Joining Forces: The Master’s Journey By Elizabeth Uhl DVM, PhD, Dip, ACVP
Being able to work so closely with Jean Luc and Pascalina has been very enlightening. The work with her, as well as with Bentley, combined with discussions with Jean Luc have gotten me thinking about the journey toward mastery. This kind of journey is personal and never ends as it requires constant learning and continual self-improvement. However, such journeys’ goals and are ultimately more similar than they are different, so we can share experiences as we learn from Jean Luc’s guidance. Here are some of the things I have learned in hopes they will be useful.
Do not fool yourself – learn to think again: The mastery I have dreamed of is becoming a centaur in the sense of merging to be one with a horse. However, such a merger is dynamically fluid and the static resistance way of the ‘classic’ riding I was taught has often gotten in the way. Jean Luc overcame this problem as he learned to create the dynamic connection by paying close attention to what horses were telling him. This required awareness of the need to immediately reject what he had been taught, or assumed to be true, if it conflicted with their message. His ability to do this on his own is both amazing and courageous, as a more common tendency is to have one’s identity and self-worth tied to beliefs and the approval of others rather than being firmly rooted in values. When this happens the ‘Totalitarian Ego’, as Adam Grant calls it in his book “Think Again”, steps in to fiercely defend beliefs even to the point of denying obvious evidence that they are wrong (i.e.: the horse is tense, unhappy, not making progress and/or lame). I admit I went through periods where my totalitarian ego took over and I went into denial about how we were doing, but luckily Jean Luc and my horses were always brutally honest. They invalidated my excuses and taught the important lesson of humility. The admission I was wrong and rea
Let the reductionists be. Believe in knowledge, your skill, and your horse.
We posted recently in Reel the video of my horse performing Tempi Changes. Years earlier, the horse was lame and diagnosed with a severe case of navicular syndrome. I attempted his rehabilitation, encouraged by L. Ostblom” research finding that navicular changes were remodeling instead of degenerative disease. “The findings introduce the thought that navicular disease is not primarily caused by ischemia and subsequent necrosis, but rather is the consequence of increased activation of bone remodeling caused by altered pressure from the deep digital flexor tendon on the bone and increased load on the caudal part of the foot. The disease is, therefore, considered to be reversible and may be alleviated by altering the load on navicular bone by special shoeing.’ (L. Ostblom, 1982) Having already, through the practical application of advanced scientific discoveries, observed that the most efficient way to reduce the load on the hoff was acting on the direction, intensity, and frequency of the forces loading the front legs from the thoracolumbar spine down to the hoof, I did not limit my horse’s rehabilitation to corrective shoeing. I focused on identifying and correcting the source of the forces loading the right front leg abnormally. It was an inverted thoracic spine rotation, shifting the dorsal spine toward the right and loading the right front leg. I observed then that the corrective shoeing hampered my ability to correct the right front leg’s aberrant kinematics, and I removed the corrective shoeing in favor of simply correct shoeing.
At first, the horse was so lame that he could not carry a rider, and I started the rehabilitation working in hand. The in-hand technique I use differs widely from all in-hand approaches. I discovered that a horse can feel subtle adjustments in my back and body tone even walking by the horse’s side. I developed a in hand technique exploiting this ph
“Some people are not put here to evolve. They are here to remind you what it looks like if you don’t.”
When the French Cadee Noir was a military institutuion. It was mandatory to complete at first a military training. I volunteered for special training to jump in a parachute, and the training included a forced walk/run test where we needed to cover ten kilometers carrying a backpack with a fifteen-kilogram bag of sand. The backpack was rudimentary, a soft bag with harnesses for the shoulders. After a few kilometers, the bag of sand bouncing on our back was painful. To avoid the bouncing, I used my belt and tightened the backpack around my chess. After a few kilometers, a different problem developed. The pressure of the tightened belt distributed the sand unevenly, creating local pressure and sharp pain in my back. The memory of the pain makes me cringe when someone tells me that her saddle has been fitted to the horse’s back muscle imbalance. The saddle cannot correct back muscle imbalance; it is the rider with adequate gymnastics. To identify and correct the back dysfunction leading to muscle imbalance, the rider must have an undeformed perception of the forces interacting between the horse and the rider’s back.
Today backpacks are very well designed; there is no padding modeling the human back. They are firm yet supple enough to distribute the weight evenly; they use materials that absorbs forces. So they are good saddles.
The video is a model showing the diversity of movements in motion. Like all models, the illustration is not perfect, but it is useful enough to give a visual impression of the large diversity of forces and movement occurring during locomotion. The saddle needs to fit this dynamic diversity of forces and movements. The saddle is not a mold that fits exactly the skin and muscle variations of the horse’s back. The saddle needs to be steady, close contact, well balanced, and transmit as precisely as possible the forces and movements
Epictetus
“You have been criticizing yourself for years, and it hasn’t worked. Try approving yourself and see what happens.” (Epictetus) Don’t try with humans; they are too deep in their fake world to respond honestly. Try with equines. You have been criticized for not applying the aids correctly. Try to communicate with the horse through your whole body, frequency, and energy. I don’t talk about the forces of the Universe; I talk about the energy that your whole physique creates, the frequency that matches the horse’s frequency. Don’t expect to find the magic formula in a book; it is not magic; it is real; it is who you truly are if you brush away the correct aids and other inventions of traditional equitation.
Don’t remove the bridle or the saddle; these hypocrisies are just another form of the same fake relationship with horses. If you want to develop and coordinate the horse’s physique for the athletic demand of the performance, use the tools you need. The true relation occurs through education. The horse will work with you if you are true to him and yourself. Intuitively, you have the essence of the solution, but you doubt yourself because your intuition does not match your education. Intuition is not infallible; you need knowledge, but, paraphrasing Bertrand Russell, “We are faced with the paradoxical fact that education has become one of the chief obstacles to intelligence and freedom of thought.”
Biomechanics is useful for understanding how each part of the horse’s physique works and the relation of each part with other parts. Biomechanics includes the understanding of fascia, but while the fascial system can be viewed as the fabric of continuity and communication, biotensegrity can be seen as the model for explaining the architecture underpinning continuity and communication. Through body parts, we cannot influence how the horse coordinates the many systems that compose an athletic performance. Our gestures and body shifts do no
Touching Energy
Years ago, I had a friend who was a physiotherapist. She never understood why I did not want her to practice her therapeutic skills on me. We were friends enough to socialize despite our divergence of view. One day, I was hurt walking painfully through the barn, and she could not resist telling me how to walk to correct my problem. Her description was right, but her body language did not fit her words. Perhaps as I used my body to communicate with the horses, I noticed discrepancies between what she said and how she held her physique. I told her, and she dismissed my remark a little annoyed, telling me that what she described was important, not how she carried herself. A thought was in my mind. If humans are sensitive to each other’s body motion, as are horses, perhaps therapists should coordinate their physiques to fit their words.
My friend’s therapist was not a rider, but I invited her to watch and learn how to work my horse in hand. I worked the horse, repeating the body coordination she described days earlier. She observed the horse’s response and wondered what I did. I told her. I held my body the way you described me two days ago. Your description was right, but the horse pushed the therapy one step further. The horse’s umwelt urges him to adjust to my body’s coordination while protecting his physical issues. The horse will not keep the physical coordination I created on his own. To keep the horse’s physique in proper coordination, I have to make minute adjustments that further refine my body control. The horse errors are minute; we work in sound body alignment, but to keep my horse efficiently coordinated, I have to refine the coordination of my physique further.
If you were the one helping me, you would correct my mistake once the mistake was done. The horse and I don’t work at the level of conscious thinking, which is too slow. We work at the level of efference copy, myofascial pre-stress, closed kinematics chains, and all
Dasmaco.
Mareike sent me a video of her horse, Dasmaco. The horse efficiently applies the storage and reuse of elastic strain energy. The slow motion idealizes the process, but the short sequence at regular speed shows how efficiently Dasmaco functions. The forelegs are designed to propel the body upward and forward. They store elastic energy in the tendons, muscles, fascia, and aponeurosis and use the elastic energy for the push-off and the swing. The forelegs bounce the body upward and forward. When the load on the forelegs exceeds the capacities of the forelegs' structures, the forelegs act as levers, vaulting the weight from one front limb over the other. A trot without suspension is a kinematics abnormality.
Mareike is a trainer and hoof care provider in Switzerland. We work regularly through live video lessons. Dasmaco is physically and mentally a complicated horse. His education demanded sophisticated coordination of his thoracolumbar spine to function soundly.
Jean Luc
Disconnection
San Diego was severely disconnected when I purchased him. His trot was short and jerky. He was not comfortable to sit. He was capable of jumping large jumps but was not ridable in the show jumping ring because he took off like a maniac at the landing of the jumps. The rider did not connect the jerky trot and the problem over the jumps. Mechanical thinking thinks a horse jumps at the canter, so who cares about the trot? As a result of the disconnection, the horse developed pathology at the level of the right hind leg annular ligament.
I based the rehabilitation on the hypothesis that extension of the thoracic spine and low trunk carriage between the forelegs caused the jerky trot but also explained the take-off at the landing. I recoordinated San Diego’s physique. The rehabilitation program taught me that focusing on the lesion, releasing some muscles or fascia, or manipulating body parts doesn’t fix the problem. Forces generated in the fibers of any muscle are shared throughout the entire biotensegrity locally and globally via the softest and hardest fasciae. This changes our “one muscle, one movement” ideology.
San Diego gained a first-class trot. He could no longer safely jump Gran Prix level jumps due to his injury, but I played with him occasionally over four to five-foot jumps, and San Diego no longer apprehended the landing. He was as steady and comfortable in the middle of a jumping course as a dressage ring.
It is symptomatic that San Diego, like Ronda’s horse, developed pathology in the lower hind legs’ structure due to thoracic spine dysfunction. Both horses extended the thoracic spine and lacked trunk support between the forelegs. Ronda’s horse exhibited spectacular gaits and performed movements because of his talent. San Diego flew over high jumps due to his athletic abilities, but both horses performed below their potential and developed pathology. They were injected in every joint of their body because they performed belo
Forces travel from the hind hoof forward to the poll.
