Dressage 1: Intro

What has dressage got to do with Horse Boy and Autism? Everything! We need a soft, safe horse that woks in collection because collected movements cause the kids’ hips to rock in a soft and even rhythm, which fills the kid’s body with the feel-good hormone oxytocin. This means the kid, riding like this, is in the ideal environment fro receiving and retaining information. Plus our Stree-Free dressage training helps you maintain your horse’s back and neck (necessary for horses that do a lot of back-riding), and makes for a safer ride. Finally, a horse with smooth transitions is good for autistic riders – transitions are the hardest thing for kids on the spectrum, to cope with. If your transitions from gait to gait are smooth and feel good, it helps the kid with other transitions in life, like car to supermarket and supermarket to school.

You don’t have to do any dressage to do Horse Boy work, but if you learn our exercises your hosre will give the kid much, much more during his or her time in the saddle. And the learning is easy and fun!

Basic Two Day Workshop

Day One (3-4 hrs):

• Intro talk; The history of Dressage: What it’s for, why it was created; the battle horse; how these movement can be used to heal: Collected rhythms and the Oxytocin connection. The roadmap from raw horse and rider to Piaffe, Passage and beyond.
• Exercise 1: De-Stress (Sensory work on the horse)
• Excercise 2: The Intentional Pleasure Ride (get into the right frame of mind to learn and teach)
• Exercise 3: Basic in-hand work for the horse’s mind and body: jaw and poll flexions and yield the quarters in a circle
• Excerise 4: Rhythm, Suppleness, Connection: the Countdowns at the Walk and Trot – get the horse listening, relaxed, working in rhythm, gets the hind legs underneath (preparation for collection), gets the horse softly on the bit.
• Exercise 5: Suppleness, Connection, Impulsion and Straightness; Learning and applying shoulder-fore and leg yield to get soft walk to canter and canter-to –walk  transitions that feel really good and LIGHT.

Homework: rein holding, wrist position, relaxed arm position.

Day Two (3-4 hrs)

• Intro talk: Today is all about YOU. How to easily achieve the Classical seat before you get on the horse;, contact and straightness decoded; how to use your aids to help the horse; the therapeutic effect of stress-free dressage on your horse as well as the child.
• Exercise 1: The Intentional Pleasure Ride
• Exercise 2: The Circle and the corners – learning to use them to help get the horse working the muscles evenly, creating comfort and safety
• Exercise 3: Shoulder-in – the key to getting the horse even and happy, flexible and LIGHT
• Exercise 4: Travers (Haunches in): the key to building the horse’s back strength and the key to Collection
• Exercise 5:Therapeutic  Longing to build and maintain the horse’s back and neck

Conclusion:

How to do these exercises at home. How to do them in your trail rides. How to do them with a child in the saddle with you and include them in your Horse Boy work.  Training aids and when to use them. The Dressage roadmap – where do I go from here.

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