Enlightened Equitation/Susan Hopf

06/09/2022

A picture caught my eye as it illustrated the problem created by saddles blocking riders in an artificial posture. I drew the silhouette and asked the New Order Team members about their impressions.
Here are the four first responses.

Susan Hopf
The rider in the picture is something I see all too often. Not only with new students and in live clinics but also in advertisements for breeches, bridles, grooming products and other equine products. The silhouette created with the straight arms, seat too far back and high on the cantle with no alignment in the spine of the rider makes me cringe each time I see this aberrant rider position. It makes me think more of a poorly arranged "hunter" rider rather than a dressage rider whose ultimate goal is balance. Balance is spoken of in all aspects of dressage training but unfortunately rarely achieved in part due to the current fashion in saddles. Saddles with a too deep seat, the pommel so high and the rise traveling too far back coupled with large thigh blocks leave little room for the rider to actually sit. Instead the thighs brace against the blocks and push the rider's seat back. This then creates a distortion in the proper alignment of the spine which over time will most likely cause issues in the lumbar spine of the rider. As the rider struggles with the saddle they will miss any connection with the horse. I hear and read all of the time "trainers" telling their students to feel the horse. But in the position demonstrated in the picture all they wind up feeling is an aching back. As the struggle continues they then clutch at the reins to try to stabilize the imbalance in the horse, forcing the horse to be heavy on the bit and consequently causing the horse to travel heavy on the forehand. Among other more serious consequences, such as navicular from the overloading of the front limbs, balance can never be achieved under these circumstances. Saddles must be included in the paradigm shift that is the cornerstone of advanced and educated riding. (For those interested in learning more about advanced equine education please check out Science of Motion's In hand Therapy Course as well as the Wisdom series.)

Ronda Hanning
The rider’s seat is at the back of the saddle and the knees are pushing into the knee rolls. The lower leg has swung forward. I would anticipate from her position in this photo that when the horse alights with the diagonal pair that she will move too much and then be in a position where she pushes with her seat. I would expect to see her upper body move too much. It also looks like when the diagonal pair alights that the front foot will touch first and will touch not forward enough in front of the shoulder. I see tension through the neck and shoulders of the horse. The reins as you have drawn them look loose but the tension in the neck and shoulders of the horse tell me that the horse probably puts weight on the bit or the rider has tension in the hands or arms. The rider’s shoulders are rounded and the chest is not open. That also tells me there is weight there. The rider looks “perched” on the saddle and way above the horse, especially with her seat at the back of the saddle where the saddle is thickest. The upper thigh does not drop down and hug the thoracic because it is at the wrong angle due to the seat being at the back of the saddle and the lower leg swung forward. This rider may not absorb the movement of the canter in the lumbar but instead, hinge and the hip and move her upper body forward and backward at the hip joint. If her leg has tension the lower leg may swing back and forth a bit as well.

Vicki Borrelli
This saddle has the opposite effect of what they are looking for. No way to be able to advance the pelvis forward as the thigh blocks prevent even the upper inner thighs to have any upright support. Lifts your sit bones and pushes you back on your glutes. Certainly disconnects you from the horse; you are spending your time riding the saddle instead of the horse.
I had a student pre-Samba for me that had one of these saddles. When I hopped on to better explain to her what I wanted, I literally could not move. It was as if the saddle was 5 sizes too small for me and it was either a 17.5 or 18" saddle. Hers was an expensive high end saddle and I thought about how trendy the saddle was but how aweful it felt to me. It put me in a position that you literally had to push your glutes into the high cantle in order for your legs to not mash against the thigh blocks, which they did anyway. And to get off the horse was an extraction project. The forces that came through your back were like a jack hammer and there was no way that I could find to right that. The rider in your picture looks like they are handling that saddle better than I did. Course, I suppose if it were in motion, we would see more problems, no doubt her feet would end up in front instead of under the hips.
She thought the saddle gave her a sense of safety as she was so locked in, but it prevented her from having any dialog with her horse through all that leather and the distorted position she had to ride in. She was always sore after her lessons and blamed me for the workout. What it gave her was only a false sense of confidence as she was never in a place that she could effectively communicate with her horse. Once I got my Samba I made sure that she rode in that for her lessons. Needless to say she was able to reach a level of communication with her horse without undue effort and invisible cues. She realized that she did not need to be 'locked' in to ride and what it was like to finally have the freedom of her body to use and that her body was not sore after lessons; I would say also that her horse felt less strain as well as he could now respond instead of react to her requests. The rides got more harmonic.
It makes a huge difference when you are riding to have the correct tools and your saddle and your body are the key tools. Without having the ability/freedom to move to influence your horse all you are doing taking on blunt forces of the horses movement without a way to redirect them; your body pays the toll as well as the horses. One of the high end saddle manufacturers has a book out on why their saddle should be the choice for your horse if you love them. I read the book. It certainly was very well done. However, never did it ever mention anything about forces coming through the saddle or how that plays into developing a saddle. Well, if you do not take forces into account, how are you basing what you are building on? And that is a big problem with modern day dressage saddles. It is all about the fashion or what is in vogue. Fashion not function.

Amy Potter
For sake of brevity, the very first thought/word that came to my mind when I see the silhouette of rider in the picture is
Lordosis. Backache.
Also, a thick wall between horse and rider that damns any potential for clear, sympathetic (two way) conversation into a distortion; a disruption
of pushes, shoves, instability. No flow.

06/09/2022

Wisdom for the ages. By Susan Hopf

I have yet to comment on the individual presentations in the Wisdom 2 Tensegrity course simply because I have been listening to each one multiple times. From the first the information has been much to digest mentally but on top of that, each one has touched the very soul of my endeavor to work with horses in the best possible way. Each additional topic continues with layer upon layer of data and then breaks it down to its practical application. An incredible body of work and clearly one that comes not only from a deep passion for learning but also becomes the heart of what all conscientious riders should strive to understand.

As I approach my mare now, with each installment fresh on my mind, I have to stop and rethink all that I do. Not just what I was taught years ago but also what I brought to my ride a few seconds ago. Am I pushing here, grabbing that or asking just too darn loud? Am I focusing too much on one part of my body, one part of her body or am I keeping in mind both of our bodies as a whole? As I work through all of these questions and as I let go of my more loud requests I find my mare, a truly sensitive soul with a great sense of humor, return the favor by becoming softer in her resistances and ultimately letting them go. She has had a perpetual issue in the right SIJ which I have addressed in various ways since she came to me from the track six year ago. But it is always there, or it has been. Now as I consider biotensegrity structures and spirals and proprioception and I assess my level of touch in a very short time she has let go of her protective reflexes and no longer “dog tracks” behind; and not just when schooling she has stopped dog tracking on her own.

It is difficult to express just how deeply this course has touched me. I have trained horses for close to 40 years. This is a whole new level of enlightenment. Not only for my horse life but for all aspects of my life in general.

Many thanks to Betsy, Michelle and Jean Luc for their tireless research leading us all toward better relationships with the gentle giants we call friends. https://www.scienceofmotion.com/documents/certificate_program_1.html

05/29/2022

Tack that distracts.
A few years ago, as a favor for a friend, I attended a clinic with a well thought of local dressage trainer. I did not ride, only audited, as I did not know her personally and never subject my horses to the unknown. Sadly the clinician did not address most of the participants concerns nor did any of the horse/rider combinations improve. But that is not why I write.
Throughout the day I watched several riders quite literally get stuck in their saddle. It begins when first mounting. Trying to throw their leg over to take their seat the riders’ had some difficulty in getting past the huge thigh blocks. This was then followed by many gyrations to position their legs into what can only be described as slots formed between the block and the very deep seats so typical of many dressage saddles. Trying to find a place to sit also seemed to create a problem since there really wasn’t room enough to sit. Then many had issues with dismounting as their legs once again were trapped by the blocks and high cantle. The poor horses suffered in silence through all these machinations and then went off to do their best despite the riders’ constant fidgeting as well as the saddles rocking from side to side on the horses’ backs due to the very padded panels and too wide gullets.
I left this clinic shaking my head and wondering how a discipline of riding that should be based on harmony and enhancing the horse’s athletic ability so easily turned into a such sadly comical parady of such. I felt sorry for the horses as well as the riders for neither received any real help from the supposed expert. But what is worse the riders did not seem to realize how little information they were given since they spent most of their time fighting with their tack. In retrospect perhaps one answers the other. Perhaps this is the very reason why these saddles are promoted by dressage trainers. And that is to keep the riders distracted so they do not realize how little they actually are able to glean from these sorts of clinics. Quite obviously there is a decided lack of education which is all too often accepted as okay.
As I drove home I realized the only way out of the funk the day created was to spend time with my mare Nia. Tacked and ready to go I easily swung my leg over my saddle and gently placed my seat in my Macel Samba. No wiggling needed as my seat and legs were just where they needed to be. I breathed a sigh of relief and took in the beautiful evening. A herd of deer decided to join us after crashing through the trees, apparently to both them and my horse, they were being chased by bigfoot. A big spook ensued but it was barely noticed as the saddle remained stable and even though it was quite surprising for us both I felt it coming and was able to go with Nia, take a breath, watch the deer meander into the hay field and then just go back to work. To me this seems so simple. To be seated on your horse in a saddle that allows you to feel your horse as well as allows the horse to feel you seems the only reasonable approach to our tack. If this does not exist how can we communicate with each other? Einstein said “Genius is making complex ideas simple, not making simple ideas complex.” Yup!

05/02/2022

Continuing Education. By Susan Hopf
“It’s what you learn after you know it all that counts.” –Harry S Truman
To best serve our horses we need to have the knowledge with which to help them overcome issues and achieve their potential. Much of today’s riding has come about on the heels of past knowledge. The past can be a valuable tool but only if you’re willing to let go of information and ideas that no longer bear up under advances in research. We all look to those that have achieved what we desire. But we need to evaluate with some level of thought just how their success was created for in today’s world of high speed internet and social media, coupled with highly competitive activities, much success is weighed by fame and fashion instead of true knowledge.
I was well trained in what is best described as Classical Dressage. I make this distinction as the Competitive Dressage world did not then nor does it now hold any interest for me. My training consisted of schooling horses in hand between 2 whips against the wall to begin and then mounted against the wall in lateral positions that were well accepted at the time. The reasoning behind this was that the whips would lower the haunches and lift their knees, and the wall would oblilge a horse to stay off of the bit and hand. This was 40 years ago. My horses as well as my students’ horses improved in gait to varying degrees. Being light and straight was always the goal. At the time I believed that that was achieved, again to varying degrees, but often with great struggle and at times some level of volatility from horses that were unable to comply with this comparatively forceful way of schooling. Some of the struggle came about due to inverted rotation. I now, but did not then, understand that horses that were not capable of bending correctly in the thoracic vertaebrae distorted the bend and that lowering the haunches is not the biomechanically correct way to create lift.
As my education and teaching became more advanced I started to think there must be a better way. I studied and researched and found much to contemplate. In the late 1990s finding articles written by Jean Luc Cornille in Dressage & CT magaines, that spoke of equine biomechanics, began a whole new level of education but that was just the beginning. Finding a clinic close by with JL Cornille changed all I knew regarding schooling horses. Featured in this clinic was an introduction to Science of Motion, a science based program that shed light on many fact based reasons why horses succeed or fail to stay sound, as well as why riders struggle. The amount of information given to each rider/horse was incredible. Real answers were given to many questions regarding crooked horses, heavy horses and riders that had issues that were never corrected in the past. From there I became a member of Science of Motion and as such my education has been challenged and continually enriched, benefitting greatly my horses, students and their horses.
In the beginning several “ahha” moments struck me. The first was that there was no need to trap a horse between the wall and whips. If you allowed the horse time to think and contribute they learn more quickly and with greater results. Walking quietly next to them I quickly felt the level of connection that was possible as long as I managed my own body correctly. Each horse became lighter, straighter and more engaged both physically and mentally, often in just a few minutes. As my new level of understanding grew it next became clear that to truly connect with your horse you need an indepth understanding of their biomechanics. Management of forces, how each horse places their feet, maintaining my own body in a correct tone and keeping the horse involved in the conversation became paramount in my thought process. And now as JL Cornille continues his research, along with a team of highly regarded researchers, we advance our understanding even further to the level of vibrations, tensegrity and even more nuanced communication between rider and horse that is indeed a paradigm shift in our relationship with horses.
Those of us that have experienced this level of integrity with regard to equine schooling have done so best with the support and constant evolution of information from JL Cornille and Science of Motion. No point is too small with regard to examining what has come before. Making sense of how horses convert the thrust from their hind legs, through their backs, utilize elastic strain energy and how fascia, aponeurosis, muscle and bone all work together to support and amplify all that we ask is a complicated study but one that is vital to a true equine education. The smallest change in tone and seat can make or break your ride. Of course not every moment can be perfect and learning to feel what is not correct and where your horse may be struggling is key. In order to accomplish this you must have tack that allows such an intricate feel. This is where a saddle that fits close to the horse and puts your upper thighs in the correct place can help. And in contrast a saddle with panels too deep and wide, that moves too much on the horses back, while disconnecting the rider from their horse will forever make for a frustrating ride for both horse and rider. My Macel Samba has made a world of difference for me and my horses. And I can speak from experience when I say my students have all felt the same. A well balanced and well postioned saddle that was created to first not interfere with the motion of the horse and then enhance each ride with stability and feel best describes Macel’s craftsmanship.
Harmony between horse and rider is often spoken of in all disciplines of riding. The only way to truly reach this goal is to have a secure knowledge of how the horse actually functions physically and processes information mentally. This allows us to make good decisions regarding how we approach and address each horse and ride. Never stop learning especially when another soul is involved.
“The important thing is not to stop questioning; curiosity has its own reason for existing.” -Albert Einstein

01/02/2022

Manure happens!!??

No way!

It is, in fact, a painstakingly complicated process – beginning with one small seed, a speck of dirt and a drop of water. And so the journey begins.

Grass and other sorts of greenery grow from seeds sown on the wind. These seeds are blown about, land in the dirt and then anxiously wait for a drop of water to help them sprout. Once sprouted these fragile beginnings of plant life must then passively avoid being eaten by critters above and below the surface. If lucky enough to survive the sprouting then these delicate tendrils reach and seek out soil in which to nourish themselves, root and grow into all sorts of foodstuffs that horses like to eat.

Meanwhile at the opposite end of the food chain a little girl is reading about little pastel ponies, black beauties, black stallions and little horses that can – do anything. Four-footed collectibles line the shelves, floor and bed of this budding equestrian’s domain. She is fed plants and various sources of protein to “grow big and strong”. Many hours are spent grooming and dressing the multi-colored array of equines.

Nagging of the parental units ensues – lessons, horse camp, jodhpurs, boots and helmets follow. Time passes as all go back and forth, back and forth, to the barn, day in and day out, all for an hour’s worth of time spent with a big-eyed gentle giant. Up, down, up down and round and round they go as these parental units freeze or sweat in a musty, dusty barn and arena all the while calculating costs and smiling with enthusiasm each time the child/horse unit trot by.

After several years the child/horse unit will wish to travel to different barns and arenas in order to engage in the up down, up down, round and round, with hopes of obtaining brightly colored ribbons. As the ribbons accumulate the child will require a more personal equine unit in order to obtain more brightly colored ribbons and perhaps a trophy. The search begins for an appropriate candidate. More freezing or sweating in more barns and arenas and more cost tabulating take up most of the parental unit’s time. Distances are traveled and many perspective equines are evaluated and rejected until the perfect pair of eyes is found that also match the perfect coat color, mane texture and length of tail. Once this perfect equine is acquired and delivered to the barn of choice the travel time is slightly less – but only for that amount of time that the child/equine unit’s trainer deems necessary for the pair to safely engage in yet more traveling in order to obtain yet more brightly colored ribbons.

There are two constants in this ever-changing (and money-sucking) endeavor – the first is that the child’s love of the equine unit never waivers and the next is that no matter the barn, arena, weather or distance traveled manure happens. There is nothing that can be done to prevent this but for the seed to never take root – ah but what a colorless existence that would be and where then would the child learn to love another creature so different, yet also so similar, to her bipedal family and friends.

03/04/2020

Private training lessons with Jean Luc Cornille at Science Of Motion farm in Georgia.
Horses require our best to perform to their highest level. Jean Luc Cornille will advance your knowledge, giving your horse their best chance to reach full potential. Poor performance and chronic, undiagnosed lameness can be symptoms of training issues. Even when genetically predisposed horses with kissing spine can be helped with proper guidance toward improved body coordination. Spend three days with Jean Luc at the Science of Motion facility with your horse for critical evaluation and rehabilitation. You will gain the knowledge to help you overcome current difficulties and keep your horse moving forward toward a sound equine athlete.

Please contact Helyn for specific details and cost - [email protected]

Hotel accommodations nearby.

03/01/2020

https://www.scienceofmotion.com/documents/kissingspine.html
The kissing spine is, unfortunately, a relatively frequent problem with very few medical solutions. One is an invasive surgery, with all the risks related to surgery. The other is injections, which might provide transient relief but do not cure the problem nor teach the horse to live with the abnormality.

The problem of the equine kissing spine often combines genetic anomaly and protective posture. The dorsal spines are inherently too close and the horse adopts a protective posture providing short-term relief but long-term problems. In 1980, Leo Jeffcott summarized the results of 443 cases of horses having back issues. The British scientist categorized the severity of dorsal spine impingements into five levels.

Interestingly, there was a high percentage of affected horses showing a higher level of severity (42%). In the eighties, back soreness was thought only to be a compensation for hock pain or other musculoskeletal disorders. Commonly, kissing spine issues induce discomfort in the hind legs. The symptoms vary from reluctance to pick up the hind legs to lameness. One can imagine that with the mindset on the thought that back problems were the outcome of hock issues, hocks and other limb joints were investigated and injected again and again before looking higher into the horse's vertebral column. When finally the focus was directed on the horse's back, the problem had already evolved to the higher severity level.

With technology improving the quality of the pictures and a greater willingness to investigate the horse's vertebral column, horses can be diagnosed even when the dorsal spine only touches intermittently. These horses are easier to reeducate. The concept of therapy in motion is pertinent, especially in a world where training techniques are the main cause of equine injuries. In 1994, Mikael Holmström wrote, "Most dressage manuals describe the training of passage and piaffe, but very few explain how the horses perform them." Indeed, the science of motion focuses precisely on the body coordination allowing a horse to perform soundly and efficiently.

In many instances, the genetic predisposition, which places the dorsal spine too close, does not alter the horse's activities until the intensity of the demand increases or the horse is submitted to inappropriate training techniques. Very little can be done about this genetic predisposition, which places the dorsal spines a little too close. Still, a horse can learn to work and function efficiently with this genetic abnormality. The key is to identify the posture and working attitude, causing intermittent contact of the dorsal spines. The horses that we have reeducated presented a combination of stiffening or arching of the thoracolumbar spine, associated with a problem of lateral bending and/or transversal rotation.

Once the source of the kinematic abnormality has been identified, the reeducation is, in fact, an education. The therapy for the kissing spine can be CLICK LINK TO READ ON

02/27/2020

This is an incredibly important article and I encourage every caring rider to read it. It has so much more meaning than instructing the piaffe.

Example of the profound wisdom found within...

"There is a fine line between challenging the horse to think and challenging the horse to protect. Keeping in mind the horses’ inherent willingness helps the rider to negotiate that fine line without going over it. When a horse expresses their difficulty by not doing what we ask or expect, if we keep in mind this inherent willingness, our minds will be a fertile soil from which solutions will be born. If, instead, we believe the horse is disobedient, lazy, crazy, etc., our minds will be the soil in which our horses are buried. The science is available today to explain the difficulties our horses present us with in our daily work."JLC

The evolution of knowledge should make us think, versus how traditional thinking makes us think.

01/09/2020

"The holy grail is not at the level of success and associated ego; it is when we meet the horse at his level of subtle perception, absolute willingness and outstanding kindness. "JLC

The Holy Grail


The search for the holy grail commences early in our equestrian life. There is something mysterious, sublime, superior, an absolute lightness and harmony with the horse that is promised in the equestrian literature but not clearly defined and apparently unreachable. For a competitive rider, the holy grail must be the absolute victory, but from local, to regional, to national success, the holy grail remains ahead of us. Maybe it is attainable at world class level. Well, I competed at world class level and realized that I was aiming in the wrong direction.

The holy grail is not at the level of success and associated ego; it is when we meet the horse at his level of subtle perception, absolute willingness and outstanding kindness. The real horse has been curtained from us by the theories of obedience to the aids and submission that have directed our skill and mind away from the relationship that the horse expects from us.

All along, the horse has done it in spite of the archaism of our training techniques and even when the reflexes that we stimulated were contrary to the effort that we requested. We have engaged the horse’s hind legs forward under his belly thinking that the more forward the position of the hind leg at impact, the greater the hind leg’s ability to propel his body upward. There were studies demonstrating that it was indeed the forelegs which produced the greatest percentage of upward forces but the findings did not fit our beliefs and we dismissed them. Horses have performed and continue to perform in spite of our kicking legs and shifts of our body weight. As we think that upward propulsive forces are created during the first half of the stride when the hind legs are forward under the belly, the horse starts the propulsive activity of the hind legs during the second half of the stride as the hind legs move backward behind the body. The first half is the decelerating or breaking phase where the alighting hind legs resists accelerations of gravity storing elastic energy that is used for the following sequence of the stride, the pushing phase. As we think that our driving seat pushes the horse forward, the propulsive activity of the hind legs produces a force in the direction of the motion traveling forward through the thoracolumbar spine. Gravity pulls a percentage of the initial thrust generated by the hind leg down to earth loading the forelegs, and the shift of our body weight accelerate gravity loading even more the forelegs

Our mind imagines specific effects of our actions but the horse perceives totally differently our gestures and shifts of our body weight. The horse has basically to ignore our nuisances and coordinate his physique in spite of our nuisances, and we take the credit when the horse succeeds. Rider’s skill and the horse’s talent find ways to communicate through a third language. I did, all the way to world class level, and realized that I was feeding a system which failed the horse and failed me. “Any intelligent fool can make things bigger, more complex, and more violent. It takes a touch of genius - and a lot of courage - to move in the opposite direction.” (Albert Einstein) The touch of genius is in the inherent intuition of many riders. The courage to move in the opposite direction demands that one liberates oneself from the oppression of the system. Insecurity is a weapon of control as insecure peoples always feel that they are not good enough. The system is a third language which does not allows one and one’s horse to reach their full potential.

Meeting the horse at his level of subtle perception, absolute willingness and outstanding kindness is the first step toward the holy grail. It is a considerable evolution but a fascinating journey. It does not question our physical skill; it uses it for a different conversation. We partner with a willing and imperfect partner who meets difficulties and tries instinctively to protect whatever muscle imbalance, morphological flaw, or even memory which is part of his body state. The horse does not need our judgement; he needs our knowledge and analysis. The horse is willing to explore a different solution if our analysis identifies the source of the difficulty and provide solutions to correct it. Then, the touch of genius which allowed the horse to fill up the blanks of traditional education rises the partnership at a level of intimacy, willingness, and intelligence that the submission to the correct aids never approach. This is the holy grail.

Jean Luc & Chazot