Tuesday 13 January 2015

Day 13 when nature said hello and when we did a brain vs body challenge

There is a little coffee/sandwich shop at Ealing Broadway station in London where they make the best Latte and even the best take-away tea I have ever tried. Not only that, they make no squeaky, "oh reallyyyy??" comments about my requests for brown sugar for a cup of tea ;)
It's an independent little spot with a cool "Gone to The Beach" sign instead of the boring "we are closed". But let me tell you, they had better not been planning a lunch at the beach today because this is what London had in store at lunch time (oh and a bus drivers strike! I knew I should have checked the news in the morning!):


If you would like to see it on a video, here is a moment of a bounding, unexpected hail for you :)



Nature is a one scary beast. After a bright sunny morning, the weather switched fast and with an ease of pressing down a button on a remote control. I only started filming half way through the downpour, prior to the footage the wind was much stronger and lauder with rain and hail being driven all the way under the roof and towards the stables. At one point, it looked as if someone had hang white, opaque curtains in front of us.
As rapidly as they arrived, the heavy clouds moved on, the sun came out and the sky changed channel to blue!

On a coaching side note, we chatted with my client how conscious thinking and analysing really doesn't go hand in hand with "doing". I made a little experiment. As she groomed, I asked various questions that covered the content of the lesson I planned for today. Every time she needed to visualise something or search for an answer in her memory, her hand would stop (sometimes half way through the brush stroke against the curry comb), all efforts focused on the intellectual challenge.

We repeated that several time after I pointed out the reason for the "exercise" but even knowing what was this all about, she still had to cease grooming to answer some more challenging questions.

Do you try to "think" what you need to be doing whilst riding? Try stopping in between exericses or movements you have planned, thinking the thoughts you want to think, then close the imaginary eyes on your brain and just do, feel, experience. Let the subconscious skill develop :)

Until tomorrow!

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