All Your Body Needs

by Melinda Folse News Riding Through Thick & Thin

“How might you begin to reframe how you regard your physical being in kinder, gentler terms?”

—Riding Through Thick & Thin

Answering this question can be a new and different game changer in the battle against negative body image. When we start to really think about our body and all it does for us every day — all we can do because of countless split-second miracles firing one after another in rapid succession (and some simultaneously) — it is hard not to realize what we’re taking for granted.

So if you’ve ever caught yourself using words like “buffalo butt,” ” thunder thighs,” “candles,” “tree trunks,” “batwings,” ” muffin top,” ” boulder boobs,” “rollo,” “jelly belly” and other similar insults to your physique, you’ve got some apologizing to do to these fine body parts. To ride a horse takes strength, stamina, and flexibility. Caring for a horse requires even more than that.

melinda-does-this-horse-make-my-butt-look-big

Tossing around bales of hay, unloading sacks of grain, carrying water buckets, mucking stalls, piloting a wheelbarrow loaded with manure and dumping it without mishap, yanking on a lunge line trying thwart a 1000-pound tantrum on the other end, moving fence panels, operating heavy machinery and oh so much more means that as a keeper of horses you are stronger than most and your body deserves not only good conditioning and care (maybe even as thoughtful care as you give your best horse), it also deserves a thank you every now and then — and some nice words used to describe it, even in the privacy of your own mirror.

Try this simple language conversion chart on for size:

And no, I’m not saying we shouldn’t try to be improving our “wobbly bits” in terms of fitness and health, but ironically, the shortest path to making any changes or improvements we seek is accepting and loving the body we have RIGHT NOW. Once you’ve mended this important internal fence, then making gradual lifestyle changes in terms of fitness and nutrition will likely move you toward your goal on a surer and swifter course than all those name-calling-and-crash-diet strategies you’ve tried in the past.

Give it a try. Aren’t you worth it?

As always, I’d love for you to share your thoughts on Facebook, Twitter, or via email.

This post was originally published by Equisearch.com

See Yourself As Your Horse Sees You

by Melinda Folse News Riding Through Thick & Thin

Something about being female — and most especially a female rider — sets up a different kind of self-scrutiny than whatever gets loaded into the male circuit board that allows plus-sized cowboys to hop onto quarter horses to cut, rope, rein their way to championship runs without even so much as a second thought about the watermelon-sized gut hanging over an over-cranked belt. We women, on the other hand, can worry ourselves sick over a little extra pudge — and God forbid — a muffin top. To go up a size in jeans is to admit failure or some personal shortcoming we can’t even name. And nowhere is this more true than in the show ring.

Why is this, I ask you? Or, possibly even more important, what can we do to get past it? How can we learn to think differently about our bodies, even if they aren’t the size or shape we want them to be? As long as we’re fit, strong and healthy, do our horses even care?

Jenni, whose story appears in full in Riding Through Thick & Thin is a perfect example, I think of both the kind of garbage we can take on about our bodies — and the exhilaration to be had in overcoming it. Jenni was born into a line of women, her grandmother, specifically, who truly believed “being skinny” was key to any success a woman should aspire to. “I was never tiny enough to meet her expectations,” Jenni writes, adding that some of the things that are conditioned in childhood often stick with us for life.

After spending most of her childhood and teenage years believing she was “this obese monster who would never achieve anything,” Jenni met Mary, a friend at high school who rode horses. While Jenny really wanted to ride, she was afraid. Not of the riding or the horses, mind you, but that the extra 15 pounds she carried would be just too much. “ I was fearful of how I would look in breeches,” she says, “I was fearful the horse would stumble with me because I was so fat.”

Jenni says she remembers Mary, laughing at her, saying like, “Jenni, the horse weighs a ton. Literally. Get over yourself. You are not fat, and the horse will never care.”

The horse will never care.

“And he didn’t care,” Jenni says. “And you wanna know who else didn’t care? The instructor didn’t care. And all the girls at the barn felt funny in breeches. NOBODY cared how “fat” I was.”

Jenni says that while she may not be Olympic material, she turned out to be a pretty good rider. What’s even more important is that putting her focus on riding helped her break free of the hang-ups she had about her body, once and for all (Take that, Grams!)”

For all the Jenni and Grams stories out there (and believe me, in researching Riding Through Thick & Thin I met plenty of them), the names and details may change, but the body angst is shockingly similar.) In fact, part of why I wrote this book in the first place was to get to the bottom of exactly what drives this kind of body angst. Whether or not our self-criticism — or the criticism of others —has even a pinky toe in reality, we have to wonder what it is that makes us take it on. And how we can set ourselves free.

Spoiler Alert: the first step isn’t losing weight or exorcizing that muffin top. To break this cycle we must first learn to look at our bodies in the light of acceptance —without any judgment or plan for changing anything. Now allow yourself to feel what you’re feeling — without any need to shut it off or to fix it. See yourself — maybe for the first time in your life — with a big, open, kind, and loving heart.

I’d love to know what your horse doesn’t care about! Reach out to me on Facebook, Twitter, on my website, or via email. I look forward to hearing from you.

This post was originally published by Equisearch.com

It’s Not What We Have, But What We Do With It That Counts

by Melinda Folse News Riding Through Thick & Thin

All jokes aside, it really isn’t as much our size that matters most when we ride; it’s what we do with the body we have that makes all the difference. Once we really understand and accept this, the better we’ll ride, the easier we’ll be on our horses, and the more fun we’ll have on this glorious trail we all share, regardless of our weight or body type.

If you’ve ever fallen into the trap of thinking that you will only be able to ride well when you get into those size 6 breeches or Wranglers, I’m here to pull you out with the advice of one of my favorite experts, Coach Daniel Stewart, author of Ride Right, and Pressure Proof Your Riding. “Any body shape can ride to success,” concurs Coach Stewart. “You just have to find your own definition of what success is for you — within reason.”

Coach Stewart helps us move away from judgment and toward practical solutions that help us make the most of what we do have going for us and mitigate those things that are, well, less than ideal. He even makes a clever comparison between horse breeds and human body types to illustrate how in our horses we accept physical build and attributes of each breed without question (or any sort of bemoaning) — and then we match those attributes to what we ask that horse to do.

As one of our virtual panel of experts in Riding Through Thick and Thin, Coach Stewart tells us, that regardless of our riding goals, developing our own unique set of affirmations around what we do have going for us is what lays the thought groundwork for future success, however we may define it. “We have to train a rider to find whatever is in her that’s positive,” Coach Stewart says, “and then we can build from there.”

So now that you’ve taken that unflinching and self-compassionate look at your body with an honest assessment of what you have to work with, acknowledging any challenges without judgment, it’s time to make a plan to put yourself in a place where you can do the very best you can with all you have and all you are. With this as our new mindset and mantra, we may be both surprised and delighted at what we can achieve! In Riding Through Thick and Thin I offer readers a self-test to help determine exactly where they’ll be beginning this journey to a better body image; CLICK HERE to download this free self-evaluation form to find your own starting point!

I’d love to hear your success stories — and how making this shift in how you think about your body has made a difference in your riding, your outlook, and your overall sense of satisfaction with your body, in or out of the saddle! Reach out to me on Facebook, Twitter, my website or by email.

This post was originally published by Equisearch.com

Get Out Of Your Head And Into Your Body

by Melinda Folse News Riding Through Thick & Thin

“Spending some time learning to separate fact from fiction and truth from ‘mounted mythology’ can make all the difference in our ride.”— Riding Through Thick & Thin.

Do you have a “rider’s body?” You know the one. Long and lanky, legs that can wrap a horse, arms that reach without leaning, flat belly (and chest), strength without bulk, and most likely, a blonde pony tail.

Whatever.

The rest of us spend our riding lives trying to make what we have work, and most likely, bemoaning our short limbs, thick waist, big boobs, or whatever pains us most. To that my Riding Through Thick & Thin experts say, “Snap out of it!”

“You can’t change short legs, a big frame, a long torso, and so on — it’s the body God gave you,” says Susan Harris in Riding Through Thick and Thin, “And while you can’t change the fundamental shape and conformation of your body, you can learn how to work with your body’s characteristics to maximize your effectiveness in the saddle.”

So what does this mean? I think above all it means that any time spent bemoaning our shape and size is time wasted. Instead of descending down that proverbial rabbit hole, I offer up (with the help of some generous experts) another option. What if we look objectively at our own bodies and spend our energy figuring out how to make the most of what we have? And, if there are things we can do to maximize our capabilities, such as increasing our core strength, amping up our upper body, finding a more secure place of balance, or simply incorporating mindfulness habits to help us “ground, center and grow,” in the words of the late great Sally Swift, this is where we can re-engage our noggins in a more productive direction.

Namely, this is where we can set some specific, measurable goals, identify the active steps to achieving each one, and give ourselves a deadline for accomplishing each step. And remember, the smaller the steps you can identify, the more doable each endeavor will become.

Set yourself up for success with objective evaluation, deliberate thinking and baby steps that will add up to big results!

I’d love to hear from you! Reach out to me on Twitter, Facebook, by email or through my website.

This post was originally published by Equisearch.com

It’s In There, Dorothy

by Melinda Folse News Riding Through Thick & Thin

“Be open to change, to acceptance, to whatever it takes to learn what is real, authentic, true and right —and let go of all that’s not.” —Riding Through Thick and Thin

This is truly one of the big ideas behind Riding Through Thick and Thin. It’s just so easy to get caught up in what we think others think, what others actually say — and what society deems acceptable . . . and not-so-acceptable. To make peace with our body image and make changes (or not!) for our greatest good, it’s time to pull the plug on this endless loop once and for all.

Through countless interviews with experts, scholarly and not-so-scholarly articles, scientific journals, and casual conversations with real women facing real struggles over how they feel in the skin their in, here’s what I learned in the process of researching this book:

First, it doesn’t really seem to matter whether we’re talking about a few pounds or a few hundred; the mindset and words used to describe these feelings is shockingly similar — and more often than not, driven by the opinions of others.

Second, to open ourselves to real change in how we think, feel, and talk about our body means turning our focus inward instead of simply internalizing the input from the world around us. It’s time to get quiet and face our body issues squarely, and then do what we need to do to figure out our own best answers.

Finally, sometimes this may mean taking others’ observations to heart and making lifestyle changes that will lead to improved health and fitness. Or it may mean (lovingly) telling them to go jump in the nearest lake.

It’s only when we learn to reach for our own deep truths that we can begin to sift what’s real from what’s not. It’s in there, Dorothy — and it has been all along. Go inside and find it.

And let me know when you do! Reach out to me on Twitter, Facebook, my website, or by email. I look forward to hearing from you!

This post was originally published by Equisearch.com

Find Your Spot

by Melinda Folse Riding Through Thick & Thin

As we begin to focus more on our rider biomechanics — that is, learning to ride in a more balanced connection with our horse — sooner or later we happen onto a moment when we feel this connection. We are moving as one with the horse, our energy is completely connected with his. I’m not a golfer but from what I hear this is akin to the perfect drive; people who enjoy this sport of immense frustration say that once you experience that feeling you’re hooked — it’s what keeps you coming back after the other times when you want to (or actually do) throw your clubs in the lake. I am a tennis player, so I can equate this “sweet spot” to the moment when everything comes together — footwork, body positioning, swing, speed and power — and that ball comes off the center of your strings and travels just exactly as you intend to the precise target you have chosen. It’s a beautiful thing. And once you experience it, you want more of it.

Riding a horse, which as Riding Through Thick and Thin expert source Susan Harris puts it, “is the only sport I know of where one species sits on top of another,” the challenge of riding well is finding that sweet spot of connection between our horse’s center of balance and our own. Sticking a tentative toe into the world of physics in a consult with Dr. Jacob Barandes of Harvard University Department of Physics, I learned that this has everything to do with not only where our body is on the back of the horse, but our own individual height and weight. Put simply, it’s an individual thing; we each have to find our own spot.

This is not about how we look when we ride. This is beyond the old “ears, shoulders, hips, heels” body alignment. This is all about how you feel as you move forward with your horse at any gait. When you find it, you’ll know it. And once you find it, you’ll get better and better at finding it again. Eventually, it’s the only place you’ll ride — finding this spot will become as automatic to you as checking your cinch. This simple work of experimentation and tuning in to your horse and your own body can change the way you ride forever. Give it a try the next time you ride and let me know when you find your spot! Reach out to me on Facebook, Twitter, my website or by email.

This post was originally published by Equisearch.com

Accept All “Great Truths” Carefully

by Melinda Folse Riding Through Thick & Thin The Smart Woman's Guide to Midlife Horses Women and Horses

How do you know what you think you know on a given subject? In the horse world, sometimes the “great truths” handed down from our fellow equestrians, other disciplines, and preceding generations can be real — or the farthest thing from actual truth.

There’s an old saying I have always loved — and have experienced time and time again in interviewing all kinds of “horse people” for both The Smart Woman’s Guide to Midlife Horsesand Riding Through Thick and Thin: “Anytime you get three horse people together you will most likely find that they will not be able to agree on anything. However, when one of the three leaves the conversation, the other two will finally agree on one thing: the one who left was definitely wrong.”

I think the most important lesson to draw from this “great truth” is that while it’s important to consult the experts, to educate yourself and to listen to those who have “been there, done that” (do we really want to make all the mistakes ourselves?), it is equally if not more important to use the noggin and inner guidance you were born with to learn how to figure some things out for yourself.

How do you know you’re on the right track? You get quiet on the inside and learn how to really see what you’re seeing, hear what you’re hearing and feel what you’re feeling. With practice, this authentic, on-board guidance system we all are born with (but sometimes needs to be primed and rebooted, if you’re pardon the mix of mechanical and technological metaphor) will indeed help you listen, filter the advice, information and sometimes plain nonsense you encounter — and just know what you need and quite often, what your horse needs from you. Horses are great helpers for finding our authenticity — and discovering our own answers— but our part of the bargain is that we have to learn how to get quiet, use our innate gifts of observation and intuition, and teach ourselves to trust what comes. Give it a try and let me know what happens. I’d wager that every horse person alive has a story about this — I’d love to hear them! Please share them with me on Twitter, Facebook, my website, or email me at mkfolse@gmail.com

This post was originally published by Equisearch.com

Teach Your Fitbit™ to Ride!

by Melinda Folse Riding Through Thick & Thin

If you, like me, have joined the Fitbit™ craze and are challenging yourself daily to get those 10,000 steps (and are mystified at how MANY steps it takes to hit that mark consistently!), you may also be wondering how to calculate those steps — and the workout settings to use when you’re riding.

Now I do admit that I giggled a little the first time my wrist buzzed with the 10,000-step woohoo . . . during a long trot on Trace. I patted him and thanked him and gladly took credit for HIS steps, thinking that perhaps I was working hard enough to merit at least partial credit.

So when I found this great post by Susan Friedland Smith on her wonderful Saddle Seeks Horse blog, I was at once disappointed and encouraged by her bit of delving that helps clarify how we can use our Fitbits, ride our horses, and still get an accurate picture of how we’re doing when it comes to our fitness seeking goals.

I do encourage you to read the whole post (and a big shout out to Susan for doing this work for all of us!) but the upshot is that when we put the thing in workout mode, we can more easily see that a vigorous ride burns as many calories (and uses as many muscles, if not more!) than many popular gym workouts (Susan compares a vigorous, but fairly routine riding lesson to the calorie burn in her spin class).

The bigger issue with using Fitbit when riding is the step count. The challenge is figuring out how to subtract the right number of steps for the duration of a ride, and then go back to regular human step counting for the rest of our day. Susan says that she discovered that if we select “Workout” (which is technically horseback riding) and then the category of “Driving” from the drop down list on the exercise menu of various workouts, it gives a pretty accurate assessment of calorie burn during a ride. For the record, I do agree with Susan that a few minor coding tweaks would make Fitbit sales skyrocket in the horse world (are you listening, Fitbit execs???): “If the developers had foresight enough to know that equestrians would want to use a Fitbit for horseback riding to track fitness data, why not make a few coding tweaks so that when horseback riding is entered, it will deduct the step count during the timeframe in which the exercise took place?”

I also agree that none of these concerns or adjustments take away the the practical fun of using my Fitbit to keep myself moving toward my overall fitness goals. With this technology and Susan’s advice, (assuming we can remember to do it) we can tweak our settings, tap a button at the beginnings and ends of our rides, and actually get to count our rides as part of our exercise regimen. By being able to gauge the intensity of each ride as part of our “workout” (And understanding that we do need to do make sure to do other work to balance the riding muscle groups to prevent imbalance and overuse injuries), we can now give ourselves credit (and kiss our horses) for what is likely a major contributor to our overall fitness regimen.

As we all learn more about this great tracking device and discover more ways to tweak and use its features in ways that apply specifically to riding and barn chores, let’s share them here and start a groundswell that just might get the attention of those Fitbit and bring about the programming we need most!

Comment here, email me, or add your comment to Facebook, Twitter, or my website, and tell us how you use your Fitbit to track your progress toward your riding fitness goals!

This post was originally published by Equisearch.com

Seeds of Experience: Riding Through Thick & Thin

by Melinda Folse Riding Through Thick & Thin

Writers often like to ponder (sometimes as a procrastination device!) both the unsuspecting origins of whatever we’re working on at the time AND sifting through current experiences for hints of what may be next. The truth is we can look all we want to — we usually have no idea what is currently shaping our future work; part of the mystery we all live with is how projects unfold — and from where. You just never know which ones will surprise you by working out well — and which certain “home runs” end up dragging, dejected, back into the dugout to lick their strike-out wounds. Realizing that there is a finite number of books each of us can write in our lifetime, we have to ask as we begin each one, why should this be one of them?

After I finished and lived with The Smart Woman’s Guide to Midlife Horses, which was one of those unexpected out-of-the park experiences that still mystifies me, I really didn’t know what I would be writing about next. Then a call from my publisher piqued my curiosity about whether I would be able to come up with a way to write about body image and riding horses in such a way as to help people think, feel, and behave differently around how riders feel about their own bodies — and how that affects the way the ride.

Fast forward a few years to the release of my new book, Riding Through Thick & Thin. This was a topic I was familiar enough with to write about, having struggled with the same 20-30 pounds for most of my life — and a ridiculous amount of self doubt that rode along with it. In remembering those rides — as a young teen, as a 20-something, and as now as a 50-something — I know firsthand how this special connection with a horse evokes empowerment and freedom that can drown self-doubt in a sea of exhilaration. As I delved into my research, talked to experts and women of all kinds, shapes and sizes, something else became apparent. This topic transcends horses and riding into a much bigger arena — however, the horse world offers up to may solid metaphors to ignore.

So with that in mind, I invite you to ride along with me for a while on this journey, whether you’re a rider, like horses, or are just curious about how getting #bodypositive will help you banish your own self doubts and rediscover the joy of whatever thrills you!

This post was originally published by Equisearch.com

Does this horse make my butt look big?

by Melinda Folse News

About two years after The Smart Woman’s Guide to Midlife Horses hit the mark for so many “women of a certain age,” now coming back to owning and/or riding horses, Trafalgar Square Books approached me with a new challenge: now let’s do a book about body image and riding.

A what?

Several things intrigued me here. A cursory review of “load” research told me that a floppy 120-pounder could actually feel heavier to a horse than a fit, well-balanced 200-something. A little further investigation revealed that being fit in this sense has nothing to do with size-6 jeans. Rather, it requires an integrated approach to fitness that unites stamina, strength and flexibility (affectionately dubbed the “holy trinity of rider fitness”).

Another interesting factor that popped up right away is how women are conditioned from birth to compare their bodies to others. In a bizarre combination of cultural brainwashing that condones fat shaming with overactive inner critics, many, if not most women internalize the message (whether there is any reality to it or not) that they’re not thin enough, tall enough, leggy enough or whatever-else-enough for whatever we aspire to.

This silliness has done a lot of damage to women’s self-esteem around the planet, including mine, and that just makes me mad. Taking this whole conundrum into the arena of riding and working with horses — the ultimate authenticity enforcers — it makes no sense at all. And yet, this emotionally crippling condition is reaching epidemic proportions, with many women either giving up or overcorrecting in the form of eating disorders.

As an admitted self-help junkie, and one who has similarly struggled, I couldn’t refuse the opportunity for another deep exploration that would crisscross experts in many different fields, in and out of the horse world, to come up with some useful information and maybe even a few missing answers. Mostly I wanted to develop an arsenal of tools that could help all who struggle with these issues to find their way out of this black hole of self doubt and into the joy we’re meant to have riding horses.

Challenge, however, came quickly on the heels of intrigue. What could I possibly find to say about all this that hasn’t been said before? How in the world would I find and approach people to ask them the important questions about this sensitive topic? Who would help me?

The outpouring of support was amazing. From experts inside and outside the horse world to psychologists and nutritionists; from trainers (both horse and human) to all kinds of women — riders at every level, from all over the world — stories, information, advice and insight infused this project. As I explored, gathered, curated, and organized this information, and with the help of many key others including my deeply committed Trafalgar Square editors, we wrestled this torrent of support into an ironically hefty book filled with, yes, some new ideas, insights, and combinations of strategies I’m proud to present as Riding Through Thick and Thin.

This book is hot off the press, and I’m excited to hear what resonates, what further questions arise, and how we can make this information most useful to those who have been searching for it. In this space I’ll be unpacking some of these ideas a little further (there’s more to my stockpile than can possibly be contained in a single book and I’d love to share it!), so please post your comments, questions, and requests, and I’ll do my very best to supply any additional information you need. Message me on Facebook, Twitter, or via email.

I look forward to hearing from you!

Melinda

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This post was originally published by Equisearch.com

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Tagged: Trafalgar Square Books

All Your Body Needs

See Yourself As Your Horse Sees You

It’s Not What We Have, But What We Do With It That Counts

Get Out Of Your Head And Into Your Body

“Spending some time learning to separate fact from fiction and truth from ‘mounted mythology’ can make all the difference in our ride.”— Riding Through Thick & Thin.

It’s In There, Dorothy

“Be open to change, to acceptance, to whatever it takes to learn what is real, authentic, true and right —and let go of all that’s not.” —Riding Through Thick and Thin

Find Your Spot

Accept All “Great Truths” Carefully

Teach Your Fitbit™ to Ride!

Seeds of Experience: Riding Through Thick & Thin

Does this horse make my butt look big?

Permanent change to deeply-ingrained body image issues is not only possible, but it may be much easier than we think.