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!!

Dressage in the Fourth Dimension: Statement of Philosophy

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.

You don’t ride a theory…a method…or a style. You ride the horse…and it is you that does the riding. It is not “your body”. You are more than just your body….and, when you ride the the horse, s/he is extremely affected by you. No-one can teach you how to ride. No-one can tell you what to do. All a good teacher can do is be a finger pointing at the Moon.

Dressage is the Moon. I can point you toward it, but that is all. You have to find it on your own. We each own our individual experiences. Until we stop insisting that a teacher do it for us…and begin to find it on our own….we are like caged rats. I see students run from teacher to teacher…book to book….video to video….in a search for dressage. What they don’t do is feel, experience, gestalt. Until the student really rides….from within…s/he will remain the caged rat. Ride, ride, ride until your sense of feel wakes up. Get out of your head and into YOU. Deconstruct everything that you have ever been taught and reconstruct it as you experience it. Own it.

Dressage in the Fourth Dimension: Egroup Available

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/
It's free, open to all and puts you in touch with alot of other Fellow Travelers of the Fourth Dimension!

Email to and from the aforementioned list, once you have subscribed, is dressageinthefourth@yahoogroups.com

I look forward to seeing you in The Fourth Dimension!