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By James Shaw
We take our breath for granted. We breathe in and out without really thinking about it. But what if we did think about it, and by becoming aware of our breath and deepening it we could feel our horse change underneath us? No verbal commands, no reins, no spurs, just our breath as the aide. It can happen just like that, and it does seem like magic!
Not Breathing
Breathing is for the most part an unconscious act. Thank goodness for that, because if we had to remember to breathe, most of us would not be here. When we hold our breath, the affect on our horse is apparent. When you hold your breath:
- Your body begins to tense and the tension is transferred to your horse
- Your horse’s head raises two or three inches
- The movement through your horse’s body is restricted
- You cannot maintain fluid movement and you are disconnected from your horse
- When jumping, you cause your horse to be imbalanced in the air and on the landing.
- Prior to a transition, you lose your rhythm and your timing is left to chance
Breathing into the Chest
This is how we normally breathe. By breathing only into the chest:
- Energetically you cut yourself in half
- Your lower back tightens creating a tremendous amount of unnecessary tension that may be the sole cause of a sore back in both you and your horse.
- Your upper body becomes your root of strength, pitting your strength against your horse’s
- You weight the forehand of your horse and restrict the movement in the hind end, shortening the step of the back feet
- You restrict the amount of air the horse can take into its lungs, greatly decreasing its strength and endurance
The afore mentioned conditions are merely symptoms of holding your breath.
The magic is that all these symptoms may be changed or prevented by learning how to breathe a little differently. Your breath can become your most powerful and effective aid.
How Changing the Breath Changes Your Balance
Becoming aware of your breath is one of the best ways to connect mind and body, a requirement to any enlightened approach to training. If you’re not in control of your breath, you’re not in complete control of your body and balance. There are two ways to control your body and influence your horse. The first is from the outside with strength and leverage. The second is from the inside, through using your breath and moving your center. Think of your center as a large balloon or sphere filled with water, your center has a liquid center of its own. Now imagine that the balloon is strapped to your back, the outside of the balloon is secured but the watery center is free to move in any direction. You begin to walk and the water inside the balloon on your back starts to slosh back and forth from your movement. The outside of the balloon is held tight to your back but the movement of the liquid center causes you to become unbalanced. To compensate for the shifting center of the balloon you tighten and brace muscles in your body that normally would be relaxed while walking. To the outside observer, who only sees the outer shell of the balloon and not the movement of the liquid center, your walk would appear unbalanced, lacking grace and power. In this imaginary walk you are strong enough to manage the outside of the balloon, it doesn’t fall off your back because it’s held on, but the unseen moving center is out of your control. If you could control the liquid center you could match its movements to yours, this would create a rhythm between you and the balloon. In the same way the balloon and its moving center affect you and the way you walk, you and your center affect your horse and the way it moves. By controlling your breath you can control the fluid nature of your center. This means by slightly redirecting your breath to the front of your body (your belly), you weight the front of your seat bones. By expanding the breath into your lower back, you can weight the back of your seat bones. By allowing more breath to fill the left or right side of your abdomen, you can shift weight into the left or right seat bones. All these shifts of weight come from your center and are unseen from the outside of the body.
Please take a moment to find out how you shift weight in your seat. Do you lean with the upper body? Or push and pull with the muscles in your legs? Can you use your breath to shift your center’s center? If not, don’t worry, it took years to develop your habits of breathing and it will take time to change them. Becoming aware of how you breathe is the first step to changing the way you breath.
To control your horse’s rhythm you must first gain control of your own rhythm. And you do that with your breath. Breathing is your body’s natural metronome. Your breathing sets the body’s rhythm and rhythm is the key to timing. Without it you leave timing to chance. Effortless and invisible transitions in speed, direction and gait are dependant on you matching and maintaining your rhythm with that of your horse. When this happens you can ask for and get transitions with your breath, its magic! Ask yourself, “Where is my breath when I ask for a transition?” For example: from walk to trot, as you ask for the transition, are you inhaling, exhaling or maybe holding your breath? If you’re holding your breath, you lose the rhythm in your body and disconnect from the horse. Remember because your horse is bigger and stronger than you it sets the rhythm for you to match. The best example of this that I can remember is while working with a friend on sitting the trot on a very cold spring day in New York. She was having trouble finding her rhythm and asked if I could tell her what it should be. I reminded her that it was her horse that set the rhythm so maybe we should ask him. At that moment I realized because it was so cold I could see the breath leaving the horses nostrils, I could see the rhythm of its breath. He exhaled with two big puffs of steam and then inhaled then two big puffs of steam. After a little experimenting we found that if she exhaled to a two beat rhythm, her sitting trot became more fluid.
Changing the Way You Breathe
There is no doubt that stress is a part of our lives. In today’s society, most of our stress is mental stress. Unresolved mental stress drops into the body in the form of tension. While your mind may forget the initial cause of stress, the body does not and can hold the resulting tension for years. This tension builds up in layers in the body. The layers of tension form walls. These walls, like the walls of a fortress are nearly impossible to penetrate from the outside. Even with bodywork and massage it’s difficult to get through these walls in order to relax. By changing the way you breathe you can approach the walls from the inside. With proper training of your breath you will gain control over the smallest, deepest muscles in your body. When these muscles are actively engaged, the larger muscles of the body begin to let go of the tension they hold. If the body is in proper structural alignment, (See “The International Equine Journal” Issue 1, 2004, Article” It’s in Your Bones”), the tension will release down through your structure and into the ground.
Abdominal Breathing
In abdominal breathing, the abdomen expands with the inhalation of breath and contracts with the exhalation. This is exactly opposite of how most people breath. To successfully move your breath into the abdomen, your abdomen must become relaxed without sacrificing your structural alignment. When this relaxation happens, your lower back, pelvis, and spine will move freely within your center. In return, this free movement “deepens” the seat and allows you to match the rhythm of the horse. What this means for your horse is that he has to spend much less energy and focus balancing you on his back. When you match your horse, you allow him to move more freely and effectively in any gait. Experience with hundred’s of riders has proven that horses feel and react to the stress/tension we hold in our bodies. Abdominal breathing will relax and calm your mind and body. This in turn calms and relaxes your horse. The most effective place to begin to change how you breathe is on the ground.
For photos and more information on breathing see Chapter 5 of my book, “Ride From Within”.
By James Shaw
“Tai Chi for Equestrians”
This exercise develops the enhanced mobility of your shoulders and chest necessary for increasing the sensitivity of your hands. It helps soften your chest, shoulders, and upper back. And finally, the exercise will help you maintain the rhythm of your seat and your connection with the horse.
The mounted version of this exercise enhances your ability to balance your upper body. It also teaches you to recognize and release tension in your arms, chest, and shoulders.
Exercise: Spread Your Chest
Desired Result
Spreading your chest teaches you to move energy through your neck and shoulders down the back and into your seat; this helps you keep your upper body free from the tension that leads to fatigue. It can also help prevent chronic injuries of the neck and shoulder.
You may experience some popping or cracking noises in your shoulder joints. Don’t be alarmed—it is natural for the body to make noise as the muscles, tendons, and ligaments stretch, realign, and heal. However, if you have had any shoulder injuries, you must use caution in doing this exercise. You may experience some discomfort in the shoulder while performing the stretch, but it should not be painful. Only you can determine the difference between discomfort and pain. In any case, you should feel no pain after completing the exercise. Often we have to move through and past discomfort in order to heal an old injury.
The position and alignment of your bones during all the Laing Gong exercises is of vital importance. Only with proper position can you realize the tremendous healing nature of these exercises.
Intent
Imagine that your arms are stretching out from your spine, not just from your shoulders. Feel a sensation of heat moving out your arm—use your mind to push heat out to your hands and then out beyond your fingertips.
As you become familiar with the motion, look at one hand, but focus your mind on the other; this concentration will engage both hemispheres of your brain simultaneously and increase awareness.
Step-by-Step
Unmounted
- Begin in Standing Meditation.
- Stretch your arms straight down in front of your body, with your right palm on top of the back of the left hand. Lock your elbows; they remain locked throughout the exercise. Remember to hold your fingers together and thumbs out.
- Your eyes and head look down at your right hand.
- Raise your paired arms straight forward and up, until they are directly over your head. Keep your eyes on your right hand.
- Stretch your arms up by bringing your shoulders to your ears for one second as you extend your fingers towards the sky.
- Move your arms back past your head as you separate your hands, and push your arms out and back in a circular motion.
- Keep your palms facing up by rotating the upper arm, not the forearm.
- Continue to move your arms in a circular motion—back, out, and down.
As your hands drop below the level of your shoulders, let the upper arm rotate forward while the arms return to the beginning position, but now with left hand on top.
As your hands drop below the level of your shoulders, let the upper arm rotate forward while the arms return to the beginning position, but now with left hand on top.
- Repeat for your left side.
- Once to the right and once to the left form one complete repetition. Do at least four repetitions.
This form can create strong sensations in your arms and hands. You may feel a tingling or heat. It’s not uncommon to experience a feeling of electricity shooting through your arms. While mounted, you may even experience a feeling I can only describe as riding with an open heart—it will feel as if your horse’s energy moves up through your body into your heart. Physically, when the muscles of your chest and shoulders are relaxed, they soften and allow your spine to move more freely, and this enables you to maintain the alignment of your upper body over your center.
Mounted
Practice this exercise while riding at the walk on a loose rein or longe line. Ask a friend for assistance.
- Begin in Sitting Meditation.
- Riding at the walk, begin the exercise just as you would on the ground.
Notice how your body reacts to the movement of the horse as you begin to circle your arms back and out. Remember to keep your eyes on one hand—first on one side, and then on the other as you repeat the movement.
By James Shaw
“Tai Chi for Equestrians.”
The following exercise develops enhanced mobility in your shoulders and neck, which will enable you to keep your head balanced without undue tension. When your head is balanced, you allow the horse to move with more freedom. By opening your shoulder joints and the accompanying meridians, you will increase the sensitivity of your hands and fingers—helping you improve your communication with your horse. An added bonus of this exercise is that the pain you may have in your shoulders and neck caused by unconscious tension when you ride, will be alleviated.
Exercise: Spread Your Wings
Desired Result
You’ll develop the ability to move your arms and shoulders with minimal use of your upper trapezius muscles. You will also use your latissimus dorsi muscles to hold your shoulders down. This independent movement allows your shoulders and energy to stay down, so you don’t raise your center of gravity while raising your arms. This exercise also helps you learn to use your upper body while keeping your seat. A good seat is vital to maintaining the circuit that brings energy from the earth, up through the horse, into your seat, up through your body and out the reins to the horse, where it travels back down to the earth to begin the cycle again. Watch Olympic Gold Medalist Klaus Balkenhol’s winning dressage test for an excellent example of this ability in action.
Intent
Focus your eyes and mind on your elbows. Imagine stretching your elbows out and away from your body while drawing large circles in the air with your elbows. As you become familiar with the motion, look at one elbow but focus your mind on the other. This focus will engage both hemispheres of your brain simultaneously and increase your awareness. Step-by-Step
Move softly and gently. Breathe as you move, and support your elbows from below rather than lifting them with the trapezius muscles. Remember that any tension in your arms will show up in your hands. Think about keeping your armpits emptied.
Unmounted
This motion is much easier to master on the ground than in the saddle, so develop your skills doing the unmounted version and then do the exercise mounted.
- Begin by standing quietly with your feet together, arms at your sides, shoulders back, head erect, eyes gazing calmly into the distance. (Standing Meditation)
- Place your hands on your hips with your thumbs forward. Turn your head and look at your right elbow. Pull your elbows back and up, stretching the front of your chest open, while keeping your shoulders down and your palms close at your sides. Your eyes and head continue to follow the position of your right elbow.
- Continue to lift your elbows back and up until they are higher than your shoulders. Keep your palms close to your sides as your bent arms continue circling up. Circle your elbows toward the front of your body, allowing your hands to rise up to and through your armpits to the front of your chest.
The backs of your palms are now facing each other. Your wrists and fingers should be
soft and relaxed. Your elbows should be higher than your wrists and your shoulders
(trapezius muscles) should be relaxed and down.
Remember to follow the path of your right elbow with your eyes, but to keep your attention on the left elbow.
- Using your wrist as a pivot point, allow your elbows to drop down and your palms to face forward—but not quite straight forward: your hands should be positioned as though you were holding a large ball in front of your face.
- Relax your shoulders and elbows, while you allow your arms to return to the beginning position.
- Repeat and focus this time on your left elbow.
- Once to the right and once to the left form one complete repetition. Do at least four repetitions.
Have a friend watch the arm you are not looking at. Ask her to make sure that the motion of both your arms is the same.
You should feel no tension in your neck or hands. The motion will become smooth and relaxed throughout. With practice, you will recognize the moment you engage unnecessary muscles in your shoulders and neck, and you’ll be able to release them before they affect your balance or your connection with your horse.
Photos of this exercise may be viewed on pages131-136 of my book “Ride from Within”
Mounted
The mounted version of this exercise is the virtually the same as the ground version. Practice this exercise while riding at the walk on a loose rein or longe line. Ask a friend for assistance.
- Begin in Sitting Meditation.
- Do the exercise at the walk. Pay close attention to your seat while rotating your elbows. You will know immediately if you tighten the trapezius muscles because
- your seat will tighten and you’ll start to lose your balance backwards and brace your lower back.
The Tai Chi Perspective
Many of you know my background has been in the Martial Arts. My training has included hard style Kung Fu and weapons forms and soft style Tai Chi, Laing Gong and Chi Gong, which is what I use to train riders like you. Five years ago, I was visiting my sister Becky in Washington. She rides at Charlie Horse Acres owned by Cele and Tony Noble. Becky introduced me to Cele who called me a few weeks later and said that Betsy Steiner has been visiting the farm and was looking for a Tai Chi instructor. The rest, as they say is history. It takes some people a lifetime to figure out their life purpose. I feel fortunate because I was able to immediately put together the CONNECTION between my Tai Chi training and the specific help I could give to riders. It is a match made in heaven.
I began working with Betsy and her students. I then started offering classes for riders and creating specific exercises for the rider.
Many people don't realize that Tai Chi is a health exercise and is designed to create a strong and supple body' while promoting a clean circulation of CHI or life force. Chi helps the body to maintain internal balance. Tai Chi is a martial are, all of its forms have a combative purpose to them. The underlying principle is to never oppose an incoming force with strength. This way this applies to riders is that you will never be physically stronger than your horse; therefore, you would not be able to control your horse with mere force. The combination of techniques, connections and application that benefit riders are endless. I realize that the riders I work with are not interested in becoming Tai Chi masters, so I focus on exercises that develop you body's ability and sensitivity to effortlessly redirect your horse. Only when you have mastered the subtleties of your own body can you expect your horse to do the same.
When I am working with riders on their horses or on the ground my eye goes to look for the imbalances, stresses and misalignments. Our bones are designed structurally to support the body against the forces of gravity. Misalignment of the skeleton leads to ver use of the muscles. This then leads to unnecessary tension, not just to the muscles, but also on the nerves and joints. When the bones are aligned, the muscles are able to then release and relax and become extremely sensitive to changing forces inside and outside of our body. Our body is like a spoiled child: we need to give it constant direction and reminders. Otherwise, it does as it pleases without regard for what is good for it.
Once your bones are aligned, they are truly capable of listening and taking subtle direction from your Mind. Lack of flexibility in any of these areas directly effects the other. Each is a foundation upon which the other is built. For example, the lack of mobility of the waist or pelvis maybe the root cause for many lower back and knee problems. The result is restriction of range of motion. My goal is finding structural balance in any given position and then using only the muscles in a certain group necessary to maintain that balance. This is by no means an easy task, considering we have spent most of our lives unaware of the role our bones play in "true balance." We have asked our muscles to compensate for it, and to do a job that they're not necessarily designed to do.
The problem is, our muscle can be quite capable of doing these 'wrong jobs." We can spend our entire life slightly out of structural balance with very few ill side effects. Maybe the occasional sore back or achy knees, stiff neck or headaches. Only when we try to follow or adhere to a much greater force or movement such as riding a horse, are our structural imbalances magnified. It then becomes impossible for the misused muscle to take on the role of structural support. This results at its worse in injuries to joints and ligaments and at its least, discomfort and pain in the surrounding muscle groups. Not to mention what this does to our horses!
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IS THERE A CRACK IN YOUR SEAT?
One of the most effective and efficient ways athletes can improve performance is by strengthening their foundation. For the equestrian, I believe that foundation is the body. More precisely, the body's ability to maintain structural alignment, which adhering to the motion of your horse. Structural alignment is achieved when the bones align in such a way that they carry the force of gravity down through the body without creating unnecessary tensions in your muscles. Tension is created when the motion of the horse pushes you out of structural alignment and the muscles around your joints tighten in an attempt to hold you in balance. This would not be a big problem if we let go of the tension when we return to structural alignment. To maintain this level of balance you must increase your body's sensitivity to and ability to absorb and redirect outside forces - namely your horse.
To increase our sensitivity, I help the rider focus on three areas, The Body, The Breath, and the Mind. When focussing on your body, realize that by increasing the controlled range of motion in your joints, such as your pelvis, femur, and spine, you enhance your body's ability to sense and follow the horse's rhythm (motion). With greater controlled range of motion in your joints, you are able to maintain structural alignment without creating tension. This new alignment promotes increased relaxation and in turn enables the joints to move more freely. You not only follow your horse's rhythm but you also can match it. This is what I talk about when I use the phrase "Becoming One With Your Horse." Remember, the more relaxed we are in our body, the more relaxed our horse becomes in theirs. I will talk about the breath in my next newsletter.
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