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 Horse Sense and Sensibility
Towards the end of her life, I showed a copy of the Equitation issue of Direction Journal to Marjorie Barstow, the first person to graduate from F. M. Alexander's first teacher
training course. Until her recent death at age 95, she was the world's senior Alexander Technique teacher. Knowing of her lifelong interest in horses, I asked, "Marj, did you ever give an Alexander lesson to a horse?" Her
immediate reply was, "Yes, of course." And then, after a very long pause, she added, with a twinkle in her eyes, "But you'd better know your horse!"
That last remark got me thinking about the nature of Alexander exchanges between humans and animals. My personal experience in that area has been fairly limited. I have given what I
consider a very good lesson to a frightened puppy, and I've done some work with domestic cats. I once tried to help a cow lengthen and widen, but she immediately sat down, nearly crushing my legs. Perhaps she thought it was to be a chair
lesson.
There is a growing body of evidence that some species of animals such as dolphins, whales, and primates, are capable of quite sophisticated thinking. It even seems likely that large
clusters of insects engage in creative thought, even if the individual ant or bee seems to have a pretty unimaginative lifestyle.
 I suspect that we are, for the most part, as ignorant of what's going on in
animals' minds as they are of our thoughts and emotions. But is it nonetheless possible that horses and other animals could teach us a thing or two? If so, how would they do it? What conditions are necessary for useful information to be
exchanged between animals and humans?
The Alexander Technique could provide a very useful framework within which to explore these kinds of questions, as well as more general questions about the nature of animal
intelligence. For one thing, we are thoroughly at home with the subtleties of non-verbal communication. The Equitation issue included several examples of Alexander lessons successfully given to horses. And of course the origins of the
Technique owe a great deal to Alexander's close observations of animal behavior. Indeed the Alexander term "use" was borrowed from the language of horse trainers.
Richard Weis, is an Australian Alexander teacher and a Senior Instructor of Centered Riding, a process that emphasizes the importance of developing a cooperative and harmonious
relationship between horse and rider. In the Equitation issue, Richard notes that a trained horse "...has learnt to move with a free neck and an open back whilst carrying a rider through all sorts of difficult maneuvers. He has
learnt to inhibit his instinctive reacting towards having a predator on his back..."
Richard adds that horses possess a delicate presence of mind and they "...can learn what even great thinkers find challenging: they can maintain their own directive orders for
extended periods of time"
If a horse can do all that, I'd certainly like to have a lesson from one!
 While I was thinking about how that could be arranged, I had a conversation
with Barbara Conable, an American Alexander teacher. As a child, she had something akin to upside-down table lessons from her father's draft horses.
Barbara used to lie face down along a horse's back and, as she describes it, "I would rest there, often sleep there, on the horses' backs, on my tummy, my limbs dangling on
either side, my poor back relaxing. The horses did not merely tolerate me. They cradled me and helped me and taught me, as the Tao Te Ching says, 'without saying a word'".
Has anyone else had help of this kind from a horse, or other animal? I would love to explore this topic further.
Robert Rickover is a teacher of the Alexander Technique living in Lincoln, Nebraska. He also teaches regularly in Toronto, Canada. Robert is the author of "Fitness Without
Stress - A Guide to the Alexander Technique" and is the creator of "The Complete Guide to the Alexander Technique" (http://www.alexandertechnique.com)
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