09/08/2026
If it’s not in you, it won’t be in your horse.
We talk a lot about what we want our horses to do with their bodies.
We want them to lift through the base of the neck.
Use their back.
Connect their hindquarters.
Free their shoulders.
Bend through their body.
Stay straight.
Collect.
But there’s another body involved in every single one of those conversations.
Yours.
And I think we sometimes underestimate just how much the horse is feeling, responding to and ultimately mirroring what is happening within us.
If you consistently drop your head, collapse through your chest, tip forwards, hold one side of your pelvis differently from the other, brace somewhere through your spine or carry tension that prevents movement travelling freely through your body, your horse feels that.
On the ground and ridden.
You can spend an enormous amount of time trying to correct what the horse is doing without ever recognising that some of what you are seeing is the horse responding perfectly to the body beside them or sitting on top of them.
And this is where it gets really interesting.
Because it works the other way too.
If I want a horse to find more movement through an area of their spine, I can first find that movement within mine.
If I want them to soften somewhere, I can look for the tension in myself.
If I want bend, I need to understand what that bend requires within my own body.
If I want lift, straightness, lateral movement or collection, I need to know what those things actually feel like in me.
This is something I use constantly with my own horses, and something I help clients to develop.
It takes the idea of “mirroring” much further than simply thinking about where your shoulders, hands or legs are positioned.
It becomes about function in motion.
What is your spine doing?
What is your pelvis doing?
Where does movement travel easily through you and where does it stop?
Where are you holding tension?
Can your body actually organise itself into the movement you’re asking your horse to find?
Because if it can’t, you’re potentially giving the horse one instruction with your reins, legs or whip while giving them a completely different instruction through your body.
And the horse has to somehow make sense of both.
The more I work like this, the less interested I am in making communication more manual.
More rein. More leg. More pressure.
I want the opposite.
I want the communication to become quieter.
Breath. Energy. Intention. Movement. Spinal function.
Because once a horse understands that dialogue, you can do an extraordinary amount through incredibly small changes within yourself.
I can feel a block appear somewhere in a horse’s spine and instead of immediately trying to physically correct the horse, I can create movement through that area in my own body and see what happens.
Very often, something changes underneath me.
The same can happen through the neck, the pelvis, the ribcage, the shoulders.
It isn’t magic.
It’s communication.
Of course, not every horse is immediately able to have that conversation. Horses who have experienced a lot of poor communication, tension or conflicting information from humans may need help establishing the dialogue first.
But once that conversation exists, training becomes very different.
So next time you’re asking your horse to do something, whether you’re standing beside them or sitting on top of them, try something.
Before you change the horse, put the movement into yourself.
If you’re asking for bend, find the bend in you.
If you’re asking for lift, find the lift in you.
If you’re asking for a particular angle in lateral work, organise your own body into that movement.
Then watch what your horse does.
Because sometimes when an exercise isn’t working, the horse isn’t getting it wrong at all.
They’re showing you exactly what you asked for.
If it isn’t in you, it is very difficult to put it into your horse.
But when you learn to create it within yourself first, you may be surprised by just how little you need to do to create a change in them.
