Roadmap to a Better Connection
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I invite you to dive in! Come and immerse into the threads of Feel, Timing and Balance, both separately and as we weave them together with The Feel of Release for a light and joyful ride. Discover the direct line to your horse! Feel and Lightness go hand in hand - one augments the other. The art of releasing a horse through feel is refined by timely technique as it relates to locomotion and balance, while developing a better feel for the horse enhances technique. It is all about connection - a good ongoing feel your horse can rely on that serves in all things, from riding in the woods, in the show ring, or over fences to going out to feed at night, trimming feet in the pasture or caring for an injury. Getting with the true feel of the horse is creative and just plain captivating! Come join the fun! |
Feel
Look at these horses. Imagine you are standing right there, aware of every whisker and breath. They are feeling of each other, while feeling back to each other, each offering their unique, exquisite feel to the mix.
All the horses are curious, mentally engaged with each other, and physically light in their readiness for any maneuver in the next moment, when one offers to lead the dance.
Bill Dorrance knew that this availability of a curious mind and the readiness for any maneuver were the source of a genuinely light and willing ride - a ride best released within such a connection through feel with their rider as these horses demonstrate with each other here.
Bill realized that dominance ("Why, there is no place for this idea if you're speaking about horses") and pressure ("That is what we are trying to get away from") offered by a human before the reward of a release, or hand-fed reward, to mark the desired response are strategies apt to snuff out this instinctively light and available feel a horse has in his nature.
In the context of equine learning theory this is intriguing because it tends to rule out both positive and negative reinforcement as feel-based strategies in the sense that Bill thought about "feel". So what to do?
Bill found the missing link that allows genuine lightness to remain available: an ongoing feel of release that we adjust to fit and shape the horse in the moment. The reward becomes the ongoing moment to moment good feel vs. the intermittent good feel offered as reinforcement.
When the good feel is a constant between you, the reward is YOU, rather than the release of pressure or treat. And that re-defines the connection.
Timing
Adjusting to fit the horse, through an ongoing feel of release blends a number of things for effective timing, including:
1) An accurate read of "the feel the horse has in every square inch of his hide and all through his mind"
2) An understanding of the horse's sensitivity to space and its use.
3) Clarity about the role of the root of the neck, and how this relates to accessing the feet and mind.
4) How a feel of release can be offered in timing with this flow to shape a horse and release his curiosity - and therefore his genuine lightness - so that is connected to the feel of the handler/rider who offered it.
Balance
The more we build our power of observation and awareness, the more we understand what Bill meant by "particles of feel", and the better our feel and timing will fit the horse.
In the end though, that dream connection, the most exhiliarating kind, will depend on the precision that comes from having the 'supporting' actual facts in our flow:
1) The horse's shape, his way of dynamically distributing his weight during locomotion and how he places his feet.
2) How to influence 1) though feel.
Whether "performance" to you means a quiet ride in the woods, a quality arena pattern or a bold gallop over cross-country fences, your horse's performance and long term health/soundness will benefit from Feel, Timing and Balance achieved through The Feel of Release.
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Do Feel and Timing give you Balance, or do Balance and Timing give you Feel?
Bill's brother, Tom Dorrance, used the analogy of balancing a broom handle on your finger to illustrate how Feel and Timing give you Balance (or not!).
Bill offers richly detailed examples throughout his book "True Horsemanship Through Feel" and explains seven nuances of "Feel" in the Meanings section - and left plenty more on the table to explore.
Faverot de Kerbrech, whom Bill cites as one of his key influences among the masters of the French cavalry, was a dedicated student of Baucher and the French tradition of lightness. He wrote that “the easier it is to shift the weight of the horse in any direction, the more perfect the balance”.
Master horseman Nuno Oliveira said that "in equitation there are two main things, technique and soul." Both express the emphasis of the French school's focus on a technical understanding of balance in locomotion, relative to rider balance and precision, with a view to developing good timing.
Philippe Karl, Ecuyer for many years at Le Cadre Noir, sums it up: "Equitation only reaches the dimension of art to the degree that it appears to escape the constraints of technique... and to free oneself of technique requires a very high level of technique."
From this perspective, one might say that Balance and Timing give you Feel.
As I have traveled a long and winding path from what I see as the artfully precise technique of a French foundation to achieve lightness, to what I can only describe as an exhiliarating immersion into Leslie Desmond's entirely different yet connected world of feel and release, Bill's conclusion could not ring more true:
"Each one of these things [Feel, Timing and Balance] supports the other. They are interconnected and all three are real important. You really can’t get along without all three.”
The common ground between the two perspectives is as fascinating to me as the connections I make about how Bill adjusted to support his approach of Feel & Release and primary goal of leaving the horse's genuine, natural, exquisite lightness intact - through feel.
