 This is communicating the ears are a gauge to the eye The eye is a gauge to the mind and what and the eyes they say, you know the eyes are the window to the soul, right? You've heard that when I can see what my horse's eyes and I can see my horse's ears. I Get a read on what they're thinking and It's the same with people. You know, I look at all of you and I think to myself Do they buy what I'm saying? Do they think I'm like making it up? Do they think I'm crazy? You know what I mean? I watch everybody because if I didn't watch you I would have no idea if I'm making sense And it's this so when we work with our horses we can look at their head. There's a time riding Where you'd say well, you're not supposed to look at the horse's head and I'd agree with you But because my eyes are soft and open I can see a wide field of view I can look up and I can see his ears right now I'm not looking right at his head, but I can see his ears So I'm not looking here because my body will go there. I'm looking up here But I'm as soft as I can opening up my field of view now all of you try soft eyes It's the same thing you do when you're driving your horse trailer down the freeway And you're looking through the windshield and your side mirrors and your rear view It's that so try that open up your field of view wide and open and when you do this You'll sit up. You'll lift your chin and when you do this with your eyes and you open Your periphery up you'll relax You'll relax so When you ride horses We all could relax a little more sometimes if I'm staring at my horse all the time I Miss what spooks him He runs the show he makes the decisions because I wasn't aware of the cowboy action shooting or whatever He says well you aren't fit to be the be my leader I'll make decisions if I'm looking at something if somebody's coming in the arena. He's already look at that He's already looking but if somebody's coming in the arena and I know that and I say hey look over there And I take my horse there I Was his eyes and I showed him so if I think something's gonna make my horse nervous What I'll do is I'll use that and I'll say hey here's some people. Let's go. Let's go by the people, right or Let's go down the rail here and Let's look out that door There's a little light coming in through that door So my eyes are up and soft, but I'm thinking about forward so his ears go forward When I look to the left you might see that ear come back left and then I could go forward Those ears ride up You know and if I go to the right I could wiggle my right rain I could wiggle my right leg and maybe I could get that ear to come back to the right So I call that riding the ears, but really I Tried to call that riding the mind directing the mind, but people don't it doesn't stick But if I say riding the ears getting the horse to look forward or getting the right ear back or getting the left ear back if I do that I Call it riding the ears and people it sticks, but you're riding the mind, right and You do this when you don't realize you're doing it often times you'll be talking to your friend next to you and Your horse will turn and look where you're looking and I see horses that are looking where their riders looking it's really cool and that horse is feeling for you and trying and Oftentimes people don't notice it. I've even seen this happen I've seen somebody look over to the side and the horse turns and they pick up the rain and They go where you go and they try to straighten the horse out and you know what they you did They killed the horses try they killed the curiosity keep it in there but we have to be cognizant of The horse's eyes and ears and awareness and I know I'm going a long time on this, but it's so important So as we ride, let's think about this. All right, so remember on the ground. I got tall to get life So we sit up. This is heard. This is heard behavior if I sit tall He comes up So then I think about exhaling and breathing into the saddle and I could Relax my muscle tone Thinking about like something like I'm gonna sit really relaxed, but maybe I'll sit like Jell-O-E So I'm just gonna get real low Now I know that's an exaggeration, but my muscle tone got real soft So now I sit up. I look up My aids are action. I'm indicating action through my body getting tall through my movement of my seat back to front and through even Sometimes your leg just like on the ground. We stand tall. We lead. We move our feet Well stand tall Lead and I'm not gonna move my feet I don't need to but if I had to I would so I could even move my feet. I could move my legs How many of you sort of need to ride with your legs still raise your hand and it's not a it's a place to start But who uses their legs to ride be honest? Okay? Yeah say that again everything Riding and junk aiding talk aiding means to speak to your horse So who uses their legs to talk to their horse? Okay? Do you want to do that? If you use your legs, do I do I notice you use your legs? Do I see it? Yeah, if I use my legs my horse notices it now There's a place for your leg and we do start there. We can do that, but let me give you a suggestion When you use your leg Don't hold Don't hold anything Bumping is a good word. You could swing. You could bump you could wiggle So don't hold for now save holding For later on you'll love it later when you hold a leg We're saying to the horse lift your back lift your barrel Elevate and come up and maybe even flex vertically But don't hold your leg to get forward But what you could do with your leg is this First sit up Second make sure your hips are walking third open the leg fourth we could wiggle it and Watch how loose My leg is I'm not using a lot of effort check this out when I want to go forward and I do use legs watch my leg It's like Coming from my hip and my knee and like right now. I'm just letting my leg hang And if I were to wiggle my leg Let's do this side so you can see if I wiggle my leg. This is how much leg I might use for now If I had to get firmer I Could still kick him But don't kick and hold Get off the horse if you have to wiggle your leg and bump them and kick them Don't hold it just relax again So you're always coming back to what I would call a neutral a neutral leg a relaxed leg So I sit up My hips move and If I needed to I could wiggle my leg or work my leg and we'd see if we could get him moving out