Ep. 46 The shape of the horse’s neck, and the ‘footprints in the sand’.

Hello, I'm Mary Wanlis WELcoming you to podcast 46. In our last podcast, we were talking about images that access the horse's core, the treadmill that goes horizontally through him from his seat bones to his chest and recycles. And I hope you've been able to think about that, even if all you've been able to do is to hack your horse out. We also had that small water wheel in his shoulder blades going from the tips of his withers to about halfway down him, which is the level of his spine at that point. I told you about how with one of my horses, that small water wheel helps me make a filled inness and an upness to her back and connect her middle third to her front third in such a more healthy way than she would do left to herself. With one of my other horses, it's been a major help too out hacking. And he's the kind of horse that thinks the world might end at any moment. And there we were one day, walking through the woods down a path downhill, and then it turns to go more steeply downhill, making it look like there was a human in front of us with no legs. This woman was actually just standing still with her dog, waiting for us to come past. And suddenly his neck goes right up in the air like he's going, mary, look, there's a human with no legs. And his pushback in 0.2 of a second is immense in those kind of situations, especially if I get a couple of seconds warning and I'm ready. With that small water wheel, I can avoid llama drama in a much more powerful way than I've ever been able to before. And it can totally dissolve what would have been a big deal. The option exists to not just send water up over the water wheel from the horse's stifles up through him, but to go from his stifles to the bottom of that small water wheel and then on into his neck under the neck vertebra. This follows the same line that I've talked about as the tracer clip line. So in the area where I live, the people will often clip horses in winter, using one line to delineate the clipped bit from the not clipped bit that goes from the horse's stifles just forward and up on a straight line to somewhere just behind his jaw, a bit lower down than his ears. And the line from his stifles to the bottom of the water wheel and under the neck vertebra takes that and makes it two dimensional, going through the width of the horse's body. And for some horses, it would help to turn the water wheel that way to help bring the front end of the horse up. In others, it would just make the horse too hollow. A big deal in terms of deciding which of those you need might well be the shape of the horse's neck. And let's talk for a minute about the neck vertebrae. So the vertebrae within the horse's neck are pretty much shaped like a teapot spout coming out of his ribcage lower down than you might imagine. And then from a rather horizontal bit going rather up before the last couple go more horizontally into his skull. If you see that shape on the outside of the neck, we call it a swan neck. The neck could have a lovely crest with the vertebra being basically that shape. And when the horse goes to graze, the teapot unflattens into one single curve with the horse that has a very upright teapot spout. The llama type neck, it's like those middle vertebra are stuck in a rather vertical place. And I often find myself looking at that kind of horse and going, how does this horse manage to eat grass? He really looks like he was designed to eat leaves. But when that teapot spout flattens out into one curve, he can indeed eat grass. But he'll bounce back up from that almost like a rearing cobra with a very upright neck. Other horses, the neck is almost stuck too much in that single grazing curve. And when they bring their neck up, it doesn't do the rearing cobra, it just does very long and flat. A U neck really means that the bottom vertebra at the bottom of the teapot spout are really dropped down and have slack muscles underneath them, because there are some muscles under them that should be just holding them up more. But if those muscles are slack underneath, those low neck vertebrae are dropped down and that drags down the top of the neck just in front of the withers. Now, none of these neck shapes are easy to change, but it is possible to make a difference. And of course, if you've bought a horse with a naturally lovely crest, a well shaped neck, a chest plate which isn't so low down, isn't so far away, isn't so tilted, but is closer to you higher up and more vertical. If you start with that horse, he's likely to be a more talented horse and easy to ride. But there's hope too with the other horses. So let's take the rearing cobra llama kind of neck. Somehow the rider has to get the middle Neck vertebra, I would say, especially five, four and three, numbering them there, going away from her, because seven is closest to her and one up at the pole by the pole. Those vertebrae need to somehow be made to be more horizontal and almost like they could have gaps between them rather than being vertically stacked on each other and just imagining trying to push them away with your bear down, imagining the reins as solid rods, trying to create more horizontalness and more length to the neck. It's not easy to change that, but I have got some colleagues who've been able to do it really rather well. The rather long, flat grazing neck that goes more from one single curve needs to become the teapot shape, that needs those middle vertebra to be drawn towards the rider. Back through time, we had the braids to buttons ideas, which worked to a degree, but it does work much better to imagine, let's say, some elastic bands under those neck vertebrae, pulling them up towards your front, keeping a very strong wall to your front. So whether you need to think of pushing the neck away from you or drawing the neck towards you is going to be determined very much by the shape of that neck. Being able to influence the whole neck from its very bottom to its very top as it goes into the skull is very often challenging. But, you know, it can help. If you almost imagine your horse had a unicorn horn, like the connection of his neck, if it's a bit wobbly in those few vertebra up towards his skull, if you think of a unicorn horn, you're kind of getting that connection and energy to go right through to the front of the face, as if someone was pulling on his unicorn horn. And if he would be rather like a shy person going, oh, no, I don't want to see and be seen and retract his head with that and probably come behind vertical, you're trying to counteract that tendency and go, be out there, horse, be brave, be seen, get your energy right out of the front of your face. Grow yourself a unicorn horn. Many elite riders will be able to make adjustments to a horse's neck without maybe even knowing they're doing it, let alone knowing how that they're doing it. Because, of course, this would be an implicit skill that's part of their unconscious competence, part of their talent. And of course, they're more likely to start with a horse who has a neck that is well set on and not stuck in either extreme of the rearing cobra or the grazing neck. But whilst your horse might not have the ideal shape, you definitely can using the schema I've devised. Learn how to work your way through the Alphabet and make a difference. I'm aware that in this podcast and in the recent ones about collection, there's a danger that I've just been saying, do X focusing on things that are too far down the Alphabet for you at the moment. But I want you to realize that in the last 40 years I've been doing this, things have changed immensely. And what's taken me 40 years to learn can definitely be learnt in 10, and for many people in five if they're coming in with good body awareness and a good riding background at the beginning. But whatever skill level and level of perception and presence and embodiment somebody brings with them, realize that there are, as it were, footprints in the sand of the people who've gone before you. Within this work, those footprints give you a track to follow. Sometimes I think it's rather like the four minute mile. Roger Bannister broke the four minute mile. It was thought to be impossible and within months other athletes had broken it too, because somewhere there was a change in consciousness, a change in mindset, a change in belief. I think that's true with this work, as riders get into it and are able to go through these layers of the onion, these learning stages, faster and faster and faster. And there's more to it than just my understanding and my skill at teaching it and the skill that has been transferred to the other accredited coaches. When I began to come up with this in 1980, it was very new. But it wasn't that I was the only person. When we were looking for publishers for my first book, one of the publishers that really would have been a good bet had already signed another author, and that author was Sally Swift. Sally and I had no knowledge of each other, but we were both in different parts of the world. Combining what we knew about bodywork and, and the complexity of bodies and how to unravel that and combining that with writing skills. The time was ripe within the culture for the beginning of this work, if not the general acceptance of it. That makes me think of what's been called the hundredth monkey syndrome. And actually, I looked this up. It's a great story that the researchers on one island studying monkeys actually were giving the monkeys yams, were putting out yams for the monkeys. It wasn't part of their natural food. And one of the younger monkeys started washing her yams in the sea. And then other monkeys started following suit. It was the younger monkeys that copied her. A lot of the older monkeys never did the Story then goes that this spread to monkeys on other islands. Now, actually, the science for that is some sadly not there because it's a wonderful story and I'd love to believe that that happened. But what does happen repeatedly through history is that discoveries have been made of the same concept or scientific invention in different parts of the world by people who had no communication. So Charles Darwin, who came up with the theory of evolution, had a rival, Alfred Russel Wallace, who did the same with slight variations. Before then, in the 17th century, both Isaac Newton and Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz came up with calculus, perhaps just to torture schoolchildren of future generations. Although actually calculus was about the only thing I could ever do. But I guess that makes me rather rare. Sally Swift and I were both at the same time melding our knowledge of bodywork with riding. We had no knowledge of each other. And actually, when I first started writing Ride with youh Mind, we went to a publisher who would have been the ideal publisher, who said, great idea, but sorry, no, we've already signed another author and that author was Sally. So the time was ripe, the vibes were there, the pieces that could be put together into a new whole were known to both of us. And that time was right for the initiation of an idea, if not the acceptance of an idea. But between these ideas of our simultaneous discovery, the footprints in the sand, the, the four minute mile, people get this faster and faster as time goes by. And here in the uk, more than one person has said to me, you know, I think the standards of riding are changing in this country really fast. And I think it's a mixture of me as it were, pushing standards up from the bottom and Carl Hester and Charlotte Dujardin and some of our other well known names and at the top, drawing people up from the top, being really good role models, showing well ridden horses by well organized riders with really good ethics. But here's a question for you. If the knowledge that I've been putting out here were explicit, were known consciously by elite riders, were told to people down through the levels, what would change in competition? Certainly at the high levels, I think we'd see fewer riders riding horses with their nose behind vertical, and we'd see more people able to generate real collection with the muscle sling drawing the withers and the front third of the horse up and the loin coil relatively lowering a bit the hindquarters. We'd see fewer scrunched horses, less water ski motorboat horses. Riding and training then would be more ethical. Could I dare hope that as this Information was disseminated down through the levels that there might be fewer riders who would just want their horse's head down by hook or by crook. I can hope, but I'm not sure that's really realistic. We have the issues of deletion, distortion and generalisation, which happens to all information as it's disseminated between people and which really is unavoidable. We've got the issues of the wordscape and the brainscape and people who think that they've heard the word so they know all about it. We've got the massive influence of different schools in the culturescape, people who can't talk to each other and can't even really agree on what riding and training skills are. So I'm left changing the world one rider at a time, working from the bottom up. And where I have influence with elite riders, working from the top down, helping people go through all the stages from a first lesson where there's a realignment that asks the question, and what does this feel like compared to normal? And works with the riders until she goes beyond going, well, it's different or it's fine to what is different? Well, my thighs feel like this and I feel all slouched and my stirrups feel short. And we get some descriptive words which.

Get us on our way.

And soon we hope that rider's riding on interface with changes in her changing her horse. She starts to learn how to bring his back up and the idea of water through the hoses and maybe the big water wheel recycling back between the horse's front legs via its pecs towards its girth. That's especially useful in the Araby types. She learns about the carousel pole and the horse who might pull the bottom of the carousel pole forward and flip her back back. She learns the importance and the value of staying vertical. Once she's learned to bring the back up, she's learning about the middle third and the front third, the back third joining to the middle third. She learns to push the horse's head and neck away. And at some point that changes as she's learning to and draw on various parts of the horse. As well as this, she's learning that riding is an interactive game, getting feedback from the horse as the horse tells you what your next move should be. And that's such a different philosophy from here am I, the big white human chief, teaching you, the inferior horse, what to do and your job is to just be obedient. We're training our horse to agree to be danced and we are learning to get more and more perceptive in reading his feedback and timing our questions really well. Writing is such a multidimensional skill. I hope you agree with me that it really is in terms of the qualities you need as a person, how your brain needs to work, how you learn to pay attention, how you learn to get feedback and be appropriate. And virtually every rider I think, would agree that all of these skills take more than one lifetime to master and become really good at it. And of course, the bottom line is the learning process itself and enjoying the journey rather than just longing to arrive. And within that idea, our next podcasts are going to take us right back down to those pyramids of dots and expand the bottom layer. We've been scaling the heights in the last few podcasts of what is possible within riding and the rider's influence on the horse. And now as we go back down to the bottom, you're going to get more tools in your toolkit and get the tools you already have to work better. We really get to focus in on steering and in the meanwhile, have fun with your horses, enjoy your riding and I'll be back again soon.

These podcasts are linked to two other Internet sites. One is dressagetraining tv, which hosts a whole variety of webinars taught by myself, Mary Wanlis and my colleague Ali Wakelin with where we're working live with a variety of horses and riders, showing them the basics of biomechanics and helping them build their skill and train their horses and explaining to the audience as we do this. There's also a groundwork certification course on that site based on the work of Dr. Andrew MacLean and Equine Learning Theory and this too gives you a step by step guide to building your skills. We'd also love you to take a look@justgiving.com and then to search Overdale to find the Just Giving page for Overdale Equestrian Centre, which is my UK home base here in this time of lockdown in 2020, we have 10 school horses eating of course, and pooping and doing all the things that horses do and no income to support those horses and whilst they're having a wonderful time for us, this is something of a stre. And if you've enjoyed these webinars or enjoyed these podcasts and benefited from them and you're willing to give any small or large amount to our Just Giving page, we would be so grateful. Many thanks to you.