Circles of Joy aka Achieving Natural Collection

I used to struggle with getting my horse to collect.  It felt like a battleground with me pulling him into a collected frame with my hands and upper body while trying to push him forward into that frame with my legs and seat. All of this while my horse tried everything he could to avoid these conflicting cues.   Talk about a pushmepullme!

Needless to say my horse and I weren’t exactly poetry in motion.  He braced his neck and jaw against my hands which made if  feel like I was holding up my horse’s entire front end with no help at all.  The result was usually either a jackhammer of a trot which made my teeth feel like they were about to go through the top of my head, or a dragging, flat trot with as much energy as most of us are without coffee on a Monday morning. 

Today, though, a whole new world of collection opened to me in my lesson.  Instead of using force, leverage and every muscle in my body to try to get my horse to collect, I learned how to use gravity and circles to get my horse to collect on his own.  Here’s how we did it:

I started out at the walk, keeping him light and soft and bending on a very large circle (about 25 meters diameter).  Once he was warmed up on that - all nice and light in my hands and moving off my knees and legs (shoulder in, haunches in, shoulder in  to check this) I started spiraling him in onto smaller and smaller cirlces. As the circle got smaller and smaller he started stepping under himself more and more with his inside hind - the beginnings of collection!  My job was to keep him light and moving forward while paying attention to his level of resistance.  At about fifteen meters he started getting resistant and sticky so I spiraled out just a few feet and then started doing shoulder in, and then haunches in, then shoulder in to really encourage him to stand up through his shoulders rather than lugging on my legs and not moving off of them.  This lateral work helped him step under himself and hold himself in self carriage. 

Once he was solid doing this in the walk, I asked him to move it up to the trot, again on the small circle.  This was really really hard for him (he’s out of shape after a month off because of saddle fitting issues). He did great though! Whenever he’d feel like he was lugging in my hands I’d ask him to bring his shoulders or haunches in and then back out -causing him to step under himself and hold himself up - voila self carriage and collection all without me having any fight with him! If he really struggled I’d bring him onto a slightly bigger and bigger circle until he felt more comfortable and then bring him in just a bit and repeat the lateral work.  Through all of this work I encouraged him to stretch down through the neck while bringing up his entire front end through self carriage and collection.  This is great horsey muscle building.

He couldn’t hold it for long - just a couple circles each direction at a time. But what fantastic circles they were! He was light in my hands while he was stepping under himself with his hind legs so nicely in natural collection.  The big bonus was that I never fought with him, or felt like I was pulling him into a frame or anything - the spirals did all the work for me - so he was relaxed and light and wonderful. Behold! Natural Collection!