Sophia our trek guide wrote this up last summer. I thought I’d share it with you. I’m sure she won’t mind.

The four aspects of horse’s language
1. Focus:

Herd: Horses respond to the focus of another horse or to anyone who is confident about their focus:
• Horses rely on one another for safety in numbers. Their natural instinct is to follow one another’s focus and hence perceive danger and save their lives– i.e. when one member of heard looks up others around look also
• Human: focus puts human into a good riding position for both horse and rider
• When in unfamiliar situations the natural human instinct is to curl body and to have no focus
• A riders curled position puts the riders weight onto the front quarters of the horse – driving both rider and horse into the ground
• Horses find safety in rhythm, a rider in a curled focus-less position looses rhythm – communication is lost
• Riding with focus: Ride with belly button in direction of forwards, backwards (sink down) and turns
• Ride with a deep seat for balance and look up – give your horse the responsibility of where his own feet go

2. Body energy
• Form of non-verbal communication – how horses communicate with one another, hence how we can communicate with our horses.
• New or challenging situations may bring humans body energy up – horse will respond with actions like moving his feet, tossing head, swishing tail..
• Experience energy down – with a soft jaw and deep breath out, and energy up breath in bring up energy ‘Lifting your life’, creating an intention, as putting you’re “light bulb on”, as your expectation, getting excited.
• Play friendly game and maintain low body energy: swing the rope with a soft jaw, soft belly button and a deep sigh out, then swing the rope faster and maintain that low soft body energy

• The first and second aspect of horses language are the most challenging for humans as these go most against our predator own instincts

3. Feel
• Four phases of increasing firmness
• Reward tries by quitting or moving down a phase
• Used as a teaching tool – creating respect both ways between horse and human
• Give horse incentive to move off lighter more responsive phases
• Steady or rhythmic pressure
• Praise by quitting and doing nothing
• Always end on a good note
• For example: porcupine game: Air, hair, muscle, bone.
• Phase 1. Air – focus, and raise life, no tough
• Phase 2. Hair – light touch
• Phase 3. Muscle – firmer steady pressure
• Phase 4. Bone – more steady pressure

4. Quit
• Most important: show respect for your horse, and he will respect you for it also – offers comfort and incentive
• Timing is the very important: got to be able to recognise when your horse makes a try
• Rider goes with the action/movement/stop the has been asked for
• Energy of the command is maintained and also focus