Navigating My Own Path

I often feel alone on this journey, since living on an island can be very isolating. Yet I began this journey seemingly alone 3 decades ago, learning through experience early on, often painfully. Finding my own way.

I have yet to encounter all that I'm looking for in a teacher or methodology in the flesh. When I've followed another towards a seemingly common goal, the narrative often doesn't hold up; false idols and empty promises. Beware of those that claim their way is the "right" or "best", to which I would ask: "For whom?"

So I try to pull what I can from different clinicians, methods and disciplines. A colorful and diverse toolbox, filling it with what feels right. But there's usually something lost in translation, something left out, an empty compartment. 

The why behind the what. 

The feeling behind the action.

Perhaps because it's seemingly unprofessional to talk about such things as feeling, emotion, intention, states of mind and the like, a bit too woo-woo for our masculine culture to stomach. 

Whenever I've had a riding lesson, I always felt like the instructor was working through me on the horse, rather than working with me to influence the horse. The more ways they demanded I exert my physicality, the more divorced from true unity and constricted I became. 

Mechanics are the methodology that discipline lives by, but horses are not machines, nor are they here to simply serve as our beasts of burden. The use of force and gadgetry is a quick and easy fix, but the resulting image is an illusion, a forgery. 

Humility, vulnerability and empathy are the keys that open doors through which art can be created.

We want to have it all figured out and to feel like we're in control, but the greatest lessons and revelations can only come through when we let go and trust the process rather than getting hung up on outcomes and becoming enslaved to a particular methodology. To do so would be to give up your power and personal agency.

If there's anything I've learned, it's the importance of staying true to yourself.