Two sessions with Beth; one on a fjord, one on Charlie

I can now confidently say that I have spent my entire life not using my lower abs.  Much like you can't control the muscles that are making your heart beat (unless everyone else has always been able to do that too), I have little to no control over those muscles, although I know they're there because every once in a while they turn on.
So the takeaway from a pilates session with Beth up in Redmond, a mat class down here in Olympia, and two riding lessons is that I am going to be working very hard this winter on mastering those muscles and then getting them stronger (and under my control).
Because Charlie was still healing up and then beginning light work from his hock injections, Anne very graciously let me ride one of her fjords for my first lesson, and then I brought Charlie the second day.  First, a shout out to Charlie.  He has had almost two weeks off, it was very chilly, and yet Mr. Manners stood quietly and didn't go tearing around, even though all we did was mostly walk with a bit of trot.
It was very different, like always, to ride the two of them.  What I've noticed is that with Charlie, I tend to stick my left foot far further out (to the left) than on other horses - and I also move my hands a lot more.  I'm wondering if it's his shape, or the fact that he needs some encouragement to go - that causes me to react that way, since I'm clearly capable of remaining (relatively) still on other horses.
While they were different, my issues were the same:
1)  Sit on my seat bones underneath me, not pointing towards his back
2)  Sit on them evenly - not with the weight heavier in the left.  To correct this, I can either lift my hip (the left one almost always) - like a hula dancer, or push my waist to the right - which is also lifting my hip but a slightly different visual to accomplish it.  This has the secondary effect of making my legs even in the stirrups (which are even) instead of one leg hanging lower than the other.
3)  Reduce the "S" that makes up my back - make a Martha-pancake where I am flat and pulled together from front to back low (hips), middle (waist), and back (no rounded shoulders).  To get rid of the rounded shoulders, pull my shoulder blades together and down from the center of my back - not by rolling my shoulders up and back.  Then roll my shoulders back - like there is a strap that fastens one shoulder blade to the other, not DOWN, like suspenders.  However, the pancake comes from a set of front and back suspenders, with a solid wall behind me.  This is incredibly visual and difficult to explain (but easy to feel once I get it right) and I need to spend some time practicing with the minute movements to get it right.
4)  Keep my shoulders on the same plane as his.  My body's default position is to twist right (left shoulder leading) regardless of whether we're going right or left.  If I make my spine into a pole and swivel around it so my shoulders match his, I stay more balanced over his back.
We worked on walk/halt transitions without hands or legs - just from stilling my hips.  With Charlie, I also had to stay firm in my upper back for just a second at the end to keep him from popping his head.
Then we worked on leg yields where I kept my weight in the center - by thinking about pushing my waist to the outside - i.e. if we were leg yielding left, I pushed my waist to the right - to keep my weight centered instead of heavy on the left leg, and timing my aid with his inside leg lifting.  (Beth does this as when your seat bone slides back.)
The other thing to think about in the walk is getting aligned evenly (if I'm wearing a jacket with a zipper, I can look down and see the zipper going to the center of the pommel; if I'm wearing a shirt, I can look at where the wrinkles are across the belly), and then moving the motion from a front back with my chest and back, to the right and left coming out of my hips where my legs swing with his barrel.  There are some floor exercises that also help separate these two movements.  When I try to stop moving front and back, I make my whole body one stiff block from my shoulders to my knees, and I need to have better independent movement of each portion.
Then we did an infinitely harder leg yield where we came down the center line and did a couple steps left, a couple steps right.  This needs practice!  I can think of all the aids going one way, but my brain can't process fast enough to flip them back and forth.
Then we did trot work on two 20 meter circles where I kept a "wall" to my left to stay evenly centered over Charlie and then on the straight in between the two circles, tried to reduce the amount of time I spent switching directions, I started at 5 strides and got down to 3, but I couldn't get it down to 1.  Another practice area!  This is mostly to do with adjusting my shoulder plane rotation to the new direction, which sounds so simple when I type it.
On Anne's fjord, we worked on a lot of the same lower body control, including making my "pancake" firm enough that I control the trot tempo.  I could do this sometimes, but not consistently, and Anne helped by saying she thinks of it as lifting the horse up, which is the way it feels when I get it right - like their back is connected with a spring to my seat.  And for the first time - a light bulb went off and I could feel that on a left circle, I was facing right, and how hard that makes it for the horse to balance under me.  Much like with my lessons with John when I finally felt my hands pull at the last second over a fence, I finally FELT it, so now I can start fixing it without just memorizing each individual movement.  And, I have the tools to address it, so I know what to feel for, and then what to do to my body to feel instead.  Progress!

Dr. Revenaugh

Charlie has been a wee bit off, which is not like him, so Dr. Revenaugh saw him earlier this week.
He noted that Charlie's neck is sore (the chiropractor comes tonight) and his front feet were just a little sore, but that nothing seemed especially unusual.  His hocks are bothering him a bit, so he got hock injections - which we skipped last year because he didn't seem like he needed them.
Then I'm going to give him the pack of Adequan in December, and probably follow that up with another one in June, so he gets the packs twice a year.
If he's not feeling better by the end of December, we'll take him down for a bone scan instead of experimenting for months trying to find whatever is bothering him.
I also got three more weeks of the general antibiotic for his sheath, which accumulates crud faster than any gelding I've ever known.