If there's one thing in riding or working with horses that you've got to have even more under control than your body, it's your emotions. We all know that, right?
Living in the Bay Area, I'm lucky to be surrounded by lots of enlightened people. I don't know anyone who has never taken a yoga class. I do know a whole bunch of people who are yoga instructors or very experienced in mediation practices. When I was growing up in East Germany, I never heard of such things. I had to learn the hard way. It wasn't until my 20s when I read Linda Kohanov's "Tao of Equus" that I felt validated for hiding in the bathroom based on what I felt in my gut when a certain ex-family member of mine entered the house.
That is to say that I've come a long way in being very aware of my emotions. And in my ability to come back to neutral very quickly should something arouse my affections one way or another. When I'm around horses, I operate from a very grounded self; it's like there is certain happy spot reserved for that work. It's hard to describe, but at that point I am not taking anything personally, I'm just working with whatever is, all the while still making my wishes known to the horse and finding ways of accessing his/her willingness to cooperate.
The other day I got on a horse while still pretty peeved about something unrelated. I was aware of it and told myself to let it go, but it still occupied my mind. I noticed immediately that I was riding with more tension (not the good kind) and a less forgiving attitude. That's when I was able to drop it all and go back to the neutral spot, and I have no idea how that really works other than under no circumstances was going to be unfair to the horse. And I've seen it with really fantastic riders too, the moment emotion comes in, most horses respond with at minimum a less willing attitude. And who could blame them. The moment they go back to just good riding, the horse comes back to them.
With increasing skill, it becomes easier to stay in neutral. That is because when something isn't happening, one can simply approach it from different angels rather than thinking the horse is purposely "doing this to annoy the rider", getting frustrated or angry because the rider feels inadequate mixed with a good amount of fear that one is screwing up the horse. And that's exactly why it is so important to work with a great trainer as he/she will be able to mediate the training issues by separating what's the rider's and what's the horse's learning curve and hopefully merging them at some point.
There is a requirement for being grounded while teaching too. I've been on the receiving end of the absence of that many a times as a riding student. Once I asked a trainer if we could go over the turn on the haunches again and was told: "I explained that to you last time!!!" and that was that. Today I taught a lesson that didn't go so well. At some point my student said: "If this is what riding feels like I don't want to do it." (Way to motivate a rider...) She was quite frustrated because I had asked her to think a bit differently about "forward" on her horse, i.e. power vs. quickness, and while they did some of the new work extremely well, this particular horse has historical issues with the "go button" that were resurfacing, giving the rider the sense that they were regressing rather than progressing. It didn't occur to me until later that I could have easily gotten flustered myself, and either get defensive or panicky about having tried something that didn't go as planned, but I was able to stay in neutral, get my student back to neutral as well and have a productive discussion about what happened or didn't happen and how to move forward.
Of course there's pressure now on my end to figure out a way to bring this pair back on track, but that's my job. For riders who only ride one horse, each ride increases dramatically in importance and it's harder to see the "trending in the right direction" big picture. Here's to a whole lot of letting go.