Product Description
An Illustrated Guide: How to Sit Better and Gain Influence
Practical exercises, enhanced with copious photographs and diagrams, show how to balance your front and back, left and right—yielding skills that simultaneously address the equivalent imbalances in your horse.
Note, this book was first published in the USA as New Anatomy of Rider Connection.
For the past 30-plus years, Mary Wanless and her bestselling Ride with Your Mind books and videos have helped revolutionize the art and science of riding horses. Now she takes her pioneering techniques—which combine a lifetime’s influences from the fields of psychology, biofeedback, neuro-linguistic programming, the Alexander and Feldenkrais techniques, Tai Chi, massage, dance, anatomy, sports psychology, and educational kinesiology—to a whole new level. In her newest book, Wanless teams up with Anatomy Trains® creator and author Thomas Myers to examine how the “fabric” of our bodies (fascia) can potentially allow us to generate both stability and what so many riders find elusive even after years in the saddle—“feel.”
Recent research shows how the body-wide “net” of fascia that both wraps each muscle and connects your skin to your bones can be the source of postural imbalances and the resulting restrictions in your movement. Wanless posits that the difference between “average” and “elite” riders lies in the quality of connection and awareness within this fascial net, and she gives us the means to take practical and meaningful steps toward addressing such issues, resulting in extraordinary change in the way we look and feel on horseback.
About the Author:
Mary Wanless began riding at fourteen, passed the British Horse Society Instructor’s exam in 1978, but soon after became disillusioned with traditional ways of teaching riding and gave up a career with horses. As she pursued other avenues of study, she found her interest in horses and riding did not abate and soon she was persuaded back onto a horse. It was at this juncture that she started combining her traditional equestrian training with the experience gained by her study of psychology, biofeedback, neuro-linguistic programming, the Alexander and Feldenkrais systems of bodywork, T’ai Chi, massage, dance, anatomy, physics, sports psychology, and educational kinesiology. This led her to develop an extraordinarily effective method of teaching, based on the biomechanical demands of riding and communication styles that make riding easier to learn. Mary now teaches riders of all levels, from beginners to international riders, in the UK, US, and Australia. Learn more about the Ride with Your Mind method at mary-wanless.com.