Making the Experience Whole

Horse Riding Made Simple

© Bert Hartog

Making the Experience Whole,
my Phylosophy as a Coach.

I am sure you all have had experiences that everything just fell into place, be it the perfect canter strike-off, the perfect corner, a half-pass in which the horse was dancing. Sometimes this feeling was a moment, at other times it lasted longer. But did you not wonder how it happened in the first place?!

I am sure that you are familiar with the terms "Natural Horsemanship", "Joining Up" or the "Horse Whisperer". To put their technique in nutshell, is not to pose a threat to the horse, which is a flight animal by nature. The advantage is that most of the work is done on the ground and little on the horse. People practicing natural horsemanship therefore can use their eyes to assess the body language of the horse and act accordingly. If the horse is frightened, the person near the horse closes their body to take away the perceived threat, and so on.

When we are riding we take this a step further. We need to teach the horse new movements, but we can no longer rely on our eyes, as everything now happens underneath us. We need to create new lines of communications with the horse through "feel".

To know what we feel we need to have good understanding of the biomechanics of the horse. How does the horse's body move in the various paces and how does that affect us. That is the basis of all riding, the horse continually feeds us with information whether he is free and loose or restricted in his movements and stiff. The hardest part is to feel the small changes.

This is where the coach comes in. I believe that the coach should be the medium who empowers you and assist you in becoming whole.
Empowerment develops when you and your horse are allowed to make mistakes when you are learning.

I like this saying:

While one person hesitates because he feels inferior the other is busy making mistakes and becoming superior.

So many riders try too hard. And when I say, you can't make a mistake in my lessons, many students feel that a weight falls off their shoulders. Instead of trying not to make any mistakes, they are now ready to receive the flow of energy and information from the coach.

I believe the process should go like this.

In the beginning the coach is the mentor who teaches the horse and rider. The coach at this moment takes responsibility for the progress of both horse and rider. If we look at it as a triangle, the triangle looks like this. Keep in mind that the triangle always has three even legs. No one participant is more important than the other. In the beginning most of the information flows from the coach to the horse and rider.

This relation changes as time progresses. With the coach's help the horse will learn what is expected of him and the rider will learn more techniques and when it "feels" right. So, now we have a three way flow of energy, information and feel like the picture on the right.

The relation between coach, horse and rider now changes. An interaction between coach, horse and rider will develop on an equal basis. Sometimes the horse's body language gives messages to the coach, which the coach then transfers to the rider, which will improve the rider's feel. Sometimes the rider's body language gives message to the coach and the horse, which need to be resolved.

I feel the relation between coach, horse and rider must always be equal, without reservation and trustworthy. This results in a close relation of all three, in which the trust must never be broken. It's easy to let the relation develop into something more and this will spoil the trust. A coach who yells or used denigrating language to the student spoils the equality between horse, rider and coach. A coach who demands more than the horse can give in the moment spoils the trust of the horse.

All the time more and more knowledge is transferred from the coach to the horse and rider, but also the horse and rider teach each other with feedback, creating a deeper understanding of each other. The rider allows the horse to make mistakes, and in return the horse will forgive the rider's mistakes.

As the training progresses, training faults will creep in. After all, it is in the nature of both horse and rider (warm blooded animals) to sometimes take the easy way out and make it "look" all right. It's too easy to just put a band-aid on the problem to smooth over the problem. To become "whole" you always need to treat the core of the problem and not the symptoms.

With time and infinite practice, knowledge will deepen and the combination will develop synergy (syncronised energy). Knowledge creates self confidence in horse and rider, knowledge creates pride in horse and rider and knowledge creates self carriage. Self carriage is foremost a mental thing. Self carriage is also the result of the complete trust between horse and rider. The combination is now "whole".

The role of the coach has now changed to a pair of eyes on the ground. The triangle has now turned upside down, with the horse and rider combination on top, with the coach in a supporting role. The combination is whole and in self carriage, and all coach has to do is make minor corrections.

For me as a coach this is the ultimate achievement, to make him/herself almost obsolete, because the combination is whole.

The trip to "making the experience whole" is absolutely fascinating and is full of discovery and self discovery.

Check out our Mini Courses and Short Courses on Jumping and Horse Management here.

Bert Hartog.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivs 2.1 Australia License.

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