The Learning Zone :) A personal growth story

The Learning Zone is a concept many of us in Parelli are familiar with, both in regards to our horsemanship, and our own persoanl growth. When I was in Florida for my externship, Oct 15-Dec 10 2010, Linda Parelli asked me if I would like to ride with her during my time there. WOW!! What a huge opportunity :)

At first I was OVER the moon excited. WE had a few rides, and I was riding Remmer (before his injury obviously). Linda was helping me with my possition, and lots and lots of excercises to help Rem get more balanced, and engaged, as we have all seen his STRONG LBI nature. It was really incredible.

Now, those of you that know me, know that Finesse, is NOT my strong point :) I STRUGGLED to help my mare get to a point where we could film the old Level 3, and since then I haven't done much finesse at all! Between doing young horse development at Atwood Ranch, and teaching lessons, I have been able to succesfully avoid playing with contact pretty much at all! Well... not so when you ride with Linda!

For the first week I did well; I was learning lots, sore in muscles I didn't know I had, and starting to grasp some theories that I had never truly understood before. Plus, I was in heaven, getting the chance to ride, big, beautiful moving warmbloods for hours every day, chatting with Linda Parelli, and Lyndsey Fitch! I should have been in 7th heaven...

So, why this blog? Well, a funny thing started to happen. Voices in my head started to say...you aren't good enough for this opportunity... you dont deserve this... you are taking this opportunity from someone who could do more with it, would enjoy it more, would benifit more. I seriously considered asking not to ride with Linda and Lydsey anymore :(

WOW, how interesting?!?! So I began to step back, and ask myself why I was feeling this way? Why did I all of a sudden believe I wasn't good enough? Luckily I was able to voice my thoughts to Lyndsey, and also to Kerryn (And later down the road to Linda too!) Both Lyndsey and Kerryn knew me well enough to say... in so many words... that that was a bunch of BS!

It took a bit more personal growth and development for me to finally realize that, I think, all of those feelings were simply coming from being in the learning zone! Linda and Stephanie Burns talk so much about how it can be an uncomfortable place, and boy are they right! I realized that in my everyday Parelli Journey with my Levels mare, or my students, I am happy to push myself into that learning zone, and I know its uncomfortable, and I can just relax and say, its just cause im trying to figure something out. Not so when it came to Finesse, so many little demons got inside my head and were telling me so many things to ruin my self-confidence.

Through support from my friends, and an eventual commitment to truly TRUST THE PROCESS I was able to get through these feelings and believe that I deserved the opportunity of learning from Linda. I was able to really say, its ok that it feels uncomfortable, Im just learning! And once I said that to myself it was totally liberating :)

Of course parts of me wishes I didn't have to go there and feel those feeligns, but I am also profoundly grateful. Now I have such a stronger grasp on what students in this program must feel as they push themselves to learn more and more. I know that this emotional exerience, AS WELL as everything I learned during the amazing 8 weeks I got to ride with Linda have made me a stronger horsewoman, teacher, and woman :) And now I can't wait to go back!!

Horsenality and Not creating DUST

Hi all-

Welcome to my attempt to blog about my horsemanship and teaching journey as a Parelli Instructor :) I plan on writing whenever I can and want to ... so don't expect religiousness! haha, but hopefully this will give everyone a little food for thought, and perhaps be a unique way for me to puzzle through my various musings!

Well, this weekend started off with me getting the opportunity to play with a young two year old Hanoverian that Kerryn has started. He is really spectacular and quite an LBE! haha, but he also seems to have a lot of moments of RBI, and unconfidence. It got me thinking about Horsenality... and then ALL the different ways that horses can change their horsenality depending on different things. Many horses are different horsenalities within the 4 savvy's (on-line, liberty, freestyle, finesse) others are very different within each of the areas of confidence (learner, leader, self, environemnt, herd). These make our horsesboth different, challenging, interesting and complex! haha, and thats why I love it. Pat always says a horse is made up of three things, learned behaviour, innate characteristics, and spirit. It can be so so powerful to have a grasp on what our horses innate horsenality is, but equally powerful to realize we must address the horse that shows up each day!

So... back to the two year old. He was quite interesting because he was very LBE, but a little RBI as a learner, and about me... this brand new person who was trying to be a leader. As I played with him, I was trying to keep both of these theories essentially balanced in my mind... he is an LBE innately, but was showing RBI tendencies. I felt my horsemanship become a thousand times more effective as I tried this! Although I was using some RBI strategies with him, ie, waiting, not phasing up, retreating, etc, I always tried to have in mind that he was innately more of an LBE. That way I was also able to use a little bit of variety in our touch it game to keep him interested.

I also got the opportunity to play with a beautiful broodmare who has a two week foal at her side. The mare was I think an LBI innately, but was showing STRONG RBI tendencies, especially about trailer loading which was what we were playing with as the mare and foal need to be transported in about a months time. Now, Troy Henry always said that a GREAT horseman is good at three things, Trailer loading, liberty, and flying lead changes. I can confidently say that I feel I am "good" at only one, liberty. Flying changes are coming along, but I dont have a true horsemans grasp on them, and trailer loading, I am mostly just unconfident about my ability to help horses understand this puzzle. I have been succesful many times at trailer loading challenging horses, but Im still a bit hesitant, mostly just a personal confidence issue I think :)

As such, I was very excited (and nervous) for the opportunity to play with this mare (Kerryn played with the foal, who did GREAT)! Kerryn had done a quite lengthy trailer loading session with the mare before she had foaled, and they had made HUGE progress, so my job turned out to be fairly easy. I began with a strategy that I have seen Linda use in a few RBI trailer loadings, she asks the horse to come forward to where the edge of their "bubble" is and they start to put the breaks on and say the trailer is scary, then she backs them until their feet get sticky ... hence the "bubble" of the trailer is no longer causing them to retreat. I did this a few times, and the mare licked a lot. SLowly her"edge" started getting closer and closer to the trailer. I think the key to this approach is to make sure you are only really putting pressure on the horse during the retreat phase, and then you are almost letting the yo-yo effect pull them back towards the trailer.

Once this was solid, and we could confidently get nose, neck and two feet onto the trailer with less than phase 1 pressure from me... I noticed that the mare had switched from being RBI "I can't" to LBI "I won't" HOW INTERESTING?! so then I changed strategies :) I asked the mare to come forward into the trailer, and rubbed and scratched her while she was in there. I put NO pressure on her while she backed herself out, but as soon as she stopped outside the trailer, and had a moment of silence, I asked her to come back in. We  repeated this a few times, and pretty soon as the mare was retreating herself out of the trailer she was blowing out (I think because no one was forcing or trapping her to stay IN, on a side note, this mare had had a few traumatic trailer issues, especially in regards to her TRYING to get out and realizing that she couldnt and panicking). The next time after that, she retreated herself out of the trailer, but left her nose and neck in the trailer :) And then the next time, she only felt the need to retreat a little, and left both front feet in! And that's where we quite for the day!

During our whole session the 2 week old foal was sniffing, and stomping and pawing at the trailer, what a great first experience for her! My last musing for the day is how important it sometimes is to think of getting things done "without making dust." As the mare had a young foal at her side, I had no choice but to keep things very calm and relaxed so as not to stress out baby, and I think because of this I was MORE succesful. Don't get me wrong, sometimes horses NEED to go through a dark patch to find the ease and sunshine on the other side, especially horses with baggage, but more often then not, it is US, the human, that feels the need to cause all this dust!

Thanks for reading!

Lillan Roquet

L4 student & 2* Parelli Professional

Asking Questions

In Parelli we are always focusing on putting the relationship first; and in many ways this comes down to figuring out how to really have a conversation with your horse... a two way street. Hearing and taking on board their opinions, and expressing your own. As Pat would say, "Cause your idea to become your horses idea, but understand their idea first." One of the best ways to promote your relationship with your horse, to understand their idea, and to really promote that idea of having a conversation is to teach and encourage your horse to ask questions. Alright. That makes sense... but how do we do that?

First of all I want you to think about your own life. Think about when, why, what, and how you ask questions in your daily life. In my opinion there are usually about 4 main reasons as people that we DON'T ask questions... I think if we understand the reasons why we as humans DON'T ask questions... we can begin to apply the same logic to our horses and start to understand why they might tend not to, as well.

So, for humans, and from my observations it seems to me that people don't ask questions for these 4 main reasons. First of all we don't ask because we are overly confident that we know all the answers; or to put it another way, we don't ask questions when we are extremely Left Brain. I also think we don't ask questions when we are the opposite... extremely Right Brain. I know as a Right Brain Extravert, I often find myself not asking a question because I’m scared someone else will think its a stupid question, or something along those lines. I’m sure many of you can now see where I'm going with this ;)... I also think as humans we don't ask questions if we are feeling overly introverted or overly extraverted. When someone is overly extraverted whether LB or RB, we often find it hard to slow down, and listen enough to actually ask a question... OR, even more often is the case, we ask the question and then don't take the time to actually HEAR the answer. And of course the converse... Introverts often would rather listen then step up and ask a question. So, what does this teach us? The answer to successfully asking questions, lies, like almost everything, at the heart of our goal to become more centred.

Alright, so without getting direct line, lets MORE directly apply this to our horsemanship. As with us, when our horse is too extreme in any one of the 4 directions, it will be extremely hard for them to ask a question... we have to help them come more to the center ... to the learning zone... so they can start to think about how to ask a question.

For Left Brain horses; often the answer here is being more provocative, more particular, and generally more interesting. When a left Brain horse makes an assumption, "oh... i know this ... this is the 7 jobs" ... there won't be any questioning or communication. Or if there is, it won't be on a level that satisfies either our personal or our horses need for connection. For Right brain horses, if they are TOO right brain, obviously here flight mechanisms are kicking in and they are reacting instead of responding. No chance of a horse connecting and asking a question there. So first off we have to get a Right brain horse thinking and responding, and also make sure we are not applying TOO much pressure. With these Right Brain horses, often we can be "inside their bubble" without even realizing it, and the best thing we can do to cause a question is to back up and wait. Of course this is when we feel we’ve got that moment of connection, and they have stopped fleeing.

With the introvert/extravert part of the puzzle its all about energy levels. When an introvert or "short horse" is moving like molasses you are unlikely to have them motivated and connected enough to get a question. The reverse is true with an extravert being too high energy moving their feet TOO much to stop and ask a question. Of course it also has to do with MATCHING that energy. An introvert that feels you are rushing them, or just TOO high energy for them won’t be able to ask a question, because you are not “understanding their idea first.” With students I often compare this to thinking about if you were planning a nice lazy Sunday afternoon watching TV and eating popcorn and your best friend came RUNNING in the door saying its time for a jog!

So with this background theory in mind, think of your horse, and how you can best encourage them to ask questions. The most important thing to think of is that it is about your horse being in the learning zone... not in the deep end, but not doing the same thing they can do every day!