General

Rhythm

By 22nd March 2017 No Comments

Isn’t it obvious when I say that the rhythmical movement of the horse should come through a feeling in the reins? Of course! That horse is half a ton of metronome, marking out a rhythm that you are connected to. So, a ‘constant’ contact which you may hear about is almost impossible to achieve – but more than that, it can’t possibly be what we want.

OK, so as the horse canters forward, say, our position adapts in an attempt to allow that movement without unbalancing ourselves or the horse. Suppose now, by some miracle, that we were able to anticipate every millisecond how to adapt the weight in our hands so that the horse would feel a constant contact in the mouth. Our feel through the reins would be, quite literally, flat-lining – the word used for DEAD.

Here’s how it would look….

Pretty uninspiring.

The lucky thing is, we can’t produce this constant contact no matter how hard we try – but what we can do is produce a ‘consistent’ contact.

That’s a better idea and it would look something like this…

This up and down weight in the reins is perfectly natural and explains how you can have a communication with the horse. There is a change in weight that goes smoothly up and down in time with his footfall. The whole thing becomes like being stroked – it feels good, familiar and comforting.

Ok now let’s wake up and smell the coffee..

Uh oh… too much caffeine, trying to hard, trying to get somewhere too fast, ignoring your better self…etc. and then the real-world contact, like that of most of us, is much more like this..

OK, maybe not quite so bad but not great.

So, what Synchronicity does that’s so clever is calculate how much your rein tension is like the smooth consistent variation of rein weight we looked at earlier. It does this without bias and without trying to stroke your ego. It tells the truth – every day.

All that and more….