Being a working student or apprentice here at our Academy is a life changing experience. In this weeks blog you will hear more from Jonna.

Thank you Jonna for being here. If you have a solid background with horses, we have a couple of apprentice positions available for 2016.

Kind regards Stina

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Don’t forget to have fun
Four months have passed since I started this adventure and new chapter in my life here in beautiful Richmond . With me on my journey I brought a golden note book, all blank pages with no written words. The purpose was to let the book be filled with whatever comes to my mind during this period. Today it’s half full with quotes, poems, thoughts, ideas and lyrics. This inspiration to create comes from the mountains, the volcano, from the ocean and the stars and of course, a big part comes from the horses.

Browsing through the book I found a quote saying “we have to be ready to release our knowledge in order to come to a higher understanding of reality”. I wrote it thinking about this way of being with horses verses the traditional way. I came here mentally prepared and open minded to change what I knew though I´d started questioning the traditional way. I´ve been writing down what I´ve been learning, watched Youtube clips, red books and googled a lot. This has given me inspiration and motivation to practice the new knowledge and method. I have noticed that I need to keep repeating this knowledge a lot though I’m afraid of “doing wrong” or fall in to old patterns or routines.

But everything is about balance. I´ve noticed that I tend to think too much about methods and rights and wrongs instead of just letting myself be taught by nature (including the horses). Because that is simply what it is all about; common sense and natural thinking. I think that a lot of things we automatically are learning from growing up are taking us away from what is natural and what we are born to be. When we are young we swallow all information because we think that all grownups are right. Then we to go to school and we learn what we agree with and not, what is natural and what is not, because we don’t know. At least that is how I’ve experienced it. This way of being with horses is so natural, fun and so much about common sense that I found it almost ironic that I have spent so much time doing and learning somethings that are actually very unnatural and doesn’t makes sense at all. But many times we complicate things in life.
With routines, tasks I “have to do”, hot weather and other conditions I can sometimes get distracted in my calm and natural me and get stressed, too hot, tired etc. I can lose myself in confusing thoughts which of course has an effect on the horses. And I can forget to have fun.

Stina has started to give me lessons in liberty training every week which is a really good way for me to get very inspired and also to calm me down in the sense that “the method” is easy and that the connection and relationship with the horse is much more important than the method. She reminds me about that there is no right and wrong and to always have fun. To pretend with a smile on your face that the horse did exactly what you wanted he or she to do when the horse do something completely else than what you had in mind. Also observing Stina work with the horses is a total joy for me. To see the horses come so alive make me feel the same way.

I will continue finding the balance between routines, tasks and methods and I will have fun. I will continue to let nature and horses inspire me so that all my blank pages in my golden note book continue to get filled with whatever comes to my mind. Because what we think and do is also what we become. I´m very excited to see how things are going to develop and what is in my mind at the end of this chapter in my life. Another one of my favorite quotes will end this paper and that is that

Our own life has to be our message.

Don’t forget to have fun.
Greetings
Jonna