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It is now late October, and I am soon to head for the USA where I teach for the next six weeks. Leaving home is proving more demanding than ever, with the number of things I have to do and think about significantly increased by the presense of my builders, who are doing a fantastic job (albeit slower than I had hoped). I am so looking forward to coming back to a house where I can live in more than the two rooms that have been home to two of us for the last seven months! It could have been hell, although it has actually been quite fun - but you can have too much of even a good thing!
I have recovered remarkably well from the surgery I had in early summer, and the last few months have been busy. I have now written three quarters of my next book, and have had a great time doing it. Writing gets easier with age and practice! I have also had a very good time with Quite, my very opinionated Lusitano, who is really changing for the better. I shall be very sad to leave him and the work we are doing, which has given me some fantastic feels and a clear sense of where the next level of improvement will come from. That narrow/wide paradox seems to be an unending source of brain-and-body teasers that have so much pay-off once they are solved. Given that learning to ride well is like peeling away the layers of an onion that would seem to have no middle,I am both celebrating this layer, and preparing myself for the next!
My season of teaching in the UK ends with the Teacher Training courses in late September, which were challenging and fun as always, with a very encouraging level of skill being shown by the trainee coaches who attended the basic course. It is interesting how, a few years ago, would-be coaches who came into the system seemed to struggle with it much more than people do now. I do not know if that says more about me, or about the people who are attracted to my work, but either way, it is a very good sign. Our network of coaches will sooon be expanding to include some more very good people!

I have already written this once, and lost it in cyberspace when I attempted to spell check it. Once bitten, I am twice shy, so this one is coming to you complete with mistakes!
It is now late August, and I am fully recovered form the surgery I had in May. The summer has been punctuated by the stages of this recovery, by the builders who are revamping my house, and by working on my new book. After the surgery I made a great beginning to this - my head was functioning pretty well, and I was pain free only if I did not move, so an unusual opportunity presented itself. It is much more dificult to sit down and write now that I am riding and teaching and living everyday life more normally. Riding Quite has been interesting, with some good learnings about how to organise myself so that the outer edges of my body (from the armpits down to the sides of the pelvis) are precisely lined up over the outer edges of his long back muscles. Getting this right makes a huge difference to how ridable he is, and the bottom line is that he will not let me get away without having it (sensitive little devil that he is!). But despite the motivation, it is not an easy change to make, especially on my errant right side.
The most exciting thing I have done this summer was to go to Verden in early August. This was the last competition before the World Games for the American dressage squad, and I was there to help Heather Blitz, who I have taught for about the last twelve years. She was there with Arabella, who took her to 5th place in the team trials in the US, and also with her up and coming horse Otto. He can do all the Grand Prix movements, but is not yet ready to string them together in a test.
This was my first experience of coaching from the edge of the warm up arena for an international competition, and I am pleased to say that I felt thoroughly at home. Heather needed more strength from her back, and some revaping of her right side, which is not so strong or precise as her left. This made a huge difference to both horses, and I was very impressed with the way that she managed to take those changes into her tests, and ride them in the face of all of that pressure! That is a sign of a top class rider! Arabella did not make the team, but Heather certainly impressed everyone with her riding skills, her cool head, and her attitude to all the challenges presented by the situation. Otto really turned heads, and he shows every sign of being a remarkable horse who really could take on the world. But two years ago he was a remedial case with a push back that gave Heather a panoramic view of his eyeballs and nostrils... so I think she demands imense respect from us all!
She is now settling into her new life in Denmark, where she expects to be for the next two years, and we are both looking forward to working together in that time.
Meanwhile, I am facing a very busy Autumn, with riding courses and teacher training between now and early October, when I shall need to start preparing myself for my teaching trip to the US later in the month.

It is now mid July, probably two months after I wrote my last entry. During this time I have had surgery to remove an ovarian cyst, so I have been largely out of cirulation and not riding. I have also had builders in my house, but thankfully, a friend who was away loaned me her house for the first two weeks post-op, and that was a real help. Various people have helped to look after me, and have been wonderful, but the combined scenario has been a big deal. Thank God, I appear to have come out of it remarkably well.
There were some interesting learnings that came out of my recovery. I had very little pain, except for a 'pull' from the left hand end of the incision down to the corner of my pubic bone. This hurt like hell just in one stage of rolling over my foot, and it made me very lame. (I have no idea if it involved damage to nerves, to a muscle, or what; but it was definately secondary to the main focus of the surgery.) It really became quite worrying, and I feared that I might have a longer term injury that might affect my riding. It took me ages to realise that each time I opened the door of my bedroom, which was rather stiff, I stood with my left foot forward, and pulled the door towards me with my left hand. This was my instinctive way to do it; but it was contributing to the injury, and upping my pain levels, so that walking remained painful for some time afterwards. I had to really reorganise myself to open the door with my right hand whilst standing with my right foot foward. It made a significant difference to the pain I experienced.
It took me about another week to realise that another contribuary factor was that I always take my first step with my left leg. By the laws of Physics, it takes much more force to start a body moving than it does to keep it moving once it has started. If I started walking with my right leg, it made a big difference, and I think that this was when the pain really started to diminish. The improvement, when it finally happened, was rapid, and I now walk, ride (with caution), cough, sneeze, shovel shit, and am nearly normal!
It was particularly interesting to me that it took me so long to 'get it'. Given that I teach co-ordination, and help people to discover their asymmetries, you might have thought that I would be quicker off the mark! I can only claim stupidity, and suspect that someone without this training would not have had a hope of figuring it out. It makes me wondour how much our dominant leg, which we use to take the fist step, sets up our pelvic asymmetry. For riders, I think it is as, or more, significant than the dominant hand. The good news is that you only have to engage brain to start walking with the other leg (but remembering to do this is not so easy as it sounds!). However, it is much less cumbersome than trying, say, to muck out with the other hand/arm, and following this experience, I think it can have a significant effect.

I have just returned home from a short teaching trip involving three clinics in the USA and one in Canada. It was a whirlwind of riding arenas and aeroplanes, but still managed to be fun despite the hard work and jet lag.
Several experiences stand out from the trip as a whole. One was the tearful and heartfelt 'goodbye' profered by the friend of three women who rode in the Toronto clinic. They were riding with me for the first time, having audited a clinic last November. They all made some terrific improvements, and I don't know how much their friend was tearful because of the sadness she felt on missing out (she booked too late to get a place) or because of her joy in discovering the changes she now saw were possible for riders like herself. I imagine it was a mixture of the two, but either way it was a very moving moment.
That clinic also introduced me to one of the most talented 10 year olds I have ever taught, who fortunately is also a pupil of Carol Martineau (who organised the clinic and has ridden with me for a number of years). I gave her only the briefest of explanations about how to steer the horse's wither, and from this she made the most wonderfully effective and subtle changes that actually effected the way in which the horse carried his ribcage. Her ability to take in information and convert that into bodily changes was a joy to behold, and far surpassed that of most of the adults in the clinic, who were, in reality, struggling to learn this!
The New Orleans clinic mostly saw me working with people I already knew, who are all making steady progress. I particularly enjoyed seeing a couple of quite novice and nervous riders who have both worked with me now for several years, and who are, in effect, 'learning to ride by numbers' (analogous to 'painting by numbers'). They are living proof that this can be done, and are graduating into riders with a level of feel and influence that would normally lie way beyond their limited number of years in the saddle. They are both great learners, which goes some way to explaining this; but the fact that they have been given doable, tangible input is a large part of it too.
In New Jersey I felt very flattered that an advanced rider who has had about 5 lessons with me took another only a few hours before she was due to fly to Germany to work with Her Schumacher. She will stay for three months, and have three horses in his barn, all at diferent levels. Both she and I know that the biomechanical input I can give her will enable her to make the most of his input on training.
I was interested by another rider there who I have taught quite a bit, and who is a very good young- horse jockey. She commented that she really needed that element of unpredictability to make her pay attention, and that she was too 'laid back' on more established horses. Of course I was immediately on her case (in a nice way, and whilst honouring the great strengths that she has). She is far too content to be able to do a reasonably good job of steering the wither and having the horse's neck reaching into the rein. But she does not search for the many possible improvements that lie beyond this. In effect, she rests on her laurels. So it was a big deal for her to start considering how she might get the horse to reach from further back in his body, and how she might organise the steering through influencing the bulge of his rib cage. This made me wondour what percentage of relatively skilled and confident riders limit their improvement in the same way that she does - by not looking for more.
My last clinic in Maryland was a blast as ever. Francie Doherty who organises that group is one of the funniest people I have ever met, and life in her presence is always a magical mystery tour. My most profound experience there was working with a rider I have taught in maybe three clinics, whose starting point was a desperate level of front-to-back hand-orientated riding. She has begun to change this very well, but the way in which old habits and desperations die hard was bought home to me when I asked her to change the rein. Immediately she stopping thrusting forward (in rising trot), stopped bearing down, and hauled the horse around the corner. We then had to spend time in which I said the words, with her understanding being that she was not to change the rein, but only to stop herself from reverting to her old habit. It took a long time for her to not react to the words 'change the rein', and then, eventually, to test her correct responses when she actually did change the rein. In the end she did well, but it bought home to both of us how careful she will have to be if she takes conventional lessons in which the way her body reacts to instructions is not the priority. Her new-found skills are so delicate, and her angst levels so high, that it could all go wrong very easily.
So I now have a few days to catch up with myself before I begin teaching here.... and doubtless more insights await!

I had great fun doing the series of lecture-demonstrations that took place in March and April in various venues around the UK. I always enjoy having an excuse to drive around the countryside, especially when the daffodils are out, and especially when I get to see parts of the more wild north, and parts of the coast. I love this country!

The 10 demonstrations involved 20 riders, who all came up trumps for me. Several wrote to me afterwards saying how positive the experience of the evening had been for them. This, I think, is a great achievement, especially when you consider that I am taking their riding to bits and putting it back together again in the space of less than an hour, and in front of many people! However positive and non-judgemental I am, this is a very exposing situation, and rarely do I work so fast and risk over-loading the rider with so much input given so quickly.

Perhaps the most important thing is that I do this in a way that makes it clear to both the rider and the audience that we are not our patterns. In other words, riding 'badly' does not mean that you are a bad rider or a bad person; it simply means that you have not yet discovered a way to do it better. No one rides badly on purpose, and people do the best job they can with the input they have been given. Sadly this often contains so many misunderstandings that they have unknowingly jumped on the wrong bandwagon.

I regularly curse the loose use of language within the horse world, and look forward to the day when phrases like 'use your back' 'sit deep' 'drive him forward' and even 'relax' are banned from riding arenas - or at least routinely questioned by the pupils who hear them. It is insanity to assume that anyone who hears those words should know what to do in response. They are open to many interpretations, and much of what I do in the demonstrations (as well as in everyday teaching)is to use language much less ambiguously. I define my terms and do everything in my power to minimise the 'slippage' between what I hope will happen within the pupil's body and what actually does happen in response to my words.

The key to my work is the precision with which I see the patterns operating in the rider's body, and the precision with which I use both language and hands-on input to change those patterns. Then, of course, I have to be precise in the way in which I assess how well my strategy has worked, and as I make the adjustments that are most going to help the individual in front of me to 'get it'.

Those familiar with my work will recognise this as a cybernetic learning process in which I am homing in on a goal, and using feedback to refine my input and even to change direction if need be. The pupil's response lets me know if I am getting 'hotter' or 'colder' etc, just as my response (as well as the horse's) tells her the same thing. So both the pupil and I are basically playing the same game, homing in on the goals that we have chosen together, and hopefully bouncing off each other's input as we refine and progress.

When this works well it is a dance that challenges and engages us both - and hopefully the audience too. Not quite the same as giving instructions and just expecting the rider to obey!