More hands

The hands theme continues. A rider's hands are expected to have many qualities, it should be soft, sensitive, quiet, offering horse support and much more.

Many of these qualities, can be impoved off the saddle and in third posting I'd like to give you some ideas of how you can train your perception of and in your hands. The basic idea of the Alexander Technique is that anything you are unaware of, you can not improve, and awareness is aided by the ability to percieve.

By taking a few moments each day to pay attention to what your hands are doing and how they do will refine your perception.

Take time to notice how what you are holding in your hand feels; its weight, texture, temperature. When you let your hands stroke the horse, notice how the hair, muscles underneath the skin feels and you try to register any temperature difference on the surface.

A good opportunity to exercise, that many of us have every day (and I am at right now), is when our fingers and hands move across a keyboard. How hard do your fingers press on the keys? Or when you hold a pencil, how hard do you have to hold it to write?

Become an explorer in yourself, experiment! If you can do something with a certain force, try to do it with half as much power next time. Be easier in that you do!

Take the time to rest your hand against your thigh when the opportunity arises. Avoid pressing down on the thigh, just rest your hand, that in itself encourages relaxation and is a very soft stretch of the hand muscles.

The Hand

Welcome to a "the day after" blog. Yesterday I came home at 7:00 am after a driving the entire night from Svärdsjö in Dalarna. Together with three other northeners, I have been on a five day hoof clinic with KC LaPierre and it gave lot of new input to be processed. I slept all day...

Today's post will be about our front hoof - the hand. Our hand plays a big role in our daily dialogue with the horse. We inspect the horse with our hands, we stroke it, it holds the brushes we use when grooming, it lifts the horse's legs, it holds the reins and much, much more.

I would like to hand out some tips on how we can improve our use of the hands to make the dialogue with the horse more nuanced. The hand, which I described earlier in the post The hand is dominating, occupies a large part of the brain's sensory and motoric centers. It has an amazing ability to develop fine tuned skills and sensitivity. All we need is to engage in deliberate practice.

These are three experiments for you to play with
1, Take a straw from the horse's tail or mane, put it under a page in the telephone directory. Look out in the room and let your finger cross out the page and feel hair through the paper. Add on another page, feel again. Add on another page, and another. Do this until you no longer think you can feel the hair. Then touch lightly, lightly over the paper. Can you perceive the hair?

2, Develop touch

Take an ordinary A5 envelope and hold it between your thumb and other fingers. Let the fingers "pads" rest on the envelope. Does the envelope bend? How much do you need to hold to keep to the envelope between your fingers? Can you walk with the envelope still between your fingers? Once you find a light touch you can try to replace the envelope with a paper folder, it is a bit heavier but keep your efforts as light as possible to hold the folder between the fingers.

3, Tip touch

Let the envelope rest on your fingertips, with all fingers in contact with the envelope. It can feel like it tightens in the hand. Breathe and let your fingers find their way up towards the envelope. Inhibition, to say no to any attempt to force your fingers into contact with the envelope. Direction, to know that you want your fingertips to have contact with the envelope.

Good luck!

Inhibition

The words inhibition - to say no and direction - to give yourself orders comes early on in the process of taking lessons in the Alexander Technique.

What is it that need to be inhibited, stopped?

Those that I work with first notice that they must stop the already established patterns of movement when they "do what they always do" when they carry out an every day movement. The pause is necessary to find the time to notice what happened - actually.

The second step is trickier to get and involves your own thoughts about what "needs to be happening" in order to go from sitting to standing, for example. - Yes, but I have to xxx, yyy, this or that to be able to...
There is a pre concieved idea of ​​the force needed to bring the body in motion. All such preconceptions need to be inhibited.

An additional level in which inhibition is necessary concernes distrust, selfdoubt in your own ability and what you reckon is possible.

The first, superficial level is easy to see and therefore to understand. I might for example show with my own body what is happening with my students and also show how it can be done in a different way.

Level two is slightly harder to reach. Most people I meet are active, enterprising and energetic people. They take responsibility for and initiates most of what happens in their lives. Vigorous efforts is a living for them! It is a journey in itself for them to realize that their own body can "give them what they want" if they'd only leave themselves alone.
Which almost seamlessly brings us into the last level - the confidence that what we have practised through the lessons and dealth with above really is an ability of their own.

To me it's really a magical moment when those I work with really realize that inhibition, to say no (how paradoxical it may sound) is the key ... and now I have no handy way to describe what I perceive ... allows them to be fully living in their lives. And we're not talking about a fluffypuffy life, many have been troubled by pain for years and will have to live with it for years to come but inhibition can help them live a fulfilling life together with the pain. For those who are free from pain, there might be other burdens that they have to carry with them in their lives.

The magic is that they feel they can live adequately and fully in their process, they know they have the ability to say no and, from there take a more desirable direction, for me it is a privilege to be present at the very moment they realise that all they need is to be found within themselves.

"When you look at fairy tales, it must strike you that one thing that nobody ever worries about at all is how the wish is going to be carried out."
Walter Carrington

Not every day is a sunny day

It's been a long and dreary winter for me this year. I'll refrain from comment on the details but just want to list a few highlights.

* Icy fall
* Injured horse
* 3-year-old blonde tagging
* Husband with heartbeat interference
* Hoof and farrier worries
* Lots of snow (90 cm on the farm - a record)
* Icy spring
Amarettos unfortunate fall last autumn led to lameness in the hind, neck pain in front and a sore back in between. Luckily, Anna Semrén, a skilled vet and chiropractor, gave him a treatment that gave him a good direction. Any exercise that required equipment were put aside and I devoted myself to "clicker training" this season.

The fact is that the horses were set aside this winter because the decision to try clicker training evoked a lot of thoughts about myself as a learner, coaches and training methods and the horse as a trainer.

Over the past three years I have educated myself in everything from horseback riding to horse handling and horse health. I've been a good student, but sometimes I felt like I was just repeting stuff like a cockatoo. And this winter I was flooded with questions - What am I? Where am I? There were many late nights mucking out with the pitchfork in my hand and thoughts in my head. I had lost myself in all that new. Why am I doing this? Why do I have horses? What goals do I have, it is my goal or other´s goals? What relationship do I have to horses? What relationship do I want to have? What dreams do I have? Why am I an unhappy horse owner, I love horses!

Luckily winter is followed by spring and with that the opportunity to see life in a different light. I have a friend who I learned to know just a few years ago and although it is far from often we meet I see her as a good friend. We can discuss high and low and enjoy a good laugh together. This good friend sent a text message and invited me for a ride, and (holy moly!) I could say yes.

She had chosen Mustang to be my companion for the day. Mustang is a 18 year old North Swedish draught horse stallion who has been with her for 17 years. He has been trained in all sorts of riding styles, from ordinary "riding school riding" via western to academic riding and now he is trained in accordance with what is called "power creating riding". He has been involved in almost everything other words.

For me however it was the first time I rode with double reins - it took me a while to get the reins organised in my hands and finally being able to find Mustang out there in bit end of the reins. Before we rode out, I was informed that Mustang could give me a swift trot, but it was just for me to hang along.

So when trotting was introduced it was in a rather healthy pace. But not only that, he put a little pressure to the bit as he asked a question and he waited for my reply. I replied.

He asked again. I replied.

He asked again and now with some power. I again gave the same answer.

My answer was accepted, and with it, he allowed me to ride him (he laid great emphasis on my reply, had I given the wrong answer, he had taken me for a ride ...)

My answer was no release, nor any increased pressure on my behalf or correction or demand that he would ease off. I only promised that I would carry myself - and then he carried me.

We had a wonderful canter on the way home. He came into a calm and healthy canter, and we left the party behind us. Mustang rolled on with carriage and rhythm, and when the road was bare, I gave him more space and he lenghtened his stride. It felt really wonderful to give before it was time for me to take back.

I got credit for riding Mustang so well and it pleased me of course. But Mustangs praise is more valuable, I cleared his quality assurance system! Although the dialogue was between Mustang and me, my promise to him is a promise to all horses - I carry myself.

Thanks Mustang for taking me from winter dwelling to canter euphoria! Now I feel a longing for horseback riding and I've got Mustangs blessing.

"Riding is very much like nuts and bolts - if the rider is nuts, the horse bolts."

A connected leg - the bottom line

The pelvic floor, or the pelvic diaphragm as it alsa can be called, is the bottom of the abdominal cavity. The "true diaphragm" parts the abdominal cavity from the ribcage/chest. The chest is the place for heart and lungs (which I shall return to in a post about breathing, I'm soooo sick of all the talk about breathing with the belly!), in the abdomen we have all the organs that take care of everything we eat, the organs that cleanses the body and for us women, the uterus.

The pelvic floor consists of three muscles, the levator ani, coccygeus and piriformis muscle.


(Image from Wikipedia)

Pelvic floor muscles are not actively involved in movement, nevertheless tension in these muscles reduces the freedom of mobility in the hip joint.

The English have a wonderful expression for a person with stiff lips - "a thight assed person." How can it be possible to judge the thightness of someones ass with what you see around the mouth? The answer is to be found in the uterus, at a certain stage in our development we might be described as having a "worm like shape" with an opening for intake and an opening for outlet. (An embryo during pregnancy, 21 days, from Lennart Nilsson's book Life)



This means that if we go around with a tensed gluteus and pelvic floor muscles, it affects the muscles around the mouth. Try it yourself!

This also works the other way around and it may be important for women to know before giving birth. A mouth that gets tensed by groaning leads to a thightening of the pelvic floor and this in turn leads to a baby having to push its way through muscles that are resisting. For a rider clenched lips leads to tension in the pelvic region and suppleness is lost.

Now I have focused on a limited part of the body, the part where the trunk and legs meet. There is much more to say about how this area of ​​the body influences the body, both higher up and below - it is an intricate weave ...

I want you to give a conscious thought to the fact that it is important to remember that the body is more than just its individual parts, each body part is working in the space it is given/provided by other body parts and the mind set we let it work in. Stress, anger, frustration, anxiety, worry and fatigue are moods that affect the functionality in a negative direction. While serenity, joy, confidence and security makes it easier for the body to function well.

"The secret of health for both mind and body is not to mourn for the past, worry about the future, or anticipate troubles, but to live in the present moment wisely and earnestly."~~ Buddha

PST!
Here you find the first and the second posting on this subject.

A connected leg 2

We continue with the hip joint in this posting. The hip joint is where the torso meets the legs. Along with the pelvis the legs form a "bridge" over which our weight from the trunk is distributed over our feet.

Since the hip joint is a ball joint, it theoretically have the same mobility as the shoulder joint. What keeps us from being able to rotate the leg as we can the arm is muscles and ligaments that surrounds the joint, they restrict the movement and stabilises the relationship between the legs and torso. (The pictures are from Wikipedia, a source I hope to be able to return to...)



Here we see the deep muscles of the hip, these muscles function to support and stabilise the hip joint. The sciatic nerve passes through between the Piriformis muscle and the Quadratus Femoris and if these muscles get into a spasm the nerve might get squeezed and we suffer from sciatic pain.

The muscles that we place on a chair or a saddle seat is the gluteal muscles. They are actually three muscles; maximus (the most bulging muscle in our body), medius and minimus (not seen in the picture but lays beneath medius).



The gluteal muscles are connected to the hip joint as well as the postural muscles in the back. Medius and minimus stabilise the pelvis sideways when we walk and maximus contributes to keep the torso upright above the hip joint.

If we sit in the saddle and tense the gluteal muscles we push our seat bones out of the saddle seat, the upper thigh contracts and that brings the upper legs away from the saddle, knees and heels loose their position and "climbs upwards" and the lower legs leaves the horse's sides. All in all we lose our balance and become "like butter on a hot potato", the imbalance often causes the upper body to tilt backwards and to overcome the insecurity and imbalance we start hanging on to the reins and thereby in the horses mouth.

Inbetween the hip joints we have the pelvis and pelvic floor, a region of importance to us as riders and the scope for my next posting.

A converation around the kitchen table between me and my second son, 7 years.

- You can not have everything, I say (a typically boring adult comment)
- You always have everything of one thing, he replies. We all have a whole life.

PS!
A book that I return to often is Anatomy of the Moving Body, by Theodore Dimon Jr. A great book about our human body written with an Alexander Tehchnique perspective of use and movement.

A connected leg

To improve suppleness, it is important for riders to have some basic knowledge about their own anatomy, and in this post I thought to start with the legs.

In riding the rider's legs belongs to the horse's trunk. The legs should rest around it without squeezing, ready to support the aid from the hand and equally ready to send information about the horse's movement to the rider.

There are many who on a straight question as to where the hip joint is actually do not know the answer. To be able to improve our riding skills it is worth while to spend some time learning more about how our body works; where movement take place and what happens when we move. Let's take a closer look at how our legs are connected to our torso both bone wise and muscular. (Picture below comes from Wikipedia).



As you can see by the picture, there are several muscles in and around the pelvis attached to the femur. (There are 17 different muscles responsible for moving the femur in different directions, the other can be found here.)

The hip joint, like the shoulder joint, is a ball joint with the ability of movement in multiple directions (picture from healthpages.org).



A muscle that is relevant to the rider's ability to obtain a stable vertical seat is psoas major. Its origin is on the inside of the spine, lumbar vertebrae 1-5, and it attaches to the inside of the thigh bone. Psoas, among other muscles, are responsible for the flxing of the hip, that is to bend the torso towards the legs (the legs are fixed) or the legs towards the body (the trunk is fixed).

A shortened psoas muscle pulls the lower back forward and tilts the pelvis forward (increased lordosis). If the pelvis is tipping forward it means that the movement the head of the femour is impaired and that affects our ability to absorb the horse's movement.

A gentle stretch can help to overcome a shortened psoas muscle is the Alexander rest. During activity it can be helpful to think about letting your legs and torso "let go" of one another so that the legs can hang down from the torso and the trunk can have a direction straight upwards over the legs.

We may be content with less mobility than this three-year-old can produce but the potential is there...




"Riding turns 'I wish' to 'I can'."
Pam Brown

The body as an equipage

Just as the horse, we have a stronger and a weaker side. It is often related to us being right or left handed, but it is not always so.

In those who are right-handed, the right side is working more and muscles work by contracting themselves. If you, as a right-handed sit at your desk, it is quite common that the right arm is pulled forwards and that in turn effects the entire muscular system in the body.

Today I worked with a client whose right side was willing to work and fast to take action. There where muscular discomfort in the shoulders, lower back and the movement of the hip joint on the right side was impaired. The left side was much softer and more pliable.

But soft and flexible is not always something to strive for if the soft and pliable really is floppy and without any supportive tension.

Then, and just when I thought of when I drove my anglo arabians two-in-hand. My client's right side was acting like my anglo filly; quick to action, eager to work - alert. While the gelding was more like the left side of the body a little more laid back, slow to start and passive.

Early on it happened that I gave them the que to start and the mare stepped forward, just to be met with opposition in her mouth (the reins in a pair is connected so that the horses left and right side are brought together) because the gelding had not reacted to the que.

To avoid that the slightly slower gelding would nag the mare in her mouth, I had to be careful to wake him with a touch of the whip before I gave the start signal and that made the take off much smoother for my mare. While driving, I also had to keep an eye on the gelding so that he remembered to do his part of the job, he tried to back off from pulling and by that place most of the work load on the mare.

So I asked my client (who also drives pair) to think about the body as a two-in-hand equipage and start as many chores as possible by making the left side aware of that it is time to wake up and take its share of responsibility for the daily work load before starting to work.

I usually say that we as riders should strive for a trunk with four free tentacles. By free I mean that they can move independently of each other even if they are in contact with each other through the spine.

It could perhaps be likened to a equipage of four horses in hand, with its forerunner and rod horses. Each horse has its role in the team and need to do the task in such a way that the other horses are free to perform their work. The chest/ arms are associated with forerunner and in the pelvis/legs with rod horses. They need to be able to move independent of each other, but get their position from the rod - the spine.

The head is the driver and gives the equipage its direction, but the where the driver/head is placed I leave to your own vivid imagination.

"No philosopher so thoroughly comprehend us as horses."
Herman Melville


PS! My knowledge of horse driving in English is quite shallow so if you feel I ought to change a word or two don't hesitate to contact me.

A mindful rest

FM Alexander insisted that man is a psycho-physical unity - body and mind is an undivideable entity. Anything that affects our mind will reflect itself in our body and vice versa. I have yet to meet the man who contradicts this, but every day I meet people who still have to embrace this truth in their own lives. Alexander also advised that we need to practice our response (reaction) to what is happening (stimuli) so that we try to avoid to be too hasty. To cultivate an inner peace that allows us retain our ability to make sensible decisions, both in terms of what we do and what we say.

The Alexander rest (or semi supine) is a fantastic tool to help yourself along the road to become a psycho-physical unity. The foundation is laid by giving yourself 15-20 minutes of Alexander rest as I described earlier (posted in August-October). Once you become familiar with your body and have let it benefit from the passive stretching that the semi supine gives, you've also got a feel for how it feels when your back is resting on the floor, a feeling that you can recall standing up. You have arrived to the point that your body can give its weight to the floor more quickly because it has learned to appreciate both the rest and safety of being carried by the floor.

At this point you can start using the Alexander rest as an arena to make perceptive assessments of your internal, mental, processes. I usually lie down and allow me to settle before I start to think through a "challenge" that I have before me. It can be anything; a meeting, a presentation, a training session with the horse, a busy day. When I do this review, I notice what happens in my body, is my breathing is affected, do I become tense somewhere, does my heart rate increase. If I notice that I get a reaction from my "mental stimuli" that I want to avoid I pause and consciously strive to let go of any unnecessary tension before I let my inner film continue to roll.

If I, in a real situation, notice that I get nervous or stressed with an increased tension I can "return to my previous work", if only for a millisecond, and it becomes quiet both in the body and mind.

This way of working with your psyche and your body and seek to pre-program desired connections in the nervous system is nowadays called mental training. Alexander Technique is a sophisticated form of mental training. It gives the body a relaxed relationship to gravity, it will help you become aware ot the direction you want to keep and when you meet challenges it helps you to find time for reconsideration in the feel of security that comes from knowing where you have your back.

"This inability to stay calm, this annoying desire to immediately take action, is one of humanity's most obvious defects."
Walter Bagehot

Do the Twist

An personal abbreviation and interpretation of Dr. Tim Cacciatore research approach “Increased dynamic regulation of postural tone through Alexander Technique training.”

Having a good posture is really a question of standing upright with the head above the feet with a body in between. Surely the muscles that work to keep the head on top need to have some muscle tone (tension) in order to do the job, the question is how much do they need to hold for us to be stable but not stiff?

This research report was published in Human Movement Science (2010) and I make a brief summary of the same.

The brain regulate the degree of tension muscles need to have to be able to support the body in relationship to gravity. This long-lasting muscle activity is called postural muscle tone and is especially important around the body's longitudinal axis to prevent the spine from collapsing.

It is easy to take for granted that the postural muscle tone has been studied thoroughly and that it is scientifically explained. But it's not. This is mainly due to the fact that postural muscle tone is difficult to measure. It works in a quiet manner over a long time and involves many muscles and that makes it difficult to quantify.

Balance, on the other hand (how we place our mass over our feet), is an entirely different phenomenon that is much more studied and whose function is more understood. This is due to the frequent movements back and forth that occurs when we balance ourselves are easy to measure, in contrast to the continuous forces that respond to gravity.

In order to measure the postural tonus Cacciatore used our ability to rotate around our own axis (the spine). The spiral-like movement, referred to as the Twist, is not working as a support against gravity, any resistance in the twist would reflect an individual's muscular tension in response to gravity.

The measurements were taken at the neck, torso and hip. Measurements showed how muscle activity in each region integrated instead of measuring the activity of a single muscle.

Rigid people are 3-4 times as stiff as less rigid people. The difference in postural muscle tone may be due to two things 1) the degree of muscular tension 2) how the tension can be adjusted dynamically in relation to posture or work load. An individual with low levels of tension can either have a low tonus to begin with or adapt dynamically during the turn - by "letting go" (reduced activity) in the muscles that need to be extended and "take up the slack" (increased activity) in the muscle that is shortened. The results of the study gave was that the muscle activity was fixed with rigid people while the muscle tone were more dynamic in those who were less rigid.

The study showed that AT-teachers showed significantly less resistance to rotation than the control group, the average resistance in an AT teacher was half the size at all measurement points.

It is not yet possible to distinguish the amount due to the level of tension or due to the adaptability of tension but it is possible to measure how muscle tone adapts and measurements showed that the postural muscle tone in the AT teachers were more adaptive than in the control group.

In another study of people with back pain, the same method of measurement were used before and after a series of 20 AT lessons. The study showed less stiffness around hip and torso after the period of lessons.

Being able to stay upright relative to gravity without undue tension promotes mobility. This in turn promotes suppleness to us as riders. As I see it, you can now do a "self check" of your own muscle tone. Rotate slowly around your own axis (the spine) in both directions. Do you feel strain anywhere? Does your shoulders tilt in any direction? What about the contact between feet and floor? Does it affect your breathing?

"God must be fond of dancing, otherwise he would not have ensured that most objects in space revolves around itself and around something else."

Back part 4 stress management

Now, when I've reached the goal of my travel I'm sitting at a desk with the computer connected to a broadband with a speed that almost scares me!

If you have been doing your home work from the first posting you now have familiarised yourself with your back 30 times. You have begun to explore how movement of the limbs affects the contact your back has with the surface and you have had an opportunity to recognise the feeling of your back resting on the floor even when you're upright.

Today's theme in the supine position series is the power it has on our mind. A typical day brings with it many moments and situations that increase the level of mental tension or stress. Stress (including what we may perceive as positive stress!) is always an increased strain on the body and what you've learned by lying down on the floor can now help you to reduce the effects that stress has on you.

First and foremost, stress leads to increased muscle tone, ie our muscle costume actually shrinks slightly. That shrinking affects both joint mobility and breathing. If you feel excitement or stress take hold of you, inhibit - pause and find the "floor behind your back", just allow yourself get back to your back.

Your moments on the floor has given you a great tool for self evaluation, make use of it! Lying down has presented you with the opportunity to explore how your body feels in a neutral position. Tune in where and how your body is affected by stress. If the jaws have become more tense ease off the tension by just visit them briefly in your thoughts.

We all have a uniquely positioned "stress indicator" where tension gets to us first. My spot is situated on the right side, midway between the spine and the lower part of the scapula, if I start to feel tension there I know that I am under a high mental workload.

If I visit that point often, ease the tension, I can "get through" stress without the body goes into a stress-locked position and the nice part is, as I do it consciously, it may be a pretty tough situation and never the less I feel I still have it in my hand. I can continue to act, which is much better than simply react to the challenge and immensely much better than to capitulate to it.

What I do when I feel I am under stress is that I rest "in the feel of the floor", it helps me to keep my chest open in the front and keep the shoulder blades resting on the thoracic spine. With that direction in my body I minimise the tension around the chest and my breathing is relatively undisturbed. If the breathing works oxygen reaches the brain and the mind can actively work to find a solution or an alternative course of action.

Without a functioning breathing, stress leads to a double burden, both physical (I am suffocating!) and a psychic (I can not handle this!) and the stress increases.

Even under pressure, there are choices, the better you become at maintaining a focused calmness and relaxation, the greater your chance is to see where the situation is heading, you can see the options that pop up and choose how to proceed. You can to some extent, therefore, choose the way in which the battle is being fought, or if there is a need for a conflict at all. All that is needed is perhaps a liberating laughter before continuing with the task.

Stress is basically a disconnection from the earth, a forgetting of the breath. Stress is an ignorant state. It believes that everything is an emergency. Nothing is that important. Just lie down.
Natalie Goldberg

Back part 3

Alexander Technique is a gentle technique, but its purpose is, nevertheless, to make life and movement easier. With another 10-day "rest" in the back, it's time to move.

The gentle stretching that the Alexander rest gives has a purpose to restore the back and help it to return to its natural length, our back correspond to the horse's top line and in riding we seek to lenghten the horse´s top line.

How do you know that your back has regained its natural length? The check is done through movements.

Lie down on the floor with your head on the books and knees bent. Lighten your toes slightly from the surface and let one leg slide, on the heel, to stretch the leg. Pay attention to what happens in the rest of the body; does the head's contact with books change, is the lower back lifted, is it starting to tighten across the hip joint, is the breathing affected?

If you notice a change somewhere in the body, pause, inhibit, wait until tensions have released or make a decision. If there are big changes - bring the heel back towards your bum, back/torso and legs need more time to find their proper relationship.

If you can let go of the tensions, let the leg stretch and flex with the foot, ie move the feet in the ankle so the toes are pointing towards the ceiling. At first, it's good to straighten one leg at a time, observe yourself and notice what happens both in the diagonal and the lateral side of your body.

To bring the leg back to the starting position, without being tempted to lift it and thereby tighten the abdominal muscles, I recommend the following: let the leg fall out from the hip, the foot is "rolling" on the heel when the leg turns outward. Place your attention on the heel and let it slide up and in towards your bum, it'll bend the knee. At a certain point it will be natural to turn around the femur in the hip joint so that the knee is turned up toward the ceiling. If this move creates any tension, pause and inhibit before continuing.

When the leg can be straightened out and the rest of the body is left undisturbed, try to straighten both legs simultaneously. When you can lie without books under your head, with your arms at your side without the shoulder blades being pulled at and lifted, when your legs can rest stretched without the torso and lower back being affected then you have regained your natural length in the back.

A word about pain. Alexander rest can be a painful experience if there is huge muscular troubles in the body. There are different types of pain, some is superficial and it's ok to stay as long as the pain is bearable.

But there is pain that is structural and in those cases you should lie down just as long as you are pain free! If it starts to get sore, stop! To get the Alexander rest to work, the situation has to be comfortable and safe. If you get in pain after only 2 minutes, stop. Next time you can lay down for 3 and so on. Respect pain signals and the minutes of relaxation will increase. I know this from experience.

This should maybe have been a part of the first posting...but better late than never. To end the rest and to come up on your feet I want you to roll over to one side. And pause. Then you can decide to come up on all four for a while or come up to a sitting position before you get up on your feet. Avoid doing movements similar to sit ups.

Now that you have 20 Alexander rests in your back, you can at any time, standing or sitting, evoke the feeling of the floor behind your back. That will help you to become aware of what goes on in your body at that moment, if your back/topline is shortened this helps the muscles in the front of the body to let go of the back - you'll spring upwards and backwards, become tall and strong at a fraction of a second.

Congratulations! You are now your best friend!

"If you do not take care of your body, where will you live?"
Peggy Ayala
►

Back part 2

Lena wrote in last weeks posting about the horse's inherent asymmetry and it is something that also applies to us humans.

When you lie on your back with books under your head and on a relatively hard surface, you have every opportunity to familiarize yourself with your own asymmetry. What you should pay attention to is the weight-bearing points that are in contact with the surface; the back of the head on the books and the contact the shoulder- blades, sacrum and soles of your feet have with the surface.

If you have done your homework you've had 10 occasions to check yourself. Does your head tend to fall to one side or the other? Is one shoulder blade against the floor while the other is lifted off the surface? Are your weight more on the tip of the tailbone than on the upper part of the sacrum? Is your lower back arched in such a way that you easily can slide your hand inbetween the back and the floor? Are both the inside and the outside rim of the feet in contact with the floor? Does your feet stay on the floor or do they tend to slide off away from you? Do you have as much weight on the left and right diagonal (scapula - sacrum)?

Now I want to emphasize that perception is more important than perfection! I do not think you can be 100% equilateral, the importance of this work is to become more aware of yourself and your asymmetry. That knowledge allows you to know when you need to be more focused on the Means-Where-By so that you and the horse are properly prepared in riding different excersises.

For the next period of homework, I like to give you some tips and hints to bring the process further forward.

If the head tends to tilt to one side it is often due to the muscles on that side being more contracted. One way to help yourself to keep your head still in a neutral position is to make use of your eyes. Aim at a point midway between the knees up towards the ceiling, keep looking in that direction.

If one shoulder-blade is kept a little above the floor I have a personal favorite. Place your arms straight out sideways from the body (you will be like a cross). Be aware of that the muscles of the arms can be shortened so there may be a reason to have pillows to rest the forearm against in the beginning.

When you want to bring your arms back to rest your hands on your belly or the iliac crest it is important that you do not lift your arms off the floor but allow them to slide on the surface toward the body. Keep track of how the movment affects the shoulder, elbow and wrist, if you notice any muscle tension, pause - become active passive (inhibit) - and continue with the movement when the tension has subsided.

If you easily get your hand under your lower back I urge you not to press down the back towards the floor. It is far better to place the lower legs (calf) on a chair seat or sofa in order to free the torso completely from the weight of the leg and allow the muscles in the leg to disengage.

If your feet tend to slip away or you have an uneven contact between the inside and outside of the foot, focus on your knees, make sure they always have a direction straight up toward the ceiling.

Breath, notice your own breathing, were does the breathing become visible in you? Where is your chest influenced?

“When anything is pointed out, our only idea is to go from wrong to right; in spite of the fact that it has taken us years to get to wrong we try to get right in a moment.” F M Alexander

A rest to stretch

Something that is significant for the Alexander Technique is that there are virtually no drills. If you want to do somethingfor yourself with an Alexander technique approach I warmly recommend this procedure, laying in semi-supine or the Alexander rest.

The purpose is to give you the opportunity to observe what is happening in your body and give your muscles a chance to ease. An important prerequisite of this work with yourself is that you are observing without evaluating.

This is a short note on semi-supine.



This position is certainly familiar to many already. My dad told me that during the harvest when he was a child, grandfather rolled up his shirt into a hard roll and had a lay down on the meadow (like the picture) with the roll under his head, waiting for Grandma to come with the coffee basket.

This position offers the body a posibility to good rest, it gives the disks in the spine a chance to rehydrate and thus swell up again and it can - if you rest consciously - teach you where you accumulate unnecessary muscular tension and also contribute to an active ease (not to mix with relaxation which is something completely different!).

What you need is a warm rug or mat to lie on and a couple of paperback books to put under your head.

The way you choose to get to the floor may be different but once you are laying on the floor there are some things to pay attention to.

1, allow yourself to settle, take a few breaths - do not adjust anything
2, note how you perceive the weight through the back of the head on the books, how the contact between the floor and scapula, sacrum and feet feel.
3, be aware that your knees have a direction towards the ceiling. (If your legs feel unstable or trembling, it is better that you let your knees fall against one another than to try to hold them in place).
4, the hands can rest of the stomach, chest or iliac crest.
5, keep you eyes open - keep looking.

What happens without you having to "do anything" is that the muscles on the front of the body such as chest muscles, abdominal muscles, hip flexor muscles will become more supple and therefor make it possible for the back to come into a closer contact with the surface.

A strained hip flexor muscle pulls the lower back against the femur and contributes to an increased lordosis and a restricted movement of the hip joint. It affects your ability to smooth sitting trot or gallop. Shortened chest muscles pulls on the shoulders (rounded shoulders), and this in turn limits the movement of the shoulder joint and affect the quality of your hands.

If you give yourself 15-20 minutes of semi-supine five days a week your muscles will have got a regular dose of mild "gravity based" stretching and the bending muscles at the front of the body have let go of the back muscles and you end up being straigther.

Once you have been laing for some days in a row, you will be able to evoke the feeling of how your back rests on the floor while sitting on a chair at the desk. The kinesthetic memory is precious, you'll be able discover how the the shoulders are brought forwards to the keyboard when you're working for example, and you will be able to "release them back" again just by knowing which direction the releas has to go.

What you learn about yourself when you refine your body image will affect your everyday life on many levels. Start your journey today, visit yourself through the Alexander rest.

”Clear thinkers try to find the causes, while the average look for escapes from effects.” ~~~ Barbara Anna Brennan

To stand tall

Take a look at the picture below, notice the directions of the arrows



and then pay attention to yourself, right at this very moment.

What direction does the arrows have in you?

Our spine is made up of 33 vertebrae, at the top of the spine we carry our head, like a ball on a weight-lifters bar, and at the bottom the sacrum and pelvis represents the next ball.

The spine is not straight and stiff as a weight-lifters bar, it curves its way smoothly between the head and pelvis. Some vertebrae have a greater mobility between each other than others. The biggest movement we have in the neck and lower back - that's why it is a common location for slipped discs. Vertebrae in the thoracic part of the spine is more fixed by the ribs and sternum. The sacral vertebrae are completely fused.

The Alexander Technique aims to help you reach your full height, as in the left body. Not by forcing you to stand upright with strained muscles (the military way with the sucked in belly and pulled up, extended chest) but in such a way that the head is allowed to be carried on top of the spine and the pelvis may act as a counterweight at the other end of the spine. Between these "spheres" (the head and pelvis) muscles are stretched. Just as a lead-line works when you hang a weight at the lower end of it, but a lead-line without anchor at the top is collapsing on the floor, just as the right body does in the picture.

Alexander Technique helps you find the way to let the head and the pelvis be each others counterweights. When the lift of the head allows the pelvis to hang freely they provide the muscle that keeps your back upright with proper muscular tonus/tension. You are thereby able to stand tall without having to hold and stretch the muscles to acchieve it.

“People do not decide their futures, they decide their habits and their habits decide their futures.” - FM Alexander

Calm

In working my young horse I have been working with different versions of calmness.

At first I was scared, insecure in regard to both the technique and the horse. I appeared calm because at times my body was completely passive, frozen, but at the same time the inside of me was a complete chaos.

Now that I'm really confident my body works all the time, it moves constantly to position itself in the best possible manner in relation to the horse. I say "it moves" because in this calm mind set I can let it proceed its work undisturbed. It is a kind of calm that allows me to be present in what is happening without feeling a need to act, but still be ready to do so if and when I feel the need. So when I want something actively with the horse; stop it or turn it or anything else, I go in and control the body or in the AT-language give myself directions.

A horse also needs to come to peace. Being calm is a prerequisite for it to be able to benefit from the training. A stressed nervous system is busy dealing with internal signals that is really about its survival. The horse is a flight animal whose first defense is to get away from the thing that scares them. As a horseowner/trainer you should really make an effort to avoid giving the horse bad experiences, because it will affect the training ahead.

But that's where it gets interesting. How do we avoid bad experiences ... what is a bad experience? Which road should we choose, do we choose not to expose the horse to anything or expose the horse to "everything"?

It is not unusual for riders to ride with their lower legs lifted away from the horse's torso with the explanation that the horse is afraid of the legs. Spectators in the riding hall is being asked to be silent and still to avoid frightening the horse (read: so the horse remains calm). The pram is removed, the dustbin is moved, the hoses should be removed - all in order to keep the horse calm.

But the calmness that the horse gets in arranged surroundings is not the calmness that we seek. The on the outside seemingly calm horse may be a horse with an a huge internal uncertainty. What we want is a horse with an internal ease that allows the horse to react to the environment but without having its flight reflexes activated.

It is a kind of calm that allows the horse to be present in what is happening without feeling a need to act, but still be ready to do so if and when it seems necessary. So when the horse wants something actively, stop, turn or something else, it controls the body or in the AT-language gives himself direction.

"All human errors are impatience, a premature breaking off of methodical procedure." Franz Kafka

position + direction + balance + suppleness = the ability to follow

What exactly is balance and suppleness?

Balance is, as I see it, the body's response to the question asked by gravity. Can I stay on my two feet or motion be it standing still or being in motion? Or if I sit in the saddle, am I able balance myself on my seat bones? How much muscular effort do I need to keep me in balance? Do I have to use the support of something outside of me to keep balanced?

Suppleness is, in my opinion, my ability to maintain self-balance allowing the body to keep up with a movement that is generated by someone (or something) else outside my own body. The movement can be generated by me skiing, cycling, riding or dancing.

The basis for a good seat is when we are positioning the bones in such a way that the postural muscles are given a chance to keep us up-right with least possible tension. That kind of basic attitude gives the prerequisite for good balance and ability to follow the motion.

But the concept of position brings about a possible conflict with both balance and suppleness and that possibility arises if we think of the position as something static, something we take and then hold ("strike a pose").

The Alexander Technique way to make a position relative and alive is to emphasise the directions that you want to be possible at every moment the position is in motion.



The picture above is from the book Riding - a tutorial by Percy Hamilton from 1923 and shows a rider good balance and with good ability to follow a movement follows the extended trot the horse offers. The horse carries his head high, but note that the rider does not sit on a sway-backed horse, on the contrary! That is a well connected back, it is particularly noticeable on the horse's legs - it is a snapshot of strenght!

Keep this image in mind when you study riding today. This rider has no fear of speed or force! He asks for extended trot and he lets himself be carried off by the horse, he has a good position and a clear direction - full speed ahead!

"Toughness and force are exclusive to the mediocre who never want to be true."
de la Guérinière

Place your bones carefully

In conjunction with a lecture on seat and saddle, I had the opportunity to make an interesting experiment - I put a skeleton in the saddle.

When I work with riders on the wooden horse, I usually talk about the desirable directions that should be in the rider's legs. The thigh should have a slightly inward rotation and rest on the saddle so that the inside of the thighs and knees rests on the saddle flap. Just above the knee the thighbone connects to the saddle flap and it means that the movement of the horse's chest directly affects the bone and thus the hip joint.

The lower leg, on the other hand, will have a slight outward rotation. That brings the calf muscle to drop in towards the horse's belly and the knee have a direction out over the big toe.



There are drawings of skeletons in the saddle, but it adds to the experience to see how well the pelvis connects to the shape of the saddle. As you can see the hip joint and the upper part of the thigh bone is free from any contact with the saddle.



There are of course individual variations in the shape of the pelvis and that is why it is important to try different saddle brands and models. This skeleton had a shape that fitted well in a Top Reiter saddle.

A saddle seat that follows the shape of the pelvis gives the muscle suit that keeps the skeleton upright a possibility to become a body with a relaxed balance, allowing for a smooth riding with precision in the giving of aids.

"Dear riders - don't just look - please observe! C. Harris

The hand is dominating

We are coming towards the end of our first year writing postings in english. It is amazing how time flies and how fun this really is. The greatest advantage of this process is that my way of looking at riding and horse handling in large has been affected - I notice more.

The challenge is to work for a broader approach to riding, rider, horse handling and horse-rider relationship. There is so many short cuts and there are so many established "truths" that influence horse owners even though new research shows that it is high time to let go of some of the so called knowledge. "It is what you think you know that hinders you from learning."

It is interesting that the question if we should use bit, bridle and hand or if the riders aid should be given by the seat is such a hot topic. There seems to be a division between "seat riders" and "hand riders".

A comment in our swedish blog said that "The bridle and the hand is a force that is often misused because the horse is very sensitve in his mouth and by making use of a bit we can force the horse into submission." I agree that the horse's mouth is very sensitive and an untrained hand (consciously or unconsciously coarse) can definitely force the horse into submission.

The catch is just that an uneducated (or insensitive) hand can dominate a horse, even if you ride without bit. Interference with the head carriage of the horse in the mouth or on the nasal bridge, affects the horse's balance. It is possible to put the horse out of balance even if you ride bitless!



The picture (taken from The World of Science, 1985) illustrates the body based on how much of cortex that control different parts of the body. The figure with purple hand illustrates the "motoric homunculus" and with the yellow hand the sensoric. As the nerve crosses over the brain the right side of the brain controls the left side of your body so you have the color codes on the opposite side above the drawing. The sensory nerves send signals from the body to the brain and the motoric nerves takes care of the traffic in the other direction.

The picture speaks for itself, the hand is dominant. The hand has access to a large part of the brain's motoric and sensory capabilities. It has all the potential in the world to be receptive, sensitive, subtle and well-coordinated, all we as riders need to do is to train it.

With a educated hand, we can, with or without a bit, have an impact on the horse in such a way that we give the horse the opportunity, while maintaining balance, do the job we ask of it.

All straight lines are not vertical

In riding it is common to talk about the riders seat and that a well balanced rider is sitting with his/her body oriented around the vertical line, with ear-shoulder-hip and ankle nicely aligned.

Lena and I took some pictures where she is acting rider and I hold the (at times vertical) line. The first image below illustrates the now so common slightly backwards tilted seat - the rider's body differs greatly from the vertical.
The attentive reader can see that Lena is compensating for the backward leaning with advancing both the lower leg and poking her head forward to avoid tilting backwards. Sitting on the wooden horse she can keep herself balanced by tightening her muscles. On a horse in motion, she inevitably will use the reins to keep her balance.


You can get a fairly straight line between shoulder, hip and heel, just as we do here in the picture, but as it meet the surface of earth at an angle less than 90 degrees it may well be a straight but not a vertical line.



In this picture we show what is called a hanging seat (rough translation from Swedish..) Here you can see that the deviation from vertical is less than in the upper image and the angle is greater than 90 degrees to the ground. Even in this seat the rider can become unstable and have a need to balance herself in the bridle, but as long as the horse is checked, riders are able have a light contact in the bridle.

The last picture is our contribution to illustrate the vertical seat and a balanced rider.