Objects of dressage

Objects of dressage

Seeing experience as doorways and being able to pass through to new levels is about savoring the experience and finding the common space. There are two points in dressage; dressage with objects and dressage without objects. It is the later which carries you further. To know and see dressage as a dance of the mind is to be able to find freedom for the horse and human alike, but this is not the dressage of ordinary means. All progress occurs when the objects of dressage are seen to be without substance; here is the mind of the master found. This is the journey. We pass from object to nonobject and back to object again. When minds are at play and unlocked we can advance along the path. Objects can be understood in several ways: 1. something that arouses feelings in an observer 2. something on which the purposes are fixed as the end of action or effort 3.something that is set or may be regarded as set before the mind so as to be apprehended or known From Latin objectum ‘thing presented to the mind’ An object is a point of fixation. One must release any and all fixations. To relate to the horse well is a lot about space which is always present. In training the horse, the most basic work in taming is about removal of fixation by the horse’s mind. Tying, wearing a saddle or blanket, even pick up the feet involve the removal of fixation or nonobjective mind. In the higher levels, the mind fixates of other “objects” which both the horse and human fixate...
What?

What?

Realize that training begins with the young horse and human at first breath and ends at the last breath. The initial journey is a study in “I” and progresses into “we” and ends “you” before it returns to “I”. It is not a circle but a spiral which, as the best guess, never ends. This is the world in which dressage is cast. We can get stuck and unstuck at anytime and anywhere. Dressage is a path that we can choose to take or not. What makes dressage so brilliant is that we have a teacher with us for every step; the horse. The “you” in this journey of dressage is always the horse and so we are always drawn forward in our circle of learning which when cast over time is a spiral. It is not so much about the objects and movements in what is called dressage as much as it is in the deportment of energies. “All three (I, we and you) are a manifestation of a circle and a center. All three can produce what is termed “upper level” work, but the amount of energy it takes to maintain or manifest that level is greatest at the “I” level and the least at the “you” level. Consider that this occurs from the horse’s side as well as the human side. This is the way of mastery and when we are each lost in the other, we find an art which is luminous and profound. The horse and human illumine each other. For this to be your path, your dressage will reveal glimpses of the art...
Neurotic but with credentials

Neurotic but with credentials

The starting point in genuine devotion to the horse is the dismantling of credentials. There arises a time when there are no longer experts. Everything needs to be questioned. Is this or that best for the horse? When you settle on this, study that further. When you settle on that, study this further. Learn to see not this nor that, but the mind which looks at the questions. What is difficult to grasp here is that the first expert to dismantle their credentials is the most difficult to work with and that is you. The horse does not need experts and credentials. It needs servants. When an issue appears and reveals a great passion for you, always be suspicious because the neurotic mind always craves warfare. There must always be an enemy which must be attacked. In keeping the conflicts alive, our neurotic side can feed and thrive. Credentials keep the separations going. This whole issue of credentials and experts is like fly paper. We all get caught to some degree, but the point is to get unstuck and free of the glue is to question everything without end. We all have preconceptions about what good dressage is. To learn what it really is good dressage, you must give up all your preconceptions because your good dressage gets in the way of finding good dressage. With lightness and kindness as your guide, you journey into relative and absolute good for the horse. Seeking to find the best way forward is always about the view. In most cases, the answer is not picking one over the other but seeing the growth...
Walking down the path

Walking down the path

Finding the way; the journey in dressage or the linking of mind to the horse is an understanding rarely found today. It is not so much something we need to create as much as it is allowing ourselves to be a certain way with the horse. Such a mind state can be instant but not usually. It is rather a slow and organic realization which takes years to occur. The simple changing of the mind is all that is needed which starts with an authentic connection with your own body. There is a discipline in this. It is not a discipline of “no pain, no gain” but it is more like a vacation from that kind of thinking. Mechanical repetition is not good dressage. It is only boring. Discipline here is found at a whole other level. Finding discipline is about generosity and effort which starts with finding the ground. Good dressage must start with sanity. The test of sanity is how directly one relates to earth. Anything else is a sidetrack. This earth discipline brings certain joy and the work with the horse takes on a playfulness. Knowing how and when to touch is about territory. There is no territory that is yours or that is the horse’s; both of you are in no man’s land. Patience arises, territory dissolves and because there are no obligations you are free from time, in the sense of that you are not being compulsively driven by obligations to keep within time to achieve something with the horse. The educated horse person’s actions are calm, deliberate, and persevering. Since there is space...
The suffering of dressage.

The suffering of dressage.

“Since everything today is valid or invalid only as determined by the dictatorship of ‘publicness,’ which is a function of technology, it may be impossible for centuries to come for what is essential and original simply to allow itself to unfold.” Martin Heidegger Letter of March 21, 1948, to Elisabeth Blochmann, in Martin Heidegger and Elisabeth Blochmann, Briefwechsel, 1918–1989, ed. Joachim W. Storck (Marbach: Deutsche Schillergesellschaft, 1989). To say that dressage has suffered from the “dictatorship of ‘publicness,” is an understatement. The initial rules for dressage, created by the military elite at the turn of the 20th century where already a drift to “publicness” when you consider the root of dressage in terms of the 18th century nobility. However, the leap of dressage into the public arena which occurred in the latter part of the 20th century profoundly changed the practice of those rules. In an attempt to make the noble art into a public sport took the rules and even the nature of the horse and turned them all upside down. In a time which better favored dressage, allowing the horse and rider to unfold themselves was part of the process called training. There was a basic willingness and tacit understanding to allow an organic unfolding. The logical first step in the training of the horse in this organic way is the joining of the two minds. Without such a process, training is reduced to a series of recipes. Of course, dressage, as it exists today, is just that, but it is this way because of complete assimilation by the military. Having lost the art, the military, rightfully, imposed...