Kindful Training starts here:

Kind………..

kindly, good-natured, kindhearted, tenderhearted, warmhearted, softhearted, good-hearted, tender, caring, feeling, affectionate, loving, warm, gentle, mellow, mild;

having or showing a friendly, generous, and considerate nature

give pleasure or relief

Mindful

Recently the word Kindful popped into my mind and I LOVE it! It describes my approach to training horses and to teaching their riders and handlers.

I came up with it while thinking about the whole Mindful movement. I have followed this movement closely and used its concepts to help me calm anxiety both in myself and my horses—though of course the two go together. If I am calm, the horse is usually calm too. And if not, I can figure out what is upsetting him because I can separate my emotions from him. It has given me the ability to step slightly outside of myself, and take the time to look at the situation, observe my behavior and change it. Which then leaves me able to help the horse with his behavior.

Mindfulness has enabled me to live in the moment, to appreciate what I have now. To exist without constantly striving to a goal that is too far in the future to be worried about. And most of all, to have a positive view about what’s coming on the path ahead.

Rather than strive to avoid failure, I now gently and slowly, taking lots of time to enjoy the sights along the way, make my path towards success. Mindfulness gives one the ability to focus on oneself with wholly positive results. Which in turn shapes the way you interact and affect others, horse or human. But it doesn’t address one’s interactions with others in a relationship context. I got thinking about this and realized that I was interested in trying to explain to my students how their relationship with their horse should feel.

Kindful

Kindful addresses the feeling that one can have when interacting with your horse if you follow the basic precepts required to train your horse kindfully. If you have previously governed your interactions with your horses with either fear or anger the whole notion of kindful comes as a huge relief. You don’t have to be dominant of this large beast that you love so much, you just have to be his caring leader. Because you don’t have to dominate him you don’t have to summon the fear and anger it takes to be strong enough to do so.

Suppose you were to approach your wish to partner with a horse in a completely beneficent way. Meaning that your relationship withhim will be nothing but good for him. That he will feel better, learn new and wonderful things, see new and interesting places, have a safe home, good friends, free health care and most of all a long term, carefully developed relationship based on trust with you.

Supposing all of that was OK? Well, guess what, it is OK! It is OK to not want to be afraid. It is OK to not want to be dominant. It is OK to wish for a partnership with your horse. It is OK to want to enjoy your horse and have him enjoy you. It is OK to be kind to him. And it is OK to want that feeling of kindfulness to be the prevailing goal and emotion.

Kindful Training Program

My Kindful Training Program for horse and rider addresses all these issues by first of all giving myself and my students (horse and human) permission to take all the time we need to figure things out.

I use my lifetime of experience to address each situation individually and come up with an explanation or plan of action.

I use a variety of methods incorporating my extensive knowledge of dressage, western dressage, eventing, trail riding, starting and training young and damaged horses of all shapes, sizes and types.

Each individual journey is a puzzle and a joy to figure out and through it all I ask myself the same question over and over. Does this feel kind? Is this to the benefit of the horse? Does this benefit his owner/rider? Does this alleviate anxiety? Is this the right path forward for them? Is it KINDFUL?