Slowing Down!

This is one of those life lessons that we learn from horses.....to improve balance, slow down! This week a new student asked me why it was that her horse seems to pick up the canter when all she is asking for is trot. I thought about this for a moment and then asked to see her trot. One likely answer would have been that she was probably unknowingly giving a canter aid to her horse. Some horses will pick up the canter more easily(especially in one direction) if they have a particular diagonal pair of legs that is chronically farther apart than the opposite pair. But in this particular case the answer was about speed! Her trot was unfortunately too fast for her horse and he was moving on out of balance to the point where he felt more comfortable picking up the canter. My advice was to slow the trot down and there was no other incident during the lesson. She did make one comment though, "I only kept up the pace because I thought we needed impulsion." I simply stated that impulsion had little to do with speed and left it at that.
Another student asked a question at the end of a lesson where her horse worked mostly at the walk on a square using a variety of lateral exercises to bring him into a better physical attitude. He was walking oh so grand, articulating his hind leg joints as he learned to manage his very large body within the given parameters. Her question was, "how does one know if the walk is too slow?" My immediate answer was, "if you can immediately ask the horse to move on and he does, then you know you did the right thing." But I realized later that the answer I gave wasn't really an answer to the question she asked! I had to think some more about this question and came up with an idea of what her real querry was about.
Working slowly is somehow a concept that seems contrary to the norm for dressage riding where there is lots of activity and grand motion. I am not against grandiosity. What I am against, however, is the compulsion to work with mph, particularly with large horses, where there is little chance for improvement in balance. Working with the energy the horse offers, building it within and directing it carefully, growing the horse upward, instilling self-carriage.....all these things make for brilliance when we later add mph. Mph does not bring about self-carriage or balance.
So I suppose the last question above was really a wondering about whether or not her horse was somehow short changed by not moving forward with greater abandon. To that idea I would suggest that by the slowing of the horse and the putting him to task laterally with elevated head and neck, the result would be a greater setting on the haunches which would improve his balance and provide the necessary self-carriage which would enhance forward motion by giving the horse's body a sense of integrity or collection as he advances ground. Any heaviness of hand, lowering of the head and neck, irregularity of the steps.....these would be examples of ill effects of working slowly.
Eventually, I will have the opportunity to explain to the first student how the speed really had little to do with the fact that the horse was attempting to canter. It was rather the horse's poor balance at trot that was causing the problem. Speed is the ENEMY of IMPULSION! Slow work 'with purpose' gives birth to impulsion.