Nov '07 Newsletter by Dressage Naturally

Dressage, Naturally

with Karen Rohlf

Creating healthy biomechanics and stronger partnerships through combining natural horsemanship principles with the art of dressage... Dressage horses are horses, too. photo: Peggy Finnerty never underestimate the potential for harmony & lightness to improve in ways you cannot yet imagine

Welcome back to the Temenos... 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.

This month... Ahhhh, my travelling season has ended! I wrapped up the year with clinics in Chester, NY and Guelph, Ontario. A special guest auditor at the Ontario clinic was Walter Zettl! Now I am settling into the wonderful routine of seeing my horses everyday and watching them get stronger and stronger! In this issue I will answer a few questions, including another good one from my friends at the Natural Dressage Forum!

My upcoming clinics are: NOV 10 ... Open Format Workshop at Temenos Fields, Ocala. FULL (Open for auditors) contact K2 for details. If

you would like to submit a story or a question please email it to: karenrohlf@earthlink.net to submit it. You will also be informed about exciting news from my temenos!

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Student Question.. “Is it OK to purposely, lighten my seat to help my horse bring his back up? Student, Laurie French sent me the following question which I was happy to expand upon...

[This] question I have is with my-

self. I have been an instructor and trainer for years, and just in the last year have started myself back into lessons where someone actually critiques me ( thank goodness! way too long!). Anyway, I notice I acquired a too casual position from not being under the watchful eye! I am attaching a picture.

velop the horse’s back. From the moment we sit on them, our weight and gravity is My problem is this, when I am working on my working against our desired result: a horse getting soft through the back, spine, and back that can lift. If we plop our weight ribs, and giving to the light contact, I know I down and sit statically, unathletically, his have this image in my mind that I should make my seat soft so that he can raise it up into that body will be in pain or will fatigue and he will adopt a posture to protect his back area, especially if I am making any balance and rhythm mistakes (which is always possiagainst us instead of one that offers itself ble). So i think deep down I round my back on to us. Our goal is to create a confident purpose to lift my seat-bones as I feel my horse (with the posture that goes along horse isn’t in shape and strong enough yet to with it) who trusts our body. Would you do it for long periods of time and or with my full contact and seat-bones down on his back. be able to have a confident trusting posI also tend to open my hands and arms a bit to ture in the presence of someone who help him, or make it as easy as possible for regularly punches you in the stomach?

So as you take your lessons, do refine your posture and allow your legs to reach down and your upper body to become more silent and stabilized above your pelvis. Trust your instincts as to how strong your horse is to be able to carry your weight with his back up. This is the artful kind of riding that allows great big men to ride lightly on their horse’s backs! (see picture below) Thanks for your question and photo ~K1

him.

I will say this horse is as good as gold, and is very calm and left brain through this process, he is just out of shape and I am physically having to bring him up to shape. Mentally/ emotionally, he has it just fine. So tell me if I should be thinking this way, or not. I am just really curious as to your thoughts on this. thanks so much.!

Well, I think your instincts are ex-

cellent, and if I had any doubts, the picture proves you are on the right track! That is a picture of harmony, healthy biomechanics and lightness! Lucky you! I want to also commend you on trusting your instincts regarding what your horse is telling you he needs due to his physical condition. we must take our time to de-

As your horse gains strength you can let him carry you more and more. And as you want him to carry more uphill you can bring your posture more upright. Then your challenge is to keep your lower back supple even though you are refining your upper body posture. It will be the same challenge for your horse: to become up hill without stiffening in his back. Repeated short intervals and many transitions will develop this. If tension creeps in, you can return to the home base of the posture pictured above, or simply rest. We want to be able to blend having our weight deep into the horse, but to also be athletic enough in our backs and hip joints to be able to ‘ride the wave’ of our horse’s motion.

4 star parelli Instructor, Berni Zambail

laurie’s contact: lfrench@globespeed.net www.frenchquarters.net

Another excellent question from the Natural Dressage Forum:

We have been discussing contact a great deal and hoped you may have input on getting a long open neck that stretches to the bit, use of the outside rein, and your views on salivation. Achieving vertical flexion is one thing, but we would like to learn more about the type of contact that is needed for creating more expressive gaits. Thanks for your time and knowledge, The natural dressage forum www.naturaldressage.2savvy.com

A: I always feel like giving a ‘zen’ answer to this question: “Ahh, it is not the contact that creates the neck, but the neck that creates the contact.” ... and just leaving it at that... From there I make sure I can take the The neck is an extension of the spine and the spine is supported by the legs and is free only if there is balance. The key is to find balance, then the neck is free. Balance is a product of the emotional state, the mental state and the physical state. Within respectful boundaries I make sure my horses feel free to move powerfully forward (this does not mean just speed or out of anxiousness, because a horse that is ‘escaping’ forward, by definition does not feel free! I make sure they are balanced and I make sure they know how to find the stretch on-line and riding.

I really leave the neck alone as much as I can. If I have prepared the horse’s body, mind and am riding well, his neck will be free. The he will naturally look to ‘hold hands with me’. And I can receive it. It is less about amount of pressure and more about quality.

Karen(K1),

but really this is the case!

The same goes for the outside rein. Yes, it is important to feel the energy of the horse between the inside and outside of his body, and when bend is created, or in lateral exercises, if your outside rein is there, your horse will fill it up. If you disappear or are not there, you will not feel it and your horse will also not feel as much information or connection. But too often students are told ‘outside rein’ or ‘outside rein half halt’ and they TAKE the outside rein. You need to ‘be there’ and cause the horse to fill it up for you! Now, as for salivation... that will continue on the next page!

slack out of my reins and not screw anything up! The contact truly is created by the body of the horse filling up the contact. This is a completely different feeling than a horse who is bracing or leaning. Our hands must be able to diagnose the sensation of pressure. ‘The horse filling up the contact’ or ‘feeling the horse’s hocks in your hands’ are statements that are often mis-interpreted to mean it is OK if your horse leans in your hands. Not so! But also misinterpreted is the idea that to ride in lightness it is not OK to feel your horse! If the horse moves forward into our hands to make a connection in the reins and we misinterpret it as brace, we now have discouraged the long, reaching spine and will cause contraction as the horse tries to be a ‘good boy’ and not touch the reins. (top & lower right photos: Coco)

Salivation... (not to be confused with salvation) Here are my humble thoughts on salivation: First of all salivation is good...it just matters if it is excessive, and what happens once it is in the mouth...does it dry up, get swallowed or accumulate?

Benign reasons for foam: • action of bit against lips. I just put a (clean) rubber thing in my mouth and I am not really feeling stressed, but I am accumulating some saliva and even though i am swallowing, I don’t get a perfect ‘seal’ and so some is getting a little frothy in the corners of my mouth!

As with everything, the important thing is to know your horse, and notice when something changes...then take in all the information at hand and do your best to figure out what is going on. If I see a horse foaming, I do just that: I look at the whole picture and see if there is any meaning behind it.

Ever notice that athletes spit a lot? I asked a triathlete friend of mine why. He commented that during exercise • anxiousness...this is typically big sometimes the saliva is more mufrothy stuff that drips all over the cousy and feels better to spit, and also place! during some intense exercise it just inability to swallow... due to tension • doesn’t feel good to swallow, it inter- I think that is all I have to say about and tightness in the throat latch rupts the breathing pattern or can salivation! area. cause more air to go into the stomach. ‘Negative’ reasons for foam:

‘Positive’ reasons for foam: • intense concentration/effort... I have found times when horses, even with the hackamore on get a little foam between their lips during sustained concentrated moments. I am aware, but if everything else tells me things are OK, I don’t see it as necessarily negative, especially if the horse licks and releases when he rests. I have experienced this on horses having really wonderful moments of them really ‘applying themselves’.

‘Negative’ reason for no foam: • dry mouth due to holding mouth slightly open, or so much tightness that no saliva is produced

Maybe some horses experience this too...could be worse: they could spit!

To join the Natural Dressage Forum, got to: www.naturaldressage.2savvy.com

Typically, the horses I have don’t get foamy except for a little between their lips on occasion. In dressage-land foam is considered ‘good’ but I think that is because so many horses shut down and become dry in the mouth. This is dangerous because then the tissues can crack and be damaged by the bits. It is a common practice to feed sugar cubes often to keep them having something to chew on. I have also seen liquid soap squirted in their mouths to create foam. This was done in the spirit of not letting the horse’s mouth get dry and injured, but of course it was not getting to the core issue!

‘Positive’ reason for no foam: • Horse producing saliva but is relaxed and loose enough in the jaw and mouth to swallow regularly. 4

“Dressage is a matter of trust”

~Walter Zettl

Fawn Anderson and Billy

3 Star Parelli Instructor, Fawn Anderson hosted me for a 3 day clinic in Ontario. It was cold, damp, Canadian weather, but the weekend was made warm by the amazing students, beautiful horses, diehard auditors and a special treat of having Walter Zettl audit all day Saturday. He also brought along a protoge of his, Eddo Hoekstra. All that and a wine and cheese party in a local art gallery on Friday night! I was honored by Walter’s attentiveness and enthusiasm. He must be doing something right to be still so full of love for the horses, the art and the process of learning. I must admit, I breathed a sigh of relief when he gave me his words of approval at what I was doing! I really must thank her and Heather McNeil for organizing such an excellent group of students. Following are Fawn’s comments on the weekend:

Illustration: riding forward to the connection

Karen riding student’s horse

Thank you so much for what I knew was going to be an amazing clinic. It was so wonderful to see how having a solid foundation enabled my horse and I to make amazing progress during the four days with you. Billy, my 6yo buckskin, is not the most engaged horse in the world and the stretching and energy exercises really made a huge difference in his desire to step underneath himself, round his back and soften. You could really see how, once he found this way of moving, he truly wanted to be able to move like that more! Riding in the clinic with you and spending time with both Walter Zettle and Eddo Hoekstra at the clinic was really life-altering. I see now, more clearly than I ever have, what refinement and the connection with the reins both means and is for. Or, more importantly, what it is not for.

It has awakened in me a desire to really

study and understand more about Dressage, for I see that it is really a discipline of improving both horse and rider and has absolutely nothing to do with 'English' or 'Western'. The glimpse of freedom of movement that I saw in my little Billy horse was inspiring and something that I will strive for 'within' my Parelli playings. A few of the things that you spoke about over the weekend that really had an impact on me were: 'Ride the freestyle 'within' the finesse' and vice versa - having done so much freestyle with Billy and learning much more about what can be done by your seat alone set the stage for this to really hit a chord in me. And I was so pleased at my ability to pick up the reins and take a connection without losing the relaxation by understanding that shaping 5

comes first from the body and is only supported, not initiated, by the hands. Boy was it tempting to forget about the body once those reins were picked up, though! But you reminded us to not try to fix the head with our hands, but to get the horses body to find alignment and, through that, relaxation and a soft, intimate connection through the bit. 'Don't be afraid to 'mess' it up' this was just another reminder that in order for us to find that sweet spot of perfect synchronicity and lightness we must be able to swing from one side of the pendulum to the other freely in order to find that middle point. And even if we lose it a second later, if we felt it then we can find it again. But if we always try to be careful and ride exactly, we lock up our horses and ourselves and create heaviness by our hesitation. But the more often we aren't afraid to go beyond what we were actually asking for, the sooner our horse will respond and give us just what we are asking for. 'Did your horse match your energy/do what you wanted? Do they know that they did/did not?' - Wow! Talk about a strong reminder that we need to stay consciously focused and always be aware of what we are asking for and whether we got it. Not accepting 'good enough' when our horses and ourselves are truly capable of really good. The mental exertion this required of me was a humbling indicator that I need to practice this, consciously, until it is second nature and does not require such an effort. This goes back to the fact that every moment with your horse you are either sensitizing or desensitizing them. The exercises in your clinic truly heightened my awareness of

this. Giving instant corrections (which were really more of a supportive tap to let my horse know he had not matched my picture quite yet) and instantly letting my horse know when he had made it was hard! But I am encouraged by the knowledge that this will become a far easier habit with practice. Karen, this clinic was EXACTLY what my horse needed me to do so that I could be a better partner for him. I am so excited to take this back to my younger horses as well so that the next time I am practicing my freestyle, I can be practicing my finesse within it and be developing habits of movement that will help us both down the road. I am very excited about the time I will be spending studying with you this winter and can't wait to see where all this leads. Thank you so much for coming to Ontario and we are all very excited to have you back in the spring and fall of 2008.

And THANK YOU to all the students, clinic hosts, auditors, volunteers, facility owners and especially the horses who have made this years clinics so much fun!

~Fawn Anderson Thanks, Fawn for your feedback

I look forward to 2008

Nullam arcu leo, facilisis ut

Photo: Dana Rasmussen photonstudio.com

... I’ve got a secret!

magazine and I will be doing some articles for them.

The Dressage Naturally book is at the printer!

Also check out Quarterhorsedressage.com as they have asked for articles The DVD is still in editing from me also. They have phase, but is moving forward... I am so sorry I keep promising asked me for photos of stuit will be ready soon... I really dents on their quarter horse, paint or appaloosa doing had no idea how long these dressage, so if you have phothings take! tos of this, send them to me This month my new website will be up, so check in a couple and I will see if we can include them in future articles! weeks for that. There will be some new stuff on there as well So that is all for this month... as a fresher ‘look’! Stay well, have a Happy Also I want to tell you about a Thanksgiving to those of you magazine called Horses For here in the USA, and I will Life It is a beautiful on line see you here next month, if not before...

Dressage Natu

…Results in Harmon