Published on 08/20/2007

In a session with a client a couple of months ago, my client was experiencing difficulty playing certain games with her horse. The horse was becoming more and more anxious and worried and my client was very unsure how to handle the situation or what had caused it in the first place. As an outsider looking on at the two of them it was apparent that my clients positioning when asking for something was just a little bit off and this was just enough to make the horse uncomfortable about what was being asked of him.

How To Position Yourself for Perfect Communication

Key points to remember about how to position yourself:

Communicating clearly is vital.

How successful your communication is can be attributed to how you can best influence the horse.

How to best influence the horse can be achieved not only with crystal clear communication but where you are positioned in relation to the horse to affect the manoeuvre or task.

Where are you directing your communication and what you are focussed on with your mind and body? This will give you a response right or wrong.

Using the information from the horse’s response will tell you exactly where your focus was and how it was directed.

This is a valuable tool to bring awareness to how you used your body and where you focused your energy and most importantly what you were thinking of at the time! By retrying the manoeuvre again with your new awareness and trying something different in your focus, positioning and thoughts will you find that magic place to be to achieve the desired result.

To best influence your horse takes an understanding of the body areas of the horse.

What happens to the horse in each of these body areas when you position yourself at a certain distance or in a certain way and then ask him to do something i.e. the head area or hindquarters? Your positioning has a direct correlation to not only the quality of your communication but also on the outcome of what you are trying to achieve.

Reading the body language of what the horse thinks about your positioning to his body and the result of your two-way communication or ‘discussion’ will also determine how good your relationship is.

Does your horse become very guarded or worried when you stand at a particular distance to him or in a particular area or is he completely relaxed? If your horse is at all worried about your positioning to him then FORGET the game or manoeuvre, the best thing you can do for your horse is to help him become more confident and comfortable with you in that area FIRST!

The major pitfall in being so outcome focused is that you will do what it takes forgetting the true cost.

Ignoring the communication from your horse until it gets out of control or becomes totally ineffective and turns into a nasty down hill spiral to literally become a big upsetting mess for both of you!