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Post by Zuzan on Aug 6, 2008 13:16:36 GMT 1
was reading this thread here ihdg.proboards91.com/index.cgi?board=talk2&action=display&thread=82645&page=2 and realised that one way of reaction to a scary situation is actually really similar to something in sports psychology called Zoneing I think... It's when you are so focused everything really slows down in your head and you become completely focused on the present task in hand.. It's actually a great thing to be able to do.. thing is it isn't something that I know how to do concsciously.. sometimes it happens and sometimes it doesn't... What are your experiences of this and how do you get there..? |
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Isi
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Such a Lady - Just Like Her Mum!
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Post by Isi on Aug 6, 2008 15:50:24 GMT 1
Do you mean something along the lines of
"Shall-I-bail-out-the-side-door-now-and-attempt-a-controlled-roll-on-the-soft-ish-grass-or-try-and-hang-on-for-dear-life-and-hope-bolting-horse-stops-soon"?
lol - sorry Zuzan, that was a flippant comment but as I am really trying to avoid housework until it's time to go 'do' the horses I couldn't resist myself!
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Post by Zuzan on Aug 6, 2008 16:01:56 GMT 1
not really just the ability to deal logically and calmly with emergencies or in stressful situations.. by stress I include competition or something new... I caught the end of About Myself on the Beeb with an interview with Colin Jackson about how he zoned himeself...
I reckon the ability to zone and really focus actually helps deal with emergencies.. I remember posting on one of the threads on the Members Board about having soft eyes.. mentally to help problem solve .. and think this might be part of it..
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Post by amarche on Aug 6, 2008 16:37:10 GMT 1
I think it's about meditation & that kind of trance like state you get when concentrating (my oh calls it FLOW)
I also believe you can train for it usisng various meditation and possibly hypnosis - i think 'drills' as in army drills are almost a part of this - you repeat a behaviour so often it becomes an unconscious reaction.
someone once said to me that you only truly know yourself in the face of an emergency - which I think is very poetic but I hope that when faced with an emergency i don't fall apart!
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Post by colourfulpony on Aug 6, 2008 18:14:38 GMT 1
i know what you mean amarche - it's like when something happens which you have to react to quickly or is an emergancy you just get on with it and do what has to be done, then after it has happened you wonder how on earth you did it!
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Post by Zuzan on Aug 9, 2008 0:15:02 GMT 1
OK well have just got to this passage in Paul Belasik's Riding Towards the Light Which is far more literate than my fumblings..
so the soft eyes thing which I mentioned (a kind of hyper awareness of everything around you) is not focusing down at all.. infact it's contradictory
Right I'm off to zen bed now..
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Post by chrisbetson on Aug 9, 2008 8:15:00 GMT 1
I would like to know what happens to the brain memory at times of emergency - like coming off a Clydesdale stopping suddenly from full gallop! - I have absolutely no memory of the actual dismount - one instant I was on a galloping horse just thinking about a half halt and the next instant I landed on my back... and yet the fall must have taken a few seconds to happen.
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Post by mandal on Aug 10, 2008 10:46:24 GMT 1
I'm having trouble understanding what Paul Belasik is saying there Zuzan.  Is he saying to focus solely on one thing closes your mind to everything else?? I think meditation practice is good for developing awareness of the world around you and awareness of yourself. One example I have is the RWYM classes I attended briefly. We were working on directing the horse with our bodies, we were to imagine our upper legs were the banks of a river controlling the river/energy/horse...for corners the banks needed to be steeper on one side etc. (I may not have described this precisely) We practised this in the classrom with exercises including meditation to help focus our thoughts and bring our minds in tune with our bodies. We then went and practised on a horse for real  , well I had a horse who went where he wanted with ineffectual riders and off we went...he did really take me most of the time but there were a few strides where I really 'got it'...my mind and body were in tune and the 'river' responded and went where I was directing it. It was a wonderful moment and gave me such a fantastic feeling of being really in tune with him. I've babbled a bit but I just wanted to describe this experience to show how meditation etc. can focus the mind without blocking out the rest of the world. |
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Post by Zuzan on Aug 10, 2008 14:05:27 GMT 1
Chris the times when everything happens so quickly we have no apparent awareness of the event are when we are not “in tune” I think… by in tune ..(as Mandal refers to it) we are not using our brain to as Paul Belasik writes The more self-conscious, the more limitations. This kind of concentration can deaden the mind and body is not o much use when one is involved in unfolding, changing action. .. our brain cannot process everything in this state.. hence no memory.. or at least it is very deep in our subconscious memory I think.. at a guess hypnotherapy might be one way of taping into the details of an event we seem to have no conscious memory of.
Mandal what Paul Belasik (and me too) are trying to comprehend is a state where the WHOLE is crystal clear.. not just the small point .. but a universal awareness.. you become aware of every nuance of not only your own body but of the horse’s too.. because your brain is processing all this in the conscious part of the brain.. it feels like everything moves very very slowly all though in reality it will be fractions of a second.. the opposite of Chris’s fall.. Mary Wanless and Sally Swift both talk about this in slightly different ways.. with Sally Swift it is Soft Eyes (which are the opposite of tunnel vision). Both Sally Swift and Mary Wanless are heavily into body awareness be it Feldenkrais or Alexander Technique.. I think it is also a mental state too.. Paul Belasik (again) refers to a lot of Zen theory.. and incidentally Mark Rashid, I think, is also into the Martial Arts and the state of mind that they require.. I suspect that this hyper reality is VERY closely linked to Mark Rashid’s ideas about Intent and also what I was taught on the IH Foundation Course about Energy .. Guess I’m feeling my way to some kind of linkage between all these concepts..
Again Paul Belasik writes “In the best concentration you stop putting things into your mind. You try to cease the directives and analysis; you let the mind be free to do what it does best – and that is to perceive the world around you with all your senses at once.” because there is so much information involved in the processing this keeping it in the conscious realm of the brain is the key to “In an open, alert but calm way the body can attain intuitive reactions which are not really reactions because there is no time lag between action and reaction. The horse and rider literally become one, feeling things at the same time.” I think this is what you were referning to as ”In Tune
Having experienced moments of both what Chris describes and moments (totally joyous) of this hyper reality I would like to be able to be able to consciously use the hyper reality state more..
Incidentally there is a branch of ancient Japanese Martial Arts that relate specifically to horsemanship.. joba-jutsu .. much like the classical riding of the West this horsemanship was practised by Samurai (Knights and Noblemen).. would be very interesting to compare joba-jutsu to the West’s Classical Riding
Did Xenophon go to Japan?
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Post by mandal on Aug 10, 2008 16:32:01 GMT 1
Again Paul Belasik writes “In the best concentration you stop putting things into your mind. You try to cease the directives and analysis; you let the mind be free to do what it does best – and that is to perceive the world around you with all your senses at once.” because there is so much information involved in the processing this keeping it in the conscious realm of the brain is the key to “In an open, alert but calm way the body can attain intuitive reactions which are not really reactions because there is no time lag between action and reaction. The horse and rider literally become one, feeling things at the same time.” I think this is what you were referning to as ”In TuneHaving experienced moments of both what Chris describes and moments (totally joyous) of this hyper reality I would like to be able to be able to consciously use the hyper reality state more.. Thanks for this Zuzan..yes you're right this is what I mean also it involves 'being in the moment'...which is where for me the meditation practice is so helpful. Interesting too are your other references but I'm afraid I haven't studied this in depth. |
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Post by rifleman on Dec 1, 2008 19:46:10 GMT 1
Zuzan - I hadn't come across the term 'Zoning', before, but can think of a few examples which might relate to your question - and to some of the other posters' experiences.
First one was when I was 17, on my motorbike. I came over a slightly hump-backed bridge, approaching a side turning on my left. Facing me, waiting to turn into the side road were two cars, a Mini, and a big old Ford. The Mini driver clearly thought he had time to turn in, so pulled across in front of me. Minis being as nippy as they were, he was well clear. Problem was, the driver of the big Ford started to follow the Mini; I don't think he'd seen me at all. Part way across the road, he saw me, panicked and hit the brakes. That left me with a problem. I couldn't go round behind him, as there were a couple of cars filtering through on his near-side. In front of him was a very narrow gap between his front wing and a lamp-post, which was right on the corner of the pavement. The next thing, my view-point instantaneously shifted to somewhere up in the sky, as though I was looking down on myself from a helicopter about 40 or 50 feet up. I still have a clear visual memory of watching myself as I aimed the bike for the narrow gap - it was far too close to stop in time - but no visual memory of being on the bike for that second or so before I reached it. I can clearly remember, also, feeling completely unbothered by the sight of the bike heading for the gap - basically, a detached sense of, "Yes, that'll be okay".
What brought my viewing point back onto the bike was the thumping of the front wheel as it ran over the granite setts in the gutter, and the clunk as the front brake lever hit the wing of the car, breaking the front brake cable. As I came back onto the bike, it was a sort of 'whoosh!' feeling - quite different from the instant shift at the start.
The next example which comes to mind was when I was riding another bike from Hastings, on the south coast, to a place near Inverness - a journey of nearly 700 miles. I hadn't intended to do it in one day, but just see how far I got before putting up at a B & B for the night.
Once I got north of London, going up the A1(M), I got into a sort of rhythm; keeping the rev counter dead on 7,000 rpm, and playing a track from Pink Floyd's 'Dark Side of the Moon' in my head.
Eventually, it got to a point where I felt I wasn't moving at all - just images slowly moving around me, as I passed cars, or they passed me. It felt like being in one of those very slow stately dances from the 18th century. The other thing I noticed was how aware I was of everything around me - and I mean pin-sharp aware - but with no apparent effort. I've talked to friends who study martial arts, and they've said that's exactly how it feels when you get it right; totally aware, and totally relaxed, and totally ready to respond instantly to an unexpected situation.
Well, I did the whole trip in 13 hours, and got off the bike feeling as though I'd just ridden a couple of miles. After discussing it with a friend, we came to the conclusion that I had put my meditation practise into action, and that, for most of the journey, I was in a meditative state. But definitely not in a day dream - quite the reverse. I was 100% present, and not putting either myself or anyone else at risk.
So, you could say, in the first example, it just happened because I was in a very life threatening situation. In the second, because of the study and practise I'd put into meditation.
On another occasion, I was out on a group hack, and the lead rider had a pretty unpredictable mare. Ali thought she might take off, so asked me to ride alongside her, and keep at a steady pace, as she thought would help her to keep her mare steady, too. At that time, I was putting a lot of work into trying to tune into whichever horse I was riding, and this gave me a perfect opportunity to try it for an extended period of time. So I used various meditation techniques I'd learned to relax deeper and deeper into the saddle, and to blend my energy with my horse's, at the same time as keeping an awareness of what Ali's mare was doing. Also, I 'looked', very clearly, at where I wanted to go, and how I wanted to go there - as I would if I was just walking on my own feet. It soon reached a point where I didn't feel as though I was me, and that was the horse under me - but as though there was just a me, which was nether horse, nor man, but something . . . like a centaur. So I was no longer telling another creature what I wanted it to do - nor even asking it. Any more than I do when I walk across the room. I just thought 'there' - like 'this' - and the different me just went there.
So, whether we were trotting, or later, when we went into a slow canter, it didn't feel as though I was giving the horse any aids at all. The bigger me/us was just thinking "let's do that" - and it happened.
I think I need to stop here, and go away and think about this.
Interesting question, Zuzan. Thank you for asking it.
Best wishes,
Jack
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Post by Zuzan on Jan 7, 2009 15:54:33 GMT 1
.................. The next example which comes to mind was when I was riding another bike from Hastings, on the south coast, to a place near Inverness - a journey of nearly 700 miles. I hadn't intended to do it in one day, but just see how far I got before putting up at a B & B for the night. Once I got north of London, going up the A1(M), I got into a sort of rhythm; keeping the rev counter dead on 7,000 rpm, and playing a track from Pink Floyd's 'Dark Side of the Moon' in my head. Eventually, it got to a point where I felt I wasn't moving at all - just images slowly moving around me, as I passed cars, or they passed me. It felt like being in one of those very slow stately dances from the 18th century. The other thing I noticed was how aware I was of everything around me - and I mean pin-sharp aware - but with no apparent effort. I've talked to friends who study martial arts, and they've said that's exactly how it feels when you get it right; totally aware, and totally relaxed, and totally ready to respond instantly to an unexpected situation. Well, I did the whole trip in 13 hours, and got off the bike feeling as though I'd just ridden a couple of miles. After discussing it with a friend, we came to the conclusion that I had put my meditation practise into action, and that, for most of the journey, I was in a meditative state. But definitely not in a day dream - quite the reverse. I was 100% present, and not putting either myself or anyone else at risk. ................................. Yes this is exactly the frame of mind I think Paul Belasik talks about in his trilogy I wonder whether someone who isn't trained to meditate can get into this frame when for instance riding.. I suspect that sports pyschologists try and coach this but suspect the best method is via martial arts / meditation etc |
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Is he saying to focus solely on one thing closes your mind to everything else??
, well I had a horse who went where he wanted with ineffectual riders and off we went...he did really take me most of the time but there were a few strides where I really 'got it'...my mind and body were in tune and the 'river' responded and went where I was directing it. It was a wonderful moment and gave me such a fantastic feeling of being really in tune with him. I've babbled a bit but I just wanted to describe this experience to show how meditation etc. can focus the mind without blocking out the rest of the world.