It will be too late

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It will be too late

Jean Luc Cornille

Jean Luc Cornille and Charpege

With actual knowledge emphasizing the role of fascia, tendons, aponeurosis in the stability of joints and vertebral structure, it is quite easy to understand why slackness is causing severe back pain. In the seventies, an orthopedic surgeon, who had a horse in training, suffered from severe back pain. He could not ride anymore but loved his horse and asked me to keep his horse in good muscular shape. He watched his daughter taking lessons and told me, “If I had learned to ride like that, I probably would not have back problems.” I was far away for actual understanding of tensegrity but I was teaching integrity, nuances in muscle tone. I was already ahead of the traditional, ” obedience to the rider aids.” The doctor asked me to help him coming back on the saddle. He learned to use his back properly while riding his horse and he greatly improved his condition. He had a regular dressage saddle. Not enormous as today, but the padding was thick and the saddle placed him toward the pommel, as it was the norm in the seventies. I offered him to ride in my saddle, which was a Samba. He could not believe the difference. I offered him to ride in my saddle because watching him, he was repositioning himself constantly. He was busier riding the saddle, than adjusting the tone of his abdominal and back muscles to the horse's tensegrity. The same day that he rides in my saddle, he purchased a Macel Samba and the saddle definitively helped him to relearn proper use of his back. He was an orthopedic surgeon and a precursor in hip replacement. We had numerous conversations; he was the science and I was the intuition and experience. He asked me where I found this saddle. I told him, I was like you; I was fighting the saddles. They all pretend to place us in the right posture but they miss the fundamental point. There is no stereotype posture. The rider position is not a finality; it is a tool allowing productive conversation with the horse. The second the saddle imposes a posture, the saddle triggers muscular reaction which, instead of being part of the conversation with the horse, became a dialogue between the saddle and the rider.

I learned a lot from our conversations. He told me one day that the human body does not function the way we are told at the school and I was thinking, this applies to the horse. This was in the mid-seventies. Recently, another orthopedic surgeon, Dr. Stephen Levin, stated that tissues do not function as previously believed. Stephen Levin describes how every part of an organism from molecular to the gross anatomy, is integrated by a mechanical system into a complete functional unit. The same thinking applies to the horse. Instead of acting on different parts and trying to coordinate the parts a certain way, we need to realize that the whole system functions as a unit and there is an integrity inside which the body can refines its coordination, but out of which the body never find harmony and efficiency and therefore soundness.

My friend surgeon hinted actual knowledge in the seventies. “Truly, my therapist is the horse. It is by feeling his movement and, thanks to the saddle, my horse nuances in muscle tone, that I can tune and coordinate my back and abdominal muscles properly. You guided me in the direction pushing me away from the primitive concept of the correct aids. I was stocked in the obedience to the correct aids and completely skipped what the horse was telling me. You explained me that the horse willingly responds to my suggestions but protecting whatever muscle imbalance or vertebral dysfunction he does have. His response is the starting point of a conversation where I, and only I, has the intellectual capacity to analyze and correct. This mental engagement engendered a physical coordination, nuances, refinement, that I was not thinking was possible, or more exactly, was beyond what I have to do in normal life as well as during my work. It is this subtle nuance in muscle tone that is the therapy. I don’t see how I would have regained mobility and pain free life without this subtle dialogue that you encouraged me to entertain with my horse. I was thinking that he was a tank and that pulling was his way of life. Then, I watched you training him and he was light like a feather. You refused my excuse thinking that you could do it, but not me. You told me about the baloneys that a great master told you about the timing for the flying change. You told me that you believed it at first, because the man was a great master, and you lose confidence because you could not do it. You realized then that the speed of feed back correction was 0.8 of a second and that what the master pretended was beyond the capacities of the human nervous system. It was just an ego trip. The story that makes me believe that you were human like me and that with your explanation and my own research I could do it, is the story of this dressage judge, who had a great sense of humor and gave you one day the score 11 for you rider position. The score was supposed to be between 0 to 10. You asked him why and he told you, ‘you have the classical position of the school we both come from, so I give you 10, but there is something more in the way your body communicates with your horse, so I added one point. This is what intrigued me. It was effectively an easiness in your body motion but also the same easiness in your horse body motion. I watched you walking and moving and you are not different. It is on the horse that the harmonic ease is palpable. Talking with my daughter, she explained me that you do not believe that the rider aids are formulas, but instead, part of an overall body coordination, nuance in muscle work that has to be done within our own integrity as well as the horse integrity. My daughter added, before I bought mine. He let me ride in his Samba as well, and I don’t think that I would have evolve form my equitation of gestures if I had not felt my horse nuances in muscle tone as I felt from his saddle. I was like you dad; I started to feel pain in my back. He told me, my horse is my therapist if I refine my equitation to the subtlety of my horse. He added laughing. You cannot do that with the thick adding of your saddle burn it and I give you mine. I did not burn mine but I tried his and I measure the real deepness of what he told me.”

Today, the explanation of what we hinted decades ago is there, in front of our eye. Harmonic tensegrity is the best explanation so far, but also, we have to have a tool, a saddle allowing such harmonic tensegrity. Often, I think, watching young women protecting their deep seat, high cantle saddles, "You will understand in one decade or two but it will be too late for your back." Jean Luc Cornille