MASTERING YOUR HORSEMANSHIP SKILLS

MASTERING YOUR HORSEMANSHIP SKILLS BY STAYING IN THE “FLOW” ZONE…BUT WHAT THE HELL IS FLOW?

Have you ever wondered why you ride horses? Why we engage in an activity that is time consuming, difficult, expensive and potentially dangerous? Even if we use our horse for a sport and compete in competitions the rewards in most horse sports are of little monetary value, it might be a piece of coloured ribbon or a few dollars but nowhere near the compensation of time and effort we put into training and competing a horse….but still we do it! Why? Most of us will say – because we “enjoy it”….but still why do we enjoy something that can be so stressful in so many ways and for so little obvious reward as it appears to defy the usual things that people are motivated to invest time and effort in?

Interestingly, we are not being crazy…truly we are not! The reason why we are involved with horses is because we are just being human and when we work with a horse we can enter a curious and fascinating conscious state where we find ourselves immersed with an energised focus that makes us experience the wonderfulness of being alive. It is the same state that people who enjoy other activities such as other sports, art, music and even scientific work that have the similar demands of skill mastery as working with horses, experience. This state in the western world is technically known as “flow” and is the state that is commonly describe as being “in the zone”. But concepts similar to flow have been discussed and written about in eastern religions of Hinduism, Buddhism and Taoism for thousands of years that describe states necessary for spiritual development. Flow is a power state for a human to experience and we will go to great lengths to experience it again and again. I believe that understanding yourself and your human nature can improve your ability to work with horses. We spend so much time focused on horses, how they learn, how to train them etc. that we lose focus on the tremendous impact our own skill development and decision making abilities have on any interaction with a horse. I have decided to write about flow because understanding this thing that you subconsciously hunt can positively impact your skill development and ultimately your talent to work with horses.

So what is flow? Flow is a state people report when they get totally engrossed in an activity to a point they have no sense of time or fatigue and nothing in the world matters except the activity itself. When you are operating in flow you are functioning at your ultimate mental and physical capacity. People experiencing flow commonly describe three characteristics:

1) Intense and focused concentration on the present moment where your actions and awareness become one and the little voice inside your head, your self-consciousness, self-doubt etc. is silent.

2) A lack of anxiety about losing control of the situation so you have a sense of control over what is happening. It is thought that this characteristic is one of the reasons why experiencing flow can be so enjoyable and therefore rewarding to experience as when you experience flow your worries in life are silent.

3) Altered sense of time. Whilst boredom makes time go slow, when we are in flow and all our attention is engrossed in the moment we have little mental processes available to focus on time passing and this is why when we are immersed in an activity where we are experiencing flow time typically seems to pass very quickly.

I enjoy asking people about their life with horses and everyone, even if they are currently having troubles with a horse can always tell me about a horse or a time when they have experienced moments with a horse that align with these three characteristics - when they have enjoyed the exhilaration of flow, the exhilaration of being human at the finest level! But how can understanding flow improve our ability to work with horses? Because while there are still many mysteries about flow we understand three key conditions that need to be met for flow to be experienced and these are:

1) The need for clear goals! Flow tends to occur when we are engaged in activities that have goals that give us purpose and direction to our behaviour. This tends to channel our attention so we can structure the experience. Therefore, people need to have a clear understanding of what they are doing with a horse, how to do it and why they are doing that activity and how that activity then leads onto the next and how it fits into the bigger scheme of things.

2) A need for a balance between the perceived challenge of the activity and the person’s perceived skills to deal with the situation. This is of extreme importance when dealing with horses and the root cause of why people can find themselves in frustrating and depressing situations with a horse they feel unconfident or out of their depth in dealing with. This is because when the perceived challenges and skills are well matched a person can enter the flow where a person’s attention can become fully engaged in the activity, but when there is a mismatch then their self- consciousness kicks in with self-doubt and anxiety increases and their sense of control is lost. Attached to this article is a graph that shows that shows the relationship between a person’s horsemanship skills verses the difficulty of a horse or an activity that involves a horse and when there is a a balance between the difficulty of the horse/activity and the person’s skills flow can be attained. Therefore, horses that are in a state of stress or have learnt behaviours that increase their difficulty to handle are not a good match for people that are not yet skilled to work with such issues. Therefore, this aspect of flow highlights the need for a person to have a horse that is suited for their abilities. However, and this is empowering, if there is a mismatch between the challenge a horse presents and a person’s skill level research shows that with support and education that focuses on keeping a person within their “flow zone” a person’s skill development and mastery balance can be improved. For example, an excellent way of improving skills is improving a person’s ability to communicate and control a horse from the ground and then progressing that communication and training onto their backs. Simplifying goals to focus on skill development is key to developing training skills, it also allows flow to be experience as these simple goals are attained.

3) Finally, the need for clear and immediate feedback for a person to judge how well they are progressing in the activity. Therefore, a person needs to be able to firstly “see” feedback and accurately analyse and evaluate it so that they know whether to maintain or change their present course of action. Again, education and support can help people improve their ability to see and interpret feedback the horse provides.

Therefore, to summarise – flow is that rewarding feeling that we experience when we work with a horse. Seeking that feeling of flow and how it inspires us to enjoy the challenge of working with horses is what motivate us to improve and master the skills of working with them. By understanding how flow works and understanding the need for clear training goals, setting ourselves optimal challenges that do not exceed our skill level and being able to see and correctly interpret the feedback the horse gives us during training can help us increase the opportunities for experiencing flow. But ultimately experiencing flow is about experiencing the sheer enjoyment of being alive and it appears in the space bounded by boredom and anxiety where there is a balance between your skills and the challenge.