What I don’t do, however, is using words that are hard to relate to. I use very solid language. I would never use terms like “retrain the nervous system” or “brain plasticity” or “fancy pants”.

Actually, “fancy pants” doesn’t sound that bad.

Falling off horses gets a lot of attention in our culture. Even people who don’t know the first thing about riding, horses, or much of anything else, will state hard and fast “rules” about falling off horses like they are facts of nature, evident to all. Like the rise of the sun. The first example everyone “knows” is, “if you fall off a horse, you have to get right back on again”. No! You might have been hurt! You may very well have frightened the willies out of your horse when you (his leader and guide) fell off and he’s not ready to trust you to get back on him. You may have hurt him jerking the reins, or banging on his back for something that was only his normal reaction and perfectly logical to him. Remount only if 1) you are okay physically 2) your horse is okay physically, and mentally 3) you understand what happened and know what will happen differently next time.

This one is like saying, “when you wreck your car, you must keep driving it.” I know the “correct” analogy is that you should face up to your fears and deal with them, but you know how people twist things! I know people who’ve mounted with broken vertebra and ridden for no other reason that this old expression says they should do so.

I have spent a great deal of time dealing with people who have fear of falling problems. There is another category (area? type of fear?) that I have found to address in riders as well.

“Yes”, to all that you mention; fear of injury, fear of failure, fear that you will not recover or get up. But there is another. It may be a subcategory of the recovery fears. It is the fear of the unknown. The abyss. The loss of any sort of control. I have this fear when I wake up from that dream of falling. This dream is not like a fall that I have ever had in real life. “Real” falling doesn’t feel like that to me. I can move when I really fall. In that nasty dream, nothing happens and I can’t move or affect things. Just nothing – the abyss – the end – death?

“Real” falling brings this up in some people. They may not even have to be close to actually falling off the horse. Just the notion that it could happen can bring that emotional fear up. People have a very hard time explaining what this fear is all about.

“Carrie” began to ride as a middle aged adult. She is an Aikido black belt instructor and 40 year Alexander teacher. She is not afraid of falling (or much of anything else physical). Ever. She once had an experience during a riding lesson where the horse calmly ran off with her. Not too far. She was in an enclosed arena. Not horribly fast. It was while practicing skills she had practiced successfully before. She was nowhere near losing her seat, or being separated from her horse. Yet it absolutely terrified her. Every time she thought of putting her foot in the stirrup (literally) the emotions started.

She came to stay with me for a little bit to get some help. She’d lost the love of her life, and wasn’t willing to give up that fight so easily. Doing what I do as a horse trainer, I tried to look at it through her.

What I saw was that she had lost her connection with the return trip to the earth. In Aikido, she can get to the ground whenever she likes and get up whenever she likes. She can also put you there, whenever she likes. This is her security. Her control. Certainly her perception of control, and almost her perception of life, is centered around her connection to the center of the earth. Her lifeline.

When the horse ran off with her (not far and not fast) she lost control, briefly. She didn’t know how to deal with the loss of control, because she had no practice at that. We did two things. We practiced being out of control around horses and then finding the edges of control so we could regain it. That was a lot of round pen work, thinking like the horse, etc. So the next time a horse tried something she didn’t want she could have a fool proof way to regain control.

Secondly we found the earth connection. We fell off in many lovely controlled ways. I am sure you can relate to this. I asked her then, “when the horse ran off, why didn’t you just fall off?”. We delved into the definition of “fall” and “dismount”. We found they are actually the same thing. Very Feldenkrais. If walking is falling and recovering, then we fall off our horse every time we get on it. We just do so beautifully, or less beautifully.

For Carrie, this worked wonderfully. She met her monster, gave it a name, and learned she could control its predictable behavior. Carrie had a sort of fear of falling without having fallen – that time. She had fallen off horses before. In fact, the first time she rode one (a big one!) she fell off. Didn’t bother her a bit. She landed on her feet! Much later, she found the fear of the loss of control brought up that paralyzing fear of the abyss. She couldn’t fall and that scared her to death. All I showed her was how to fall, because the actual “real” fall, the return to earth, is her reference point for control. Not so, for most people who fear the return to earth.

We human organisms start our lives on the earth, and eventually return to it. Gently or less so, we know we return to the earth. When up on that horse, Carrie must have felt like David Bowie’s “Major Tom” as he floated away from earth with no way to return. Lost in the abyss, further and further away. Paralyzed by the fear. Wasn’t Major Tom doomed to forever fall? Isn’t it an analogy to death? The abyss can visit us in many ways. Often the feeling of falling brings up the abyss. For Carrie it was when the horse went where it wanted to go, in spite of her pulling on the reins. Then the abyss appeared every time she just put her foot in the stirrup, or even thought about it. Trying not to think about it didn’t work. Checking the lifeline worked.

My falling dream doesn’t allow me to move. Maybe the face of the abyss is the loss of life defining movement. Moshe would like that, wouldn’t he?