In my January newsletter I usually write about goals, but since I already wrote about having a theme for your 2008 goals in last months newsletter I have chosen a new topic. If you missed the newsletter on goals last month you can still read it on my website or blog. My 2008 theme is “Be Approachable, Be Accessible and Make it Applicable”.
This is the first winter in the last 4 years the snow has been perfect in NE for cross country skiing. The normal 6 foot high drifts and patches of bare ground caused by 60 mph winds are no where to be found in my pastures this winter, so I have taken advantage of the perfect conditions by skiing almost everyday. Last January in the goals newsletter I suggested if you can’t ride your horse because of winter weather to start an exercise program in order to get in shape for spring riding. Well this was my thought behind skiing this winter, although it has led me to some more discoveries about “ riding with straightness”.
In addition to skiing, riding horses in the snow, and working on my book, I have been studying “straightness” in the horse. Ray Hunt is the first one who inspired me to think about straightness. This is also a topic that Bill Dorrance repeats in almost every chapter of his book “True Horsemanship Through Feel”. “Straightness” is a theme for one of my 2008 riding goals, because according to these men it is “everything”.
Now I will go back to explain how skiing has helped me discover more about “straightness”. As I was skiing on 2 inches of new snow this morning all my old tracks had disappeared so I was breaking new trails. I stopped for a moment to catch my breath and my eye was caught by the tall prairie grasses sticking up above the snow glistening in the early morning sunshine. It was as if there was glitter sprinkled everywhere. When I turned to catch a 360 view of all the beauty I was surprised to see how crooked my trail in the snow was. This observation led me to a series of experiments on “focus and straightness.”
My first intention was to ski to the North West gate of the pasture as straight as I could. I set my focus on one of the gate posts. But to my dismay my tracks had veered to the right. The next time I aligned two focal points. This gave me a near focus and a far one to help keep me in line. Then I imagined that I had a string attached to my belly button and I was being reeled in by the far focal point which happened to be a big round bale in the next field quite a distance away. When I arrived at the near focal point, a post, my focus was still on the far one and when I turned around to see my tracks, they were much straighter. But it was not good enough yet, because I could still see little bobbles of crookedness in the tracks.
I wondered what had caused these little bobbles of crookedness, so I went back to ski in the exact same tracks. As I was doing this I concentrated on how the ground felt and what my body was doing at these points of crookedness in the path. I discovered I was leaning to the right each time the path had a bobble, therefore causing me to drift right. I also noticed my stride was longer with my right leg than with my left leg. I also felt more strength in my left arm which pushes me forward with the ski pole as my right leg glides forward. Bottom line, I was using one side of my body more than the other.
Hang in there with me I am going to get to how this relates to riding a horse with straightness. The next part of the experiment involved skiing with my eyes closed. I know it sounds crazy, but this is when I really started to make progress because I was better able to feel the imbalance in my body. I picked a point much closer than I had been using, closed my eyes and bravely began my journey. When I opened them, I was shocked by how much I had missed the point. And you guessed it I was to the right of the object. I tried it again with a new object, same results.
The next time I closed my eyes and concentrated on skiing to the left of the object a little, and to my amazement I was on target. Wow, I had to try it again, but this time I was off to the left of the object even more. I had overcompensated and when I arrived I fell down for the first time this year because I was leaning to much the other way which not only caused me to miss the target again but to loose my balance.
I thought to myself, “I have to concentrate on keeping my body from leaning either way, make my strides equal, and put equal amounts of pressure in my poles.” Plus I thought about my core again. I imagined I was being pulled from my belly button with a string to the object. Yahoo, this time I arrived on target with perfection with my eyes closed and it was the straightest path in the snow I had made. I also felt strong and balanced.
If you haven’t figured out by now how this relates to riding a horse with straightness, I will try to explain it. But before I do, I challenge you to do the above exercise in the snow. You don’t have to ski, just try it walking with your eyes closed to an object and see how straight you are. Then try riding your horse at a walk in the snow and see how straight you can make the trails. You can even ride with your eyes closed a short ways. You will be amazed at the results. I have been doing this with my horse, plus seeing if we can go in the exact same trail over and over. I thought it would be easy, but I found out I still have plenty of room for improvement.
For those of you who have been to one of my camps, clinics or lessons you know I talk a lot about focus. And you often hear me say things like “don’t look at your horse’s ears, they won’t fall off”, or “quit looking at the ground, look ahead at something”. This is one of the keys in helping a horse stay straight. I noticed when I looked at the ground while skiing the more crooked my path was and the further out in front of me I focused, having two objects aligned with my core being drawn to the far one the straighter my path was.
A horse will go where his brain is focused. Whenever his brain and feet are working together the horse will move forward with willing straightness. However if his brain or focus is going in a different direction than where you are trying to get his feet to go his anxiety level will increase along with his crookedness. It is our job as a good leader to set it up so the easiest thing for the horse to do is focus on following our guidance. Without a strong focus of our own our guidance is meaningless to the horse.
If we get the horse focused in the direction we are pointing him and our focus is a strong support, the next thing we must be careful of is the straightness in our own body. Ask yourself these questions:
Did I saddle my horse so the saddle is balanced in the middle of the horse?
Am I sitting straight in the center of the horse?
Am I on my balance point?
Am I aware of the core of my body and where it is directing us?
Does my seat have a forward feel in it?
Are my hands presenting equality on the reins?
Am I presenting a forward feel with the reins?
Are my legs wrapped around the horse with balance?
Is there the same amount of weight in each stirrup?
Is one of my stirrups more forward than the other, or are they the same?
If we become aware of our own straightness first it will be easier to develop straightness in the horse. I will save writing about “how to help the horse with straightness” for a future newsletter after you have had an opportunity to experiment with your own focus and answer some of the above questions. If you sign up for one of my camps or clinics in 2008 you will get important live feedback about the harmony of straightness between you and your horse. It is one of the riding themes I will be studying, sharing with others and working on myself in 2008. If Ray Hunt and Bill Dorrance say “straightness is everything” then it deserves our unbiased attention
Happy Trails,
sherry jarvis
www.heartinyourhand.com
