From: Michael Stevens
To: Craig Stevens

Michael Stevens said:
I had an interesting ride yesterday. I was asked to try out a thoroughbred that a friend had bought for eventing. The horse was rather dead to the leg, particularly in walk. He did loosen up in trot and canter, but the "engine needs oiling" to get him to go freely.

As an experiment I tried pushing him on strongly in walk to see the reaction. He started stamping his front feet and moving in a way that seemed a bit like a Spanish walk - something I have never ridden. I doubt very much if he has been trained to do it.

Since he seemed to be getting a bit angry I gave him a trot around and then a walk on a lose rein to relax him again, and I didn't pursue it. I guess he has some stiffness that prevents the hindquarters getting active but the best he can do is to exaggerate the action of the forehand when you drive him on.

Have I accidentally hit on something that could be turned into a Spanish walk, do you think; or was it just a corrupt pace caused by driving him beyond his capability?

Craig Stevens said:
The following quote is from Beaudant, "Training the Horse Under Saddle"(original translation-by Craig Stevens copyright 1993)

" VI. Front leg extension -
While in a halt, lightness, make the right leg extend by the effect of the right rein in the direction of the haunch left; urge with legs and prevent the forces from passing forward, except for the right leg that is rendered free by passing the weight of the forehand to the left shoulder. Forces not able to be forward move through to the right front leg, this holding itself as much as these forces are urged forward more.

A precise and well chosen small example : skin of an animal into which one blows; When the air arrives in the paws they extend more the stronger that one blows. This is the action provoked by legs of the horseman that makes the legs responding extend until the point of the hoof.

VII. Spanish walk -
Ask for the complete extension and horizontal of an front leg. Remark: one wants always to go too rapidly and it is not necessary to try the Spanish walk before having obtained the complete extension and horizontal of the front legs. Only then, being stopped, asked for the complete extension one leg. - push the two legs simultaneously by sitting down properly, the hand permit the execution of a walk. - Halt - Lightness. - To reward, resume with the other leg.

Little by little use less and less the legs and to act only by half halts by raising the hand giving the most extension possible.

Spanish walk only raising one leg. - One step executed to the right maintain the contact with the mouth with the right rein now keeping the weight on the left shoulder and to resume an walk on the same side. To intermingle later the walk of one legs alone increasing with the walk executed by the two legs alternately elevated. To arrive to the Spanish walk slow or rapid half tense reins, the horse obeying to simple small pressures of fingers on the reins."

Craig Stevens continues:
Beaudant's understanding of this work is a much deeper understanding then most of the people who try this work.

Riding is about the mental manipulation of certain kinds of refined matter. Matter, in the sense that I am using it, is a type of electrical energy that used by the horse to control the forces in his own body. In the highest levels of the training process this matter can be directed in a very concentrated pure form. The way Beudant controls this force is through the combined focus of the horse and rider and shoots the energy though the limb and allow it to escape out the leg as a leg extension and then combines this effect alternately as the Spanish walk.

Those who claim the Spanish walk is not a classical movement do not know the Spanish walk as anything but a showy gesture. When it is understood as Beudant understood it. It is classical.

Classical riding and training is not about movements. Movements are the shallow end of a very deep pool. Classical riding is a mental discipline which seeks the direction and concentration of the horse-rider ensemble. It has very little to do with the form of the horse or rider in themselves, but rather the underlying consciousness which joins both. The concentration and direction of these forces is the domain of the art and is also called in other systems, ki, chi, prana, etheric energy, life force etc..

Horsemasters of the past did not know this in this way, but forces do not have to be understood to be used. Gravity is a force which has always existed but did not always have a name.... The use of forces in this manner is one of the things people sense when a master works a horse. The on-looker feels these forces as a thick rapport between the horse and the trainer. The master seems to be working in the "fog" or energy cloud.

Traditional training brings this skill by extended and intensive practice. You can develop these skills in other ways.

Centered riding is one such attempt. There is much to commend this effort, but it eventually fails because of its focus on forms. Center riding is a hallmark in the history of equitation because it is an acknowledgment of a connection between the inside of man with the inside of the horse. The nature of the art is that it never is bound by the form but is a pure expression of spirit. It animates a form, but is never bound by it. What is wrong with riding and competition today is the complete attempt to subjugate the spirit to the form.... The spirit does not live in a ridged container. This is why the only suitable judge is you and the horse because only you and the horse can perceive the spirit. As your understanding grows the quality of the animating spirit is better able to express itself through you.

Originally published and Copyrighted© 1997 NSAE News.
Published here with permission of the editor.

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