In between travelling all over the state to complete compulsory free teaching hours, the journey of getting my own horse to Level 4 remained the challenge. Having the focus, but at the same time the flexibility to deal with the state of whichever horse I had for my partner that day was something I was having trouble with. For a while, horses even lost their fun for me as I had to fulfil this requirement to solidify my instructor status. Can you imagine what they were perceiving from me? Direct line thinking, autocratic, dogmatic, chauvinistic and anthropomorphic thinking are all perceived as predatory behaviours by horses, and this causes them to act against us; but in line with their natural reactions for self preservation. Horses are creativity, its my art and my love but I needed a new attitude to channel progressiveness without the failure of not 'being something' when I felt my whole identity was riding on it. In the end I just did what I enjoyed which was just to hang out and play within known realms with my horses, with no progression.
I watched a video, a TED talk actually, from the author Elizabeth Gilbert. It talked about how talented people are skewed by our warped perception of what a 'genius' is. You see, prior to the development of a full blown egocentric society, talented people used to have a genius not actually be a genius. It sounds like a crazy idea, but it was common knowledge in ancient times, in more than one culture (In Greece it was refereed to as a Damon) that you had an external influence on your whether your talented blossomed or not, despite your work. It was a way for people to handle failure and success without throwing their life's worth into it. To cut a long story short, it helped release people from the fears of their own failure, if your work was shoddy, you were only half to blame because you just scored a lazy 'genius'. Gilbert summed it up perfectly at then end of her talk. Whether you experience moments where you feel the work of the god is simply being channelled through your body as a vessel, or your working your backside off with a lazy co-creative mystic being, the fact is, no work is being done if you don't show up. So whatever your work is you feel you need to do, all you need to to do is be there doing it. So that's what I began to do, show up to my work no matter if it the sun shone or not. Progression can only happen in motion!
In July I was privileged enough to spend a short time with 4 Star Instructor Mikey Wanzenreid, in his home in Les Bois Switzerland. What a refreshing way to look at how the Parelli program is taught! I gained some fabulous new insights, and a fresh way too look at old ones. It was also a great taster to how the Parelli Community is able to co ordinate worldwide and it was fantastic to meet one of international instructors, and gain insight to how everything works during some seriously cold winters!
Mikey Wanzenreid's farm in beautiful Switzerland
So now I am home, playing with completing my Level 4 by the end of this year. We have big things coming up this year, riding with Pat and Linda Parelli themselves, and volunteering at the Parelli booth at Equitana in Sydney....its financially draining but bring it on!
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