Stories & Inspiration
What Is There To Learn From Young Horses?
Greetings from Denmark where I will be working with these cute Icelandic horses. I will be traveling through Europe in the coming weeks, and thought you might be interested in my insight from this trip. 🙂
The owner of these horses and I have started many young horses together throughout the years.
It made me realize that there is one thing to learn from starting young horses, that every rider should be aware of:
When I first started green horses, I realized that when I was doing it right, e.g. turning my body correctly to turn the horse, the green horse followed into the movement without me having to “teach” him how to do it. Isn’t that fascinating?
That means the green horse can understand and follow the movement of the biped on his back, if the human’s body is aligned with the horse’s natural way of moving.
Just like a good dancer can lead a novice dancer into turns and movements without the novice needing to “learn” the movement. They can just allow themselves to be lead by the confident dancer.
That means that if you understand the nature of the movement, you can move your horse into it without having to pull on the reins etc to try to make your horse “do stuff”.
You lead your horse through engaging the movement inside of you. Pretty cool, right?
What’s even better: The movement that’s required from the rider is basically the same movement a person would do walking.
Try this: Walk circles in the arena without your horse. Feel the way you are turning.
I guess: you are staying vertical and you are turning your body in order to walk the circle.
It wouldn’t make sense to lean in with your torso or turn your head to the center of the circle, right? You don’t need to do that when you are riding either!
Next time you ride, remember the way you were walking the circle and lead your horse onto the circle through turning your body just as much as you did when you were walking the circle.
I would love to hear from you how that goes. Shoot me an email to share your experience or ask questions!
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