Overcoming Anxiety In The Saddle
How to overcome anxious thoughts and tension to feel relaxed and free in your riding again!
Hey Rider!
Do you ever struggle with anxiety in your riding?
Maybe some of these scenarios sound familiar to you:
You find yourself getting anxious, hyped up or even a little shaky when you’re grooming and tacking up, knowing you’re about to get on and ride.
You procrastinate riding and find reasons *ahem excuses* to not get in the saddle
One misstep, minor spook or sign of bad behaviour from your horse and you heart is pounding and your throat feels like it’s closing.
You avoid riding with other people because the thought of someone judging you and your horse is more terrifying than being lonely.
Anxieties like those can get the best of us all. It’s completely normal for us riders to sometimes experience anxious thoughts, but at the same time, those anxious thoughts (and the habits that form from them) can really hold us back in our riding.
Your mind can either be your greatest asset, or your worst enemy when it comes to your riding.
There are a number of mindset tools we can use to help us refocus our thoughts, clear out that tension in our body and keep moving forward confidently in our riding, but in this blog post I’m going to focus on one tool, my absolute favourite mindset technique to be exact!
I’ve struggled with anxiety in my riding many times and in many forms over the years. So trust me when I say, I know what you’re going through.
But then I found a tool that really helped me transform my mindset and get rid of those anxious thoughts. *cue the angelic music 🙌
It's called Emotional Freedom Technique or EFT or Tapping. It’s a simple but SUPER effective technique that you can use any time, any place to remove anxious thoughts from your mind. It actually helps release those physical symptoms from your body as well (which of course our horses feel and react to).
I have personally been using EFT for years to help me overcome my own anxieties when riding (especially after my injury) and I've used it with my coaching clients to successfully help them with whatever riding fears they’d been facing.
Here’s how it works:
EFT uses a rhythmic tapping sequence on unique acupressure points on the face and body. These points correlate with the energy meridians that run all throughout our body. When we experience fear, anxiety, tension, trauma or any triggers that make our bodies feel unsafe, the body is flooded with stress hormones like cortisol and adrenaline and our energy becomes restricted and tense and can’t flow through these meridians freely. EFT lightly stimulates these points and triggers a relaxation response in our body that courses through the meridians and allows energy or Chi to flow again, sending signals to our brain that we can calm down and get out of fight or flight mode and stop producing stress hormones.
There is a lot of science behind this brilliant technique and you can feel free to research it more as I have, but know this…. It’s simple, but EFFECTIVE! And it can easily be applied to any situation that a rider might come up against.
I hate seeing riders plagued by fears and anxieties and holding themselves back instead of enjoying their sport/hobby to the fullest. And I know just how much EFT can help when applied to our riding beliefs, because I've seen such incredible transformations from it in myself and my students. It’s a tool that I wanted to make accessible to everyone!
So I created a mini course called TAPPED IN RIDING to teach you exactly how to use EFT and apply it to your riding to release your anxiety in and out of the saddle.
This course consists of 6 short videos that guide you through the EFT tapping technique and each video helps you work through a belief or fear that is causing you anxiety and creating what I like to call a roadblock.
This course is for you if you struggle with:
Being afraid of falling off or getting injured
Doubting your abilities as a rider
Procrastinating going out riding
Fearing the judgment of other riders
Feeling disconnected & out of sync with your horse
Feeling like you're not as good a rider as you once were
When you purchase this course you gain immediate and lifetime access to all of the resources, it is sent straight to your email and you're ready to start!
I walk you through all of the details of EFT and how it works, you get 6 short tapping videos working through each roadblock, plus PDF copies of the scripts so you can tap along with me.
Oh and there may be a special BONUS video in there as well 😉
I wanted this to be really inexpensive so that any and every rider who needs it, can try it out. So this course is only $44 USD! Trust me you wont regret this investment in your riding mindset
Grab the course below and get ready to tap away your resistance and release those anxious, negative feelings so you're ready to ride freely!
You can’t always control when anxiety will pop up in your riding, but you do get to choose how you will handle it and work through it.
Learning how to be proactive and use powerful mindset tools and techniques (like EFT) to get rid of your anxiety and not let it hold you back in your riding is always going to be the best choice you can make.
So make your mind your greatest asset rider, and choose to work on your equestrian mindset!
~Rachel
As always, I’m cheering you on Rider!
Feel free to comment or send me a message if you have any questions about the course or if you want to work with me on your riding mindset with one on one coaching.