Fear of Riding, Part II: Overcoming Fear & Feeling Safe

Today’s video is part one of a month-long series about how to overcome the fear of riding.
Like our previous video: Fear of Riding: How to Avoid Accidents, Part I: Proper Preparation, this one will focus on learning how to slow down, pause, or stop, attune, or tune in, and pay attention. The difference is I will be giving you specific exercises to use that will help assist in your recovery process.
Learn to connect to what’s around you, not what’s in your head. Slowing down and paying attention to what you feel will not only teach you emotional agility, but it will also teach you how to respond appropriately to any given situation.
You can achieve this through the following 3 steps:
1. Meditative breath techniques.
2. Feeling your horse’s movement underneath of you until you feel it inside of you.
3. Connect often to your horse by pausing, stopping, touching, talking to them.
Horses pause when they sense danger or a threat. This pause allows them to tune into their senses, their true guttural instincts and safety barometer.
Too often a horse’s pause, or hesitation, is revered as something negative such as disobedience, disrespect, attitude, refusal, cowardness.
If your horse pauses, they’ve either hit an emotional threshold or they sense a threat. The last thing we should do is push them through it.
You’ll never build trust, confidence, or a willing attitude in your horse if you fight their instincts. Instincts are intrinsic to horses for their survival. I want my horse to be aware and engaged in their surroundings. I also want them to trust me and feel safe enough with me to let me know when things are getting too scary.
Here are my suggestions, recommendations, to handling the situation:
1. Respect and allow the hesitation, pause, or stop in your horse and offer calm, connection to relationship and positive reinforcement.
2. Retreat from the area or get off and offer the same.
3. When your horse has calmed down and reconnected to you, that’s the right time to work with your horse and the scary place or thing.
The opposite would be to push, fight, make the experience horrible for you both so that your horse never wants to go there again.
Here are a few quotes that I thought would help you along your journey with this topic.
“Human freedom involves our capacity to pause between the stimulus and response and, in that pause, to choose the one response toward which we wish to throw our weight. The capacity to create ourselves is based upon this freedom, is inseparable from consciousness or self-awareness. (p. 100)” ― Rollo May,
“Practice the pause. Pause before judging. Pause before assuming. Pause before accusing. Pause whenever you're about to react harshly and you'll avoid doing and saying things you'll later regret.”
― Lori Deschene
“Patience is an inner pause, a brief stillness, a moment we give ourselves to breathe through our initial reaction so we can move to the place where a calm, thoughtful response is born. Patience is a gift of time we give ourselves so we can give the gift of peace to others.” ― L.R. Knost
If you would like to learn how to develop your horse, from ground to riding, start to finish, you can learn how and so much more in my universally proven MasteryMembership Riding Foundation Program.

[@kittypage333]

Many gems in this video, thank you!

[@TaoofHorsemanship]

Hi Kitty and Welcome! Great to hear, thank you.

[@jillbevens7661]

Thankyou once again Caroline. You explain so clearly which always makes perfect sense You .break issues down to the basics which really helps to re set then re start the building blocks with our horse. . Your tutorials have helped and supported my journey please keep them coming .

[@TaoofHorsemanship]

Hi Jill Bevens, welcome! We are so happy that you enjoy watching them. Caroline works hard to make sure her videos resonates with you guys and comments like yours make all of it worth it!! Thank You! xx Sabrina

[@lauraalbertson7821]

This was Wonderful. Just so much WISDOM YOU shared . And easy to remember. I got in a moment with Bear this morning where He wouldn’t back off of the empty food bucket I was carrying. Not sure why He kept pushing to have the bucket but perhaps to play . But “I” ended up backing all the way out of His corral as he wouldn’t stop coming . I had no other tool with me to send him away . Was a scary feeling. He is very playful and curious and not afraid. Practically never has spooked . Let’s me touch him every where . Licks my open hand as it is our Hello every morning. Bear positions Himself next to us so He can be Halter. He always runs to us when it’s time to come in from the pasture. I guess I need to work on the back up and “Stay”. IDK 🤷🏻‍♀️. What else would you suggest when they are not yielding to a No ? Thank you 😘 Laura ♥️ Bear ♥️p.s. I sent all of these videos to my Friend. She had an accident recently on her new Horse .

[@TaoofHorsemanship]

Hi Laura! Thank you! So great to hear! Like children, horses respect and need a balance of love and leadership. You can say "no" and back it up with strong follow through (should you need it) and feel love for him at the same time. However, your "no" needs to be strong enough to earn his respect for your space. Geldings are playful by nature and when young even more so. They need healthy boundaries to teach them how to behave and what's acceptable behavior or they will become dangerous. This is the language of horses and in a healthy social dynamic, herd, the dam/mother will enforce and teach good behavior. She will also allow her youngster to play and figure out those boundaries, something we humans don't understand and end up messing up our youngsters. Hope that helped!

[@lauraalbertson7821]

@@TaoofHorsemanship yes wonderful insight. 💜🐴💜

[@kelangeliqueduclos9707]

Im so interested in this .. I’m now recovering from a bad fall . Four broken ribs and permanent damage to my hip Ive tried to break the fall process to see what I could’ve done differently. He froze/ paused then exploded so quick I had no time to put my horse in a one reign stop . I had the same kind of accident on another horse same time last year of where I fractured my spine. This second fall has really shaken me up .

[@TaoofHorsemanship]

Hi kelangelique duclos and welcome! I am so sorry to hear about your accident. Once we experience something so tragic, it's hard for us to continue without fearing it will happen again and unfortunately in most cases, it's only a matter of time. Please reach out to us if you need any kind of guidance. Caroline's MasteryMembership Program is a program that can help you and your horse. I will add a link for you that will take you to our website please feel free to check it out and please take a look at all of our courses if the MMP is not something you are interested in. www.taoofhorsemanship.com/ Good luck and for any questions you might have, email us at [e-mail] XX Sabrina

[@lauraalbertson7821]

Ohhhh my gosh that’s a lot ! I have had moment like this . Your life with Horses may just be different like mine is . I started over . Just lovingly my Horse from the ground. Caroline will be an amazing help to you . Huggggs. 😇🙏😇 Laura

[@aliceboothe8231]

I just started lessons several months ago on a school horse, I’m 58 years old and have always loved horses. I’ve progressed well but have anxiety since the horse almost bucked me off a month ago. Can the horse feel my anxiety? Can I develop a connection with a “school horse”? I’m trying to decide if it’s worth it to continue lessons?

[@aliceboothe8231]

I’m looking for more personal direction in your answer

[@TaoofHorsemanship]

Hi Alice and Welcome! I'm so sorry to hear about your accident and fear now. Yes, a horse can sense fear. Yes, you can develop a connection with a school horse and it's going to be really challenging. Mostly because they spend most of their time disconnected to their riders and what's being asked of them, meaning most school horses are on self-preservation mode and auto pilot. They learn learned helplessness to cope and that's why there are so many accidents with school horses. They don't feel safe with, or connected (in relationship) to, their rider's, handlers. A really happy, safe school horse will help you recover but you will also need the right instructor too. I recommend finding a non-traditional instruction, like myself, who has epxerience with trauma and respects both the human and horse as a student.