Understanding integrated awareness: Part one

Understanding integrated awareness: Part one

Jenny Lee MMCP explains how to understand and train our minds so we can support our horses to perform at their best

In her book ‘The Human Herdawakening our natural leadership’, Beth Anstandig introduces the Four Channels of Integrated Awareness model which provides an interesting lens through which to view the relationship between endurance horse and rider. The Four Channels of Integrated Awareness are:

1. What is happening with me?

2. What is happening with my horse?

3. What is happening between us?

4. What is happening around us?

This first part of a two-part series considers Channel 1 and the psychology of the rider. We turn a spotlight on the challenges we face with our human analytical minds, our tendency to overthink and how our nervous systems can get stuck in elevated states of arousal. It can feel uncomfortable to focus on us, rather than our horses, but it’s a critical part of reaching our full potential as riders. We work hard to train our horses for endurance rides but training our minds is equally important and could be the marginal gain that makes all the difference.

“Holding Space” is an original creation displaying a girl experiencing grief in the presence of her horse. All of us can relate to this feeling. Animals have the power to hold space for us in ways humans cannot.

Maggie Justice Leverett (www.mjsequineartstudios.com).

Channel 1 What’s happening with me?

As we go through life, we process our experiences and establish core belief systems that impact our behaviour and how we view the world. The reality is that life is challenging and the scars that many of us carry can cause us to develop thought patterns, experience feelings and exhibit behaviours that hinder our ability to connect as meaningfully and as positively with our horses as we would like.

Often the symptoms we experience at certain life stages such as disturbed sleep patterns, negative thought patterns or feelings of either a thread of agitated energy running through us or conversely a feeling of overwhelming fatigue can be linked to experiences in childhood. Childhood trauma causing anxiety into adulthood can have quite subtle causes and is dependent on how the boy or girl perceives their level of safety, love and support. Genetics do play a role with some children predisposed to more sensitivity to adversity than others.

The Adverse Childhood Experience (ACE) quiz asks a series of questions and scoring one or above can indicate the presence of childhood trauma. While this quiz needs to encompass the extremes of physical and psychological abuse, it also includes questions covering more common issues, within the endurance community, such as parental separation/divorce, death of a parent, poor mental health of a parent including depression, problem drinkers and/or drug abusing parents. There is also a question about whether the child felt that they were loved and important and that the family were close to each other and looked out for each other.

Tools such as the ACE quiz can help people identify and process early trauma in order to deal with problems such as underlying anxiety or depression that are impacting their adult lives. The ACE quiz can only cover so much and does not include the difficulties faced by children growing up with neuro diversity and having to navigate the world through a raft of conditions including ADHD, Asperger’s Syndrome and other autism spectrum disorders. Clearly neuro diversity brings many unique skills and advantages but can be very tough for children growing up within a set education system, and just wanting to fit in.

In addition to the emotional upheaval of teenage years the menopause can also cause those that have been previously managing underlying stress or unprocessed trauma to hit a ‘wall’. This is because when hormone levels drop as a woman goes into perimenopause it’s the job of the adrenal gland to step in and produce hormones that can be converted into oestrogen. However, if current or built-up stress has depleted the adrenal glands, as they focus on stress hormones such as cortisol, then their ability to produce sex hormones is compromised. Furthermore, high cortisol production due to chronic stress is linked to bone loss. Not helpful in the event of an unscheduled dismount!

It is crucial that all women in this stage get their oestrogen and testosterone levels checked when they are at their lowest levels. The oestrogen low point, as most women can feel, is on day one of their cycle. Even without the added burden of historic trauma the hormone changes during menopause can impact mental and physical health and feelings of anxiety, stress and depression are not uncommon. Robyn Schiller, a top-level reining rider, has done several podcasts covering menopausal anxiety which can be accessed at warwickschiller.com.

It's almost impossible for men and women to go through life completely unscathed so how do we as riders do a ‘psychological muck out’ so we can give our horses the best possible version of ourselves? How do we identify the root causes of our behaviour and core beliefs and how do we process any trauma that we find along the way? In situations where there are symptoms such as a disturbed sleep pattern, feelings of anxiety and low mood then having a chat with a therapist can be a good place to start. You may then wish to introduce tools such as hypnotherapy, cognitive behavioural therapy, eye movement desensitisation and reprocessing, emotional freedom techniques and others to help reset long-term thought patterns.

There is a growing body of research looking at how long-term tension and trauma is stored in the body and can lead to chronic pain and degenerative disease such as arthritis. Specialist physiotherapists work with myofascial release and somatic release experience to remove long-held tension patterns from muscles, organs and connective tissue. The physical release will then give rise to the person feeling an emotional release. There are also several yoga specialists who teach trauma-releasing yoga and have achieved outstanding results with PTSD victims.

In addition to using therapies to reset our nervous system there are many tools that can be used to keep daily stresses under control. These can help with routine challenges and with times of more elevated stress such as mass starts of endurance races. These techniques allow us to control our minds and our bodies and move us from the sympathetic nervous system into the parasympathetic nervous system.

Within the autonomic nervous system, we have the parasympathetic and sympathetic nervous systems that regulate involuntary body functions…

• The parasympathetic nervous system slows down certain responses, bringing about a state of calm and allowing the body to rest, digest, relax and repair.

• The sympathetic nervous system gets the body ready for fight and flight through increased heart rate, elevated blood pressure, elevated respiratory rate etc and shuts down many parasympathetic responses including the reasoning part of the brain!

Dr Stephen Porges in his work on Polyvagal Theory has also identified a third state of freeze. This occurs at the extreme level of arousal beyond fight/flight and is characterised by immobilisation. Think of prey pinned down by a predator or a shut down horse enduring undiagnosed and untreated pain. A deeply depressed human may also be existing in this state. In human terms, depression is the body’s way of keeping itself safe by shutting down and immobilising.

It's important to achieve balance between the nervous system states as overstimulation by the brain of the sympathetic nervous system can cause health consequences and impacts quality of life. It also puts quite a heavy emotional burden on your horse. So what then is the best way to move into parasympathetic?

The Soul Abyss - Original artwork created by Maggie Justice Leverett

Maggie Justice Leverett (www.mjsequineartstudios.com).

Put it into practice

Stanley Rosenberg in his book Accessing the Healing Power of the Vagus Nerve has developed several exercises that short circuit you back to parasympathetic. Here is one to try…

1. Start by lying down comfortably on your back with your face up.

2. Interlace your hands behind your head.

3. Resting your head on your hands, let your head gently rotate all the way to one side, back to centre, then rotate to the other side.

4. Now take a minute to really let your head settle in the middle, just resting on your hands, eyes open.

5. With your head staying in the centre, let your eyes only travel all the way to one side, and stay there for 30 to 60 seconds.

6. Let your eyes return to the centre, rest and repeat on the other side. You’ll feel a sigh, a yawn, or a swallow as you return to parasympathetic.

7. Once you have got used to this exercise you can do it standing up and facing forward and just looking to the right (3060 seconds) and then left (30-60 seconds). It’s a useful exercise to do just before you mount your horse.

Tactical breathing

There are numerous breath work exercises that are highly effective in bringing the body back to a calm state and the Neurocentric Rider (theneurocentricrider.co.uk) even offers on-line Breathwork for Riders workshops. As a starting point this Navy SEAL technique below works simply and effectively and after a while you will find yourself yawning and feeling calmer. Ideally breathe in through your nose and out through the mouth:

• Inhale for four seconds

• Hold your lungs full for four seconds

• Exhale for four seconds

• Hold your lungs empty for four seconds.

Entangled - Original artwork created by Maggie Justice Leverett

Maggie Justice Leverett (www.mjsequineartstudios.com).

Meditation

This can feel almost excruciating for those that ‘run on adrenaline’ but that’s the point! There are various forms of meditation to experiment with including mantra-based meditations and mindfulness. Audio books and apps such as Calm are a good place to start. Mind Hacking by Sir John Hargrave is also a great guide to taking control of a busy, frantic or self-critical mind.

Cold therapy

Cold therapy such as the Wim Hof Method works by putting your body into a sympathetic state and then using your breathwork to get control of your mind even in this state of arousal. It also makes you feel great afterwards and is well suited to the more hard core among us.

Horses

Many of us are instinctively drawn to horses as a form of self-regulation of our nervous system. Spending time around horses without asking anything of them or us can provide a refuge from busy lives. Techniques such as The Masterson Method Bladder Meridian (You Tube) can serve to enhance that feeling of calm and connection. There are also several equine assisted therapists achieving remarkable results in prisoner reform and PTSD victim rehabilitation programmes.

Bella Fricker

Bella is a leading endurance rider who competed for Great Britain under 21 squad. She has raced and crewed in endurance nationally and internationally. Bella has a loving family, but some circumstances of her childhood have caused various trauma symptoms. These manifest themselves in Bella being highly driven, high energy and enjoying multitasking and keeping busy, but struggling to slow down and have focused concentration. Bella’s sleep pattern has been impacted and was especially bad in her teenage years. She keeps highly physically active to manage her anxiety but when injury strikes, without the protection of exercise stimulated endorphins, Bella can suffer with depression. Bella has been honest and open with her mental health challenges and has sought the help of performance psychologists within endurance and through wider athlete programmes to manage her anxiety. This takes hard work and a great deal of courage but can transform sport performance and indeed greatly enhance how life is experienced.

Esther Groen

Esther of Groen Equestrian has bravely shared her experiences of menopause which left her with low energy and feeling drained from 10 years competing at top level, on limited funds, against a backdrop of moving countries, recession, Covid and re-establishing her coaching business. Esther understands the importance of being present around her horses and will not ride if she feels that she will not be mentally there. Menopause made her feel shut down and depressed and she struggled to find enjoyment from riding. Horses had previously always provided a grounding and calming mechanism for Esther and a way of finding focus and endurance had been the mechanism by which Esther coped with some traumatic childhood experiences. In the end it was the poor sleep patterns and the resulting stress that led to Esther using HRT to manage her symptoms.

Credits

Thank you to our contributors Bella Fricker (www.bellafricker.co.uk), Esther Groen (www.groenequestrian.co.uk), Jenny Lee (MMCP Masterson Method Equine Bodywork) and Maggie Justice Leverett (www.mjsequineartstudios. com).

Read Part Two

Channel 2 – what is happening with my horse? Will be featured in Endurance Magazine Summer 2023 and is due out in June 2023