Answer

By Your Horse

Homeopath and Practitioner Caroline Putus replies:

If you feel capable, you will feel more confident, so have a few lessons with a good instructor to make sure that you have a good jumping seat and technique. You also need to have strategies in place to cope if something unexpected happens. Find somewhere quiet, close your eyes and imagine that you’re the director of a home movie, watching yourself on the screen jumping exactly as you would like to. Remember, you’re the director, so if anything in your film doesn’t look right, just edit it out and put a new, better, bit in.
When you’re happy with your film, step into it and act it out in your head. Be the star of the show. Practise this several times, making sure that what you’re doing feels right and enjoyable.
Now spend a little time thinking how you would handle something unexpected. Run these scenarios through in your head several times until you feel that the strategies you’ve decided on are good ones to try. Practising these visualisations frequently
will make this behaviour instinctive for you.
Lastly, remember the only pressure to jump big fences comes from within you. If you feel comfortable jumping smaller fences or poles on the ground to start off with, do that.