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page 8, “the legs of the rider - some people have the tendency to use too much pressure with the legs. I would try to use a very simple explanation to make you lose the tendency to use too much legs. The horse breathes and if the pressure with the legs is continued, then he must breathe with his chest contracted.” Now who thinks about that?

How do we transform the anger and despair that we are all feeling about how the horse is being treated like an object to use and abuse, into compassion and purpose? How can I protest against this? What we need to be able to do is "to bridge the gap between spirituality and activism" - bridge the gap between our feelings and caring, between our soul and our actions and purpose.

The lesson of this day was to create bending and turning with no reins, off the seat alone. But not with gross movements, or shoving with the rider's balance first one way and then the other, but with a finesse that created a whole of the horse below. Rassembler insists that the horse is connected from head to tail, that we create no disconnects anywhere in the horse. That we insist that simple alignments create subtle connections that cannot be disturbed.

Out of this mix have come unexpected connections, and a proposal, or a suggestion really, for a way to be present, not only to heavy heartedness, but outrage, and the feeling of helplessness in repeatedly seeing violations of the dignity of the horse.

It seems, the gorilla cannot be coaxed back under the rug. He’s just sitting there, peeling bananas, right around ‘X’. Bless his little cotton socks. (Yes, MY gorilla wears cotton socks.)

I was invited to Robert Wagner's ranch just outside LA to watch a man called Ray Hunt work with horses. I spent four days entranced by this man's philosophy and work. Having said that, Ray would continually give credit to a man called Tom Dorrance: “If I’m doing anything good with a horse, I got that from Tom.”

I had to find Tom Dorrance.

“When I work with a horse, I feel like two rings interlocked. I may talk to those who watch, but I am not totally with them, simply because I am lost inside the heart of the horse.” Carlos