by Craig Stevens | Mar 20, 2015 | Craig Stevens' Blog
How do you explain a lifetime love affair with the horse? How do I come to understand it? It was never really a choice for how does water not flow downhill? So it seemed impossible not to follow this course and when the winds of circumstances blew me in other directions, I came back, again and again to the horse. At the start, I was like a blind man running downhill. I called it “riding” and I “trained,” but now what I see was just confusion. It was certainly not the horse who was confused but nevertheless the horse was the victim of my confusion. Yet, I was good or so I was told. I won this and that in competition and I shared my confusion with others under the sincere pretense of being a teacher. These are my confessions to my own ignorance without trying to justify the aggression which arose from my own self-deceptions. Becoming educated in the ways of dressage installed a logical and acceptable methodology to those otherwise illogical aggressions and so I hid behind a passion for the teachings of the French school. I was now at least a blind man running downhill with a map. I wore the armor of history which gave this blind man a certain moral certainty. My mind built the box in which the horse was held. Such a strong mind but still unable to see itself. The eye is certain of what it sees, but it can never see itself. This is the setting of the stage of my dressage. Arrogant in its certitude, so experienced from hundreds...
by Craig Stevens | Mar 19, 2015 | Craig Stevens' Blog
Exploring lightness has been an interesting journey, to say the least. What has surprised me the most is just how many degrees of lightness one can find. In my experience, I have found that the levels and degree of lightness have been more a matter of my mind than anything to really do with the horse. When I was consistent, precise and clear the horse would exceed my expectations and continues do so. I never counted the number of “levels” I discovered but based on the length of my professional practice and the number of horses I have trained, my guess is that it must be in the thousands. On a practical level, lightness turned into gentleness and kindness followed. I look back on my own earlier days and it freaks me out a bit to see how rough I was, but I cannot undo the past and so I continue my work into a better future. I learned so many rules and principles in training. My seat, legs, and hands have been trained and retrained so many times. I have mastered what seems like endless complications only to discard it all. No rules, no complications, and only a few simple principles remain. Mostly, simple awareness coupled with a sense of how the mind builds boxes and systems to remove fear. The fear is the funny part really, because over the years the most consistent thing was the complete and utter denial that fear was there or that it was in anyway real. Yet it was and is a part of what obscures awareness. It is a very brave...
by Craig Stevens | Mar 18, 2015 | Craig Stevens' Blog
Recently, I had a potential client ask me what level a horse I had been riding was at. While a simple enough questions, what it brought to mind was just how far from modern dressage my work has come. My answer was simple and direct. The horse I was on was simply a good riding horse and that was all. The horse worked on the draft of the boot and the weight of the reins. On further reflection and in an attempt to orient the horse to a meaningful scale for the potential client, I had to admit the horse to be FEI level because it would happily do all of the movements, but somehow that made me a bit uncomfortable, not because it was untrue but because it seemed a pointless question and a pointless answer. What is a level? What was it for? What was the whole point of having a level? Did my horses have levels? I suppose to value something, it is useful to place its value on a scale of some sort but the horses I train are not for sale and their only purpose is in the pleasure of the life they generously share with us. It is hard for someone who comes to see the work we do not to weigh and measure by some imagined scale what they are seeing, but I think we have gone beyond that. It is hard to point to just being as the whole point and relationship to be something which is beyond any level. In this same encounter, I was also asked, “So what do...
by Craig Stevens | Mar 16, 2015 | Craig Stevens' Blog
There are many kinds of dressage. Each of us who attempt, on a practical level, to work with the horse, in essence, formulates our own dressage. It is important to understand that such individual formulations in dressage or the supplication of the individual dressage to any method should always take into considerations the benefit of the horse both in the short and long term. The nature of good dressage is that it attempts to encourage a wholesome existence for ourselves and the horse. Implied in this are lightness, kindness and gentleness but most importantly is the cultivation of empathy and compassion for both yourself and your horse. It is doubtful that many practitioners of dressage intentionally choose to harm the horse and yet too many horses are harmed by well intended and misguided practitioners. So from this, we can conclude that in a proper education in dressage must include a willingness to reflect on our actions. The central goal of all training is to learn to abide in peace with the horse before we even begin to consider anything else. There is no posture or forwardness which is of any value if it is not solidly rooted in the calm confidence of the horse. The kindness in which our aids envelop the horse leaves no doubt in the horse’s mind as to our intentions. Good dressage cannot be separated from calm. Calm in motion is called forward and straightness is the proof of a balanced mind and body which functions in full self-awareness. These three attributes (calm, forward and straight) are not just about the horse but about the...
by Craig Stevens | Mar 15, 2015 | Craig Stevens' Blog
According to the legends, there was a time in which certain “old masters” existed who worked horses from a place of peace and accomplish great feats with the horse. These masters governed the horse by wise and compassionate use of the aids and were able to “reason” with the horse and educate riders without error. The horse people they trained were equally kind and learned, so that, in general, there arose a golden age of equitation. Neither before or since has such a wonderful place been found. It was a model world in which the horse and human achieved the highest good. So, when was this time? Some would say that such a place existed right before the French revolution as the school of Versailles and while equitation has never reached such a height since, it is unlikely that it was the horse heaven of the myth. The fact is that since antiquity in all periods and all times the legend was known. One of the earliest record of such a place having actually existed in the history of Sicily which is the land from which a dressage in lightness arose which in the Italian Renaissance became the start of modern dressage. In the real world, the world in which you and I live, what value is there to such a story? What is the point? Why bother? Whether or not such a time, place or people ever really existed is not really important because we have always been at the door to such brilliant equitation by opening ourselves up to potential that is within every horse and human...
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