What Are You Expecting Before You Begin? #165

Your brain is constantly predicting what will happen next. It uses past experiences to help you prepare for everything from standing up from a chair to approaching your horse with a saddle or walking your dog past a skateboarder.

That ability is incredibly useful. But sometimes a prediction causes you to brace, hold your breath, tighten unnecessarily, or focus so intently on a difficulty that you unknowingly help recreate the very experience you expected.

In this episode, Mary explains how this prediction loop can influence your movement and your interactions with your horse or dog. She shares examples involving a painful knee, a stiff neck, a horse who becomes uncomfortable during tacking up, and a dog who reacts anxiously to skateboarders.

You’ll also learn why changing these patterns doesn’t require denying what has happened or convincing yourself that everything is fine. Instead, you can offer your brain and nervous system new evidence through small experiences of greater ease, comfort, freedom, and connection.

Through FeldenkraisⓇ Awareness Through MovementⓇ and Debono Moves, you can begin creating experiences that expand the possibilities available to you and your animal.

Your brain may predict what will happen next. But a prediction is not a verdict.

Key takeaways

• Your brain uses previous experiences to predict what is likely to happen next.
• Those predictions influence how you breathe, move, focus your attention, and prepare for an experience.
• Bracing against expected pain or difficulty can contribute to recreating the expected outcome.
• You also make predictions about how your horse or dog will respond.
• Becoming aware of a prediction doesn’t mean denying genuine pain, stiffness, anxiety, or discomfort.
• Small, comfortable experiences can give the nervous system new evidence.
• Beginning with an easier direction, using less effort, imagining easier movement, or exploring a smaller range can interrupt a habitual pattern.
• Using hands-on Debono Moves with your horse or dog, you can help your animal move with greater ease and comfort, and update their predictions. 
• Each new experience of ease, comfort, or connection can influence the brain’s next prediction.
• Before beginning, ask yourself: “What am I expecting?”
• Leave a little room for something else to be possible.

Resources:

Grab your FREE video training to help your dog. 🐕 https://www.marydebono.com/lovedog 💥

Get Mary’s bestselling, award-winning book, “Grow Young with Your Dog,” for a super low price at: https://tinyurl.com/growyoungwithyourdog. Demonstration videos are included at no extra cost. ⬅️⬅️⬅️

💥Learn how the Feldenkrais MethodⓇ can help improve your seat, position, and balance on your horse! Free rider videos masterclass: https://www.marydebono.com/rider 💥

All information is for general educational purposes ONLY and does not constitute medical, veterinary, or training advice. Please consult a qualified healthcare provider if you, your horse, or dog are unwell or injured.  Always use caution when interacting with horses and dogs.

About the Host:

Mary Debono is a pioneer in animal and human wellness, blending her expertise as an international clinician, best-selling author, and certified Feldenkrais Method® practitioner. With over three decades of experience, Mary developed Debono Moves, a groundbreaking approach that enhances the performance, well-being, and partnership of animals and their humans.

Mary's innovative approach draws from the Feldenkrais Method®, tailored specifically for horse and dog enthusiasts.  Her methods have helped animals and humans:

• Improve athletic ability and performance
• Enhance confidence and reduce anxiety
• Reduce physical limitations and discomfort
• Deepen the human-animal bond

Mary's flagship online programs, "Move with Your Horse" and "Easier Movement, Happier Dogs," provide animal enthusiasts with an innovative approach that combines the concepts of Feldenkrais® with her signature hands-on work for horses and dogs (Debono Moves). Through this transformative approach, both people and their animal companions discover greater harmony, ease, and connection.

TRANSCRIPT:

Your brain is a prediction machine. It uses past experiences to anticipate what's most likely to happen next. And in this way, it's preparing you. It's helping you meet the situation, however, and that's super useful. Think about it. If you met every moment as if it was brand new, that wouldn't be a very efficient way to live. However, predictions can also limit you because they have you recreating the same experience over and over again.

Give you an example. Just say you're sitting in a chair and you want to stand up. Your brain says, okay, I know this. I've done this many times. And maybe your knee hurts, hurts when you stand up from a chair. And so now your brain, this happens a lot of times way under the radar. You don't even realize you're having all this stuff going on, right? But your brain is figuring things out and it's saying, hmm, okay, that, that right knee is going to hurt.

So I'll, you know, hold the breath, stiffen, kind of like brace through it. And what you're doing is you're not just predicting the outcome, you're influencing it. You're inadvertently creat the conditions that make it more likely for your knee to hurt. And so, but instead, if you take a step back and you think, okay, if I'm about to stand up, maybe I could make sure that my lower legs are in a straight line under my knees, right?

That the ankles are under the knees, and very importantly, that you're not rolling the knees inward or outward. So notice if you feel like your weight shift on your feet. And of course, you know, I teach the Feldenkrais awareness through movement lessons, and we have whole lessons about helping your knees be much more comfortable and how to come from sitting to standing. But even just start with that little thing.

Start with a little thing like, okay, I'm recognizing that it's possible to do this movement differently. Differently, meaning in a more comfortable, easy way that's healthier for me now. So that's one example from a movement that you probably do multiple times a day. But now let's say you're. You're also making predictions about your animals, about your horses and your dogs. So maybe you're going to tack up your horse, and this has happened many times before, that your horse pins her ears when she sees the saddle coming, or, you know, as you tighten up the girth, even though you're doing it carefully and slowly, your brain is making a prediction.

And so you anticipate that, right? You're, you get that information, even unconsciously, you're getting that information from your brain, and you might inadvertently be doing things that actually reinforce your horse's behavior. Maybe you get frustrated, you hold your breath, right? Your attention is now on the difficulty and not on the ease. And yes, in my move with your horse program, we go through a whole thing that I call tension free tacking up so that this isn't a problem for you.

But if you're not there yet, just think about, well, you can do this a bit differently. You don't have to assume these things. And maybe with your dog, maybe your dog has in the past reacted badly to someone coming by on a skateboard. Can't blame your dog, right? And so you anticipate that you see or hear a skateboard coming down the street. You anticipate that. Now, of course, that can be very helpful that you anticipate it.

But the key thing is to not do things that create more anxiety for your dog, right? And have your dog more likely to react in that negative way. So here's where we have to be mindful. We're not saying that these things don't happen. Yes, maybe your knee hurts when you stand up. Maybe your horse is uncomfortable when you're saddling them. Maybe your dog doesn't like skateboarders. It feels your dog might feel anxious around them and reacts accordingly.

Those things can all be true and, and they can all be changed. So what we want to do is to remember that the prediction machine, we'll call it, doesn't have the final say, that once you become aware of it, once you get that in your head, that you actually have more control, you can bring more awareness to a situation, then you can start changing the outcome, okay? So that it, it doesn't have to just continue.

So let me just say this again in super simple terms about how I see the prediction loop, okay? Something happened before. That's step number one, right? Your brain registered something. The brain predicts that it will happen again. So when the environment is similar, you come out with the saddle, or you hear the skateboarder, or you're getting out of. Up, out of a chair, right? The brain puts that together.

And now your nervous system starts to organize around that prediction. And then this is very important, that organization, what you're doing with yourself, the way you're moving, the way you're breathing, the way you're directing your attention, it influences what happens next. And then that experience seems to confirm the prediction. So you see how it, it's quite a funny loop. It's it's can really become a downward spiral. So to give another example, if maybe each time you turn your head, it feels stiff or tight or something, or you expect it to be uncomfortable, you may unconsciously be again, holding your breath, restricting your ribs, tightening your jaw, right?

And then you're trying to move your head as an isolated part. So yes, it's going to be difficult. It may hurt, right? So then your brain says, see, I was right. I told you that when you turn your head, it hurts. So you actually build in more compensations, more protective habits. So again, same thing with your horses and dogs, because you expect a certain thing and then you're actually contributing to it.

Unconsciously, of course, unconsciously. But that's when we start, we want to start to bring more conscious awareness into the equation. And this is where, how you can do it, you can use new evidence, okay? You don't have to convince your brain that that prediction was wrong, right? And you certainly don't have to criticize yourself for having that prediction, right? Because it, remember, your brain is designed to keep you safe.

It made the prediction for a reason. It was using the evidence it had. So now we want to do is to give it new evidence so it can, it can refine the prediction, it can change it. And the evidence can be very, very small. It can be simply imagining doing the movement more easily. And then you do a little bit at a time, maybe you explore a smaller range of the movement.

So, for example, turning the head, because you do such a small movement, it feels easier and comfortable and safe. So now you're starting to tell your brain, okay, now we have new evidence so we can change that prediction, right? Maybe you begin in a more comfortable direction, maybe to the left is easy, to the right is more difficult. So you go with what's easy, and then you build on that.

Maybe you simply use less effort. You do a little body scan. You kind of work through letting go of unnecessary tension so you can experience the movement or the opportunity without bracing and restricting. Or with your horse or dog, maybe you focus on one response that they're having. That's different, right? That's, you know, somehow easier, more comfortable for them. So instead of focusing on the difficulty, you start to focus on the positive, the new possibilities.

So in other words, you're bringing curiosity and awareness into the equation. And so each new experience like that gives the brain something new to include in its next prediction. And you don't. It's not like you have to convince the brain that, oh, this is all easy all my problems are solved. Everything is perfect. No, it's simply there might be more than one way for this to happen. That's all.

You have to tell the brain that you have choices, that it doesn't have to be locked into these habitual patterns. And this will influence how you approach these things with your horses and dogs. Okay? So for, let's, let's bring it to the horses and the dogs. You know that I teach something called Dubono moves, which is a hands on, very gentle way of working with your animal. And for example, just say your horse or your dog, you want to improve the movement of the shoulder.

Okay, we do that, right? One way we do that is by you very gently learning how to bring very delicate, easy movements to the ribs, to the sternum, to the thoracic spine. You're kind of leaving the shoulder how it is, but you're moving all these other parts sort of around the shoulder. And then the brain says, oh, that's a new experience. You're moving the more proximal parts, the parts that are closer to the center relative to the distal part, which is the shoulder.

And now the animal's nervous system says, and that feels really good. So now you're helping to have your animal experience a different way of being. And then you can then gently move the shoulder and suddenly it's freer. So that's new evidence. And what you're doing is you're helping the animal create new neural connections around that activity. So now, again, now the nervous system of the horse or the dog can update its prediction machine, right?

It can update the prediction. Doesn't have to stay locked into this thing that, oh, we have to protect the shoulders and we move very stiffly and the base of the neck is stiff and maybe the back is stiff and the hind end, no, you can use your hands in very specific ways. Again, I teach this in my programs. How to have this idea of new experiences, ones that feel safe and comfortable and easy.

So the animal's nervous system will want to repeat that. That now informs the next prediction. And this is also what we do in our Feldenkrais awareness through movement classes. We're updating those predictions. We're creating new neural connections where suddenly, yeah, your shoulders get freer, your back gets freer, your hips are freer, you can sit and stand and move in a more balanced, easy way. So just remember, your brain is always predicting what will happen next.

But a prediction is not a verdict, right? Every small experience, you give your brain of great, greater ease, greater comfort, right? Or better connection with your animals is new information, and with that new information can make a different prediction. So before the next thing you do, whatever it is, ask yourself, what am I expecting before I begin? And then see if you can leave a little room for something else to be possible.

Thank you so much for joining me here. I love sharing this work with you and let me know what you're expecting. Is it good? Is it bad? Is there something you'd like to improve? Let me know. Love to hear from you. So thank you again and I look forward to talking to you very soon. Bye for now.