Sorry for not posting when I usually do. I was too lazy to do it Monday night, and I got home later than normal because my lesson has been pushed back an hour. Then on Tuesday I was at my friend's house for a sleepover, so I didn't get home till yesterday afternoon, and last night I was volunteering/working at the stable (I'll blog about that after this). So today was the day I finally decided to blog.
Of course, it rained during my lesson, because if it's going to rain, it will most likely be on a Monday. It was also thundering, so we had a barn lesson. Since my lesson's been moved back, I was with the girl I used to ride with, which I'm actually happy about. Having a private lesson's nice because I get one on one attention, but sometimes it's nice when my instructor's focused on someone else so I can do my own thing. Not that it mattered this week, since we weren't riding.
According to the list posted on the bulletin board, I would be using Captain because the other girl (Jess) was using Annie. We both got out our horses and groomed them. Then our instructor gave us some options for the barn lesson. We could do some relaxing exercises with our horses, use a small skeleton to learn more about body position and riding, or use the mini trampoline to work on riding position and stuff. I said I wanted to do the relaxing techniques, so that's what we did.
Every week when I groom, my instructor always puts her hands on certain spots on my horse and just kind of stays there for a while, and then moves on to different spot. That's what we learned to do this week. Apparently it's called Jin Shin Jyutsu, and it's used for relieving stress and tension by putting pressure on different energy points or something. I looked it up when I got home and found a bunch of articles about it (click on the link to read one), and apparently you can use it on yourself as well as horses and other animals.
I can't remember exactly where the spots were that we put our hands on our horse, but we did two spots on the neck, two on the stomach/back area, and I think just one near our horse's tail (along their spine). Basically our instructor showed us where to put our hands, and we did the same on our horse. All we had to do was place our hands using a minimal amount of pressure and take deep breaths. The goal was to get our horse to give a release or show signs of relaxation such as lowering their neck, licking and chewing, or snorting (it's kind of like a deep breath, I guess). Some spots were very relaxing for Captain, like the ones on his neck. He never really licked and chewed, but he did snort often and at one point had his neck below the horizontal line of his back (a very good thing!). We did each hand placement on both sides of our horse.
I've got to say, these exercises were not only relaxing for Captain, but for me as well. I know that for me, I often have trouble keeping my shoulders and elbows back and heavy when I'm riding, so as the lesson went on, I could feel my shoulders and elbows lowering and getting heavier. By the end of the lesson, I felt very grounded. I wish I could have ridden after that, because I feel like it would have made a major difference in my body position. It was also nice to just have an hour of peace and quiet, just me and Captain. So about halfway through the lesson when my instructor asked me and Jess if we wanted to continue with the Jin Shin Jyutsu, I said I did.
So after that, we did some more relaxing techniques, but they were a little different. I don't even think they were actually Jin Shin Jyutsu. My instructor mentioned some centered riding lady named Peggy something who used techniques that were kind of like the ones we used earlier, but different. It might have been Peggy Cummings, but I'm not sure. We did this thing called the 'wither rock' (I think it was called that), where we put our hands on our horse's withers (right about where the mane stops) and gently rocked our horse from side to side. It didn't have to be a huge difference, we just had to use enough pressure to change the weight in our horse's legs. We also couldn't just use our arms, we had to do it from our center (the whole point of all this stuff) by shifting our whole body. We did this kind of rocking farther back on our horse's too.
After those, we learned another technique that involved using the backs of our fingers on one hand and gently pressing them into a couple different spots along our horse. We had to push into our horse for five seconds, and release for ten seconds. The farther back I did these on Captain, the more he relaxed. When I did the pressure thing near his butt he even started licking and chewing a little. The last thing we did was something called the 'Caterpillar'. We had to cup one of our hands into a C shape and by using the side opposite our thumb we applied pressure on our horse - just enough to move the skin up a little. We did this all down our horse's neck on both sides, which is why it's called the Caterpillar - you inch your hand down their neck. I think Captain really enjoyed this one. He lowered his neck so far I had to lean down a little do it.
That was the last of the techniques. I really liked this barn lesson, because it was fun to really connect with Captain and learn something a little different than what we would normally learn. I hope you guys reading understood at least a little of this. I'm not even sure I know what I'm talking about. Oh well. If you didn't understand, than I hope you enjoyed reading it anyway! I won't be blogging next week because I'll be up in New York for vacation where I won't have Internet (that and I won't be having a lesson, obviously). You can read the week after when I blog about that lesson.
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