Position breakthrough

Last weekend I had an amazing time with my equestrian clients in the Montreal area.

It started with a young woman I have been working with sporadically for almost a year now. Working at Equine Canada I had a pretty hectic schedule last fall and didn't see her as consistently as I normally would have. Of course living in Ottawa while she is on the outskirts of Montreal didn't help!
After a couple of months of not seeing her, and her being busy with school, she had somewhat lost her motivation to do the exercise plan I had given her. And speaking with her coach, it showed. She has a very pronounced lordosis (lower back very arched) when she doesn't do her corrective exercises which then causes upper back pain when she sits deep in the saddle.

The first thing I did was release her tense muscles and taught her how to relax her body. So many people use too much force to execute simple movements and to correct this we need to activate the body's information systems so that it can tell the difference.

Once I had her body balanced, I prescribed some corrective exercises and we went through them together. My next client was her mother so I asked her if she minded pushing her sessions back a bit so that I could work with her daughter while she was on her horse to solidify the work I did.
She rides an arabian cross who can be somewhat high-strung which creates a vicious cycle of tense rider, tense horse. Within minutes of being mounted, and after I manipulated her position and released some muscles, both her and her mare were nicely synchronized and her mare's eye was soft. With a bit more coaching in movement and me releasing her tense arms so that she could feel the proper position, it was beautiful to watch. The best part for me was that her mare, who had been buckling and spooking at the door in the arena for the past few weeks, walked right past, in both directions without reacting. Sound rider, sound horse. :)

From this great start she had a lesson with her coach who was very happy with the work we had done! She kept saying, I don't know what you did to her but now you have to come to all of the shows! I'd love to :)

I have to go start my day! *MY* turn to ride! :)