Ok, so the blog post of today will be in English. I have some friends that are not speaking Swedish so I have promised to once in a while write in English. Here we go. Today the handwork was much better than yesterday. Bröta was alert and “on” from the start and we got the nice fluent movements sliding between shoulder in and quarter in pretty fast. I am still focusing on explaining the outside leg aid and the bending away rein aid and to get the nice, smooth bow of the spine moving between the shoulder in and quarter in. This means not falling out on the outside shoulder when going to quarter in for us right now. We did pretty well.

Then I jumped up on the horse and totally forgot about the work in halt but started walking straight away. My soft side changed again, and today it was the left lead that was better and I was struggling a bit more to the right and did not get quite the softness that I got yesterday. Thank you Bröta, that was a very clear message that I am stiffening in my right hip again!

Anyhow, I got the very wonderful sensation that my stomach and inner hip is leading the way when riding. It was so clear in my body today and when changing between shoulder in and quarter in I just focused my hip rotation and stomach to outer or inner shoulder when turning. Truly an amazing feeling!

It is interesting how you change your point of view depending on where you are in life. I have always appreciated how Celina can always tell me what to do, how to do it and why I need to do things during my education. She knows the theory and biomechanics so well and I have appreciated these “technical” instructions very much, theory girl as I am. However, now I am more and more beginning to appreciate how she can guide me to the feeling of riding. Of course we have worked with this before, but I am getting sensations in my body now when riding that I have never felt before. I guess there is a time for everything in life and now is really the time for me to develop the feeling of riding, the timing, the softness and the breathing. It is such an exciting journey this, the education in academic art of riding.

As I said, the message from Bröta was very clear, that I was getting stiff in my right hip again, so after riding I went inside to do some stretching and salsa exercises to loosen it again. It will be interesting to do my short evening work tonight to test my hips!

#academic art of riding