The ‘Ride With Your Mind’ approach is a tremendous advance in teaching and learning. It shows any rider how to organize her mind and body in the same way as the riders we call ‘talented’. This enables each person to learn the same feels and to achieve the same results.

Our coaching techniques are very streamlined. By increasing each rider’s body awareness and using innovative imaging techniques, Mary helps riders understand both what to do and how to do it. The bottom line is that improvements in concentration, body awareness, and core muscle strength create incredible improvements both in the rider’s seat, and in her horse’s response to her body. These can be obtained in a very short time, defying traditional expectations. Learning then becomes satisfying, exciting, and fun!

This system of coaching utilises elements of Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP), and the Alexander and Feldenkrais systems of bodywork. It is highly interactive, with rider and coach acting as equals as they combine their perceptions to unravel the puzzle of how the rider affects the horse and the horse affects the rider. Learning always takes place in a calm, safe, supportive, and appropriately challenging environment, with no raised voices, no ‘shouting louder at the natives’, and no impossible demands.

Learning through this method does not take talent, it simply takes learning how to notice. Mary has pioneered coaching methods that ‘get through’ to people, creating those ‘Aha!’ moments where ‘the light bulb goes on’. We then build on those moments as new skills become ingrained.

Courses include riders at all levels, from relative novices to upper level competitors. So much individual attention is given to each rider that no one will hold anyone else back. Everyone is invited to be supportive to everyone else as group members each take the next steps in their learning. In this regard, everyone is an equal!

‘YES BUT!’, you say….

‘YES BUT I AM NOT GOOD ENOUGH TO COME!’

At Overdale (and also on courses elsewhere) all riders are treated equally as they each take the next steps in their learning. To say that a less experienced rider is worse than a more skilled one is like saying that a rosebud is ‘worse’ than a rose. We pair you with the coach who can most empathise with your situation, and need your needs. Courses are structured so that no one will hold anyone else back.

‘YES BUT MARY WANLESS’S WORK IS JUST FOR NOVICE RIDERS.’

Wrong! Mary has been the long term biomechanics coach of 2 of the top 12 US dressage riders. She also coaches members of the Canadian eventing squad. Talented, experienced riders gain hugely from explicitly learning the biomechanical skills that address their training issues.

‘YES BUT I DON’T HAVE THE TIME OR MONEY.’

How much time and money have you spent on lessons that have not ‘hit the spot’? We so frequently hear that riders have ‘learnt more in the last 4 days than they have in the last 4 years.’… On that basis, can you afford to wait?

YES BUT THIS ISN’T DRESSAGE RIDING/COMPETITION RIDING/CLASSICAL RIDING…’

Oh yes it is! And though it isn’t Western riding or Polo, it is the skills that the top few riders in each of these disciplines share, even thought they may not recognise that fact. The laws of physics and biomechanics do not change when you change your riding discipline, and they have not changed over time. But by using different language to describe those skills we make them far more accessible and reproducible. Few trainers in any discipline can ‘clone’ riders who replicate their skills; but we can.

When riders use their body to say it in the language ‘horse’ their riding becomes extremely ethical, and horses miraculously ‘get it’. It takes a while for new skills to become natural, but soon enough the rider appears to have talent!

THROUGH RIDE WITH YOUR MIND YOU CAN::

– Transform your riding – discover new skills, new insights, new horizons
– Solve your riding problems over a massive spectrum…
– From standing still to be mounted to uneven steps in passage!
– From the confidence to walk, trot, canter to the confidence to compete at your own next level
– From getting started to ‘getting the horse on the bit’…
– From ‘getting the horse on the bit’ to good transitions and collection…
– From basic steering issues to the intricacies of straightness and lateral work

– Develop awareness and skill through ridden and simulator courses with Mary Wanless
– Feel, see and understand the hidden ‘how’ of riding!
– Learn how to influence the horse in all paces
– Learn in ‘bite-size chunks’, in a supportive, safe environment
– Learn how to learn, using Kinaesthetic, Auditory, and Visual input
– Learn what ‘talented’ riders do, that they may not know they do
– Boost your learning with Mary’s books and DVD’s!