I have completed Dressage in the Fourth Dimension this morning and must applaud, cheer, namaste to you with awed gratitude! You have truly written and connected from a transcended dimension and in doing so, opened an understanding that allowed me to "get back on the horse" for I had fallen so far and so darkly off. Now I can, again, respect "the horse", trust "the horse", and love "the horse"...ie, my life, my body, my marriage. Any "other" is "the horse" with which to practice the art of love and beauty, harmony and integration...with an infinite joy de vivre! Thank, thank you, thank you for this book! --Marianne Boyer, Singapore
The words "Thank you" just do not carry enough meaning or weight to express the gratitude that I feel for our work together. Our lessons this week have left me so inspired and I feel such a higher level of understanding of my horse. I learn more with you in one hour than I learn with other instructors in a month! I am just thrilled. You are so amazing. You bring out the strength of Nitters and her kindness by teaching me how to ask her for what I want more correctly and subtly. Tonight when I let her out of her stall she galloped for several minutes in the pasture, even after our intense work out! I believe she feels the same positive energy that I do.
"The Central California Dressage in the Fourth Dimension clinic was so awesome, Sherry. It really tied things all together in a coherent framework - Integrated it you might say. Seriously I cannot think of a situation where I learned so much in such a short time. Stuff that I continue to use every time I ride. " --Karla Lund, San Francisco, CA
AUGUST 13-16, 2009 Spring Brook Farm, Maryland This was a most AMAZING clinic! We began with an evening of "meet and greet" the riders and the auditors, followed by an exciting lecture delivered by Dr. Sherry Ackerman. We were all mesmerized by her presentation, and the humor and candor of Dr. Ackerman. The readings from her powerful book Dressage in the Fourth Dimension were indications of the dedication and gentle persistence of the riding experience.
The clinic experience was thorough and detailed. We began each day with a yoga session and meditation. These sessions drove home the point that we, as riders, need to have an empathy with our mounts for the difficulty of balance, bending, and self-carriage! The extraordinary movements we "demand" they perform can only be accomplished if we, also, have the physical abilities, knowledge, and stamina! Stretching never felt so all-consuming!
The riding experience was fulfilling, detailed, and extraordinary in its self-awareness! Riders became more accomplished in their own balance, in how to self-correct, and in how to influence the horse to be more balanced and supple through lovely and quiet exercises.
The rest of each day included lectures focusing on the groups and on the seat, legs, and hands, and how to use the rider mind, body, psyche, and spirit to ride fully and with a complete dedication to the powerful beauty of the horse. In return, each and every horse became focused, compliant and collected without physical force! A joy to watch.
Each day was rewarding and riders followed methodical and crystal-clear pathways to using their riding aides. The horses became obviously proud of their abilities and rewarded all their riders with more enhanced ways of moving! We all were amazed at the changes among all the horses and the riders. Auditors were completely involved through hands on demos, and so many notes and discussions and readings!
This was a clinic of wonderful immersion and inspiring instruction. All riders, auditors, and horses were forever changed.
Information is available for other clinics through Tiffany Moritz:
I have been very pleased with this Season's Dressage in the Fourth Dimension Introductory Clinics around the US and Canada. Here are some comments that have recently come in from participants in these clinics:
Elise Fageras, from Oslo, Norway, completed the Dressage in the Fourth Dimension Introductory training this week at ShasTao in Mount Shasta, CA. It was a terrific four days of affirming that dressage really IS an international language! The training approached all four "bodies" that a rider brings to the horse: the physical, mental, psychological (emotional) and spiritual. By working holistically, we shared visible and measurable progress each day with the dressage. These Introductory Fourth Dimension clinics really pack alot of punch!
Horses for Life magazine has featured a very nice interview with Dr. Sherry L. Ackerman and her ideas about Dressage in the Fourth Dimension. This is a super ezine that has many interesting and pertinent articles for curious, conscious equestrians. Enjoy!
"One of Plato's critics once stated, 'I see particular horses, but not horseness'. Plato answered, 'That is because you have eyes, but no intelligence'. The archetypal Horse, which gives form to all horses, is to Plato a more fundamental reality than the particular horses, which are merely specific instances of the Horse, embodiments of that Form. As such, the archetype is apparent not so much to the limited physical senses, though these can suggest and lead the way, as to the more penetrating eye of the soul, the illuminated intellect. Archetypes reveal themselves more to the inner perception than to the outer."
The following review was written by Dr. Candice Quinn of Southern Pines, North Carolina:
Happy New Year from the Fourth Dimension! Whip Jane Piereth and passenger Jec Ballou (author, 101 Dressage Exercises for Horse and Rider) are enjoying a morning sleigh ride here in Mount Shasta...sitting behind a Morgan horse, of course!
I entered the Fourth Dimension, literally, one blustery afternoon in 1993. Let me explain…..as a small child, I had a mystical consciousness. I experienced Oneness as a matter of course. My parents, though, thought that this awareness was immature and childish and, subsequently, thought that ‘good parenting’ involved guiding me away from these ideas. My parents, mainstream community, schools, colleges and graduate institutes all did their part; well intentioned, albeit mistaken, to condition my thinking toward materialistic, dualistic values and beliefs. By 1993, I was a fully conditioned person. In looking back, I can see that I was ego-identified, exteriorized and enculturated. I, though, was clueless, thinking that everything was right on target. In retrospect, however, I can see that I was sadly derailed! One Wintery late afternoon in 1993, I was riding a particularly difficult young horse in my quiet indoor arena through the figures of the manege, when, out of nowhere, I was struck, as if with a lightening bolt, with Pure Awareness. I felt Love pulsating throughout me and I felt as if I was a whole new being. I fused completely with the horse and we were One. There was nothing left of me, and equally nothing left of him. We just Were. Pure Presence. Consciousness. There was only The Moment. I remember, though, wondering what would happen when I dismounted….but what happened was that I continued to see the whole world this way. The boundaries were gone, duality resolved. There was no right and wrong, no male and female, no night and day. I remember, again, wondering what would happen when I had dinner with my family that night. But, I was visibly transformed. My children asked me why I was “glowing”. Love. Finally, I remember wondering if I would feel like this forever….and, for the past 15 years, I have. Sometimes the Light glows softly and sometimes it bursts into full flame, but it is always there. Nothing about my human existence has ever been the same….and all this, thanks to a difficult horse on a late Winter afternoon. Right Here, Right Now!
The 2009 Clinics and Workshops have been uploaded to the Dressage in the Fourth Website where there is alot of new information. The Site is four pages deep, so keep clicking your way through it! We hope to see you at some of these great events! Suppose riders today were taught to ride in one certain way, that being only the contemporary model of “push and pull”. Over a matter of time, real dressage would be gone! For those of you who have experienced Sherry’s teaching, you know that she truly “drops the penny” of Classicism and Consciousness in each and every lesson…and now she is going to share the secrets of how she does it in an ordered system. Wow!
The 2009 Clinics and Workshops have been uploaded to the Dressage in the Fourth Website where there is alot of new information. The Site is four pages deep, so keep clicking your way through it! We hope to see you at some of these great events!
"Dressage in the Fourth Dimension is invaluable for the modern equestrian who seeks to understand the essence of riding and pursue a classical education in the art of dressage. To experience a true manifestation of union or yoga with the horse, Sherry Ackerman’s work inspires dressage artists to cultivate a humble approach and take responsibility for integrating mind-body-spirit-horse. In so doing, she reemphasizes that a rider’s greatest life-lessons and source of fulfillment are found in the journey…not the end result."
"Dressage in the Fourth Dimension offers us an important piece in building a complete picture of the horse. Sherry Ackerman convincingly articulates the weighty main message of this book: horses have the ability to either liberate us or hurt us."
"Sherry offers the reader an abundance of valuable, coherant and considered thinking, inspiring and encouraging learning in how to distinguish one from the other. She also describes empathetically, on different levels, how we humans can approach the horse in an holistic way mindful of the cultural, natural and symbolic aspects the horse shows us."
I have launched a new clinic and workshop initiative for 2009 based on Dressage in the Fourth Dimension. This initiative will focus on animal spirituality and the transformational aspects of the horse-human relationship through the Way of Dressage. I am interested in raising consciousness about the potential of dressage for human transformation and evolution. This work will be much more holistic than the dressage teaching that I have done for the past several decades. It's time for me to be much more integrated about my horse-relatated interests than simply "teaching dressage". At this point in my life, seeing dressage as "just dressage" is too reductionistic and makes me feel, as Sartre (Critique of Practical Reason) might say, a bit "practico-inert". It is, quite simply, too third dimensional....Flatland. Seeing the horse-human relationship as a path to transformation and evolution breathes life into riding and is really where my head is at these days. I'm ready to ride...and live...in the fourth dimension. The primary emphasis will be on the real stuff of riding.....the inner work and the horse's contribution to facilitating our transformation. I don't want to just teach people how to weight their inside seatbone and keep their shoulders back anymore. I want to show people how horses and the art of dressage...each and every movement...can teach them to deal with their pain-body and/or shadow. Time is short and horses could save the Planet. Horses don't really care if riders keep their heels down and their sternums up. They want us to open our heart chakras.
We all need to stop talking about classical equestrian ideals….that just makes us dressage fundamentalists. Be Here, Now. We’re not stuck in the boxes created by previous century masters. This is not the Renaissance…it is This Moment. The art de vivre is alive…and so are our horses. Trying to ride dressage from your head kills it…and when dressage dies, so does the horse.
If you enjoy the book...and the Blog...and want to be involved in the sister e-list, your subscription is welcomed to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/dressageinthefourth/
The book you see to the upper left represents an incredible act of courage and vision. In 1997, when Dressage in the Fourth Dimension was originally published, bestsellers like Susan Chernak McElroy’s Animals as Teachers and Healers and Monty Roberts’ The Man Who Listens to Horses were a couple of years away from becoming bestsellers. At that time, those of us who did, in fact, see horses as sentient beings, and even as teachers and healers, kept quiet about it for the most part. To say that you were riding for any reason other than sport or recreation was suspect. The phrase “horse lover” was applied with disdain. And anyone who admitted to having a spiritual experience in the presence of one of these amazing creatures was considered eccentric at best and more than likely delusional.
Along came Sherry Ackerman, an accomplished equestrian and philosopher who not only suggested that riding could be used as a path of transformation but also all but guaranteed that anyone who learns to ride well can’t help but be transformed.
Dressage in the Fourth Dimension was a pioneer work in awakening consciousness, a finger pointing at the moon. Now in its second edition, its message is right on time. It requires readers to deconstruct every assumption they have ever held, to ask “Why?” and become okay with not-knowing.
--From the Foreword, by Linda Kohanov, author of Tao of Equus and Riding Between the Worlds
- Chia Tao (779-843)
