I had a vision of how this seminar would work and by crikey it far surpassed even my vision. Far out – the people and the things that happened just knocked my socks off.
Soak up every bit of joy and excitement and wonder and enjoy!
Click here if you need an alternate audio.
This video is a humorous look at why we want a riding position that HELPS our horse rather than gets in their way. For the riders who care about performance or the horse’s ability move powerfully or to carry us with ease and strength – imagine how much harder the horse has to work in those … shall I call them “difficult” riding positions that Sue and I are so humorously demonstrating for us?
Who would have thought it hey?
Did YOU get taught to grip with your knees or turn your toes in or sit up straight or sit on your pockets too? Far out hey, the age of misinformation started a lot earlier than we thought! 🙂 I have often reflected that we’ve been taught so much crap because really good riders – the beautiful ones – have no idea what it is that makes what they do so special. AND of course, their Feel is unique and when we’re trying to copy their way of doing it, it just doesn’t work.
What gets in the way of our perfect riding seat?
We’ll see various examples of this as I work with people today:
- There’s a tension that results from ignoring the messages of your own natural Feel. Each ignored message is another layer of tension pushed down deep inside, each layer intensifying the next until you’re perched on top of the saddle instead of the lovely magnetic centaur stuff of our dreams.
- There’s also a tension that arises in your own body from ignoring the messages from your horse – and that too is cumulative – each layer adding on to the next, creating more and more tension that gets in the way of our joints working freely the way they were designed and adversely effecting our posture.
- Posture posture posture. How many times can I say this dry sounding word and HOW can I say this word in such a way that I communicate the sheer bloody magic of a body that moves sweetly in harmony with itself first and then in harmony with our horse? Posture posture posture!
- Fright imprint – there’s another type of cumulative tension that can get locked into our bodies when we have a fall from a horse (even if we weren’t injured). Each small fright from a fall adds on to the next and every layer of tension increases the likelihood of another fall. And that’s not even counting the big falls where we were injured, which if they’re bad enough, can produce PTSD type symptoms. All fixable.
- Old injuries can get in the way of a perfect riding seat. But don’t despair! I think you’ll be gobsmacked at how often injuries can be released and healed even long after the original injury. I’m hoping you’ll get to see / hear some of that today.
Keys to success
- It’s using our own unique way of feeling, to find our own perfect riding seat that is what makes this work so powerful.
- It’s using our Feel to notice and Release old stresses and tensions so that our new improved riding seat is effortless.
- Then we use our Feel to keep our perfect riding seat.
- Once we’ve released that tension, our Feel for ourselves AND for our horse is the key to being able to ride without building up layers of tension again.
- When you take this out to your horse, you may need to shorten your stirrups for at least a while. Shortened stirrups will help you to keep your good seat happening while you work on releasing the layers of tension that are restricting your hip joints and spine.
- VERY IMPORTANT. When you take this riding position out to your horse, if you want to explore using your lower legs as if they were cuddling, like Sue talked about briefly on the video, PREPARE YOUR HORSE FIRST. Without the combination of Feel for your horse and proper preparation, you might startle your horse with the sudden change. And without a magnetic riding seat, startling your horse might not be a good look lol!
- If you’re a regular rider, when you take this back out to your horse, take the time when you first mount up to bring your Feel in to your conscious awareness – for two reasons. One, to allow your legs to move into the perfect position, because we’ve only worked on your seat in this lesson and we want your legs to be part of that too.
- The second reason to bring your Feel to your conscious awareness, is to take the time to really Feel into and listen to your horse. Otherwise THEIR tension will become YOUR tension. You can’t get the magnetic seat and the glorious One’ness that our hearts secretly desire if our horse resists, blocks, or gets defensive and tense from feeling unheard. Gosh this is SUCH a big deal, I can’t emphasize it enough!
- If you’re not a regular rider, see below for Fast Track, where (among other wonderful things) you can get back to riding in a way that will steadily increase you AND your horse’s confidence if that’s what you yearn for.
- Every layer of progress, we make that our new normal – that’s a major key to the success of this way of working. You’ll hear me talking about HOW we anchor that progress and make it our new normal, over and over again on the seminar. So there’s none of this adjust this, check that, focus on this – there’s only a natural and effortless togetherness with your horse. I’m going to follow up with some group riding seat lessons after this seminar so you you’ll have the opportunity to get at any more difficult layers – see the details at the bottom of the page.
- We don’t try to FIX a riding seat that isn’t yet perfect – this is SUCH a key to success, I’m just about dancing up and down in my chair talking about this! FIXing it would mean that we’d have to fix it every time we got on and as far as I’m concerned, that’s too much like hard work having to redo the same thing over and over again lol! And that doesn’t fit with my anti-struggling revolution at all lol again! Using our Feel is how we release whatever’s BEHIND our riding seat not being the best it can be – so that with that thing gone / released / healed, the improvement is effortlessly there – effortlessly there. Do you get what a big deal that is and why this is unique in the world?
- Does that mean you’ll be riding with that improvement forever? It CAN mean that, but not listening to your Feel when you’re riding causes tension to come back into your body and enough tension will stuff up your riding seat again. And yes I’m smiling here. I’m smiling because it’s not a big deal to stuff it up, because each time we recognize what set us back, it’s a valuable awareness and valuable progress because of that and it leads to another layer of effortlessness. So bring on the stuff-ups! 🙂 The key to success here is to learn to listen to your Feel as best you can, on and off your horse.
Your horse’s contribution to a magnetic riding seat
What you’ve learned today is about your own self carriage.
Beautiful riding is when a horse in self carriage meets a human in self carriage. That’s when you’re REALLY super duper sucked into the saddle. THAT’s the centaur stuff I get so excited about.
All those years ago when I started typing Bobby’s little black notebooks into the computer (I wrote down all the things that Bobby “said” while we were together in little black notebooks) I was surprised at how often he had repeated the same things over and over again in different ways. One of those things he repeated many times was “A horse in their comfort zone is in self carriage.”
Self carriage is a horse who is powerfully balanced over his / her feet, their stride is soft and kind of springy and rhythmic, their back is lifted up and when the muscles are built up in that position, they can carry us with strength and ease. Riders have for aeons tried to MAKE horses go into that frame. That’s not SELF carriage, that’s an ugly sister version of the real thing. And it’s not necessary either because it only takes helping our horse find their Comfort Zone. It’s 20 years now since I first heard Bobby’s thoughts in my head with what I know now to be my Mental Feel and I’ve had hundreds and hundreds of people who have validated what he said “A horse in their Comfort Zone is in self carriage.” Such powerful simplicity.
(For the dressage and other performance riders among you – it’s a simple step to go from the real self carriage that I’m talking about, to the power and joyfulness and grace of real collection. And mannn… THAT is happiness on four legs.)
Such powerful simplicity applies to riders too. I’ve come to realize that a rider in their Comfort Zone is in self carriage too. That’s why our Feel works so well to get us into a beautiful riding seat. Because there is no more stress and tension when you’re listening to all the messages in all the ways that YOU uniquely experience your Feel for yourself and your horse.
Want more?
If your imagination has been stimulated by what you’ve experienced today and you want more, there’s two ways in which we can help you move forwards more rapidly:
- Fast Track to Brilliant Riding is a step by meticulous step blueprint for you AND your horse’s Comfort Zones and self carriage. 90+ lessons, 21 of which have various contributions to a magnetic riding seat – including the crowning lesson about re-programming your oh shit reactions, so that when the crap hits the fan you can flow with your horse instead of grabbing, jerking and making it worse. You can click here for detailed info.
