From the most recent issue of Yoga Journal. Starting Over by Phillip Moffitt. I realized that she was pointing to a radical attitudinal shift in which you cease to be reactive when you are knocked off your intended path. Instead, when you discover that you have lost your focus, you just begin again without getting caught up in emotional stories about why you can't achieve your goal, or judgments about how unworthy you are or why the change you seek is impossible. ... I set about developing "just start over" into my daily practice. www.marinsangha.org

I started practicing yoga years ago after I broke my back in a riding accident, and I read Yoga Journal every month. As I get older, I learn to take things more in stride, but I like this idea of "just start over." It means I do the very best I can with what I have at this moment in time. Maybe I want to be able to do a shoulder stand on the vaulting horse at a canter. (Right now I'd settle for a good mount at the canter.) Well, instead of having some grandiose resolution about how I'm going to condition my body each and every day to reach my goal and then chastising and disliking myself when I fall off of the exercise wagon, I can just start over. When I am practicing on the vaulting barrel for the first time in several days, I don't have to berate myself for my lack of discipline, I'm starting over, right now, this moment. I may not be perfect, but it sure is an interesting journey. And it helps me be compassionate to myself.

I find the same thing in training the horse. If the horse isn't understanding, you start over. You don't get invested in the outcome at the moment. You work with what you've got right now. And with training horses, you're surely going to start over again and again. And again.

Funny how horses can teach one to flow.