Dear Readers, Here are some thoughts, highlights, and changes I experienced last year, especially pertaining to my equestrian and professional worlds. Please enjoy and stay tuned! If you are interested in learning more about any or all of the material covered, please feel free to respond to this email with your questions and curiosities. I will orient subsequent posts in the direction of your wonderings. This has been a year of inner transformation for me. In 2021 I moved Wonder, my trusty equine partner, to a non-show barn where we reconnected in an organic and horse-centric world. He learne ..read more

I have been experimenting with keeping my life simplified, focused, and rhythmic instead of being super busy all the time. Hence, my lack of blog posts over the past year. But now in the quiet of the shortest days I am compelled to reach out and share some musings from the year. I spent the winter between my home-office in Petaluma, CA and our remote cabin in Pope Valley, CA working with clients remotely and chipping away at a long-term writing project. When home in Petaluma I rode Wonder every day. After getting vaccinated in the spring, I ventured out to a horse show at Paso Robles Horse Pa ..read more

In recent months, many of my followers have been asking me if I have disappeared! I have taken an intentional break from from the horse show merry-go-round due to Covid. In place of travels and competition highs and lows, I am writing a book about what I have learned about myself and my work from my equine partners. The result is a work in progress called My MindZone: A Personal Philosophy Emerging from a Lifetime with Horses. It chronicles many of the amazing equine relationships I have had throughout my life as well as the teachings I received along the way. Many of these nuggets of wisdom ..read more

Dear Readers, I am writing in response to the recent fires in northern California. I hope this email finds you safe and unscathed. In light of these circumstances, I have returned to studying the brain’s reaction to fire as well as ways to reroute this evolutionary reflex and better understand what many of us are experiencing. Simply put, instinctual systems in the brain and body are activated when the smell of unexpected smoke is detected. The stress hormones epinephrine and cortisol are released, and the sympathetic nervous system is activated to have a fight-fight-or freeze response. Your ..read more

Please enjoy this article by clicking link and scrolling down to page 23! Thanks to The Horse Park at Woodside for the invitation to contribute to this publication. http://www.horsepark.org/documents/2020EEBodyv7_000.pdf ..read more

Monthly release of What's Up in the Land of Dr. Carrie? where I share my thoughts and teachings... Things I am pondering: • How often I have wished for the world to stop and now that it has feeling the depth of change this stoppage has set in motion. • That virus is one of the only things that can actually "check" the human race. • What is the “new world” going to be like? And how can I continue to support people? Is my current work with equestrians expanding? Is my audience expanding? Is there a new type of client coming into my life? • How incredibly important endorphins are to my wellbeing ..read more

,When I returned to show jumping three years ago I found myself unbelievably nervous on the day of competition up until I was completely done riding. I applied my arsenal of mental practice and brain training tools and made a bit of headway. But honestly, I struggled with very uncomfortable nerves until recently. I started recalling the physiological reasons for the surges and heart palpitations I felt as my turn to go in the ring approached. I knew that most of what was happening was a normal biological response to athletic performance. I wanted to shift my relationship to it. I started focu ..read more

As I sit her on a late November afternoon, I am thinking about intentions for the off-season and the coming year. Here are 10 ideas that have surfaced in my life and work in 2017 to inspire your own reflections: Compare = Despair There is enough success to go around and it is important to surround ourselves with people who are striving. Put on Technicolor lenses and broaden your vision to see that success exists in the small steps of everyday life. It is contagious and it is definitely a disease you want to catch! Talk to yourself as you would someone you love If your inner voices are n ..read more

I have been having a most amazing horse show season walking much of my talk as a competitor, student, sport psychologist and equestrian community member. Just back from my last show, Sacramento International, I felt I must write about a magical moment I had of re-finding my joy. There is a lot of rich material left uncovered in that final day’s experience, which I had planned to write about soon. But hours after I returned home from Sacramento the Sonoma County firestorm broke out, freezing us all in our tracks, and thrusting us into survival mode. Now two weeks after the storm engulfed our li ..read more

I have a regular, recurring column in Horse & Style Magazine -- the premier publication focused on the competitive equestrian community. The challenges equestrian athletes face, though, are very similar to those faced by any kind of pressure-bound situation. Join us for the discussion -- we'd love to hear from you ..read more