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Let the Horse do the Work!

Here we have a photo of the traditional leg position: thighs and calves firmly on the horse and heels down.  It's from a book I love! Effective Horsemanship by Noel Jackson It's also not what I do.  It's what I've not done for as long as I've been doing Centered Riding!  But it's still a cool picture and it'll help.

p36 Effective Horsemanship by Noel Jackson

The first major modification is to leave the bottom of the feet level with the ground.  

Real quick, if you push against a wall, what happens to the wall?  What happens to you?  In this case, the irons are the wall.  The more you push down on the irons, the more you push yourself away from the irons.  Which is to say, the more you push yourself away from the horse's back.  Since the aim is to stay *on* the horse's back, dispense with pushing against the irons!

Now, a released leg will have a heel that drops down naturally and is able to absorb movement.  This comes about by getting rid of any unnecessary tensions in the leg.  (Which is where I come in handy!)  So a heel below the iron is ok as long as it is floating and not forced.

The next aspect of this is that a lot of time is spent talking about how the leg moves.  Which, the leg moves, but we don't move the leg, and that's where it gets dicey.   

If you have a towel draped across the horse's back, as the horse walks, the edges of the towel will lift and drop -- because the horse's back lifts and drops.  But the towel itself doesn't get longer and shorter.  Similarly, with the legs, as a unit, they rotate around the longitudinal axis of the horse without needing to noticeable change their shape.  If the rider's leg is released, the rider needn't push into a stirrup or lift a foot, bend a knee or articulate a hip.  Or anything really.  The horse does all the work.  It looks a little like this, on a continuous loop:

One of my first images for this was from childhood playing with the plastic cowboys that snapped onto the horses -- the cowboys were permanently bow legged, and there is a similar quality when riding.  The legs stay relatively the same length and shape, although they aren't solid like the plastic cowboy.  Because there are released joints, the joints are articulated by the movement of the horse.  

The thing is, it's not like when the stirrup comes up, a foot lifts, a knee bends, a hip articulates and that side is scrunched up while on the other side the leg is still scrunched up waiting for the energy to pass over the back and unscrunch it.  There is a transfer of kinetic energy within the leg, like sand or water moving within the container of the skin.  

Another way to think of this is that the feet are on a teeter-totter.  When one end of the teeter totter goes down, the other end goes up.  And vice versa.  There are two ways to think of this -- the end that goes up pushes the other side down, or, the side that goes down, pulls the other side up.  I have found that if I allow the falling foot to pull up the other foot, it is much easier to keep tension out of the body.

Or, you can think of there being a long continuous string connecting the feet.  When one foot moves, the other foot automatically moves, too.  They move in unison at the same time -- just doing mirror things.

There is also another teeter totter which can be used -- under the sit bones, where the horse's back is moving.  If you think of the legs like strings with balls at the end (where the feet are), then when the side of the horse lifts, it lifts that leg, and when the side drops, it drops that leg. As one leg lifts, the other drops.  The deeper in the earth you can connect, the freer the movement of the horse and of your legs.

What's the benefit of this?

You don't have to keep track of how to move your legs!

Releasing tension from the body allows us to move in harmony with the horse.  Wherever we're tight, we bounce against the horse and have to grip.  By allowing the joints to articulate while letting the horse move them, we don't have to guess how much to move.

An Approach

If you're interested, another option is some hands on guidance and feedback!  Call and leave a message or email or pm and and set up a lesson!  This is what I teach.  Let me share with you how to use these concepts for greater  understanding and harmony with your horse.  The fabulous rides follow.

Lynn 
Centered Riding Instructor & Level III Clinician 

Books: Amazon Assoc. / Old Favs

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"The greatest achievement was at first and for a time a dream. The oak sleeps in the acorn, the bird waits in the egg, and in the highest vision of the soul a waking angel stirs. Dreams are the seedlings of realities." 

~ James Allen