twitter facebook pinterest linkedin

Kuhn Mun Ann, was a concerto violinist. She was also a teacher at the Baltimore school of music. She offered me one day to visit the school. There were rooms each side of the corridor and I could hear students practicing in each room. The quality level was amazing. I asked to Kuhn Mun, “When the students have reach such a mastery, what do you teach them?” She responded, “Their style.”

She told me to seat on a bench outside of one room and we both listened. The young man playing was incredibly precise and fast. After several minutes, Kuhn Mun asked me, “What do you feel?” I told her that I was impressed by the speed, the accuracy, the precision of each note, the power. I asked if he will become a virtuoso? Kuhn Mun responded, “He will be a concerto player. He might become a virtuoso if he explores his style.”

We walked further away and Kuhn Mun offered me to seat on another bench saying,” she is going to start playing in a few seconds.” The young woman literally took my breath away. The notes were crystal clear continuing through the following silence. I felt emotionally the meaning of Claude Debussy’s statement. “Music is the silence between the notes.” Kuhn Mun smiled saying, “You must feel home; she does what you do with me and my horse. She does not play the violin, she vibrates the cord and let the note evolve. She let her violin modulate the note. Her skill and the instrument partner creating the music. You do that with me and you do that with my horse. You start the vibration and you let my horse modulate the note. When I meet you for the first time, I was a driven competitive woman. I wanted to show and I wanted to win. You did not look very impressed by my goals. You watched me ride and told me quietly, ‘You are accurate and your horse is obedient. But you are also an artist and so is your horse. Your sensitivity, emotion, art and intelligence will not be happy with a mechanical equitation, even if this equitation is punctuated with a few ribbons.

Your horse executes the right to left flying change with precision but expresses difficulties with the left to right. Your driven mind makes him practice the difficult one harder but your artistic mind knows that the notes are wrong. Intuitively, you know that somewhere in his body, a part plays the wrong note. You try to apply more “aids” because this is what mechanical equitation advises you to do, but you also know that, no matter the dexterity of the fingers, the cord will not vibrate at the right tune if the tension is incorrect. Indeed, this is why you called me.

Here is the technical problem. During the stride preceding the flying change, a talented horse increases the duration of the hind limbs ground contact. The horse also prepares for the change in the following airborne phase decreasing the length of step and time between the impact of the forelegs. You horse does that very well preparing for the right to left flying change but does not increase the duration of the hind legs ground contact preparing for the left to right flying change. Instead of practicing the flying change harder and stronger, which is what the equitation of gestures advises, you need to identify the root cause. Why a horse, who as the talent to prepare his body efficiently for one flying change, is not capable to orchestrate his body efficiently for the other?  

You started to talk about inverted rotation of the thoracic spine explaining a chain reaction leading to insufficient dorso-ventral rotation of the pelvis and consequent kinematics abnormality of the left hind leg. I was lost but I was home. I practiced the wrong practice instead of going back to the fundamental orchestration of my horse’s physique. I did not like when you told me that if I wanted the resolve the problem, I have to stay away form the show ring and don’t even practice the flying change but instead, precisely develop and coordinate my horse’s physique for the athletic demand of the move.

I have paid the entry fee for a show the coming week end and I insisted asking if I could still show and fix the problem. I was blown away by your response. Quoting Albert Einstein, you simply say, ‘You know what Albert Einstein says about doing the same thing but expecting a different result.” I loved it. I hated it but I loved it. You believed that I could do it, you believed that my horse could learn and you were not ready to accept any compromise altering our chances of performing well.  

It was an amazing journey tuning each part of my horse’s physique with every other part and in relation to his body as a whole. Until then, I have dissociated in my mind riding and music because the way I was trained was two totally different tunes. You talked about frequency, duration, intensity, silences and I soon realized that I was playing music with my horse and he was vibrating and tuning his mind and his physique with me. I always have love riding but now, riding is a delight. You taught me how to teach him the proper technique for the left to right flying change and now, I start to understand how I can lead him to the full expression of his style.”

Stephen Hawking wrote, “We are a bunch of educated monkeys living on an average planet. But we understand the universe and that makes us special.” According to a Japanese legend, a horse with a monkey symbolizes energy led by intellect. We need to be more than educated monkeys. We need to do better than making the horse do it. We need to understand the horse’s physique, mind and physics. We can lead the horse energy to great efficiency but we need to understand elastic energy, tensegrity. We need to guide the horse brain toward the coordination of the horse physique ultimately adapted to the athletic demand of the performance. Then and only then both the horse and us become specials though the development of our respective intelligence. Jean Luc