It's all in the head.

There are several connections between classical riding and the Alexander Technique. One of these is the head, both from a psychological but also physical / mechanical perspective.

The hand is the primary aid in classical riding, “because the horses head comes first” according to de la Gueriniérè or as an Alexander teacher would say - "the head leads and the body follows." It can be described purely mechanical / physical, the head of both horse and man weighs its courageous kilos. In a full-size horse approximately 30 kg and 4-6 kg in humans.

To give you an idea of what the weight of your head really feels like I suggest you fill a bag with about 4.5 kg. Then take the bag and let it hang from the hand alongside your body. Notice how you perceive the weight. Then lift your arm with the bag straight out in front of you. How do you percieve the weight now? Notice what's happening in your body when you stretch out your arm. Does your body need to compensate for the weight in any way? How did you feel your balance was affected?

If we let the head fall in front of the body's center of gravity (I call It a vulture’s neck) the muscles of the neck, shoulders, back and calves make up for the weight shift that occurs in our body, otherwise the law of gravity will do its job and we fall over.

A horse can be compared to a table with four legs with a weight of 30 kilo attached on the far end of a stick that is nailed to the table-body. If the stick is raised, the weight of 30 kg is shifted towards the rear end of the table and if it is lowered it brings the weight on to the front end of the table. So by shifting the weight of its head a horse can get ready to make a roll back by lifting its head or stay heavy on the front legs (and be less moveable) while grazing.

One facet of the psychological gemstone in humans is our thoughts and ideas. Every move we make has its origin in the brain. Either we are aware of the nerve impulse or we are not – the latter it is often called reflex. When we learn to ride (or anything else for that matter), we are egaged in creating and establishing new nerve connections that will manifest themselves in the body as motion. At the beginning of learning our movements are many times both briska and jerky. That is because we are busy analysing what’s going on, what we are doing and how well we manage to meet the assignement.

After a while, we have streghtened the neural pathway enough so that we can begin to rely on a reflex like response. We begin to develop our skills. We begin to "ride every step", we are starting to detect if the position of the horse is correct before we even start the specific movement and if need be we can provide help accordingly and adjust the position.

If the horse is thinking or not I leave unsaid, what I do know is that a horse needs to involve the brain at the beginning of its learning process and build the neural pathways that will facilitate its body to perform what we ask of it - and they certainly get tired of the work . Good training helps both rider and horse to quicken the time of response and it helps to establish a reflex like response to clear questions (from both ends of the rein!).

So there are no specific equestrian bodies, the important thing is the riders head! Equestrian tact and feeling is positioned in the head, both in how you carry it physically and how you use the inside in your approach to learning and indeed how you view the fact of beeing right and wrong in that process.

Leadership = emotional balance?

This fall there have been a series of entries discussing leadership here at The Quest for Equipoise:

*) Leadership, something to strive for. Or?

*) Leadership is all about relationship

My leadership ”over” my horse Yeats was put to the test last week. I've decided that we should go out on the trails to enjoy the beautiful autumn days. The test this day came in the shape of the brand new hunter's tower that had been set up on a field about 50 meters from the road we usually go on. That Yeats noticed there was something new is an understatement.

Soon after Yeats started to stare and tried to make a 180 degree turn to run back to the barn I made the choice of dismounting. Since Yeats still isn't 100 % secure in leaving the barn without a fellow horse have I made a habit of leaving the rope halter on underneath the bridle. This gave me the option at this point to give him the space he needed, instead of hanging on to the reins. I could also ask him to focus on me by asking him to yield his hind- and fore quarters rather than on the – according to him – lethal tower.

Since I didn't bother to look at the watch I don't know how much time we spent on getting by the tower. Since we were there, we did go back and forth a couple of times. On the way home we passed it without me having to dismount. The day after, when we passed the tower with another horse as company, he didn't even raise his head to look at it.

So, what made Yeats go past the tower? My leadership? The equipment I used? The technique? My attitude? What is most important – how I present myself to Yeats, or that I achieve a certain goal (in this case getting past the tower)?

This is what I think:
About the equipment – Since I'm used to handling the rope halter and the rope I also trust my ability to not have Yeats get loose and run home, possibly getting hurt in the process. The rope also let me give Yeats the extra space he needed to deal with his own emotions without me finding myself pulling on the shorter reins and by doing so hurting him in the mouth.

About the technique – the ground work I have done before has not only opened a bridge of communication between me and my horse (Six Keys to Harmony) but also gave both of us a familiar and well-known routine to lean on. The way I approached the situation was with the goal of not getting by the tower, but to gain and keep Yeats attention.

About the attitude – For the non-Swedish readers I might need to explain a little about the attitude toward the horse that is prevalent at most Swedish riding schools. The horse is usually seen as someone that the riders “need to put in his place”, and it is said to be important to “make the horse do” whatever we ask of it. When the horse tries to communicate back this is often seen as the horse having a bad personality.

This day I made a conscious decision not to make the horse do anything, but just to offer him the possibility of relying on me by remaining calm and assertive instead of getting frustrated (that my plans for the day were spoiled), upset (with the horse for “making trouble”), insecurity (what if Yeats hurt himself?!) and so on. Time was of no importance since horses don't have the same mental capacity as humans to measure time anyway. What they remember is not the time spent achieving something but the emotions and level of stress involved. By remaining calm and assertive I could grasp this opportunity to deepen my relationship with my horse.

I think that the attitude together with the equipment and the technique worked in this instance to produce the successful outcome. What do you think?

PS Thank you to Mark Stanton of Natural Horsemanship magazine for proof reading!

The shortest way to yes can be no.

If I compare Alexander Technique (AT) with learning to play the guitar it’s easy to learn some common chords and then you can happily play the accompaniment at a party or a bonfire at the beach. If you want to deepen your knowledge and improve your technique, you’ll find that there is something to learn from this day on and all of a sudden playing guitar has become a way of life.

The same goes for AT. There is a basic level that in many ways is about the mundane and physical. How you sit, stand and walk, a technique for improving posture. As we sit, stand and walk a great deal during a normal day that knowledge is useful for everyday health and wellbeing.

If you decide to go ahead with AT, you can explore what is needed to move and how much tension that is really necessary to make the moves. Then there is an equally interesting aspect of how different stimuli (sensory input) affects the body physically without it showing outwards. How is the level of stress affecting tension in the body? Nervousness? Fear? The sight of the one that you like or hate? AT helps you discover how your body reacts to different stimuli and it can open up for a chance to choose what to do with these initial reactions.

On both these levels you train your perception and inhibition and direction are your tools in learning. As the nervous system is equipped with the ability to automate processes, it is sometimes necessary to actively say no (inhibit) to make room for an active yes (direction).

There are studies showing that the nervous system is prepared to get into action about 10 seconds before we ourselves become aware of what we intend to do. 10 seconds ... in neuroscience that is one (if not two!) eternities.

It is of great importance to realise that even if the nervous system and thus the body "is ready to do what we’ve always done”, there is a moment, a few milliseconds, where we are offered the opportunity to actually say no to whatever the nervous system have prepared itself (and us ) for. The opening allows us to choose a new way of acting, a way that better lead us to where we want to go, a reaction that brings us closer to our goal.

If we refrain from or miss our chance to say no (inhibit) the stone is put in motion, and like a band of crackers nerve impulse after nerve impulse is fired until the automatic reaction is completed. During that journey we have few if any means to stop the process.

Imagine a man who has a habit of betting on the racetrack. He comes to the junction at Solvalla. If he takes advantage of the opening to actively say no to the reaction his nervous system offers as he drives past the junction, he’ll come home with all his money. If he misses the moment and makes the turn, he will go all the way and bet on horses til his wallet is empty.

What do you need to prevent from happening to make way for the things you want to happen?

Leadership, something to strive for? Or...

I've been pondering the concept of leadership since ISES this summer. What is leadership for you? Is it something you strive for, or do you interpret it as something that dominates your horse in a way that his/her personality is stifled?

Scientists don't want us to use words like ”leadership” or ”respect” when we talk about the way our horses relate to us. They say that horses don't have the same ability as humans for abstract reasoning. I agree with this. Scientists also say that the way horses behave is all about learned behaviour. Whatever the horse does is, from this point of view, something you taught the horse to do and has nothing to do with any feeling of love, respect etc that the horse has for you, or if the horse sees you as a leader.

But, horses are herd animals. This mean that a horse always knows who the leader is in a herd, even if this herd only consists of one horse and one human. Or at least the horse always knows who at the moment is in charge of looking after potential danger spots in the surroundings. As Maria wrote in last week's blog:

”Within a horse herd there is a situation-based leadership. Different jobs have different 'leaders', some individuals are responsible for certain stages of the everyday activities of a herd. One is good at finding water, one being the guard, one finding herbs, minerals, one fostering the fillys and one being ready for defence, etc. ”

So, OK, horses cannot perform abstract reasoning, they don't write blogs and don't read any for that matter. But there is for sure a big difference in being with a horse that doesn't see me, walk all over me, does whatever he/she feels like but not whatever I asked for (follow me from the field to the barn, stand still when mounting, loading, pick up the correct lead etc), and a horse that calmly follows me, and in a calm and attentive state responds to my light requests.

The horse that response with lightness to my light request, does he/she see me as his/her leader? Well, I don't know what the horse calls it, but to me this is leadership. Leadership to me is to gain the horse's attention so that I can communicate with my horse. If I have the horse's attention and ways to communicate, at the least I can let my horse know I don't particularly like being physically pushed around by backing him/her out of my space. So, if the scientists don't want us to use words like “leadership” and “respect”, what words should we use to describe the difference in behaviour between the first and the second horse?

Whatever word you choose to use, leadership or learned behaviour, the one thing that both science and NH have in common is the emphasis on the horse handler's behaviour. If I want to teach my horse to behave in any particular way I will have to behave in a way that the horse can understand. What this is called seems to differ with different communities.

What do you want to call it?

PS Thank you to Mark Stanton of Natural Horsemanship magazine for proof reading!