Introduction
The horse is a vibrant, powerful being, deeply rooted in our cultures.
On many levels, the horse is part of our heritage. Literature the world over, mythology. The horse helped lay the foundations of our cultures as a tool for working the land, for travel, and as an asset in war. It has been a magnificent pedestal for the rulers of every country and every age. That alone shows how deeply this splendid animal is rooted in our cultures.
It is only natural, then, that changes in society should be felt in the way we live our riding and our relationship with the horse. As dressage riders and coaches, we have lived through and observed a shift in the relationship between riders, their mounts and the practice of riding. We have been attentive witnesses to a change that seems to us bound up with the social context.
For many riders, the pursuit of performance is no longer a Holy Grail in itself: something more is needed, an ethical dimension one can feel. One need only look at how many people on social media now work at liberty with their animals — today we seek to bring out the animal's life force and the relational space we share with it — to understand that a relationship of domination no longer belongs to our time.
The dream of the centaur hovers over riders' hearts more than ever, and over trainers' hearts still more.
Many riders, ourselves among them, have set out in search of a practice that would magnify the expressiveness of our horses.
I shall not try here to explain why the relationship has changed; what I shall set out today, honestly, is the path that was my own, because it seems to me to answer present concerns and perhaps to contribute to this change.
My thinking has followed three lines, which I shall lay out. Each of them, however, seems to me connected to the others and in dialogue with them. Without pretension, I shall say a little about my own path, so that you can grasp the links between my development as a rider and the way my passion pushed me to become a researcher.
We shall look at:
— The mechanics of the horse, which I needed in order to develop a technical practice that respects the animal.
— Teaching, because the horse can only communicate with an educated rider. I had to work on exercises in cognitive understanding and to grasp the biases of teaching.
— And also phenomenology, which I do not master as a science but practise intuitively, for what it brings to the understanding of beauty and its links with the extraordinary sense of existing that aesthetic experience brings. It is through this that we shall move gently into our subject.
Our research began in 2003, but the story started almost 60 years ago, in my village in the south of France.
There was a young lad in the village who spent his Thursdays and weekends bareback on the horses of the local landowner. Everyone knew him, but I watched out for him: I waited for the sound of his horse's hooves, which came before the pair appeared. He seemed magnificent to me, and so free on those Anglo-Arabs, that I would tremble with emotion as he passed.
One day he went out alone into the countryside with a young stallion and had a fatal fall. The whole village was seized with horror, and children were no longer allowed to ride. Yet I still dreamed of riding those stallions. So we would go out into the fields in secret with other village boys; we defied the ban, and went to ride the little Camargue horses bareback, with no tack and no adult watching.
Life took it upon itself to draw me away from my DNA and made me a salesman — a very… salesman-like salesman, with my little suit, my big fine car and my front-of-house smile. I was a respectable family man under pressure. At 30 I had a heart attack. My doctor was wonderful: "Sir, you have no choice — if you want to live, you must change your life!" I took his advice very seriously.
The day I left hospital, I left my job, I left my wife, and I went and bought my first horse: « Tau » (pronounced Tao), a magnificent three-year-old Spanish cross stallion, untouched…
At the yard where he was kept, the people I was trusting to guide me, with more than thirty years' experience, encouraged me to back my colt for the first time in the arena that looked onto the mares' paddock, on the grounds that he was a kind horse. "Are you quite sure?" — "YES, I've been breaking horses for thirty years!"
I had a spectacular fall over the horse's head into the barbed wire, and I decided that I would never listen to anyone again.
As a former judoka I was fit and had no fear of falling. Having studied mechanics, I saw the horse as a vehicle — a somewhat complex one, but alive. I bought treatises on hippology and ethology, books that spoke of the horse in itself, as a living being.
From there I schooled three horses and a pony. We put on equestrian shows in the region; I set up a yard in the Camargue. In summer it was equestrian cabaret with colleagues.
I very quickly grew disheartened by what was being asked of our animals, on two counts: there was an obvious lack of rigour in the techniques used for schooling (which therefore was not schooling at all), and the rhythms of our horses — who made intense efforts throughout the season — were never respected. Many ended up injured.
Alongside all this, I was walking the competition grounds.
On many levels, the horse is part of our heritage. Literature the world over, mythology. The horse helped lay the foundations of our cultures as a tool for working the land, for travel, and as an asset in war. It has been a magnificent pedestal for the rulers of every country and every age. That alone shows how deeply this splendid animal is rooted in our cultures.
It is only natural, then, that changes in society should be felt in the way we live our riding and our relationship with the horse. As dressage riders and coaches, we have lived through and observed a shift in the relationship between riders, their mounts and the practice of riding. We have been attentive witnesses to a change that seems to us bound up with the social context.
For many riders, the pursuit of performance is no longer a Holy Grail in itself: something more is needed, an ethical dimension one can feel. One need only look at how many people on social media now work at liberty with their animals — today we seek to bring out the animal's life force and the relational space we share with it — to understand that a relationship of domination no longer belongs to our time.
The dream of the centaur hovers over riders' hearts more than ever, and over trainers' hearts still more.
Many riders, ourselves among them, have set out in search of a practice that would magnify the expressiveness of our horses.
I shall not try here to explain why the relationship has changed; what I shall set out today, honestly, is the path that was my own, because it seems to me to answer present concerns and perhaps to contribute to this change.
My thinking has followed three lines, which I shall lay out. Each of them, however, seems to me connected to the others and in dialogue with them. Without pretension, I shall say a little about my own path, so that you can grasp the links between my development as a rider and the way my passion pushed me to become a researcher.
We shall look at:
— The mechanics of the horse, which I needed in order to develop a technical practice that respects the animal.
— Teaching, because the horse can only communicate with an educated rider. I had to work on exercises in cognitive understanding and to grasp the biases of teaching.
— And also phenomenology, which I do not master as a science but practise intuitively, for what it brings to the understanding of beauty and its links with the extraordinary sense of existing that aesthetic experience brings. It is through this that we shall move gently into our subject.
Our research began in 2003, but the story started almost 60 years ago, in my village in the south of France.
There was a young lad in the village who spent his Thursdays and weekends bareback on the horses of the local landowner. Everyone knew him, but I watched out for him: I waited for the sound of his horse's hooves, which came before the pair appeared. He seemed magnificent to me, and so free on those Anglo-Arabs, that I would tremble with emotion as he passed.
One day he went out alone into the countryside with a young stallion and had a fatal fall. The whole village was seized with horror, and children were no longer allowed to ride. Yet I still dreamed of riding those stallions. So we would go out into the fields in secret with other village boys; we defied the ban, and went to ride the little Camargue horses bareback, with no tack and no adult watching.
Life took it upon itself to draw me away from my DNA and made me a salesman — a very… salesman-like salesman, with my little suit, my big fine car and my front-of-house smile. I was a respectable family man under pressure. At 30 I had a heart attack. My doctor was wonderful: "Sir, you have no choice — if you want to live, you must change your life!" I took his advice very seriously.
The day I left hospital, I left my job, I left my wife, and I went and bought my first horse: « Tau » (pronounced Tao), a magnificent three-year-old Spanish cross stallion, untouched…
At the yard where he was kept, the people I was trusting to guide me, with more than thirty years' experience, encouraged me to back my colt for the first time in the arena that looked onto the mares' paddock, on the grounds that he was a kind horse. "Are you quite sure?" — "YES, I've been breaking horses for thirty years!"
I had a spectacular fall over the horse's head into the barbed wire, and I decided that I would never listen to anyone again.
As a former judoka I was fit and had no fear of falling. Having studied mechanics, I saw the horse as a vehicle — a somewhat complex one, but alive. I bought treatises on hippology and ethology, books that spoke of the horse in itself, as a living being.
From there I schooled three horses and a pony. We put on equestrian shows in the region; I set up a yard in the Camargue. In summer it was equestrian cabaret with colleagues.
I very quickly grew disheartened by what was being asked of our animals, on two counts: there was an obvious lack of rigour in the techniques used for schooling (which therefore was not schooling at all), and the rhythms of our horses — who made intense efforts throughout the season — were never respected. Many ended up injured.
Alongside all this, I was walking the competition grounds.
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