Nahshon Cook Horsemanship

11/24/2025

This was fun.

This might make you laugh, or p**s you off, or make you think, or make you feel seen and validated — depending on what level you're at.

But I want to share this to start a discussion around what is typically called “the horsemanship journey”.

I don't think that term is an accident. In fact I've both attended and taught so many horsemanship clinics and lessons lessons by now, that I see repeating patterns — like horse owner “archetypes” — that come up over and over again.

It’s gotten to a point that these archetypes have become so obvious that I had to write them down.

I won't go too deep into the neuroscience in this post, but I wanted to state in plain language what the actual “Levels” are that I believe we go through in developing our “Horsemanship Consciousness”.

In other words: How your level of awareness, and the manner in which you relate to horses, changes over time as you gain knowledge and experience.

I’ll describe what each level feels like from the perspective of the person experiencing it.

Like me, you may see yourself — or older versions of yourself — on this list.

Let’s climb the ladder:

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📺 PHASE I: THE SIMULATION

Horsemanship = Ego Projection

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Level 0️⃣- The Passenger

Knows nothing except “horses are pretty”.

Felt State: Benign Helplessness.

You are literally unaware that “training” as a concept even exists. A horse is either rideable or it’s not. Riding or interacting with horses feels like gambling, or sitting in the passenger seat of a car driven by a toddler. Sometimes you “win”, and the horse behaves and does things you like. Sometimes you “lose” and get frustrated or hurt. That’s horses. It is what it is.

Internal Monologue: "I hope he’s a good boy today. Last week he was kind of crazy, but I think he was just in a mood. My friend said he’s a Gemini, so that explains it. Oh, he’s stopping to eat grass... okay, I guess we’re stopping. He’s so strong! It’s amazing how big they are. I’ll just kick a little... nope, he’s ignoring me. That’s okay. We’ll go when he’s ready."

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Level 1️⃣- The Tourist

Treats the horse like a child or a dog.

Felt State: Fantasyland of Warmth and Denial

Horse ownership feels like a Disney movie. You feel a swell of affection in your chest. You are constantly scanning for validation that the horse loves you back. When reality intrudes (a bite, a spook), you feel a sharp pang of betrayal or cognitive dissonance, which you quickly cover with a story.

Internal Monologue: "Look at him looking at me. He knows me. He knows I’m his mom. We have this connection, you know? I don't need bits or spurs because our bond is enough. Ow! He just nipped me. He’s just playing. He didn't mean it. Look, he’s saying “Sorry, mom”. He’s probably just sensing my anxiety from work today. I need to be calmer for him. I’ll just give him a cookie to let him know we’re okay."

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Level 2️⃣- The Bebopper

Flitters around doing purposeless nonsense, fishing for reactions from the horse.

Felt State: Low-Grade Frustration & Vague Desire.

It feels like trying to tune a radio but never finding the station. You always feel "busy." Your body is constantly moving—pumping, squeezing, kicking, pulling, nagging. There is a sense of impatience: "Why isn't this working yet?"

Internal Monologue: "Come on... let’s go... more... MORE. Why are you so lazy? Go forward! Ugh, now he’s too fast. Quit it! Slow down. Why is his head up like that? Get your head down. I’m squeezing as hard as I can! This horse is just being difficult today. Maybe I need a different bit? I just want to have a nice ride, why does he have to make it a fight?"

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Level 3️⃣ - The Operator

Uses the horse for ego validation and/or to scratch a competitive itch. Filled with insecurity about not measuring up; are in denial about this. Worships highly accomplished trainers and wants to be like them, but does not take coaching or criticism well (despite paying lip service to “learn something new every day”).

Felt State: Pressure & Rigid Judgment.

Riding feels like a performance review. You are tight, braced, and vigilant. Your ego is fused to the saddle. The horse is a prosthesis for your personal identity (“I’m a reiner” or “I’m a roper” or “I’m a jumper”), and the urge to find peer validation and keep up appearances drives everything you do. Every mistake the horse makes feels like a personal insult or a public embarrassment. You feel powerful when it all works, and furious when it doesn't.

The Internal Monologue: "Don't you embarrass me. Get in the ground. That felt like s**t. C’mon, get stopped. HARDER. Good. Now spin. Faster! Come on, you pea-hearted sunofa— don't quit on me now. I paid good money for you. I paid way too much money to get you trained. Knock it off. We’re doing this, now. There—see? He just needed to be told who’s boss."

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🔥 PHASE II: THE AWAKENING
Horsemanship = Learning Lots of “Rules”

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Level 4️⃣- The Zealot

Knows they need guidance, so outsources their thinking entirely to a method or guru. Depends on that security blanket to make decisions. Rigidly defends said guru like a mindless fangirl. Often overwhelmed with second-guessing and self doubt. Struggles to identify their own mistakes.

Felt State: Anxious Compliance.

Horsemanship feels like taking a math test you studied really hard for. You are terrified of getting the answer "wrong." You are constantly checking your own position against a mental image of "Correctness." You feel stiff, trying to apply perfect technique.

Internal Monologue: "Heels down. Chin up. Elbows in. The method says ‘Step 1, Step 2, Step 3.' Okay, I’m at Step 2. He’s not responding. Is my leg in the right spot? What would [Guru] say? I have to maintain the frame. He looks tense... but the book says this is the correct frame, so I have to hold it. Am I doing this right? I hope I'm doing this right. I don’t want to mess this up.”

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Level 5️⃣ - The Technician

Sees horsemanship as a problem to crack. Physically more fluent but mentally still overthinks everything. Has enough knowledge to recognize their own mistakes, but struggles to act on the information they’ve gathered. Brain is going a million miles an hour, while limbs are often stuck in a “traffic jam” of thoughts and struggling to catch up.

Felt State: Mental Exertion (The Traffic Jam).

It feels like driving a manual transmission car for the first time. You are processing so much data that your brain hurts. You’re down in the trenches, fighting your own latency. You can see the solution, but your hands are too slow to catch it. You feel "clunky."

Internal Monologue: "Okay, he’s falling in on the left shoulder. That means I need to apply the inside leg and... wait, now he’s speeding up. I need to half-halt. One-two... missed it. Dammit. Okay, reset. Why is the left hind dragging? Biomechanically, that means the psoas is tight. I need to engage the core... okay, applying aid... now."

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🧠 PHASE III: MASTERY
Horsemanship = Systems Thinking

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Level 6️⃣- The Architect

Sees horsemanship as a great game. Diagnostic thinking is more fluid, has better discernment. Self-correction is more automatic. Understands the horse’s psychology more deeply, understands the training process, and trusts their own intuition.

Felt State: Cool Clarity.

The anxiety is gone. The emotion is gone. You feel like a chess grandmaster or a scientist in a lab. You are “above the fray”, observing data points; enjoying the process more than the actual outcome. When the horse resists, you don't feel anger; you feel curiosity. The world slows down. You feel more present and alive.

Internal Monologue: "Interesting. I asked for the hip, and he braced the jaw. That’s a diagnostic. Let’s verify. I’ll ask again... same brace. Okay, the root cause isn't the hip; it’s the anxiety about the contact from my leg. I’m going to change the constraint. Let’s go back to the Anchor exercise and isolate the hip for now. I’m going to work on some simpler leg yielding. There’s the release. There’s the breath. Okay, now we can try for the complete movement again.”

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Level 7️⃣ - The Alchemist

Treats horsemanship as a process of mutual transformation — an adventure where you encounter chaos, master it, and become a better person as a byproduct of that process. Both horse and human become higher expressions of themselves through this dance.

Felt State: Fluid Competence

You’re “in the zone”. Riding or interacting with horses feels like playing jazz. You know the structure, but you are improvising the notes. You feel the horse's energy as a raw material that you can shape. You are comfortable with chaos because you know you can transmute it.

Internal Monologue: "He’s got a lot of energy today. Good. I won’t fight it; I’ll use it. Let’s funnel that speed into some work on our transitions and spins. Easy... let the pressure build... wait for the thought... there. Redirect. Beautiful. He thinks it’s his idea, but he’s actually following the incentive structure I already built. My hands and legs structure and channel his energy, not fight it. I’m just setting the banks; the river flows itself.”

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🎉 PHASE IV: TRANSCENDENCE
Horsemanship = Effortless Congruencey

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Level 8️⃣- The Centuar

Rider no longer feels like an external agent acting on the horse. They are a symbiotic organism that interfaces seamlessly with the horse's nervous system. They provide the decision and intention, the horse provides the energy and power. “Riding” becomes a two-way stream of subconscious, intuitive communication.

Felt State: Emptiness & Expansion.

You are fully present. There is no "voice in the head." The internal monologue stops because thought and action have become simultaneous. You do not feel your body ending and the horse’s beginning. You feel the ground THROUGH the horse’s body. You know where each hoof is under you, and where each hoof is going to be, at any given time. You feel the horse’s intention as your own thought. Time collapses. You stop living in the future (simulation) and the horse stops fearing the present. You meet in the exact millisecond of the stride (T=0).

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Level 9️⃣ - The Steward

The highest level. You have achieved the skill of the Centaur, but you also realize that you are now an heir to a six-thousand year old tradition. It must be guarded, preserved, and transmitted for future generations.

Felt State: Reverence, Responsibility, Deep Sense of Meaning & Purpose

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⚠️ WARNING: THE HORSESHOE TRAP

Now, before you self-assess, I have to advise caution.

There is a phenomenon known as the "Horseshoe Theory”…

The way it applies here is that if you bend a horseshoe, the two ends — Level 1 (Tourist) and Level 8 (Centaur) — curve around and look almost identical to the beginner’s eye.

The Level 1 Tourist rides on a loose rein because they are afraid to touch the horse, or they believe that "freedom" equals love. The horse is wandering, distracted, and disconnected.

The Level 8 Centaur rides on a loose rein because the horse is Self-Carrying. The connection is so potent that the rein is unnecessary. The horse is tuned in, energized, and waiting.

Big, big difference.

Many riders stay stuck in the lower levels because they use the masterful and spiritual-sounding language of Levels 7 and 8 to bypass the hard work of Levels 4, 5, and 6.

But you can’t “teleport” like that. You can’t skip all the discipline and mechanics, and go straight to being a Jedi Master.

Your horse needs a complete foundation… and you do too.

So, what level are you?

Be honest.

You cannot solve a problem at the level of consciousness that created it.

You cannot fix a Level 2 (Chaos) problem with more Level 2 behavior (Nagging). You need Level 3 (Order).

You cannot fix a Level 5 (Overthinking) problem with more Level 5 info (More Contradictory Advice, More Clinics, More Lessons). You need Level 6 (Diagnostics).

🪜 If you’re somewhere in PHASE II or higher in your journey right now, and you’re ready for the next level, you need a system designed to pull you up that ladder.

That is exactly what Foundations of Excellence is built to do.

It is the ladder from Simulation to Reality.

The roadmap from Foundation to Finesse.

Let’s get to work.

—Jake Lundahl

🐎 🧠 💡 🪜

11/21/2025

Counter canter-passage-canter transitions to help with impulsion as his ability to collect correctly improves.

11/17/2025

Jay's piaffe is finally starting to find its balance. He used to triangulate. His mouth and tongue have been a journey to correct. But, I think we're on the home stretch.

Correct movement is medicine.

11/17/2025

Inca's canter changes are finally starting to fly. Here we are practicing our four-tempis along the wall in medium canter on a slack rein.

Note: He is a teeth grinder. It's a habit that was with him when he arrived. It is getting better, though.

11/17/2025

Gem: A twenty-six year old, 14h, in his first lesson about the school halt from the renvers, today. This is where we landed by the end of twenty minutes.

11/17/2025

Quantum Riding.

Quantum mathematics transcends the classical notions of physics. Biotensegrity surpasses the classical notion of riding. Quantum mathematics requires a departure from intuitive logic. Biotensegrity necessitates a departure from traditional notions of riding and training.
Light, for instance, demonstrates both wave-like and particle-like properties. When observed as a wave, it exhibits interference and diffraction patterns. However, when analyzed as particles, photons exhibit quantized behavior and discrete interactions with matter. This duality challenges classical notions of physics, which generally categorize entities distinctly as either waves or particles. Classical notions of riding generally associate performance with obedience. Biotensegrity demonstrates that many elements of a horse's athletic performance, including fascia lines, closed kinematic chains, and muscle synergies, are not controlled by the rider’s aids.
The rider-horse duality, which leads to sound performances, is a partnership that gives more credit to the horse’s mental processing and willingness. A horse can execute the same movement using different muscles. We cannot control which muscles the horse uses, but we can feel which combination produces better movement. We can reward the horse when he executes the best movement, but that is too simplistic. By observing and analyzing the horse's overall body coordination, we can identify and recreate the conditions that lead to optimal performance,
Considering that the horse’s solution might be better than the dogma we have been trained to apply is a departure from the traditional notion of riding and training. We also need to expand beyond the linear theories to which we have been conditioned such as balance being a backward shift of the weight over the haunches or tearing of the lower legs’ long tendons is an elongation beyond the normal compliance of the tendon. Tendons are auxetic, they expand simultaneously in multiple directions. In the study ” Mechanical and possible auxetic properties of human Achilles tendon during in vitro testing to failure on the human Achilles tendon,” Christopher V. Nagelli and all observed a remarkable degree of medio-lateral auxetic behavior. We think longitudinally when, in fact, lateral forces and vibrations are significant causes of failure. The advantage of advanced knowledge is that we can prevent injuries by addressing the real problem instead of submitting the horse to traditional beliefs. We can reduce the intensity of lateral shifts and vibrations, creating authentic balance.

Authentic balance cannot be achieved by shifting the weight backward. Actual knowledge demonstrates that balance is a forward concept where the thoracolumbar spine muscles manage multidirectional forces around the center of mass and above the base of support. The language is foreign to classical thinking, but familiar to the horse. Indeed, it is the horse who processes efficient body coordination, if we create conditions guiding the horse mental processing toward efficient coordination of the horse’s physique.

In regard of the traditional concept of obedience, this is a quantum leap which includes accepting that the horse is willing, capable of feeling touches that we don’t have the sensitivity to feel, and process sophisticated body coordination. Most premier human athletes are talented but dysfunctional. If not corrected, the dysfunction limits the athlete’s potential and leads to injury. The horse is not different. We have knowledge of the performance’s athletic demands, and we need to teach this knowledge to the horse. Teaching first-grade kids is easy as they know nothing. Teaching fifth grade teenagers is difficult as they know all. The horse does not have an ego problem, but protects instinctively morphological flaws, muscle imbalance or other issues such as memories. We can ignore the horse’s protection and resort to obedience. The horse will submit finding a compromise which, over time, develops pathology.

Reducing lateral shifts of the tendons and vibrations, can be theoretically included in the concept of straightness, but in a dimension that is not approached in any school of thoughts. From the simpler understanding of straightness placing the shoulders in front of the haunches, we need to evolve to the concept of channeling the forces moving the horse’s thoracic spine between our upper thighs and the steadiness of our whole physique. This is Biotensegrity, integrity of our whole physique and subtle nuances in muscle tone. It is easier to channel the forces through our whole physique than synchronizing mechanical actions, but we need to evolve from the order of priorities to the understanding, that balance, forwardness, straightness, lightness, all develop simultaneously. It is a gradual orchestration of the horse’s whole physique. All the priorities interact, each adjustment at one end of the horse’s physique triggers adjustment of the whole physique. We are not different. We cannot have soft hands if we are not in neutral balance over our seat bones, with proper tensegrity of our whole physique interacting with the horse forces and energy through subtle nuances of our body tone. If we think which muscles, should I use, we are locked in mechanical thinking; actions-reactions, that are far away from the horse’s comfort zone and can only trigger protective reflex contractions.

We have no physical difficulty riding at such level of subtlety if we dish the aids and communicate with the horse through nuances of our whole-body tone. Quantum mathematics transcends the classical notions of physics. Quantum riding transcends the classical notions of training. If we practice shoulder in and the horse expresses difficulties bending the thoracic spine to the right, we consider the components of lateral bending, latero-flexion, transversal rotation, and longitudinal flexion. If the horse carries the trunk low between the shoulder blades, he will have difficulties bending the thoracic spine laterally. If the low carriage of the trunk is coupled with a preferential rotation shifting the dorsal spines to the left, the horse will have difficulties bending the thoracic spine to the right.

The horse cannot complete this level of analysis, but we do. We might have to lift the trunk between the forelegs before asking for lateral bending of the thoracic spine. This is a very simple example. It could be for instance that the transversal rotation that is part of lateral bending causes the horse difficulty bending the thoracic spine to the right. We can stimulate transversal rotation by asking for adduction of the right hind leg. The horse will react positively if the adjustment that we create eases the ex*****on of the performance. Other adjustments such as balance and slower cadence might be necessary. It is a conversation where we analyze the horse’s reaction as a partial answer to our question.

Resisting a gait or performance is not behavior. Resistances are expressions of pain or discomfort that we must identify and correct. If we believe that repeating a movement educates the horse’s body, we insist on practicing the right shoulder in and the horse intensifies or switch protections. One way or the other, pathology will develop and we inject the joints hoping that the horse will perform better. He will for a short time as hyaluronic acid or corticoids ease the pain, but they also accelerate the development of arthritis. The cure resides in our ability to transcend our classical notions.

Jean Luc Cornille

11/17/2025

Howdy. Sorry for the late post of gratitude for everyone who joined in on my lecture about Xodo last week. It was great fun for me. I hope you enjoyed it, too. Also, if you weren't able to join us, but got the recoding, thank you. If you neither joined us live or got the recording, thank you, too. I'm grateful for all of the support.

11/08/2025

Howdy Good People. This morning I recieved a message from the wonderful Amelia Thomas that the print edition of an article that she wrote for Telegraph Magazine piece, in which she mentions me and my work, ran today in the UK (print readership 1.7 million!).

I'm thankful for that news, and thought it was worth sharing.

I hope you’re having a wonderful Saturday.

11/06/2025

Good morning. I've been getting my lecture notes together for my Eclectic Classroom lecture note for the work with DSLD and PSSM2 that Xodo and I are doing for the past few days. Yesterday, I thought it would be valuable if the people who participating in the Zoom session on the 11th, or are purchasing the recording, would send me questions that they'd like to ask me so that I can include them in the presentation.

I'm suggesting this because all 95 spaces for the event sold out in ten days, I can't answer that many questions after a lecture. I will still offer an opportunity for questions to be asked, but this way more can be addressed.

If we don't cover everything on the 11th, and if people are interested, I can see about offering a second session.

Please just leave your questions in the comments.

Thank you.

11/04/2025

An update on Xodo: Xodo is the 24 year old Lusitano with DSLD and PSSM2 that I wrote about on here a few months back. As of right now, his pasterns have stayed lifted for over a year, after having been dropped for, I think, two years. He and I have been working together for one year and seven months. .

This time last year, he couldn't walk around the area, in-hand, more thank ten steps without taking a break.

It's documented by ultrasound images that scar tissue has substituted the space where his suspensory ligaments once were.

In an effort to share more of my work, I'm sharing this short video of the glorious Xodo has decided to go for a hack around the farm before his dressage lesson for the past two days.

This was taken the day before yesterday.

He is so beautiful.

This is what recovery sometimes looks like.

Progress!

11/04/2025

Howdy. Thank you so much for you interest in the mediation on DSLD and PSSM2 that me and Xodo are doing together, and also for your support of tge Eclectic Classroom talk that I will be doing g on Nov 11th. It's sold out! If you wanted to attend, but weren't able to reserve a space for the live talk, the post talk recording is availabe via the link below.

Thank you again.

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