Lecture-demonstrations
Tagline for Blog All
Lecture-demonstrations
Categories: everyday life, 596 wordsSend feedback • PermalinkI 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!
