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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!