“Perhaps it suffices for our intentions to assume that the horse is a fluid life energy that can be guided by closing and opening visualized spaces. … The rider acts and directs the horse by closing undesirable spaces and by opening preordained spaces (paths), so that the horse's life energy can flow along planned lines.”
Wilfried Bach (1998, translation: TR).
Wilfried Bach touches on something important with his brief remark. This is a principle that is worth drawing attention to. Horses resemble water or electricity in the sense that their energy needs open spaces in order to be able to flow, and that it will flow through any opening that presents itself. If there is no opening, the pressure will build, until it breaks the containing walls in a big explosion. If there are several openings, the energy will flow through the largest one or most easily accessible one. It takes the path of the least resistance. The rider’s aids can be described as valves of sorts that can open and close doors for the horse’s energies. All turns, movements, and transitions are the results of certain doors being opened while others are being closed. The same thing applies to straightness and balance.
This means, among other things, that if the horse makes a mistake, the rider must have opened a door that should have remained shut, or he may have closed a door that should have remained open. The horse’s energy will always find weaknesses, gaps, and holes in the rider’s seat and aids, and it will escape through them just like water escapes through a crack or a hole in a bowl.
In more concrete terms, a yielding aid is the equivalent of opening a door. A passively framing or resisting aid is the equivalent of closing a door. An active aid creates the pressure that moves the “water”, the energy, from back to front or from front to back, or side to side.
The comparison can be expanded in a variety of directions. Water will always flow downhill, but if you want it to flow in other directions, there needs to be a certain pressure to create the motion that can then be channeled by the opening and closing of doors. As long as the water is stagnant, it makes no difference which doors are open and which doors are closed, or if any doors are open. In a similar way, horses will always naturally tend to go downhill. If the rider wants to change the direction of the energy, he has to create a certain amount of motion through driving aids first. The more the horse is supposed to go uphill, for example, the more energy and motion has to be created. If the horse is at a standstill, without any energy, then it will matter very little, which doors the rider opens or closes.
The narrower the channels or pipes are and the smaller the doors are, the higher the water pressure will be. The smaller the openings are that the rider provides, the higher the energy pressure within the horse will be as well. This is good and necessary to a degree. If there are too many openings or openings that are too large, then the impulsion will be too low, since too much of it escapes through the openings. If there is not enough of an opening, the pressure can rise to dangerous levels.
The rider has to create a certain healthy and necessary degree of pressure through the driving aids in order to create motion. The framing and restraining aids then have to channel the energy into a specific arena pattern, gait, tempo, stride length, and posture and to recycle it back to the hind legs to establish a cycle of energy.
Staying within the comparison of the horse with water, the training of the horse is done by opening and closing the right doors at the right time, for the right duration, in the right combination, and to the appropriate degree, so that the energy, the “water”, flows into the right spaces at the right time, which will activate the right muscles in the horse’s body and gradually develop the gaits and the musculature to their full potential.
Feel free to e-mail me with questions and comments.
Thomas Ritter
