Horse rider uses T'ai Chi and Qigong exercise and practise

Horse rider

stability, pain, Qigong

A Rider Case Study

  • Related activities for the rider
  • Complete clearing of pain in the shoulders
  • A change in riding patterns - looseness and stability
  • Finding 'relaxed' un-mounted first, then translate to riding
  • 'The best lesson I have had in ages'

This lady had a history of many years of riding which had also been interspersed with many horse-related accidents that had dented her confidence, generated a lot of physical pain and a good deal of mental anxiety, anger and despondency.

She followed a couple of eight-week rider series 'Energy Development for Riders'; a daytime weekly class in Surrey, and the work suited her in many ways. We worked with many of the energetically based exercises which come from the background work of Buqi and related those exercises to both riding and to body awareness and tension release. A bit like a DIY Buqi session for the rider - only more. Although she was initially unsure, because of the quite extreme pain that she had in her shoulders, arms and body, the changes and the release from pain became very real in a relatively short period of time.

With reference to her riding, she describes how she is now experiencing increasing looseness and freedom in the upper body, and, she has the where-with-all and the stability to step out of the mutual pulling between horse and rider that can creep into the ridden process of even an educated rider. She also described how the work has given her a way of releasing the underlying tension that is not possible to release by using mental intention alone. She is discovering just how to relax the body and says 'you can't just relax without knowing what it is you are aiming for, you've got to know it inside you so that you can find it again'. Which is exactly what she was able to do in a recent jumping lesson when she used her 'Qigong know-how' to help her position and mental frame and says 'it was the best lesson I have had in ages'. The chronic pain across the shoulders is leaving and she says that she has found a way of working with the pain and can feel it coming out of her body, especially when she is doing one particular exercise. Because of the ongoing changes from the effects of the weekly series she has noticed that she has also brightened up generally and with regards to her riding she tentatively states that she has become more positive.

The un-mounted work that we do on the 'Energy Development' rider series is based upon the work from the internal energetic practises of QiGong and T'ai Chi; there is an emphasis on developing the groundwork and finding freedom, connection and core stability. Soon I will be taking these riders on to the mounted sessions but already the direct changes are having their effect on their riding.