I ask participants in seminars to bring horses that are either still very green, such as this young Arab Stallion, or particularly difficult. Changes are most obvious with these kinds of horses. When I can step the horse, I am assuming the strongest position of the stallion demonstrating an incredible amount of power. I ask him to halt with movement from the hips only, no loud whip cracking or anything, just the hip movement. With this understood body movement, we will stop together. That's what a stallion does.
As a result of this, the horse turns around towards me to stare at me and says, Hey! This guy, I mean this horse riding sense, this guy knows what he is doing. I can trust him. And then with a horse standing here and looking at me, I can take command by showing him that I am now the mare and to show him defensively I'd like to follow me at this point, he should do this.
If I meet a horse and meet him on his own terms, then I have to meet him in a well balanced state. The horse is always in a balanced state and together with the human being he has to chance to develop an even better and a more beautiful state of balance. This requires that I with my human body language have to keep my state of balance, physical balance and mental balance at the precise moment of union.
The very moment when I lose my balance inside and my body and whole self and my emotions, when I show rage, the anger, when I am annoyed, when I absolutely decide myself and no longer in harmony with my inner self properly centered. At this point the horse does not recognize me as being one of his own, but rather sees me as an alien being that he has reason to fear.
Watch as I throw the stone away again, this time as a child does it, completely differently. In other words, a child is always in a balanced state. When I pick up the stone like this, I am actually about to fall. I have to strain certain muscles unnecessarily. I strain the muscles and the small of my back, intense the muscles up here, my leg really has to bear incredible weight, ouch! All this so I can pick up a stone.
A child does it differently. When an adult steps, he steps so to speak like this, out of balance. A child steps in this way, putting his weight into the ground and a small child runs like this because he knows if I don't run like this, I will fall flat on my face, I am out of balance. When a child takes his very first shaky steps, he tries to stay in balance and because of this concentrated effort, he can keep his balance. The point which is absolutely decisive is the center of the human being, the pelvis.
And now when I bend my knees, my index finger because of the thigh bone goes forward and iliac crest goes backward, do it sideways. The index finger goes forward; the thumb and the iliac crest go backward. In this way, I bend my knees. I don't just do one thing and the other goes in the opposite direction, I do it like this, that's right. Try to do the same thing, that's right, correct. Thumb is backward, that means my pelvis tips backward and the thigh bones go forward. I act as I am the leading mare or according to the Leading Mare Principle, as I call it, I act voluntarily at my own free will.
If I make an effort prominently, make effort to do everything I do for the horse and then wait to see what naturally happens afterwards. And actually I am able to see this as a reward, if the horse lets me on his back and carries me. If we don't have to fight anymore, then this is a fantastic development. It means that the horse is simultaneously offering me his friendship, his trust and placing confidence in me and he demonstrates this through an incredible member of different gestures and in a multitude of ways.
His gestures are really in his interest, in the interest of the horse, in the interest of the animal. On the other hand, he quite simply recognizes me as his leading mare or if necessary, his leading stallion. I replace the respected figures in his life; he can now make friends with me. He can view me as the leading mare that he follows and he can view me as the leading stallion that, in nature, has the task of training his herd. In a way, preparing them individually to be able to cope with all the difficulties, or the problems which a horse encounters in the course of his life.
All these things I get, it's all interlinked, I can't separate the entities. I can not see dominance, trust and friendship separately and then expect to experience them one after another. They have to be seen as one single entity. In other words, I can only dominate a horse when he places trust in me and only when I dominate through my body language, through my clarity, through my explicitness, only then it is possible to establish a trusting relationship between human being and horse.
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