A Journey to Softness E-Book

Mark Rashid

• Herausgeber: J A Allen
• Kategorie: Lebensstil
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2016

Beschreibung

Mark Rashid shares personal stories about events in his life that helped him on his journey to softness, as well as the stumbling blocks along the way. The narrative includes a section in which Mark passes on the experiences of others from a wide variety of walks of life and occupations, all sharing their views on how feel, connection and softness apply to their respective professions. Those interviewed for this special section include a musician who has written and performed several number one country music hits, a highly decorated helicopter pilot, a movie actor, a college professor, a master carpenter, an artist, and numerous others. What the reader learns by example is how to develop feel, relaxation, connection, and softness in both horse and rider. The methods and techniques Mark demonstrated have been gleaned from decades of work with horses and horse people, as well as while he trained with world-class martial artists whose lives have been dedicated to developing softness and connection with a partner through feel.

Leseprobe

Journey to

Softness

In Search of Feel and

Connection with the Horse

Mark Rashid

Foreword by Skip Ewing

J.A. ALLEN

First published in Great Britain in 2016 by

J.A. Allen

www.allenbooks.co.uk

J.A. Allen is an imprint of

The Crowood Press

The Stable Block

Crowood Lane

Ramsbury

Wiltshire SN8 2HR

www.crowood.com

This e-book first published in 2016

Copyright © 2016 Mark Rashid

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, by any means, without written permission of the publisher, except by a reviewer quoting brief excerpts for a review in a magazine, newspaper, or website.

Disclaimer of Liability

The author and publisher shall have neither liability nor responsibility to any person or entity with respect to any loss or damage caused or alleged to be caused directly or indirectly by the information contained in this book. While the book is as accurate as the author can make it, there may be errors, omissions, and inaccuracies.

J.A. Allen encourages the use of approved safety helmets in all equestrian sports and activities.

British Library Cataloging-in-Publication Data

A catalogue record of this book is available from the British Library.

ISBN 978-1-90880-949-0

Cover photograph by Fall River Productions ([email protected])

Book design by Laury Eddlemon

Cover design by RM Didier

Typefaces: Gotham, Helvetica Neue

For Declan, Jack, and Brinley

Contents

Foreword by Skip Ewing

Preface

1 Powerful Softness

Softness from the Inside Out—Angela Ewing

2 The Pull

Offering the Inside of Ourselves to Our Horses—Shannon Brown

3 Internal Softness

Thoughts on Connection, Feel, and Softness—Michelle Scully

4 Initial Contact

The Difference Between “Make” and “Help”—Walter Josey

5 Friction

The More You Listen, the More You Hear—Lee Cranney

6 Working the Edge

Cultivating Softness—Lasell Jaretzki Bartlett

7 Simplicity

“Feel” Is a Verb—Tim Harvey

8 Feel

Opening to Softness—Crissi McDonald

9 Softness

Afterword: An Exercise in Softness

Foreword

Gratitude.

For the fact that you’re reading this. For the fact that you may have chosen to ask the question, “How can I be even more skillful for my horse, any horse, every horse?” or perhaps “What might be here that opens the door of greater understanding, not just of horses, but of others … of myself?”

Gratitude.

For the journey you’ve already taken and the myriad decisions that may have led you to pick up this book; to watch, listen, learn, practice, care, try, refine, try again, teach, train, try yet again, and perhaps even transform habits and ways of thinking that no longer serve your relationships well, including the relationship you have with yourself.

Gratitude.

For the long history of effort leading to the heart and intention behind the words in this book and the many others my friend Mark Rashid has written.

Friend? I meant brother.

Gratitude.

For the offer to be involved with so many hearts, so many horses, and so many humans on so many levels.

Gratitude.

To all of you, for your willingness to reconsider the horse, again, and again, and again.

Gratitude.

I believe it’s the best place to begin, an even better place to end, and a good way to assure that every ending is an even more skillful beginning.

As a friend of mine once wrote with me, “If you got it right more times than you got it wrong … you got it right.”

Friend? I meant brother.

With great confidence that you know the spirit in which this was written,

Skip Ewing, Singer and Songwriter

“You Got It Right” (Skip Ewing, Mark Rashid) © 2013 Write! Music (BMI)/Rocking 5 R (BMI). Lyrics used by permission.

Preface

Very early on, as I began working on the outline for this book, I realized that one of the main concepts I wanted to share was the fact that the development of softness truly is a journey—one with a beginning and a middle, but not necessarily an end. One of the other concepts I wanted to try to impart is the fact that if we’re not working on softness in everything we do, achieving it when we are with our horses is going to be considerably more difficult.

I asked a few friends, all with different backgrounds, from different walks of life, and from different parts of the country, if they would be willing to share some thoughts on how the practice of softness has helped them in their respective occupations, as well as with their horsemanship. Many of them were kind enough to jot down their ideas on the subject, and these can be found throughout this book as “Reflections from My Friends.” My thanks to all who contributed!

Mark Rashid

Estes Park, Colorado

There is strengthin muscle, butpower in softness.

—Mark Rashid

Powerful Softness  1

Dwight and I hadn’t been on horseback very long when we reached the top of a small mesa and looked down into the valley below, green with new spring grass and bathed in the yellow glow of sunrise. The valley was maybe a half-mile long and two hundred yards wide, and in it were a handful of horses. One looked to be black or very dark brown, one was an Appaloosa, two were gray, and three were sorrel. One of the sorrels had what appeared to be a new foal running at its side.

“Is that her?” I asked.

Dwight shifted in his saddle. “I don’t think so.”

“No?” I asked. “She’s got a foal, and I doubt there were any other pregnant mares out here.”

He tipped his weathered cowboy hat back and scratched his forehead. “No.” He readjusted his hat. “I think she was a bay.”

“A bay?”

“Or brown.”

“You don’t know what color she was?”

“It was dark.”

“The horse?”

“I think so. But the sale was at night, so it was dark out.”

He squinted down into the valley and watched the sorrel with the baby. “And it was over a week ago. I’m pretty sure she weren’t no sorrel.”

“Pretty sure?”

“Well, I did buy two sorrels,” he said, still looking at the small herd below us. “But they was geldings. The mare was a bay … or brown … I think.”

Satisfied, at least to some extent, that the mare we had come to find (and that, at Dwight’s suggestion, we would take off the 3,500-acre pasture on which our ranch horses had wintered) was not with the band we were currently gazing upon, we turned our horses and continued on our way.