‘Horses are my passion. A lot of things have been happening in my life and it’s felt pretty stormy and insecure, but I always have my horses and my riding.

Lately my riding has been getting worse, not better. My routine is to be at the stables by 8.30 every morning and finish riding by midday. On top of that I have lessons with my horse riding trainer every Wednesday to stamp out any bad habits I may be falling into. And at least once a year I train with top class international trainers in natural horsemanship. I am constantly working on improving myself. I have been riding since I was 8 years old, I am a very seasoned rider, but I have lost my edge and its’ been really frustrating.’

Anca’s Notes:

When I observed Fiona on horseback I noticed that her body was too rigid and so she was not responding to the natural flow of movement of her horse. She complained that she had lost the sensitivity to adjust to very subtle cues from her horse.

To ride well the rider needs to be in a synchronised state with her horse – the movement of the horse should flow through the spine of the rider, so they appear to move as one. Fiona needed to accomplish this feat – only then would she gain any real benefit from her hours of practice, many lessons and expert horsemanship training.

To help her she was given fractal movements to integrate the left and right sides of her brain. The recent upheavals in her life had caused emotional trauma which had shut down the communication pathways between the left and right sides of her brain. This interfered with the coordination between the left and right sides of her body. It meant she no longer had full control over her body and as a consequence she became rigid in her movements.

Emotional trauma had ‘hijacked’ her brain: trauma activates the reflex parts of the brain that respond to threats. Once this primitive part of the brain is active, higher regions, such as the left and right brain pathways, are inhibited.

She was given movements to calm her reflex brain and was also asked to perform a ‘crawling’ type movement, very similar to the movements that are a natural part of child development. These fractal movements re-activated the left and right sides of her brain, giving her perfect co-ordination and complete control over her body – and the natural synchronicity with her horse she so much desired.

Here is the story….