Horesmanship and Yoga.
NEWSLETTER Volume 1, Number 2, September 2004I am a long-time student of both horsemanship and yoga, and this summer my two interests came together in a direct way when I was asked to teach a yoga workshop for equestrians. I have since followed that first workshop with a number of yoga lessons for riders and am now trading yoga lessons for training for my filly, and for English riding lessons, among other things. It has been a wonderful melding of my two avocations.
For me the similarities between yoga and horsemanship have long been obvious, if unarticulated. The emphasis on alignment and body awareness in both activities is perhaps the most obvious. I can recognize my habits, good and bad, in both pursuits. For example, I tend to brace my feet in the stirrups, putting more weight on the little toe side of my foot than on the inside, big toe side. In standing yoga poses I do exactly the same thing (and the wear patterns on my shoes reveal the same tendency). It is a good reminder that both my riding and my yoga are an integral part of my daily life. In yoga, we work with the breath to move in and out of poses, and to stretch into a pose or to reach deeper into it. The same principles apply in riding as we use our breath to cue our horse to a downward transition, to help her relax, or to help us release tension in the spine.
The practice of yoga benefits riders through increasing body awareness, strength, flexibility, and balance, but I think the links between yoga and horsemanship also exist at a more philosophical level. "Yoga" means union, union of body, mind and soul. This is a goal shared by horsemen and one that allows us to achieve a sense of union with our horses. "Yoga is an art, science and a philosophy," writes influential yoga teacher B.K.S. Iyengar. "Yoga," he continues, "enables the practitioner to perceive and experience the world within and around himself, to touch the divine joy of all creation, then to share that nectar of divine wealth and happiness with his fellow beings." An article on Bill and Tom Dorrance (whose philosophies are generally considered to be the foundation for the contemporary natural horsemanship movement) in this month's Western Horseman magazine quotes their protege Ray Hunt, "Tom and Bill's attitudes about horses translated into all areas of their lives, they shared their knowledge freely." Late in their lives, each of the Dorrance brothers published books which have become classics of natural horsemanship. Tom published True Unity in 1987, and Bill (with Leslie Desmond) published True Horsemanship Through Feel in 1999. Both of them write about the union between horse and human in both a physical and a mental way. Those who worked with Tom noted that while the physical aspects of horsemanship fascinated him, Tom " wanted to get into the mind and soul of a horse he lived the horse's life." Bill Dorrance and Leslie Desmond write about the elusive concept Bill called "feel." "Using feel," Bill writes, "a person can shape the horse's desire to stay with them, and they can determine the horse's direction and speed and frame of mind when they want him to move. Through feel, a person can get a horse to think about and do many little things that are very important to the safety of the horse and to the safety of the person. To get the idea of feel, the horse handler needs to understand how the horse exists and survives in the world, which is through his senses."
For Bill Dorrance the way to union with a horse is through feel, but we have to practice and work hard to achieve that feel. Bill writes, "little things can be felt by the person and the horse too, of course, but they aren't always visible to everyone's eyes. That's because these observations take a lot of time and not many people want to spend their time that way." Tom Dorrance was known as a horseman with great powers of observation and a great memory. "Tom always said, what he knew about horses, he learned from horses." The ancient yogic sage Patanjali (who lived somewhere between 500 and 200 years B.C.) wrote about the need to create a "culture of consciousness." This culture entails, "cultivation, observation, and progressive refinement of consciousness by means of yogic disciplines." This culture of consciousness is achieved through practice, and detachment or renunciation. "Practice," Patanjali tells us, "is a dedicated, unswerving, constant, and vigilant search into a chosen subject, pursued against all odds in the face of repeated failures, for indefinitely long periods of time. Practice implies a certain methodology, involving effort. It has to be followed uninterruptedly for a long time, with firm resolve, application, attention and devotion." To achieve union with your horse, Bill Dorrance tells us, you have to be prepared to invest time: "People are going to be in a better position to handle a horse if they spend whatever time it takes to get some real useful knowledge. That's what they are going to need to get in order to present their feel to the horse clear enough so he can understand what they expect him to do" In other words, it will take time, effort, and practice.
While I'm sure the plain spoken Dorrance brothers would not have used the vocabulary of yoga philosophy, I am struck by the similarities in what they wrote and talked about and the words of contemporary and ancient yogis. And I like to think that especially the noteably intellectually curious Tom Dorrance would have gotten a kick out of the comparisons!
Anna Banks
Moon Hill Ranch, Idaho