The Canter: Influencing its Energy

To better understand the canter is to have had better connection at the trot. By connection I do not mean with the hand, but with the seat. Time and again I find more riders ask me about flying changes than anything else. To me the changes, for a healthy horse, are easy. The problems are mainly with the rider not finding the connection. It is more than just the horse recognizing the change of aiding or change of balance. It is about horse and rider communicating through energy direction and exchange.
If there is one misunderstanding that shows up worse at any time, it is the 'between leg and hand' concept at the canter. The 'between' is really between the rider's seat and the horse's mouth. The seat(and torso) is the 'clutch' or power regulator and coordinator of the effects of the rider's hand and leg. So if you really want to know 'between leg and hand', stand up and notice what is between your leg and hand.....your SEAT!!! And the seat makes the canter, not leg, not hand.....but seat!
Poor dull school horses hardly recognize seat when they have spent so much time patiently waiting upon beginners with their awkwardness. For a beginner to try his canter aids out on a very highly trained horse, he would quickly discover that something in his own understanding was radically amiss!
The feel of the canter seat is a diagonal glide with a slight roll from outside hind toward the inside fore. It is not a rocking motion or rowing motion as so often observed. There are 3 steps from the horse and one moment of suspension.....4 beats, if you will! If there is no clear moment of suspension the speed and energy of the canter are not right. I call this a precipitous canter which rather runs along. Some horses are prone to this problem at canter. Reworking the problem through the seat(or clutch) can make quite a difference and restore natural beauty to the gait.
Although a horse trotting out of balance can pick up the canter , forcing a horse to choose canter in this way is rather chaotic and stressful. Better to build energy for the task and work at creating order in the leg coordination.
There is no question that true horsepower is at work to get a massive body off the ground for a moment of suspension when 4 feet are in the air. Canter is but a jump through the air! Keeping this in mind, it is important to remember that for canter to result from an aid, the horse must know what he is going to be asked to do with enough warning for his level of fitness and understanding. Therefore, the rider can only expect a good response if there is enough 'readiness' in the horse. The 'readiness' is created in the seat.
Imagine you are in a car climbing a steep hill. If the car is not an automatic, you will need to shift gears(employing the clutch) to create more power to get your car up that hill. Your seat then acts as a clutch to 'ready' the horse to 'climb that hill' and transition into canter.
To help visualize how the seat moves at the canter, imagine that you are sitting on a small rectangle. The rear edge of the rectangle is parallel to the cantle. While the front edge is parallel to the pommel. The sides are parallel to your sides(and the horses). This is a SMALL rectangle but it has 4 corners and 4 edges. The rider's torso balances over this rectangle, compressing down onto it and carefully, with good self-control, shifts the load of the torso above the seat between corners and edges.
So, eg, at the canter, the rider will take the load from the outside rear corner and shift it to the inside front corner of the small rectangle. The more refined the understanding of this is, the more you can appreciate that the motion is so very slight that it is more so a burst of energy flowing in a precise direction from a short burst of power in the form of a physical response to an intent that originates in the rider's mind.
If you had poor muscle coordination through the torso and were put on a horse blindfolded and asked to try to stay upright and centered, you would feel a million tiny twitches from tiny muscle fibers firing off in response to an inner system that 'wills' you to stay upright. With our appreciably better coordination we need to search even deeper to maintain a bolstered torso over a lowered diaphragm, chest wide, shoulders relaxed back and down......all while the torso remains 'calm'. The rider's waist is full now and wiggle-free but supple enough to take the effect of the body situated above it down into the seat where it becomes stable and well organized within the rectangle. In addition to the load carried in the rectangle, is that which is partially carried in the thighs. The tone of the thighs is essential to a light seat that frees the horse and frees the rider's joints. These joints need to be slightly open and movable inside the quiet outer flesh of the rider. Only 'open' joints can send energy through to the horse AND only 'open' joints can receive energetic messages coming up into the cantle from the horse. Coordinating this weight distribution just right makes you a pleasure for the horse to carry, opens the doors of his willingness to cooperate without fear in a relationship with you and helps extinguish inherent difficulties he may have in general.
All good relationships are free! So why clamp the legs on the horse's sides and choke the good nature out of him. Use legs with care. If he pulls in the reins, he may need to be fed more power through the seat or the seat balance and weight distribution may need to be checked. Is the torso bolstered well enough? Perhaps more power is needed to help the horse climb in front! He is throwing plenty of energy up into the cantle....are you open to catch it? are you holding, 'mixing', building, 'cooking' in your 'oven'...your dan tien, low in the abdomen? are you 'open' enough to release it in the right amounts?
If the horse is not using his back well he may rock his head and neck up and down. More leg won't correct this, but more bolstering of the rider's torso helps resist and redirect the forces that induce this rocking motion.
Just as in trot, the energy coming up into the cantle is fed into the rider where it is 'reworked' and then directed forward and down into the 'hopper' near the withers. Become aware of the place where you are directing the energy. It is specific.
By the rider keeping his body over itself and minimizing the driving aids whilst holding and compressing the power coming up from beneath the cantle over softly open movable leg and hip joints, the clutch does the job of building the horse's OWN power before that power is then employed.
The feeling is of the hips of the rider riding up to the mouth of the horse in a regular rhythmical glide. It is a glide because the rider uses his flexible joints to fold and keep his body still relative to the horse. As the horse rolls in the canter wave, the rider glides on the wave. The rider adds to this the image of suspending his head from a cloud and then he can really begin to appreciate how this glide operates in harmony with the horse.
I am of the opinion that horses wish to move in balance but they also like to conserve energy....it is consistent with their sense of self-preservation. If the rider gives the horse the chance to move in balance beneath him then ease(and conservation!) is in the realm of possibility!

Relaxation and Tension

Anyone who has ever ridden the passage knows that the horse that is performing this incredible gravity defying feat is anything but relaxed! His body is employed in a special tension that seems to help him remain suspended as if from a cloud.
Similarly, any ballet dancer who has performed leaps into the air knows that he is anything but relaxed when doing so. Then why is it that we use this word 'relaxation' so often in riding? More than one of my riding masters of the past have told me to stop trying to relax....that's something you do when you are home in bed!
So then why do we still keep hearing people shout "relax" and talk about relaxing the horse as well? I think the answer is in the poverty of description. What I think people are seeking is calm and ease....not to be confused with 'easy'!!!
Someone who is calm and at ease might be so relaxed that both he and his horse are nearly asleep. If that same person were to switch on some body tone and change himself into a state of readiness or poise, the possibilities for the horse would also change. Poise carries a special quality of tension. Why people confuse relaxation with poise is because they have not understood what specific quality of relaxation they were after and what specific quality of tension they should steer away from.
I see it like this: the rider must have the complete ability to control the energy flowing through his own body. We are not well designed to be in a state of relaxation all day long but we are designed for outstanding energy flow. So what is the point we must focus our attention on? It is the opening up of cramped joints, loosening of fascia around muscle and organs and the quieting of the mind to remain on task to direct the body and the complete surrender of the body to the direction of the mind.
When the mind of the rider is separated from its task the body begins to develop many little minds that operate on their own. I recently heard Bettina Drummond jokingly tell riders to talk to their bodies...."bad hand! Stop doing that! You bad bad hand!!" The humor of her comments was so refreshingly realistic to exactly what one must do with oneself daily to bring wayward parts of one's own body into submission to the mind. Without awareness of what we are doing, without the humility to realize we need constant self-supervision and without the will to recapture ourselves we are forever going to romance that 'relaxation' is the panacea for our problems!
If we have a tight elbow, we need to find out why it is tight! It might be the improper placement too close to the body that is causing this. Or it might be that the elbow is held too far from the body. It might be a muscle in the wrist that is blocking the elbow. It might be your clothing is too snug or one tiny sinew in the elbow joint that you have not accessed and commanded to let go. You may have inflammation in the elbow from an injury or the elbow may simply be tired from overwork! Whatever it is, you must fix it!
So the state we are after is free access to all our parts and the ability to learn how to coordinate parts without losing access to any of them. Tension can be created in this state to great benefit!
Interestingly, this is exactly what we want for the horse! We do not want him to be like a sack of flour. We want him to carry himself with poise and form....to be in control of himself and yet....willing and able to work with us and respond to our requests. The horse is by nature enormously strong. Continuously trying to either strengthen or relax him is not the objective. What we are after, however, is the ability to organize his strength in a way that preserves and fosters calmness and ease. So opening and accessing the appropriate parts of both horse and rider bodies to render energy flow complete is the real relaxation and the real tension we should seek.

The Trot: Influencing it's Energy(Part 2 Sitting)

In some ways the posting trot is similar to sitting trot and in just as many ways they are quite different. One thing is clear, however, and that is the sitting trot is probably one of the hardest things a rider will need to learn to master. To sit the trot well is all a question of how able you are to take charge of your body when all forces are working against you.
To fully develop horses you will absolutely need to be able to sit the trot for the mechanics of the posting trot limit the rider's subtlety of influence. To begin, it is helpful to have read the article on posting trot if for nothing else but to gain additional perspective on how to feel for the energy and work with it. It is also helpful to have mastered the posting trot to gain its value in developing better tone in the thigh muscles and the torso.
When you learn something, generally it is unhelpful to learn what it is you DON'T wish to do. But in this case I feel justified in doing just that! What the sitting trot is NOT is a sort of hula or shimmy or belly dance in the saddle. What I have found is that the more upholstered a saddle is with its fancy knee and thigh rolls and depth of seat, the more likely it is that the rider will try to master one of two ways of sitting, neither of which are right in my opinion. One is this wiggle I mention above and the other is the 'wedged' seat where the knee and thigh are held in a vice-like hold to clamp the rider's seat down against the saddle. This latter method is possibly the worst mistake of all. It produces a visual picture of stillness but it completely blocks energy flow to the horse. What ends up happening is the rider then kicks or squeezes on the horse to generate what he THINKS is missing....forward motion! What is actually stymied is energy flow! Until saddle makers finally figure out that riders can only make their horses happier when there is full energy flow, we will continue to see a flood of these type saddles in the market. I recommend to all my students that they remove knee and thigh rolls from their saddles. Most are skeptical at first but when they follow through they are eternally grateful for what 'sitting ability' they recover by having done so!
The hard part, however, is that without help from the saddle, the rider will need to use himself in a very special way that requires thought and effort and maintenance. The best way to understand how to sit the trot is to start out with the intention of influencing the horse. If you begin with only the intention of following the horse you are more likely to miss the secrets of success! So let us start by thinking of a basketball player dribbling a ball. The hand of the player remains virtually 'attached' to the ball as it bounces up and down. The back of the horse does not actually bounce----it rather undulates rhythmically in a wavelike motion. But the forces that travel upward from the ground as each of the horse's hind feet touch down send a sensation to the rider as though the horse is a bouncing ball. Now imagine the ball is travelling forward as it is bouncing. The hand of the basketball player needs to move, shift and mould accordingly to stay with the ball and influence how powerfully it bounces.
Essentially, the rider imagines that he is sitting on a big round ball and he is bouncing it without falling off the ball. What allows the rider to bounce this ball? If his feet touch the ground he can use the touch down of his feet to spring off the ground, bounce the ball and then advance the ball forward. Once the ball is in motion, now he can employ the folds in his seat----groin, hip, waist, knee----and cause them to act as springs or levers, opening and closing to activate momentum in the bounce and the advance(forward or sideways) of the bounce.
Practically speaking then, in the saddle the rider uses the angles of his legs and the gentle curves in his torso to absorb the shock of the concussion of the bounce as well as to influence the intensity of the bounce. In order to minimize the amount of motion in the rider's body so that this motion does not get out of control and/or irritate or hinder the horse in his job to deal with the wobbling weight on his back, the rider learns to bolster his body through an intricate orchestration of isometric holds and releases. It is these holds and releases that are the basis for energy management. Breath control exercises, especially as they help you learn to lower the diaphragm and use expansion of the chest to still the torso, are very helpful.
Just as in the posting trot, the rider needs to focus on directing energy the horse sends up into his buttocks and lower back forward and through into a distinct spot on the withers(the hopper). So, without actually hoisting the body up out of the saddle as in the rising trot, the rider uses the angle between his thigh and hip as a sort of pin to 'attach' to the saddle, receive the horse's energy, process it in his 'oven'(or dan tien as in Tai Chi) and then open the angle to release and send the energy forward to the withers....dropping it down the hopper. Very quickly, as the wave of motion continues, the attachment 'pin' closes to catch the next installment of energy from the horse. This 'pin' cannot be held too tightly or the flow will be blocked. The tension on the 'pin' is very carefully regulated by the rider to assist him with stillness and to catch and hold the energy and to then release it.
In addition, the hip bones will spark energy into the elbows and send it forward in a 'push-like' action down the lower arm and into the rein. And in another way energy travels fluidly down the thigh into the knee and the knees spark to the horse's shoulders to move ahead. There should be an even tone in the thigh between hip and knee and even touch against the horse. The very upper inner thigh acts by pulsing energy inward and forward. The ankle should have a looseness as should the toes which touch the stirrup gently. The action upon the stirrup, not by actual pressure on it but by the springing action off it, can enable upward lift of the horse(something to be described later). The heel of the rider feels back for the energy of the horse's hind feet bringing power up from the ground-----sort of a reverse gravity pull! So the springing open and closed of the rider's ankle as he touches lightly upon the stirrup feeds energy up into the rider's calf which naturally becomes hard and soft....hard and soft....in a pulse-like action of its own. This pulse is so remarkable. It does not need to be deliberately generated by the rider. Simply allowing the springing action on the stirrup enables the calf to do this. The horse is so sensitive that he can feel this pulse through the stiffest hardest leather boot. As all these sparks and pulses harmonize with the beat of the trot motion the horse becomes pumped with energy which he is just bubbling over with desire to release in beautiful soft forward and upward motion. The hallmark of good trot motion is the gentle articulation of the horse's joints. This can best be facilitated through the movement of free flowing energy(or chi) through the rider which he releases to the horse who then sends more back which the rider takes in.....the cycle of repetition is aligned to the beat. The harmonious taking, mixing, and releasing is the exchange that makes the trot come alive and aids the rider in his ability to sit effectively.
One more word, the subject of which I will take up in another article, is that the sitting trot will truly make sense to the body and form real neuro-connections that turn sitting into something that feels more comfortable and natural when the rider starts to grasp the concept of 'follow through'. If an effort to sit the trot feels particularly difficult, I am certain it is the result of held back energy which you were not aware you were stifling. Think like this: when you throw a ball, you must let go of the ball! Let go....and catch another....throw it....and let go. Do this in a pattern of regularity and watch amazing things begin to happen!

The Trot: Influencing it's Energy(Part 1 Posting)

When I begin riders at the trot I have found that the easiest way to help them feel the placement of the body is to ask them to hold on to a neck strap which is nothing more than a stirrup leather I secure around the horse's neck. The rider holds on to the strap at approximately the withers, leaning into it in the rising phase with the idea of coming forward and setting 'something' down with the hips into the place they are leaning on. Almost without exception the rider catches on to the posting(or rising) trot within minutes, the horse remains at ease and the awkwardness of this first experience is minimized.
When he displays more confidence and steadiness, I then ask the rider to simply lean into the neck strap and eventually hold the hands still in that place. The most difficult part to achieve is the correct use of the large quadricep muscles of the thighs to hoist the torso up out of the saddle and forward. During this time it is also important for the feet to remain light in the stirrups so that the correct part of the leg is used to bring the body forward. The knee remains relatively still at a fixed point and the thigh hinges off the knee.
If the rider begins this way he soon learns just how easily his horse will respond to a forward aid from a mere touch of the leg. A soft flexing in a relaxed ankle produces a slight bulge in the calf which the horse can feel and respond to. Believing it is this simple is one part of getting the rider to appreciate his horse as a sensitive creature and to develop patience while he learns to communicate in a way he can be understood without resorting to force.
As the hand learns to remain still in its place because the torso is moving forward out of the saddle and back as a result of adequate tone of the thighs, the hand 'appreciates' that this 'something' that the hips deposit into the withers is related to the 'something' that seems to stream forth from the arm to hand into the same spot! This 'something' I call 'energy' sparks over from the hip bones to the elbows and thus the rider's entire body participates in a continual regular pattern of carrying forward the thrust the horse generates as his hind legs push into the ground. The rider in this pattern connects the back end to the front end via the horse's spine and related musculature. It is a neatly orchestrated activity which the horse can accomplish completely on his own but which can be radically disturbed by the additional weight of a rider. The act of sitting in the correct place over thoracic vertebrae T-12 and T-13 and using the mechanics of posting trot in a way that works in harmony with this orchestration instead of in a way that fights it is what brings to light another process. This process, which even though it cannot be seen, is at work simultaneously together with the mechanics that are visible. And this process is what I call 'energetics'. It involves the recognition of a simultaneous flow and the entrance of the rider into the flow and gradually away from the reliance on the mechanics!
Interestingly, young riders can catch onto this very early when they are introduced to it at an innocent and pure stage in their learning. All they need is guidance to feel the flow and to recognize how their own body either interferes with it or embraces and engages with it in a creative fashion. Of course in this limited article I have not begun to touch upon the problems that might be innate in the horse in terms of blockage of this flow. At this stage in my articles I simply wish to enlighten the rider of his responsibility to seek this important thing and to work toward the very real possibility that at some point later on in his personal development as a rider he will be able to influence the horse more distinctly and precisely and can bring forth healing to a horse, leading him out of bondage to his own self.
Allow me to sum up posting trot and integrate energetics into this picture. The rider instigates trot with a touch of the leg, focusing the mind on the image of sending energy the horse throws up from under the saddle forward and down into the withers(the hopper). The strong quadricep muscles of the thighs hoist the torso up out of the saddle and the rider imagines tossing a small concentrated ball of energy from deep inside his lower abdomen(the 'oven'!!! or dan tien) forward onto the withers(the hopper). It is a specific concentrated projection onto a specific spot.
The knees will be soft but still and lower leg will hang gently down with feet light in the stirrups. Buttock muscles will firm up as the rider aims the toss into the targeted spot. Hands low(near the withers) remain quiet and still with elbows close to the hips to receive a spark from the hip bones to take down the soft arms through the hands and into the reins. The elbow is 'retained' by the rider but the lower arm and wrist are 'offered' to the horse. The effect is a push from the hips straight into the reins. Rider looks straight between the horse's ears and 'talks' to the poll with an 'ether-like' connection of brain to brain.
There is no backward traction on the reins. The rider lowers the body back into the saddle very gently employing thigh muscles and lower back. The more precisely the integration of the body sends the energy into the 'hopper' without disturbing the regular beat offered by the horse, the more the horse will round himself, mount his back, and collect his body into a graceful form.
Working with energy flow in the posting trot very soon demonstrates to the rider that forward motion is much more than the push from the hind legs of the horse. It is really more a product of the well designed coordination of muscle and nerve impulses that cause the spine to transmit energy forward. How the rider sits and communicates through his seat further demonstrates that motion results from more than what we say to the horse's legs---it's what we say to the spine that matters most!
Speaking from experience, I have seen many riders who have struggled desperately to get and keep their horses moving. When they come to the realization of the futility of working hard with the legs to try to influence the step of the horse's hind legs and of the faulty approach of their seat, riding takes a leap to a new plateau! Discovering the flow that comes from the horse and how to work with that flow opens doors to a much higher level of sophistication in the riding.

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.

The Walk: Influencing Its Energy

Without trying to make for too much confusion, I'll try to explain what the rider can feel from the saddle and how to adjust his energetic influence to the horse's walk energy. Just take some walk steps of your own on a straight line. Allow your body to clearly shift weight from one leg to the other. What you should notice is that as you stand on one leg(let us say it is the left one)and swing the other(the right) forward, the hip above the one you are standing on shifts or swings slightly to the left while the hip of your right leg drops, falls in slightly and then rises as you put down the right leg only to then feel the left foot leave the ground and the left hip drops and falls in while the right one shifts or swings to the right. So your hips gently sway from side to side....always out toward the leg you are standing on. This is basically what is happening from the horse's hind legs. At a walk you feel this dropping out of one side of the barrel and a slight bulge or swing out of the other side. The dropping side is consistent with the lifting of the hind leg off the ground on that same side. On the bulging side, the hind leg behind the barrel is ON the ground and soon to push off it.
Working on the premise that we really have the best influence over a leg when it is airborne, try to imagine that on this dropping or hollowing out side that the horse is sending energy forward to his forehand. The feeling under the rider's seat is a slight drop and in and swing up and forward toward the withers. So the walk feels as though the energy is sent up toward the withers at the end of each step. This is the same pattern that the rider needs to follow to activate the combined energy from his horse and his own body's influence.
Shoulders of the rider relaxed back and down, with elbows hanging relaxedly down at the hips, the hip of the rider sparks this combined activated energy over to the elbow on the same side which conducts the message forward down the arm and through the rein to the bit. This action happens on one side at a time. So the hand effectively sends energy to the bit only as the hip tells it. The timing is accurate and smooth and is resolved at the moment the seat on that side rises to the top of the wave and has an additional influence into the withers. The motion feels like a beautiful swan gliding along on a still lake.
Initially, practicing the walk in this way may feel awkward for a few steps but then the effect is beautiful and brings the horse into an influence more from its hind legs. The walk innately is more like a crawl forward, like a pulling of the horse along by his front legs with hind legs following. Moving the hands and arms in a rowing fashion keeps the horse striding too far out in front of himself, falling away from balance and away from the influence of his own front end lifting mechanism. Keeping the hands in unison with the seat motion brings the horse into a collection of his parts quite easily. It negates the need for excessive and awkward hand aids and excessive leg aiding which only disturb the walk and morph it into another form.
Try keeping your arms steady with your hips and feel this flow. It may resolve many issues you have with unsteadiness from the horse, jigging or jogging, can help you create variations in the walk(collected, medium and extended), and help you start to identify any irregularities from the horse that will need targeted exercise.

Moving Energy

The manipulation of energy is at the heart of good riding and exceptional dance with the horse. But before you can understand how to move energy you need to realize the power of 'intent'. 'Intent' is a key concept in the martial arts, of which Tai Chi is a gentler form. Although the latter is not likely to directly affect your riding, it can indirectly help train the mind to focus on 'intent'. Before the power of intent can be realized, the substance of the intent must be well considered.
Have you ever met someone who seems to put their mind to something and stay hellbent on doing it? This is the nature of intent. Every fiber of your being is awakened and on task and nothing is allowed to get in the way. It is not based on force but holds its secret in steadiness on quiet, clear, controlled thought. It is a humble fervency of purpose which is directed on a course.
One of the interesting lessons we learn from Tai Chi is that a poignant assault is only one asset in fighting--there are many other ways to deal with an opponent. These might involve drawing and extinguishing(or neutralizing) energy, deflecting energy, or re-directing energy. Like martial arts, similarly in riding, although we do not view the horse as our opponent, we experience energies of another living being and try to work with or match those energies. In Tai Chi there is no fighting, but the postures and the motions that take us from one posture to another explore a full range of human physical movement. This range of motion is mainly to experience the parameters within which our individual bodies should operate to maximize our personal balance and effectiveness of energy exchange. Examples are: the placement of the arms and feet. Arms too far away from the body in certain positions, channel our energy in the wrong direction, destabilizing us.....disturbing the clarity of intent. Feet not pointed in a certain direction would also send energy where it was not intended to go. Thus it is not exactly that the posture of the rider needs to be this or that, but that the posture needs to be directed by intent and congruent with the shape of that intent. I see so many dressage riders that sit like a doll! This has nothing to do with dressage riding! The seat has a purpose....the seat is alive and waiting with poise to follow the orders given from the mind regarding its intent. The 'alive' seat must be calm and open to whatever the mind tells it to do.
So body positioning has much to do with 'intent'. A rider holding one or both shoulders up is not in control of his 'intent'. Hands held too high or hands turned down, wrists curled, elbows too far from the hips----all these details are important examples of how 'intent' might be shaped incorrectly.
A very basic example of moving energy is to take a thought in the mind that says "move my horse forward". So the first thing we do is touch with the legs or tap with the whip. But if we are also holding back with the rein we are cancelling our intent! How might we gain a horse's confidence in rein connection while asking him to move forward without cancelling intent? There are many options. I will give you an example. A horse that feels rigid in the jaw is holding himself in a resistance. All aspects of health must be considered before assessing this problem intelligently. But by sitting quietly and focusing ONLY(a SINGULAR INTENT!) on asking the horse to savor the bit one rein at a time with gentle vibration with soft pliable fingers, the energy of this intent helps the horse to understand the role of the hand in the sense of friendship with it. Most people get no response or the wrong response because they are completely unaware of the tension they have in other parts of their body while they do this! That tension is not only confusing the horse but is undermining energy flow. So one can appreciate the great need for supreme self-control.
Now change the 'intent', relax both hands and touch with leg. A non-response or wrong response? You are either using too much leg(moving too much energy) or you held the leg on too long and tensed the ribcage of the horse or you asked with the leg while holding body tension somewhere else that says, "don't go forward!" These other energies are very real! You are affecting them ALL the time! Essentially, everyone who is alive is moving energy! We only THINK we are not doing this and are making the concept of 'moving energy' seem hard to learn because we are not in control of ourselves! We are so very much concerned about controlling the world around us that we have lost sense of the 'out of control' world within us!
Last night during a lesson, while a new student was walking her horse, I asked that she step in time with his footfalls. I complicated the exercise by asking her to match the footfalls of her leg nearest the horse with the horse's foreleg nearest to her. Her comment later was how much lighter and easier her horse felt! That comment tells me that the singular isolation of her intent to match those specific footfalls was actually a relief to her horse. He could feel her mind less worried about him overall, essentially trusting the rest of him, thinking only about the feet. The matching of the footfalls had an additional effect of combining efforts(or energies) as if producing one footfall.....a horse/rider step AS ONE!
This very simple example points to the reality of moving energy and the need to focus the mind on an intent so clearly that the energy of the intent directs the body precisely, thus eliminating clutter, opening pathways in the joints....both horse and rider....for energy to flow freely and easily. The steps then become easy, balance is adjusted, gravity is worked WITH and not AGAINST.
When the student turned to face her horse he halted as though the thought came from himself and he sat back in a self-carriage that was as easy and lightweight as a bird landing.
We struggle daily with unknown, unfamiliar energies. Take the time to walk and work with your horse quietly and through clear intent, discover how to unravel struggle gently through this kind of understanding. It is not that horses resist us, they resist the discomfort of their own bodies and they resist the energies in ourselves that we fail to take charge of.