Jill explained a lot of her theories, a lot of kineseology (sp?) and tai chi driven stuff about using your seatbones to controll pretty much everything. She explained squeezing not as much as squeezing but more pulling your left seatbone deeper with your right heel kind of thing. I asked a lot of what I thought were dumb, newbie questions and we had a lot of laughs.
Rather than fight with blending everything I've learned from Leeandra with everything I will learn from Jill, I asked Jill to start me at the beginning. What would she do if I'd never been on a horse before? She can start me from the ground up, then I can merge what I've learned from Leeandra with what I'll learn from Jill.
We started with me walking along side D, to get a feel for contact with the bit. Good thing I'm tall!!! I couldn't imagine half of my friends doing that! Some can't even reach his back! Only after I had him doing well on the ground, did she tell me to mount up. Bareback. He's 17.2 and I'm 40-something and fat. OK fine.
I was petrified and all over the place. I had horrible fears of falling and felt like I'd never been on a horse before. I struggled through about an hour in the saddle and went home to shower so I could come back and meet Lisa1, Jill H and Miss Maggie back at Tory Hill.
When I was putting my bugspray in my cubby by Daniel's stall, I saw my helmet hanging. MY HELMET! I took the lesson this morning without my helmet!! I wonder if that was the nagging, gnawing doubt that I had going on through the lesson was that I realized subconsciously that I didn't have my helmet on? Maybe it was more than I haven't been riding bareback in over a year. Maybe it was lack of a helmet? Sort of like when I went for a physical recently... I didn't feel truly naked under that gown until I realized I didn't have my Blackberry on my hip. OK, sad but true...
Anyway, I'm waiting for Lisa1, Jill H and Miss Maggie to get here, so I'm sitting on a stump in the boy's field with The Metaphysical Club, an approximately 500 page book I have to read by my class Thursday night. So, back to reading!
