The Confident Rider Podcast

Latest Episodes:

The Mystery & Magic Of The Body With Alexa Linton Feb 18, 2021

Show notes

A little while back I was interviewed for the Whole Horse Podcast and for the first time "properly" had a chance to talk to the host of the show, Alexa Linton. I found our conversation before and after the interview so fascinating and enlivening that I knew I had to turn the tables and invite Alexa to speak to you all on my own podcast!

Aside from being one of life's inspiring and engaging people (two of my favorite things!), Alexa is a wealth of knowledge when it comes to all things body-based; from the energetic to the nuts and bolts mechanics, she has spent over 14 years working as an Equine Sports Therapist, is in the final stages of studying Osteopathy for humans, has a degree in kinesiology and extensive experience in the energetic and healing arts.

Our time together is a winding discussion on horse and human connection, exploring the body from the skeletal to the emotional, sharing personal experiences of both, and highlighting just how incredible this structure is that we call the human form.

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Click below to learn all about my JoyRide membership, to help you think, feel, move & ride differently:

https://confidentrider.online/joyride/

For other resources:

Website: https://confidentrider.online/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/TheConfidentRider/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/confident_rider/

Redefining What It Means To Be Brave Feb 09, 2021

Show notes

Over the past few years, I've noticed what I am learning from my horses is taking a much bigger and more expansive form.

The same dreams remain; to create a harmonious and energetic relationship together. To learn what I can about behavior, biomechanics, and horsemanship so I can be the best partner possible. But beyond that, I've noticed that my work with horses has gifted me with an increased capacity, strength, and resilience to show up in other areas of my life in bigger and bolder ways.

In short, horses have allowed me to access and find my voice in ways that I have never experienced previously. They have prompted me to redefine what it means to be brave and to understand the different forces at work that exert their influence on us and keeping us playing and feeling small.

In this episode I reflect back on my experiences and discuss:

The importance of strengthening our voice and developing a healthy relationship with the fight channel of our nervous system
Letting go of the rigid, masculinized view of bravery and offering a different viewpoint that allows us to ride and move with integrity
Horsemanship as a practice of everyday activism, that allows us to enter the bigger conversation on structural and systemic inequities

I hope you enjoy it! Happy listening!

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Click below to learn all about my JoyRide membership, to help you think, feel, move & ride differently:

https://confidentrider.online/joyride/

For other resources:

Website: https://confidentrider.online/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/TheConfidentRider/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/confident_rider/

End Of Year Ponderings with Kathy Price & Tania Kindersley Dec 17, 2020

Show notes

Sitting down to write the blurb for this podcast, I pinged Tania and Kathy a message:

I have no idea how to condense our conversation down into a few sentences.

That remains the truth some time after as I attempt to gather our "life, horses, and the universe" into a palatable description!

So here is the truth of it! Kathy and Tania are two of my closest and most trusted friends and I couldn't think of a better way to muse over the last 12 months and ponder the next 12 than to gather around the microphone together. This episode is a fly in the wall listen-in on our ponderings covering everything from "Tania's Top Tip" for dealing with difficult people to getting down to the nitty-gritty of what it means to show up for our horses (and ourselves) in an aligned and authentic way.

I hope you enjoy it!

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Click below to learn all about my JoyRide membership, to help you think, feel, move & ride differently:

https://confidentrider.online/joyride/

For other resources:

Website: https://confidentrider.online/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/TheConfidentRider/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/confident_rider/

It's Not About Confidence, It's About Capacity Dec 09, 2020

Show notes

For someone who spends a lot of her day discussing various aspects of confidence (and what's more has it featured as a keyword in her business!), it may surprise you to hear that I think we have things a bit mixed up when it comes to understanding what confidence actually is… and what's more, what we *actually* mean when we say we want to feel more confident.

Over time, I've come to understand the complex relationship so many of us have with the word "confidence" (let alone our feelings around it) and from the place I sit now, I think we are focusing on the wrong end of the stick. While we may want to experience confidence, what we need to be focusing on as a practice is increasing our capacity.

So, what, then, does that mean? When I say, "increasing capacity", what's that all about?

Well, think of it this way. Every experience that we find ourselves in the midst of holds a certain energetic blueprint, or activation level. If I'm feeling Zen, there's a relatively low level of activation present, and I can easily contain that experience within my body without it feeling like it's a problem.

Anxiety, on the other hand, has a much higher charge. Our ability to hold that charge before it moves to a place where we feel disconnected from ourselves and no longer in control of the energy relates directly to our capacity.

Capacity is basically how much energy and activation you can hold without overflowing.

Exceed it and you move into survival mode.

Stay within it and you feel like you have a handle on things- even if those things are hard.

In this episode, I dive into our associations and misconceptions around confidence, share some personal stories with you… and get you to consider that it might be capacity that you are looking to increase rather than confidence.

I hope you enjoy it!

❤️ Jane

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Click below to learn all about my JoyRide membership, to help you think, feel, move & ride differently:

https://confidentrider.online/joyride/

For other resources:

Website: https://confidentrider.online/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/TheConfidentRider/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/confident_rider/

On Taking The High Road: Maintaining Integrity In The Face of Upset & Unease Dec 01, 2020

Show notes

You know, confrontation of any kind can be a hard thing to handle. In JoyRide, we're talking all the time about the various communications (and miscommunications!) that happen within all the different types of relationships that we find ourselves in- both within our horsing life and outside of it.

I know way back when I was in my early twenties (when I was also reading a lot of different spiritual texts and throwing myself headlong into my own studies of body and breath), I convinced myself that if I was serious about this whole "mastering myself" malarky, that I needed to take myself off and live in a cave (spoiler alert: this definitely did not happen and actually sounds kind of ghastly to my present-day self. So cold! Those hard floors! But I digress…). What I've since understood is that the real learning happens in relationship. With yourself first and foremost, but beyond that with those we choose to surround ourselves with, and with those who temporarily, for a little while, or fleetingly cross our path.

When we are presented with the many faces of relationship, we get to see what our "stuff" really is. And it turns out, well… we have quite a lot of it. Stuff that is.

Enter at A our horses, and we are gifted with a magnifying glass that allows us to see things from a slightly different perspective. And in order to create a conversation, we have to approach things from a different angle, and with a new set of understandings; ones that require us to get out of our head, to let go of the stories we've told ourselves, and to be present to our direct experience.

In the last week or, I had an experience that allowed me to practice yet again. A confrontation that jolted me and temporarily knocked me off-center. It is in these moments I am grateful for the lessons that came before that allowed me, however briefly, to create a space between what I was feeling and experiencing and how I wanted to respond… which was ultimately with my integrity intact.

In this episode, I talk about exactly this and more. How we can manage the choppy waters of confrontation and discomfort and do so in a way that allows us to maintain perspective, integrity, and self-compassion.

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Click below to learn all about my JoyRide membership, to help you think, feel, move & ride differently:

https://confidentrider.online/joyride/

For other resources:

Website: https://confidentrider.online/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/TheConfidentRider/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/confident_rider/

On Training Yourself With Kindness Nov 24, 2020

Show notes

You know, when things get tough, usually one of the first things to kick in is the commentary of the Itty Bitty Shitty Committee. The "You should have done this, or you didn't do this or why did you do that or what were you thinking-ness" in all its hues and colours and variations can pretty quickly throw a wet blanket over any feelings of hopefulness or possibility that we hold for ourselves or our horses- or at the very least suck the joy out of it.

The thing about the Committee is they convince you of things that simply aren't true. They tie your worth to the outcomes that you create, your value to how much you can get done, and your ability to feel good about yourself to a series of outside metrics that see you constantly chasing the carrot on the string. Those little critters can make life exhausting.

So it's for these reasons and many more, that I now understand that being able to meet yourself with kindness- being able to separate the essence of who you are from the remarks of The Committee and to treat yourself with self-compassion is the highest form of practice there is.

In this episode we discuss:

Why kindness and self-compassion is essential for ongoing motivation and momentum
How meeting yourself with kindness gifts you with a clear perspective and the necessary understandings to decide the next best step for you and your horse
Why kindness is the necessary antidote to low self-worth or feelings of not-good-enough-ness

I hope you enjoy it!

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Click below to learn all about my JoyRide membership, to help you think, feel, move & ride differently:

https://confidentrider.online/joyride/

For other resources:

Website: https://confidentrider.online/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/TheConfidentRider/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/confident_rider/

A Conversation with Dr Sarah Le Jeune: On The Pressures of Veterinary Practice & Developing Awareness within Client/ Vet Relationships Nov 17, 2020

Show notes

A couple of weeks back, a collection of members of JoyRide gathered together on a Zoom call. The purpose of the call was simply to get together and find out what was going on for everyone and get some help and support if needed. Sarah, a member of the group, spoke up about her concerns about her students and if there was a chance we could possibly create something that would help them develop some strategies that would help them cope with what were sometimes significant stresses within their working life and ways to better manage the more difficult client relationships.

As an equine veterinary surgeon, a veterinarian, and clinical professor at UC Davis, Dr. Sarah Le Jeune is well versed in the pressures of the job. The veterinary field as a whole has some worrying and frankly heartbreaking statistics around mental health that speak to just how significant that stress can be. Dr. Sarah and I decided to team up in this episode to extend support to vets that might be struggling, help raise awareness and share our thoughts on how as horse owners and clients we can be more mindful and considered at our end within the relationship.

Beyond that, we are also interested in creating resources and hosting a round table discussion with equine professionals who would be interested in being part of this conversation. If you are interested in being a part of it, please get in touch. We would love to hear from you!

Please feel free to share this episode around. Although the conversation covers some difficult topics, it's an important one to put out there and hold in our broader awareness.

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Click below to learn all about my JoyRide membership, to help you think, feel, move & ride differently:

https://confidentrider.online/joyride/

For other resources:

Website: https://confidentrider.online/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/TheConfidentRider/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/confident_rider/

Body Informing Mind: A Discussion on the Somatic & Interoceptive Nervous Systems & their role in repatterning responses Nov 10, 2020

Show notes

I'm always blown away by how simple changes to posture; how tangibly connecting with where feeling and sensation sits in the body in relation to a specific thought; how accessing experience through the body can allow us to not only shift our perception but integrate and metabolize experiences from the past that are showing up as challenges in the present.

It's one thing to see this play out in real life and another to understand the mechanisms and systems at work that explains why working at the level of the body is so powerful.

Why is it that shifting things in the body changes our thoughts?

How does it work that we can make sense of traumatic or stressful events through body-based practices?

The answer lies in understanding the nature of memory and also the function of the somatic, interoceptive, and proprioceptive nervous systems, and how they work together to create templates of our experience.

In this episode we discuss:

Explicit and implicit memory; the basic differences between the two and how understanding their functions and role helps us integrate traumatic stress and change any unwanted patterns and behaviors
The somatic, interoceptive and proprioceptive nervous systems; their role and function in memory and why it's necessary to begin at the level of the body for us to make sense of past experiences making themselves known in the present
How our nervous system functions as an integrated whole, with body informing mind and mind informing body

Happy listening!

❤️ Jane

Click below to learn all about my JoyRide membership, to help you think, feel, move & ride differently:

https://confidentrider.online/joyride/

For other resources:

Website: https://confidentrider.online/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/TheConfidentRider/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/confident_rider/

Story Time Episode: On my clinic experience, finding what works, and not throwing yourself in the deep end Nov 03, 2020

Show notes

A storytime episode for you today! These last 12 months have been a period of big transformation for me (and if I'm honest the 12 months prior to that also). I talked in a previous podcast about a personal experience that was really the catalyst for changing lots of things up- for moving from a more mind-based approach to a body-based one, to diving deeper into nervous system understandings than I had previously, and to really committing myself to "doing the work" so that I had the tools to renegotiate and make peace with some things that I knew were really holding me back.

Horse wise, I felt like I'd come a really long way- not necessarily in terms of outward shows of success, but in my ability to be present and to hold my ground and my centre so I could show up for my horses in the way they needed me to show up.

In this episode, I talk about two similar experiences of attending clinics 12 months apart. I discuss my journey, what I've learned in between, and what changed as I came into a week-long learning experience with my horses.

Click below to learn all about my JoyRide membership, to help you think, feel, move & ride differently:

https://confidentrider.online/joyride/

For other resources:

Website: https://confidentrider.online/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/TheConfidentRider/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/confident_rider/

Surge Capacity: A Conversation On Resilience, Awareness, and Managing Your Energy In The Hard Times Oct 13, 2020

Show notes

What is Surge Capacity?

Surge Capacity is the amount of energy and fortitude we bring to a situation that is challenging. You know when something happens that really requires you to step up and you gather yourself to rise to the occasion? That's what we are talking about here; the surge of power that allows you to be able to do something difficult and make the most of it, even if it feels really hard.

In the ideal world, this would only be required of us every now and then and then we would have time to regroup, replenish our resources, and build ourselves back up. But what about in situations- like Covid or any long-term situation where we are being called to access our inner resources in more unusual, taxing, and unexpected ways… what happens then?

Our Surge Capacity decreases. We find our ability to muster energy growing less and less. And as a consequence, our feeling of resilience can be compromised, our attitudes become increasingly despondent and our mental, emotional, and physical health all suffer.

In this episode, we talk about Surge Capacity and how an awareness of it can help us make better decisions and take proactive steps to ensure we are looking after ourselves in times when we need to be in it for the long haul. I discuss three things that I consider vital to pay attention to maximise our resilience and ensure we are showing up for the things that are important to us.

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Click below to learn all about my JoyRide membership, to help you think, feel, move & ride differently:

https://confidentrider.online/joyride/

For other resources:

Website: https://confidentrider.online/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/TheConfidentRider/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/confident_rider/