The horse is a system. The human is a system. When the human attempts to ride the horse she endeavours to create a new system – a horse and rider system. The harmony and strength of this system is based on its connectedness. The stronger the connection, the more harmony, the more the appearance of something greater than the sum of the parts. The weaker the connection, the less harmony. It becomes only the sum of the parts or even less.
Developing the connection is complex and involves us carrying on with work on ourselves (the rider ingredients) and also working on the horse. The horse needs to have the same ingredients as the rider ie calmness, concentration, connectedness of his mind-body. A horse that has too much or too little of any of the necessary ingredients is difficult to connect with.
The connection is something we feel, not hear or see. Often the connection is relative. Do we feel more or less connected with the horse than we did two minutes ago? The connection can always be improved. It must be attended to constantly.
To improve the strength of the connection we need to identify the “ingredients” that we currently have too much or too little of and work out how to rectify the balance. The interesting thing is that unlike baking where we start with an empty bowl, in riding we start with two bowls which already have a certain amount of each ingredient present – those of the rider and those of the horse.
Figure 13 Horse and Rider Mixing Bowls
A new cook will follow a recipe to the letter. Carefully weighing precisely the right ingredients and adding them in precisely the right sequence. As confidence grows the more experienced chef will experiment with ingredients, sequencing and so on. The really confident chef will create their own personal recipes, often by adapting existing basic ones.
We follow the same progression in our riding. However, unlike baking, the novice rider can’t have her riding recipe book open in front of her when she rides!