The Power of Walk

31/10/2024

Spinal Rotation in Bend

I've heard a few people say that they are confused about rotation in bend. Here's a resource to demystify the simple concept. It's something every rider should be aware of: so often we see riders at every level sitting on the outside of the horse during turns and lateral movements. Maintaining correct rotation is so important. Feel free to share!

28/10/2024

Welcome to Slowvember!

Slowing down is the most simple yet profound thing that you can do for your horse, which is why we are excited to invite you to join us for this year’s Slowvember challenge. A dedicated community of horse lovers are slowing down for the whole of November, with simple but impactful exercises, tips, discussions and more. If you are up for the challenge, stay tuned to join like-minded people in this serene space where you and your horse can connect.

Consider it a retreat—a time to reflect, pause, process, and reset.
To participate in Slowvember, head on over and join my group "Slow Walk Work" or if you prefer to receive your exercises by email, you can register using the link in the comments. We can't wait to have you on board!

21/10/2024

The Dithering, Directionless Horse Lady?

I am a questioner, a critical thinker. This is what’s enabled me to step outside the norm, to reject a lot of what I was taught as fact, and to find a better way. With this, comes some challenges which I think a lot of you will relate to.

We can see that something isn’t right, but we lack clarity on how to make it better. We yearn for someone to teach us, but we’re not ready to trust anyone.. very often, our perception of what is being taught doesn’t match the perception of the person who is teaching it, and in the past we have been stung by thinking we’ve found the right teacher and then finding ourselves doing things that still don’t feel right.

With past instructors we have frozen, and obeyed, when we really wanted to question. This has led us to do something we regretted, and we are afraid it will happen again. We don’t trust ourselves to advocate for the horse if we don’t like something we are asked to do.

Some of us cope by withdrawing into a private journey, working things out between us and the horse – a journey which can be magical and profound, but also can be full of doubt. Others keep searching, searching, trying a little bit of this and a little bit of that, flitting from trainer to trainer, pulled in different directions, never quite committing, never finding what we are looking for.

With all these factors in mind, the empathetic, intutive critical thinker can end up a dithering and directionless horse lady, paralysed by perfectionism. She gets stuck in her head and disconnected from her body.

Enter: The Horse Guru. Having never himself experienced any self-doubt, the horse guru sees only the dithering directionless horse lady. He doesn’t see the empathetic, intuitive critical thinker beneath. He lacks the intuition to nurture her into connection with her body. He doesn’t notice the bond she already has with her horse: the way that the two of them communicate, and are in tune. Deep down, she knows what her horse needs more than anyone. But she can’t tap into this when she feels pressured and judged, full of self-doubt and she becomes self-depreciating and disconnected. Her horse mirrors this, and becomes anxious and unfocused. The guru tells her to stop overthinking and just get on with it. Masterfully and effortlessly, he demonstrates how amazing her horse can be when she gets out the way. He’s satisfied with the results he achieved, but he is unable to see the shrinking that takes place, the subtle undertone of “not good enough” that she experiences. When she gets home, she’s unable to replicate the results.

Realising all of this is the first step towards tapping into something amazing. Dear Dithering Directionless Horse Lady, You are amazing. I’m not going to tell you what to do next. Deep down you already know!

05/10/2024

Fascinating to see how slow walk work can help in unexpected ways. Correcting his posture in a way that allowed him time and space to process enabled Jasper to find better body awareness, proprioception and balance so that he was easily able to balance on 3 legs and hold up a hoof. Sometimes, when horses can't hold their feet up for the farrier, the issue is not in the feet themselves.

Jasper learns to balance more easily on 3 legs, through a session of slow walk-work when we work on posture, balance and proprioception. He will now find it ...

30/09/2024

Lateral walk: What causes it, what is it, why is it bad and how can we correct it?

I was taught by a number of instructors not to work in the walk, because I could ruin it and make it lateral. Now I understand that it is not working the walk that ruins it, but jamming the horse up in any way so that they start to brace muscles. This is less obvious to see in trot and canter, but becomes obvious when the purity of the gait is lost in walk. Jasper had a slightly lateral walk when I began working with him, not because he'd been jammed up, but because he is an older horse with some stiffness issues. I resolved this through gently releasing the braced muscles using slow walk work. So that debunks that myth!

30/09/2024

"Yield the hindquarters, inside rein, near fore, quarters-in, side-pass, leg yield, disengage the quarters, off hind, on the forehand, on the bit, indirect rein, Travers..." Our language has become a mish-mash of traditional English, natural horsemanship, Western, and terms newly invented. I think the birth of the internet has brought with it so many opportunities but also a lot of overwhelm. Who on here has taken an online course or attended a clinic and felt self conscious for not understanding words and phrases that are being used frequently, and everyone else seems to be nodding along? I'm thinking of putting together a glossary or cheat sheet. I have a long plane ride next week and thought that might be excellent use of my time to distract me from the numbness of my buttocks and the fact the tea tastes like gravy. So, if you relate, I'd love it if you could hit me up with phrases or words you would like to see included!

17/09/2024

French speakers - unique opportunity for you! My new course is in the late stages of editing now and I'm excited about it. It follows the progress of lovely Jasper as I take him through a series of 6 sessions incorporating in-hand and ridden walk work. I've listened to your feedback and will be including a voiceover to talk through what I am feeling, what I am asking for and why, with subtitles as well. I'm looking into creating subtitles in French as some of you have asked for that. The editing software that I am using I am very happy with so far, and it has created me a transcript in French. I'm still working out how to make this into subtitles that appear at the right time. I was wondering if there are any French speakers who would like to get involved by watching one of the videos to see if the transcript/subtitles make any sense!! Also would anybody like it translated into another language? Let me know if you'd like to be involved, or if you know somebody who would.

02/09/2024

How many of you love attending clinics as a fence sitter rather than a participant? You get to see the clinician teach lots of session, and begin to get a deeper feel and understanding of how everything fits together.

How many of you have spent a week or more observing a trainer in their daily work? After a while, you start to get a feel for how everything fits together to bring about changes. You start to see how the foundations they laid on day 1 start to show results in day 6. You learn about how the trainer responds when things don’t go as planned, and the small but important details like how long they work the horse for, how long they stick at an exercise, and how many breaks they give. After a while, you begin to be able to visualise and even feel in your body, a clear picture of how things should be.

When I spent a month with Heather Moffett, watching her teach students and train horses, as well as being taught myself on her horses, I learned more from this month than I did in my whole life. A big part of this was the watching of other peoples’ sessions.

Spending a lot of time with talented trainers.. sometimes, you can end up feeling as if you absorb their energy and can channel this to bring into your own schooling.

I’m really putting myself out there for this one, but I’m excited about doing it because I think there is great value in what I have to offer: openly, authentically and in its fullness.

I’m very excited to share with you a little more about this course I have been working on—a course where you get full, behind-the-scenes access to my training journey with one horse over six sessions.

This unique course aims to capture the true reality of schooling a horse in slow work, so you can see it for yourself in real time. Rather than watching specific skills being taught in short clips, you will see the schooling is woven into six sessions that combine in-hand and ridden work, with a voiceover explaining my observations, actions, and adjustments.

In the course, you will observe the gradual unravelling of tension, watch trust and connection grow, and see the horse's confidence blossom as he comes into good posture and alignment for the first time.

It contains full sessions, including mistakes that I make, how these affect the horse, and how I put them right.

All the video material for this course has already been filmed, but I would now like to ask for your help to ensure I put it together in the best way to suit your needs.

If you joined me on “The Power of Walk” this course is an ideal follow on because it enables you to really see how the steps you learned fit together to bring about progress. It can give you a much clearer idea of what you are aiming for.

For those who haven’t studied with me, but are curious about exactly how profound changes can be brought about using slow work, this course will reveal all, as you see the progress taking place before your eyes. And if you need a little help understanding what you are looking at, it’s explained in the voiceover.

For people who learn best by observing, this is your chance to be my student for 6 sessions. Becoming immersed in the sessions enables you to grow confidence and get more clarity on the process so that you can go away and try it with your own horse.

At this stage, it looks as if the course will be on-demand, which means that you can dip in at your own pace. It won’t have the live sessions, intensive support and step by step instruction that you get with The Power of Walk, which means that it will be priced lower.

There may be options for support and instruction to be added on, but my initial thoughts are that these may be an optional add-on to keep the basic course affordable and accessible to all. If you have any ideas or preferences, I would love to hear about them.

Click on the link below to visit my survey and tell me exactly what you would like this course to look like.

https://s.surveyplanet.com/4j8x1hex

The before and after photos are taken from the actual course.

01/09/2024

A question I am commonly asked when teaching slow work is "How do I know it’s right?"

This question came up in today's live session. Here is a summary of my response:

The goal of this type of work is to help the horse feel better than they did before. If they experience improvements in the way they feel, both physically and mentally, this work is helping them. Any type of improvement that we are looking for will be more meaningful and long lasting if it is built on making the horse feel good.

One of the hardest parts of this is letting go of conditioning. Because we are conditioned to expect and instant response, and for the horse to be moving forward energetically and in a consistent rhythm, it can cast doubts in our minds when they are moving slowly and pausing between steps to process or experiment with different balance, which causes a change in rhythm. These pauses are where the magic really happens, because the horse is revealing for us the vulnerable true nature of their crookedness. This is our chance to address the cause, and not the symptoms. That’s why it’s so important to deepen our awareness of the horse’s experience, and to hold space for processing and let go of certain expectations. Once we learn to read the horse’s responses, built on a basic awareness of whether something is making them feel better or worse, we can better use this to inform our choices moment to moment.

If you're not sure, one of the clearest and most reliable ways to know if you are on the right track is to look back over videos and note the horse’s facial expression and body language and see if they improve during the session. Use the resource to check if you’re not sure what you’re looking for. When your confidence builds, you will get more of a feel for it: In the present moment, if the horse does it willingly and it feels easy, then it is certainly doing no harm, and more than likely is doing good. Long term, you will notice the horse becomes more focused and interested in work. Their tendency to want to go towards the exit of the arena will diminish as they feel the benefit of the work, and behaviours like fidgeting, itching, head tossing, nipping etc should diminish.

If in doubt, less is always more. Less time spent in a session, less force use, less bend and angle asked for, if in doubt whether to finish the session or carry on, always choose finish, without being tempted to try for once more. For many horses, getting used to being allowed to do something which does not involve any hard work or expectations is quite a revelation and can be very powerful in itself.

28/08/2024

Who would be interested in a "fly on the wall" course where you get to watch me train with a voiceover, of what I'm feeling and trying to achieve moment by moment? Would anyone be interested in watching a series of complete, unedited sessions so that you can see the whole process of how I brought about changes in one horse? If there was such a course, what else would you like to see included? I thought this might appeal to people who learn best by observing rather than being explicitly taught a series of steps.

18/08/2024

"Why don’t you use the proper anatomical terms and refer to the bones, joints and muscles by name?"

Nowadays, when I am describing posture and movement of horses and riders, I try to talk about general areas and keep the language very simple, and there is a reason for this.

The depth of my knowledge comes from my fascination with movement and a keen eye for detail. From years of close observation of the whole horse, I have come to know the meaning of the different shapes formed by horse and rider bodies in different postures, and how they relate to beautiful, harmonious movement. In synchronisation, the bodies of the horse and human make smooth and fluid shapes, and the balance and symmetry of those shapes and lines indicates the balance and symmetry of the horse and rider.

In general, smooth curves, parallel lines and equal distances, horizontal and vertical shapes indicate good biomechanics.

Shapes and lines that are that are tipped or slanted, lines that are not parallel or are different lengths, curves that are irregular, all indicate problems.

When I look at a horse and rider, I see the symmetry and fluidity of the beautiful shapes dancing together. The shapes are mobile: some of them open and close, but they keep their symmetry. I notice the facial expression and softness and evenness of the muscle tone. I notice how well the horse and rider move together and appear at one.

When I’m working with the horse, I focus on feeling rather than thinking. I connect with the horse using all my senses, moving intuitively. The knowledge I’ve accumulated is stored in my body, allowing me to communicate through movement. I feel a general sense of straightness, symmetry and balance. I have a general picture in my mind, and a heightened awareness of my body and the horse’s.

Focusing on working out which specific muscle or joint is doing what, can tip us into thinking mode, which tends to reduce body awareness and get in the way of connection with the horse, who’s natural language is subtle body language.

When I'm working with the rider, I focus largely on which parts need to be softened and released, and what the rider is feeling in their own body and the horse's. Alignment is also important as it enables the rider to synchronise effortlessly without tension.

When I create educational material, to try and pass on my knowledge, I include pictures annotated with shapes and lines, and descriptions that use simple words for parts of the horse and rider like “thigh” and “poll”. I want you to learn to see the shapes and save the memory in your body so that you can communicate telepathically with your horse through connection, synchronisation and feel.

The pictures show just some of the shapes and lines I see. The green ones show beautiful balanced shapes and the red ones show problem areas. I work towards improving the symmetry and balance of the shapes and lines, through seeing or feeling the shapes. When everything’s in balance and alignment, the horse begins to move smoothly, willingly, lightly and joyfully. Yay!

If you ask me what the horse’s psoas is doing or whether the AO joint is functioning correctly, I will probably fall off!

08/08/2024

One of the very many concepts that is commonly taught and rarely questioned is the turning in of the thigh and knee so that the inner thigh is flat against the saddle. This may work for certain long legged men, but for women, who also have a different shaped pelvis, it nearly always causes the lower leg to pop away from the sides, and most of the rider’s weight to be concentrated around tight thighs and knees, with the pelvis lifting and tipping forward.

The rider often has to resort to drawing the lower legs back, or bumping them to give an aid. Exaggerated or inaccurate aids always block the horse’s movement and cause them to brace against the intermittent or hard contact.

In order to follow the shape of the horse's barrel, we need to turn the knee out slightly. When we have soft, even contact all the way down the thighs and calves, rather than a harder contact concentrated in the thighs and knees, this enables the horse to breathe and move more freely. We can synchronise precisely with the horse and apply subtle aids using the calves, with perfect timing so that our aids don’t block the horse. We can also drop the seat deeper and more softly into the saddle, as we aren't sitting on our thighs. This enables us to use subtle seat aids as well.

I made these diagrams using screenshots from an excellent video that Heather Moffett made, which demonstrates it really well, even taking into account different shaped horses and riders with different conformations. Here's a link to the video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LOj9SiUwa-Y

05/08/2024

Why do horses sometimes bite when being worked in-hand?

In-hand work is very intimate. We stand very close to the horse, and if we are careless or clumsy when holding two reins, the pull on the horse’s mouth is greatly amplified compared to riding. This is because we are anchored to the ground, whereas when riding, we go wherever the horse goes. Many people also incorrectly attempt to hold the horse’s head in a “frame” when working in-hand.

Horses can feel pressured and chased by having someone stand close by. They are sensitive to your energy, which can feel very intense to them. Imagine being the horse: someone stands very close, breathes in your face, and sticks to you wherever you go. Add to this the possibility of the person having an anxious or frustrated vibe, or wanting you to hurry up all the time. Imagine they are ill-advisedly holding your head tightly and putting it in a position where you don’t feel free to balance yourself or move away.

When you stand close to your horse while they are grazing in the field, do they stay with you or edge away? If you walk this close to them when they are moving about, do they move sideways and quicken their pace? Horses naturally want to create a little bit of space at first, but they can learn to be comfortable with you close by. It’s better if they learn this when they are free in the field or walking in a headcollar on a loose rope, so they can try for short periods and then move away if needed.

Before a horse is ready for in-hand work, they need to be completely comfortable with you walking side by side in a headcollar on a loose rein, stopping, and starting. They should be happy with you picking up the reins in halt and be used to responding by relaxing their jaw and neck muscles and trusting the light contact. Both of you need to develop a language where you can transition smoothly between halt and walk. This requires the human to be in tune with the horse and able to read their energy just as much as the horse reads the human’s.
You should be able to walk and stop together easily off the lightest of aids. Both of you should be able to predict when the other is about to go, stop, or turn.

If you use continual whip taps to get the horse moving faster, or if you feel the need to keep the horse going in a certain rhythm, or if you do anything to the horse instead of with the horse, or if you move in a way that is unpredictable or lacks fluidity, the horse is likely to experience the work as very stressful. This is why we see so much biting and tail swishing in such cases.

This highlights the importance of synchronisation as the cornerstone of in-hand work. Because of all the factors mentioned, and because we aren’t perfect, if we practice in-hand work with several horses, we will inevitably encounter biting at some stage. When this happens, it doesn’t mean we should beat ourselves up, but we must take the feedback seriously, back off with the ask, and return to passive synchronisation.

When I see people fussing around, disconnected from the horse, bossy and with a hard focus on an outcome, tap-tapping the whip, and pulling the horse around while demanding quicker responses, it breaks my heart. To me, it is a violation of the intimate beauty of connection that should be experienced in in-hand work.

04/08/2024

“I’m keeping my hands soft and passive whilst using lots of leg so I don’t have to use the hands. I’m not going to worry about the horse’s headset” explains Susan, as she see-saws her hands left and right pulling the bit from one side of the mouth to the other, and pushes strongly with the legs, until Shadow drops her head, bringing the nose behind the vertical, “Good girl!” exclaims Susan, pushing more enthusiastically with the legs to hold her there.

“I wish I could get her to do that!” laments Anne. “You make it look so easy!” 20 minutes earlier, she had been struggling to even get Shadow to move forward, crooked and stuck, resisting and swishing the tail as Anne asked her to trot, before her coach asked her to dismount, tightening the noseband a couple of holes. Susan had got on and walked a few strides, sitting elegantly and not seeming to put much effort in. After a bit of head shaking and tail swishing, Shadow was soon trotting around, looking straighter, and seemed to be moving willingly forward. Susan trotted round for about 10 minutes before pausing for a rest.

“Don’t worry. There’s nothing wrong with you. It’s just that I can only get her to do this because I’m really fit and used to riding lots of horses” says Susan. “I have strong legs!”

Shadow, who isn’t fit, is sweating and blowing. Susan pats her kindly.

Anne is left with mixed feelings. On the one hand, she is full of admiration that Shadow is moving more forward and seems a bit more relaxed and straight than before. Susan seems kind: She pats Shadow and says nice words to her, and she just laughs when Shadow stops and doesn’t punish her. Shadow seems to like her. Anne doesn’t like doing up the noseband so tight, but Shadow doesn’t seem to mind it: surely she would protest if she did? Surely someone as kind as Susan wouldn’t do anything to make Shadow feel uncomfortable? Shadow was swishing her tail and wrinkling her nostrils as she trotted round, but she has always had a tendency to do this. “It’s hard work for her” explains Susan “But it will do her good.” Look how much better she is going than before!”

Susan is so much nicer than the last coach Anne had who used to yell at Anne and hit Shadow if she stopped. Anne doesn’t really understand what Susan is saying about the hands, as it looks to her as if Susan is moving her hands quite a lot, but she doesn’t really want to ask: she doesn’t want to feel stupid if she has missed something obvious. So she pushes it to the back of her mind.

And yet… a part of Anne would like to explore what she has read about. Moving the horse off light aids. Loose noseband and steady, light hands. But how’s that going to help when Shadow is crooked and stuck? Anne’s tried and it doesn’t seem to help. Maybe that’s not something that people really do. After all, Susan says her hands are passive, but Anne can clearly see her using them left hand, right hand, to get the head down. The nose is behind the vertical, and Anne has read that this is a bad thing. But Shadow does seem to be going much better than before, and is Anne really entitled to an opinion as she couldn’t even get her to move?

Susan is happy with Shadow’s progress. She loves horses and is passionate about helping horses and their riders. She rides how she was taught when she trained as a coach. The horses at the training centre were all ridden in tight flash nosebands. She was never specifically taught to see-saw the hands, but she was taught to get the head down by using more leg: this never seemed to actually work and she used to get yelled at frequently for letting her horse go around with his head in the air. After watching and copying the other riders who were achieving this and not getting yelled at, she gave a few little surreptitious tugs until the head came down. It worked, her coach praised her, and after a while she forgot she was doing it. Now it is so habitual that she doesn’t realise she does it: she genuinely believes her hands are passive. Susan tries her best to be kind to her clients and their horses. She speaks kindly to the horses and pats them often. She never yells at the clients like her coach did at her.

I was once like Susan, training at a big exam centre (though I always refused to tighten nosebands: I would surreptitiously loosen them and spend the whole lesson terrified my instructor would notice!) And then one day I found someone who showed me that it is actually possible to ride with a feather light contact and soft, steady hands. To straighten the horse without the use of strong aids using a completely different, almost opposite, approach to what I was taught.

Now when I see lessons taking place Susan and Anne style, I can empathise with Susan, Anne and Shadow. What I find really difficult is that, with the horse abuse being completely unintentional and so much more subtle, it is very hard for people to realise that it’s a problem. It’s easy to see a problem with someone hitting their horse or losing their temper, but the Susans of this world are trying to do a good thing, and the Annes are trusting them, and then the Shadows lose out. And I can so much see what could be done to help: Susan has the skill and empathy to easily learn a kinder and more effective way, but she has just never had the exposure to even know this exists.

I do get super frustrated when everyone else gushes at how well the horse is going and nobody seems to be able to see the problems - they just listen to the words of the coach and believe everything they say without using their eyes!! So many of you owner riders have such little confidence in yourselves, but it is you that have spent years building beautiful connection and understand your horse like no other. Trust your eyes and intuition! You don’t need to be an expert for your observations to be entirely valid. A good coach helps you to build on that connection and respects you as a voice for your horse: we can offer our perspective which may be different from yours, but as coaches we must always listen and take seriously those observations and questions.

Photo: This is the year I first experienced a completely different way of riding which changed everything. Riding beautiful Sudi with Heather Moffett.

03/08/2024

Walking with your horse

Yesterday, my kids dragged me to an ice skating disco. I know the basics of how to skate, but I don’t go very often. When I first got on the ice, I felt stilted, wobbly, uncoordinated. My lower back felt stiff, braced ready for a fall. I started slow and tentative. I enjoy being on the ice, just going round and round the outside of the rink and getting into a trance like state. After a while, without trying to change anything, I noticed my strides were longer, slower, and more fluid. The tension in my back had eased. I began to feel graceful. I was able to match my strides with the rhythm of the music. It became easy, effortless. My body had somehow reorganised itself, like magic, into balance.

It reminded me of when I was young and shared Jimbo with my Mum and 2 sisters. The riding school would lend us the misfit ponies, ones that were young and green, or for whatever reason weren’t safe in the school. We would take them on long picnic rides. Walking on a long rein, picking blackberries as we rode past. Occasionally trotting or cantering, but mostly walk. I don’t recall having very many problems at all with these ponies, except for one: Peanuts. He had all the types of problems a pony could have. Stargazing so badly you could see his nostrils, upside down in your face. Freezing. Bolting. Bucking. Headshaking. Shying. Randomly turning at right angles off the track, mid gallop, into a thick, dense forest. Being young, I didn’t care. Over time, with lots of long rides, he turned into the quietest, happiest, most reliable pony you could imagine. He was very talented, fast, with beautiful gaits and a big jump. When my younger sister took him over, she did cross country jumping with him and my Mum ended up buying him for her.

Looking back, I suspect that Peanuts had some serious physical issues. The head shaking would come and go throughout his whole life, even after the other behaviours had stopped. But there is no doubt in my mind that the long hours of walking were what turned him around and allowed him to find a way to be comfortable in his body. Nowadays, I wouldn’t ride a horse like Peanuts. But I do believe that this relaxed, loose rein walking, going somewhere with a purpose just as horses are meant to do, really saved him, and helped those countless other ponies we rode as well.

Walk gives our body time and space to gently unwind and reorganise itself. It relaxes the mind. It is medicine for people and horses, especially when carried out in beautiful settings.

As a much less confident/foolhardy adult, I can see the same benefits, and even more, from taking horses for walks in-hand. Just matching the steps, noticing the breathing and getting lost in the easy rhythm of walking together without asking anything.

Photos: Peanuts (bay), Jimbo (palomino) and Svalur (grey) on multi-day trail rides in their later years. All three lived into their thirties and continued to be happily ridden until the end. In these photos, they were in their late 20s and early 30s, with me all grown up!