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Apr/11 Q&A: How Do You Prepare Horses for Lead Changes?
Horses have grace, beauty, performance, power. All of it coming naturally to them. We must think about how perfect our horses present themselves in the pasture. Running, playing, and those fancy manoeuvres including the dances they perform with the lead changes.
Their athletic abilities comes so easy and natural to these amazing creatures, so us as proud horse lovers that are striving towards that deeper connection with our wonderful partners, need to keep it clear in our mind the truth behind this statement with the simplicity and complexity of these beings. Remember the key here is developing the connection with our horses for the unity we dream of. This starts all from the base of us to advance our horse’s potential as only through preparing ourselves can we prepare our horses.
Try this: Sit and visualize your horse loping/cantering around a meadow with the feel of relaxing through his body and the active momentum from the desire to enjoy him/herself in perfect balance. Now out of intention to look the other way he gently straightens his body then into a now new lateral bend the opposite direction through his/her entire spine to then switch/pick up the new lead. As we can see, a lead change cannot just happen from a cue.
Now imagine the beauty of your horse performing these strides again, but this time while you are riding. Cantering/loping with rhythm with that light feel connection in a even bend through the body then developing towards the straightness followed by straightness before the new bend into that new lead on the same rhythm. Recall the concept of deepening the connection with our horse; the harmony.
By no means does it, or should it, take harsh driving and intimidation into a lead change. Nor will the true harmonious lead changes come from mistaking riding as sitting in your lazy boy. We must find the balance of the horse in his/her body to flow through the dancing strides of the lead changes. It is the participation of feeling the active movement and relaxed flowing body just in ourselves before we can ever accept our horses to connect to unit with us. Remember that expanding our connection with our horses is our foundation to everything we do with them and this all beginning with knowing what we are feeling for. This flow of lightness with a feel is what we have to ride like. Ourselves being in this presents of feeling of relaxation and active is our main focus. Then if our horses do not find this feel to connect on to we can influence to engaging the mind and balancing the body to follow. The idea we are striving towards here is getting our foundation to get our horse to always deepen our relaxation and active connection. But what happens if our horses don’t find this connection is us? It is neither about doing repetitious patterns nor drilling our horses to shut down to break their spirit.
We must be asking ourselves the questions of is my horse in direct relation to myself with a relaxed feeling connection longitudinal movement (forward/backwards), lateral bends (bends from the top of the poll down the spine to the top of the tail head right and left), or vertical flexion (rounding up from the back muscles to the proportional degree of elevation)? Does my horse have the light active connection longitudinally, laterally, and vertically? Only through advancing these things will we deepen the connection with our horses.
As we think about this our intention with our horse has to be to get them to think about what to feel so they enjoy our partnership as much as we do and not to tell them what to think as this only puts their body into a false position and have no desire to stay with you. So we must influence only to get the mind to participate to get a feel toward the three connection channels of longitudinal, lateral, and vertical and leave time to their hoof beats as to when they will connect whether it is to maintain a certain bend or changing it to a new one.
Just be patient but imagine the connection will happen right then. Instead of thinking towards the task think about, “where is my connection with my horse at?” Where do we need to help out our horses in the three connection channels to be working towards tasks of doing bend practises, speed variation, elevations or maybe towards the task it’s self of simple or flying changes.
Have fun and deepen that connection with your horse as then any discipline, activity, task should just flow into place!
May all your horse dreams be reality,
Alicia
Equineship Connection is a holistic horse training approach presented by Alicia McKendrick which focuses on the concepts of forming a connection with our horses. No Force. No harsh methods. An equi- (equal) blissful natural connection, Equineship. With the knowledge of using relaxation and active energy, understanding the awareness of the mind, and developing self carriage with balancing the body we build safe, fun, loving, able equine bonds. Check out Alicia's website for more information!
ARTICLE ADDED THURSDAY, APRIL 7, 2011
CATEGORIES: TROUBLESHOOTING, Q&A, LEAD CHANGES, ALICIA MCKENDRICK
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