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Find Your Calming Color

5/19/2014

Find your calming color.

Wouldn’t it be neat if we all had the money and resources to surround ourselves with a colored environment that meets our sensory and energy needs? We could have one room for relaxing, one for working out, one for exercising the brain, one for sleeping, and on and on and on. If I had my druthers, I’d have a majority of blue rooms, one soft celadon green room and one industrial style black and white room. Those three palettes would get me through the moods of my day and the needs of my mind. I’m kind of simple girl when it comes to color, though I admit I do like looking at a myriad of colors (think 1960’s Peter Max posters), but I can’t live within them if I expect to do much more than play in my imagination and feel my pulse rise.

Finding the colors that help you find your best place for doing whatever it is you need or want to do, isn’t so much a science as it is an art. Tons of resources are available online to help you find your color code, but beware, many resources are not very flexible in their suggestions. To some, color is not flexible reality individuals can play with, but rather something certain thanks to empirical research based on opinion polls and some decent comparison studies. For example, there is research that concludes if a woman is wearing the color black, she is presenting a submissive position to men. That’s rather funny to me, as I wear black to look thinner not to help men feel superior.

So… as you explore your color world don’t take it too seriously. Look in your closet and see what kinds of colors you turn to for your day-to-day wear. Are they bright, dull, mostly one color, or all kinds of colors? Pick up some color swatches at a home improvement store and look at them one at a time until you’ve had enough time to find the color(s) that seem to create the effect you’re after (calm, stimulated, energized, etc.) And when you think you’ve found the colors you are happiest with, begin to surround yourself with those colors. You don’t have to paint a whole room or buy a new wardrobe. You can carry a small piece of cloth to pull out of your wallet or pocket when you need a color to zone in on. You can get a few pillows, or paint a rock to sit on your desk, or make a big collage of your color from the color swatches; in other words, you can keep and display tiny bits of your color choice nearby for a quick color fix.

Aspie.com #colorscheme #colorzen #coloryourworld

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Horse Therapy

5/12/2014

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Horse Therapy with me!

In my day there weren’t equine therapy or hippotherapy centers for me to explore and join. I had ponies and horses, a halter, some lead ropes, a bridle and a saddle and wide open pastures to roam. My mom had the dairy farmer up the street teach me basic horsemanship then she turned me loose in the morning and said “See ya when you get home.” Such a thing probably doesn’t happen much these days. I didn’t have formal lessons or instructors riding with me, but it’s important to note my go-to horse was an extremely gentle and well trained ex-show horse who knew his stuff. Blaze was his name and he was my best friend forever. I could jump on him like a gymnast over a vault. I’d stand on him while he munched his grass. I’d lay my back to his and watch the clouds in the sun.

Most days I’d go without a saddle and ride with a halter and lead rope for reins. The hours I spent teaching my body to mold to my horse, were priceless and precious pieces of my move toward what I call my bilingual world – half Aspie, half neurotypical.

Studies tell us equine therapy helps a person with core strength and balance, hand/eye coordination, body-awareness, focus and concentration, interpersonal communication skills, self-esteem, patience and self-control and sensory integration. Bingo. The magic mixture of autism supports. I hit the jackpot when I sat on my first pony as a little bitty girl. All these neat things began happening within my body to help me enter the seemingly crazy world a bit more seamlessly, because I took a liking to horse riding and care.

There are several different therapeutic based riding programs involving equines though they each share the belief that the horse’s gate and the warmth from his body along with the vestibular input the horse provides, work together to help the rider’s body align and work in ways that positively facilitate a variety of neurophysiologic systems. For example, research has shown equine based therapeutic riding can help the rider with bilateral coordination, sensory information processing, speech and language skills, core strength, fine motor control, standing, walking and self-control, confidence, leadership skills, executive functioning skills, depression, anxiety and fear, and perhaps a whole host of other things we have yet to attribute to equine therapy.

On a horse, I am free. My body forgets there is still a tightness that sits in my muscles and that I remain relatively uncoordinated. My mind forgets the complications I have when trying to understand language and do simple things like coordinating my schedule or running a household. On a horse I can forget my baggage and turn my trust over to the animal beneath me and truly, together, we work out what each of us needs to find that joint comfort zone of relaxed beast and relaxed human. The horse will drop his shoulders and engage his hind end to balance. I’ll adjust my seat bones and posture to help him. He’ll buck out a little or grind his teeth against his bit if I’m not doing my job to center him. I’ll nudge him forward or adjust my pressure on the reins to help him do his. We are a team working for physical connection. Most importantly, we are friends.

Aspie.com #horsetherapy #equinetherapy #ponypals

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Find Your Calming Color

Horse Therapy

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