Dressage in the Fourth Dimension: 2009 Clinics and Workshops

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.

In an era when America defines itself according to its gross national product, suburban sprawl and consensus ideology, I am, in existential fashion, inviting individuals to forge a new reality that would displace the old psychological reality of personal powerlessness and passivity—a reality untainted by conformity and complacency. 'See you there!!