Brianna's Blog Post # 14

Discipline

(The mare who has inspired a great deal of my discipline!)

I have been reading another book, this time of my own accord which means no date to procrastinate to. It is The Road Less Traveled written by M Scott Peck. The Road Less Traveled is an analysis of human behaviors, tendencies, and misconceptions. It reveals many ugly truths to the way we perceive our world via the educated eyes of a psychiatrist.

There is a particular theme throughout Peck’s work that appears to apply directly to improving one's riding and one’s general horsemanship. The theme is that of discipline. Peck explains how discipline is important to one's spiritual growth meaning you must have discipline if you ever wish to improve and come closer to a true sense of humanity.

When I looked at this from an equestrians perspective I accepted that to be the most successful with horses one must be humane. We can not ask of our horses what we do not ask of ourselves. Thus if we do not require ourselves to be self disciplined, we can not ask our horses to be self disciplined.  

Riders often ask their horses to have self carriage, to be straight, to be light on the forehand, and adjustable. If a rider is self disciplined then they will ask the same of themselves before they ever ask it of their horse. Asking more of our horses than we ask of ourselves is the same as if someone tried to teach something they knew nothing about. And this is in itself unfair and inhuman.Thus the rider must have self carriage and a sense of self awareness. They can not be crooked in their bodies or carry more weight in one hand or the other. They to must be light in their forehands, or really their hands, because a heavy handed rider creates a heavy forehanded horse.     

As for adjustability, the rider must be an expert at adjusting the way they ride. Not every horse will appreciate the riders way of riding on their default setting. This means that the rider must be able to adjust according to the requirements of the horse. The rider must be willing to adapt, grow, and be open to new information. The most successful teachers are the ones who love learning more about their subject and are constantly updating and improving the way they teach. This is our job as self disciplined riders.

With that said there is the question of how the imperfect rider (since we are not all perfect) ever learns to train or to train better if we are being inhuman by teaching what we do not know. This is where the rider must be disciplined enough to recognize when they have overstepped their bounds and humble enough to seek guidance for the benefit of themselves and their horse. It is also important that we recognize our imperfections and train with these in mind so as not to compromise the horse with our bad habits.

Peck defines discipline as the ability to control one's emotions. This is where we choose how to respond to a situation instead of acting on impulse. We must act against our natural reactions to the horse and instead respond with an educated and contemplated response guided by self discipline and humanity.