Compassionate Mind, Compassionate Horsemanship
An introduction to the psychology of compassion
How can our understanding of compassion and emotional regulation help us in our relationship with ourselves and our horses?
The theory of compassion inspires my work in supporting horse owners who are seeking a more connected, mindful and horse-friendly ‘way of being’ with their equine partners. In this article, I’ll explain and unpack a small part of this that might be helpful for those interested in human psychology.
Professor Paul Gilbert, a British Clinical psychologist and founder of the Compassionate Mind Foundation and Compassion Focused Therapy is perhaps an unlikely person to inspire an article on horsemanship. However, I think his work on compassion has clear applications to inform our interactions with horses. I’m fortunate to call Paul a professional colleague in the School of Psychology at the University of Derby where I teach. I also get to work with other inspiring colleagues such as Professor Frances Maratos and Dr Caroline Harvey who are building upon Paul’s work and creating training for educators in how to use, model and teach compassionate mind training approaches to emotion regulation and compassionate communication skills respectively. This way of working and thinking has certainly complemented the way I approach many aspects of the teaching and training that I do in my professional roles both inside and outside human psychology and behaviour change.
Emotion Regulation
Professor Maratos explains that over the thousands of years of evolution, humans have survived successfully much to the credit of three aspects of emotion regulation within our nervous system. Let’s look at these and I’ll draw from situations I’ve encountered with some of my horsemanship clients to help illustrate them.
The threat system - things we feel anxious, nervous, angry, hostile about e.g. your first competition, picking up your horse’s hind feet if you recently got kicked, or even riding at all if you’ve had a fall. These experiences activate the sympathetic nervous system, commonly termed the ‘fight-flight-freeze-fawn’ response, so our appraisal of them as threatening is accompanied by the release of glucose and stress hormones (e.g., cortisol and adrenaline) and associated physiological responses such as shallow, fast breathing and an increased heart rate. Additionally, negative self-talk such as being self -critical can also stimulate this threat system. Although this system has been helpful for us in surviving sabre tooth tigers, we tend to over-activate this system by perceiving many things unnecessarily as threats.
The drive system - things we are excited and energised about- e.g., looking forward to riding with friends, going to an event you are well prepared for, having a lesson with a great instructor who is always encouraging and helpful. Although this also activates our sympathetic nervous system, we interpret these events as motivating or positive challenges and, in addition to the release of adrenalin, cortisol and glucose, we get a dopamine release which we experience as pleasure rather than threat. This system is linked therefore with pursuit of goals, acquisition of resources and achievement. When we overdo the drive system, we can get into addictive and compulsive behaviours, perfectionism and burnout as we lose sight of balance, and often forget to step back and replenish our minds and bodies via activities that activate the soothing system.
The soothing system - things we do that deeply relax us and shift us into the parasympathetic ‘rest and digest’ side of the nervous system. ‘Feel good’ neurochemicals such as oxytocin, endorphins and opiates are released. When we do things we truly enjoy, time seems to pass quickly, and we are relaxed and content. By taking time to take care of ourselves in this way, we can soothe ourselves, and soothe others better – we can give and receive care, affection, acceptance, encouragement and kindness. Soothing time seems to fill us back up and replenish us if we are feeling run down or disconnected from things we’ve previously enjoyed. Examples of soothing activities are completely individual of course, but perhaps you enjoy a few moments of watching your horse graze in the field on a summer evening, reading an inspiring novel, or having a relaxed hack with no time pressures (if you like to hack!). These activities and their neurochemical responses help to offset the damaging effects of the threat system, or overdriven drive system, bringing us back to a more centred, calm, and peaceful place.
In the world of compassionate mind training, the idea is to check that we are not spending too long in threat or drive in particular e.g., we are not pushing ourselves too hard so that the drive system is overloaded (this shifts us into the threat system) or we have no time for soothing activities. This can take the joy out of riding as the things that were enjoyably challenging now feel stressful, or one more thing we have to cram into a busy schedule.
It can also be useful to think of this in terms of our comfort zones, learning zones and panic zones, a concept I heard cited by American horsemanship trainer, Kathleen Beckham, and which originates in learning theory (Senninger, 2000; Vygotsky, 1978). The activities in our comfort zone are likely those linked with the soothing system - it feels safe and easy here. Activities where we are happy to learn and stretch ourselves with a positive attitude are linked with the drive system, and situations where we feel anxious, overwhelmed, or start to hear messages in our minds that sound alarmist, are linked with the panic zone.
I invite you to take a few minutes and think about your time with your horse. When you think of all the activities you do with them, how would you classify these in terms of the threat, drive and soothing systems (or panic, learning and comfort zones)? Does your time with your horse fit into the soothing system, the drive or the threat system? How balanced are your equine activities?
It’s also good to think about this in your normal (non-equine) activities too. It can be useful to think back over your day and think about times when you were in drive or threat, and, if the threat system was activated, what soothing activity might have been good to employ to reduce the negative effects of this on your mind and body. I’ve also found this activity to be really helpful when considering larger life choices e.g., do you have enough time in your week, month of year to look after yourself and nurture that soothing system or are you always on the go? Is the ‘go’ something that energises or drains you?
If you feel you spend a lot of time in the threat area, I’d recommend discussing this with a confidence coach who can help you learn psychological strategies to support you. Using techniques such as breath work, visualisations, and reframing can be helpful. An example from one of my clients was that any time her horse increased his energy in the arena, even in walk, she worried he was going to buck as she’d previously experienced this in there (at a trot, within the first weeks of his arrival). This would make sense if it had been a recent event and no training had happened since. However, it had been nine months since that event, and she’d been having consistent groundwork lessons and her horse had been ridden by professionals too and he was working calmly and well at walk and trot. Her threat system was over-activated. To help to soothe this, one of the strategies she learned was to reframe this idea of ‘energy meaning panic’ to ‘energy meaning… energy’, and, if all the other parts of his body language were lining up as being calm, focused and connected, the interpretation of this as being something to panic about was unfounded. The more times she experienced energy as being OK, the more her brain began to believe this - in psychology we call this the recency bias - our brain gives greater importance to most recent events (I should note that in some cases the perception of threat is due to PTSD and this needs to be supported by a clinical psychologist).
Acknowledging what triggers our threat system can therefore be really good to understand, as this is a place where we might benefit from getting some help, or stepping back and re-evaluating the situation. We might ask- am I driving too hard here? Could I step back and remove some of the stress from the situation? Is my horse also in the threat mode? Are we both there? Do I have the skills to manage this? Our bodies don’t lie, so if you feel your heart rate increasing, you feel emotional or anxious, you are probably in over-drive, or threat. In that place emotionally it is very hard to be a calm and effective teacher for your horse. They pick up on subtle body language as this is their ‘native’ language and how they communicate with each other.
A Foundation for Success
Using groundwork to build the connection between human and horse can be really useful. By doing groundwork we are essentially, as horsemanship trainer Joe Midgley says, ‘riding from the ground’, therefore creating transferable skills for the horse to build upon. This way of working also supports the horse and rider’s confidence. You see their foundation being built, which can translate to you knowing, for example, that by asking your horse to do something when ridden, they aren’t going to panic, as they have already gained some experience and success in that movement on the ground.
Without it, ridden work is less likely to be as successful and the ‘holes’ in the training are more likely to become apparent under saddle. This is where problems can arise, as a horse can get confused, get pushed into threat, and move into the flight, fight and freeze sympathetic nervous system, which may push us into that place too! A vicious cycle begins.
So, in conclusion, finding harmony in both our own and our horse’s emotional regulation systems can be a helpful way to consider how we spend time with our equine partners. It can also help us to appraise where this time fits within our broader lives. Building a foundation for both horse and rider is an essential element to success, and finding a compassionate trainer who helps you and your horse to learn, stretch and build confidence can also be an important part of a horse owner’s journey to making their time with their horse as enjoyable and rewarding as it can be.
Compassion and Emotion Regulation Resources:
Gilbert, P. (Ed.). (2017). Compassion: Concepts, research and applications. Taylor & Francis.
Maratos, F. A., Hurst, J., Harvey, C., & Gilbert, P. (2022). Embedding compassion in schools: The what's, the why's, and the how's. In Applied Positive School Psychology (pp. 81-100). Routledge.
Maratos, Frances A., et al. "A Mixed-Methods Study of Compassionate Mind Training for Pupils (CMT-Pupils) as a School-Based Wellbeing Intervention." Mindfulness (2024): 1-20.
About Fiona Holland
Dr Fiona Holland learned about horsemanship over 30 years ago when she was living and working in North Carolina, USA. She has been practising and learning about this style of working with her own and others’ horses ever since. She is a Senior Lecturer in Psychology and Behaviour Change at the University of Derby, the Director at Behaviour Change Partners (www.behaviourchangepartners.com), a freelance training and consultancy business, and she also helps people as a horsemanship coach in her Peak District-based business, Compassionate Horsemanship .
She is passionate about helping people new to horsemanship as they develop their skills and understanding of a good foundation, and brings her training in sport psychology, motivational interviewing and compassion-based communication to her human clients, and horsemanship inspired by her mentors Buck Brannaman, Jan Leitschuh and Joe Midgley to her horse clients.
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