Send us your feedback! I tell the story of a rider with phenomenal talent in another area of life, and ask, how did this affect her riding, and how would it be if we taught riding as if it were a martial art?  I discuss what it means for riding that ‘form follows function’, and how this relates to the challenges inherent in riding well, and also to the ‘chicken and egg’ nature of the ways that riders and horses affect each other.  A lot of answers are to be found in the geometry (whether sacred or not) that we have delineated and expounded on through our various exercises. They can ..read more

Send us your feedback! The rider with rebars that connect diagonally through her can use these to pattern her horse in shoulder in, suggesting to him how he could transmit force through his body from his inside hind leg to his outside foreleg. This can make riders feel much more effective!  I continue with an exercise that involves resting your back against the back of a chair, whilst moving your skin, muscles and fascia sideways over the underlying bones. This develops the idea of two ‘long narrow triangles’ in your back. Becoming able to find, clarify, and ultimately equalise these tri ..read more

Send us your feedback! ‘Rebars’ are the dull red metal uprights you see sticking up within the frames used on building sites when pouring concrete pillars. Rebars also have smaller horizontal pieces of metal wrapping around them.  Our seated exercise helps you find ‘rebars’ in your own torso-box, defining its corners. They make a huge difference to your stability, and with practice they become really tangible, helping to give you clearer body boundaries. You can connect the rebars on diagonals inside your torso-box, thinking particularly of your underneath, your diaphgram, and the diagon ..read more

Send us your feedback! Most riders can organize their body much better from the top down, or from the pelvis out, than they can from the bottom up.  Thinking of your core like the core of an apple means that it goes from top to toe, (and toe to top). We do an exercise whilst standing, that ‘centres’ you, and talks about the connection between your various diaphragms. (You have more of these than you realise!)  We gradually build the connection from the soles of your feet, through your calves and inner thighs, to your pelvic floor, psoas muscles, breathing diaphragm, trachea, throat ..read more

Send us your feedback! I did the ‘boards as blades’ exercise with a young rider I know well, and discovered that it was difficult for her to get her right board to go down.  Later, when the group did a dismounted exercise, she realised that she curled her toes under her foot on that side, which in turn led to her knee coming up, and also her board coming up. This is a very unusual pattern - usually the knee that comes up goes with a seat bone that goes down - and I had misdiagnosed her, falling short of my own principles!  When my young friend tried on a set of toe separators the n ..read more

Send us your feedback! I contrast the story of a very unassuming rider, who has been a long term and dedicated learner within the RYWM system, with a more naturally talented rider who does not have to think about so many ‘pieces’. The first rider had not really appreciated that, whereas the early stages of her learning required her to grapple with doing many ‘pieces’ at once, she could now pick and choose the most appropriate ones to address the issues her horse was presenting.  I then use several exercises to help firm up the Lateral (Myofascial) Lines, which form the sides of the tors ..read more

Send us your feedback! Most people are, in effect, falling off one side of the horse, whilst pushing their torso towards his midline on the other side.  My most dramatic story about this concerns a Grand Prix rider, whose horse’s apparent problem with piaffe turned out to be her problem.  There are 3 particularly important points on the boards, and thinking about these can help you transmit force more effectively from your back to your front, as you link them together with an imaginary series of bolts. These also change how your arms connect to your core, how your diaphragm might o ..read more

Send us your feedback! The idea of ‘positive tension’ is very new in the horse world, but I am no longer the lone voice crying in the wilderness!  As well as force absorption, we need force transmission, which enables the most important ‘myofascial lines’ in the body to ‘play a note’ in the same way that only a well-tensioned guitar string can play a note. This puts more ‘ping’ into each step, taking away the trudging heaviness of a 'soggy' net.  I offer some images to help you discover how to firm up your soggy places, and tell a story of how a soggy ‘unstuffed’ horse can lead to ..read more

Send us your feedback! One of the biggest over-views of the work I do would be to consider it the re-discovery and re-creation of the ideal shapes our bodies would make.  We can think of both human and horse torsos as rectangles that have become distorted into’C’ curves, or parallelograms, and that have, in addition, become twisted.  I compare the learning process to making a quilt, where different pieces get sown together, progressively making a larger whole in which various patterns become clear.  This leads me to talk about our ‘inner quilt’, the fascial net, which is a th ..read more

I'm back after a long break from podcasts!  I'm sharing the stories of three riders who were all very different types of learners, using strategies that worked more or less well for creating change.  One of the stories introduces the idea of 'un-believing' things you have previously been told and have taken for granted - simply assuming that you must be doing the right thing because you are attempting to embody words you’ve been told.  Each of the stories has a moral, and I’ll let you decide what that moral is, and how relevant it is to your own learning! The stories also beg ..read more