I love horses and teaching Health & Wellness

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"I love horses and teaching"

Today's Health & Wellness May/June 2005

Janice Terra's 30 years' work with riders and horses has earned her the nickname the Female Horse Whisperer of Texas. Her secret: training people as much as the horses. Terra has found a way to turn her childhood love of horses into her livelihood. "I'm very fortunate that I've always known what I want to do and am able to make a living doing it," she says. In addition to coaching traditional horseback riding skills, she teaches equestricize, a system she designed for exercising on horseback.
Terra guides new equestricize students through easy stretches like touching your toes while in the saddle or leaning back to rest your head on the horse's croup (behind). As flexibility, coordination, and confidence improve, you progress to riding with no hands and with your eyes closed- and ultimately to soaring over jumps with your eyes closed, your arms out like airplane wings, and your feet from the stirrups.

Sound scary?

"On the other side of fear is joy," says Terra, sounding like a Zen master. (In fact, she also teaches classes in Zen riding and mounted meditation.) With clients from as far away as England, Germany, and Egypt, she's definitely onto something.

Exercising body and mind

You get plenty of exercise around the stables, Terra says. Riding tones leg and butt muscles and requires a strong core for good posture. The upper body workout comes with lifting feed and saddles, grooming horses, and mucking out the stalls. But many of her students find the mental workout the most challenging of all.

There's more to riding than just staying in the saddle, says Terra, "Your body position on the horse is key. You need to get in touch with your body, your posture, your center of gravity. As in martial arts, you learn that the power comes within you, not without. You learn to relax, breathe, and remain in control." If you're not relaxed and in control, she points out, the feedback is immediate.
"The horse simply won't do what you want. You can't be in harmony with the horse if you're not in harmony with yourself."

The payoff is "seeing how much more you are than you ever thought you were," says Terra. "Horses help teach you that. My students see that if they can do this, they can do anything. It opens up an entire world of possibilities. Horses help us reconnect with ourselves."
Terra is currently writing a book titled The Language and Psychology of the Horse.

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