To All the Horses I Have Loved Before

Photo courtesy of Sara Fogan

Me and Renege, my first “Equine Love”

When I started my hypnotherapy training, an important focus of my original business plan was to help equestrians improve their communication and relationship with their equine partners, including overcome anxiety around horses and achieve competition goals. Of course, not all of my practice focuses on horses and riding. Smoking cessation, weight loss, overcoming fear of public speaking/performance anxiety, grief resolution and dealing with stress/anxiety are just a few of many other self-improvement goals I help my clients achieve. But I named my hypnotherapy practice Calminsense Hypnotherapy® in homage of my special interest in horses and riding. “Common Sense” is a colloquial expression that means “horse sense,” and I use the word “calm” many times during every hypnotherapy session. Recent queries about my work with equestrians inspired me to pay tribute to some of the horses that have been so special to me over the years.

·         Paent (pronounced “Paint” and probably named because of his coloring). I rode him on a trail-ride during my one-and-only summer camp experience. He was probably an average-sized horse, about 15 or 15.2 hands high, but I was very little at age eight and he seemed huge. He was a gentle giant—i.e., he didn’t run off or try to dump me during the ride—and I begged my parents to let me take him home with me when I went home.

·         Renege. I rode this grey gelding for a few years between the ages of about 11 and 15. My first-ever riding instructor owned him and his doppelganger, a gelding called Charlie. Trivia fact: Clint Eastwood is riding Renege in the first 10 minutes of High Plains Drifter. The gelding was very dirty in this scene, but he is definitely in those scenes. My trainer’s husband worked in the movie industry and owned the horses—or bought them right after the movie, I can’t remember. Renege was a little smaller than Charlie and rarely used in jumping lessons—which made him less popular in lessons—but I really bonded with him. I can still remember how slow and smooth Renege’s trot was; in fact, it was probably better categorized as a Western jog. His canter (lope) was also comparatively slow compared to the bolder stride that is desired in dressage. My memory of how wonderful his canter felt probably created the subconscious mental script that my subsequent trainers and I had to work hard re-write so I would feel comfortable riding a true medium (bold) canter.

·         Galhoso (“Gally”). One of my dear friends co-owns a Lusitano stallion called Galhoso. The last time I visited her—about 15 years ago—Sandra asked if I would like to sit on him after their training session. She knew that I used to ride when I was a teenager and loved horses. The opportunity to get on a horse again and even trot him around on a lunge line for a few minutes was too good to be true. It also was the beginning of my re-introduction to horses and riding as a passion and life-style. The following year I started taking regular riding lessons again and bought my first-ever horse.

·         Geeves. I bought him from my trainer at Silvergate Farms when I turned 35. As I liked to say, I knew I loved him before I ever met or rode him. Having lived in England for seven years I was a fan of the Jeeves and Wooster novels and television series. As soon as I heard there was a horse with that name at the barn I knew I had to meet him. My trainer was surprised when I asked to ride Geeves, but we soon became recognized as a kind of item at the barn: “Sara and Geeves.” At 16.2 hands high, the dark-brown gelding was (and remains) one of the biggest horses I have ever ridden. He was always very gentle with and even protective of me, as I was of him. He taught me how to enjoy every aspect of loving a horse—not just riding but grooming, hanging out on rainy days and worrying about every little thing that horse owners worry about, often unnecessarily. Geeves and I were together for nearly eight years and it’s nearly six years since he passed away. I still miss him every day, and I remember every lesson he taught me.

·         Candy. I leased this sweet part-Arabian mare for about a year after Geeves died. I had actually been riding her at the end of Geeves’ life because his arthritis was getting worse. I wasn’t ready to own another horse yet, but the schooling mare and I were a good fit as far as size and my riding goals/ability. She took me to my first horse shows and even though I knew she wouldn’t be a permanent part of my life, I am grateful for the time I got to spend with her while I was grieving for my horse.

·         Galahad. I met Avalon’s Galahad in 2011. Our introduction was similar to how I discovered Geeves. A friend (now current trainer) owned a training barn and Arabian-horse breeding facility; when I finally started looking for a horse of my own, she gave me a DVD of some of the horses she was offering for sale at the time. My interest piqued the instant Galahad appeared in the frames. Learning about the horse’s part-Lipizzan pedigree was like a dream come true. The dancing white horses of the Spanish Riding School symbolized the ultimate of classical dressage training, and I could have a chance to become part of that story. The first time Galahad was brought out for me to watch him work at liberty, even my trainer agreed he seemed to be flirting with me in a way he didn’t behave with another prospective buyer. The first time I got on him for a ride, the gelding cocked a hind leg and dropped his head, waiting patiently as I adjusted my stirrups. “Well, he’s made up his mind!” My trainer said with a laugh, noting Galahad’s relaxation with me on board.

So had I, and we’ve been together ever since.

Sara R. Fogan, C.Ht. is a certified hypnotherapist based in Southern California. She graduated with honors from the Hypnosis Motivation Institute in 2005. For more information about Calminsense Hypnotherapy® and to set up an appointment, please visit http://www.calminsensehypnotherapy.com/.

© 2016

The Post-Hypnotic Suggestion

Photo by Rick Hustead

When I work with my hypnotherapy clients, I give a lot of suggestions during the session. Some of those suggestions happen at the very beginning of hypnosis. For example, I will tell a Physical suggestible client: “You are allowing your eyes to close.” Or I might say to the Emotional Suggestible person, “Right about now you are noticing that your eyelids are feeling verrrrrrrry heavy.” The content of the suggestions I use to facilitate the client’s desired behavioral changes will depend on the person’s therapeutic/self-improvement goal and his or her suggestibility. I also include two specific post-hypnotic suggestions during the session.

The first is the post-suggestion to re-hypnosis. This is what enables the client to easily, comfortably re-enter the hypnotic state in future hypnotherapy sessions whenever a specific word/phrase or physical trigger occurs: the words “deep sleep” and me snapping my fingers or touching the client’s forehead. I include the phrase, “Each time deep sleep is suggested to you for the purposes of hypnosis, with your permission and only your permission” to ensure that this state will be induced only in the context of hypnotherapy. When I work with children/teens I make it clear during the cognitive (alert) and hypnosis portions of the session that only the hypnotherapist can induce the hypnotic sleep, not a parent or sibling, etc. Similarly, when I use hypnosis to help a pregnant woman and her birthing partner prepare for childbirth, I include a similar caveat. For example, the client will not be suggestible to doing anything that is not relevant to relaxation and aspects of the birth process.

The second post-hypnotic suggestion I use is called the post-suggestion to reaction. This is a specific suggestion that activates a desired behavior change when the client is no longer in hypnosis and has returned to an alert and aware state. For example, I might suggest to a client to wants to feel more relaxed and confident when speaking in public begins to notice a specific color that represents relaxation and calm everywhere around him, all over the environment. Furthermore, every time the person sees this color, he immediately feels completely confident, relaxed and in control of his response to every situation and can express himself and his ideas easily, comfortably and confidently.

Sara R. Fogan, C.Ht. is a certified hypnotherapist based in Southern California. She graduated with honors from the Hypnosis Motivation Institute in 2005. For more information about Calminsense Hypnotherapy® and to set up an appointment, please visit http://www.calminsensehypnotherapy.com/.

© 2016

Thoughts of the Day

Photo by Sara Fogan

      Every now and then I like (and need) to take a few moments and remind myself about what is really important to me, in my life. If you follow me on my Calminsense Hypnotherapy Facebook page you may have seen some of these quotes before on this page, or will in the future. Many of these Quotes of the Day are beautiful examples and illustrations of the work I do as a hypnotherapist, so I will probably draw on them in future essays.

• “Stop being a prisoner of your past. Become the guardian of your future.” – Lolly Daskal

• “Keep your goals in front of you and your fears behind you. ” – Tony Robbins

• “Ask yourself: Have you been kind today? Make kindness your daily Modus Operandi and change your world.” – Annie Lennox

• “Let people do what they need to do to make them happy, mind your own business and do what you need to do to make you happy.” – Ritu Ghatourey

• “That broken thing you keep trying to put back together can’t even compare with that beautiful thing that’s waiting to be built.” – Trent Shelton

• “If you can't fly, then run; if you can't run, then walk; if you can't walk, then crawl; but whatever you do, you have to keep moving forward.” – Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

• “You know all those things you've always wanted to do? You should go do them. ” – Unknown

•  “Self-care is not selfish! It’s the most precious gift you can gift to others!” – Bruce van Horn

• “You may have to fight a battle more than once to win it.” – Margaret Thatcher

• “My goal is not to be better than anybody else, but to be better than I used to be.” – Wayne Dyer

Sara R. Fogan, C.Ht. is a certified hypnotherapist based in Southern California. She graduated with honors from the Hypnosis Motivation Institute in 2005. For more information about Calminsense Hypnotherapy® and to set up an appointment, please visit http://www.calminsensehypnotherapy.com/.

© 2016     

Lost...and Found

Photo by Rick Hustead

There is a platitude about never really losing something that truly belongs to you. If it is truly yours and you are meant to have it, eventually, that object or person or pet will return to you. In the past 36 hours or so, three things I truly believed were gone for good returned to me in the most unexpected ways.

The first was a quote: “You don’t do that to people, you don’t do that to people, you don’t do that to people!” The line just popped into my head one night earlier this week and I had no idea why or where it was from, but the quote was so familiar. I tossed and turned for about an hour, wondering who said it, where had I heard or read it? Maybe it was from one of my favorite movies, Truly, Madly, Deeply? No. I have seen that film and many times and read the screenplay; I know the dialog for all the key grief scenes practically by heart, and that line wasn’t in any of those scenes. Finally, I did an Internet search and found a scene from Grey’s Anatomy that had a similar line. Similar, but not the same…. So I put the line out of my mind and went about my day. When I woke up the following morning, the answer to my quote puzzle was solved: the line was from a scene in Circle of Two, a 1980 film starring Tatum O’Neal as a sixteen-year-old girl who falls in love with an artist portrayed by Richard Burton. (FYI: The scene in which O’Neal says this line is at 1 hour 28 minutes into the movie.) 

The second item I found was a notebook that contained notes I took during Charlotte Dujardin’s dressage symposium at the Los Angeles Equestrian Center in March 2014. Earlier this year, I reorganized my room and packed away a lot of magazines and other items to store in our loft. The notebook “disappeared” around then. From time to time I considered climbing up to the loft to go through those boxes and look for the notebook; but as the months passed and the weather got hotter I just put it off. I knew it had to be somewhere in the house. Sure enough, when I was sorting through some notebooks for inspiration for a new blog I happened to glance at the corner of my bedroom and saw the notebook. It was on the floor next to a bookcase and probably had been there all along, I just never noticed it before. I quickly picked it up and placed it next to my computer; I referenced some of the notes in yesterday’s blog about the Olympic gold medalist’s tips for training a young horse for dressage.

I found the third item this evening. Actually, there were two items, but I didn’t know I was looking for the second one—which I found first—until I discovered it. When I started to become involved in advocating against cetacean captivity, I wanted to work on a counted cross-stitch pattern of orcas (killer whales). It was strange to me that even with the popularity of Blackfish and growing awareness about the plight of these animals at marine parks, there were no embroidery kits or even patterns of the mammals. I looked on-line and inquired about these kits at every craft shop I could find on San Juan Island, Washington, where I attended the Superpod 5 event in July. As it turned out, I actually had a pattern in a collection of embroidery designs of wild animals tucked away in a box in my closet. I’m sure I purchased the book for the patterns of grizzly bears and grey wolves, and it probably had been languishing in that box, never opened, for at least ten years.

The amazing thing to me was that I only found the patterns because I was desperately searching for something else. Last weekend, I noticed that a small plastic horse I displayed on top of my dresser was missing. My mother gave me the horse to celebrate when I bought my first real horse, Geeves, in 2004. Both my mom and my horse have since passed away, and the sudden disappearance of that little horse really upset me. So this evening I started pulling boxes out from beneath and beside the dresser in case the horse fell behind or even into the items I was storing. (This was when and where I found the orca pattern.) What if I knocked it into one of the dresser drawers? I wondered. Ta-da! When I opened the one in which I store my t-shirts, I could see four tiny plastic hooves sticking up.

My hypnotherapy training really helped me find these items because it allowed me to relax and allow the inspiration and items to come to me rather than slip into a frantic search mentality. I was able to engage the logic/will-power/reasoning/decision-making faculties of my conscious mind to strategize about where I should start looking: Where was the last place I saw the item/heard that line? But I also knew that when the item didn’t appear after a reasonable time of searching, the best thing to do was stop the active search and allow my subconscious mind to do the heavy-lifting part of this work. The conscious mind can only store a limited amount of information at any one time, but the SCM holds millions of message units just waiting to be re-discovered. I just needed to be patient, relax, wait and let the treasures return to me.

Sara R. Fogan, C.Ht. is a certified hypnotherapist based in Southern California. She graduated with honors from the Hypnosis Motivation Institute in 2005. For more information about Calminsense Hypnotherapy® and to set up an appointment, please visit http://www.calminsensehypnotherapy.com/.

© 2016