Jumping on bending lines

I have to work all night tonight, so this post is brief.
We jumped jumps that looked big, over lines that took a lot of concentration.
For warm up, John told me to let Duke figure out the spot - so give him a bit with the rein on the approach.  The other big impact was to make sure I looked up and over the fence instead of down at it.
Then we did some lines that either needed an angle/angle or a carefully timed bend or turn to get the distance right. Duke did very well with these, even though I had a couple where my reaction time was a little slow.  We also went from a regular four to a long four to a regular but even even four, and so I had to think to adjust in between for each one.
My two big corrections were to let Duke do his job on the fences where he could figure it out, but help him get to the next fence on the correct striding - in particular for the long four that was a vertical to an oxer.  And then to pick the line and commit to it.
It was one of the classic John lessons where I looked at the fences when I got in and thought "that's crazy, I can never jump any of those" and then felt all confident and successful at the end.