Baby Piaffe and Passage

I had a dressage lesson on George today (still trying to get Willig sound in the slowest, most noncommittal approach ever), and a mini lesson on Falada.
For my before shot, I'm a dried up husk of dessicated sponge. For my after shot, I'm so full of liquid (information) that I'm dripping. And that was like, maybe absorbing 20% (at best) of what Mike was telling me.
Let's start with the things I still need to fix:
- My gripping legs - they're like cling-ons that never let go. Like how horses can sleep standing up, I have to think "relax" to make my legs ungrip. Invariably, if I check in with them (regardless of what is going on) they're gripping.
- Tone my middle. I'm doing more and more with my seat and it's connected parts, and I can't be flopping around loosey goosey.
- Watch my right side. Something funky is going on again (or it's just that this stuff is new and it's dominant) but I had a hard time with it overworking everything today. I also had, perhaps related, a hard time getting all three horses to canter. I think my hips are tight and I can't swing my leg far enough back, but I'm not sure what to do to work at home on that "leg back from the hip joint" feel.
So to start out with a bang, here's baby piaffe and passage:
Piaffe is stepping up and down in place, passage is lifting up and down. Piaffe comes out of the back legs while passage is elevating the front legs. I always thought they were two sides of the coin (I guess they are) but I hadn't appreciated these distinctions.
To teach a horse piaffe, you lean forward ever so slightly, slightly lift your hands, and put both legs back and do a whispery-fluttery aid. The person on the ground uses the stick to tap their hind legs, and when the horse starts the movement, it feels like he's crouching down. You just do a few steps then stop and reward. You do it out of walk, not halt.
For passage, you lean back, but then lift your hands and put both legs back with the fluttery aid, and also - I don't know how to describe this - suck up with your seat. The person on the ground uses the stick on the horse's front legs. This one feels like they're stepping over trot poles.
So this was really, really cool.
Then we took that feeling, and worked on the trot (slower) and when I thought piaffe, George would get light in my hands also. And if we did it really, really well and all the stars aligned, I could feel the moment of lift that we added.
Then later we took the feeling from passage, and used it with OPEN HIPS to extend the trot. This was the same thing I did with Falada after Mike rode her a few (?) rides ago, where she felt like she sat back, lifted her front end up in the air, and then shot forward like a rocket. We got a baby feeling of this with George.
We also worked on canter, taking the piaffe, and walking, doing a few half steps (thinking piaffe), walking, repeat a few times, and then cantering a few strides on a 10 meter circle, and then thinking 1-2-3 [trot/walk/halt]. I had been trying to ride Falada with halts from behind earlier, and this exercise also really helped with that.
Mike's goal is that the exercises we did today are how I will exercise George, Falada, and to a slightly lesser degree Prince, from now on. These exhausted my legs, made me pour sweat, and were exhilirating. The hard part is I don't even know how to describe what happened, and without being able to describe it, I feel like I can't repeat it. It's like it's squirming always just out of my grasp - every once in a while I get it with the tips of my fingers, and then it slithers away again. I definitely feel it when it's right, but I don't quite know what I'm doing with my body to make it right.
But I am definitely going to keep working on this, because I think the world is going to open up when I finally catch on. And my being nice to myself is that in the two years (ish) I've been riding with Mike and Shannon, I have made SO much progress as a rider. Yes, I regret I didn't have the opportunity to ride with this level of instruction from the very beginning (I might actually be good by now), but I'm grateful to at least have it now, and not go my whole life without learning this.