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glenatronYesterday we went to watch the first day of a Kathleen Lindley clinic. Kathleen has been working and touring with Mark Rashid for the last few years so she works in very much the way he does. If you haven't read any of Mark Rashid's books I strongly recommend it- they're really good reading. Unusually for an American Natural Horsemanship practitioner, her background is a lot more in showjumping ( or jumper hunting as I think it's called in the US ) than western riding- she does some purely jumping clinics as well as ones like this which was mostly just working with people and their horses and helping them to sort things out together.
Like most trainers coming from the "Natural Horsemanship" scene now Kathleen dislikes the term - there is very little natural about the way we keep horses and nothing natural about the fact that we ride and drive them after all. What I felt I was seeing at this clinic was very much pragmatic horsemanship, easy to follow and simple to that point that a lot of it seemed pretty obvious, but in an obvious-after-the-event kind of way. Not necessarily the first thing you would think of, but the kind of thing that when you see it you go "of course! Why didn't I think of that?" I guess not being a trainer and clinician of many years experience explains it...
The first pony up was making her rider feel that it was very hard work to keep her going, as though the rider was having to work harder than the horse. Kathleen suggested that the problem here was that the horse was constantly asking if it was alright to slow down. The reason for this was a very slight lack of consistency in the rider- just enough that sometimes when the horse said "can I slow down now" the answer had been yes so now she was asking the whole time.
To change this they worked on making cues clearer- the ask that the rider wanted to be making, followed up by asking more strongly (in this case by using the whip on the rider's boot to make a noise) and only finally if the horse ignored that following it up by asking the horse on with the whip, so that she always had fair warning and was making a choice that she understood.
In the long run the solution would be to make sure that downward transitions are always the rider's decision. If you can catch the step where the slowdown starts to happen you can fix it much more easily- the sooner you notice something the more leverage you have.
She also discussed the importance of asking with a reasonably light leg- once you really have to clamp your leg on you are inhibiting the horse's ability to move thier barrel and consequently to move their feet, so it's better to ask more lightly and follow it up than to end up just squeezing and actually making it harder for the horse to do what you want.
Something that she really made a point of with all the riders was breathing correctly- in order for the horse to be working freely and with impulsion she suggests that the rider needs to be breathing in a measured way- when riding to the trot count how many rises you can inhale for and how many you can exhale for without becoming light-headed. Ideally this should be about six to eight rises to start with and building on that. Experimenting this myself I've found that conscious breathing actually helps me to think clearly about everything I'm doing so I certainly recommend working on it.
Kathleen talks about impulsion as being what comes from the inside of the horse, when they really buy in to what you are asking them to do it, at that point you're working as a team.
Another point that came up was the importance of finding the rhythm of transitions so that the horse can make a downward transition without losing all it's movement- when you drop from trot to walk you want to drop to a nice brisk walk rather than dropping to the slowest amble the horse is capable of. Kathleen suggested focussing on the hind feet and keeping them moving forward to help to drop pace without losing everything else. Again she talked about the importance of breath, exhaling on downward transitions.
The next horse up was a big hunter type by the name of Bobby and his rider Be, who was wanting to work on softness and on her confidence.
They started out working on stopping, which raised the point of asking for a stop at the time the horse can do it, rather than just asking in a "please stop when you have a moment" kind of way that most of us usually do. She suggested feeling for the back feet, exhaling and thinking "stop" as the first foot comes forward and then closing the hand on the second. This certainly seemed to help Bobby stop more sharply but it was still a bit bracey so Kathleen decided to do some work on reining back.
It turned out that Bobby didn't really know how to do that softly - this turned out to be a big theme of the day, it seemed that the easiest way to begin to get the horse to understand softness was through working on backup. This involved Kathleen actually taking the reins and really working to draw Bobby's head in and help him back up with it. He was getting really stuck, finding it very hard to move his feet, although he was very happy to soften his head. Kathleen ended up pretty much leaning on the bit at some points, but once he got unstuck and worked out how to move his feet he was quickly able to back up and then it was a case of keeping him backing until he was able to do it softly. She discussed the difference between lightness, giving to pressure and softness - a horse can be light without being soft- lightness means the cues are being followed quickly and responsively, softness means the horse is working in a relaxed fashion.
A couple of times Bobby seemed to want to push through her rather than back up- he was trying to find release but he was looking in the opposite direction. She commented that horses will offer everything they already know before offering something new so a horse that has never learned to back up under saddle will try a whole bunch of other things before they find the thing you are asking for. That's why you might want to be quite careful in working at something like this with a horse that doesn't know how to back up but does know how to rear. She observed that there are no general solutions and you have to be very ready to taylor your approach to each horse.
Once Bobby was working softly backing up it changed how he felt in his other work as well and he looked a bit happier and more rounded when he went forward.
The cause of his bracing, in Kathleen's opinion, was probably years working on a meaningless contact, so he had just learned to push against the bit rather than listening to it. By keeping the contact as soft as possible it remains a line of communication rather than a pressure to be worked against. The mark of good hands is visible changes in the rein as the horse moves their head, this indicates it's not being held rigidly so when any pressure is applied to it the horse knows to listen. Allowing the horse to release itself by putting it's head in the right position is a good way to help them find softness.
Next up were Jo and Schooner, a very handsome bay arabian.
Once again they were working on reining back as a route to softness- to start with he was doing the classic high-headed arabian trot and a good rein-back would maybe help him bring his head down a little.
They started out by just asking Jo to take up a contact and wait for him to back up. Literally just sit and wait. It took a while of him moving his head around, leaning back and trying pretty much everything before he actually thought to move his feet. Kathleen recommended waiting with the contact until Jo got the back up she wanted- with a horse like Schooner, who is very smart and quick to learn she judged that it was better to get the whole thing than to release earlier and risk him learning that was all that would ever be expected of that cue. Jo's hands needed to soften as he started backing but keep some pressure until he was backing up softly. Once again it was observed that there were no general cases.
In Schooner's case he obviously got release while still leaning back because he started to get stuck in a position with his front legs straight and his backside in the air, a bit as though he thought he was taking a bow. To get out of this they started turning to unstick the feet and then changing the turning motion into a backup.
After a little while he started to really get it.
The next horse to come in was a black welsh mare by the name of Lacey. She was totally the kind of horse you would get if you went to the Zorro shop and asked for one a couple of sizes smaller. She also had the same kind of attitude, although having attended clinics with Kathleen and Mark a few times she was a lot less lairy than apparently she had been.
They started with a bit of leading work because Lacey tended to run her handler over, mostly by not stopping when they did. She had them lead her and then turn quickly when they stopped ready to move her back if she started coming forward unasked. She also discussed the importance of having enough attention so that when the horse spooks they know where you are and can go around you.
They went on to work on cantering, which Lacey wasn't very good at, tending to take the canter cue as a "trot faster" cue. Because she had been allowed to treat it that way she had learned that was what it meant. By always having a backup ready for your cue you can make sure this doesn't have to happen.
She was also striking off on the wrong lead when cantering clockwise around the arena. Kathleen explained that a good way to work on this was to drop back to trot and then quickly back to canter- when a horse drops out of canter the second and fifth strides of trot will be on the other lead so if you can pick up canter on either of those the lead will be changed.
They also worked on focussing on a destination- if you are looking down or focussing on the front of the horse you are effectively sticking their forehand to the ground.
All morning it had been cloudy and cold enough that we were shivering under all our coats, we went indoors for lunch and when we came out it was brilliantly sunny and I started to wish I had brought suncream so I could take my jumper off.
The afternoon began with Louise and her handsome bay horse Flynn. He was very distracted by the new situation and everything that was going on outside the arena so they started out by working on just getting him paying attention. He needed to be moving so they used that to get him working on lots of small rounded shapes - the moment his attention started to wander out of the arena he he was on another turn in another direction. When he was able to keep his mind with Louise they would start to straighten out, but the moment he was distracted again they were on another circle. He needed to learn that the only person who could help him feel more brave was his rider.
Flynn was wanting to walk towards whatever was distracting him as well, which Kathleen suggested was a response to the way a lot of horses are weaned.
This was really interesting to me- she was saying that in a feral herd of horses foals have an absolute free run of the place, they can bump into people, clamber around them and generally be a pest as much as they like. Around the time they are weaned they suddenly find they are part of the herd and they can't take liberties any more, they go where the lead mare tells them and they drink in an order appropriate to their social status.
When humans get involved in the weaning process they will often take the foal away from it's mother and put it either on it's own or with other horses it's own age. This means that there is no-one to teach it about social order and they never learn to hand over their decision making to another horse or that some behaviours that were fine in foals are not really appropriate for grown-ups.
This really spoke to me as Zorro shows some very colty behaviours and just doesn't seem to have learned that they are not as great when performed by a lunking great 500kg cob than they were for a little playful foal.
She talked about what decisions you do and don't want horses to make, how you do want them to decide where their feet go because on rough ground they're a far better judge of that than you are and also how she leaves them the decision to stop if they can't jump something. She observed that the majority of jumping accidents happen when a horse feels it has no choice to jump but is in a position where it can't possibly make the jump safely.
The discussion also moved on to the importance of clarity- posing the question of how gentle horses are to one another in a herd compared with how clear they are. Although we may want to be gentle with our horses it's not something they care about in the least- they want us to be clear with them.
The problems Louise was having were at least in part because Flynn didn't see her as enough of a leader- this may not be a problem in the known space of home, but once you get out into a new environment he starts showing it in a lot more ways. Because horses are born followers they're not very keen on leading, especially when confronted by something new. If you can be the leader they need they will be happier and you will be safer.
She talked about the line from Consistency to Dependability to Trust to Peace. That is the path we should be working to follow with our horses, but it's one we can use in a lot of other aspects of our lives as well.
Next up were Simon and Mallow, pictured above. They had done a fair few clinics with Mark and Kathleen over the last few years and they certainly seemed to be thriving on it. They did a lot of canter work, focussing a lot on Simon's breathing and body position, helping him to move better with the horse. Particularly they looked at the circles made by the horse's hindlimbs and forelimbs in canter and how these need to match up to a third circle made by the rider's pelvis. To make the best of this the rider needs to be able to soften their lower back and support themselves more with their abs. This is apparently not easy for men to do because we tend to have more upper body strength and to use our back rather than our core muscles.
There was quite a lot of Aikido talk here (Mark strongly recommends that his students learn Aikido as a counterpoint to their horsemanship) which was interesting to me but maybe less so to non-martial-artists in the audience.
The last pairing of the day was Sue and her horse Troy. Once again they were wanting to work on their softness in all paces.
Once again they began on focussing on breathing and timing it with the trot- sometimes horses will spook to jump-start their breathing and because they are so reflective if we are holding our breath expecting the horse to spook that could be enough to trigger the spook. We can breathe ourselves and our horses either into calmness or into panic.
Troy seemed to find it quite hard to soften and once again they went on to rein-back to work on that. Troy was very braced and very prepared to work into pressure. In fact Kathleen ended up pretty much leaning on the rein to get him to back up. To me that seemed a bit unnecessary- she had already discussed that the horse is choosing to resist the pressure on the bit and if they were genuinely uncomfortable they could just give to it, but it still seemed a bit heavy to me. I can see how it did work well in a clinic format with the horse saddled up and the rider in place but it just seemed to me like a groundwork problem being solved in the saddle because the saddle was there. Discussing it afterwards Kathleen commented that working with their own horses they always work on softness from the very start, in leading, lungeing, ground driving and everything else, so it's already there when they get into the saddle.
Kathleen explained how they were riding the horse very much front to back but that with a horse as braced as Troy if you tried to ride from the back to the front you would just run into the wall of that brace and not get any more. She made the distinction between a horse that was heavy and one that was braced- you could have a horse that moved very softly but was still heavy but you could never have a horse that was braced and soft.
Once they had got around the brace Troy was moving a lot more freely and he seemed to be doing well.
The problem with only watching one day of a clinic is that you don't really get to see the progress the horses make- they were all looking a lot better when they left the ring than when they entered it, but after a night to think on the work they had done before you were guaranteed to get a lot of latent learning going on and by the end of day three I'm sure the changes in many of the horses there will be dramatic.
On the whole I really enjoyed watching the clinic, Kathleen was very approachable and the solutions she was offering were very common-sense but really seened to be working both for horses and riders. I'd certainly suggest going to watch if she's doing a clinic near you and if you are interested in having a better relationship with your horse but a bit worried about how different a lot of Natural Horsemanship seems, you might find that the approach she is teaching works really well for you.
Like most trainers coming from the "Natural Horsemanship" scene now Kathleen dislikes the term - there is very little natural about the way we keep horses and nothing natural about the fact that we ride and drive them after all. What I felt I was seeing at this clinic was very much pragmatic horsemanship, easy to follow and simple to that point that a lot of it seemed pretty obvious, but in an obvious-after-the-event kind of way. Not necessarily the first thing you would think of, but the kind of thing that when you see it you go "of course! Why didn't I think of that?" I guess not being a trainer and clinician of many years experience explains it...
The first pony up was making her rider feel that it was very hard work to keep her going, as though the rider was having to work harder than the horse. Kathleen suggested that the problem here was that the horse was constantly asking if it was alright to slow down. The reason for this was a very slight lack of consistency in the rider- just enough that sometimes when the horse said "can I slow down now" the answer had been yes so now she was asking the whole time.
To change this they worked on making cues clearer- the ask that the rider wanted to be making, followed up by asking more strongly (in this case by using the whip on the rider's boot to make a noise) and only finally if the horse ignored that following it up by asking the horse on with the whip, so that she always had fair warning and was making a choice that she understood.
In the long run the solution would be to make sure that downward transitions are always the rider's decision. If you can catch the step where the slowdown starts to happen you can fix it much more easily- the sooner you notice something the more leverage you have.
She also discussed the importance of asking with a reasonably light leg- once you really have to clamp your leg on you are inhibiting the horse's ability to move thier barrel and consequently to move their feet, so it's better to ask more lightly and follow it up than to end up just squeezing and actually making it harder for the horse to do what you want.
Something that she really made a point of with all the riders was breathing correctly- in order for the horse to be working freely and with impulsion she suggests that the rider needs to be breathing in a measured way- when riding to the trot count how many rises you can inhale for and how many you can exhale for without becoming light-headed. Ideally this should be about six to eight rises to start with and building on that. Experimenting this myself I've found that conscious breathing actually helps me to think clearly about everything I'm doing so I certainly recommend working on it.
Kathleen talks about impulsion as being what comes from the inside of the horse, when they really buy in to what you are asking them to do it, at that point you're working as a team.
Another point that came up was the importance of finding the rhythm of transitions so that the horse can make a downward transition without losing all it's movement- when you drop from trot to walk you want to drop to a nice brisk walk rather than dropping to the slowest amble the horse is capable of. Kathleen suggested focussing on the hind feet and keeping them moving forward to help to drop pace without losing everything else. Again she talked about the importance of breath, exhaling on downward transitions.
The next horse up was a big hunter type by the name of Bobby and his rider Be, who was wanting to work on softness and on her confidence.
They started out working on stopping, which raised the point of asking for a stop at the time the horse can do it, rather than just asking in a "please stop when you have a moment" kind of way that most of us usually do. She suggested feeling for the back feet, exhaling and thinking "stop" as the first foot comes forward and then closing the hand on the second. This certainly seemed to help Bobby stop more sharply but it was still a bit bracey so Kathleen decided to do some work on reining back.
It turned out that Bobby didn't really know how to do that softly - this turned out to be a big theme of the day, it seemed that the easiest way to begin to get the horse to understand softness was through working on backup. This involved Kathleen actually taking the reins and really working to draw Bobby's head in and help him back up with it. He was getting really stuck, finding it very hard to move his feet, although he was very happy to soften his head. Kathleen ended up pretty much leaning on the bit at some points, but once he got unstuck and worked out how to move his feet he was quickly able to back up and then it was a case of keeping him backing until he was able to do it softly. She discussed the difference between lightness, giving to pressure and softness - a horse can be light without being soft- lightness means the cues are being followed quickly and responsively, softness means the horse is working in a relaxed fashion.
A couple of times Bobby seemed to want to push through her rather than back up- he was trying to find release but he was looking in the opposite direction. She commented that horses will offer everything they already know before offering something new so a horse that has never learned to back up under saddle will try a whole bunch of other things before they find the thing you are asking for. That's why you might want to be quite careful in working at something like this with a horse that doesn't know how to back up but does know how to rear. She observed that there are no general solutions and you have to be very ready to taylor your approach to each horse.
Once Bobby was working softly backing up it changed how he felt in his other work as well and he looked a bit happier and more rounded when he went forward.
The cause of his bracing, in Kathleen's opinion, was probably years working on a meaningless contact, so he had just learned to push against the bit rather than listening to it. By keeping the contact as soft as possible it remains a line of communication rather than a pressure to be worked against. The mark of good hands is visible changes in the rein as the horse moves their head, this indicates it's not being held rigidly so when any pressure is applied to it the horse knows to listen. Allowing the horse to release itself by putting it's head in the right position is a good way to help them find softness.
Next up were Jo and Schooner, a very handsome bay arabian.
Once again they were working on reining back as a route to softness- to start with he was doing the classic high-headed arabian trot and a good rein-back would maybe help him bring his head down a little.
They started out by just asking Jo to take up a contact and wait for him to back up. Literally just sit and wait. It took a while of him moving his head around, leaning back and trying pretty much everything before he actually thought to move his feet. Kathleen recommended waiting with the contact until Jo got the back up she wanted- with a horse like Schooner, who is very smart and quick to learn she judged that it was better to get the whole thing than to release earlier and risk him learning that was all that would ever be expected of that cue. Jo's hands needed to soften as he started backing but keep some pressure until he was backing up softly. Once again it was observed that there were no general cases.
In Schooner's case he obviously got release while still leaning back because he started to get stuck in a position with his front legs straight and his backside in the air, a bit as though he thought he was taking a bow. To get out of this they started turning to unstick the feet and then changing the turning motion into a backup.
After a little while he started to really get it.
The next horse to come in was a black welsh mare by the name of Lacey. She was totally the kind of horse you would get if you went to the Zorro shop and asked for one a couple of sizes smaller. She also had the same kind of attitude, although having attended clinics with Kathleen and Mark a few times she was a lot less lairy than apparently she had been.
They started with a bit of leading work because Lacey tended to run her handler over, mostly by not stopping when they did. She had them lead her and then turn quickly when they stopped ready to move her back if she started coming forward unasked. She also discussed the importance of having enough attention so that when the horse spooks they know where you are and can go around you.
They went on to work on cantering, which Lacey wasn't very good at, tending to take the canter cue as a "trot faster" cue. Because she had been allowed to treat it that way she had learned that was what it meant. By always having a backup ready for your cue you can make sure this doesn't have to happen.
She was also striking off on the wrong lead when cantering clockwise around the arena. Kathleen explained that a good way to work on this was to drop back to trot and then quickly back to canter- when a horse drops out of canter the second and fifth strides of trot will be on the other lead so if you can pick up canter on either of those the lead will be changed.
They also worked on focussing on a destination- if you are looking down or focussing on the front of the horse you are effectively sticking their forehand to the ground.
All morning it had been cloudy and cold enough that we were shivering under all our coats, we went indoors for lunch and when we came out it was brilliantly sunny and I started to wish I had brought suncream so I could take my jumper off.
The afternoon began with Louise and her handsome bay horse Flynn. He was very distracted by the new situation and everything that was going on outside the arena so they started out by working on just getting him paying attention. He needed to be moving so they used that to get him working on lots of small rounded shapes - the moment his attention started to wander out of the arena he he was on another turn in another direction. When he was able to keep his mind with Louise they would start to straighten out, but the moment he was distracted again they were on another circle. He needed to learn that the only person who could help him feel more brave was his rider.
Flynn was wanting to walk towards whatever was distracting him as well, which Kathleen suggested was a response to the way a lot of horses are weaned.
This was really interesting to me- she was saying that in a feral herd of horses foals have an absolute free run of the place, they can bump into people, clamber around them and generally be a pest as much as they like. Around the time they are weaned they suddenly find they are part of the herd and they can't take liberties any more, they go where the lead mare tells them and they drink in an order appropriate to their social status.
When humans get involved in the weaning process they will often take the foal away from it's mother and put it either on it's own or with other horses it's own age. This means that there is no-one to teach it about social order and they never learn to hand over their decision making to another horse or that some behaviours that were fine in foals are not really appropriate for grown-ups.
This really spoke to me as Zorro shows some very colty behaviours and just doesn't seem to have learned that they are not as great when performed by a lunking great 500kg cob than they were for a little playful foal.
She talked about what decisions you do and don't want horses to make, how you do want them to decide where their feet go because on rough ground they're a far better judge of that than you are and also how she leaves them the decision to stop if they can't jump something. She observed that the majority of jumping accidents happen when a horse feels it has no choice to jump but is in a position where it can't possibly make the jump safely.
The discussion also moved on to the importance of clarity- posing the question of how gentle horses are to one another in a herd compared with how clear they are. Although we may want to be gentle with our horses it's not something they care about in the least- they want us to be clear with them.
The problems Louise was having were at least in part because Flynn didn't see her as enough of a leader- this may not be a problem in the known space of home, but once you get out into a new environment he starts showing it in a lot more ways. Because horses are born followers they're not very keen on leading, especially when confronted by something new. If you can be the leader they need they will be happier and you will be safer.
She talked about the line from Consistency to Dependability to Trust to Peace. That is the path we should be working to follow with our horses, but it's one we can use in a lot of other aspects of our lives as well.
Next up were Simon and Mallow, pictured above. They had done a fair few clinics with Mark and Kathleen over the last few years and they certainly seemed to be thriving on it. They did a lot of canter work, focussing a lot on Simon's breathing and body position, helping him to move better with the horse. Particularly they looked at the circles made by the horse's hindlimbs and forelimbs in canter and how these need to match up to a third circle made by the rider's pelvis. To make the best of this the rider needs to be able to soften their lower back and support themselves more with their abs. This is apparently not easy for men to do because we tend to have more upper body strength and to use our back rather than our core muscles.
There was quite a lot of Aikido talk here (Mark strongly recommends that his students learn Aikido as a counterpoint to their horsemanship) which was interesting to me but maybe less so to non-martial-artists in the audience.
The last pairing of the day was Sue and her horse Troy. Once again they were wanting to work on their softness in all paces.
Once again they began on focussing on breathing and timing it with the trot- sometimes horses will spook to jump-start their breathing and because they are so reflective if we are holding our breath expecting the horse to spook that could be enough to trigger the spook. We can breathe ourselves and our horses either into calmness or into panic.
Troy seemed to find it quite hard to soften and once again they went on to rein-back to work on that. Troy was very braced and very prepared to work into pressure. In fact Kathleen ended up pretty much leaning on the rein to get him to back up. To me that seemed a bit unnecessary- she had already discussed that the horse is choosing to resist the pressure on the bit and if they were genuinely uncomfortable they could just give to it, but it still seemed a bit heavy to me. I can see how it did work well in a clinic format with the horse saddled up and the rider in place but it just seemed to me like a groundwork problem being solved in the saddle because the saddle was there. Discussing it afterwards Kathleen commented that working with their own horses they always work on softness from the very start, in leading, lungeing, ground driving and everything else, so it's already there when they get into the saddle.
Kathleen explained how they were riding the horse very much front to back but that with a horse as braced as Troy if you tried to ride from the back to the front you would just run into the wall of that brace and not get any more. She made the distinction between a horse that was heavy and one that was braced- you could have a horse that moved very softly but was still heavy but you could never have a horse that was braced and soft.
Once they had got around the brace Troy was moving a lot more freely and he seemed to be doing well.
The problem with only watching one day of a clinic is that you don't really get to see the progress the horses make- they were all looking a lot better when they left the ring than when they entered it, but after a night to think on the work they had done before you were guaranteed to get a lot of latent learning going on and by the end of day three I'm sure the changes in many of the horses there will be dramatic.
On the whole I really enjoyed watching the clinic, Kathleen was very approachable and the solutions she was offering were very common-sense but really seened to be working both for horses and riders. I'd certainly suggest going to watch if she's doing a clinic near you and if you are interested in having a better relationship with your horse but a bit worried about how different a lot of Natural Horsemanship seems, you might find that the approach she is teaching works really well for you.
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Date: 16 Jul 2007 13:17 (UTC)no subject
Date: 16 Jul 2007 14:08 (UTC)no subject
Date: 18 Jul 2007 06:57 (UTC)But I like the phrase 'pragmatic horsemanship.' Well-said. (although on a related note the phrase 'practical dressage' kinda makes me laugh)
Also, interesting that the first horse was slwoing down all the time because of inconsistencies in the rider...and the solution was making the cues clearer. (Speaking of which, I spent time with Sage on the ground last week, with him in the Parelli hackamore...teaching him the cues for it like he'd never learned them before...and then when I rode him he was every bit as light and responsive as he was in the dually halter! So hooray for one dilemma solved!)
But I think having consistent and clear cues is something that's kind of a theme right now, for me, having a 5 year old just started under saddle horse.
I haven't worked on my breathing in a long time, although I know that used to be really important in my dressage lessons as a teenager, and definitely gave me that 'zen' feeling that also happens during yoga class...
And I see aikido mentioned...Parelli talks about martial arts stuff too, its interesting to see how the breathing and balance overlap...I've even done some martial arts based stuff in Linda Tellington Jones clinics...
Hmmm...stuff to think about...