Before you can clearly communicate to the horse what shapes you want him to take at what gait and in what rhythm, you need to have control over your own body. You cannot simultaneously influence the horse’s shape, gait, and cadence unless you are in the right position over his center of gravity to apply the right sequence of aids with the right degree of pressure and the right timing. To control your body to that extent, you need to have an independent seat.

Fear of falling creates both mental and physical tension. That’s why relaxation is at the base of the riding tree, the set of skills a rider needs to master in order to develop an independent seat. In order to relax, you have to become aware of every part of your body--every muscle, every joint--and find any places where you are holding tension. When you can let go of all of this involuntary tension, you can move to the second level of the riding tree. When you can stay relaxed over the horse’s center of gravity, you are in balance. When you are in balance, you can stay on the horse.

The first step in developing an independent seat is learning to relax while sitting on the horse. The second is learning to balance your own weight over the horse’s center of gravity. The third is learning to feel and follow the horse’s motion at the walk, trot, and canter

Aids are physical pressures a rider uses to communicate with the horse. When the horse responds correctly to the pressure, the pressure goes away. So a correct response rewards the horse.

Think of individual aid pressures as “words” that have a specific meaning to the horsechange gait, go left, go right. As both horses and riders progress in their training, they begin combining several aids into “sentences” with greater nuances of meaning than a single wordget ready for an extended trot after we make this left turn, spin to the left when you come to the end of this slide.

Communicating to the horse involves much more than just a mechanical application of a specific set of aids. That’s the beginning but if riders want to progress up the riding tree from merely applying the aids to coordinating them, they have do more that just use their aids in an “on” or “off” mode. Coordinating the aids means applying the right aids in the right sequence with the right degree of pressure and with the right timing. Developing a feel for this coordination requires some additional skills.

When riders become very good at coordinating the aids, they become capable of influencing the horse. Now they can show a baby green horse what to do or enforcing the requests made of a spoiled horse to retrain it. They have the necessary skills to use artificial aids like a whip or spurs to reinforce their requests without ruining their communication with the horse. The riders have now become capable of teaching.