May 2012 Newsletter by Dressage Naturally

May 2012

“Creating stronger partnerships and healthy biomechanics by combining the principles of natural horsemanship with the art of dressage.”

Karen Rohlf Upcoming Clinics: For full schedule, click here June 2-4 Gilroy, CA Sweet Spot taught by: Shelby Hume Shelleycandelario@yahoo.com

June 2-12 UK 2 clinics taught by: Karen Rohlf stefgaunt@yahoo.com

June 15-18 Poland taught by: Karen Rohlf Contact: beata@400.pl July 20-22 Ebro, Ontario, Canada Upward Spiral with Karen Rohlf

Welcome to the May 2012 Newsletter! In this issue: • This & That • The Power Of The Walk • Solana started, Ovation back! • Classroom DVDs coming soon!

What is a ‘Temenos’?

June 29-July1 Bridgewater, NH Sweet Spot taught by: Shelby Hume Contact:

Temenos is an ancient Greek word. It refers to a sacred space that has no limits, where special rules apply and extra-ordinary events are free to occur.

laddfarmllc@me.com

June 2-4 clinic in CA

Shelleycandelario@yahoo.com

Dressagenaturally.net

clinics@dressagenaturally.net

One Spot open in Shelby’s

Quote of the Month: “Be open.

And then the truth follows.” ~Gangaji

This & That Karen is coming to Ontario!

HURRY! Only a couple spots left in Shelby’s June 2-4 clinic in CA

July 20-22:

Contact: Shelleycandelario@yahoo.com Don’t miss this opportunity; Shelby is quickly becoming in high demand around the USA. Go to clinic page for more clinics

The Upward Spiral of Success. Taught by Karen Rohlf Contact: breannepeters@hotmail.com It’s been a little while since I have been to Canada and I am so excited to be returning!

Contact: clinics@dressagenaturally.net to create a clinic in YOUR area!

Barefoot Trim Resource

I do my horse’s hooves (with some occasional help from a professional) and one thing I have learned is that on the one hand it is easy to do it well and it is even easier to mess it up! James & Yvonne Welz have truly dedicated themselves to trimming to create healthy hooves and to helping us understand it too! The have a print magazine that can be signed up for at http://thehorseshoof.com/ . I highly recommend investigating them. James and Yvonne have a way of presenting the information in really accessible way.

Another new recommended product is the SoloComb For those of us who want a nice trimmed mane, don’t have the heart to pull the mane, but hate the look of a mane cut with scissors, this is the solution. This is a great tool! You grab the long hair, tease up the rest (like you would if you were going to pull it, but then you use this to cut it. It leaves a really natural look, preserves partnership and your horse will look lighter on the forehand! ;-)

Do you like the Sonnenreiter riding Pants I usually wear? D,N followers get discounts at Proryders.com Simply mention my name! If you don’t live in Europe, (They are a German company), then

Proryders is the place to get them. Just mention my name by leaving a message during check out, (you will be refunded in a separate transaction), or place your order by phone!

The Classroom is going strong! There has been so much great feedback - it is so satisfying for me to hear all the results you are getting from this!

Join the Classroom!

Coming Soon! Classroom Archives on DVD! Soon the D,N Video Classroom Archives from 2011 will be available on DVD!

You asked for it!

We are preparing the 2011 Videos to go in a 6 DVD set.

Available to subscribers at a low cost!

Anyone who was a subscriber to The Classroom for at least 9 months by the end of 2011 will be able to purchase them for a ‘close to complimentary price’. It is our thank you to our members, and one of the new benefits to being a subscriber to The Classroom!

The DVDs will also be available for everyone, and will be found in the web store. We are aware that some people’s internet simply isn’t fast enough to be able to make viewing possible. Now everyone can benefit from the videos!

Being a subscriber to The Classroom still gives you the best value, and the most immediate viewing of the videos, as well as access to The Forum... Still, we are so excited to be able to offer this to folks who have been unable to access the videos on the internet.

Big Thank You to Dana for all the tech work! They are close to being ready and we will let you know when they are available!

Feedback Just want to let you both know I love my new Ansur Excel and my mare Amiga does as well. The saddle fits her very well and it does NOT slide forward. She is much freer in her shoulder with this saddle. My chiropractor checked her out after I had been riding her in it for a couple of weeks and he has found no issues or sore spots :-)). I'm still playing with the added velcro blocks that came with it. For the moment I've pulled them all out . Regards Donna PS - my Parelli professional also liked how the saddle fit my girl as she checked it out this past weekend.

Just wanted to say how much I enjoyed the clinic with Shelby Hume. She was a great teacher, patient, caring and enthusiastic. And most of all, positive! Lauren Kahn was a wonderful clinic host as well. We all hope Shelby will come back in the fall! I think everyone who was there this past weekend plans to bring a friend or two! Susie Haubenstock Morning Karen, I just wanted to let you know what an absolutely fantastic weekend I had with Shelby and the group in NC this past weekend. Shelby was positive and supportive while still challenging me to explore new areas and old areas in a new ways. I have never had the pleasure of participating in one of your classes and Shelby seems to have taken your principles and embodied them and then she has the ability to communicate them to others. She not only allowed but encouraged me to hold hands with my horse (there is a first for everything) and it was so huge for us. I really felt the connection with out the brace and for that spilt second we were together. I know that it will take tons of practice to sustain that but now, thanks to Shelby, I know it is possible.

D,N Instructor, Shelby Hume

I went into this clinic with the desire to learn techniques to help my horse find balance and relaxation but found a “new” place where it was more than techniques. It was a partnership if only for a short time, but it was there and we discovered it. This was by far the BEST clinic I have ever taken. I believe that my horse thought so too as he came to me from the herd every day when at other clinics on the second or third day he would not be so eager, something has changed. Thank you for allowing Shelby to share your principles and I hope that she returns soon. Of course I would love to take a clinic with you but I can’t say how much I learned from and enjoyed Shelby. I wanted to let you know how inspiring this weekend was. Thanks again and again, Debbie Darling

The Power of the Walk You should count yourself lucky if you have never had to be restricted to only the walk for any length of time... Or should you? Whether it was due to an injury of the horse, or myself, or because of icy footing, (I didn’t always live in Florida!), heat, etc there have been many times when I have been restricted to only walking with my horse. The news is usually met by me with a big sigh, a mental visualization of the calendar, some positive thoughts such as: “well, that’s not so long in the big scheme of things”, but on the inside it is difficult not to feel a pang of frustration or impatience. Then I remind myself of a strange phenomena that I will call: Inconvenience-Induced Amnesia. This occurs when I am so distracted that this ‘inconvenient change of plans’ has been thrust upon me that I forget that every time this has happened in the past it has led to a really nice result that I may not have found otherwise. There simply is something special about spending time at the walk for extended periods.

What is it about the walk? The walk is different than the other gaits (of walk-trot-canter gaited horses) in that it is the only gait where: • Each leg moves independently, and • There is no moment of suspension. • Relaxation of the back is key to clarity of gait (tension at the walk will disrupt the rhythm faster than other gaits) So what does this mean? If each leg moves independently it means we get a chance to really feel what leg is stiff/strong/weak/out of alignment. It gives us a chance to get very specific about straightness and suppleness. Since there is no moment of suspension it is the easiest gait for the rider to sit, and so gives us the best opportunity for more subtle giving and receiving of information through a relaxed seat. With no moment of suspension, the mechanism of engagement and collection must be more ‘sophisticated’ in some ways. In dressage-land the walk is the last gait to be asked to collect because it is so easily disturbed. If you push too much at other gaits the horse can spring in the air... The moment of suspension can act as a buffer... There is some margin of error where a horse can flatten his trot or canter and still keep a 2 or 3 beat rhythm respectively. But if you over-ride or push a walk there is no air-time to absorb it, so quickly the rhythm is no longer a 4 beat rhythm, and so it is no longer a ‘real’ walk. The idea of waiting to ask the walk to collect is that presumably the horse and rider have learned better skills by that time... A different idea could be that the walk is the best gait to check whether your technique for collection is really beneficial, because poor technique will be more apparent! Relaxation of the back (and mind) is so important at the walk (mostly for the reason above) and of course it is so important to the whole horse in general, so in someways you will find out more about the truth of whether or not your horse is relaxed by riding the walk... If the walk is relaxed, chances are the whole horse is relaxed. One of my favorite sayings is that ‘Everything comes from and returns to relaxation’. In dressage-land, Rhythm/Relaxation is always listed as the top priority in the Training Scale. Walk is the gait of relaxation. copyright 2012 Temenos Fields, inc. May

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Power Walks, (cont’d) What can you do at the walk? Of course that depends on whether you are walking due to vet recommendation, weather, or due to footing, but here is a range of things to consider: • Make big improvements in your own posture/position • Play with the connection, build trust in the contact • Transitions from freestyle to connected, refining and searching for sources of any tension. • Lateral positions and transitions between them • Lengthening and shortening the stride; exploring how to use your seat to communicate this. • Focusing on the rhythm of the gait and looking for 4 evenly spaced beats. Search for and resolve reasons for interruptions in the clear rhythm. • Practice precision riding different sized circles and straight lines • Practice freestyle seat connection • Changes of bend/direction, searching for and resolving areas lacking suppleness • Partnership building... Adventure walks, variety, building confidence, or simply enjoying a nice long walk together! This past summer Ovation tried to keep up with Atomic during an extended mad gallop around the pasture and unfortunately there were some consequences, which led to a couple months of difficult diagnosis, then rest for 4 months (cue a big sigh). I reminded myself that: Every time this has happened in the past it has led to a really nice result that I may not have found otherwise... There was so much we could do! Dressage trainers in my past always joked about how difficult it is to get a warmblood back feeling good after time off, but every step of Ovation’s recovery has felt as good or better than before. All that we need to do is continue to gradually build his strength and stamina back. It was a chance to clean the slate, to let the troubles and tensions fade away and keep the dynamic that works. So whether it is due to injury, or 100 degree heat, or icy ground, or.... If you are restricted to walking, don’t think of it as a restriction, but a gift and an opportunity to go deeper into your feeling of the horse’s movement.

Another experience that convinced me of the power of the walk was from when I was competing my horse, Vivaldi (a.k.a.: Bubba). We were entered in a CDI competition at Prix St Georges and Intermediaire I and I got food poisoning the night before my first class. In these shows, if you scratch one class you scratch the whole show and I wasn’t about to miss the whole show! At 1.5 hours before my ride time I was finally able to stand up without ‘something’ coming out, so I went to the show grounds and got on my horse. Bubba was not all that ambitious and usually took some brisk movement to wake him up, but all I could manage was walk or I was going to puke! So I warmed up for the class only at the walk, doing the essence of each movement, plus I would walk past my trainer who would touch his back legs for a couple steps of piaffe here and there. Then in I went! I took a deep breathe and tried not to think about the consequences of riding in white breeches in public with food poisoning. I had to remember the test while trying to determine whether the feeling I was having in my tummy was a burp (which if I let out would make me feel better) or something more recently familiar (which also would make me feel better but would not make such a pretty sight at this moment.) We ended up with one of the nicest tests we had done, with a warm up I never would have chosen. After that day, I began using that type of walking warm up on purpose!

Solana had her first rides this week! She has been really ready to ride for a little while, but I have been so busy that I kept putting her on the back burner. I like to feel like I have endless time when putting the first rides on... My method is closer to The Meandering Path To The Horse rather than The Road To The Horse ;-) But I kept asking myself â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;what was I waiting for? She was wearing a saddle comfortably, I had bellied over her with no event... Well I guess I was waiting for Lianne! Lianne Landa spent months with Fawn Anderson who is just down the road from me, and when I saw her ride and learned she loved (and was good at) starting horses I thought what a perfect human to give Solana a great first riding experience! Lianne is doing super, Solana is so calm and confident... The whole process has been delightfully boring... And I just get to play the proud owner, which is a very strange role for me. Weâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ll do this for the rest of the month then she can have a big lick and chew on it when Lianne goes home and I start to travel. Solana is a 3 year old filly. Her mother is half kiger mustang/half PRE (Gaucho III) and her sire is Sandro Hit (Oldenburg)

Ovation is back and better than ever!

It has been a long, boring fall and winter for Ovation as we were waiting for an injury to heal... But it has been a chance to clear the slate and start anew... It has been so amazing to feel his reflexes and balance be better than before... Yay!

4 Day Clinic

We had a beautiful 4 days for our late April clinic here in the Temenos. There were familiar faces and some new ones. We played with a range of things from a dressage studentâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s first freestyle with her horse, to finding a let loose, stretched posture, to improving our own positions, to helping get better balanced counter canters.

DRESSAGENATURALLY May 2012

The Art & Science of Dressage, Naturally... Learn to find The Sweet Spot, then bring it with you! Prints, tote bags, and mugs are available in the web shop! Artwork by Karen.

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