Newsletter: September 2007
Copyright Alexandra Kurland

These posts were originally posted to "the_click_that_teaches" list, an on-line study group for the riding book.

Contents:

What is Riding?

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What is Riding?

By Alexandra Kurland

copyright 2007

Bone Rotations
What is riding? That's a question we explored in depth at a recent clinic. I'm not talking here about what type of riding you do, be it jumping, dressage, trail, etc. I'm talking about the connection/influence we have when we sit on a horse.

This question came up at a recent clinic as we were exploring how to use bone rotations instead of muscle strength to develop stable structure. The easiest way to become aware of bone rotations is to go through the "flying lesson" exercise described on page 145 of the Riding book. You raise your arms out to the side so your thumbs are pointing up. Then you rotate from your shoulders so your thumbs point back, up, forward, down and then back behind you. In the first part of this sequence, it's possible to rotate just from your elbow and not to involve your shoulder much at all. But when you rotate so your thumbs point down and behind you, you will feel your shoulders very much becoming involved.

I happen to like this part of the sequence. I always think of those wonderful slow motion films of geese in flight. The rotation creates a feeling through my shoulders that I very much enjoy. However, in clinics I often see a look of concern bordering on agony as people attempt to follow my instructions. Surely, shoulders weren't meant to move this much! Aren't they instead supposed to remain glued firmly to the rib cage, preferably held in tightly in place with permanently contracted muscles? I know that's what people are thinking. And of course, that's the problem. For so many people their shoulders have become very static in their range of movement. They have forgotten how much freedom of movement their shoulders really do have. And it is in this full range of movement, in the bone rotations that occur when you include shoulder, elbow, wrist and hand in the action, that allows you to be powerful without being forceful or aggressive.

One of the common habits people fall into is they hold their shoulders up. They aren't even aware they are doing it. As a matter of fact, you may be holding your shoulders up as you are reading this post. This may be your unconscious pattern, not something you do deliberately, but it will most definitely effect both your ground work with your horse and your riding.

Beach Balls, Shoulders, and Picking Up The Reins
One of the participants at a recent clinic demonstrated this beautifully. She was just learning the mechanics of single-rein riding. I was having her practice first on the ground without a horse. I held the bit while she picked up the buckle with her outside hand, and slid down the inside rein with her opposite hand.

She did a good first approximation. The holes in her technique however were revealed when I added a little bit of pressure to the reins. She immediately tipped forward onto her toes and had to use muscle tension to keep her balance.

What was the cause of her lack of stability? She hadn't released her shoulders. She hadn't fully completed the rotation needed in the pick up of the reins.

Let's just consider the lifting of the buckle hand. You can lift it by just bending at your elbow. That's a common first approximation pattern for lifting the rein. Try it. Imagine you are holding a set of reins in your hand. Let your hand rest in your lap, palm down. Now lift your hand up toward your shoulder by just bending at the elbow. Don't rotate your bones. Just move your hand, knuckles up to your shoulder. What moved? What didn't move? If someone were standing behind you with their hand resting lightly on your shoulder blade, would they have felt any movement as you lifted the rein up and down? Probably not.

And if this hypothetical person were standing in front of you so they could apply pressure to the rein once you had lifted it up, how easy or not would it be to keep your seat? The answer I get from people in clinics is they are easily unbalanced. It doesn't take much pressure to get them tightening, gripping, using force to try to keep their balance. Without a bone rotation, they have no structural integrity. They are a set of building blocks that is easily toppled.

So how do you change this? You add a bone rotation into the lift of the rein. Instead of lifting the your hand in a straight elbow-bending-only line, imagine you are lifting your hand up over a ball. Make it an over-sized beach ball. You have to lift your hand up and out over the curve of the ball. Pause as your hand gets to the top of the ball and observe for a moment what your shoulder, arm, wrist, and hand are doing. When your hand is at the highest point in the arc, your shoulder and arm are suspended up as well. You can't maintain this position without fatiguing. So let your hand continue on from the top of the ball down the near side. Notice how your elbow settles into down into its resting position. Notice how your shoulder blade releases down to allow this full rotation up and over the beach ball.

With the clinic participant I had her repeat this several times until it became a fluid movement. Then I added pressure to the rein. Instead of tipping forward onto her toes, she remained stable. In fact the more pressure I added, the more stable she became. Her elbow was connected to her torso, anchored firmly to her hip - firmly via structure, not muscle tension.

I had her add the slide down the inside rein. There is a bone rotation involved here as well. She slid down the rein, everything looked fine on the outside, but once again she had neglected to release her shoulder in the final step of the rotation. When I added just a little pressure to the rein, she again tipped forward out of balance.

When she remembered to release her shoulder down as she completed the rotation, she immediately became stable. I could add pressure, and she remained quietly anchored in her core balance.

Riding with Awareness
So next I mimicked the horse that responds to the pick-up of the rein by becoming stiff. We matched pressure for pressure. I stiffened against the rein, and my "rider" matched my pull with her solid core.

So now what? As a rider, when my horse stiffens to me, I want to remember to take the time he's giving me to work on my body awareness. Instead of becoming reactive to his resistance, I want to think about what I could let go in me to become even more grounded, to release even more the make-it-happen tension in my muscles.

So the question to this "rider" was what could she let go to release her shoulder even more. Her breath was a good starting point. It melted away the remaining tension in her shoulder blades. And as it did, I couldn't help but soften in response. It wasn't a conscious choice. I found myself releasing pressure to the rein without having any deliberate thought to do so. There was no winning and losing in this interaction. No tug of war where one of us finally fatigued and gave in to the other. There was instead just a matching of softening into softening. Wonderful.

My "rider" had the body awareness to be able to either hold her shoulder up and tight, or to release it. That meant I could let other people experience what it felt like to be at the horse's end of the reins. And she got to "ride" each of the other clinic participants. Several of them were instructors so this was a particularly interesting experience for everyone. Every person you work with presents some new insight into this work.

We had our "rider" pick up the reins without a shoulder rotation. Each one of our "horses" could easily tip her forward out of balance. When she added the shoulder rotation, they felt her become solid - not solid resisting them, just solid and unmovable.

I had them keep pressure on the rein while she did a body scan and further released the tension in her body. They all melted as she breathed away the tension in her shoulders.

What is Riding?
Which brings me back to the question I posed at the beginning of this post. What is riding? As my "rider" rotated through the pick up of the inside rein, I stood behind her and rested my hand on her shoulder. As she released her shoulder, I released mine. This created an even more definite rotation of her shoulder blade, which in turn resulted in an even bigger response from her "horse".

We played with this. Sometimes I stiffened my shoulder, or held my breath. It should be no surprise that big changes like that blocked her ability to release her shoulder. But even subtle changes such as curling my toes, made a huge difference in the feel down the rein. Our "horses" reflected perfectly what I was doing by their response to the rein. They softened when I softened, and tightened when I tightened. It was like playing an elaborate game of telephone. Each change I made was transmitted through our "rider" to the "horse".

I let people experience the effect of my tightening and blocking our "rider", then I went back to releasing my shoulders with my breath. Without at first being aware she was doing it, my "rider" was now breathing in perfect sync with me.

Inner and Outer Cues
And this to me is what riding is. This growing connection and influence that comes about through increased body awareness and control. It's what I play with when I ride. Peregrine and I have been riding partners for a very long time. We have our outer cues well worked out. It's the inner cues that we play with now. Last night I had a lovely ride on him. He's had a lot of time off this summer because of my travel schedule. The last couple of days it's been cool enough to do more than some simple, slow work.

He had wonderfully tons of energy, lots of go. He reminded me why I so love thoroughbreds. And he also reminded me why I so love this work. Tons of energy is only fun when it is connected and flowing with you, not out from under you. I was enjoying the trot, but I wanted to make sure he was still connected, listening to me. I needed to check in and find out if his balance was still adjustable. I didn't want to be a passive passenger riding whatever quality of gait my horse happened to throw at me. And I also didn't want to block this wonderful energy, so I started to think about my shoulders. I thought about the feel of bone rotations and the lovely stretch that comes into the shoulder joint when you fully extend your arm. Peregrine balanced more underneath me. The energy was still there. The trot had simply become more suspended. I thought again about my shoulders, and he came to a square halt. Wonderful. Another thought and he was trotting again, full of energy, full of life, connected, listening, each nuance of thought creating a matching response from him. It was play. What do you do when? What do you do when I think only of my shoulder blades? What do you do when I let the thought travel down my back and into my spine? What do you do when I let the energy roll like a ball through my center?

If you are a novice rider, you may be thinking all this sounds like hocus pocus. You may be asking what is it you are supposed to do exactly while you are doing all this thinking? You may be saying to yourself: "I can barely get my horse to trot. I'm so busy thinking about what diagonal I'm on, I can't even imagine remembering to breath, let alone think about what my shoulders are doing. And what do I do when I think about my shoulders?"

That's the beauty of the ground work and all these body awareness exercises. They create a muscle memory that thought triggers. I can think about my shoulders rotating and feel a subtle change. I don't do anything active. I just allow the thought to be expressed through those muscle memories. Peregrine tells me this is enough. He can feel the changes, and he has learned to tune in to these invisible shifts. His response reinforces the subtlety of the exchange.

There is a point as you ride where you know you are on the right diagonal, your horse is going forward fairly well without your having to restart his engine after every stride. He's going more or less where you want. Things are okay. The trick then is to remember to do a body scan and not simple stay riding on the "outside" with gross movements of hands, reins, and legs doing all the work. You start on the outside as a novice rider, and then you gradually shift the communication to the inside. How subtle and refined can your signals become? It isn't what cues I use with Peregrine that you want to be asking about, but what does your horse do when you remember to breath? What does he do when you find the full rotation of your bones and your structure begins to function for you? What does he do when you think about changing in some subtle fashion the shape of your spine? What does he do when you gain the body awareness and control to make these changes deliberate and consistent?

You gather in this data. Nothing is right or wrong. It's all useful information. You learn what to do when you want to steady your horse, to rebalance him, to add energy, to create a subtle shift in bend. Your signals becomes invisible, inside. A thought creates an action and riding becomes magic.

Trying to mimic exactly what another rider uses for cues is a process that can lead to frustration, tension and confusion. But understanding the process of becoming more internally body aware, and remembering to use this as you ride leads to pure joy and rides that feel like heaven.

Alexandra Kurland
theclickercenter.com