Holistic Horses
"Advancing the mind body relationship between horse and rider"
"Life leads us along paths to
have a go, make mistakes,
learn
a new way of doing something
and use that wisdom to help others understand
and ultimately create something better ..."
In March 1993 Holistic Horses was created - a small, friendly licensed riding centre with five horses.
We offered adults meditation and relaxation rides and lessons followed by an hours holistic massage. The business soon grew and by 1995 the yard was a 30 horse strong equestrian centre. The massage became a distant memory and all sorts of fun weekends were created - a tepee weekend, nervous rider clinics, racehorse experiences and full days hacks from Avebury.
Some great names came to teach including some of my friends from Racing - Stan Mellor, Richard Dunwoody, Hywel Davis and Colin Brown. And my good friend Patrick Print FBHS (the current chairman of the BHS) kept his horses with us and taught regular clinics including summer camps.
I (Lisa Venables) was always interested in the mind body relationship while being around and riding horses. Running the yard was a fascinating playground to interact with all sorts of different people, horses and their individual personalities. I spent those years viewing peoples energies and reactions around horses and studying responses to different styles of teaching.
I always claimed those 8 years were my University of Life. However, it seems that it's only when you leave University and get into the big wide world that you can really study and apply what you have learned.
I was lucky to have been around some of the greatest horsemen and teachers of horsemanship during those years, but beyond that, the lessons for life that could be learned from them were second to none. All the successful people were positive thinkers, open in their opinions looking at both sides of the coin and very humble in their teaching - always putting the clients at ease, explaining techniques and aiding learning and knowledge of horsemanship.
As mentioned I was always interested in the mind body
experience of teaching, so I taught the extremes - from
nervous rider clinics to the Ultimate Racehorse experience. With my
teaching of nervous riders I would look at the mind and how it affected the
muscles of the body and how that then affected the horse.
I was working out my own system of effective teaching and improving my
skills as each clinic went by.
During one of our Nervous Rider weeks I employed my NLP trainer to do an 'Alexander Technique' session with my riders. I was amazed in the first 5 minutes of watching a lesson. I instantly knew that this was going to offer me a chance to continue with my research but add to my library of knowledge while deepening my understanding. All that FM Alexander had discovered was totally relevant to riding and our own ability to consciously control movement, fear, reactions and use.
In June 2008 I moved from our lovely 30 box yard in Kingston
Lisle to an 11 box yard
in the neighbouring village of Sparsholt. I was planning to downsize
to allow me to study The Alexander Technique, a 4
year course which I began in the September 2008.
Wanting to focus more on my studies and work on a closer level with
private clients and their horses to develop a more
personal relationship between horse and rider I chose to close the yard at
the end of 2008 and focus on the next stage ....
Lisa's teaching philosophy ...
Paris the Perfect Pink Pony - 93
Richard Dunwoody -
Jockeys Jumping Clinic
Stan Mellor - Race Riding Clinic