Spirit and my progress

So thus far I have been able to work with Spirit on Tuesdays and Thursdays and then at least once more during the week. I hope that I will be able to do it more, though. I have moved some of my tutoring appointments around so I have time. When I first started to work with Spirit it was really hard. I did not understand him in the least. All the old horse sense my Dad had taught me was not working out. Spirit and I had to first learn how to communicate with just driving and I had to learn how to drive him. I use to leave out phases or do them so fast. The phases are techniques I get to use to communicate to Spirit in a good way. In my opinion they are the safeguards for me to remember to stay calm and not get frustrated. Well so once I learned how to do that Spirit and I were doing a lot better. At the same time Spirit seemed to mellow out a lot. Before he was always trying to push me around or not listen to me. Now that I have established me being the leader he seems to be content to follow. I don't particularly like this because then he always seems board with me. So last week I finally figured it out. We were working together after class on Thursday and all the horses started to leave. This is when Spirit get nervous and anxious. So I decided to just go with it just like Brother Twitchell told me to. I brought my energy up and started to drive him in a nice trot then we got faster and faster and I started to go through obstacles. It was amazing!!! Because I felt the connection that I have been trying to obtain for so long and have only experienced glimpses. He did everything perfect and as I have thought about how that happened I have come to a epic conclusion. I put my trust in him and in my abilities. I trusted that he would listen and respect me and then I told myself that I could be the one to lead him. Spirit likes to play but on most days he seems to like to just follow but when I lift my energy and get in the mood to play I can direct him and it truly is fun. He even jumped over the jump instead of slowing down to walk over. Then today I went into the area really excited to practice what I learned on Thursday. Instead I was humbled greatly and learned something new. We let our horses loose in the arena and watched them for a time then tried to implement our driving skills in the little herd. I noticed that cowboy, one of the other horses, and Spirit did not really care about running around and goofing off. They were content to just stand there and run every so often when the two dominant horses got excited. So I tried to go in and be the dominant horse but I think I was to worried on being big and forgot to be a leader. I lost my focus which was energy directing to communicate to Spirit where to go. I was then truly humbled when Brother Twitchell came in and taught me what I should do and how I was communicating badly to Spirit. I went through the phases too fast with him and then I never released the energy that I was throwing Spirit's way. Therefore, when I would put pressure on Spirit to turn he did but it was too much pressure that never went away so he turned too much. I would run to the other side of him and do the same thing until Spirit ended up walking back and forth and back and forth. What I should do is start with small amounts of pressure and then increase until I get just the right amount of response from Spirit then just go with him. This is going to be kinda hard for me because I think I tend to come at things with a lot of energy and too much drive. Maybe, if I figure out how to control that tendency I wouldn't drive so many guys away, ha ha. Just kidding guys are a little different than Spirit but not by much. Either way that was my learning today. Peace out!!!!