Stories & Inspiration
How To Achieve Self-Carriage In The Horse
Greetings from Germany.
I am the student this weekend. I am deepening my knowledge of a work that I have studied and practiced for 20 years but as always, there is always more to learn. 🙂
The clinic started on Friday night with a 4-hour lecture by a great horse woman, Babette Teschen. Let me try to put the essence of it into a few sentences. Lol.
No, seriously, here is what this work is about in a nutshell:
It’s the work on the horse’s straightness. Most horses are crooked by nature, meaning they can bend more easily to one side than the other. This is the reason for a very uneven weight distribution onto his joints, causing balance and very soon health issues.
Fixing this is therefore crucial. And fixing it just through riding requires a lot of riding skills BUT there is a different way: You can fix it through in-hand and lungeing work!
You can teach your horse to bend both ways, this way finding his balance and rhythm, which again allows him to use his back. You can get your horse into a nice “on the bit position” without having anything else but a cavesson on them.
No side-reins, no pressure, just balance.
Sounds to good to be true?
Here is what I am convinced of:
If every rider understood the problem and would learn how to lunge like that, and if every young horse would learn to move like that, our horses would not only last longer but they would also be more fun to ride:
A well balanced horse moves better and more safely, and enjoys carrying his rider more.
There are many great trainers who are teaching ways to find good balance through lungeing and in-hand work, and I have worked with many of them but when I wanted to pass what I had learned on to my students, I found it almost impossible because the techniques were so complex that they were hard to teach to non-professionals.
When I came across Babette Teschen’s work 10 years ago, I fell in love with it right away.
It taught these great tools in a super horse-friendly, step by step, easy to understand and follow way. It can do tremendous amounts of good, and it would be hard to misunderstand it in a way to cause harm.
It’s super efficient but playful.
I have decided to give this work more room in my teaching as I believe in the power of it. There will be clinics on just this topic coming up! Let me know if you are interested, and we will get it scheduled. 🙂
If you want to get started, get Babette Teschen’s ebook that’s also available in English. I think it’s the best book on this topic on the market. It also comes with short videos that will allow you to practice it! Highly recommended! Here is the link:
Contact Carla if you are interested in learning this kind of ground work and would like to participate in or host “The Balanced Horse Clinic”.
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