18 November 2017

As I pulled out my beloved violin to play a favourite Scottish folk tune before heading to bed one night earlier this year—something that has become a meditative ritual after playing infrequently for so long since walking away from my classical performance degree 10 years ago—something flashed into my mind, articulating a truth I’ve felt countless times with a bow in my hand, and just as often on the back of a horse.

I was never the most technically brilliant violinist, but I loved to try and produce the sweetest, smoothest tone I could; a fluidity of sound. Nothing mattered more.

The anatomy of flow is a fascinating topic in itself, but one for another time. Nonetheless, getting reacquainted with my violin, much like getting back in the saddle, has done wonders for my body and mind, along with my awareness of how they affect each other. I’ve experimented with many approaches to managing the severe neck, back and chest pain triggered by the collision of injury and environmental factors some years ago on a day-to-day basis. I stretch, I exercise, and I self-treat with myofascial release, acupressure, and when desperate, acupuncture (it’s a great way to refine my palpation skills, at least…it hurts if I miss!). Working up a sweat turns the volume down.

But the only time I feel truly free in my body is on the back of a horse, or with my violin on my shoulder and bow in my hand. The day I played my great-grandfather’s violin to an open paddock while my friend Katanya was cleaning leaves from the gutters of her home, she nearly fell off the roof. “It’s like you just let go,” she said, or words to that effect. She could see the release so clearly, because she had seen the absence of it so often. When I showed my friend and mentor Caroline some images of a rehab horse I was working with, she observed that I was “unafraid of movement”.

She was right: I am unafraid of movement, and in part it is a product of cutting my dressage teeth on huge, powerful horses and learning to bring suppleness to that power, after spending my late childhood and early teens galloping around back paddocks bareback on ex-racehorses and discovering the fun of influencing the horse at speed with my seat while learning from experienced stockhorses.

But more than anything, it is because I find my freedom in movement just as much as the horse.

Looking back at my musical training, I realise that so much of what I learned and the style of playing I embraced was about learning to control my movement and posture by flowing with my fascia. In hindsight, it is no great surprise that this was the feel I gravitated towards on a horse long before I began exploring the science behind it.

Putting hair to string is a surefire way of bringing your awareness to hidden or habitual tension patterns, because you can hear tension in its effects on your sound. Tension—in us or in our horse—has the same effect on the horse’s movement. It interrupts the illusion of flowing beauty; of a creature gliding over the ground effortlessly. If losgelassenheit and durchlässigkeit—‘looseness’ and ‘throughness’—are the mark of supple, free, and fluid movement in a dressage horse, then fluidity of sound is the mark of a violinist’s losgelassenheit.

What do you think of when you imagine a musician warming up? The drilling of scales and technical exercises? As a Suzuki violinist, this was a foreign concept to me for many years. The ritual my violin practice began with was something Dr Suzuki called tonalization: the ability to produce and recognize a beautiful, ringing tone.

The approach to warming up I learned on violin wasn’t about technique: it was about tone and musicality. It was about creating the desired quality of sound before carrying this into more advanced technical or performance study. Warming up the dressage horse is no different…or at least, it isn’t to me. I’d forgotten the word ‘tonalization’ even existed until recently, but this is what I seek from every horse I sit on, before asking for anything else.

“Our eyes are naturally drawn to efficient, flowing, graceful movement: the joints moving freely in their designated ranges and directions; the myofascia receiving the appropriate information, both from the somatic nervous system and from sensing the mechanics of the surrounding tissue.

When all of these things happen together, we perceive a harmonious relationship, both of the body within itself and of the body with gravity.”

~ Born to Walk: Myofascial efficiency and the body in movement

In applying tonalization to the horse and seeking true losgelassenheit, we can also consider another musical term, legato: a smooth, flowing and connected quality of tone, unbroken in the transition between notes; for the string musician, this means playing so smoothly that the change in direction of the bow hairs over the string is barely perceptible.

Of course, even in music, you can’t only play legato; there are so many other colours of tone in the musician’s palette, just as the horse’s energy, cadence and power must be developed to master all the movements performed in dressage. But even with all their various accents, the movements must be performed from a foundation of losgelassenheit.

“From the first session the aim must be to find and work with the horse’s natural cadence.

Each horse has its own tempo which must be respected; the discovery of this rhythm, at both the trot and gallop, leads to equilibrium and to sound and economical movement.”

~ Physical Therapy & Massage for the Horse

Expression produced through force and tension destroys the quality of the horse’s movement, just as it destroys the quality of a violin’s sound. Expression produced through fluidity and freedom allows the horse’s most beautiful and uninhibited movement to emerge.

“Watch the way she moves… Imprecise, but effortless…”

“Perfection is not just about control… It is also about letting go…“

When tension exists, legato is the losgelassenheit I seek, as a prerequisite to other dynamics and flavours. It is the quality of movement that demonstrates freedom from tension, and the fluidity that one must start with, to maintain the same fluid control in more advanced and demanding movements, whether around a dressage arena or violin. It is the absence of conflict between muscles as they work in harmony and balance instead. Or, as I see it, the muscles surrendering to the fascia, and allowing the body to move effortlessly as a fluid and dynamic whole.

In any discipline of movement, this is the foundation that allows fluidity and ease even in extreme and advanced efforts: the ability to do so without blocks or restriction; the ability to let it flow uninterrupted and undamaged by tension; the ability to make intense effort look effortless, by mastering the art of letting go.

Beginning with fluidity allows us to shape and guide the flow of movement into its many variations. But the moment that tension or conflict break this flow, we must go back and find what is lost. This is the key to achieving power with true fluidity and freedom.

Be the rider who, with the sensitivity of a concert violinist, allows uninhibited, flowing movement, and coaxes this expression out so gently it looks effortless.

It starts with allowing your own fluidity.

Be unafraid of movement. Allow your horse to flow like a river, by finding your centre and flowing with them.

Let go.

 

 

References

Denoix, J. M., & Pailloux, J. P. (2001). Physical therapy and massage for the horse (No. Ed. 2). Manson Publishing Ltd.

Earls, J. (2014). Born to walk: Myofascial efficiency and the body in movement. North Atlantic Books.