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It is now November, and I am in New Jersey, on a day off in between clinics. I have already taught in Toronto, Minneapolis and Indianapolis, and have been blessed with much nicer weather than usual - even if that still means being bundled up in ski pants much of the time! (As my clinic organisers often comment, I know how to dress!)The clinics have gone well, with some very receptive folks both riding and watching.
I left home in late October, after the usual mad dash of setting up next year's clinic dates and getting them up on the website. Then there was the publicity for the 'Naked Truth of Riding' day in February, and the lecture-demonstration tour in April. This takes a lot of work and thought, and it was coupled this year with the finishing touches to my new book, which I will have in time for the demonstrations.
The final stages of a book, in which we tie up the ends, always seem as taxing to me as writing the main body of the text. They include editing everything now that the overview is available, and organising diagrams and captions. This involves me, my editor, illustrator, photographer, cover designer, and publishers in the US and UK, so as emails whizz back and forth it all becomes quite complicated.
We are still not quite at the end of this process, so the book is still coming back to haunt me as I tour the US, but the end - which can seem 'so near but so far' for an interminable amount of time - is now very, very close. The final product is certainly going to look great, with fabulous photographs and diagrams, and I hope you will think that it 'reads great' as well!
I had quilt feelings about not updating my blog during October, but can finally raise my head above water enough to devote this bit of time to it now. In terms of my life, this is a good sign!
The teacher training courses which were held at Overdale in late September/early October were great fun, with even the basic group of coaches showing some impressive skills. We had two participants from the US and one from South Africa, who definitely enriched our experience. The advanced courses were a good forum for exchanging ideas, and the presentation that I gave on Thomas Myer's book 'Anatomy Trains' shed light on biomechanical issues that many of the coaches could not quite put together in that way. I am so grateful that I discovered his work, as it has really impacted on my thinking this year.
It was very helpful to have in mind as I was riding with Heather Blitz in Denmark this summer. My horse and I were over there for much of July and August, with Heather and I coaching each other. We made some super improvements to both of her Grand Prix horses, as well as to my horse. It is very good for me to get on a horse after she has been riding it, as I can pick up on her body pattern very well, and can sense what she does differently or more powerfully than I do, and how this has impacted on the horse. My learning process, with its emphasis on biomechanics and 'feel' equips me particularly well for this. A number of insights have come this way, and I am beginning to feel that I really can replicate her biomechanical pattern which (even though she learnt it through my work)is much more powerful, elegant and effective than my own. Bringing significant talent to the process makes so much difference!
The upgrade it requires in my muscle tone and ability to match the forces of the horse's movement is huge. I cannot sustain it for long, or do that much with it, but I know that those skills will come in time. There is a specific place where I start to feel 'like Heather' - and the horses certainly respond really well to it (I just hope that it also makes me look much more 'like Heather'!) The way it connect my arms to my body and keeps my hands easily out in front of me feels fantastic. But then, any upgrade in anyone's skills that makes it all 'come together' (for a time at least) will always be fantastic.
The hardest thing about leaving home for these clinics is leaving the horses, especially Quite, who I hope is missing me (some chance!). I get back home mid December after a short holiday in Belize, so I am looking forward to some adventures with sand sea and mountains before I hit the delights and distractions of my normal life!

It is now early July, and I am horrified to realise how much time has gone by since I last wrote this. April, May, and June have passed a whirlwind,largely because writing a book virtually fills my every spare moment inbetween teaching, travelling, or doing admin. It is a hugely demanding activity, especially with builders in the house as well - although I am relieved to report that they have now left me. However, the current level of chaos includes a half fitted kitchen, which has ground to a halt as the company involved have twice failed to deliver the worktop... (try living your life with the sink in one room, the fridge in another, and some rudimentary cooking facilites in yet another. It makes you fit if nothing else!)I am now longing for some normallity - especially given that I ordered this kitchen in January. My hall is full of everything that should have been in it, and I can't wait for some cleanliness and order. A place for everything and everything in its place... what a thought! It sounds blissful, and I hope I can live up to the ideal!
Last week, in a flurry of activity, I finished my new book book apart from the last chapter, and sent it to my editor. This took some doing! I am very good at starting projects, and at doing the long haul, but I am very bad at tying all the ends together, collating everything for illustrations etc., and declaring the project finished. However, I think the book really does say what I wanted it to say, and that it reads really well. I just need to figure out the ending...
I am now in Denmark and staying with Heather Blitz, the American dressage rider who I have coached for 14 years, and who is sitting on the verge of being in their team. She has been here for a year, and in some of the big shows she has had some scores of 68% in the Grand Prix and the GP Special riding Ottoman. This is my first visit, and my horse Quite is here too so that Heather can help me and I can help her. I shall fly back home to teach the July courses at Overdale, and then come back here for much of August, then both Quite and I shall head home again.
In the couple of days that I have been here we have had some great observations and insights to offer each other, and I am thrilled to find that I can still help Heather despite the amazing skills that she has. It is very hard, even if you are a top class rider, to keep seeing both the wood and the trees. Heather also has a huge amount to offer me, and neither of our egos get in the way of this exchange. It's very exciting for me to be here, and a good break from the tireless way I have worked for the last few months.
September will be the time for finally unpacking and organising the house, and, I hope, the entry into a quieter time (although I shall of off to the USA again at the end of OCtober). The last year has seen so many projects running concurrently, and by then they will be either finished or settled in to their new level. Setting up the simulator and the weekend courses that we run on it has been another big demand this year, requiring time, energy, and some 'out of the box' thinking. The courses are working extremely well, and I am excited about how much people improve when they come on them. The various balance and core muscle strength exercises that we use alongside the simulator are, we think, just as valuable as time spent on the simulator itself. I too have learnt a huge amount from working with them and it.
With many fewer demands landing in my lap, I hope that my summer will proceed as planned, and that I shall update you sooner than has happened this time!

It is now early July, and I am horrified to realise how much time has gone by since I last wrote this. April, May, and June have passed a whirlwind,largely because writing a book virtually fills my every spare moment inbetween teaching, travelling, or doing admin. It is a hugely demanding activity, especially with builders in the house as well - although I am relieved to report that they have now left me. However, the current level of chaos includes a half fitted kitchen, which has ground to a halt as the company involved have twice failed to deliver the worktop... (try living your life with the sink in one room, the fridge in another, and some rudimentary cooking facilites in yet another. It makes you fit if nothing else!)I am now longing for some normallity - especially given that I ordered this kitchen in January. My hall is full of everything that should have been in it, and I can't wait for some cleanliness and order. A place for everything and everything in its place... what a thought! It sounds blissful, and I hope I can live up to the ideal!
Last week, in a flurry of activity, I finished my new book book apart from the last chapter, and sent it to my editor. This took some doing! I am very good at starting projects, and at doing the long haul, but I am very bad at tying all the ends together, collating everything for illustrations etc., and declaring the project finished. However, I think the book really does say what I wanted it to say, and that it reads really well. I just need to figure out the ending...
I am now in Denmark and staying with Heather Blitz, the American dressage rider who I have coached for 14 years, and who is sitting on the verge of being in their team. She has been here for a year, and in some of the big shows she has had some scores of 68% in the Grand Prix and the GP Special riding Ottoman. This is my first visit, and my horse Quite is here too so that Heather can help me and I can help her. I shall fly back home to teach the July courses at Overdale, and then come back here for much of August, then both Quite and I shall head home again.
In the couple of days that I have been here we have had some great observations and insights to offer each other, and I am thrilled to find that I can still help Heather despite the amazing skills that she has. It is very hard, even if you are a top class rider, to keep seeing both the wood and the trees. Heather also has a huge amount to offer me, and neither of our egos get in the way of this exchange. It's very exciting for me to be here, and a good break from the tireless way I have worked for the last few months.
September will be the time for finally unpacking and organising the house, and, I hope, the entry into a quieter time (although I shall of off to the USA again at the end of OCtober). The last year has seen so many projects running concurrently, and by then they will be either finished or settled in to their new level. Setting up the simulator and the weekend courses that we run on it has been another big demand this year, requiring time, energy, and some 'out of the box' thinking. The courses are working extremely well, and I am excited about how much people improve when they come on them. The various balance and core muscle strength exercises that we use alongside the simulator are, we think, just as valuable as time spent on the simulator itself. I too have learnt a huge amount from working with them and it.
With many fewer demands landing in my lap, I hope that my summer will proceed as planned, and that I shall update you sooner than has happened this time!

I am writing this in early March, and again I have just arrived back home after teaching in America for five weeks. I now have a few days to orientate myself before beginning the series of evening lecure-demonstrations that take place here in the UK in March...it's a god job that I know exactly what to pack where in my car, and how the jigsaw will fit together!
My trip went very well, with no travel dramas or sickness dramas - although I found myself teaching from a distance in the clinic where two of the riders started throwing up, and another two were coughing and sniffling with hardly any voice left! Fortunately both bugs passed me by, and all the riders had good lessons despite their lowered energy levels.
As I so often find myself reporting, I again felt thrilled and gratified to see fantastic progress in some of the people who have really struggled with their riding for a long time. It was also wonderful to work with some of the more advanced riders, and to see their progress too. It is so clear to me that the issues we all face from day to day are simply variations on the same themes, and that we work with those issues at whatever layer of the onion we have currently reached. As we peel those layers away the issues diminish and evolve, but their remnants continue to have knock-on efects that bug the rider. In fact, because of her more refined perceptions and the greater demands of the upper level movements, they bug her just as much as they did when they were actually far larger!
Before I left for the US I was thrilled to host a two day clinic at Overdale which`was taught by Heather Blitz. Heather is an American rider who I have coached for many years, and she was one of the alternates for the US dressage team for the World Equestrian Games in 2006. She is now living in Denmark, working towards a place in their team for the Olympics in 2008. The riders were mostly RWYM coaches, and we all benefitted hugely from her input. I was particularly amused to see my horse attempt to shake her of, buck her off and yank her off - and the fact that he could yank her backside out of the saddle made me feel much better about the fact that he also does it to me! However, Heather 'got his numbers' better than I have done, and when I rode him afterwards I had such a clear feeling of how my body had to be different in order to match her body pattern and to get the same result in him. The difference lay (you've probably guessed it) in bearing down, giving me a much stronger feeling for the muscles right up under my sternum. It put them into burn - and again, I was gratified to discover that he had put Heather's muscles into burn as well (the cheeky little monkey! With him at 15.1 and her at 6ft 1 that was quite a feat!).
Several of us had similar (but different) senses of how to match our body pattern to the one Heather had used, and I think this really derived from years of devoping body awarenenss and learning to feel, coupled with our ability to find the words and images that let us communicate our discoveries to each other. Not many riders would be able to recognise and replicate a feel that easily. Heather got a kick out of teaching such an enthusiastic, clued up, and able to pick-it-up-and-run-with-it group of riders, and we are looking forward to her return later in the year.
She and I then joined Hilary Clayton for a one day symposium at Hadlow College in Kent, where we had a morning of theory and an afternoon of practical work in the arena. Hilary is one of the foremost researchers worldwide into equine biomechanics, and though British, she is based at Michigan State University. She is very well known in the USA, she is usually a speaker at the Global Dressage Forum held each year in Holland. She presents her findings in a way that is easy for the layman to understand, and her knowledge is a must for serious riders (do a Google search on The McPhail Centre, and read her articles). In the afternoon Heather and I worked with a number of riders and horses, and I think the audience particularly liked seeing her ride the kind of cob that few international riders would ever think of putting their backside on! Needless to say, she changed him hugely, although he was not too amused by his sudden transformation into a dressage horse!
All of these events make me appreciate my life as an educator - still learning, still giving out - in contexts that involve both small and large groups of people. Long may it continue!

It is now the new year, and I am back home supposedly recovering from my trip to the USA. However, there is so much going on that I am struggling to wrap my brain around it all.
The trip was very enjoyable, with some particularly interesting teaching that led to a few insights that I think will bear fruit for us all. It became so clear to me exactly why some of the people I know who have struggled the most have always found riding so difficult. They had a particularly self-defeating pattern - for if you bring your hand back, bring your torso back, and simulateously open your thighs, there is nothing you can do but pull - especially if you are supposed to be steering at the same time! That particular combination of wrongness is a killer, and it was great to see those folks find their way through the pattern and begin to understand it for what it was.
Some of the professional riders I teach were doing really well, and impressing some well known conventional trainers. One, who is an international dressage judge, had recently taken to asking 'How did you just do that?' in response to a good riding correction. This is exactly the question I would want her to ask, and I hope my pupil has the courage to give her some really good answers!
I also taught several Grand Prix riders I had not taught before, one of whom is a well known name. Some were thrilled, and soaked up my knowledge like a sponge, whilst others found it much harder to take in. Perceiving and thinking differently probably does become harder the more practiced you are in your own way of doing it - especially if it has bought you considerable success!
I am now attempting to learn how to use my new compterised horse simulator, and I teach my first courses on it soon. It gives us the opportunity do to hands on work whilst the rider is in motion, and also to make good use of mirrors. But it's main claim to fame is the computerised feedback. One trace illustrates your weight - and we hope it does not look the same as it would if you jumped up and down on the bathroom scales! Another shows if you are to the right or left of the balance point, and ahead of or behind the balance point. It also measure rein tension, and if you are driving or retarding. These are the equivilent of pushing forward on the horse's rump and backwards on its chest. In a few short sessions, the feedback has really helped me to become more precise. It can be programmed to trot or canter in a variety of more or less powerful ways - although I have not yet become brave enough to play with this! It will be an interesting reasearch tool as well as an interesting teaching tool, and I am loking forward to the simulator weekends that we are going to hold throughout the year.
There is more information in Network News and on the Simulator page of the website, although I expect to update this regularly as I have more to tell. Watch that space!