Spirit-to-Spirit Horsemanship

Progress.   That sometimes elusive element that makes our heart soar, sing or sink depending on if we have touched it or whether it has, once more, escaped our reaching hands. I started this post one year ago and want to get some notes down on my journey since. My blogs, like my life in horses and in other areas, have stuttered and started in fits and lurches forward, backward, sometimes stagnating altogether. I've been working on my own emotional and mental fitness for the bulk of 2014.  I am feeling now that all of the various offshoots are starting to come together and reference materials are over-lapping, coalescing into simpler and clearer paths.   Similar messages resonate strongly with me in the various materials I have selected to study. My work is centered on getting myself more disciplined and strong.  Yoga is a good tool and I'm enjoying both the physical challenge and results from Trudie Styler and James D'Silva's Warrior Yoga dvd.  After only two week

This is Dani, my RBI. Here she is clearly asking a question and this is, 'can I have a cookie?'.  But she's also a bit apprehensive.  Look closer at her nostrils and see how tight they are as they are extended in a full take-in-all-I-can mode.  That's because I am on the other side of the partition/window and who knows what I might have up my sleeve. She never fully trusts, rarely lets it all down, and it is a trait I can relate to, as I am RBI as well and tend to hide behind my inner walls. She and I both are also prone to explosive RBE blasts, when it all just bottles up too much in our efforts to contain it and has to blow. Oh, I understand her....I do, and through learning to help her become more centered, I have become more centered myself. That is the beauty of horsemanship in general, and Parelli in particular; if you are going to go down this path and strive for an equine partnership, you are going to do the often intense work of personal developme