Prediction, Practice and The Work Of Behavior Change

I recently finished a certification course, dealing, largely with the neurology of behavior change. To say it was fascinating is an understatement. Obviously this is a very deep and complex topic, and I’m not in any way pretending that this post is a comprehensive exploration of this topic. People have devoted their entire careers to studying how and why humans change. Or don’t. There were a few key ideas that stood out to me, and they are ideas I have been implementing for myself and will continue to be integrating into my coaching sessions with clients.

WHY CHANGE CAN BE HARD

One reason change can be so difficult is that our brain is fundamentally a prediction machine, our brain prefers what is predictable. Safety, neurologically speaking, is closely tied to predictability, not necessarily to what is best for us or what is the most efficient. That is why at times even when we’re trying to make positive changes, it can feel uncomfortable. So when we start something new and it is unfamiliar, it is less predictable and hence potentially less safe. Sometimes that is enough for our subconscious to throw up resistance or roadblocks. We can revert to old habits or not practice our new skills and think it’s just a lack of discipline or willpower. However, if we can recognize that it may be a protective mechanism from our brain, then maybe we can approach it differently.

HABIT FORMATION IS A SKILL

Another key take away for me is that developing habits like almost everything else in our life, is a “skill” that we can cultivate. Behavior research from people like James Clear, BJ Fogg, and Stephen Guise helps us understand that habits are built through intentional design. That means that we’ll need to do some experimenting with cues, routines, and small everyday practices that can be repeated consistently. Over time, repetition builds familiarity, and familiarity builds safety.

RETHINKING OUR EXPECTATIONS

One of the questions asked in the class was “what is your relationship to expectations?”

This was a big one for me personally, as I realized that whether I wanted to admit it or not, I often set very unrealistic expectations for myself. One of the challenges with habit formation is that many of us have expectations that are simply too rigid.

We decide that we will practice every day, perfectly, or completely change our routine all at once. But life inevitably interferes. Fatigue, stress, weather, health, or work… it becomes too easy to miss a day of practice and then we can end up feeling like a failure. The problem often isn’t that we lack motivation or willpower. It’s that we’ve set unrealistic expectations of ourselves. Overly rigid goals tend to create an all or nothing relationship with our practice.

ELASTIC HABITS AND SMALL WINS

One concept that I personally found especially helpful, comes from the book Elastic Habits, by Stephen Guise. He sets up levels of practice, small, medium, and elite goals for each of the new habits we are trying to integrate into our life. This approach makes being consistent far more sustainable. On a difficult day a small habit might simply mean two minutes of practicing some new skill. He was clear that our mini habit we set for ourselves needs to be able to survive our worst day, so it should be easy. The key? It still counts!! In fact, small wins can be incredibly valuable because they can reduce feelings of overwhelm and allow our nervous system to experience success. That helps build prediction which then builds safety and then makes it easier to create the change we want.

CHANGE TAKES TIME

When you’re looking to create change for yourself, if you’re anything like me, you may be a little impatient at times, lol.

As riders, we understand that skill takes time to develop. We don’t expect our horses to go from being unhandled to executing at a high level of performance in a short amount of time, and it’s no different for ourselves. We can layer in new abilities overtime and build our capacity step-by-step. Instead of being reliant on bursts of motivation or intensity, sustainable change comes from consistent repetition, even in small doses. The goal isn’t perfection. It’s creating new patterns that help the brain learn to predict and to trust. Once these new habits are predictable the nervous system no longer experiences it at a threat. That’s when real change can happen.

ONE FINAL THOUGHT

In the book “The Confident Mind” Dr. Nate Zinsser said this, “Practice produces changes, but those changes happen slowly… The building, the growing, the actual development we seek through practice happens while we are on the plateaus, not during the bursts of improvement. What we have come to value most in our present day world of immediate gratification is the breakthrough experience, that moment when all those small, imperceptible changes, reach a critical mass and explode into a palpable advance. But true development happens on the plateau.”

Supporting riders through that process of learning, helping them develop new patterns, habits, and confidence is the work I’m continually exploring in my coaching and movement sessions. If you’re interested in learning more I would love to connect with you.

When “Knowing What To Do” Isn’t Enough

Anytime we are learning a new skill we need lessons and training. Good instruction matters. Riding, good riding, is a skill, an art. To do it well we need lessons, coaching, guidance. Lessons give us structure and the kind of feedback we can’t always see or feel on our own.

But… there’s a difference between knowing what to do, and being able to access it when your body feels stressed, tight, or afraid. Mastering a skill like riding requires a nervous system that can stay present, responsive, and organized under pressure. When safety drops - even subtly - the brains shifts from learning mode to protection mode. From performance to survival.

In those moments all the things “you know” can start to disappear.

* You stop breathing without realizing it

* You stiffen

* Your awareness and vision narrow

* You grip, brace, or freeze

Most of these patterns live below the conscious control, in the subconscious nervous system and reflexive parts of the brain that are designed to keep you safe. If the nervous system doesn’t feel safe it will prioritize protection over precision. And protection will always override performance.

It becomes easy to see why so many riders get stuck in frustration: They keep collecting more instruction and more “things to do”, but the real missing piece isn’t more conscious instruction, its more capacity!

Capacity to stay aware while moving (dual task training)

Capacity to breathe while concentrating (breath to movement matching)

Capacity to respond instead of react (executive function training)

Capacity to move quickly in response to unexpected and fast movements (vision and vestibular training)

This is where brain-based training and awareness work become so powerful, they don’t replace riding lessons, they help them stick. It’s about training the nervous system underneath the skill, so your body can actually access “what you know”……when it matters the most.

The good news is all of this can be trained, and it can improve. If you're interested in learning more about how to apply this type of training for yourself I’d love to work with you.

( Image from Z-Health )

Fear and Anxiety After a Riding Accident

Every rider who has experienced a fall knows that the effects go far beyond the physical bruise. Even when the body has healed, moments of hesitation, tension, or anxiety can appear unexpectedly - a tightening of the chest before mounting, a shortened breath during transitions, or an uneasy sense of ‘what if it happens again?’

From a neurological perspective, these responses are not simply psychological. They are protective patterns created by the brain and body after a perceived threat. The amygdala and related midbrain structures record sensory information from the event - sounds, sights, balance changes, even the feel of the saddle - and link them with the experience of danger. Later, when similar sensory cues appear, the nervous system can react as if the event were happening again.

When the Body Remembers

After my own serious falls years ago, I understood this connection in a very personal way. The horse I was riding was green, and with the second accident, I ignored my instinct that I wasn’t ready to ride again. I suffered a concussion, and even after the physical recovery, my nervous system was still on alert. Every time I went to ride afterward, my body replayed the experience. I felt the same tension in my chest, the same anticipation in my muscles, even when I told myself everything was fine.

At the time, I did what most riders do - I gave it time, rode other horses I felt safer on, and slowly rebuilt my confidence. But without the tools I now use in Applied Neurology and the Feldenkrais Method, the fear never completely disappeared. I could function and ride, but part of me still expected something to go wrong.

How the Brain Creates and Resolves Threat

As neuroscientist Joseph LeDoux’s research shows, the brain’s fear circuits are not under conscious control. We cannot ‘think’ our way out of them. They are shaped by the sensory and emotional context surrounding the event and are designed to protect us from future harm. This is why advice like ‘just get back on’ rarely works - the nervous system must be taught safety again, not forced into compliance.

Through approaches like Feldenkrais and Applied Neurology, riders can learn to gently update these neural maps. Movement exploration, breath awareness, and vision and vestibular retraining provide the brain with new sensory information that says, ‘I am safe.’ Over time, these experiences shift how the nervous system predicts threat and allow calm, fluid movement to return.

Restoring Confidence and Connection

This understanding has profoundly directed my work. I feel strongly about helping riders regain confidence using these tools - guiding the nervous system to feel safe again through gentle, progressive re-education. Confidence is not rebuilt by overriding fear but by retraining the body and brain to trust movement and possibility once more.

“Neuroscience research shows that the only way we can change the way we feel is by becoming aware of our inner experience and learning to befriend what is going on inside ourselves.”
— Bessel A. van der Kolk

Pain- Why Education Matters

Whether it’s acute or chronic, almost everyone would agree that pain is something we don’t like and try to avoid at all costs. What is pain? According to the Oxford Language dictionary it is defined as “physical suffering or discomfort caused by illness or injury”. Simple enough, but what about in the case of chronic pain? That is pain that persists beyond the usual recovery period. In the book “The Way Out”, Alan Gordon refers to this type of pain as Neuroplastic pain. What does that mean? Many people are familiar with the term neuroplasticity, meaning that our brains can create new neural networks and learn and grow constantly. Sounds amazing, right? The downside is that our brain can also learn bad habits, like pain. Yes, sadly we can learn to be in pain. The good news is that if something is learned it can be unlearned.

Our current biomedical model focuses on treating a condition by finding a single, structural cause and fixing it. However, there are many people who report never having had any type of injury, but they’re still dealing with some kind of chronic pain. In the book “Why Do I Hurt? Adrian Louw remind us of some key concepts to keep in mind. “Tissue injury is not needed for pain. Emotional stress can cause pain. Many people suffering from pain had a time in their lives, filled with many stressors, perhaps involving family, work or financial issues, and even, unfortunately, abuse. With all these stressors, the brain perceives threat and thus produces pain.” One thing that almost all modern pain researchers agree on is that pain, especially in the case of chronic pain is a threat response. Even if our pain started with an initial injury, if it has persisted past the normal healing time, then it has become neuroplastic pain. The body is perceiving actual or perceived danger, so it continues to send us threat signals, i.e. - pain.

I have personally seen so many clients benefit from getting more educated on the topic of pain and understanding it is not an indicator of real damage in a joint or a muscle, which can often be demonstrated when we do some applied neurology exercises or a simple and very gentle Feldenkrais®️Movement lesson, and they notice that immediately they’re pain is decreased or even gone. Alan Gordon who I mentioned earlier states that the total cost of chronic pain In the United States alone is more than $600 billion annually! Yet, we don’t seem to see alot of real help and solutions being offered. That’s not acceptable.

So what can we do? Both the methods I work with focus on addressing the brain and the nervous system, to improve the inputs your brain is receiving, and reduce threat. As well as changing chronic movement habits that may be worsening symptoms, getting real education around pain and changing the way we have been taught to think about it can all have a powerful effect to reduce or eliminate chronic pain.

Obviously this is a very complex topic, and these few short paragraphs cannot begin to explain or discuss every aspect of pain, but I hope it provided some food for thought, and if it peaked your interest and you would like to learn more about the work I offer and if it might be able to help you, I would love to hear from you.

Rhythm and Movement

For the last few months this idea of understanding how rhythm can influence our movement has been a fascinating rabbit hole to go down. At a recent workshop we spent time diving into that very topic, and it was amazing to see the differences in the smoothness and accuracy of movement when a rhythmic stimulus was added to their practice.

Daniel Levitin is a neuroscientist and musician who studies music and rhythm and the effects on the brain. He has written at least two books on the subject, “This Is Your Brain On Music” and “ I Heard There Was A Secret Cord: Music As Medicine”. He says “ The coming together of rhythm and melody bridges our cerebellum and our cerebral cortex.” These areas of the brain control the initiation of movement and improvement of coordinated movement, so it makes sense that providing an external rhythmical source could improve our fluency in movement.

I’m excited to continue to explore this topic more deeply and expand ways I can use these tools to help my clients.

“Everything in the universe has a rhythm, everything dances” - Maya Angelou

Change

"Progress is impossible without change, and those who cannot change their minds cannot change anything". - George Bernard Shaw

Change. One of the hardest things we seem to deal with as human sometimes. This last year has been full of change for me, while I was already headed down a new path, a serious injury in May forced me to travel down it even faster.

I’ve spent almost 15 years building a business that focused on working with horses. Multiple types of modalities and endless learning to try and help our equine companions. A lot of my clients probably already know this but some may not, my journey with equine therapy started out of necessity: trying to help my own horse. I have been focused on equine therapy for many years. But then, things started to slowly change. After a lot of encouragement from one of my mentors, Mary Debono, I ventured onto the path of starting to work with people. I love helping riders develop their body awareness, move with more ease and coordination, etc.. If you work with horses you know how sensitive they are. “Mirrors”, many people say. So how we are physically, mentally and emotionally plays a huge role in how we interact with and respond to our equine companions. Developing the work I do with people has become a priority.

Since then the work has snowballed and I find myself today having acquired multiple certifications in applied neurology and halfway through a four year Feldenkrais training. Sometimes life comes at us so fast we don’t always have time to sit back and appreciate just how much things have changed. When I broke my arm this past year, it laid me up completely for a while and limited my ability to work with horses for many months. Even as I write this, I’m not completely healed and able to fully go back to the work I was doing before with horses. Having that time off really made me sit back and think about where I wanted my work and business to go in the future. Did I even want to do equine bodywork anymore? It seemed to me that if the owner didn’t spend time learning the work, and also work on themselves physically and emotionally, then how much was really going to change for that horse? While I have always left owners with homework after our sessions, I wanted to do more.

So it has really solidified for me. In order to help horses, we truly have to start by helping the people who own and ride them. Going forward, while I will still be working with horses, my focus will be on working with owners who are working on their own bodies and brains, then we can work together to help their horses. I know we can’t do the one without the other anymore.

“You’re not working on your horse, you’re working on yourself.” - Ray Hunt

My beautiful Bonita