Photo: What you see here is a horse in self carriage in a five acre paddock on a long rein and a rider in the human version of self carriage, both paying gentle attention to each other and with a beautiful circuit of energy running between them. The flexion of your spine and pelvis in this lesson, is one of the keys to being able to ride with the feel of your whole body like Steve is here.
The Lesson
The flexion of the pelvis and the spine are an important key to the horse and rider melded together as one being.
Horse and rider melded together as one being. What a big statement… What would that mean to us as riders?
♦ It would mean a place of being, rather than clinical riding – a place of being rather than thinking about what to do and when to do it – a place of being where horse and rider are so connected that they act as one.
♦ It would mean sitting on your horse’s back and instantly and easily being in the place where you are so magnetized into the saddle that it felt like the saddle was wrapped around you.
♦ It would mean a natural and effortless core strength.
♦ It would mean effortlessly being able to stay with your horse when they did an unexpected movement.
♦ It would mean your seat becoming deeper, yet remaining soft when something went “wrong”.
♦ It would mean being stable and controlled enough in your seat to be able to ride with the “feel ” of your whole body.
Well folks, that’s what we’ve found.
AND we’ve found a way to have it.
AND we’ve found a fast track to it.
AND you’re on it.
All this happens when there is a circuit of energy between horse and rider – an incredibly powerful circuit of energy for those who want advanced collection for dressage or for dancing with their horse – and a gentler circuit of energy for togetherness for those who want to ride on a long rein or bridle-less with no reins at all.
Today’s lesson is about understanding the WHAT and the WHY and the HOW of the magnetic butt and the pelvic and spinal flexion that is necessary, in order to have this awesomely beautiful circuit of energy on your horse that melds horse and rider into one being. Enjoy!
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Written Version of the Audio
Today’s lesson is setting the scene.
It is the preparation for the NEXT lesson about getting rid of blockages and stuck spots in the pelvis and learning how to hold a “feel” with your whole body in the saddle.
Dwell on those words for a moment – learning how to hold a “feel” with your body in the saddle. Those are simple words for a VERY big concept that turns out to be quite simple really when we approach it with my “no struggle, doing it the easy way” philosophy.
The pelvis and the spine are an important key to the circuit of energy that is the horse and rider melded together as one being. Let’s dwell on THOSE beautiful words for a moment too – the circuit of energy that IS the horse and rider melded together as one being. How big is that?
Within that circuit of energy, you will have an ability to hold a conversation with your horse with the flexion of your spine and pelvis.
And your horse can hold their part of that conversation with THEIR spine and their pelvis – WHEN they are in their Comfort Zone and in the self carriage that comes from that Comfort Zone.
WHEN they are in THEIR Comfort Zone and in self carriage.
And as you know from your previous lessons, a horse in their Comfort Zone IS in self carriage. And if they are not in self carriage they are not in their Comfort Zone.
Now here is the good news for those of us who have less than perfect pelvis flexion, those of us who are older and a little more knocked around by life and horses. You can get that circuit of powerful energy, you can achieve that one-ness with your horse with a less than perfectly flexible pelvis so long as your stirrups are short enough to allow you to achieve a pelvis and spine flexion.
Longer stirrup length requires a greater pelvic flexion to achieve this circuit of energy.
The psoas muscle is the key to the magnetic butt part of the circuit of energy. It is THE most important muscle for a rider.
The psoas being parallel to the abdominal muscles is fundamental to the effortlessly powerful core that we are looking for when you are riding.
When you are in the “right” position, the psoas lines up with the abdominals to produce a set of parallel muscles that are many, many times stronger than either. It is those parallel muscles, the core that is formed by those parallel muscles, that is the foundation for a butt that is magnetized into the saddle no matter what is going on.
This is the human version of self carriage – where you are able to sit on a horse and carry yourself without any gripping or hanging on to the reins for any kind of balance.
The psoas is also fundamental to the truly independent legs looked for by advanced riders – i.e. legs that can work independently of the upper body.
I can explain in great detail how emotions affect the body and why, because this is an area of special expertise for me, but rather than drown you in detail, for this lesson suffice to say that the psoas is a kidney muscle and the kidney (and thus the psoas) is adversely affected by fear, nerves, anxiety and the like.
There are also two other kidney muscles – the upper trapezius that attaches to your neck and runs across the top of your shoulders and the iliacus, another important pelvic muscle that works with the psoas to flex the thigh and to bend the lumbar portion of the spine and the pelvis forwards.
The psoas is the most problematic of all the muscles in the body though, because fear, nerves and anxiety get in the way of its contribution to the pelvic flexion necessary for the circuit of powerful energy and for the parallel muscles that form the strong core that a rider needs for stable, strong, safe and happy riding for both rider AND horse.
Lucky we’ve found a simple way to fix it then, hey?
This might be more information than some of you want too, but it explains WHY it is easier said than done for some people to HOLD a great riding position once the horse starts moving. This is WHY it is so important to work our Comfort Zones to the nth degree with the earlier lessons and specially Fast Track Lessons 71 and 76, (ignore those numbers!) with their baby steps to re-program our bodies into being able to hold our magnetic butt with small movements of our horse.
Here’s the good news. These baby steps in a Comfort Zone for you and your horse ARE the answer to being able to hold that magnetic butt in movement.
The Comfort Zone work that you have been doing already for horse and rider and the work that you have done releasing fright imprints and other work in the chair has already started releasing your psoas muscle.
The same has been happening for your horse. Every layer of fear, nerves and anxiety that you have been helping your horse to process and release while waiting for The Chew, has been releasing pressure and stuck spots and blockages in THEIR psoas muscle and THEIR upper trapezius and THEIR iliacus, to create the smoothly functioning pelvis that is fundamental to the proper movement of their hind quarters – that engine that drives their body forward.
These kidney muscles being in balance are a fundamental part of self carriage for the horse too.
For you dressage aficionados, your horse’s upper trapezius functioning well and happily enables your horse to lift up his shoulders and really come up in front of you with joyfulness and expression.
Picture it – it’s the muscle that runs through the top of the neck at the base – and it’s from THERE that the neck bend truly starts.
Play with that in your chair now. Move your neck as if you were a kitten being picked up by the scruff of its neck by its mother, curve your back to go with that movement of your neck and notice what happens to your head position and how soft your neck and “poll” and jaw feels when you do that AND HOW GOOD THAT FEELS compared to being held in by the head and mouth that so many of us have been taught how to do with our horses.
This same self carriage is essential to the circuit of POWERFUL energy that dressage riders are looking for. For other kinds of riding too – anyone who is looking for one-ness between horse and rider will need this circuit of energy. It will just have a gentler and slightly different feeling that is still fundamental to that one-ness no matter what kind of riding that you do.
I get goosebumps even talking about this.
Thus you can see that the Comfort Zone work you have been doing in listening to yourself and your nerves to make yourself safe is a PIVOTAL part of fast tracking brilliant riding, the circuit of powerful energy and the melding of horse and rider into one being. This is HOW we FAST TRACK the circuit of powerful energy that melds the horse and rider into one being – the holy grail of serious riders in every discipline.
Wow…
Your next lesson will be giving you a new tool to release stuck spots in your pelvis that are getting in the road of brilliant riding. These may have nothing whatsoever to do with horses, but are still getting in the way of good pelvic flexion on your horse.
The other part of this lesson is giving you what is probably your first taste of what it’s going to be like to ride with the “feel” of your whole body. THAT is a seriously beautiful feeling.
I don’t know about you, but I can’t wait!