Dressage, Naturally with Karen Rohlf

Creating healthy biomechanics and stronger partnerships through combining natural horsemanship principles with the art

of dressage...Dressage horses are horses, too.

photo: Peggy Finnerty never underestimate the potential for harmony & lightness to improve in ways you cannot yet imagine

Welcome back to the Temenos...Temenos is an ancient Greek word. It refers to a sacred space that has no limits, where special rules apply and extra-ordinary events are free to occur.

This month...Ahhhh, my travelling season has ended! I wrapped up the year with clinics in Chester, NY and Guelph, Ontario. A special guest auditor at the Ontario clinic was Walter Zettl!

Now I am settling into the wonderful routine of seeing my horses everyday and watching them get stronger and stronger!

In this issue I will answer a few questions, including another good one from my friends at the Natural Dressage Forum!

My upcoming clinics are:

NOV 10 ... Open Format Workshop at Temenos Fields, Ocala. FULL (Open for auditors) contact K2 for details.

If you would like to submit a story or a question please email it to: karenrohlf@earthlink.net to submit it.

You will also be informed about exciting news from my temenos!

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J U L Y N E W S L E T T E R

1

Student, Laurie French sent me the following question which I was happy to expand upon...

Q: [This] question I have is with my-self. I have been an instructor and trainer for years, and just in the last year have started myself back into lessons where someone ac-tually critiques me ( thank goodness! way too long!). Anyway, I notice I acquired a too casual position from not being under the watchful eye! I am attaching a picture.

My problem is this, when I am working on my horse getting soft through the back, spine, and ribs, and giving to the light contact, I know I have this image in my mind that I should make my seat soft so that he can raise it up into that area, especially if I am making any balance and rhythm mistakes (which is always possi-ble). So i think deep down I round my back on purpose to lift my seat-bones as I feel my horse isn’t in shape and strong enough yet to do it for long periods of time and or with my full contact and seat-bones down on his back. I also tend to open my hands and arms a bit to help him, or make it as easy as possible for him.

I will say this horse is as good as gold, and is very calm and left brain through this process, he is just out of shape and I am physically having to bring him up to shape. Mentally/emotionally, he has it just fine. So tell me if I should be thinking this way, or not.

I am just really curious as to your thoughts on this. thanks so much.!

A: Well, I think your instincts are ex-cellent, and if I had any doubts, the pic-ture proves you are on the right track! That is a picture of harmony, healthy biomechanics and lightness! Lucky you!

I want to also commend you on trusting your instincts regarding what your horse is telling you he needs due to his physical condition. we must take our time to de-

velop the horse’s back. From the moment we sit on them, our weight and gravity is working against our desired result: a back that can lift. If we plop our weight down and sit statically, unathletically, his body will be in pain or will fatigue and he will adopt a posture to protect his back against us instead of one that offers itself to us. Our goal is to create a confident horse (with the posture that goes along with it) who trusts our body. Would you be able to have a confident trusting pos-ture in the presence of someone who regularly punches you in the stomach?

As your horse gains strength you can let him carry you more and more. And as you want him to carry more uphill you can bring your posture more upright. Then your challenge is to keep your lower back supple even though you are refining your upper body posture. It will be the same challenge for your horse: to become up hill without stiffening in his back. Repeated short intervals and many transitions will develop this. If tension creeps in, you can return to the home base of the posture pictured above, or simply rest.

We want to be able to blend having our weight deep into the horse, but to also be athletic enough in our backs and hip joints to be able to ‘ride the wave’ of our horse’s motion.

So as you take your lessons, do refine your posture and allow your legs to reach down and your upper body to become more silent and stabilized above your pelvis. Trust your instincts as to how strong your horse is to be able to carry your weight with his back up.

This is the artful kind of riding that al-lows great big men to ride lightly on their horse’s backs! (see picture below)

Thanks for your question and photo ~K1

4 star parelli Instructor, Berni Zambail

laurie’s contact: lfrench@globespeed.net

www.frenchquarters.net

2 Copyright 2007 Temenos Fields, Inc Novemeber

Student Question..“Is it OK to purposely, lighten my seat to help my horse bring his back up?

Another excellent question from the Natural Dressage Forum:

Q: Karen(K1), We have been discussing contact a great deal and hoped you may have input on getting a long open neck that stretches to the bit, use of the outside rein, and your views on salivation. Achieving vertical flexion is one thing, but we would like to learn more about the type of contact that is needed for creating more expressive gaits.

Thanks for your time and knowledge, The natural dressage forum www.naturaldressage.2savvy.com

A: I always feel like giving a ‘zen’ answer to this question: “Ahh, it is not the contact that creates the neck, but the neck that creates the contact.” ... and just leaving it at that... but really this is the case!

The neck is an extension of the spine and the spine is supported by the legs and is free only if there is balance. The key is to find balance, then the neck is free. Bal-ance is a product of the emotional state, the mental state and the physical state. Within respectful boundaries I make sure my horses feel free to move powerfully forward (this does not mean just speed or out of anxiousness, because a horse that is ‘escaping’ forward, by definition does not feel free!

I make sure they are balanced and I make sure they know how to find the stretch on-line and riding.

From there I make sure I can take the slack out of my reins and not screw any-thing up! The contact truly is created by the body of the horse filling up the con-tact. This is a completely different feeling than a horse who is bracing or leaning. Our hands must be able to diagnose the sensation of pressure. ‘The horse filling up the contact’ or ‘feeling the horse’s hocks in your hands’ are statements that are often mis-interpreted to mean it is OK if your horse leans in your hands. Not so! But also misinterpreted is the idea that to ride in lightness it is not OK to feel your horse! If the horse moves forward into our hands to make a connection in the reins and we misinterpret it as brace, we now have discouraged the long, reaching spine and will cause contraction as the horse tries to be a ‘good boy’ and not

touch the reins.

(top & lower right photos: Coco)

I really leave the neck alone as much as I can. If I have prepared the horse’s body, mind and am riding well, his neck will be free. The he will naturally look to ‘hold hands with me’. And I can receive it. It is less about amount of pressure and more about quality.

The same goes for the outside rein. Yes, it is important to feel the energy of the horse between the inside and outside of his body, and when bend is created, or in lateral exercises, if your outside rein is there, your horse will fill it up. If you dis-appear or are not there, you will not feel it and your horse will also not feel as much information or connection. But too often students are told ‘outside rein’ or ‘outside rein half halt’ and they TAKE the outside rein. You need to ‘be there’ and cause the horse to fill it up for you!

Now, as for salivation... that will continue on the next page!

C O N N E C T I O N W I T H T H E R E I N S

copyright 2007 Temenos Fields, Inc November 3

Salivation... (not to be confused with salvation)

Here are my humble thoughts on salivation:

First of all salivation is good...it just matters if it is excessive, and what happens once it is in the mouth...does it dry up, get swallowed or accumu-late?

‘Negative’ reasons for foam:

• anxiousness...this is typically big frothy stuff that drips all over the place!

• inability to swallow... due to tension and tightness in the throat latch area.

‘Positive’ reasons for foam:

• intense concentration/effort... I have found times when horses, even with the hackamore on get a little foam between their lips during sustained concentrated moments. I am aware, but if everything else tells me things are OK, I don’t see it as necessarily negative, especially if the horse licks and releases when he rests. I have experienced this on horses having really wonderful moments of them really ‘applying themselves’.

‘Negative’ reason for no foam:

• dry mouth due to holding mouth slightly open, or so much tightness that no saliva is produced

‘Positive’ reason for no foam:

• Horse producing saliva but is re-laxed and loose enough in the jaw and mouth to swallow regularly.

Benign reasons for foam:

• action of bit against lips. I just put a (clean) rubber thing in my mouth and I am not really feeling stressed, but I am accumulating some saliva and even though i am swallowing, I don’t get a perfect ‘seal’ and so some is getting a little frothy in the corners of my mouth!

Ever notice that athletes spit a lot? I asked a triathlete friend of mine why. He commented that during exercise sometimes the saliva is more mu-cousy and feels better to spit, and also during some intense exercise it just doesn’t feel good to swallow, it inter-rupts the breathing pattern or can cause more air to go into the stomach.

Maybe some horses experience this too...could be worse: they could spit!

Typically, the horses I have don’t get foamy except for a little be-tween their lips on occasion.

In dressage-land foam is consid-ered ‘good’ but I think that is be-cause so many horses shut down and become dry in the mouth. This is dangerous because then the tissues can crack and be damaged by the bits. It is a common prac-tice to feed sugar cubes often to keep them having something to chew on. I have also seen liquid soap squirted in their mouths to create foam. This was done in the spirit of not letting the horse’s mouth get dry and injured, but of course it was not getting to the core issue!

As with everything, the important thing is to know your horse, and no-tice when something changes...then take in all the information at hand and do your best to figure out what is going on.

If I see a horse foaming, I do just that: I look at the whole picture and see if there is any meaning behind it.

I think that is all I have to say about salivation!

To join the Natural Dressage Forum, got to: www.naturaldressage.2savvy.com

S A L I V A T I O N

4 copyright 2007 Temenos Fields, Inc November

33

Fawn Anderson and Billy

3 Star Parelli Instructor, Fawn Anderson hosted me for a 3 day clinic in Ontario. It was cold, damp, Canadian weather, but the weekend was made warm by the amazing students, beautiful horses, die-hard auditors and a special treat of hav-ing Walter Zettl audit all day Saturday. He also brought along a protoge of his, Eddo Hoekstra. All that and a wine and cheese party in a local art gallery on Fri-day night!

I was honored by Walter’s attentiveness and enthusiasm. He must be doing something right to be still so full of love for the horses, the art and the process of learning. I must admit, I breathed a sigh of relief when he gave me his words of approval at what I was doing!

I really must thank her and Heather McNeil for organizing such an excellent group of stu-dents.

Following are Fawn’s comments on the weekend:

Illustration: riding forward to the connection

Thank you so much for what I knew was going to be an amazing clinic. It was so wonderful to see how having a solid foun-dation enabled my horse and I to make amazing progress during the four days with you. Billy, my 6yo buckskin, is not the most engaged horse in the world and the stretching and energy exercises really made a huge difference in his desire to step underneath himself, round his back and soften. You could really see how, once he found this way of moving, he truly wanted to be able to move like that more!

Riding in the clinic with you and spending time with both Walter Zettle and Eddo Hoekstra at the clinic was really life-altering. I see now, more clearly than I ever have, what refinement and the con-nection with the reins both means and is for. Or, more importantly, what it is not for.

Karen riding student’s horse

It has awakened in me a desire to really study and understand more about Dres-sage, for I see that it is really a discipline of improving both horse and rider and has absolutely nothing to do with 'English' or 'Western'.

The glimpse of freedom of movement that I saw in my little Billy horse was inspiring and something that I will strive for 'within' my Parelli playings.

A few of the things that you spoke about over the weekend that really had an impact on me were:

'Ride the freestyle 'within' the fi-nesse' and vice versa - having done so much freestyle with Billy and learning much more about what can be done by your seat alone set the stage for this to really hit a chord in me. And I was so pleased at my ability to pick up the reins and take a connection without losing the relaxation by understanding that shaping

copyright 2007 Temenos Fields, Inc, November 5

“Dressage is a matter of trust”~Walter Zettl

comes first from the body and is only sup-ported, not initiated, by the hands. Boy was it tempting to forget about the body once those reins were picked up, though! But you reminded us to not try to fix the head with our hands, but to get the horses body to find alignment and, through that, relaxation and a soft, intimate connection through the bit.

'Don't be afraid to 'mess' it up' - this was just another reminder that in order for us to find that sweet spot of perfect synchronicity and lightness we must be able to swing from one side of the pendu-lum to the other freely in order to find that middle point. And even if we lose it a sec-ond later, if we felt it then we can find it again. But if we always try to be careful and ride exactly, we lock up our horses and ourselves and create heaviness by our hesitation. But the more often we aren't afraid to go beyond what we were actually asking for, the sooner our horse will re-spond and give us just what we are asking for.

'Did your horse match your energy/do what you wanted? Do they know that they did/did not?' - Wow! Talk about a strong reminder that we need to stay consciously focused and always be aware of what we are asking for and whether we got it. Not accepting 'good enough' when our horses and ourselves are truly capable of really good. The mental exertion this required of me was a hum-bling indicator that I need to practice this, consciously, until it is second nature and does not require such an effort. This goes back to the fact that every moment with your horse you are either sensitizing or desensitizing them. The exercises in your clinic truly heightened my awareness of

this. Giving instant corrections (which were really more of a supportive tap to let my horse know he had not matched my picture quite yet) and instantly letting my horse know when he had made it was hard! But I am encouraged by the knowl-edge that this will become a far easier habit with practice.

Karen, this clinic was EXACTLY what my horse needed me to do so that I could be a better partner for him. I am so excited to take this back to my younger horses as well so that the next time I am practicing my freestyle, I can be practicing my fi-nesse within it and be developing habits of movement that will help us both down the road. I am very excited about the time I will be spending studying with you this winter and can't wait to see where all this leads. Thank you so much for coming to Ontario and we are all very excited to have you back in the spring and fall of 2008.

~Fawn Anderson

Thanks, Fawn for your feedback

And THANK YOU to all the students, clinic hosts, audi-tors, volunteers, facility owners and especially the horses who have made this years clinics so much fun!

I look forward to 2008

6 Nullam arcu leo, facilisis ut

... I’ve got a secret! The Dressage Naturally book is at the printer!The DVD is still in editing phase, but is moving forward... I am so sorry I keep promising it will be ready soon... I really had no idea how long these things take!

This month my new website will be up, so check in a couple weeks for that. There will be some new stuff on there as well as a fresher ‘look’!

Also I want to tell you about a magazine called Horses For Life It is a beautiful on line

magazine and I will be doing some articles for them.

Also check out Quarterhorsedressage.com as they have asked for articles from me also. They have asked me for photos of stu-dents on their quarter horse, paint or appaloosa doing dressage, so if you have pho-tos of this, send them to me and I will see if we can in-clude them in future articles!

So that is all for this month... Stay well, have a Happy Thanksgiving to those of you here in the USA, and I will see you here next month, if not before...

Photo:Dana Rasmussen

photonstudio.com

copyright 2007 Temenos Fields, Inc, November 7

Dressage Na t u r a l l y… R e s u l t s i n H a r m o n y

©2007 Karen Rohlf. All rights reserved. No part of this DVD may be reproduced in any way or by any means without express perm

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