Fear of Flying

I’ve spent the last year trying to overcome a fear of flying. I’m not talking about the kind of flying that charges you extra when your luggage weighs too much, although I must admit I don’t find that kind of flying much fun anymore. I’m talking about the kind of flying that finds you galloping through a pasture or up a hill with wind whipping your horse’s mane into your face and every muscle in your body alive with the feel of connection between you and your horse. This is the story of how I developed that fear and how Two Star Parelli Instructor Jane Bartsch is helping me conquer it.
I wasn’t always afraid of flying. There was a time when I liked nothing better than to take my first horse Max for long rides through the 6000 acres of Maryland’s Fair Hill resource area, galloping up every hill I could find, jumping logs along the way. But I learned to ride as an adult and I never really developed the sense of balance that seems to come so naturally to people who learned to ride as children. Besides that, I’m a bit of a buttoned up type of person who has never thrived on that feeling of being right at the edge of control.
After taking riding lessons for about 3 years, I bought my first horse, Max. I was 30 years old and he was almost 10, but he had been professionally trained and was the kind of horse people refer to as a “school master”. Max had wonderful, smooth gaits and if I could even approximate the correct aid, he would do whatever I asked. This gave me great confidence when I was riding and I wasn’t even afraid to hop on him bareback with only a halter and lead line and ride him though a pasture full of horses back to the barn.
Max lived to be almost 33 years old and during that time I seldom rode any other horse. In his last few years, I didn’t ride often and when I did, we mostly took long walks in the fields around the farm. He was bothered by navicular changes as he got older but when I put the saddle on him, he walked away from the barn with his head up and his ears pricked, looking forward to the adventure at hand.
I was devastated when Max died but I wanted to get back into riding so I adopted a 12 year old thoroughbred gelding from a local horse rescue and set about trying to get myself back into shape. It was a bad match from the beginning. The horse was a RBE with some serious post racing mental issues. At the time, I wasn’t familiar with the concepts of natural horsemanship and I had no idea how to help him through his issues. After 9 months of frustration I admitted to myself that I was actually afraid of this horse and I donated him back to the rescue before I got hurt. Then I started searching again for my next horse and found Sonny.
Sonny was a 6 year old paint with an easy going disposition. He had been a husband’s horse, used mostly for trail riding and while he was solid as a rock on trails, he could hardly trot in a circle without tripping all over himself. Unlike my original horse, Sonny didn’t have particularly smooth gaits, although he could produce a nice little jog trot when he wanted, so for the first couple years of our partnership, I mostly used him for trail riding and I seldom pushed him into a canter. We might canter up the occasional hill but mostly we walked and trotted and I felt pretty comfortable riding him.
Sonny and I got along pretty well most of the time. He was very easy going, which I liked, but his attitude toward me seemed pretty indifferent. Unlike my first horse Max, he wasn’t crazy about being groomed and while he didn’t seem to mind being ridden, he could be stubborn and argumentative. I’d had Sonny for a couple of years when I began working at a local horse rescue and was introduced to Parelli Natural Horsemanship. I was so intrigued by the concepts that I barrowed a set of the original level one program video tapes and started practicing on Sonny. From the first day the change in Sonny’s attitude and behavior was remarkable. It was as if he had been deaf and suddenly he could hear me, although now I know what really going on was that I had been speaking gibberish for two years and now I was beginning to speak horse.
I was hooked and we progressed quickly on the ground but when I started to ride I ran into problems. I rode English style and only rode on a loose rein at a walk. At a trot or a canter, I had been taught to ride with contact and I found that if I tried to trot Sonny on a loose rein, I felt very uncomfortable. More disconcerting to me was the idea of riding with a hackamore but according to the Parelli method that was exactly what I was supposed to be doing at this point. I bought a hackamore to ride in it but whenever Sonny started trotting, I gathered up the reins as if he still had a bit in his mouth and he clearly didn’t like that.
I slowly worked through my anxieties at the trot and after several months was trotting on a loose rein but the canter was another story. It took me a long time to admit it to myself, but even the thought of cantering Sonny made me anxious. He was a big horse with a big stride and he didn’t have a smooth canter departure. Most of the time when I asked him to canter he would just trot bigger and faster until I was bouncing all over the place. By the time he did canter, I had a knot in the pit of my stomach and I wasn’t enjoying myself.
This is where Jane Bartsch enters our story. Fortunately for me, Jane lived close and had recently become a Parelli Instructor. I began taking weekly lessons and Jane helped me refine my balance point riding. She also helped me develop a smoother canter departure from a walk. Finally I gained enough confidence where I could canter Sonny in the arena on a loose rein. I still had some slight anxiety but I thought I had the problem licked. I didn’t realize that things were about to get much worse.
With Jane’s help, I progressed to the point where I was accepted into a three day clinic with Six Star Parelli Master Instructor Carol Coppinger. Sonny and I did so well at the clinic that we passed our level 2 freestyle test. I was thrilled and thinking that we would soon be riding easily at level 3 but at the end of the clinic, Carol did something in passing that had the unintended consequence of putting my riding into a downward spiral. She came over to Sonny and tried to slip her hand between his saddle and his shoulder.
“I think this saddle is pinching your horse,” she said. “See how I can’t get my hand in here. There isn’t any clearance. Have you thought about getting a Theraflex® saddle pad for him?”
Since I began studying Parelli, I had been slowly changing out Sonny’s equipment. I had changed the bit I was using, added a chin strap and had taken off his breast plate. None of these changes had resulted in anything dramatic so it didn’t occur to me that changing the saddle pad would so I purchased a new Therafex® pad. Clearly the saddle had been pinching his shoulders because the first time I put the new pad on, his stride was noticeably freer.
While Sonny liked the new pad, I was struggling with it. At first I felt like I was tipping forward in the saddle. Jane helped me shim it properly but I had trouble placing the pad consistently in the same position under the saddle. Each time I mounted, I felt like I was sitting a little differently and this created some anxiety. Sonny’s longer stride was also making me nervous but I was trying to push through my nerves at each lesson so I could continue to make progress.
I had been riding with the Theraflex® pad for a couple of months when I took Sonny down to the Parelli Florida campus to attend the Fast Track course. I must admit that I was nervous about being at Fast Track and nervous about riding Sonny in such an unfamiliar environment. Early on, one of the instructors came up to me, stuck his hand under the edge of Sonny’s saddle pad and told me that he thought the saddle was still pinching his shoulders. Over the month that I was there, I realized that when I was riding Sonny, he seldom relaxed enough to blow. While some of that was probably a reflection of my lack of relaxation, I came to the conclusion that Sonny needed a different saddle.
While I would like to have ordered a Parelli saddle for Sonny, my budget wouldn’t accommodate that large of a purchase so after trying several saddles, I settled for a new Wintec wide. The effect of the new saddle on Sonny was immediate and intense. Freed of the restriction on his shoulders, his stride was huge. I could feel it in the walk and trot but in the canter it was dramatic. It felt to me like he was leaping into the canter and the thrust pushed me forward in the saddle, throwing me off balance. To make matters worse, I couldn’t seem to get the shimming correct. Pretty soon I had 4 shims in the Theraflex® pad.
Sonny seemed to love the new saddle. The first time I rode him in it he blew inside of five minutes. The second time it took only two minutes. The third time he blew almost as soon as my butt hit the saddle. His stride was free. He relaxed more quickly. His trot became smoother and less bumpy to ride. There were all good things and I should have been pleased but I hated the new saddle. I didn’t feel comfortable in it. The saddle was deeper than my old one and I felt like I was sitting too far forward in it. With all the shims, the saddle was perched on the Therafelx® pad like a turtle on a mossy log, slipping this way and that depending on where I put my weight and I didn’t feel stable. I was relatively OK at the walk and the trot but even the thought of cantering put me in a panic. Sonny would leap into a canter and I would grab the reins as if they were my only lifeline.
Jane did her best to help me work though my discomfort. She was patient with me in lessons and we practiced a lot of approach and retreat, cantering only a few strides and then stopping. She respected my thresholds and when I said that was enough in any lesson she let me stop. But as the winter progressed, things got worse for me. Whenever Sonny cantered, I felt completely out of control. I knew my emotional fitness was going to hell in a hand basket because I had gotten to the point where I was so worried about cantering that I didn’t even want to go out to the barn anymore. I would bargain with myself by telling myself that I didn’t have to ride or if I did ride, I didn’t have to canter. It finally got so bad that even if I was only thinking about going to the barn, I could feel a knot growing in my stomach and I was worried that if I didn’t do something to reverse this trend soon, I would stop riding altogether.
One night I was lying in bed thinking about my first horse, Max and I remembered the first time I had taken a lesson on Max. The instructor had wanted me to ride without stirrups. When I told her that I hadn’t ever done that before and I was a little worried about riding without stirrups, she put Max on a lunge line and had me ride him while he moved around her in a circle. She told me I could hold onto the saddle if I felt like I needed that for balance. Pretty soon she had him cantering. Pushing on the saddle, I had gripped him with my legs and ridden his rocking chair canter around and around. I remembered how it felt like I was flying but connected to the instructor by the lunge line, I didn’t feel out of control. I felt safe.
“That’s it!” I thought to myself. “I need to get the feel again of flying without feeling like I have lost all control.”
I was excited at my next lesson and I told Jane that I wanted her to put Sonny on a 45 foot line so when we cantered I wouldn’t have to worry about anything except getting comfortable with the feel of the canter. She agreed that would be a good idea and after we’d had a good warm up, she clipped the 45’ to the halter I had left on under his bridle.
“OK.” Jane said as she played out the 45’. “Ask him up into the canter with your body. Try not to hit him with your heels”
I brought the energy up in my body and Sonny leaped into his canter. Reflexively I planted on hand on the front of the saddle and pressed myself onto my balance point. He cantered a lap and a half around Jane before dropping into a trot.
“You need to breath” she told me.
I smiled weakly in her direction and walked for a couple of laps until I felt a little calmer. Then I brought my energy up again and asked Sonny to canter. This time the departure was a little softer. I still had my hand on my saddle but I felt a little more relaxed. We repeated this pattern for about 20 minutes, alternating walking with one or two laps of canter; until I had done all that I felt I could do for the day. I was pleased with the result and even though I was still nervous about cantering, with Jane holding onto Sonny, I no longer felt completely out of control.
Jane and I repeated this on line lesson for several weeks. I could feel myself slowly becoming more confident with
Sonny’s canter and also more comfortable in the new Wintec saddle. An added benefit of these lessons was the refinement that it was creating in Sonny’s canter departures. I was learning just how little I had to do with my body to get Sonny to step off into a canter. I no longer felt like he was leaping out from under me.
One day I asked Jane if I could try just cantering around her in a circle, as if she still had the 45’ line in her hand. I walked Sonny around her until I felt we were both calm and relaxed. Then I asked him to canter. He stepped into a nice canter. I put my outside leg on him and took a tiny feel on the inside rein to keep him moving in a circle but I basically had him on a casual rein. His canter felt almost like a lope, slow and balanced and we circled Jane twice before I asked him to stop. I was grinning from ear to ear. The war might not be over but I had just won a major battle.
Jane continued to help me work my way thought my anxieties. After I mastered cantering in a circle, my next big step was to get comfortable when Sonny cantered down the long line of the arena. This was a problem for me because when he came off the corner and began moving down the line, his stride would begin to lengthen and I would begin to panic. My left brain knew he wasn’t running away with me by my right brain would begin screaming loudly and I would tighten up and pull him down into a slower gait.
“The next time he begins to lengthen on you,” Jane told me, “I want you to sit down on him and sigh. He knows what that means and it will slow him down. He might even stop.”
I asked Sonny to canter in a circle and then headed down the long line of the arena. Sonny’s stride began to lengthen. I sat deep in the saddle and sighed. Sonny almost skidded into a trot and I pitched forward laughing.
“See,” said Jane, “He listens to you. He responds to your body. It’s like a cruise control. You can use it to adjust his gait.”
We worked through the spring and the summer, Jane encouraging at each lesson. Gradually I stopped feeling anxious when I thought about going down to the barn. Some days when I got there, I realized that I wasn’t relaxed enough to canter but that no longer stopped me from riding. I began doing more carrot stick riding and for short distances was even able to canter Sonny without holding on to the reins. I felt like I was finally developing some of the mental and emotional fitness I needed to conquer this fear.
My fitness was finally put to the test in September when I attended another three day clinic with Carol Coppinger. I had worked really hard in preparation for the clinic and I knew that I would be reasonably comfortable when we were asked to canter. On the first afternoon of the clinic, Carol had us following the rail in the indoor arena. She had us count off in pairs.
“OK, here’s what we are going to do now,” she announced. “While the group keeps following the rail, one pair at a time is going to come into the center of the arena and using only your carrot sticks, canter your horses in a figure 8.”
My stomach immediately started to tighten into a knot. I had expected to be asked to canter Sonny but not without reins, using only a carrot stick. My right brain began to whisper urgently that I was not ready to do this and I knew that Carol wouldn’t think any less of me if I used my reins. But my left brain said ‘wait a minute’. You have done this before and you can do it now. Just breathe and stay relaxed.
I was in the 3rd pair. While I watched the two pairs before me go with some measure of success, I focused on breathing and staying relaxed and positive. When our turn came, I walked Sonny into the center of the arena, dropped the reins, looked in toward the center of the circle I wanted him to canter and brought the life up in my body. Sonny stepped into a canter and we cantered a circle. When he broke into a trot, I slowed him to a walk and asked again. We didn’t make the figure 8 exactly (Sonny has trouble with his right lead) but I did canter two circles without touching the reins. I glanced over at Jane who was assisting with the clinic. Now we were both smiling ear to ear.
I’d like to say I’ve completely conquered my fear but I know that isn’t true. I still sometimes get nervous before I canter my horse and there are even some days when I know I’m not in the right mental state for trying. But I also know that I am making progress and that someday soon, I’m going to take Sonny back to Fair Hill and have him galloping cross country, with his mane blowing in my face and we are going to be flying.