Thoughts on Posture(Rider and Horse)

Some people do not know where they are in space! Clumsy, awkward, devoid of a personal music.....lacking a centered spot from which to move, they hurl their weight around as they travel about while their mobilizing muscles suffer severe stress in an attempt to hold to a course or path. What makes us so sure that some horses don't suffer from this same problem? Maybe they cannot dance with us because they feel like they have 'two left feet'! Could we, if we knew how, correct proprioception problems for ourselves, for our horses and for ourselves in relationship to them? I believe the answer is "yes" and that it is through the power of energetics.
When most people ride they orient themselves on the horse with respect to their own posture. Thus it is a reasonable goal to want good and useful posture. But what if we have a bona fide physical deformity(and we all seem to have some degree of asymmetry or physical deviation from the ideal), does this mean we are likely to have trouble riding? Yes, if we are not using energy sensitively. The physical posture we are dealt is not our only means to communicate with the horse. I have seen handicapped riders, midgets, very old riders with scoliosis and those with a limb missing ride with all the finesse of a champion. This can only be so through a mastery of the unseen forces of energy they are able to manipulate. That said, the task of using these forces would then become that much easier in a well-ordered posture.
Order is a priority with horses. Order is essential to their survival. It is, therefore, a requirement that herd leader(s), according to rank, are able to maintain and preserve order through the ability to move the feet of the individuals beneath their rank. They accomplish this through posture, gesture and energy projection and deflection. This constant ordering and re-ordering of the herd puts the legs of everyone in motion to exercise and teach the essence of proprioception.
Without relationship to something other than oneself, proprioception is meaningless. So with this thinking, I believe that both horse and rider can find order for their bodies(their posture) and healing through energetic relationship with each other. Thus good posture begets better energetic communication and vice versa.
So when I see riders with innate crookedness, I try to help that problem by changing my focus to energy flow. Almost without prompting they will tell me they recognize a blockage. This is the beginning of great things! Sometimes a touch on the rider's thigh or hip or hand is like a sweet balm messaging for a particular channel of flow to open and release. It can be the same for the horse!
The first time I became aware of this was with a difficult and unmanageable horse. What I noticed when I simply focused and projected my intent for a particular hoof to move was that I was actually re-ordering the horse's body AS WELL as gaining better management of him. The most interesting aspect of this, which proved true with every horse since, is that one foot in particular will be more difficult to move than the others! This is a phenomenon which has some fascinating parts to it. First of all, the difficulty presented has something to do with rank. If I am able to move the most difficult foot of all and at all times, I 'have' the horse at my disposal. He has submitted at some level of his being and he recognizes me as worthy of managing him. The facial expressions and tongue and jaw movements, the sighs and the slight shift in balance over their feet demonstrates that my ability to successfully move all the feet brings not only calm and confidence but also a therapeutic re-ordering of his postural alignment. The foot that was most difficult to move?...that foot was more than a foot of defiance, it was a foot in need of re-organizing and re-orienting to the body.
This is a case for why groundwork coupled with acute observation are highly instrumental in the overall development of the horse. Extending this thinking to the rider, it is through the rider's employment of energy projection, absorption and deflection in relationship to the horse that he finds himself, re-orders himself and builds his posture in a way that is efficient for the tasks in riding. It is no good to think of training only in terms of impulsion, forwardness, bend, and roundness. If the horse has no sense of where he is in space, nothing will change him at the deep and very basic level he needs!
The dynamics of motion absolutely imply that a static posture on a horse is useless. Posture on a moving horse can be thought of as a moving flow of energy which morphs into and out of form in a smooth contiguous manner. 'Open' joints that never lock shut allows this flow to circulate and adapt to whatever the horse needs from us. The establishment of a beat allows for the form to 'rotate' through a series of alterations in a regular pattern(like a wave). The average of all these alterations is the middle spot or neutral spot to which the body orients itself. Without a neutral spot there is no place from which to change gears or positively influence the horse's balance. Posture is our position in space! Moving in space, requires a moving changing posture that has a wholesome and healthy connection to all dimensions. When relationship is healing for both horse and rider then extraordinary dance is inevitable.