PODCAST · education
Mary Wanless - Ride With Your Mind
by Mary Wanless BHSI BSc
MARY WANLESS presents crucial information on how the Ride With Your Mind approach to Rider Biomechanics can transform your learning, your riding, and possibly your life. Out of frustration at her progression as a rider, Mary embarked on a journey to discover the 'how' of skilled riding - why couldn’t she learn to ride as skilfully as “talented” riders? Over more than 40 years she has decoded the hidden laws of rider-horse interaction and now teaches the skills that combine to create “talent”, both in person and through online courses at www.dressagetraining.tv. In these podcasts, Mary talks about her journey to date, her key discoveries, and some pivotal moments. She illuminates her key points with metaphor and story, and, at times, presents insights derived from sports psychology. Prepare to be entertained, to learn, to become curious, and to understand a little (or maybe a lot) more about your interact
Episodes
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Ep 84. The Butterfly Muscles
Send us your feedback! Butterfly muscles, viable mental rehearsal, and a focus on the means whereby - the only way to discover the connection is to listen to this episode!
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Ep. 83 Stop Bracing, Start Breathing
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Ep. 82 Peeling The Layers
Send us your feedback! The surprising connection between tiramisu, snot, and your horse's back.
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Ep. 81 The Magical Connection Between Rider And Horse
Send us your feedback! Explaining The Magical Connection for horse lovers everywhere.
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Ep. 80 Not knowing, curiosity and sleep
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Ep. 79 Ways of knowing
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Ep. 78 How change happens
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Ep. 77 Stance, state, sense, signal, see, stop
Send us your feedback! How do you show up to sessions with your horse? And how do you manage your stance and state when you get there? Explore how to manage yourself and your horse to establish more effective communication between your body-mind and his. Even in conversation with another human,...
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Ep. 76 Does your energy flow or leak?
Send us your feedback! This picture illustrates one of the many images that this podcast refers to. Energy, a vital but abstract concept, is best illustrated through images and metaphors. Dive into this session to explore the world of energy and discover how to direct yours effectively.
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Ep. 75 The contagion of (dis)regulation
Send us your feedback! Does the regulated rider or handler regulate the disregulated horse, or does the disregulated horse disregulate the regulated rider or handler? Working with horses influences their regulation as well as their body organisation. In addition, horses can help us become more...
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Ep. 74 Beyond fight, flight, or freeze
Send us your feedback! In this episode, I return to the nervous system — and to Stephen Porges’ polyvagal theory, which reshapes our old picture of fight, flight and freeze. Your autonomic nervous system is constantly scanning for safety or threat, and it quietly drives your thoughts, emotions…
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Ep. 73 Deep dive into hollow backs
Send us your feedback! Back to Rider Biomechanics! I’ll uncover the effective alternatives to growing tall. The majority of women are hollow-backed, with their front longer than their back, and the majority of men are round-backed. There are different ways and places that people hollow, so let's...
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Ep. 72 Mind the gap or embrace the gain?
Send us your feedback! This episode is about how our perspective shapes our experience. So often, we measure ourselves against where we wish we were, living in the “gap” and feeling the distance between where we are and where we think we should be. This episode invites you to turn around and…
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Ep 71. Bringing out the best in you and your horse!
Send us your feedback! Do you want to bring out the best in you and your horse? I certainly do. In this episode, we’re diving into what it takes to bring out the best in both of you—and how to navigate the journey ahead. Every journey needs a map, and I’ll be sharing one that’s robust, reliable,...
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Ep. 70 What does it take to become a skilled rider?
Send us your feedback! I tell the story of a rider with phenomenal talent in another area of life, and ask, how did this affect her riding, and how would it be if we taught riding as if it were a martial art? I discuss what it means for riding that ‘form follows function’, and how this relates to...
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Ep. 69 C curves, S shapes, and uneven seat bones
Send us your feedback! The rider with rebars that connect diagonally through her can use these to pattern her horse in shoulder in, suggesting to him how he could transmit force through his body from his inside hind leg to his outside foreleg. This can make riders feel much more effective! I...
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Ep. 68 Reinforcing bars!
Send us your feedback! ‘Rebars’ are the dull red metal uprights you see sticking up within the frames used on building sites when pouring concrete pillars. Rebars also have smaller horizontal pieces of metal wrapping around them. Our seated exercise helps you find ‘rebars’ in your own torso-box,...
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Ep. 67 Top down or bottom up?
Send us your feedback! Most riders can organize their body much better from the top down, or from the pelvis out, than they can from the bottom up. Thinking of your core like the core of an apple means that it goes from top to toe, (and toe to top). We do an exercise whilst standing, that…
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Ep. 66 How I misdiagnosed two riders, and learnt the folly of my ways from a set of toe separators!
Send us your feedback! I did the ‘boards as blades’ exercise with a young rider I know well, and discovered that it was difficult for her to get her right board to go down. Later, when the group did a dismounted exercise, she realised that she curled her toes under her foot on that side, which in...
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Ep. 65 Breakfast buffets, bananas, flying buttresses and amoebas - an unlikely set of ideas?
Send us your feedback! I contrast the story of a very unassuming rider, who has been a long term and dedicated learner within the RYWM system, with a more naturally talented rider who does not have to think about so many ‘pieces’. The first rider had not really appreciated that, whereas the early...
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Ep. 64 Shoring up your structure in all dimensions - clarifying the boards from back to front, and top to bottom.
Send us your feedback! Most people are, in effect, falling off one side of the horse, whilst pushing their torso towards his midline on the other side. My most dramatic story about this concerns a Grand Prix rider, whose horse’s apparent problem with piaffe turned out to be her problem. There are…
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Ep. 63 Is your body a soggy distorted bundle, or can you transmit force?
Send us your feedback! The idea of ‘positive tension’ is very new in the horse world, but I am no longer the lone voice crying in the wilderness! As well as force absorption, we need force transmission, which enables the most important ‘myofascial lines’ in the body to ‘play a note’ in the same…
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Ep. 62 Geometry - whether sacred or not
Send us your feedback! One of the biggest over-views of the work I do would be to consider it the re-discovery and re-creation of the ideal shapes our bodies would make. We can think of both human and horse torsos as rectangles that have become distorted into’C’ curves, or parallelograms, and…
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Ep. 61 I'm back!
Send us your feedback! I'm back after a long break from podcasts! I'm sharing the stories of three riders who were all very different types of learners, using strategies that worked more or less well for creating change. One of the stories introduces the idea of 'un-believing' things you have...
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Ep. 60 The last and final one!
Send us your feedback! We do two more exercises, as I encourage you to realise the immense value of the off-horse exercises that are part of my approach to learning and coaching. We then revisit some more of the common traps in learning, before focussing in on ‘flow’. This experience/brain state...
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Ep. 59 Back to basics - as we begin to wrap this up!
Send us your feedback! I was right all of those years ago when I thought there was something my teachers weren’t telling me! But this is innate in the human condition, where we pass through conscious competence before we become unconscious of our incompetence, and no longer have words to describe...
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Ep. 58 - Rotation or shear? And from ‘bus’ to ‘bend’.
Send us your feedback! We have talked about asymmetry patterns being rotational, but it can be more helpful - and with some riders more accurate - to think of one third of the body being sheared forward, whilst the other is sheared back. This distinction suggests some new pushes and pulls on the...
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Ep. 57 The story of Sarah
Send us your feedback! One of my pupils broke her upper arm in a fall, and damaged her wrist and elbow. After surgery and recuperation she returned to riding, and found herself with a total reversal in her asymmetry! This very rarely happens, and the story of how we worked with it is…
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Ep. 56 ‘One side on/one side off’ is the existential state of humans on horses…
Send us your feedback! Many riders spend their life stuck in ‘one side on/one side off’. Others ‘ping-pong’ between right on/left off and left on/right off. Few people discover how to get ‘both sides on’ consistently. Once they have this, they can learn how to make a wider, higher, more…
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Ep. 55 Good sides and bad sides
Send us your feedback! Most people have a strength differential between their two boards, and don’t address this well - so as the weaker one becomes stronger, the stronger one gets in on the act and also gets stronger! But ‘bad sides’ do eventually become ‘good sides’, leaving the rider very...
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Ep. 54 Both boards on!
Send us your feedback! I love the analogy of ‘both boards on’ being like two people both fighting to sit on the same bar stool, but neither one must push the other one off! The top, middle or bottom of both or either board can be weak, and we have exercises to help with each possibility. But you...
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Ep.53 What do Ice skaters and clock faces show us about how to turn horses?
Send us your feedback! On a circle, an ice skater pushes off one foot and glides on the other as her body makes a dancer’s arabesque. She faces her torso to the outside, and if she were to allow it to rotate in, she would spiral out on the turn and fall over. In a fencing lunge, the fencer is in…
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Ep. 52 Slingshot!
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Ep. 51 - Spiralling muscles, rotating pelvises, and ‘seat feet’.
Send us your feedback! Hopefully the stretch from last time leaves you feeling that you can fill out your concave side and rotate it forward, making it more sturdy. We add to this effect, and explore wether one side of your pelvis rotates back more easily than the other, and wether one point of…
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Ep. 50 - Snug thighs, stirrup leathers, and a profoundly effective stretch for your concave side.
Send us your feedback! It is a challenge to create an equally snug and symmetrical ‘A frame’ with your thighs, and it’s important to ride with your stirrups level. The only exception is if you have a difference in leg length that is structural (eg. a break that was badly set) rather than...
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Ep. 49 Seat bones, feet, and compass points.
Send us your feedback! Some experiments with seat bones - how they do and don’t move - helps to get the clarity about your underneath that then makes it easier to diagnose and find answers for your steering issues.
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Ep 48. Pulling on the inside rein…
Send us your feedback! Riders pull on the inside rein again and again, even though they know they shouldn’t, and often they feel helpless about doing anything else. Left to themselves, horses tend to fall in - think of horse A going at speed towards his mate horse B in a field, and it is us…
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Ep. 47 The turnings aids - a rampant example of deletion, distortion and generalisation.
Send us your feedback! Whilst some people seem to be blissfully ignorant of the difference between riding in each direction, others are tortured by their experience of the ‘difficult rein’. When I ask people what they have been taught bout how to turn I get a variety of ‘interesting’ answers. You...
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Ep. 46 The shape of the horse’s neck, and the ‘footprints in the sand’.
Send us your feedback! Some horses have long flat necks, some have much sorter and more upright (lama) necks, but in all horses the neck vertebrae make the shape, like the spout of a teapot. The curves in the spout unfold become one single curve when the horse is grazing. In these recent…
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Ep. 45 Can the hind legs of the horse push the front third up?
Send us your feedback! ‘Kick the front of the horse up’ is a traditional idea that I have rarely seen work well in practice. Following the work of Tom Myers, I compare both the human and the horse’s core to the core of an apple, which is more than just a bulge in its middle, and it helps us...
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Ep. 44 And now that you have your black belt…
Send us your feedback! I recently enjoyed working with a small woman who was a relatively inexperienced rider with a black belt in karate. The parallels between riding skills, and her skill as a martial artist, delighted both of us. This podcast reviews the relationship between the lines of…
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Ep. 43 - The Half Halt & Collection
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Ep. 42 - The learning process
Send us your feedback! The learning process, which progressively builds a pyramid out of lots of (initially) disconnected body parts and corrections dots, is like walking in hills, where you might think you are about to reach a summit with a fabulous view - only to discover that there’s another...
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Ep. 41 The 3 thirds of the horse
Send us your feedback! The biomechanics term ‘hydraulic amplification’ describes how the muscles get ‘pumped up’ in collection. WE want a half-halt to ‘go through’, but In effect, there can be disconnects between the horse’s back third, middle third and front third. The front third, for instance...
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Ep. 40 What the half halt isn’t.
Send us your feedback! It isn’t riding in ‘mistake prevention mode’ and keeping the horse’s head down by whatever means. But it is the ‘human trump card’ in the ‘got it/lost it’ game that each rider learns (we hope) to play with her horse. This concept suggests a viable ‘it’ that the rider wants…
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Ep. 39 Half-halts: the riding enigma
Send us your feedback! Half halts are an emergent property of good biomechanics. The rider. needs firstly to realise that she needs to intervene to ‘lead the dance’ and not just get carried away on the horse’s ‘magical mystery tour’. This won’t happen until she has a ‘reference feeling’ and makes...
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Ep. 38 The tennis ball game.
Send us your feedback! Let’s imagine that you and I stand opposite each other and play a game of catch with a tennis ball, allowing it to bounce once in each throw. We are doing this in a rhythm, and not trying to catch each other out. But if I (sneakily) substitute a bean bag, that would be the...
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Ep. 37 Rising Trot - The ‘gold dust’ skill
Send us your feedback! I have been accused of terminal rising trot - but time invested here is so worthwhile - it’s the ‘gold dust’ skill. I offer some strategies to help your hollow back or round back, in both the rise and sit, keeping your knee in the same place and your foot back under you....
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Ep. 36 Rising trot in depth.
Send us your feedback! We use a full length mirror to get really forensic about rising trot mechanism, showing you how to differentiate movement in your hip joint from movement in your mid back. This allows you to mimic the movements rising trot and gives you clarity about the movements you need…
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Ep. 35 Some strategies for ‘What if’s?’, difficult emotions, and rising trot mechanism.
Send us your feedback! I suggest some metaphorical MRs to reduce the ‘sting’ of your less-than-stellar rides. Realise too that thinking ‘What if?…’ is a mental rehearsal, and if the rehearsal ends with you in a ‘black hole’ you are probably more scared of the difficult emotions it generates than...
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ABOUT THIS SHOW
MARY WANLESS presents crucial information on how the Ride With Your Mind approach to Rider Biomechanics can transform your learning, your riding, and possibly your life.
Out of frustration at her progression as a rider, Mary embarked on a journey to discover the 'how' of skilled riding - why couldn’t she learn to ride as skilfully as “talented” riders? Over more than 40 years she has decoded the hidden laws of rider-horse interaction and now teaches the skills that combine to create “talent”, both in person and through online courses at www.dressagetraining.tv.
In these podcasts, Mary talks about her journey to date, her key discoveries, and some pivotal moments. She illuminates her key points with metaphor and story, and, at times, presents insights derived from sports psychology.
Prepare to be entertained, to learn, to become curious, and to understand a little (or maybe a lot) more about your interact
HOSTED BY
Mary Wanless BHSI BSc
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How many episodes does Mary Wanless - Ride With Your Mind have?
Mary Wanless - Ride With Your Mind currently has 84 episodes available on PodParley. New episodes are automatically indexed when they're published to the podcast feed.
What is Mary Wanless - Ride With Your Mind about?
MARY WANLESS presents crucial information on how the Ride With Your Mind approach to Rider Biomechanics can transform your learning, your riding, and possibly your life. Out of frustration at her progression as a rider, Mary embarked on a journey to discover the 'how' of skilled riding - why...
How often does Mary Wanless - Ride With Your Mind release new episodes?
Mary Wanless - Ride With Your Mind has 84 episodes. Check the episode list to see recent publication dates and frequency.
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You can listen to Mary Wanless - Ride With Your Mind on PodParley by clicking any episode. We provide an embedded audio player for direct listening, and you can also subscribe via your preferred podcast app using the RSS feed.
Who hosts Mary Wanless - Ride With Your Mind?
Mary Wanless - Ride With Your Mind is created and hosted by Mary Wanless BHSI BSc.
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