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PARTICIPANT SPOTS You can book your participant spots for the review classes here. Medium members > Book your included review class spot Full members > Book your two included review class spots I'm looking very much forward to creating momentum together with you ... ❤ AUDITOR SPOTS You don't need to book your auditor spot here. All of you who booked for 6 months (or are in the Starter or Free Trial month) are allowed to audit all of the review classes, so there is no need for you to choose.

VOICE OVER SPOTS As a medium or full member, you can book a voice-over spot as an alternative to a participant spot in one of the review classes. So, if you already know that you won't manage to be part of a review class or prepare a video in time, feel free to book a voice-over instead. This is how it works: - make sure to send me your video for the voice over the latest at the end of the month and I'll review it and post it in the group within a couple of days after you sent it - keep your video not longer than 10-12 minutes I'm looking very much forward to creating momentum together with you ... ❤

There are moments in training when something begins to change. The movement becomes quieter and more organised, the back seems more available, and the horse starts to carry himself with a little more ease. Alongside those changes, we may notice a softer topline, a different neck position, or a rounder shape. I find those moments incredibly rewarding, because we can begin to see some of the qualities we have been developing together. But they also invite an important question: what has made that change in posture possible? A rounded neck can easily be mistaken for a better posture. But posture involves the whole horse: how his body is organised, how he moves, and how he maintains his balance. An experienced eye may recognise that the outline suggests something the rest of the body is not yet supporting. Lowering the head or rounding the neck does not, by itself, mean that the horse has found a better way to carry himself. This is why I think of posture as something we develop. We work on the qualities that allow the horse to carry himself differently: balance, suppleness, connection, coordination, and the ability to maintain that organisation with less help. As those qualities develop, a better posture becomes increasingly available to the horse. For me, that gives our work a much clearer direction. Balance, suppleness, and connection are closely intertwined in this process. As they develop together, they allow more throughness: the horse becomes increasingly able to respond through the whole body, with less tension interrupting the communication. In the saddle, we can begin to feel this in the response to our gently holding hands in front. As the horse becomes better organised, a soft yielding and searching response can emerge more naturally. He becomes able to soften into the connection and follow the hand as we offer more space, while continuing to carry himself. That response tells us something about much more than the head and neck. I am interested in whether the softness continues through the body, whether the back remains available, and whether the movement keeps its balance, tempo, and rhythm. The neck and the visible shape are part of that response, but we feel and observe them within the organisation of the whole horse. This is also what makes connection such useful feedback. What is already available? Where does the response still feel interrupted? What becomes easier when I change my help, and what is lost when I offer more space? A moment of softness gives us information about the qualities that are developing, while a moment of resistance or disconnection invites us to explore what still needs support. Throughness develops alongside those qualities, and the yielding and searching response helps us recognise something of that development. We can use what we feel to choose our next question, gradually helping the horse find a posture that is supported by the whole body. Rather than beginning with where I want the head and neck to be, I want to understand what would help the whole horse become better organised. What needs to become easier? What is still unclear? Where does he need more support, and where might I already be giving more help than he needs? Sometimes the shoulders need a clearer direction. Sometimes the hindquarters need to become more available. Sometimes we need more forward energy, and sometimes we need to make that energy easier to organise. A horse may need greater confidence in the question before his body can soften, or more time to coordinate something he already understands. These are the things we can work on. Through clear communication, thoughtfully chosen exercises, and opportunities to explore, we help the horse develop the qualities that support a different posture. The visible shape remains useful within this process. I look at it alongside what I feel in the connection, the quality of the movement, and the amount of help the horse needs. Has the balance improved? Is the body becoming more supple? Can he maintain tempo and rhythm more easily? Are small changes in direction or speed becoming clearer? Is he beginning to take more responsibility for maintaining what we have found together? The visible posture belongs within that whole picture. If I focus on placing the neck where I would expect it to be in a better-organised horse, I may overlook the work that would make that position meaningful. I may also make it harder for him to explore the adjustments he needs to find his balance. The question I keep returning to is therefore, “What qualities would allow this horse to find a better way to carry himself?” That question also reminds me that development takes time. Understanding a request is one part of the process. Becoming coordinated enough to answer it comfortably, maintaining it through different exercises, and eventually needing less help are further parts. We may see a promising change in posture long before the horse can sustain it consistently. I want to recognise those moments without asking him to hold onto more than he is ready for. A few good steps can give us something to return to, explore, and gradually develop. Over time, I become increasingly interested in how available those qualities remain when we change the question. Can the horse lengthen his neck and keep his balance? Leave a lateral movement and travel straight without losing suppleness? Allow his stride to become bigger without losing rhythm? Can I reduce my help and feel that he continues to organise himself? Those moments tell me something about how much of our work is becoming his own. The posture will naturally change as the task changes. What I hope becomes more consistent is the horse’s ability to adapt while keeping the qualities we have been developing. That gives us a foundation from which different postures can become easier and more sustainable. For me, developing posture means paying attention to the whole horse throughout this process. We observe the shape, feel the movement and connection, listen to his responses, and use that information to decide what might help next. The visible changes matter because they can show us something of that development. But our daily work is with the balance, suppleness, connection, understanding, and coordination that make those changes possible. And that is what I want to help the horse discover: an increasingly comfortable, capable way of carrying himself, built through qualities he can gradually learn to maintain as his own.

Sometimes, when we are training, something quietly changes in the conversation. We ask the horse for a little more organization of a shoulder, and instead he simply continues forward. We invite one hind leg to step a little more underneath the center of mass, and again we get more forward. We ask for a subtle change in balance, but rather than reorganizing, the horse braces a little and continues with what he was already doing. Often, this is the moment when our own aids begin to become stronger. We ask again. And a little louder. And perhaps a little louder still. It can be tempting to think that the horse has simply stopped listening — and that we need to make our question a little clearer, bigger or stronger. But what if we stayed curious for just a moment longer? Because what we see from the outside is not necessarily the explanation for what is happening underneath. A horse may genuinely not understand the question we are asking. Or he may understand perfectly well what we mean, but feel insecure about whether he can produce the answer. Sometimes the horse knows the answer and has given it many times before, but in this particular moment there is simply too much going on. Perhaps we have added more movement, more balance, another exercise, several aids at once, or a more challenging environment. The individual answer is understood, but it is not yet accessible within all that complexity. And sometimes, of course, the horse really is distracted or has slipped into a familiar pattern. His feet keep moving, he continues doing something he knows very well, but his thinking mind is no longer fully engaged with the individual questions we are asking. From the outside, all of these situations can look surprisingly similar. And I think this is where it becomes important to stay curious. Because if we immediately interpret every missing response as “My horse isn't listening,” our logical reaction may be to make the aid stronger. But stronger pressure doesn't necessarily solve the reason why the answer disappeared in the first place. If the horse doesn't understand, we need to make the question clearer. If he understands but feels insecure, we may need to make the answer easier to find and give him a little more support. If he is overwhelmed by complexity, we may need to slow down, isolate one ingredient and temporarily take some of the other plates away. And if he has genuinely switched onto autopilot or become distracted, we may need to find a simple way to bring his attention and thinking mind back into the conversation. The response we see may be similar. What the horse needs from us can be completely different. And, of course, before we diagnose any of this in the horse, there is another important place to look: ourselves. Was our question actually clear? Was our timing good? Did our aids make sense together, or were we accidentally giving contradictory information? Did we have a clear inner picture and feeling of what we were looking for, or were we simply applying a collection of individual aids and hoping the horse would somehow sort them out? Sometimes the horse's confusion is valuable feedback about the clarity of our own communication. This Is Where the Compass Comes In One of the ideas that sits at the heart of the PIB Compass is that good training isn't simply about knowing more exercises or having more tools available. It is also about learning to recognize where horse and human are in this particular moment, what might be missing, and what the next helpful step could be. Perhaps understanding is still missing. Perhaps the horse understands the individual ingredient but is still learning how to coordinate it. Perhaps several ingredients are already there, but bringing them together within a more complex movement is still difficult. Or perhaps the horse simply needs more experience, repetition and confidence before the answer becomes truly reliable. The visible behaviour gives us information, but it doesn't always give us the diagnosis. And I think this is one of those small shifts in perspective that can make quite a big difference to our training. Instead of immediately asking: “How can I make my horse respond?” we can become curious and ask: “Why might this answer not be available right now?” That question changes our role. We stop trying to push through the visible problem and start looking for the piece that might help the horse find the answer. Sometimes we slow down. Sometimes we stop. Sometimes we isolate one tiny ingredient and explain it again. Sometimes we support a little more. Sometimes we simply need to reconnect. And then, when the horse finds the answer again, we can gradually put the pieces back together and return to movement and flow. Because ultimately, we don't want to create horses who simply become increasingly efficient at reacting to our pressure. We want horses who stay mentally present, understand our questions, connect the dots and increasingly participate in organizing the answer themselves. So perhaps the next time your horse doesn't give you the answer you expected, stay curious before you become stronger. The answer may tell you much more than simply yes or no. ***** This little thought grew out of our latest PIB Theory Snack, Beyond Reaction – Building True Responsiveness, where we explore the difference between reaction and true responsiveness in more depth. It also touches on one of the central ideas behind the upcoming PIB Compass e-book: learning to recognize where we are right now, so we can make a thoughtful decision about what might help the horse next.

A few days ago I stumbled across something I wrote almost eight years ago. Reading it again made me smile. Some ideas evolve, some deepen, and some are expressed differently over time. But every now and then you rediscover something that still feels profoundly true. This was one of those moments. "Your body hears everything your mind says." The more years I spend working with horses, the more convinced I become that communication starts long before we consciously apply an aid. Before we move a rein. Before we lift a whip. Before we shift our position. There is already a thought. An intention. A feeling. And all of these quietly shape the way we carry ourselves. Our posture changes. Our breathing changes. Our muscle tone changes. The focus of our attention changes. And horses notice. As prey and herd animals, horses are incredibly skilled at observing subtle changes in the bodies of those around them. Long before they understand our training systems, they are reading our posture, our rhythm, our focus, and the quality of our presence. This is one of the reasons why thoughtful horse training is about so much more than learning techniques. Of course technique matters. Body language matters. The timing of a whip matters. The use of the reins matters. But underneath all of that sits something deeper: clarity of intention. I often see humans becoming increasingly technical when something does not work. They search for a stronger aid, a different exercise, or a more detailed correction. Sometimes that is necessary. But sometimes the missing piece is not more technique. Sometimes it is becoming aware of what we are actually presenting to the horse. Are we truly inviting forward movement? Are we genuinely thinking about balance? Are we mentally present in the movement we are asking for? Or are we simply performing the mechanics while our attention is somewhere else? The interesting part is that visualisation alone is usually not enough. A thought becomes meaningful when it is felt. When an inner picture creates a genuine inner experience, our body begins to organize itself around that intention. Our posture, breathing, timing, and movement start to align with what we are trying to communicate. And suddenly the horse has something much clearer to respond to. Years ago, I came across a sentence that stayed with me ever since: "Our inner picture gives our inner feeling direction. Our inner feeling gives our inner picture meaning." The more experience I gain, the more I appreciate the depth behind those words. When we can clearly picture where we want to go, what balance we are looking for, or what quality of movement we hope to create, our intention becomes more organized. And when that picture is accompanied by a genuine feeling, it begins to influence the way we breathe, move, focus, and carry ourselves. Because horses do not respond to ideas alone. They respond to what those ideas create within us. They respond to our posture. Our timing. Our focus. Our presence. The most harmonious communication emerges when intention, feeling, posture, and action all point in the same direction. Over the years I have come to think of this less as "using energy" and more as creating coherence. The clearer our intention, feeling, posture, and actions align, the easier it becomes for the horse to understand us. And perhaps that is one of the most beautiful aspects of working with horses. They constantly invite us to become more aware. More present. More honest. Because whether we realize it or not, our horses are listening long before we ever say a word. And often, they are responding to things we have not yet become aware of ourselves. ❤️

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