I am feeling once again like the winds are pushing at my back. For a while there was a bit of a lull. These winds are not so strong as to knock me over, but I am having to run at a fast pace to stay ahead of them. A good thing, I think.

I am definitely out of the horse doldrums (this is really nice analogy). Lots going on, on the Centered Riding front. This, I know is a result of my kicking open a few doors.

Next Saturday I’ll woman a booth and then give a presentation at the Mat-Su Horse Council Symposium. I’m calling my presentation Thinking outside the Round pen: Embracing the and/also contraries. I

wrote up my notes when I was in Portland and over the past few days Pete put together a Power Point presentation for me.

Pete teaches public speaking and so he had to learn how to do this, so that he could assist students and critique their presentations. I was amazed at how fast he was – and when he was done it was a golden slide show. I’m really excited about taking the concept of and/also thinking and running with it. I’m going to say that in addition to putting Natural Horsemanship practices to work that we need to consider other, equally valid practices, the one’s that I’m listing being Centered Riding, TTeam training, and agility. And, I am going to add that what all these have in Common is Feldenkrais body awareness work.

The following week I’m going to start the teaching component of my Bones for Life training. I have completed the course and now am going to learn how I might work with others. Bones for Life was designed by Ruthie Avalon, who was a student of Moshe Feldenkrais. It is really a shorter version of his more lengthy trainings.

I’ll spend the month of March getting ready for my April travels. I’m first going to do a Centered Riding Internship/Instructorship at Sally Bauder’s place outside of Schenectady. Then I’ll attend the Sally Swift celebration in Vermont. This is going to be a one-day event. After that I’ll head over to Cortland, New York where I will along with Susan Harris and Mary Trafford (Centered Riding instructors) do a creativity clinic. I am also going to do my first day-long Bones for Life workshop.

I’ll spend May working on our June Centered Riding clinics. At this point we have four or five regional reps coming here from various parts of the country. And this morning I talked with Carolene Miller, who is an Alexander Bodywork instructor. She committed to coming up. And tonight Karen Irland, who did an open clinic here last August, sent me an email saying she’d be interested in coming up. She’s the regional rep chair, so she could give us regional reps some direction.

This is all a lot to think about – the creativity clinic is for me the most important thing going on because it is what is going to enable me to make the connection between my writing and horse-related interests.

Next; 44. 2/13/17: The Writing Life: Pete’s List