Ride with Your Mind Clinic: Rider Biomechanics - From Basics to Brilliance

Riding skills guru Mary Wanless looks at a series of common rider faults or problems and, through words and photos, explains how to correct them. Each fault or problem is demonstrated by a different rider - some working at basic level, others advanced. Mary gives each rider a lesson, taking them through the (often subtle) changes they have to make, and recording their progress with specially taken photographs. Readers can witness the changes taking place and understand through Mary''s gifted teaching, how to make the necessary shift to improve their own riding skills.The ''before'' and ''after'' pictures show not only the improvements in the rider''s position and effectiveness but also in their horse''s way of going, for the two are interconnected. Among the topics for in-depth discussion are rider position, muscle tone and stabilisation; how our minds and bodies learn new techniques or change old habits; rider asymmetry; mental attitudes; lateral work; advanced work; and faults such as tipping forward, leaning back, hollowing the back, rounding the back, and pulling on the inside rein.

Mary Wanless (BSc physics and BSc applied sports coaching) started riding at the age of fourteen. During the 1970s she worked in a number of riding establishments and passed her BHSI in 1978, after which she became disillusioned with traditional ways of teaching and gave up riding. She was soon persuaded back on to a horse, however, and combined her equestrian knowledge with experience gained by studying psychology, biofeedback, neuro-linguistic programming (NLP), the Alexander and Feldenkrais systems of bodywork, T'ai Chi, massage, dance, anatomy, sports psychology and educational kinesiology. This led her to develop an extraordinarily effective method of teaching, based on an understanding of the biomechanical demands of riding and of the communication styles that make riding skills easy to learn.Mary Wanless is the author of the highly successful Ride With Your Mind (published in America as The Natural Rider), Ride With Your Mind Masterclass, For the Good of the Rider, For the Good of the Horse and Ride With Your Mind Essentials; she has also produced eight training videos. As well as teaching riders of all abilities, from club level to international, in the UK, Europe, USA, South Africa and Australia, she runs dismounted workshops and gives lecture demonstrations. She also lectures internationally on learning, body-mind integration, and personal development.