Emotions Affect Your Ride

How To Be Cool, Calm and Collected When Horse Riding

Do you sometimes feel overwhelming emotions like fear, anger, frustration or anxiety when horse riding? Did you know that how you feel emotionally affects your behaviour and, therefore, the results you’re getting?

Read on to find out how you can gain better control of your emotions and become a calm, confident and connected rider.

What's on your mind?

What you think about affects how you feel emotionally. How you feel affects your behaviour. Your behaviour affects your results. They are all connected.

So, pay attention to what you are thinking about. More specifically, notice your thoughts about horse riding.

Next, after asking yourself what you’re thinking about, answer this question - "Are you in control of what you're thinking about?"

Managing your thoughts is a vital step to being a calm, confident and connected rider.

Did you know that our brains are programmed to focus more on negative events than on the positive ones? And, it makes no difference to your brain whether those experiences  - positive or negative - are real or imagined.

You mind believes whatever thoughts you have galloping around in your head.

Have you noticed that your thoughts never seem to stop?

You may believe that you don't have any control of them. But there is a way to rein in those unhelpful thoughts that take you into those negative emotional states. The thoughts that keep you worrying:

• about the 'what if’ scenarios
• that you're not good enough
• that you're going to mess up your horse.

The secret to controlling your thoughts is Mindfulness

What is mindfulness? It is simply focusing your mind on being in the present moment.

You can do it anytime and anywhere. All you need to do is use each of your five senses to notice what you can hear, see, smell, taste and feel. This simple practice quickly calms your busy mind.

With a calm mind, you will feel emotionally and physically calm, too.

You can be mindful at any time. Right now simply take a moment to notice your environment. What can you feel (the chair you’re sitting on), hear, see, smell and taste? If you are having a cup of coffee or tea, take a sip and really savour the smell, taste and temperature.

Now, notice your breathing. Take a deep breath in - expanding your diaphragm - then slowly exhale through your mouth. You may not have noticed but just for that moment, your mind became quiet.

How does that feel?

Practice mindfulness with your horse

When you’re with your horse, take a moment to really be with him.

Feel the texture of his coat, the temperature of his skin, the tension or relaxation of his muscles.

See the colours in his coat and watch his flanks move as he breathes.

Take in all the smells and sounds of the barn or the outdoors – the strong and loud ones as well as the more subtle ones.

When you give your mind something else to focus on, all that busy, negative chatter in your head goes away.

You can enjoy what's actually happening in the moment instead.

No obsessing about what’s gone wrong in the past or might in the future.

No making up stories about possible disastrous outcomes.

No worrying about what other people might (but most likely aren't) thinking about you.

Mindfulness is a mental exercise that takes practice. It may seem uncomfortable and difficult to stay focused if you’ve never done it before. But, just like any new practice (like driving a car or riding a horse, it does become easier and more natural the more you do it.