Self carriage and responsibility II

Both humans and horses are born with a built-in capacity for self carriage. The foal will find its own self carriage within an hour after birth, and then it follows the mare and the heard in all gaits. In humans, it takes 10-15 months to get up on our feet and achieve self carriage as bi pedals.

When the child starts school and when the horse starts to be ridden it alters the conditions for the natural self carriage. The free play of childhood is changed for to a more sedentary daily life for the child. The horse on the other hand will have to learn to manage both equipment, the riders weight and requested work.

In my 9 year old schoolboy the increased sitting has affected his ability to sit up straight. He now easily ends up sitting with his back in the characteristic c-curve, something that does not happen to my 6 or 2 year old, no matter how long the are sitting.

Fortunately the 9 year old just needs soft guidance to how he should carry his head, a soft stroke on his back to remind him of the upward direction and he carries himself again. When the c-curve has become prevalent or the vulture neck, as I call it, is a permanent position the straightening of the back is a matter of re-learning and that takes time.

For the ridden horse the degree of self carriage tells you how well the breaking in and training is done and it is now I want to tell you about Lena's Yeats. He was 11 years and worked as a riding school pony when Lena bought him.

I remember a movie clip from a test ride where Yeats trotted on with a completely rigid spine, his leg just propelled under him and his neck poked straight out of his body. He carried himself through the superficial muscles and he was stiffly held throughout the body. The quality of his self carriage was low, as in the human c-curve.

Now, three years later, Yeats has reached the point where his postural muscles carry him and the superficial are free to move. He carries himself without leaning on to the bit (if the rider carries herself and don't use the reins to hang on to!). He approaches the piaffe, a movement, if it's well done, shows the horse's ability to carry himself with the strength and quality that will lead to a front end so light that he might end up in a levade.

Self carriage is something that is trained, in both horse and human, so that the individual is able to meet the demands of given tasks. We develop our self carrying capacity with a knowledge about our bodies and an ability to percieve what happens within ourselves as we do what we aim to do.

In regard to the horse, the rider has a responsibility to train the horse systematically, both to give the horse opportunity to learn the signal system and to allow its body to gradually strengthen to be able cope with the demands.

Many riders who buy young horses have no systematic training of the horse and ride their young horses as if they were in self carriage already. (All to often using draw reins or some other stringy attachment.) Many established riders may very well have a systematic approach to training, but unfortunately a contact with the horses mouth, which starts at minimum 1000 g instead of 300 g ... and then the mutual self carriage is merely a mutual suspension.