A Body In Motion Stays In Motion

The morning sun was shining across the arena, warming the sand and casting long shadows from the fence posts. Horses and their people were scattered across the space, tentatively working at liberty—ropes wrapped around the necks of the horses, testing their connection, playing at distance. Beginning to trust they can dance together even with other horses in the space at the same time.

This was the third of four clinics in our year-long series, and the group had come back ready to work on more advanced things. They wanted to develop their spins, begin teaching the laydown, add speed to their draw. The morning session had been one of those rare times where everything clicks. The participants were working through the exercises faster than I'd expected, their horses responsive and engaged.

And then came lunch.

We sat in the sun, everyone relaxed, pleased with their progress. The afternoon session was approaching, and I could feel the shift in energy. The hesitation. Someone finally voiced what they were all thinking: "I feel like this morning was really good and I am worried that I am going to get a negative response if I ask for more. What if they don't *want* to do it? What if they are just doing it because they are being nice to me?"

But I knew exactly what was happening. They'd finally arrived at the place they'd been fighting to reach. And now they had to face what comes after you win the fight.

A long time ago, in a different life, I faced the same moment.

I was a young director who had had more success than I was prepared for. Shows touring in Europe, one in China. Part of the creative team working on the London 2012 Olympics. Preparing for a position running one of the National Theatres of France. I had fought for years to get into those rooms—rehearsal rooms I'd dreamed of being in, let alone running.

And then I was there. And it was terrifying.

Because when you're fighting to get in, the fight itself gives you purpose. The struggle creates its own momentum. You know exactly what you need to do: get through that door, convince that person, win that opportunity. The path is clear even when it's hard.

But once you're in the room, once you have what you wanted, you realize something no one tells you: now you have to create. Now you have to dream. Now you have to decide what to do with this space you've fought so hard to occupy.

The journey and the fight to get there open up a space for you to explore and grow. But when you arrive, when the fight is over, you're left standing in that space with nothing but your own imagination and your own fears. And that feels so much harder and more overwhelming than the fight to get in to the room ever was.

I would sit in those dream rehearsal rooms, paralyzed. Not because I didn't want to be there, but because I suddenly had to answer the question: now what? What do I actually have to offer? What if, after all that fighting, I have nothing interesting to say?

The participants in this clinic were in exactly the same place.

Their journeys had been varied. Some had started with young horses who needed everything taught from scratch. Others had horses in pain who needed careful rehabilitation. Some had horses who'd never learned the basics, who needed patient, systematic training. Some were doing this for the first time. That journey—tiring as it was—had given them direction. Fix the pain. Teach the basics. Build the foundation.

And then they got through it.

They had what they'd wanted: horses who were comfortable, educated, ready to work. And suddenly they were faced with a new challenge, one that becomes about them—a mirror that shows their fear about their part in the conversation.

This was the third clinic in a four-part series over a year—a massive commitment that gives the chance to delve deeper into something. To get past the horses' tension and triggers, let go of the confusion and clumsiness with the tools. Some had detoured into veterinary investigations. But they'd persisted, and now their horses were pretty great. All ready to work.

Which revealed the difficult truth: They were now the barrier.

What they were really saying at lunch wasn't "my horse is tired." They were saying: I am not good enough to give this horse a good experience. I am not skilled enough to help this horse reach something interesting. I am not of value now that the problems are solved.

When I was paralyzed in those rehearsal rooms, I was fortunate to be a participant in the Clore Leadership Programme. They gave me a coach to work through what I was experiencing.

The coach told me something simple that changed everything: A body in motion stays in motion.

Newton's principle—once you start, it is harder to slow. If you can keep the motion going, the motivation comes. Start with something easy, something so easy there is no need for motivation psychology.

At first, I thought this was too simple. I had a complex problem—surely I needed a complex solution. I needed to understand my fear of the blank page, my imposter syndrome, my relationship with success. But the coach persisted: just move. Start with something that requires no motivation at all.

It's the same as when you choreograph something. You don't start with the complex lifts or the emotional climax. You start with something small. Simple gestures. Basic patterns that require no thought, no motivation, just motion. As you work, things start to develop, without thought or a plan.

I discovered this accidentally in my own life. My yoga practice had stalled—I wasn't particularly motivated to get on my mat each morning. So instead, every morning at 5:30, I would get up and travel across London to practice. On paper, the idea of getting up 45 minutes earlier and trekking across London wasn't logical. But to do that, I didn't have to think. With home practice there were too many choices—when to start being the main one. I had to get on my mat and find the motivation to do something hard. Whereas getting on a train and sitting still, not thinking, was not psychologically hard.

By the time I got to the studio, I was already in motion. I'm a Mysore Ashtanga practitioner, and it takes about an hour and a half to do the primary series. To get there meant catching the 5:45 train, then a tube. The train schedule meant I couldn't negotiate with myself. Miss the train, miss the practice. No decisions. No motivation needed. Just motion.

Every day I listened to the same piece of music—Arvo Pärt's "Spiegel im Spiegel." It wasn't deliberate at first, but it became a meditation. It became my on-ramp. The rhythm of getting up, walking to the station, boarding the train, listening to the music—this became the easy, throwaway choreography that led me back to movement.

Slowly, that motion spread. The body that had learned to move in the morning started to move in the rehearsal room. The mind that had learned to follow the rhythm of the train started to find rhythm in the creative work again.

I do the same with my horses at liberty now. Start with what is easy, for me and for them, just to ease us into things. You could do the same under saddle—start with something so unconscious that it just lets you both connect. Switch the brain off and allow yourself to follow your horse and for them to follow you. That moment of connection, of reaching out to each other.

So I told the clinic group what I'd learned in those rehearsal rooms:

All of you have worked hard to be here. You've convinced your horses you are worthy dance partners. You've put in the effort to help them be released, connected, pain free. You've taught them about pressure, how to take food calmly, how they like to move.

They have shown up ready to work with you.

Your job is not to ask your horse to dance only to abandon them on the dance floor because you're afraid you don't know the steps.

Imagine you do all this work and then it gets sunny and I say oh, let's just sit here and enjoy the sun. In the moment it might feel nice. It might even feel easier than facing your fears. But when you go home, you have nothing. No growth. No discovery. Just the same fears waiting for you next time.

You can see this moment two ways:

Either: How fantastic, I get to go into my laboratory and work out my way of doing things, with the help and guidance of my teachers and my horse.

Or: I don't want to fail, I am not good enough, so I will pull back and hide.

The horse feels this hesitation without understanding it's about your self-doubt. To them, it can feel like rejection. So here's what you do—the same thing I learned on those morning trains:

Start with one thing. Something plain. Something so easy you don't need to think. This is your train journey. This is the on-ramp for your body to take over your mind. No plan, just feel and play.

Then you start to move. Movement makes movement. Don't let the mind critique—do that after. Just move together. Small steps. Repetition. Not too much refinement.

After a few minutes, go back and repeat it. Make it 10% clearer. Put a few pauses in. Move more consciously. At this point the mind works as an observer, watching the body, the repetition of the movement. 

Then the mind does something different. It starts to work as an ally. It starts to say: “ooh, I could help with that”, “I could make that better”. It stops saying: “that's rubbish”, “So and so could do that better, faster” etc. It get’s excited and invested. You will notice at this point, so does your horse.

The horses loved it. The arena felt focused. I didn't need to interrupt as much as I normally would much because the structure was coming from them.

This was exactly what had happened to me in those rehearsal rooms once I'd learned to move first, think later. The paralysis broke. The creative work started to flow. Not because I'd solved my complex psychological problems, but because I'd started with something so simple it required no courage at all.

By the end of the afternoon, no one was worried about asking too much of their horses. They were too busy discovering what was possible. The more the partnerships did, the more they found. The more they found, the more they did.

One of my most important teachers, Jacques Lecoq, says: "If you can move. Move."

Be careful of the trap the mind likes to keep us in—the familiar, the safe, the still. Stillness is death. Especially when you finally have the room you fought for.

This happens to people with young horses or with restarts. They come to fight the pain or to start a horse and they think that once that journey is over they have it all. But once that journey is over, that's the beginning of the real journey—a journey to discover who are you in the dance. That's the most difficult journey to face, the most rewarding path to tread, and the most honest thing you can do with a horse.

The truth is, whether it's a rehearsal room or an arena, the moment after you get what you wanted is the scariest. Because now you have to create. Now you have to dream. Now you have to trust that you have something to offer.

But you don't have to know what that is before you start. You just have to move.

Get on the train. Walk to the arena. Pick up the rope.

Don't abandon your partner on the dance floor just because you've realized the dance is now yours to choreograph.