Greedy me

Just had these super tasty crepes! I am not normally crazy about food but give my anything pancakes like and I would certainly not say no ;)

The Charles De Kunffy book I wrote about in the post below is proving equally addictive to read as crepes to eat!

Some interesting lines so far:

"'Feel' is predominantly an ability to physically seek harmony through the most accommodating position of togetherness".

"There comes a day, and later on perhaps every day, when one feels that one looses the awareness of skills. We become unaware of ourselves, become oblivious to our aids and whatever the limbs, the torso, and musculature are doing. We become absorbed in an effort that seems independent of the senses and so thoroughly effortless that it suggests a feeling of being in a dream where we can ride for the first time without awareness of effort. When we no longer feel busy, we have entered the artistic experience. And there we find the motion, the flight, the suspension that eluded us before but now begins to flow almost in spite of ourselves...[...] Often, instruction spoils the chance for the artistic experience of the rider. Instruction, indispensable for the teaching of riding skills, is no longer necessary during the artistic effort. As in painting, once the artist has learned to use the tools of the craft from his master, he no longer finds use for the overseer [...]. Therefore, in artistic rider, silence is essential. When the rider succeeds in harmony, it is not done verbally but as a multidimensional effort."

I haven't come across that sort of view before and I am thinking that maybe that is why I feel that I only get the best out my lessons after I have ridden through them on my own the next day...If I think about it I am only ever pleased with my results if I truly feel the horse responding and that is usually only when I just switch off the outside world and go 'into' the horse's motion.

This is not to say I think I got to the stage in my riding that De Kunffy is talking about, I am still way below that level. I still cannot switch off like that every time I ride and often am distracted by people talking, instructing etc But there are moments...when I ride a horse I connect well with or when people around are those who trust me with their horses and I know they know I won't do anything to make things worse...then I can just focus entirely on what I feel in the horse and it all feels effortless indeed. I wish it happened more often...