The principles of Centered Riding are straightforward and easy to understand and remember. However, the exciting thing is that, while the concepts are superficially simple, it is possible to study each one in greater and greater depth as you progress. It's a fantastic journey.
The notes below outline the essentials.
THE FOUR BASICS
The Four Basics are the essential tools of improved awareness. Learning to use them in your riding, and in everyday activities, is the first step towards better communication with your horse.
The Four Basics are:
Soft Eyes
Breathing
Centering
Building Blocks
Soft Eyes
When you stare at an object and focus all your attention on it, you are using hard eyes.
Hard eyes cause you to hold your breath, tighten muscles, and raise your centre. You can still
look at that object but at the same time be aware of and feel everything else round about you and within you – this is soft eyes.
What does your horse feel like when he has hard eyes?
Breathing
Breathing is an unconscious action without which we wouldn’t last long. However it’s easy to get into the habit of only breathing into the top of your chest, and of holding your breath when things get stressful.
Re-learning how to breathe means bringing breathing into your conscious mind and practicing, using ribs, diaphragm and abdomen. Listen to someone sleeping to get an idea of how deeply and rhythmically it’s possible to breathe. Correct breathing relaxes you, allows you to have soft eyes and brings your awareness back to you and the horse. It’s also possibly one of the first things your horse picks up on as you approach, handle and ride him.
Centering
Your centre can be thought of as your centre of balance; your centre of gravity; your centre of movement; your centre of energy; your centre of self. It appears in different forms throughout the martial arts and oriental medicine.
Being ‘in’ your centre can give you great peace, stability and power without having to use strength, provided your centre is in the correct place – tension, worry and holding your breath draw your centre up, creating instability and mental ‘noise’.
Being aware of your body, where it holds tension and how it should be aligned, allows you to find your centre, put it where it belongs and then
use it. You will be able to retire to your centre and be quiet.
Building Blocks
Using the first 3 Basics helps you to work towards becoming aligned like a stack of building blocks, with the feet and legs as the bottom block, then the pelvis, torso, shoulders, neck and head.
For flatwork, a line dropped down from the ear to the ankle should go through the shoulder, centre, hip and ankle. In a more forward seat, some blocks act as levers or shock absorbers, but the centre must always be over the feet.
When the blocks are in balance they stay on top of on another effortlessly; the further out of alignment they get, the more unstable they become and the more energy is needed to stay upright.
GROUNDING & CLEAR INTENT
Grounding is an important skill to learn in order to gain the full benefit of using the Four Basics. It is a feeling of being connected with the ground; of allowing your energy to flow into the ground and of allowing energy from the ground to rise up into your body.
Grounding gives a good feeling of stability and security; a very good example of grounding is when a small child glues itself to the floor when it
doesn’t want to go to bed.
It is not a feeling of being heavy, but rather a feeling of having magnets in your feet attaching you to the ground. It allows you to be soft and flexible, but at the same time as strong as you need to be.
Like the Four Basics, grounding is something which can be practiced anywhere, in all sorts of situations. On a horse, being grounded
gives security in the saddle and helps to maintain balance.
Begin by standing comfortably, feet slightly apart and ensuring that your knees are not locked. Check briefly through your four basics. Have a feeling of your centre dropping energy down through your legs and feet into the ground, to meet the ground’s energy coming up. Perhaps imagine your feet standing in soft sand or warm mud, making an impression there. Allow the earth’s energy to flow up into your centre and out into the rest of your body.
While riding, although your feet are not physically on the ground you can imagine your legs extending down so that your feet are on the ground; you can also be grounded through your knees, your seat and even your elbows.
There is a balance point in your foot, at the base of the second toe just behind the ball of the foot, which is known in martial arts and oriental medicine as Bubbling Spring. It’s the point where energy bubbling up from the earth is received or where our energy can be dispersed into the earth.
When this point is balanced on the stirrup with the foot level the rider remains stable and secure with minimum effort. Try riding with the stirrup on different parts of the foot, or with the heel raised, and feel what a difference it makes to your stability.
Clear Intent is another martial arts concept. Combined
with grounding and the Four Basics it allows the development of strength and power without effort.
On the horse, your intent to do something is as important as the aids you give. Jumping is the prime example of this –to jump well, you have to want to get to the other side; if you don’t, the horse gets all sorts of conflictingmessages and may take off early, put in a short stride, or stop.
There are various exercises to try which illustrate the use of Clear Intent; the best known is called the Unbendable Arm. Many are
demonstrated in Sally Swift’s DVD’s and in Mark Rashid’s DVD Developing Softness in the Rider.
Awareness and Allowing. Often during unmounted and mounted Centred Riding lessons, you will be asked to ‘be aware’ of a feeling, or of what the horse is doing, and to ‘allow’ your body to do or feel things.
Two very common habits which we all share are trying too hard, which results in tension, and trying so much that we become very focused and lose awareness of what’s around us.
Being aware means taking time to feel the sensations of what you’re doing – for example, feel your seatbones and whether your weight is evenly distributed, or let yourself become aware of the horse’s footfalls on the ground, their sequence and rhythm.
Allowing touches on the Alexander Technique concept of ‘not doing’ – for example, if an instructor asks you to allow your
leg to lengthen and drop down, your aim is not to physically stretch the leg down by pushing your foot towards the ground but rather to allow it to lengthen by thinking about it getting longer. This is where images such as imagining your legs being the roots of a tree can be very powerful, letting the muscles make their own adjustments without tension.
ANATOMY & COMPARABLE PARTS
Anatomy
In all her teaching, Sally Swift emphasises the importance of understanding the structure of your skeleton, and how its balance can be affected by tension or poor use. She also stresses the need to develop correct posture and use, on and off the horse, in order to move and ride in the most efficient way.
Young children have perfect posture quite naturally until, particularly in the West, long periods of sitting at school and unconscious
imitation of people around them lead to a gradual change which reflects the subtle pressures brought to bear on their bodies and minds.
This change often shows itself as the classic slumped posture, which begins when the muscles at the back of the neck tighten, pulling the back of the head down and poking out the chin; the chest collapses inwards and the shoulders slump forward.
This has the effect of tipping the pelvis backwards to counterbalance the head, thereby upsetting the balance of the Building Blocks and causing extra work and tension as the muscles try to keep the body upright.
In addition it is easy to become one sided through constant use of the stronger hand, often resulting in the stronger shoulder being held lower than the other and more weight being placed on the stronger leg.
Because these changes are so gradual this inefficient posture feels ‘right’ and its shortcomings only tend to come to light when it results in poor health or injury (and sometimes not even then), or when it becomes apparent that better use might result in increased proficiency in a task such as singing, playing a musical instrument – or riding.
Body awareness techniques such as Feldenkrais and the Alexander Technique help the muscles and the brain, over time, to regain the effortless use of a child. Both involve touch and instruction to help explore the different sensations of good and poor use, gradually re-educating the body.
Sally Swift frequently refers to the Alexander Technique, and particularly to Alexander’s directions for what he called ‘Primary Control’ :
‘Let the neck be free to let the head go forward and up and the back to lengthen and widen’. The emphasis is on ‘let’ – the process is very much centred around not ‘doing’ anything, but simply giving thought to the part in question and allowing the muscles to let go. Thereafter it is the pupil’s responsibility to accept the new sensations and carry out simple tasks such as sitting down, standing up and lifting without tightening the muscles again. To gain the maximum benefit an awareness of how the skeleton and muscles work together is helpful, and so we come full circle to Sally Swift’s emphasis on understanding anatomy.
‘Since the criteria of a correct seat are the same as the criteria of good posture in general, being constantly attentive to one’s bearing when
standing or walking is excellent training. A correct vertical posture of the head and the trunk on horseback is not a special posture applicable only to riding.’
Brigadier General Kurt Albrecht
‘The Principles of Dressage’
Chapter 5 of ‘Centered Riding’ reviews beautifully the skeleton and the inter-relationships between each part of the body; it’s packed with
images and exercises to help with exploring and getting to know your bones. However, there are a few crucial areas to concentrate on, which will equip you with a check list to use any time:
Skull
With soft eyes, be aware of the weight of your head, and feel it balancing at the top of your spine like a billiard ball on top of a cue.
Feel what happens in your neck when your head tips forward or back, and practise finding a place where it feels balanced.
Shoulders
Let your upper arms hang freely and let your collarbones smile.
Ribs
Although your ribs are fairly immobile where they join your spine, in front they are springy and capable of expanding out and forward when you
breathe. Allow air to flow in and expand your ribs and abdomen.
Pelvis and seatbones
Find your seatbones and be aware of them on the chair or in the saddle. Imagine them as two little feet, and explore what happens to them when you tip forward or let your lower back slump. Remember how your back feels when you’re nicely balanced on your seatbones.
Riding at a walk, allow the horse to walk your ‘seat feet’ ; feel your lower back swing.
Hips
Make sure you know where your hips are – with your hand over the side of your thigh feel for the greater trochanter moving under your
hand as you turn your leg.
Work on gaining a mental image of your hip joints sitting above your seatbones. In sitting trot, imagine a figure of 8 looping around your seatbones or hip joints – let them move independently instead of bouncing in the saddle as a unit.
Knees
Think of dropping the front of your thigh down towards the ground and allow your lower leg to come back until you feel as if you’re kneeling and your knees are smiling at the earth.
Feet
Check that the stirrup is genuinely across the widest part of the foot, from the knuckle of the big toe to the knuckle of the little toe. The stirrup should cross just behind the 'ball' of the foot, coming into contact with the balance point known as 'Bubbling Spring'. Have a feeling of the foot connecting with the ground.
Comparable Parts
Imagine a beautiful horse, ridden well, flowing forward in trot or canter on a featherweight contact. Think of the terms we use to describe the way of going of such a horse. He’s ‘on the bit’; he’s ‘carrying himself’ ; he’s ‘working through from behind’ ; he’s ‘working over the topline’ : in other words his balance and posture are allowing him to use himself to his best advantage.
Now think what his skeleton and muscles are doing to allow him to go in this way. His head is softly balanced at the top of his spine, with a relaxed jaw and no tension in his neck. The muscles on the topline of his neck are soft and supported by the muscles on the underside. His back muscles, although they are working to support the rider, are likewise soft, wide and relaxed, lifted by his strong abdominal muscles to allow his hindquarters to lower and bring the hind legs well underneath his body to propel him forward.
Does this ring any bells? ‘Let the neck be free, to allow the head to go forward and up and the back to lengthen and widen.’ Alexander’s directions for optimal use apply just as well to our horses as they do to us.
Now imagine the opposite. A tense horse, head up and tight in the poll and jaw. Tension in the upper muscles of his neck pulls his head up and back. His weight falls onto his forehand and his back sags as the back muscles tighten and the abdominal muscles slacken. His pelvis tips up and his hind legs trail.
This should ring bells too – stand this horse upright and you have the classic human slump. It’s as disadvantageous to the horse as it is to us.
In the same way as understanding our own structure helps us to identify how we use it, developing an understanding of equine anatomy helps towards appreciating what we are asking of the horse in the work we expect him to do.
Susan Harris and Peggy Brown (www.anatomyinmotion.com ) present two videos/DVDs called The Visible Horse and The Visible Rider which illustrate the close relationship between how we use ourselves and how horses move.
A Word or two about HANDS
‘Your arms and hands ….belong to the horse.’ In the first Centred Riding book, Sally Swift quotes Charles deKnuffy, who said that if God had intended for us to ride horses he would have given us arms long enough to reach the bit rings, or ideally into the corners of the horse’s mouth. Sensitive quiet hands are essential to good riding, but can take a lifetime to achieve.
Our hands, via the reins, can convey small and subtle messages or be strong and demanding, depending on the circumstances. Clear messages from our hands depend on the absorption of the horse’s movement by our ankles, knees, hips and lower back; in other words, on a soft, deep, centred seat.
Tension or tightness in the lower body leads to tension in the shoulders and arms, and tension in the neck leads to tightness in the shoulders
and back – either way, the horse’s movement cannot be fully absorbed and it is transmitted through the rest of the body to the hands and through the reins to the horse’s mouth.
With a partner, try holding a snaffle bit in your hands while your partner ‘rides’, and experiment with the messages conveyed down the reins.
Swap roles and let your partner be the horse.
Holding the reins
Make sure the hands are carried as a pair – not one in advance of the other or one higher than the other. Viewed from the side and from above there should be a straight line from the elbow to the bit.
The reins pass between the little finger and the ring finger, across the palm and up over the index finger, where they are held in place between the thumb and the index finger. The knuckle of the thumb should form a little ‘pointed roof’. Holding the thumb flat contracts a small muscle in the forearm, creating an unwanted tension.
The tips of the fingers should be held softly against the palm – not gripping tightly or allowed to open. Think of holding two little birds in your hands; too tight and they will be crushed, too loose and they will fly away. Experiment with your hands and feel for the tensions created by either gripping too tightly or holding the fingers open.
The hands should be held with the thumbs uppermost. Allowing them to turn over so that the thumbs fall to the inside knocks the baby birds’ heads together; it also causes the two bones of the forearm to cross over, creating tension in the elbows.
The ring finger is the first line of communication with the horse’s mouth, and it’s important not to allow it to be pulled open if the horse becomes strong.
Soft strength
The more you work at centering, grounding and achieving the kind of effortless power you will discover with exercises such as the Unbendable Arm, the more you will be able to offer the horse a secure and reliable contact with soft, listening hands.
The word soft in this context does not imply weakness or lack of muscle tone; it’s the feeling that comes through using the smallest number of muscles and the least amount of energy while still being effective, and in the context of hands it’s the place we make available to the horse when he does what we ask.
The hands can be softened by the smallest thought of allowing them forward, rather than by dropping or giving the rein; try both ways with your partner and find out which feels more secure.
Feel
Feel is what the horse gets from us. It can be erratic or consistent, good or bad, strong, weak or soft. It is closely linked to our energy and our intent, and the principles of Centred Riding help to develop the physical, mental and emotional qualities which enable us to offer the horse good feel.
Finally
Finally, here is what Mark Rashid has to say about hands:
‘The human hand, in and of itself, is an amazing tool. It has the ability to be as soft as a feather, then a split second later be as hard as iron. It can break a brick or soothe a baby. It can be the instrument of death and destruction or be extended in friendship and hope. When it comes to our work with horses, it can be used to frighten and worry, or calm and encourage. My belief is, most of all, when it comes to working with horses that the human hand can and should become a tool for the development of mutual trust and understanding.’
A Life with Horses – Spirit of the Work.
The notes below outline the essentials.
THE FOUR BASICS
The Four Basics are the essential tools of improved awareness. Learning to use them in your riding, and in everyday activities, is the first step towards better communication with your horse.
The Four Basics are:
Soft Eyes
Breathing
Centering
Building Blocks
Soft Eyes
When you stare at an object and focus all your attention on it, you are using hard eyes.
Hard eyes cause you to hold your breath, tighten muscles, and raise your centre. You can still
look at that object but at the same time be aware of and feel everything else round about you and within you – this is soft eyes.
What does your horse feel like when he has hard eyes?
Breathing
Breathing is an unconscious action without which we wouldn’t last long. However it’s easy to get into the habit of only breathing into the top of your chest, and of holding your breath when things get stressful.
Re-learning how to breathe means bringing breathing into your conscious mind and practicing, using ribs, diaphragm and abdomen. Listen to someone sleeping to get an idea of how deeply and rhythmically it’s possible to breathe. Correct breathing relaxes you, allows you to have soft eyes and brings your awareness back to you and the horse. It’s also possibly one of the first things your horse picks up on as you approach, handle and ride him.
Centering
Your centre can be thought of as your centre of balance; your centre of gravity; your centre of movement; your centre of energy; your centre of self. It appears in different forms throughout the martial arts and oriental medicine.
Being ‘in’ your centre can give you great peace, stability and power without having to use strength, provided your centre is in the correct place – tension, worry and holding your breath draw your centre up, creating instability and mental ‘noise’.
Being aware of your body, where it holds tension and how it should be aligned, allows you to find your centre, put it where it belongs and then
use it. You will be able to retire to your centre and be quiet.
Building Blocks
Using the first 3 Basics helps you to work towards becoming aligned like a stack of building blocks, with the feet and legs as the bottom block, then the pelvis, torso, shoulders, neck and head.
For flatwork, a line dropped down from the ear to the ankle should go through the shoulder, centre, hip and ankle. In a more forward seat, some blocks act as levers or shock absorbers, but the centre must always be over the feet.
When the blocks are in balance they stay on top of on another effortlessly; the further out of alignment they get, the more unstable they become and the more energy is needed to stay upright.
GROUNDING & CLEAR INTENT
Grounding is an important skill to learn in order to gain the full benefit of using the Four Basics. It is a feeling of being connected with the ground; of allowing your energy to flow into the ground and of allowing energy from the ground to rise up into your body.
Grounding gives a good feeling of stability and security; a very good example of grounding is when a small child glues itself to the floor when it
doesn’t want to go to bed.
It is not a feeling of being heavy, but rather a feeling of having magnets in your feet attaching you to the ground. It allows you to be soft and flexible, but at the same time as strong as you need to be.
Like the Four Basics, grounding is something which can be practiced anywhere, in all sorts of situations. On a horse, being grounded
gives security in the saddle and helps to maintain balance.
Begin by standing comfortably, feet slightly apart and ensuring that your knees are not locked. Check briefly through your four basics. Have a feeling of your centre dropping energy down through your legs and feet into the ground, to meet the ground’s energy coming up. Perhaps imagine your feet standing in soft sand or warm mud, making an impression there. Allow the earth’s energy to flow up into your centre and out into the rest of your body.
While riding, although your feet are not physically on the ground you can imagine your legs extending down so that your feet are on the ground; you can also be grounded through your knees, your seat and even your elbows.
There is a balance point in your foot, at the base of the second toe just behind the ball of the foot, which is known in martial arts and oriental medicine as Bubbling Spring. It’s the point where energy bubbling up from the earth is received or where our energy can be dispersed into the earth.
When this point is balanced on the stirrup with the foot level the rider remains stable and secure with minimum effort. Try riding with the stirrup on different parts of the foot, or with the heel raised, and feel what a difference it makes to your stability.
Clear Intent is another martial arts concept. Combined
with grounding and the Four Basics it allows the development of strength and power without effort.
On the horse, your intent to do something is as important as the aids you give. Jumping is the prime example of this –to jump well, you have to want to get to the other side; if you don’t, the horse gets all sorts of conflictingmessages and may take off early, put in a short stride, or stop.
There are various exercises to try which illustrate the use of Clear Intent; the best known is called the Unbendable Arm. Many are
demonstrated in Sally Swift’s DVD’s and in Mark Rashid’s DVD Developing Softness in the Rider.
Awareness and Allowing. Often during unmounted and mounted Centred Riding lessons, you will be asked to ‘be aware’ of a feeling, or of what the horse is doing, and to ‘allow’ your body to do or feel things.
Two very common habits which we all share are trying too hard, which results in tension, and trying so much that we become very focused and lose awareness of what’s around us.
Being aware means taking time to feel the sensations of what you’re doing – for example, feel your seatbones and whether your weight is evenly distributed, or let yourself become aware of the horse’s footfalls on the ground, their sequence and rhythm.
Allowing touches on the Alexander Technique concept of ‘not doing’ – for example, if an instructor asks you to allow your
leg to lengthen and drop down, your aim is not to physically stretch the leg down by pushing your foot towards the ground but rather to allow it to lengthen by thinking about it getting longer. This is where images such as imagining your legs being the roots of a tree can be very powerful, letting the muscles make their own adjustments without tension.
ANATOMY & COMPARABLE PARTS
Anatomy
In all her teaching, Sally Swift emphasises the importance of understanding the structure of your skeleton, and how its balance can be affected by tension or poor use. She also stresses the need to develop correct posture and use, on and off the horse, in order to move and ride in the most efficient way.
Young children have perfect posture quite naturally until, particularly in the West, long periods of sitting at school and unconscious
imitation of people around them lead to a gradual change which reflects the subtle pressures brought to bear on their bodies and minds.
This change often shows itself as the classic slumped posture, which begins when the muscles at the back of the neck tighten, pulling the back of the head down and poking out the chin; the chest collapses inwards and the shoulders slump forward.
This has the effect of tipping the pelvis backwards to counterbalance the head, thereby upsetting the balance of the Building Blocks and causing extra work and tension as the muscles try to keep the body upright.
In addition it is easy to become one sided through constant use of the stronger hand, often resulting in the stronger shoulder being held lower than the other and more weight being placed on the stronger leg.
Because these changes are so gradual this inefficient posture feels ‘right’ and its shortcomings only tend to come to light when it results in poor health or injury (and sometimes not even then), or when it becomes apparent that better use might result in increased proficiency in a task such as singing, playing a musical instrument – or riding.
Body awareness techniques such as Feldenkrais and the Alexander Technique help the muscles and the brain, over time, to regain the effortless use of a child. Both involve touch and instruction to help explore the different sensations of good and poor use, gradually re-educating the body.
Sally Swift frequently refers to the Alexander Technique, and particularly to Alexander’s directions for what he called ‘Primary Control’ :
‘Let the neck be free to let the head go forward and up and the back to lengthen and widen’. The emphasis is on ‘let’ – the process is very much centred around not ‘doing’ anything, but simply giving thought to the part in question and allowing the muscles to let go. Thereafter it is the pupil’s responsibility to accept the new sensations and carry out simple tasks such as sitting down, standing up and lifting without tightening the muscles again. To gain the maximum benefit an awareness of how the skeleton and muscles work together is helpful, and so we come full circle to Sally Swift’s emphasis on understanding anatomy.
‘Since the criteria of a correct seat are the same as the criteria of good posture in general, being constantly attentive to one’s bearing when
standing or walking is excellent training. A correct vertical posture of the head and the trunk on horseback is not a special posture applicable only to riding.’
Brigadier General Kurt Albrecht
‘The Principles of Dressage’
Chapter 5 of ‘Centered Riding’ reviews beautifully the skeleton and the inter-relationships between each part of the body; it’s packed with
images and exercises to help with exploring and getting to know your bones. However, there are a few crucial areas to concentrate on, which will equip you with a check list to use any time:
Skull
With soft eyes, be aware of the weight of your head, and feel it balancing at the top of your spine like a billiard ball on top of a cue.
Feel what happens in your neck when your head tips forward or back, and practise finding a place where it feels balanced.
Shoulders
Let your upper arms hang freely and let your collarbones smile.
Ribs
Although your ribs are fairly immobile where they join your spine, in front they are springy and capable of expanding out and forward when you
breathe. Allow air to flow in and expand your ribs and abdomen.
Pelvis and seatbones
Find your seatbones and be aware of them on the chair or in the saddle. Imagine them as two little feet, and explore what happens to them when you tip forward or let your lower back slump. Remember how your back feels when you’re nicely balanced on your seatbones.
Riding at a walk, allow the horse to walk your ‘seat feet’ ; feel your lower back swing.
Hips
Make sure you know where your hips are – with your hand over the side of your thigh feel for the greater trochanter moving under your
hand as you turn your leg.
Work on gaining a mental image of your hip joints sitting above your seatbones. In sitting trot, imagine a figure of 8 looping around your seatbones or hip joints – let them move independently instead of bouncing in the saddle as a unit.
Knees
Think of dropping the front of your thigh down towards the ground and allow your lower leg to come back until you feel as if you’re kneeling and your knees are smiling at the earth.
Feet
Check that the stirrup is genuinely across the widest part of the foot, from the knuckle of the big toe to the knuckle of the little toe. The stirrup should cross just behind the 'ball' of the foot, coming into contact with the balance point known as 'Bubbling Spring'. Have a feeling of the foot connecting with the ground.
Comparable Parts
Imagine a beautiful horse, ridden well, flowing forward in trot or canter on a featherweight contact. Think of the terms we use to describe the way of going of such a horse. He’s ‘on the bit’; he’s ‘carrying himself’ ; he’s ‘working through from behind’ ; he’s ‘working over the topline’ : in other words his balance and posture are allowing him to use himself to his best advantage.
Now think what his skeleton and muscles are doing to allow him to go in this way. His head is softly balanced at the top of his spine, with a relaxed jaw and no tension in his neck. The muscles on the topline of his neck are soft and supported by the muscles on the underside. His back muscles, although they are working to support the rider, are likewise soft, wide and relaxed, lifted by his strong abdominal muscles to allow his hindquarters to lower and bring the hind legs well underneath his body to propel him forward.
Does this ring any bells? ‘Let the neck be free, to allow the head to go forward and up and the back to lengthen and widen.’ Alexander’s directions for optimal use apply just as well to our horses as they do to us.
Now imagine the opposite. A tense horse, head up and tight in the poll and jaw. Tension in the upper muscles of his neck pulls his head up and back. His weight falls onto his forehand and his back sags as the back muscles tighten and the abdominal muscles slacken. His pelvis tips up and his hind legs trail.
This should ring bells too – stand this horse upright and you have the classic human slump. It’s as disadvantageous to the horse as it is to us.
In the same way as understanding our own structure helps us to identify how we use it, developing an understanding of equine anatomy helps towards appreciating what we are asking of the horse in the work we expect him to do.
Susan Harris and Peggy Brown (www.anatomyinmotion.com ) present two videos/DVDs called The Visible Horse and The Visible Rider which illustrate the close relationship between how we use ourselves and how horses move.
A Word or two about HANDS
‘Your arms and hands ….belong to the horse.’ In the first Centred Riding book, Sally Swift quotes Charles deKnuffy, who said that if God had intended for us to ride horses he would have given us arms long enough to reach the bit rings, or ideally into the corners of the horse’s mouth. Sensitive quiet hands are essential to good riding, but can take a lifetime to achieve.
Our hands, via the reins, can convey small and subtle messages or be strong and demanding, depending on the circumstances. Clear messages from our hands depend on the absorption of the horse’s movement by our ankles, knees, hips and lower back; in other words, on a soft, deep, centred seat.
Tension or tightness in the lower body leads to tension in the shoulders and arms, and tension in the neck leads to tightness in the shoulders
and back – either way, the horse’s movement cannot be fully absorbed and it is transmitted through the rest of the body to the hands and through the reins to the horse’s mouth.
With a partner, try holding a snaffle bit in your hands while your partner ‘rides’, and experiment with the messages conveyed down the reins.
Swap roles and let your partner be the horse.
Holding the reins
Make sure the hands are carried as a pair – not one in advance of the other or one higher than the other. Viewed from the side and from above there should be a straight line from the elbow to the bit.
The reins pass between the little finger and the ring finger, across the palm and up over the index finger, where they are held in place between the thumb and the index finger. The knuckle of the thumb should form a little ‘pointed roof’. Holding the thumb flat contracts a small muscle in the forearm, creating an unwanted tension.
The tips of the fingers should be held softly against the palm – not gripping tightly or allowed to open. Think of holding two little birds in your hands; too tight and they will be crushed, too loose and they will fly away. Experiment with your hands and feel for the tensions created by either gripping too tightly or holding the fingers open.
The hands should be held with the thumbs uppermost. Allowing them to turn over so that the thumbs fall to the inside knocks the baby birds’ heads together; it also causes the two bones of the forearm to cross over, creating tension in the elbows.
The ring finger is the first line of communication with the horse’s mouth, and it’s important not to allow it to be pulled open if the horse becomes strong.
Soft strength
The more you work at centering, grounding and achieving the kind of effortless power you will discover with exercises such as the Unbendable Arm, the more you will be able to offer the horse a secure and reliable contact with soft, listening hands.
The word soft in this context does not imply weakness or lack of muscle tone; it’s the feeling that comes through using the smallest number of muscles and the least amount of energy while still being effective, and in the context of hands it’s the place we make available to the horse when he does what we ask.
The hands can be softened by the smallest thought of allowing them forward, rather than by dropping or giving the rein; try both ways with your partner and find out which feels more secure.
Feel
Feel is what the horse gets from us. It can be erratic or consistent, good or bad, strong, weak or soft. It is closely linked to our energy and our intent, and the principles of Centred Riding help to develop the physical, mental and emotional qualities which enable us to offer the horse good feel.
Finally
Finally, here is what Mark Rashid has to say about hands:
‘The human hand, in and of itself, is an amazing tool. It has the ability to be as soft as a feather, then a split second later be as hard as iron. It can break a brick or soothe a baby. It can be the instrument of death and destruction or be extended in friendship and hope. When it comes to our work with horses, it can be used to frighten and worry, or calm and encourage. My belief is, most of all, when it comes to working with horses that the human hand can and should become a tool for the development of mutual trust and understanding.’
A Life with Horses – Spirit of the Work.