The
Centerline Wild Wings Collections Original Painting
Arizona Dressage Association
Vol. 16, Issue 8
www.azdressage.org
AUGUST 2016
The Whole in the Part By Susan Downs Parrish, Ph.D.
Christoph Hess, an FEI “I” judge and former director of dressage training for the German National Federation, uses a remarkable pattern in a video on DressageClinic.com. He aims to help a woman perfecting tempi changes of lead. The pattern is six serpentine loops with a tenmeter circle inserted at the point at which each loop touches the long side of the arena. Upon crossing the centerline, a change of lead. A taxing exercise for horse and rider. I have been working on this set of movements for several months, and am noticing positive results. Jonas Irbinskas introduced me to using patterns. I was fourteen and didn’t understand the wisdom of his instruction, but he challenged me, and I loved it. My next instructor was Charles de Kunffy, and the importance of a series of planned maneuvers began to sink in. Gerd Zuther followed Charles and added many such plans to my repertoire. I never heard Jonas talk about the German Training Scale, but I’m sure he was steeped in the system. Charles and Gerd invoked the Scale in every lesson. Recently, I’ve been reading The Internet of Us: Knowing More and Understanding Less in the Age of Big Data, by Michael P. Lynch. Lynch writes about what Googling can and can’t do for us. He distinguishes between citing facts and understanding . He discusses the idea of the whole in the part. I could try to explain this theory of how wholes and parts relate by using the Heisenberg Uncertainty principle. Sure I could; however, let me cite the first four lines of The Auguries of Innocence, by William Blake instead.
To see a World in a Grain of Sand And a Heaven in a Wild Flower Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand And Eternity in an hour
Blake is referring to the whole in the part. Continued on Page 5