 Our position when we ride is so important. If we're in a precarious position, it's going to completely change the way we feel and think about our ride. We're going to be more nervous, we're going to be considerably more tense in the carriage of our body, and that is going to create the same in our horses oftentimes. Therefore, it's important for us to find that ear, shoulder, hip, heel. And in today's exercise, we're going to just play around with finding that. And we'll do it here initially at the walk. And what I'm going to have you do is I'm going to have you see if you can just stand up in your stirrups and be balanced and then lower yourself softly into the saddle. So what I'm going to do then is I'm going to play around. Now if my leg's too far back and I get up, I'm going to feel like I'm pitching forward again. So what I want to do is I want to find that position where my leg's underneath me and I can rise up out of the saddle and settle back into it, no problem. And then I can get a little bit further out and then a little bit further out. And I can be comfortable, balanced, and I can stay over my horse's middle or their center of balance, which is just a little bit behind the girth. I don't want to be pitching forward. I don't want to be falling back into the saddle. I don't want to end up falling onto my horse's neck. I want to be able to just rise out of the saddle and come back in. Now, what if it doesn't happen that easily, right? So what if let's say you're having trouble and you get up and you can't even hardly get out of the saddle? If you can't hardly get out of the saddle, more than likely your legs are too far forward and it's preventing you so that when you stand up, you've got one or two options. You're going to come up and then come back right back into the saddle or you're going to come up, get over your feet. Your legs are going to kick back and you're going to fall on their neck. Either one isn't good. But we now know that our legs are too far forward. So then what we need to do is from the hip swing our stirrup back and sometimes going to an extreme can help us a little because it can give our body more options and this is just all about experimenting. So I'll swing my leg back and then I'll come up out of the saddle and I'll notice what that feels like and that feels like I'm going to fall forward on my horse's neck. But I just found out how far back I can bring my leg. So then what I'll do is I'll find that middle place. We talk about that a lot, right? Finding neutral where I'm right in the middle and then when I'm in the middle, I'm going to find it's easier to stand up out of the saddle and lower myself down in. Now my legs were too far forward, so that wasn't quite middle. So I'm going to bring my leg back a little, stand up and that feels better. So I can stand up and I can settle back in no problem. This is something that takes time, but it's going to build awareness. It's going to increase your level of perception so that you're able to find that position over your feet. When your feet are underneath you, it helps your seat. It helps you find the neutral seat position because your leg is not pushing your seat out of position. When my leg's too far forward, I fall back onto the back of my seat bones. When my leg is too far back, it pitches me forward onto my pubic bone. So by fixing my leg, I can help my seat. I typically start with the seat and you've probably ridden through the lesson on the pelvis at this point. I typically start there, but then as we tweak things, everything's so connected in our body and therefore we fix our seat, but then maybe our legs aren't quite right and then we fix our legs and then that helps the seat and then from there we can work on our trunk. Play around with this exercise. You can do this at the walk, the trot, the canter. You're going to get to a point where it becomes really easy for you to stand up out of the saddle. At the trot, let me just show you that really quick so that you can get a feel for what you can do at the trot to work on this. So I'm posting the trot and what I might do is I might go initially where I stand to and then post. Stand to, post. Stand to, post. Then I might get to a point where I stand for four and then I post and then I stand for four and then I post. So then I might stand for eight and then I post. It's going to be important. You don't pull on your horse's mouth as you're doing this. I've got kind of a tight zone I'm working in so I'm going to just make a tight turn here so I'm making sure that I'm not relying on my horse's mouth and the bit for balance. But I get to a place where I can stand for increased durations of time and that is going to prove to my body that I can balance at the trot. Then at the canter I could do the same sort of thing. So let me actually, because I don't have room I'm going to just go across here and canter. So at the canter I could stand to, sit to, stand to, sit to, stand to, sit to. Or I could stand a little bit longer. So, and this is standing. This isn't two-point, so stand to. And I'm standing actually for longer and then coming back down. You'll notice this isn't a two-point position that you see jump riders ride in. That was a lousy two-point. I was showing you kind of a leaning forward two-point. This is just about standing up and being able to control my body. Right? Am I able to control it and stay with my horse's motion? When I have more control over my body and more influence over where I am at in relationship to my horse's movement, not only does it increase confidence, but it allows me to go with my horse when the unexpected occurs. Because as we all know, sometimes the unexpected does occur and they spook and we end up in a position that we're not quite used to. Then through doing these exercises, you find your balance improves drastically. Alright, until next time, happy riding.