Program Cost: $3200
Join expert riding instructor Sue Falkner-March for an educational and enriching riding experience at the ranch.
Overview
In this centered riding clinic students will gain increased body awareness. They will learn tools to release unnecessary tension patterns, and re-balance their bodies. This will increase clear communication with the horse, as well as allow the horse to move more comfortably and fluidly under them. They will experience ease, lightness and increased comfort in their riding.
There will be time spent each day exploring body awareness exercises, off the horse, that will relate to the daily riding lesson. The riders will then have time to integrate the concepts learned in their riding lesson on the trail rides in the spectacular terrain around the ranch.
Sue Falkner-March
Meet your Instructor
Sue Falkner-March is a Level IV Centered Riding® Instructor who studied under Sally Swift. Teaching is her full time job and her students include world class endurance riders, and an assortment of dressage and hunter/jumper riders, gaited horse enthusiasts, western competitive riders, recreational riders, as well as working ranchers and trainers. She is also a Connected Riding associate instructor and for 20 years has been a student of the Alexander Technique.
Itinerary
This instruction will make you a better rider, no matter how experienced you are or what your discipline is. The goal is new brain patterning which will lead to better communication with your horse. Since the body is the tool of communication and tensions hold imbalance, we can confuse our horses. We need to clarify how to use our body from the joints with a minimum of interference. Ground exercises lead to kinesthetic understanding of how your body works so each day more than half the lesson will be devoted to unmounted work.
Monday through Thursday will entail 4 hour sessions each morning followed by 2-3 hour trail rides in the afternoon.
SUNDAY: Arrival in the afternoon.
MONDAY: Focus: find out how the horse’s back moves through feel.
TUESDAY: Re-balance the horse longitudinally. Work on stopping the horse through balance.
WEDNESDAY: The mechanics of the rising trot.
THURSDAY: The dynamics of the bending line with the horse traveling in an arc.
FRIDAY: Morning and afternoon rides.
SATURDAY: Enjoy a long picnic ride in the National Forest.
SUNDAY: Departure after breakfast.
“Sue has been coming to our farm to teach for the past 18+ years…she has always been a favorite instructor of all the students, beginner and advanced riders alike. Her easy going nature and sense of humor make the lessons interesting and she is very adaptable if a horse and young or timid rider needs a different approach to learning. Her knowledge exceeds Centered Riding, she is also very knowledgeable in Connected Riding, the Alexander Technique and TTOUCH, and can address physical and emotional issues in humans and horses alike. She can teach riders new to her techniques and will always keep the lessons interesting and evolving for those who come back to work with her year after year.” – Christine Schwartz, CANADA
“…I had not ridden in years and was a bit stiff in my hips and knees…Sue listened to my particular concerns affecting my comfort and made adjustments for me, I rode off feeling much more balanced and secure than I would have expected after so much time out of the saddle. Much to my amazement, after trotting, tolting and cantering, I realized that I was riding better than I ever had in my whole life! Sue was a thorough and kind instructor and I wish she lived on the east coast!” –Elizabeth Vandor, NY
“The Centered Riding message and Sue’s ability to deliver that message enabled me and my horse SH Rock n Roll to achieve far more as a team than we otherwise would have. Anyone who is a student of horses will appreciate Sue’s knowledge and what it can do to enhance their understanding of horses and riding.”
Mary-Anne Dorchester, CANADA, Canadian Equestrian Team, Endurance, World Equestrian Games, Aachen, Germany
