From Brace To Brace, Brace To Grace
The Choice Is Ours
“Whatever you fight, you strengthen, and what you resist, persists.”
~ Eckhart Tolle
Humanity at large has a tendency to push back against circumstances without quite seeking to understand them first. So do horses, as it turns out, and they make terrific, if sometimes, really annoying mirrors to humanity’s unconscious behaviors.
One of the first things a young horse has to learn in order to function well when surrounded by humans, is to give to pressure, rather than push back. For example, if we apply a gentle pressure to his left side, we are looking for him to move away towards the right, but an uneducated horse will often move towards the pressure, towards the handler. He may even brace against the handler’s hand, pushing back against the pressure.
If the handler then immediately ups the ante considerably and applies more pressure in such a way it alarms the horse, the horse may move away, but he will now be tense, frightened, and bracing for another impact, except in a posture that holds him away from, and ready to defend himself against, the handler.
He has gone from brace to brace, while learning little but to fear the possible consequences of reacting to new stimuli.
When we first start backing a horse, he braces against the added weight on his back, much like a person shouldering a heavy backpack. Just like a kid carrying their laden schoolbag for the first time, he finds ways to redistribute the added weight challenging what was previously a body in pretty perfect equilibrium. These ways are often clumsy and without a stitch of their natural grace to be seen. As demands on their bodies increase, the horse or child will have to find ways of switching between bracing positions in order to cope with the interfering weight while in movement. That is, unless they are taught to cope differently.
Kids lean, slouch, shuffle, cock a hip. Horses stick their head in the air, or buck, or refuse to move, or move too fast. If they continue to move in these ways over time, they strengthen not only the muscles, but the pattern of resistance, leading to habitual movement and unconscious reactions that continue to be in effect long after the original stimuli has disappeared. Sometimes, this gives horses a bad name when they were really just doing what they learned to do in the first place.
Meanwhile, humans have figured out that if a horse is in a good if very basic balance, he will attain a posture in which he reaches forward and lowers his head and neck, which has led to an unfortunate obsession with a horse ‘putting his head down’ as opposed to up, whether the appropriate balance has been achieved or not.
When accomplished with mechanical force, rather than biomechanical training, while he may no longer stick his head in the air, he has simply given in to the pressure to put his head down. The body just continues to cope with a new form of imbalanced positioning by bracing and using muscles in ways they were never intended.
There has been no actual learning, only further submission to pressure. He has simply shifted the resistance around, compartmentalizing resistant body parts in a different way than before, but no less resistant despite appearances.
He has gone from bracing with his head in the air, to bracing with his head down.
What is missing is a transitional phase, a grace period if you will, where the horse regroups through returning to a peaceful balance; a physically as well as mentally tranquil state as he learns to carry weight in a way that allows his body its natural biomechanics through resistance-free oscillation of body parts.
In equestrian terms, this phase is known as ‘releasing his topline’, but it could also be known as ‘releasing all bracing’. It is the beginning of the horse regaining his natural born grace under saddle, of discovering a beneficial and empowering posture in new circumstances.
It is the beginning of the horse developing autonomy and dignity in the ridden state.
Sometimes, to get there, we have to passively let the horse flex those habitually resistant muscles long enough to tire them out, so we may finally introduce a new conversation and begin to engage the muscles that will serve him better.
Much like when Life throws us the same lesson over and over again from new angles till you’re so tired of it you sit down, throw your hands in the air and say OK, fine, what do you want from me!? Because I’m too tired to do it this way anymore.
What equestrians call releasing the topline, we call letting go and letting God. Or surrendering to the moment. Allowing grace a place at the table. It’s that exquisite moment of non-resistance to circumstance, when we simply accept what is and breath moves through us once more. Of finding peace within the confusion without the need to fully understand, of sitting with the chaos without seeking answers. Rather, allowing the answers to develop, to come as they will, as we give it over to the intelligence of the body, of our soul, giving that something bigger than ourselves wiggle-room, freedom even, to move in our lives.
It’s easing up on our resistance to what feels awkward and cumbersome, on our need to control what goes where, so Life has room to move about and reorganize what we cannot comprehend in the best way possible, to make sense of that monkey on our back that we just can’t buck off.
We can go from brace to brace, rigid opinion to rigid opinion, forever resisting and trying to force Life into a static tableau we find safe, acceptable, pleasing… or we can go from brace to grace, accepting that Life is dynamic, forever changing and challenging us to grow, to move, to redistribute how we carry the weight of Life’s demands.
Who knows? Perhaps a life awaits that we could never have dreamed up ourselves, as we braced against a tide of change trying to take us to a new and wonderful way of carrying ourselves, and our challenges, with more grace than we ever thought possible.
*For more from author and poet, Jeff Foster, check out www.LifeWithoutACentre.com or find him on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/LifeWithoutACentre.
Take-away Question: In what ways may you be going from brace to brace in your life circumstances, and where might you be able to allow grace room to move and improve your life?
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