“You’re closing off your hip angle!” She shouts, standing by the mounting block as I come around, my legs feeling like jello that’s sat out for too long. In what I know - sort of, in that back-of-my-mind way - is a wrong move, I start to grip harder. I start hanging onto the horse through the rapidly failing strength of my calves, which tilts my pelvis forward, which tilts me forward, which makes him go faster. So we are snowballing around the circle and one leg is swinging and my hands are bouncing around…
“You need to relax!”
I want to scream. Relaxing feels like the wrong thing to do, the worst thing to do. How many miles per hour is a canter? How easy would it be to fall off right now, how much damage could be done in seconds, in breaths? I grip tighter.
This backfires into a lack of movement altogether. The horse, likely confused by whatever is happening above him, just… stops. Why is the world of riding so full of counter-intuitions? Everything I think I should do, she says do the opposite. I think I must grip with more strength, she says relax. I think I should lean forward, she demands I pull myself back.
“Allow yourself to be there.” She says this as we go again into the smallest of the circles we’ve ever ridden (only 10 meters now - we’ve lost eight by my count). At first I think, but I am, and then something hits me. She wouldn’t tell me that if whatever it means was already true. It isn’t her job to point out what I am doing, but to offer a way to do something more or different.
So what does this mean, allow myself to be there?
And, as I get off Frosty and drive home, and move through the week, I think - what does this, allow myself?
I look up the word: allow. To give permission, yes. And the second definition (almost always, strangely enough, the more interesting one to me) - to give the necessary time or opportunity for.
I heard her words with the first definition - and I thought, but I do give myself permission to be here. I give my body permission to be on the horse, and my mind permission to panic about what that might mean. But if the sentence is read with the second definition?
Give yourself the necessary time or opportunity to be there.
Oh.
Give myself the necessary time to be there. Give Frosty the time to be there with me. Give yourself the necessary opportunity. Give Frosty the opportunity. I am suddenly confronted with a completely different question about dressage, which is, as I have so often said here, a question about life. What am I failing to give myself the time or opportunity for? Not the permission, which is feeble and fleeting. No, the deeper thing: the time. The opportunity.
When I start to lose control (that rising tide) I grip tighter. When my life snowballs I cling with even tired muscles at the patterns I think keep me safest: I plan my outfits five days in advance, and arrange breakfast in a particular order on the kitchen counter. I write down my to-do lists in three different places and then rewrite them if the ink smudges. I grip onto the plans and the routines, the regimens, the small corners of certainty. I lean forward as if by leaning forward I can slow down the movement.
And my life, not unlike my horse, it responds in the opposite way I expect. Gripping tighter leads to more anxiety, not less. Behaviors that promise me they will lead to safety lead either to stagnation or to stress. I give myself the first definition - the permission - to feel out of control, but not the second - the time - and so nothing gives.
The aim of dressage is in some important way not a sequence of movements but the riding that makes those movements possible. The aim of our lives is in some important way not the sequence of things we do but the kind of living that makes such doings possible.
And to find that kind of living we have to give the necessary time. We have to give the time to being uncomfortable, to not having a way, to trying to be counter-intuitive to all our safe and reliable methods and do the ridiculous thing like relaxing in a canter or letting go of the rein. Do the ridiculous thing like leave the laundry unfinished or choose breakfast the morning of. The ridiculous thing like slowing down, holding a loved one, writing on the internet with no assurance anyone is reading.
We must allow ourselves not just in permission but in time.
It can take a while to ride a canter.
It can take a while to build a life.
Give us time.