Mary Wanless Workshop: Some More Theory

I've done two posts on this before, here and here. I'm going to try to fill in additional gaps that I haven't written about before. Later this week, I'll post about the canter mechanic more and how I'm going to apply a lot of this stuff with TC, so there are some things missing.

A whole post on this coming soon!

Polyvagal Theory

This honestly deserves its own post but I don't have enough knowledge to post about it fully yet.

Essentially, the vagus nerve is one of the few cranial nerves (most nerves originate in the spinal cord) and it was long thought to be a singular nerve and now there is a theory that there are two of them: the ventral vagus nerve and the dorsal vagus nerve.

There needs to be more research done, I haven't looked into it deeply, but I have read enough to know that this isn't a well fleshed out theory. So, that being said, taking this with a grain of salt but I still think it's good information about why some riders and some horses have fear issues and how to deal with them. And by doing one of the things that Mary said to turn on the vagus nerve, I've actually found that I can reduce my anxiety (which I've been low key struggling with again the last week and a half, don't skip morning CBD, Megan!) when it's happening vs only preventing it. And that could easily be the placebo effect, but I'm a big fan of the placebo effect.

Anyway!

The vagus nerve has influence over the digestive system, heart, and lungs. The dorsal vagus nerve is an old nerve, found in reptiles as well as mammals, while the ventral vagus nerve is only found in mammals. The DVN is related to primitive survival instincts (think further back, evolutionarily, than fight or flight), which Mary classified as freeze and fold. Freeze is when animals, well, freeze, in the face of danger. You can see this in all sorts of situations. Fold is when the animal essentially accepts its death, apparently mice sometimes do this in the jaws of a hawk, the hawk bites down and occasionally will drop the mouse because it feels different than expected.

The ventral vagus nerve regulates the social engagement system. When an animal feels safe, they are in social engagement. When they feel unsafe, they turn on the spinal sympathetic system, which is fight or flight. When this happens, the animal loses the ability to use higher processing and they begin to make stupid decisions (like the mouse who runs back to the cat after escaping). If the animal feels especially unsafe, they will be scared stiff (freeze) and beyond that, they are scared to death (fold), these happen when the animal cannot aliviate the fear by fleeing (flight) or fighting (fight). Essentially, when the spinal sympathetic system fails, the DVN takes over.

I have no pictures for this part, so look, TC feeling
very skeptical of the indoor round pen

We see this in both horses and riders. When horses are put into situations where they are fearful but can't escape, they begin to shut down via the DVN. Many of these horses are praised for being quiet horses, but they are actually in shut down, think of learned helplessness, they begin to feel at home in their shut-down-ness. DVN horses are low tone, lazy, quiet. Being in fold is not consent, but it can look like that.  Riders can be in this place too, they tend to be depressed, prone to self destruction, they have a feeling of stuckness but feel like nothing is worth doing to fix their situation. They again, feel at home in their helplessness and seek it out.

When animals (horses or riders in this case) go into fold and then recover, back to fold, then recover again and again, it gets easier to go to that place and often times their sense of risk/danger becomes skewed. They will not recognize danger as easily because they are so comfortable with the pathway toward fold. Mary spoke of a rider recently out of an abusive relationship who would get on horses who were not safe, just because she was so used to the feeling of being unsafe.

I found it really interesting, but honestly don't have much else to say about it. I've run into shut down horses before, worked with shut down riders. Mary gave us one exercise that helped me a lot, so I'll just share that and maybe will post about this again when I've drawn more conclusions and done more research.

Interlace your fingers and put them on the back of your head, like you were about to lay in a hammock. Put pressure back there and then look to the left, just with your eyes, and sit there for a while, until you have some kind of release. Mary's release was yawning, mine was taking a deep breath. Same thing on the right side. Then see how you feel. If you do this, could you let me know what you find? I'm very curious. It halts my anxiety in its tracks, it doesn't last forever, but it does help me reset momentarily and that's helped a lot.


Extension vs Flexion Patterns

To be an effective rider, you must balance extension patterns in your body with flexion patterns. These patterns encompass your entire body, it's essentially, are you more the type of rider who closes your angles or who opens them?

An extension rider will default to opening their angles, you'll see this particularly in the last beat of the canter, the down beat, where the rider opens the hip and shoves their hips forward. Adults tend to be stronger in their extension patterns. Extension patterns tend to shoot a horse away from them, horses can't sit down/bend their hocks when a rider is too much in an extension pattern.

A flexion rider will default to closing their angles. Young children tend to ride more in flexion patterns, think of tiny newborn babies, they are way more likely to curl up (fetal position) than to open their arms and legs away from the body, that takes time to develop. This rider tends to put their horses on the spot and can sometimes lose the horse's swing through the back if they're too much in a flexion pattern.

Riders need to have equal amounts of flexion and extension to ride properly.

Flexion pattern in the down beat of the canter (see the engagement
of my hip flexors to keep myself upright?)

Extension pattern in the down beat of the canter (see the shove
with my hips forward in the down beat of the canter and how my
shoulders are behind my hips?) Look at the relative positioning
of the horses too, TC is at Intro level, Rico is at Fourth... hmmm

Up vs Down Riders

A rider can be more of an up rider or more of a down rider. Up riders appear "popped up" on the top of the horse while down riders appear more plunged down on top of the horse.

An up rider is effective at suctioning the horse upward, drawing the back up. They find passage easier than piaffe. A down rider is effective at weighting the horse's hindquarters. They find piaffe easier than passage, you can also see their effectiveness in a canter pirouette. Neither is better than the other. Being a down rider means just utilizing the plunger-down part of their mechanic more effectively than the suction-up part of their mechanic.

There can be ineffective up riders and ineffective down riders too. If the down-ness of the rider is not distributed through their thigh, the rider will clonk down into the horse's back, making the horse more hollow.  Neither is better or worse, but an up rider who is hollow and not effectively using suction is not good, just like a down rider who is round backed and simply landing hard on the horse's back.

Like the flexion and extension patterns, our best riders have a balance of up-ness and down-ness. They can utilize the down-ness in the piaffe and pirouettes and utilize the up-ness in the passage.

Not nearly enough down-ness here, I'm practically not even in
the saddle!

I am a very up, extension pattern rider, I found piaffe and pirouettes very difficult because they require more down-ness and flexion patterns.

Do you think you are more of an extension pattern rider or flexion pattern rider? What about your up-ness vs down-ness?


Front, Back, and Lateral Lines

To be an effective rider, the rider must have a certain amount of internal pressure, which Mary calls bear down. Sit in your chair (or on your horse) and put your fingers into your abdomen, then say "psshht" and feel your core engage. There needs to be a good amount of stuffing in you, just like when you say that, when you're riding.

The front, back, and lateral lines assist with adding tone/internal pressure to the rider. Some people are better at engaging them than others. These lines are fascial lines, fascia being the sausage casing like structure around your muscles. You can engage these lines in a relatively easy way.

Sit in your chair and have both feet flat on the ground. Push forward against the ground with your feet to engage your front line. See how far up you can feel it.

Same thing, but now pull your feet backward against the ground and engage your back line. See how far up you can feel it.

When I first started with Mary, I could feel my front line until my abs. Now I can feel it easily to my collarbone on both feet. At first, my back line wouldn't go up through my butt (that sounds so bad, sorry), now I can get it up to my midback, and am working to feel it into my neck.

For the lateral lines, which we did for the first time this year, push your feet outward against the ground. It's way helpful to have a chair that has four legs so you can push outward against the legs. This line I can immediately get up to my armpits.

All three lines (well, four, since there are two lateral lines) must be engaged to have enough tone as you're riding. A rider with a weak back line tends to lose their feet out in front of them, I find that runners especially struggle with weak back lines, as running is a very anterior chain exercise. A rider with a weak front line will lose their legs out behind them. To fix, play with resistances. If you have a weak backline, imagine someone is trying to push your foot out in front of you and resist their push. if you have a weak front line, imagine someone is trying to push your foot back under you and resist their push. For lateral lines, imagine someone is trying to push your ankle toward the horse's body and resist their push. It's way easier to imagine when you actually have someone do it to you at the halt!

In the comments, please let me know what lines you think are your strongest and how far up you can feel each line! I'm very curious. It's tough to describe over the internet, so sorry if it's tough to feel anything.

How easy would it be to push my leg forward? Back?
I think I've got a soggy back line here, it'd be very easy to push
my foot out in front of me even more!

Some more tidbits:

- No one rides poorly on purpose, everyone is doing the best they can with the body they have and the words they have heard.

- Imagine the two long back muscles of the horse as hoses, which one is spraying water harder? Should be even.

- Is the rider just accepting what the horse is giving them or are they influencing the horse? This is not possible without bear down.

- The rider should be "well stuffed" but many riders run out of stuffing down in their feet, so they flop.

- Who has the remote? Hyper-vigilant horses will snag it from the rider, change the channel, then yell "CHANNEL FIVE SCARY MOVIE," the rider must take it back and change the channel back, saying "channel one, forward and round"

- If we took 100% of the rider's weight, 80% should be in the thigh and 20% should be in the stirrup. When rider's weight is too in the stirrup, they push themselves upward and become less stable. If rider's weight is too in the seat and not enough in the thigh, the horse becomes hollow.

- Is your bear down stronger than the hold on the reins or is the hold on the reins stronger than your bear down?

- Many people feel that if they aren't riding movements, they aren't progressing, this is not true and more people need to do their time on a 20m circle finding out what feels best.

- Rider should look like they are hung in a harness and if they were picked up, the horse would come with them.

- In trot, landing too far back in the saddle pushes the horse's back hollow and the rider falls in (mantrap).

- The canter should sound more like CAnada than mozamBIQUE, emphasis on the first beat, not the last.

- Think of the rider's upper body as a carousel pole, especially in canter. It should stay upright and not fling itself back and forth. Diving deeper into this concept, the pole can be located in front of the rider's spine or to the back. Bring the carousel pole further back in your body to have a better effect in canter.

- If you want to examine running water, you do not put it in a bucket, turn the faucet off, and then look at it. You must look at it while it is running. Don't stop riding when the horse goes round, they will come off the bit, think "make it again"

- The rider must have a correct pelvis alignment to get their internal rotation correct. If the rider is too rocked back on the seat bones, their thighs cannot internally rotate (attention round backed riders).

- If you are sitting on an oil drum, do you have even amounts of drum on either side? Or is there more on one side or the other?

- Protect your horse from your seat bones (pad them with your glutes). Mary spoke about a chiropractor she spoke to who said that the worst back she ever saw was on a horse whose rider only rode him bareback.

- Think of the thighs like chopsticks, If you had long enough ones, they would cross over behind you. Make sure the cross happens in general and specifically happens in the middle of your back. Keep both thighs on at the same angle, basically.