Creating stronger partnerships and healthy bio-mechanics by combining the principles of natural horsemanship with the art of dressage.

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Thanks for your patience in waiting for this newsletter. I just completed a month‐long clinic tour of Australia (18 teaching days within 25 days!). Now I am home soaking up all the good energy of the Temenos, and all the magnificent creatures I am honored to share it with. Parelli Instructors Fiona Darling and Kaye Thomas were my hosts and their assistant, Pat Miller did the lion’s share of the organizing. (Thank you Thank you!).

The trip had me everywhere from balmy Gold Coast to the variable weather of Melbourne and both ends of New South Wales in between. I was so excited to meet so many Dressage Naturally enthusiasts and students so far from my home. It was great having Dana with me and he took some amazing photographs. Each clinic participant was given a cd of our favorite photos from the clinic and a chance to order more.

Dana was much better at blogging during the trip, so if you want to find out more about our journey and see some wonderful non‐horse photos (yes, there is such a thing) go to: Dana’s Blog. He hasn’t updated it since we got home, but he only had 2 days rest and then had 2 weddings in a row to photograph!

At the clinics I did my best to present my concepts of finding healthy biomechanics in a way that is in accordance with natural horsemanship principles. My focus was on conversations about Relaxation, Energy and Balance, as those are the building block conversations we need in order to speak to our horses about their biomechanics. Using my Big Picture Poster as the outline, we made sure foundation was there, then observed the quality of the conversations the human is having with their horse (see the article called: Yes Moments on my website.) I read the body language of horse and human and try to interpret what is being said (I affectionately call this closed captioning for the

body language impaired!). If the student can’t have a good conversation with their horse about what they want to say... How can I then get them to communicate what I want the horse to do?

So many issues and postural aberrations can be traced to a lack of understanding. This is always the first thing to clear up. Once we have those conversations working well, often a positive change in the horse’s way of going can already be seen. And if not, then it is relatively easy to make a further suggestion from there.

Students in my clinic quickly realize that I am happy to find out what is not working and roll up my sleeves and figure out how to improve it. They also realize that I will stick with them until I know they understand what I am explaining. Some students got to experience what it feels like to be led through an exercise with relentless focus, until we came through the other side of the exercise... Not just doing it, but doing it until we saw and felt the benefit...

This caused us to take a look at the term ‘micromanaging’ and be able to discern the difference between being there every moment as in excellent ‘dance partner’ leadership, and controlling aids that don’t give any opportunity for freedom or self‐carriage.

During my time there I wrote three essays which I will share later in this newsletter. My Facebook fans may have already seen these when I posted them there.

More in the May Newsletter. Click here to download the full version.

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Never underestimate the potential for harmony & lightness to improve in ways you cannot yet imagine!

Karen Rohlf

Owner, Temenos Fields and Dressage, Naturally