The Confident Rider Podcast

A little while back I was interviewed for the Whole Horse Podcast and for the first time "properly" had a chance to talk to the host of the show, Alexa Linton. I found our conversation before and after the interview so fascinating and enlivening that I knew I had to turn the tables and invite Alexa to speak to you all on my own podcast! Aside from being one of life's inspiring and engaging people...

Over the past few years, I've noticed what I am learning from my horses is taking a much bigger and more expansive form. The same dreams remain; to create a harmonious and energetic relationship together. To learn what I can about behavior, biomechanics, and horsemanship so I can be the best partner possible. But beyond that, I've noticed that my work with horses has gifted me with an increased ca...

Sitting down to write the blurb for this podcast, I pinged Tania and Kathy a message: I have no idea how to condense our conversation down into a few sentences. That remains the truth some time after as I attempt to gather our "life, horses, and the universe" into a palatable description! So here is the truth of it! Kathy and Tania are two of my closest and most trusted friends and I couldn't thin...

For someone who spends a lot of her day discussing various aspects of confidence (and what's more has it featured as a keyword in her business!), it may surprise you to hear that I think we have things a bit mixed up when it comes to understanding what confidence actually is… and what's more, what we *actually* mean when we say we want to feel more confident. Over time, I've come to understand the...

You know, confrontation of any kind can be a hard thing to handle. In JoyRide, we're talking all the time about the various communications (and miscommunications!) that happen within all the different types of relationships that we find ourselves in- both within our horsing life and outside of it. I know way back when I was in my early twenties (when I was also reading a lot of different spiritual...

You know, when things get tough, usually one of the first things to kick in is the commentary of the Itty Bitty Shitty Committee. The "You should have done this, or you didn't do this or why did you do that or what were you thinking-ness" in all its hues and colours and variations can pretty quickly throw a wet blanket over any feelings of hopefulness or possibility that we hold for ourselves or o...

A couple of weeks back, a collection of members of JoyRide gathered together on a Zoom call. The purpose of the call was simply to get together and find out what was going on for everyone and get some help and support if needed. Sarah, a member of the group, spoke up about her concerns about her students and if there was a chance we could possibly create something that would help them develop some...

I'm always blown away by how simple changes to posture; how tangibly connecting with where feeling and sensation sits in the body in relation to a specific thought; how accessing experience through the body can allow us to not only shift our perception but integrate and metabolize experiences from the past that are showing up as challenges in the present. It's one thing to see this play out in rea...

A storytime episode for you today! These last 12 months have been a period of big transformation for me (and if I'm honest the 12 months prior to that also). I talked in a previous podcast about a personal experience that was really the catalyst for changing lots of things up- for moving from a more mind-based approach to a body-based one, to diving deeper into nervous system understandings than I...

What is Surge Capacity? Surge Capacity is the amount of energy and fortitude we bring to a situation that is challenging. You know when something happens that really requires you to step up and you gather yourself to rise to the occasion? That's what we are talking about here; the surge of power that allows you to be able to do something difficult and make the most of it, even if it feels really h...

It's interesting how, when we're fed something over a period of time, we don't stop to question that there might be another way of going about things. That's certainly been the case for me in the past when it's come to goal setting. Despite recognizing that it's a system that doesn't work for me; despite not having used the traditional model that we are taught for a couple of years now, I never re...

A week or so back, a message pinged into my inbox from a rider in the recovery period of an accident that was really affecting her riding. She used a really common phrase that I often hear alongside descriptions of traumatic stress which is: I feel like I'm living in the past. I know so many of us can relate. It can be upsetting, frustrating, and frightening to find your mind and body looping arou...

So as it goes, I had a very specific idea in mind for what I was going to talk about in this week's episode, but as soon as I hit record, something very different came out! When it came time to give it an actual title, the only thing I could think of was, well, it's kind of a mash-up of a few different things so I've decided to roll with exactly that- a combination episode of a few different thing...

Ok team! Let's think about what it means to be responsive and to have cultivated a way of being that allows us to respond appropriately to the moment and doesn't see us stuck in any one spot in our nervous system for longer than we need to be. What does it mean to respond appropriately? It means that whatever comes into our experience, we are still able to mobilize our body- to stand our ground, t...

Let's talk about nervous system capacity and how it relates to the experience of being afraid to canter. Before we get into it, I just want to put this out there- some of you will explicitly relate to this example and for others, it's not going to register on your radar. If you fall into the latter group, take out "being afraid to canter" and drop in there any challenge of choice that you fill lik...

Stuck points! We all experience them, we all understand them as part of the learning process but what we also know is there's a big difference between reaching a blip point and feeling like you're continually running up against the same brick wall day in and day out. And what's more, if we do find ourselves stuck in a pattern of behavior without the context of understanding how our nervous system...

Ever thought to yourself, I wish I could think more positively! Or what's more, found yourself catastrophizing about every situation that comes your way until you're mentally drowning in worst-case scenarios? It's a vicious loop to get caught up in and one that can feel almost impossible to step out of. Most conversations around this topic approach it at the level of the mind, which at first glanc...

The belief of not being good enough. The endless quest to be "better" than we are now. The constant busyness…. What we understand about all of these things is that they are not specific to only a handful of people but have come to be a predictable part of our shared psyche and habits. Consequently, when it comes to looking at new ways of going about things, we need to go beyond individual assessme...

What's your relationship to mindful anger, aggression, and power? When you read or say those words to yourself, how do they sit in your body? We all have a somatic, or body-based relationship to language, and it's a big part of why the words that we choose matter and how describing something from a slightly different angle can open up a new perspective for us. In the first instance, when I think o...

Let's consider for a moment that our nervous system exists on more than just an individual level; it exists on a collective level as well. Not only are we working within the context of our own, personal experience but we are also living within the dynamics of the social and cultural nervous system also, creating a broader ecosystem of feeling, response, and reaction that we are all in constant rel...

Capacity is a word that's entered into my work in a big way. But what does it mean to increase your capacity? And why is this an important consideration when it comes to being effective, compassionate, and creative horsepeople? Capacity, the way I teach it, relates to the amount of activation we can hold in our body before we go into a place of flight, fight, or freeze. It's a dynamic conversation...

Of all the emotions we think of when it comes to horses and riding, anger would be up there with the seemingly most inappropriate. I totally get it. After all, most of our associations with anger link us directly to outbursts that cause harm and upset to someone or something else. Our limited understanding of anger, however, causes us to shut ourselves off from a very important and powerful experi...

Like many of us, I've found the last few weeks to be a continual wave of constant and intense experiences. The general atmosphere we are operating in is charged, and as a consequence, we are approaching everything in front of us from a place of heightened activation also. Everywhere we go, there are hard conversations. Everywhere we look, there are polarising opinions and calls to ask us to take a...

Olivia Towers is in the house! Olivia is so many things (all good I might add), but amongst her many talents, she is a Grand Prix Dressage Rider, entrepreneur, Vlogger, and blogger with a passion for mindset and really getting the best out of yourself. I've talked to Olivia before on her podcast a little while back, so it was super fun to get to switch seats and be the one asking the questions! As...

Is it ever NOT appropriate to calm down? We talked about this in a post a week or so back and I'm exploring more in today's podcast! Let's break it down… Whenever we move into a sympathetic response that brings a lot of energy to the surface (anger, fear, and anxiety are all examples of this) we are often taught that we need to calm down; that the goal is to move from a place of reaction and activ...