Sticky Learning: Varying Context for Lasting Improvement #91

In this episode of Easier Movement, Happier Horses, Mary Debono continues her exploration of how to enhance your horse's learning and movement capabilities.

Building on the principles of the Feldenkrais Method, Mary discusses the importance of changing the context during practice sessions to help both you and your horse better integrate new skills.

By varying the environment and position or activity,  both you and your horse can experience more effective learning, leading to sustained improvements in movement, emotional well-being, and overall resilience.

Mary provides practical examples and encourages listeners to experiment with these ideas in their everyday routines.

Whether you're a seasoned equestrian or just beginning your journey, this episode offers valuable tips to help you and your horse move more easily and happily together.

Key Takeaways:

1. Varying Context: Changing the environment and context during training helps solidify new movement patterns for you and your horse.
2. Feldenkrais Insights: The Feldenkrais Method teaches that learning is more effective when practiced in different contexts, making it easier to integrate into daily life.
3. Improved Resilience: By practicing movements in various settings, you can help your horse become more resilient to stress and better able to adapt to new situations.
4. Practical Application: Experiment with different contexts to reinforce learning and improve your horse's movement and emotional well-being.
   
   Resources:
   
   💥Learn how the Feldenkrais Method can help improve your seat, position, and balance on your horse! Free rider videos masterclass: https://www.marydebono.com/rider 💥
   
   Email [email protected]
   
   All information is for general educational purposes ONLY and doesn't constitute medical, veterinary, or professional training advice. Always use extreme caution when interacting with horses.   

TRANSCRIPT:

Well, today we're going to continue on our little series about helping you improve your horse's ability to learn, to experience more possibilities and how they move and how they feel. So today's little shorty episode is going to be about how you can change the context of the learning, to help it be stickier. In other words, to help the improvements really stay with the horse so that what you do together, you know, the learning that takes place between the two of you because you're learning too, right?

We're always learning, hopefully, will actually continue to benefit yourself and your horse. So the way we do that is actually by varying the context. So I'll give you an example with a human and then with a horse. So, for our human work, I use the Feldenkrais method, which is developed by Doctor Moshe Feldenkrais. And I've been a Feldenkrais teacher for over 30 years. And what we do in that is that what Doctor Feldenkrais has discovered was by changing the orientation a person is in, their nervous system is more likely to take or adapt to that learning into themselves, to integrate it into their life.

So, for example, if I, if I teach you how to side bend more easily, this is a common thing, by the way, so many of us sit crooked on our horses, and it very often comes from being, from being, people say, collapsed at the hip. People have different ways of putting this, but often what's happening is you're holding one side of the rib cage shorter than the other and changing the way the pelvis is.

And it does all things to your spine and your neck and your legs and everything. It has ramifications up and down the chain. So let's say I help you do that while you're sitting down. And I have, by the way, my, my free video series, the Rider Masterclass, which I'll link to in the show notes. And it, it'll tell you also at the end of this podcast how to get it.

Um, it goes into that, right? So, so you're, you're sitting right, and I help you learn how to bend more easily to both sides. Maybe that was not available to you before, now it is. That's great. And that's a great first step. But now, if that's all we did, it's actually not going to be as easy for you to bring that into every aspect of your life than it would be if I did this one tweak.

And this one tweak is, what if I asked you to lie on the floor, lie on your back and now I lead you through a Feldenkrais lesson. Again, that involves side bending, but you're lying on your back now. Now, this is a whole different response to gravity right? Now. There's certain muscles that you're not engaging, that you are engaging when you're sitting up. There's different associations you have with lying on your back than you do with sitting up.

So different habits come into play. A lot of habits drop. You know, there's different things are accessible that weren't when you were sitting up. Okay? And so that is great. Now we did it lying on your back. Well, now, what if we did it with you on your side? And there's all kinds of wonderful lessons I teach where you're on your side and you're doing all kinds of great things with your, you know, bringing your pelvis, your leg, your ribs, your sternum, your head involved all kinds of great things.

Okay, that's another one. What if we did another lesson where you're on your front, you're actually lying on your stomach, and you're learning how to move in these different ways, right? You know, there's. There's so many. Right? There's different orientations we can do this in. What if now you got on a saddle stand, you know, maybe you have a real sturdy saddle stand that you can sit in your saddle, and now you did some side bending in a saddle.

Well, now that's a whole different thing. Right? Then maybe you have a safe horse. You can actually play with this on your horse. Maybe someone's holding your horse's bridle for you. You know, only do that if it's totally safe. But you can start to bring in now different environments. So not only were you in different positions, but now you brought in different contexts. Like, you're now in different environments.

So you have different associations, you have different responses to each of those environments, and you're starting to impress upon your nervous system. Like, look, in all these different environments, we can still maintain a sense of ease and we can side bend evenly either way. And now suddenly, you're sitting evenly on your horse, your legs are draped evenly, you're more upright. Without effort, you feel better, you're breathing differently.

All because what? Because what you did was you took that original learning and you did it now in these different ways, in these different orientations, meaning different postures, different positions, I should say different environments. Now, this is why also with the horses, it's so important. No, they don't go into as many positions as we do. Of course, you know, they're usually just standing up or moving when I'm working with them.

But we can take it into different contexts, different environments for them. We can add pieces of tack, right? That will change their association with the experience. Like, they might have different associations about, oh, when I get tagged up, I tense this, I tense that. Well, what we can do is we can start to just bring in a girth or just bring in a saddle pad or just have the bridle hanging nearby, and then maintain that sense of ease as we do these different movements.

So again, the nervous system starts to get convinced, right? You're building up enough evidence, a bank of evidence that says, ah, I can feel good, I can feel easy and relaxed within these different environments while this is going on. Okay, while these movements. So now you're pairing the improved movement with these different things that used to stimulate your horse, maybe into a state of tension or anxiety or annoyance or some other, you know, unhelpful behavior that doesn't feel good to your horse or to you, for that matter.

So it's the same idea. We want to bring in the sense of variations in where we do things, how we do things right, keeping that going so that, you know, we can, again, help the body. I talked about this earlier, be more resilient to stress, cope with changes better, improve the movement, improve the emotional well being, as well as recognizing that the different contexts that you're doing it in.

Right. Also plays a huge role and helps the horse integrate it better, helps you integrate your improvement better as well. Okay, so let me know if you have any questions about that, or please let me know how you're integrating that into your life with your horse. Like, what are you doing differently now? Like, what are you bringing in that you weren't before? What are you more aware of?

You know, maybe you have some suggestions, or maybe you have some ideas, by the way, about something different. Maybe you have a question that you want me to do a podcast episode on. I'd love to hear from you. You can always email me, maryaridebono.com. so go there, you know, go out, play with your horses. Have a lot of fun. Have that sense of, like, childlike curiosity when you're that way.

Your horse tends to be that way as well. Remember that how you move, how you breathe, how you direct your attention are all felt by your horse and all shape your interactions with your horse. So your underlying sense of either ease or effort has a direct impact on how you and your horse experience each other. So remember, keep that foundation of ease for you and your horse. We did the last four episodes.

They're all short, so if you haven't listened to them yet, you might want to go back and listen to them. Starting at episode 88, I believe. And you can go back, listen to them, and then play with that. Let me know if you have any questions. So thank you so much for being here. I love sharing this work with you, and I look forward to seeing you soon.

Bye for now.