Teaching Finesse

Dear Friends,

As you’ve seen recently on Facebook, I’ve been teaching some of Pat’s Mastery Students in the art of riding with Finesse. It’s wonderful to be teaching people who are really thirsting for knowledge and have a lot of preparation for this stuff! Finesse is a very complex subject and you have to learn so much about your body and using it athletically to influence your horse's engagement, and then developing your feel. Contact without pulling, posture and structure without tension, longer leg profile without bracing...it's a deep subject! I love seeing the results when people start to get this, and I’ve learned that when you give the right directions, the results come fast! There were some pretty nice “makeovers” with the Mastery Students in just one lesson.

It’s great to have the Mastery Students to experiment on, because it is helping me learn new and simpler teaching techniques. One example is putting a Savvy String around the horse’s neck and hooking your fingers into it. It trains you to keep your hands still, to ride more with your body and it protects the horse from any accidental pulls on his mouth! I actually wrote about this first in the Mastery Manual on Flexion, and it’s something Pat showed a high level dressage rider about five years ago – I just didn’t think of teaching it until now. Sometimes, I’m a bit slow.

Yours Naturally,
Linda