Advertise on podcast: Mary Wanless - Ride With Your Mind

Send us your feedback! Butterfly muscles, viable mental rehearsal, and a focus on the means whereby - the only way to discover the connection is to listen to this episode!

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Send us your feedback! The surprising connection between tiramisu, snot, and your horse's back.

Send us your feedback! Explaining The Magical Connection for horse lovers everywhere.

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Send us your feedback! How do you show up to sessions with your horse? And how do you manage your stance and state when you get there? Explore how to manage yourself and your horse to establish more effective communication between your body-mind and his.  Even in conversation with another human, your words only account for 7% of what you are communicating; your intonation is 38%. The remainder is your stance and state, with the latter influencing your facial expression. Dive into this episode and discover how to use your own body-mind to make more sense to your horse!

Send us your feedback! This picture illustrates one of the many images that this podcast refers to. Energy, a vital but abstract concept, is best illustrated through images and metaphors.  Dive into this session to explore the world of energy and discover how to direct yours effectively.

Send us your feedback!  Does the regulated rider or handler regulate the disregulated horse, or does the disregulated horse disregulate the regulated rider or handler? Working with horses influences their regulation as well as their body organisation. In addition, horses can help us become more regulated. Through working together, we can lead each other into comfortable regulation.  Dive into this episode and listen to the theory as well as some very relevant stories.

Send us your feedback! In this episode, I return to the nervous system — and to Stephen Porges’ polyvagal theory, which reshapes our old picture of fight, flight and freeze. Your autonomic nervous system is constantly scanning for safety or threat, and it quietly drives your thoughts, emotions and actions. I explore how trauma fills your “threat bucket,” why hypervigilance is so common in riders as well as horses, and how simple cranial-nerve exercises can start to empty your "threat bucket". You’ll discover six states — from regulation to freeze — and how your state shapes your story, your riding, and your partnership with your horse.

Send us your feedback! Back to Rider Biomechanics! I’ll uncover the effective alternatives to growing tall. The majority of women are hollow-backed, with their front longer than their back, and the majority of men are round-backed.  There are different ways and places that people hollow, so let's dive in and explore both the challenges and the solutions! We’ll meet low‑beam headlights, seat‑bone flashlights, and two hinges that click you into neutral spine.

Send us your feedback! This episode is about how our perspective shapes our experience. So often, we measure ourselves against where we wish we were, living in the “gap” and feeling the distance between where we are and where we think we should be. This episode invites you to turn around and notice your “gains”—the small, real steps you’ve made, even if they feel tiny or hard-won.  Through some stories, we’ll explore how shifting focus from what’s missing to what’s growing can change your experience of learning, riding, and even daily life. It’s about celebrating progress, not perfection, and finding satisfaction in the journey itself.

Send us your feedback! Do you want to bring out the best in you and your horse? I certainly do.  In this episode, we’re diving into what it takes to bring out the best in both of you—and how to navigate the journey ahead. Every journey needs a map, and I’ll be sharing one that’s robust, reliable, and designed to guide you whether you’re just starting out or looking to refine your skills. This episode is packed with insights to help you unlock hidden potential.

Send us your feedback! I tell the story of a rider with phenomenal talent in another area of life, and ask, how did this affect her riding, and how would it be if we taught riding as if it were a martial art?  I discuss what it means for riding that ‘form follows function’, and how this relates to the challenges inherent in riding well, and also to the ‘chicken and egg’ nature of the ways that riders and horses affect each other.  A lot of answers are to be found in the geometry (whether sacred or not) that we have delineated and expounded on through our various exercises. They can have such a good effect our combined fascial net. Please practice them! The issue of social license has recently come more to the fore, and I talk about the truism that "where skill ends, violence begins" by considering the hierarchy of: environment, behaviour, skills and capabilities, beliefs and values, identity, purpose and spirituality. If we fail to acknowledge the layers that lie between behaviour and identity, we will not find answers to the evolving ethics of keeping, breeding, and riding horses. We need those answers not just for the instances that hit the press, but also for smaller transgressions, that can be individual and/or cultural, and that we and the wider world are now questioning.