The following text may read like a change of subject matter, but it isn't. It concludes on the before mentioned other system of communication and reveals the autonomous nervous system's role in it. The text begins with a presentation of clues, which dawned on me only after many years of uncertainty on the meaning of the rider's hand. What is its role? What do with the reins so the horse understands their impact spontaneously?
Have you noticed the changes that take place in a novice horse, when it begins to work for the rider? It wears a peculiar look expressing surprise, agreement and well-being. As if looking inside, no longer regarding surroundings, but concentrating on something there. Have you seen the young horse's inevitable dive to delightedly rub the nose on a front leg quickly set afore? Have you realized how quickly the horse settles into work, turning round after round in the school? Stepping forward in ever more regulated paces for increasing periods of time. And this after they moved in occasional spurs only, playing while growing up.
The repeated observation of these three individual phenomena fell in place when I saw a diagram, an illustration of the equine autonomous nervous system. It sparked the suspicion that all three phenomenon in fact trace back to one common ground.
To summarize, all points to the fact that - grace to the parasympathetic - the rider with his ringfingers impacts the horse’s sacrum. And this not without gaining an influence on the way. Structurally this is possible because of bit and reins. In the horse's body the configuration of the parasympathetic enables it. As before mentioned, the parasympathetic as gegenspieler of the sympathetic is responsible for rest and replenishment. It proceeds from poll to sacrum and down the horse's head to the nostrils. In the rear it contacts via sacrum sacral nervous sections one to four. In this context I would like to remind the reader of the before mentioned sacral nerve sections two and three, which interact with the rider’s bottom and legs. Precisely these and their adjoining nerve sections the parasympathetic contacts in the sacral joint.
Parasympathetic and sympathetic mix in several plexi. The solar plexus is located in the vicinity of thorax vertebra eighteen and lumbar vertebrae one between backbone and stomack. In addition there are a plexus near lumbar vertebra four, which relates to the horse's reproductive organs and the pelvic plexus, with relates to the pelvic diapraghm, which - when released - causes the tail to rise. The rider impacts the horse with his hands. No wonder, one may add, if what I suspect is true. His ringfingers send messages to the solar plexus, plus a plexus that speaks to the center of the horse’s strength, plus the pelvic plexus. In the sacral joint they contact the very sections of the central nervous system, which innervate the horse's hind legs. And, as if this was not enough, the rider’s bottom and legs communicate with these very nerve sections as well. In the sacral joint, in other words, the impact of the rider's ringfingers meets the presence of his seat and legs.
May I remind the reader once more of the three clues at the beginning of this text. Their significance now appears obvious. They speak to the horse’s surprise in view of the rider’s impact on its most inner being. They hint at parasympathetic nerves in the horse's head and nose. They bespeak the parasympathic’s role in the horse’s regularity and replenishment.
So precious a thing demands proper access, the reader may think. And indeed, the horse is not at the rider's merci. It can shut off the access of his hands to its inner workings. Because, between the rider’s ringfinger and the horse’s parasympathetic is the jaw, which when blocked is firmly locked. Empowered by strong muscles the jaw grinds up the horse's nourishment. It is attached to the head in two simple hanging joints just below the ears. And the jaw's central role in any creature's well-being, life and survival goes without saying.
Both jaw and tongue have functions in riding. Classic French equitation emphasizes an empathy of movements of the tongue and the parasympathetic and, likewise, an empathy of the movements of the jaw and the sympathetic. And in fact, the jaw not only regulates the rider’s access to the parasympathetic. It also reflects the sympathetic's energy up-swing indicated by a horse’s foaming mouth. Any impact on jaw and tongue, finally, also depends on the horse’s contact to the rider’s hand. The horse may choose this contact. It has the option to avoid it. The horse thus holds a second key to this miraculous access to its inner workings.
