and upright as he canters on the circle.

You will need a space that allows a circle of at least 60′ to 70′ (20m is about 66′) in diameter. I remember one owner asking me for help with their horse who “refused to learn to canter nicely”, they told me that no matter how often they tried, she would just tear around at a million miles an hour becoming very agitated. It turned out that they were in a pen that was maybe 40 feet wide and the young horse just didn’t have enough space to keep her balance. No wonder she was so anxious.

Think of when you learned to ride a bicycle. You needed space enough where you could go forward with enough momentum to stay upright and to not worry about turning all the time. As you learned to balance the bike, you could keep it upright while going slower and while turning, even quite tight turns. Your horse’s balance will improve too, but for now he needs enough space.

The horse should be tacked up with bridle, surcingle or saddle, side reins, and boots. Before introducing the canter the horse should be taught to go forward on the circle on the lunge line in both directions at walk and trot, giving to the contact of the side reins and accepting the presence of the lunge whip as a driving aid. Then you are ready to ask for canter. Some young horses will be nervous and tear off in canter at the drop of a hat, and some will need to be pushed quite a bit before they break into canter.

If I have a young horse who doesn’t understand that I want him to canter, and he just trots faster and faster, I will sometimes do a few canter steps myself from the center of the circle. Horses will actually mimic your body language and you will almost see the light bulb go off over their head and they will pick up canter. Be judicious the first time you do this though, and don’t skip too high off the ground, as some horses can find it unexpected and scary!

The goal at this stage is to make the association in the horse’s mind between the word “Can-TER” and him performing the gait. He will also be figuring out how to balance himself on a circle in canter, getting used to the feeling of the tack as he moves in the faster gait, and giving to the contact of the side reins, which should be set fairly long at this stage.

When you feel that the horse knows the word for canter, can balance himself fairly well, and comes back to trot at your verbal command, you are ready to ask under saddle. The timeframe for how long this takes will vary with each horse, but it will generally be within a couple weeks. Certainly almost every horse can be cantering under saddle by the end of two months of regular training.

A lot of times when you are training the canter with a young horse you have to be really emphatic in your body language as you ask them to strike off into canter. Once you are in canter you need to ride the canter quite forward until they understand how to balance in the canter with a rider on their back, and that the priority is to stay active and jumping with the hind legs.

Some young horses will find it easier than others to learn the canter under saddle, but the only way to learn it is to do it, and for that they need a rider who has the experience to help them with their balance and their understanding. If you don’t feel confident in doing this, it can be very worthwile to have an experienced rider teach your horse to canter, and then you can take over from there.

To ask for canter under saddle for the first time, choose the direction that your horse finds easier on the lunge line, and in a rising trot go more and more forward on a 20m circle. On the open side of the circle as you are approaching the wall say the word can-TER as you simultaneously slide the inside hip forward, squeeze with the inside leg, and slide the outside leg back. Touch with the whip if necessary to get a reaction. The horse should know what you mean from the command, and now we are beginning to associate the aids with the gait. If he trots faster and faster, keep asking, and when he strikes off into canter praise enthusiastically with your voice, like he just won an Olympic medal! It really helps his understanding if he knows that he is pleasing you!

Keep him cantering forward and follow the wall of the arena. The straight lines will help him balance. If he’s going forward nicely, reach forward with your inside hand and pat his neck. Keep your upper body still, and a bit forward, sitting lightly on his back.

When asking for the canter on your young horse it does help his understanding if you use your seat to help him strike off into canter, as I described above with sliding the inside hip forward. If you’re not just sure what I mean, or how that feels, here is a way that can help you visualize how to do it.

Imagine you are a child on a stick horse and you are cantering. So you are going along on your two legs mimicking the canter of a horse, da-da-loomp, da-da-loomp…. (Or use whatever three-beat sound that gets you into a canter mood, some people repeat “potato, potato…”) Get up and try it around the room until you can feel a canter sensation.

Now, imagine that you don’t have any legs, but instead are using your two seat bones as legs, and are mimicking the horse’s canter.

Back on your horse trotting along, remember that feeling of cantering along on your seat bones. Think of a gentle canter stride, and that moment of landing on your leading seat bone will automatically bring the inside hip forward and will influence your horse to strike off into canter.

At this stage of training the canter, it is important to not try to restrain the forward motion, or worry about the postition of the head and neck as he learns his balance. Think of your long-term training from the very beginning. Down the road when he comes to learn his flying changes it will be of top priority that he has a canter with good active hind legs with a clear jump behind. Trying to “collect” the canter too soon usually results in slow hind legs with little jump. A horse that goes forward in a fresh canter, covering ground and enjoying himself, is developing the right kind of understanding for a high quality canter in the future.

Work the canter a little bit each day, both ways. Training rides in the first few months of training may last only twenty minutes. What is important is that the young horse learns that canter is no big deal, it is just a regular part of training, and that he not get overly tired as he begins to develop his balance and his muscles. You should see a little improvement each day, which will translate into a big improvement over a few months time!

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Training Straightness in the Rider: The Side Plank

by Lori Albrough on February 8th, 2012

Training straightness in your horse is important. So important, in fact, that “Straightness” rates it’s very own place on the training scale, right up there at the tippy-top underneath “Collection”. So it’s both a very advanced concept, and at the same time, very fundamental.

If we are not aware of, and working towards correcting, our horse’s intrinsic crookedness from the very beginning, we are in effect training his imbalances, reinforcing his crookedness, and making it more firmly entrenched. All of us, horse and human alike, are “sided”. In people we call it right-handed or left-handed, but more accurate terminology would be right-sided or left-sided, as each side of our body functions differently, not just the hands.

Since “The horse is your mirror” (oh, how this saying inspires me!) the first step in training straightness in the horse is training straightness in the rider. A rider who sits straight and is symmetrical and balanced, is a necessary first condition for straightening the horse.

What makes a straight rider? Here are some questions you can ask yourself: Are the bottoms of your feet both the same distance from the ground? Are both feet in the same place in the stirrup and facing towards the front, or does one toe stick out more than the other? Are your reins of equal length? Is a line down your spine straight, and aligned with the mid-line of the horse? Do you have your ear, shoulder, hip, and heel in alignment? Does your torso form a rectangle, not a trapezoid? Are your shoulders parallel to the horse’s shoulders, your hips parallel to the horse’s hips? Are you able to bring your inside shoulder back and outside shoulder forward on a circle to match the curvature of the circle, the same amount going both ways? Don’t worry if the answer to some of these questions is “No”! Just join the crowd, and start working on some off-horse exercises to enhance your own straightnes and symmetry.

Your straightness as a rider is rooted in a strong core. If your core is strong and stable, it will give you a firm foundation to either move or not move your extremeties as the situation demands, without deforming the integrity of your alignment. Today I’m going to talk about one of my favorite exercises for achieving this goal: the side plank. It takes literally a couple of minutes a day, and can be used four to five days a week. It challenges your balance and trains the muscles all around your core, especially your obliques, and the gluteus medius on the hip.

Tim Ferriss in his book The 4-Hour Body asserts that while some common progressive resistance exercises can create square obliques, the side plank has the benefit of instead enhancing the hour-glass shape of the female form. So, for an investment of a couple of minutes a day we get an improved foundation for straightness in the saddle, plus a definition of the waist area. What’s not to love?

To perform the side plank, lay on one side on the floor. Then prop yourself up on either your elbow or your hand. You can raise the other hand straight up in the air to work on balance. Pick your hips up in the air, to create a straight line from shoulders to feet. Push into the bottom edge of your bottom foot (I find I need to wear shoes or my bottom foot can’t manage the pose for long). You should feel this most on the side closest to the floor. Hold for thirty seconds to start, and work up to two minutes, each side.

Once you can hold it for a minute, try adding in leg lifts, lifting the top leg as a unit up towards the ceiling and slowly lowering it back down. Keep your breathing deep and regular. A goal of twenty leg lifts during a sixty second plank would be awesome. Keeping your form and your control is the highest priority, so if you are wobbling and getting distorted, dial the difficulty down a bit until you can maintain perfect form at all times. In the above photo, you can see that I started to get a bit crooked (twisting a bit backwards) as I had to balance with my leg up while waiting for the photo to be snapped. If you feel this happening to you, back off a bit on the difficulty and don’t lift your top leg so high, and go for perfecting your form first.

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Create Your Ride, Don’t Just React to It

by Lori Albrough on February 1st, 2012

Sometimes it’s hard not to bring your day (or your week!) with you into your interaction with your horse. You get to the barn and the irate customers, looming projects, unreasonable co-workers, and that cop who pulled you over for speeding on the way, well, they all show up with you! And maybe as your horse comes face to face with this vortex of mixed feelings, he starts giving you even more challenges to cope with!

So, I want to share with you a four-step process I have learned, that you can use before going into a situation with your horse. By following this simple process of setting intention, or mini-intention as I call it, you will change from being in a reactive position to instead creating the situation that you would prefer to have.

By the way, I love that the words reactive and creative are made up of the same letters, just rearranged. This symbolizes to me that a small change in approach can result in a very different outcome.

Here is the process. Before going into any situation with your horse, you want to get clear about these four things:

- Who you want to be in the ride.
- How you want to feel.
- Desired internal outcome.
- The best-case scenario.

1. Who you want to be

I think we can agree, nobody wants to be a wimp or a heavy-handed jerk, right? But we can become those things when we feel rattled, thrown off-center, or reactive. So take a moment before your ride to think of who you want to be. “I want to be an athlete who is sure of herself.” “I want to be a bold and confident rider.” “I want to be a clear leader who communicates effectively.”

2. How you want to feel

OK, this is related to #1, but it’s an important element. By adding the emotional side of how we want to feel during the ride, it amps up our results. And when we intend positive feelings, it begins to lift us out of our negativity and teach us that we can actually generate our own joy, etc. “I want to feel grateful for the opportunity to ride and the partnership with my horse.” “I want to feel enjoyment of my time with my horse.” (Gratitude and fun are always great things to intend.)

3. Desired internal outcome

This means how you want to feel as you walk away after the ride. Deciding this in advance really helps move you from being a reactor to being a creator. “I want to feel proud for noticing and rewarding every time my horse did something right!”

4. The best-case scenario

I honestly don’t think we can use the Law of Attraction to change outcomes or manipulate situations. If I am going into a lesson with my horse, I can’t intend we ride clean flying changes. If the building blocks that have to be in place before we can even attempt a change that day aren’t coming together, the instructor will have us working on confirming the basics, and I would end up walking away disappointed. On the other hand, if I have done steps #1 through #3, that particular outcome wouldn’t matter and I would still be feeling great.

However, deciding in advance what outcome would constitute a “home run” for me in the situation is still a great idea. That way I’m clear about my preferences. And, what the heck, I am at least giving the Law of Attraction an opportunity to work!

To be clear, I’m not talking about a 30 minute ritual here. 30 seconds might be just right. And while I will sometimes use pen and paper to write a few words if I really feel the need to crystallize my thoughts, you can also set mini-intention in the blink of an eye as you go into situations. The more you practice this habit the stronger and more powerful it becomes for you.

And, have you noticed that this technique need not only apply to your rides and training sessions with your horse? I use it all the time. I use it when I have to call the doctor’s office, before meetings, before a workout, before I sit down to write, before I do an interview… the list is endless.

As you practice this four step habit of setting mini-intention, you will begin to notice more and more powerful results that seem effortless. Not at first maybe. But definitely the more you do it, the more clarity you will have, and I guarantee your horse is going to love you for that.

Here’s to creating your ride!

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Loosen Up to Sit Up

by Lori Albrough on January 25th, 2012

Sitting on the horse, we want our torso to be upright and our shoulders square, as I used to say to the kids I taught in Pony Club, “like a box of cereal”. In this way, our parts are stacked in the most efficient way for us to be in balance, to go with the movement of the horse, and to influence the horse with our seat and weight.

Unfortunately, today’s lifestyle works against us being able to effortlessly achieve this nice upright square-shoulders posture. The problem is that most people’s chest muscles tend to be overused and tight, and back muscles underused and weak. This results in a rounded slump-shoulder look more reminiscent of a dried-up leaf than the powerful equestrian we are hoping for.

The thing is, if you are forking stalls, carrying water and hay bales, and lifting saddles, you are strengthening and tightening your chest muscles. In contrast, we do very few activities behind us, which means the opposing back muscles are weak and let the strong chest muscles pull the shoulders forward. Couple this with the amount of time spent in front of the computer keyboard and the steering wheel, and you can see how this situation develops.

The remedy is not to “try harder” to get your shoulders back when you are riding. The result of the try harder approach is to make yourself stiff and tight, which will diminish your ability to ride properly. You will also end up sitting behind the vertical, leaning back to get the “shoulders back” feeling you are after. And intuitively we know that anything that you can’t do easily off the horse is not going to magically happen on the horse, when you are engaged in managing the details of riding, which even at its most basic comprises balancing yourself on a thousand pounds of moving muscle.

Instead we need to undertake some strategic training off the horse. The first step is to loosen up your chest muscles through stretching. You are going to get the most benefit if you incorporate stretching into your day as a practice. Working our craft as riders means that every single day we engage in activities that enhance our ability to positively influence the horse. Suppling our own body off-horse is just as important as suppling the horse’s body while mounted.

There are two kinds of stretching, dynamic and static. Dynamic stretching is what I do before I get going with my riding, as well as interspersed in between my rides and chores. This type of stretching is moving the body in a flowing way through it’s full range of motion, to gently loosen and increase range of movement. Later, when the work of the day is winding down, I will do static stretching. These are your long-held stretches, letting time and gravity lengthen the muscle fiber as much as possible.

Overhead Whip Pass

A good dynamic stretch to open the chest and loosen the shoulders is the overhead whip pass. This can be done anytime anywhere (yes I take a lot of good-natured ribbing for spontaneously breaking into a stretch, anytime, anywhere) and it takes just a few seconds, and uses props commonly found in the barn, like a long whip or a lead shank.

First stand in an athletic stance, knees and hips soft, pelvis level with tailbone slightly tucked. Take a fairly wide grip on your whip, hold your arms out in front of yourself, then bring your hands up overhead, take a deep breath and pass it down behind your back. Then roll your arms with the whip back over your head and bring them in front again. Repeat for a total of 4 to 5 times.

If this seems impossible, take a wider grip on your whip or leadshank (get a longer one if you have to) until you can do it. With time and repetition you will loosen up your shoulders and find that you can bring your hands in closer together.

Yoga Mat Static Stretch

A nice relaxing static stretch for the end of the day, that is good for the chest and shoulders, is simply laying back over a rolled-up yoga mat. Place the rolled-up yoga mat at about bra-strap vicinity, and lay back with knees bent, allowing your upper back to release. This stretch is best done for about five minutes. Use the time to let loose and concentrate on your breathing.

Strengthen the Back

The other side of the equation involves strengthening your back muscles. In this Dressage Today Online video tip, narrated by equestrian fitness expert Heather Sansom, I am demonstrating some good exercises used for strengthening the backline postural muscles.

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