Day 1 with Major Beale

Today's lesson was, somewhat sadly, very similar to my clinic lesson in October with Major Beale - sad because we worked on mostly the same issues.
It was wonderful because, truly like peeling an onion, we worked on them in a far more refined and nuanced way than before.
We started with making Charlie responsive to the aids, by trotting, then walking one step (at E or B) and then trotting again.  This helped Charlie to "poof" up and feel like he was ready to trot when we were at the walk.
Then we worked on leg yield to the right (off my left leg) to work on getting his left hind leg activated.  Major Beale's opinion was that Charlie has always been a little lazy with the left hind, but that I fall into his trap, making us kind of a snowball rolling down a hill (that is not at all how he described it, by the way - purely my translation).
In doing that, Major Beale noticed that I don't turn Charlie from the shoulders - I almost always bend his neck, and then turn him from the haunches.  Which is how he got the light bulb to go off for me about riding from the outside hand.
Like a lot of other things, I had read about riding from your outside hand (especially inside leg to outside hand) in books, and thought I was doing it, but I wasn't remotely doing it at all.  And suddenly, all the times Shannon or John has told me to ride from my outside hand make sense.  They want me to do it because it turns the horse over his forehand - not because I am "blocking" the flow of water out that shoulder (which it also does).
So number one is working on transitions to make Charlie sharp and responsive to the aids - making him feel ready to spring up into the next gait.
Second is not "wasting" that energy by letting it spill out (mostly) through his left shoulder.  That hand doesn't just act like a block, but also steers.  We made circles, then rectangles, where instead of a bend in the circle, I did a mini turn on the forehand type thing.
Major Beale approached this from several angles - he had me work on the circle, stretch my body, stretch my heel, look over my left shoulder, adjust my shoulders while I rode, leg yields, change of direction, and probably other exercises I'm already forgetting because my brain got completely full and excited with the "ah-ha!" moment where outside hand became clear.
So now it is on to practicing that, and next up - impulsion - (well, at some point in the future, maybe not next) - and hopefully by his next clinic, I'll have made it slightly further along in my stuttering baby steps.
It was AMAZING.  I wish I'd been riding with him my whole life.