Since I came home from the states I discovered I have a new understanding about the Parelli program, I made big steps towards becoming more of a horseman. That means that instead of just a human, I spent some very intense moments sharing and understanding a horse in such a manner that this deeper understanding brought a little piece of 'horse' into my way of thinking, feeling, acting and dreaming. To me this has been a magical experience, and I am quite sure it's one of the most valuable events that can ever take place in a human lifetime.
I learned so many things at the center that it's very hard to explain it in a constructive and comprehensive manner. I'm still going to try anyway...
Let me start by trying to convince you of the importance of principles: A basic ingrediënt of Parelli is CHANGE, what leads in a positive way to PROGRESSION. There are 2 ways you can change: you can change the way you ACT or you can change the way you THINK. They both affect eachother. But if you want to change the way you act without knowing why, chances are after a while you'll just continue with the same old behavior.. because you lack the motivation and the clear understanding to practice the new behavior long enough to make it feel natural to you and eventually master it. If you want to change the way you think without also supporting it with acting in a different way, you never give yourself the chance to experience the new behavior, and reinforce the idea when it works or replace the idea by another when it doesn't work. Either way, if you want to change your behavior successfully, you need to have a clear, structured motivation: A PRINCIPLE. Principles are the roots, the foundation, of everything you ever want to achieve in your life.
In the Parelli Programm, there are only 8 principles. If you have a true understanding of those principles, you dream, feel, act and think like a horse. Then there's more than just a horse and just a human... there's horsemanship.
EIGHT PRINCIPLES
1. Horse-Man-Ship is natural
2. Dont' make or teach assumptions
3. Communication is 2 or more individuals sharing and understanding an idea.
4. Horses & humans have mutual responsibilities.
5. The attitude of justice is effective.
6. Body language is the universal language.
7. Horses teach humans & humans teach horses.
8. Principles, pupose & time are the tools of teaching.
I'll explain them in my next posts, but I suggest you learn them by heart. To me, these principles are the beginning, the middle and the end of everything I do with horses, and it makes everything so much easier... I can guarantee your horse is going to adore you when you master these principles...
*Car broke... at the garage... is going to cost me WAY TO MUCH money for such an old WRECK... but I don't yet have a job, so the damn thing has to run untill it dies... I am SO pissed off! *Still looking for a job, the chat with the Proximus guy didn't go so smooth, but I still have 2 other applications running. *Next week I have the evaluation test for the police. *I want to go to the nice and warm fitness center... but I first have to wait untill my car is fixed.
And I'm dreaming about my own appartment, a fine job, a nice new car and especially A HORSE! Last weekend we went for a walk with Crumpie and got a little bit lost. At the end of an agricultural we found a beautiful pasture, with an even more beautiful 2yr old warmblood in it. She was alone, and came floating towards us, in a nice flowing trot. My heart melted!
Obama is the official president of the United States...
And I am officially subscribed for the first recruitment test of the police! I am also training pretty hard to run longer and faster... Yesterday I ran 1600m in 12 minutes, which is an average of 8,5km an hour... this after only 12 days of training...
Yes! I finally have an appointment with a serious company! They're looking for extern sales people for a phone company. If the first months go well I get a car.. Sounds interesting!
Yesterday I went body jamming, it was fun! This evening I go to the yoga class... becoming balanced!
2009 will be the year of building emotional, mental, physical and financial fitness... I am still looking for a job, which is actually more difficult than I thought at first. There are a lot of crappy jobs, but I am looking for something that looks nice on my resume... but I guess I'll just have to hang in there, and keep on looking.
So my days were quite lazy, altough I have the time to get things in order, like paper work for instance.
BUT the main thing is that I took a Gold Pass at Health City, a very nice fitness center! For the next 12 months I can go everyday to train, lift, run, swim, cycle, jump, and all that stuff... and afterwards I can take a shower, sauna, steam bath or relax under a solar screen I wonder how much better I will look and feel next year
I started just this Friday, so I only did the Cardio training, but after the tests with my consultant next week i can start doing the strenght exercices. Tonight I am going to do my first lesson of Body Jam, that's a work out on music...
I hope I can maintain this standard of happiness I feel right now, that I find my way into a job that suits me, so I can buy a horse in a reasonable period of time...
Horses give you the feeling that everything else is less important.
Apparently, I had to do more than just the test of French... in the end I spent all afternoon making tests... It's been a while since I challenged my brain, so I was out of my comfort zone. At the end of the day I called the agency, and I was positively surprised by the results:
(Maximum score is 5) English: 4 French: 2,5 Calculating: 3 Logical thinking: 3 Speed and accuracy: 3 Understanding a written explanation: 4
I had a special remark for my test of English: I had 74 correct answers out of 80 questions! Yihaa!
These results are really okay, so they're going to introduce me at Proximus, which is the biggest phone company in Belgium..... I'm looking forward to it!
*recovering from a major jet lag. *celebrating christmas here at home with my family. *getting my application forms ready to send. *celebrating new years eve eating gourmet and stone grill, and afterwards we went dancing a little bit. It was fun! Today I have an online test French, later they will call me for which vacancies I'm suitable. Interesting!
My dog is ill... she probably won't make it much longer. We've been to the vet 3 times already, and she's still very sick. Monday we'll go to take pictures of her intestins.
By this time tomorrow I'll be on the Orlando airport... snif snif. So now I am packing like a maniac... all the space in my luggage needs to be superefficiently organised... Because else I'll have to leave things here... I still have lots of stuff to pack..
Yesterday we had a party over at Karens place.. It was very nice! We ate BBQchicken, fresh oisters and clamps, and Julie made some chili. It was delicious! A lot of people from the ranch were there. Brian and Jay played old country western songs on their guitars, and I had a real nice chat with Lauren. Suddenly she was talking about the rich history of Belgium, while I was standing behind her She visited Ieper and Waterloo (if you don't know these places you should google them immediately!), and also said that the Belgian food is the best food in the world..; I like that girl!
I am ready to go now... I experienced the 6 weeks all the way now, I still had a taste of the country and the people.. And I also know why I go home: there's no place like Antwerp. Friday I showed some pictures of my city to Julie: the cathedral, the museum of arts, the Carolus Boromeus church, the Meir, ... Now that I experienced what it's like to be in a country with a very limited history I'm for sure going to look at ours with different eyes.
I had a fantastic time here... and I am confident that things will go better at home as well.
If you wonder why I am suddenly so quiet: I am applying for jobs. I sent 21 mails to 11 different agencies... If I come home tuesday there's going to be at least 1 positive reaction for me... Fingers crossed!
If you speak German this is THE site you HAVE to visit! If you don't, just find out where the pictures are.... http://www.lancretio.de/
It is the homepage of Iris, who shared the 6 weeks with me. She is a student of the Parelli program and she competes in S-dressage in Germany. I experienced her as a very centered person, and therefore nice to hang out with. One of the good things about following this program is that you learn how to be positive, progressive and natural, and I think you can find this qualities in her, and as well in what she writes on her website. Therefore I think it's very interesting to see the mass amount of pictures she took and her comments with it.
The course is over, so now it is time to let everything soak in, and enjoy my last week here in Florida.
In opposit to what I experienced during the weekends of my previous stay in Florida I didn't see so much of the country. That's mainly because this time I didn't have my party loving friends Sergio and Kyanna, and I also didn't have a rental car to go places. What I did have was... California girl with a comfortable Suburban.... who was so friendly to drive us 'everywhere' for 50 bucks a week. I soon found out that the word 'everything' covers the following places: Western World, Walmart, Mac Donalds, the Smoothie place, Wendy's, the Petro truck stop, Publix, Target, Best Buy, and of course the mall (both the Paddock Mall in Ocala as the Oaks Mall in Gainesville). The only exciting things I've seen during the weekends is the bowling alley and the movie theatre... Of course I am very grateful that I had a ride to get the supplies we needed to stay alive, and afer all I had a lot of fun with my 2nd roommate Gerlinde (I'll spare you guys the story about my roommates, but I returned the crappy one and got I nice one in return). At this point now I see that the gap between the cultures is more than Country Western Music and the type of car you drive in. In Belgium I never ever go shopping full days... 3 or 4 hours at max. Let alone that you do that every week, six weeks in a row.... I had a creepy feeling crawling down to my spine that this can be indeed ALL, and than I mean literally ALL life is about over here...
BUT Sunday morning Julie, Angelica, Gerlinde and me went to the cane grind. That's a harvest party of sugar canes. It was at a big old Southern house, which this family bought from the Spanish over a hundred years ago... real pioneers! The lady of the house was a real artist. She made jelly, bread and sirrup from the fruits of her garden, and she also decorated her Christmas tree with all natural things. We saw the cane being stripped into a machine that sqeezed the moisture out of the canes, and that was cooked above a special fire... It smelled delicious! Then we were invited to eat saucages, biscuits with sugar cane sirrup, and a big cup of coffee. We chatted with the grandma, the children and the grandchildren. In the afternoon we came back to buy more of their goodies, and everybody was there: 4 generations playing and chatting and having fun, ... of course a couple of dogs, some bikers... Black people and white people.. I loved it! A garden party in december... It felt like I was dropped in the middle of a movie scene
In the end the lady said to me that she was happy that a foreigner got to meet the real Florida... I have a lot of pictures which I'll soon put on Webshots... I had a fabulous time over there! I feel very lucky to find out that Florida is more than a nature park disturbed by huge commercial areas. Florida has the real southern soul....
Just a thought about last week: chaos is an essential stage of a learning process. It's the step where all the pieces of the puzzle are on a big pile on the table, the only thing you have to do is find the right construction. I think becoming a horseman is like a puzzle... Your horse, yourself, the principles and the purpose are the pieces, your learning curve defines the time line on which you add the pieces together. The more structure and consistency you build, the easier the puzzle will be. It's like finding the corner pieces first, that are the principles. Then the side pieces, that are the level 1 basics. Everything in between is attached to that. Level 10 is seeing the whole picture...
Yesterday I tried all the stuff, all at once: Longitudinal flexion using a fluid rein, latitudinal flexion using a direct rein, indirect rein, a suspension rein, and also transitions using a suspension rein... The fluid rein was ok, suspension rein was ok while on a latitudinal pattern (simply said: a cirlce), transitions was .. less. I was amazed on how particular you have to be in your body (The drag queen position, or contra-latitudinal position), especially your shoulder and hip position to get a nice response in your horses body and get him to soften his jaw. This stuff is really high level... Very interesting!
I also noticed he's not yet confident with the bit in his mouth, although he accepts it very well. Further I observed that he's not capable of shortening or lengthening his stride... he just speeds up or slows down without any difference in his body shape. Interesting!
The major things I have to work on are: RELAXATION!!!! Big time... Swinging the ribs so he's physically capable of moving his rib cage and swinging his shoulders more out and forward.
How can I let this horse move more like a tiger, and less like a turtle?
Yesterday my roommate told me I'm really pretty much the same as the Scrat, from the Ice Age movie I think it's a real good image to store in my head... whenever I go back to the extremes of my quadrant, I can think about that cartoon, and relax a little bit. After all, there's nothing wrong with being a Scrat, we're very friendly animals.... just a little completely crazy
I had a fabulous day Saturday. Very easy on line session, and I spent a long time in the arena. I played with a circle pattern, follow the rail, tit for tat, pushing passenger and figure 8. In the end my impulsion at the walk and the trot were perfect! I was really happy that day, because the results were more then I expected.
No further information today because my brain is cooked.
