Rupert Isaacson: Thanks for joining us.
Welcome to Live Free, Ride Free.
I'm your host, Rupert Isaacson, New York Times bestselling author of
The Horseboy and The Long Ride Home.
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So now let's jump in.
All right, I have Richard Williams.
Richard Williams is the publisher of a niche publishing company, which happens
to be international called Zenon Press, named after the Greek philosopher
Zenon, but it's an equine largely classical equine publishing company.
Why is it named after a Greek philosopher?
Because Xon, the Greek philosopher Xenophon, was also a master horseman
who not, was not just the pupil of Socrates and the best mate
and perhaps a bit rival of Plato.
But he also wrote the first European book.
That we know of on what we would today called dressage.
And he was also a military dude and many other things too.
So he is an all round educated bloke from Greece about 3000 years ago,
and Richard Williams, who publishes the Zenon presses publishing the
canon of Creed of this tradition that those of us who are horse nerds have
inherited and he's keeping it alive.
If you think about the Library of Alexandria, the legendary library of
Alexandria before it burned, or think about what's housed in Oxford University
or Heidelberg University or Harvard, or any of these August institutions that
keep we, we trust them to kind of keep these canons of human knowledge going.
Even if we never look at them, that's what Xenophon Press is.
But Xenophon Press, of course, is more practical, is we do actually
still train our horses from this.
As you can imagine, this being a bit of a niche thing, it's not exactly
gonna make you the kind of money that going off to be an MBA and working for
multinationals in Dubai might make you, you have to be passionate about this.
It really is, at the end of the day, an act of philosophy, an act of love.
So, Richard, I have been reading and working from these books
of yours for quite a while now.
I think I'm into my second decade of it.
And you keep 'em coming and you keep publishing them.
It's not making you a vast amount of money, but you are contributing to
Western civilization in a huge way.
Why on earth do you do this?
How do you do this?
How do you kinda make it work?
And what can we learn?
From this, thank you for coming on the show over to you.
Why you do this?
Richard Williams: Well, thank you for the introduction.
Why?
It's a couple of, couple of reasons.
First of all, I really wanna learn, and I realize that what I want
to learn might not even be widely known by people who are alive today.
Rupert Isaacson: Mm-hmm.
Richard Williams: And or if they are alive today,
I'm not that portable, so I can't necessarily get to, you know, this little
village in Portugal or, you know, the hill town in Vienna or outside of Vienna.
I can't necessarily travel around.
. So this loving to learn I couldn't necessarily transport myself around.
And at the time when the opportunity to buy Fin Press came
up, I, we were living in a remote area and we had two small kids.
And when I was a bachelor, I could go to Europe and did go to Europe
and travel around the country and take lessons from whomever.
And I basically looked at my wife, my lovely wife, Francis, my better
half, and said tag, you're it.
You're my writing teacher now, and I'm your writing teacher,
and that's all we have.
And then.
Basically what I realized when this opportunity came up to buy Zenif and
press, it was owned by Ivan Belov.
He was in his eighties and not really able to continue and having failing health
and his wife's health was failing and he couldn't really fulfill the books I had,
he couldn't fulfill orders for books.
And I said, look, I don't want any of these books to go outta print,
so I don't wanna overstep, but if you want help with this, if you
want me to ship out your books for you, I would be happy to do that.
Or anything that made sense to keep your, what you started here
to keep it alive let me know.
And he said, well, that's good to know.
And nobody else had made him that offer.
And then within.
Six months or a year he asked me to purchase.
So what what I realize now in hindsight is that this le doing these books, you
end up having to read the books when you edit them or translate them and edit them.
If somebody else is doing the translation, you end up having to read as a publisher.
And I'm the publisher slash editor Francis is the acquisitions editor.
So if I am too close to the book and can't see mistakes or can't
see areas that could be improved, then I have Francis look at it.
Just could you have a, and she'll go through the entire book.
But I realized what I could do is I could actually time travel.
One of the first books that we did with this was Dom Diago de Braganza
dressage in the French tradition.
He was a Portuguese master, a friend of Nuna Oliveira's a
sometimes riding with Nuna Olivera.
But this guy was, oh, like today, he would probably be, you know, 96 or a hundred.
He passed away a few years ago.
But I basically got to meet his equestrian knowledge through through
translating or helping the translator.
You know, refine his translation, reading that book.
So I got to meet this guy and also the distillation of his, of an entire
lifetime of equestrian knowledge.
And so then I said, well, it's great that I had, you know, a teacher here and a
teacher there, one of which is in Vienna, one's in Budapest, one's in California.
But I'm not there now.
So this is a way to not just trans, I could actually time travel,
but also space travel, right?
I could travel and, and glean this information.
So that was magical because I said to myself, well, what if the person that
knows the answer to the question that I'm seeking is possibly no longer living?
What if they were from a different century?
Just because they were in a different century doesn't make them invalid.
We all have finite lifetimes.
So this is what I really love about it is because sometimes I feel, you know, I was
maybe born in the wrong century, you know?
Do you ever have that feeling like you should have been born
in the 1930s or, you know,
Rupert Isaacson: I'm disabused from that.
Anytime I go to the dentist and then I'm like, actually I'm, I'm quite happy to be
Richard Williams: that whole new set of, you know, teeth that you got by, you know,
just dropping a few thousand is fine.
Yeah.
Rupert Isaacson: Yeah.
Richard Williams: So there, of course, we're having the benefit, we get the
benefit of the modern convenience of today's world and advances in science.
But we also, we also should not be turning our, our back on these
people who basically often lived right next door to or above, or in
an apartment adjacent to the stables.
They didn't have the internet, they didn't have tv, they didn't have
movies, they didn't have automobiles.
If they wanted to go anywhere, they had to.
Saddle up a horse or they had to get their carriage together with
horses and then go somewhere Right.
With their horses.
So they were spending, but if
Rupert Isaacson: the horse failed them, they had a real problem.
They might die.
Yeah.
Richard Williams: Right, right.
And but they, they, and they were spending all of their waking hours horse.
Right.
It was all about the horse.
So we don't even have people today that are really, we have very, very
few people today who are doing that, where they're immersed, completely
immersed, not just for, like, I go for an a week long immersion,
but I go for a lifelong immersion.
Rupert Isaacson: Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm.
Richard Williams: So yeah,
Rupert Isaacson: I, I think you've, you've, you've hit your, you put your
finger on the word classical, which is that classical means something that
endures down the generations and is past from generation to generation.
I got it from grandma, and she got it from her grandma.
Why?
Because it still functions,
Richard Williams: right?
And the the thing is like if we're trying to learn technology that's
up to date in 1920, you know what?
We're going to be completely out of date because technology has actually changed.
Mm-hmm.
And it's changing.
And the rate of change of technology and industry, right?
Mm-hmm.
Is, is always changing.
If you're up to speed for the 1920, you know, internet protocols and the thing
that's going on there, you're five years outta date or six years outta date.
But the thing that keeps bringing us back to why this knowledge doesn't need to
change that much is because the horse.
The horse as an entity really actually hasn't changed that much.
Rupert Isaacson: Mm-hmm.
Richard Williams: They still respond in the same ways.
They still have the same needs.
It's a grazing animal.
You know, it's not a piece of machinery that we're like a, like an Nvidia chip
that is going, you know, a thousand times faster than it did a half a year ago.
It's, that's not happening with horses.
They're keeping us grounded in that reality, and that's what,
that is the primary reason why the knowledge that they had in 1729.
You can read that and just say, okay, well maybe we've had advances in shoeing
and we know a little bit more about the biochemistry of feeding, but in
terms of the way the horse actually responds to us and our training and
our seat and our exercises, we must.
Avail.
I think we have to avail ourselves of what they knew then, because these people
were spending, you know, 12 hours in the barn, a a day, 365 times the lifetime.
So they learn, they have way more time in the barn.
I mean, you have a lot of time in the barn and around horses, and so do I, but
we also have other things that we do.
Mm-hmm.
So we don't, we can't even compete with the amount of exposure, the
trial and error that these people had.
So that's what makes them, that's what, why you know, Gustav Steinbach
is, you know, knows what he's talking about because he basically lived it.
He lived it.
Mm-hmm.
And we don't, even, even the experts that we have today, they didn't have that.
This kind of same exposure.
Very, very few people.
Rupert Isaacson: Very, it's an interesting thing.
Let's go back to Xenophon himself.
You know, your.
Press is named after Xenophon.
Xenophon is the ultimate sort of classical example because all we horse people, if
we have any sense read him and then we read all the people that came after him.
But he's not just taught as a horse dude.
He's taught at West Point Military Academy or a Sandhurst military
Academy as the master of the tactical retreat for having brought 10,000 Greek
mercenaries more or less safely home, out of enemy territory from Baghdad
to Greece on foot in 300 BC or so.
And then 400 bc.
And then he is also taught in philosophy schools as the complement
to Plato and perhaps he's the father of stoic philosophy and so on.
And so, and the point is that there's relevance.
So much relevance today.
Still from people like that, whether they're in military tactic, you
know, tactics or whether they're in philosophy or whether they're in
horsemanship or no matter or science or no matter what they're in, I
agree to take a modernist approach
puts the lie to where modernism, what modernism is.
'cause modernism comes out of the thing that came before modernism and
we think, oh, something's ancient.
Well, it wasn't ancient when it was written, and so it still works today.
You know?
Then we're talking, actually, what we're actually talking
about is the present moment.
And I think when people are putting their mindfulness hats on and
that sort of thing, talking about the present moment, what's often
forgotten is that the past and the future are also the present moment.
There are all these present moments and I feel that you are
making those available, but.
Why the passion for it and why the passion for this particular type of riding.
Why, why aren't you roping?
Why aren't you jumping?
Why aren't you riding races?
What, what, what is it about this, what they call classical riding?
What is it that makes it so addictive that you would consign yourself to, in order
to be able to bring out all these books?
Why is it so beautiful?
Richard Williams: I think it comes down to basically, you know, one or two words.
It comes down to truth.
It really comes down to, you know, is it true?
Is it kind?
Is it helpful?
You know, it, it, it is basically that, you know, so we can come up
with ways of tricking horses or signaling horses to tall with their
right front leg seven times as we scratch them on the wither seven times.
We can, we can do cues, but the classical, the classical methodology,
and that's kind of how I sort, what I keep is like if it speaks a language,
you try it with a horse and you try it a few, a few different ways.
If you try it with a horse and it works, and wait a minute, this horse
just got brought to you like last week.
We don't even know what this horse's training is, but if you try this
method that is in that classical cannon, it helps the horse.
Understand.
It helps you communicate with the horse.
It helps you convey your intention to the horse, and there is a back and
forth then, then it's worth keeping.
Rupert Isaacson: Hmm.
Richard Williams: And we cannot, there's no way that we can be so egotistical
ourselves in our own life to say, okay, well I'm, you know, 80 years or,
you know, God willing, you know, and in my vast experience, our, my vast
experience or your vast experience in your lifetime cannot compete with the
thousands and thousands of horsemen and horsewomen and horses over the
thousands of years that has aggregated.
This trial and error experience and knowledge to distill, Hey,
we tried a bunch of stuff, this is actually what works.
Hmm.
So I don't think of myself really as, oh, you, Richard,
you're a dressage instructor.
Not really.
I really am trying to teach horsemanship that works.
Horsemanship.
That actually works because it res, it actually is effective with most horses,
with most riders most of the time.
A methodology.
And I'm always trying to add to that, refine that.
Sometimes even dispense, maybe say, Hey, I've decided something
that I did 10 years ago.
I'm now.
Revising because I found in this situation, I could do something different.
So I, like, I teach people in western saddles, I teach people you know, in dumb
of a Cara saddles in English saddles.
I teach quote unquote Western dressage.
I even had a, a barn that I went to where all the people were Western.
It was a western barn.
And they said, can you teach us to do, you know, quote unquote side paths?
And I'm like, yes.
Among other things the only thing I require is I do need you to
have a bit that has a joint in it, you know, a little snapple bit.
Like that's really the only thing that I, 'cause I, I can't really
be doing this with a, a rigid bit.
Rupert Isaacson: Hmm.
Richard Williams: But you can ride whatever saddle makes you feel
comfortable or what you're going to use when I'm, when I'm gone.
I mean, the majority of people that I teach are in English saddles.
But I don't think of myself as classical as being dressy.
Right?
I think of classical as being, this is the methodology that has been handed down
to us through trial and error experiment,
Rupert Isaacson: right?
But there is something beautiful about it.
What is beautiful about it?
Why is this way of writing like it's aesthetically beautiful, right?
It looks beautiful.
Why does it look beautiful?
How does it feel?
Talk to us about that.
Where does that beauty come from, and why is that important?
Richard Williams: The beauty is because it is the, the classical way is like
having the correct key in the door and turning the latch that allows
us to enter into the horse's being.
It, it allows us to enter in store instead of riding at the horse
or on the horse or to the horse.
We are riding with the horse if we're really doing correct, correct.
Riding.
Rupert Isaacson: Yeah.
So you become the center you are, if you
Richard Williams: like,
Rupert Isaacson: in the horse.
Richard Williams: The horse actually stops seeing you as a threat on his back
and, and actually enjoys having you on his back and wants to carry you around.
And the, the, and that q you know, the Q power that you get from riding horses
is, it's like a life force for me.
It's like a life force.
Like, you know, I just saw something, you know, where they were showing the
where they were showing all of the original actors of Star Trek and mm-hmm.
You Scottie and, you know, Le Leonard Nemoy.
And, and we're in the year right now, 2026.
And, and I, and the last one they show is William Shatner.
Rupert Isaacson: Mm-hmm.
Richard Williams: And, and, and I said, and then all these people had died in
their sixties and seventies and you know, some very early, unfortunately.
Rupert Isaacson: Mm-hmm.
Richard Williams: And, and I said to Francis, my better half, I said, do
you realize how old William Shatner is?
And he's still alive.
He's 96 or 94.
And she said to me, well, you know why he.
You know why he is still alive.
And I, I said, well, luck.
No.
And she said, no, he continues to ride horses.
He continues.
Yeah.
And it's, it bring, it's a life force.
This interchange of energy between the rider and the horse keeps us youthful.
And she's a physician and, you know, and has seen many, many
lives and run a nursing home.
And I, I really believe that it's like, you know, for riders,
her saying is once you, once you stop riding, it's kind of over.
Rupert Isaacson: Mm-hmm.
Richard Williams: So, you know, I hope you and I, and all of our
people that are listening to this get to keep riding in some fashion.
You know, you into our, eighth or ninth decade?
Rupert Isaacson: Well, you know what's interesting is when my son,
you know the story, but you know, when my son became verbal, he was
autistic and nonverbal in the saddle in front of me, and I found, mm-hmm.
When I rode a horse in a way that was towards that classical way.
I didn't know so much about it at the time.
When I started riding in this collected way with my son, which originally I
was doing just for safety to make it more balanced, I didn't really know
the system behind it at that point.
It felt very, very beautiful.
Like it felt beautiful.
And we all go and look at those pictures from the Barak era and the classical
era of Greece and Rome and whatever, and we see horses in this very round shape
and this very round shape with elevated movement looks aesthetically beautiful.
That's why they made paintings of it and did sculptures of it.
And that same feeling of beauty, of course, translates through your
body when you're on the horse.
My son became verbal and then neuroscientists explained
to me later, oh yeah.
The reason that feels beautiful Rupert is 'cause it act is actually
making you produce a hormone.
It's rocking your hips in this rhythmic way, not unlike making
love, not unlike dancing.
And when you do those things you produce.
The hormone oxytocin.
Oxytocin is the best physical feeling of all of the happy hormones.
You've got your dopamine, you got your endorphins, you got your
serotonin, and you got your oxytocin.
Oxytocin is the one that gives you the really ecstatic feel, and it's
there to make you communicate.
It's a hormone of communication.
So of course you also communicate cross species with this other
animal and across the predator prey barrier, which is almost miraculous.
And then of course there's the aesthetic side.
Now, I didn't know all that before I started doing it, but once the
neuroscientists explained to me, to me, I was like, oh, well that
makes perfect sense then why people would've pursued this as an art for
hundreds of years, thousands of years.
Because not only is it really functional, you can stop, start, spin, catch a
cow, fight a bull, fight another man on horseback, but you can also heal yourself.
Arm of mental illness because it feels so good and it makes you
communicate within your species, cross species with nature in general.
You're open for communication 'cause of the oxytocin and the sciences.
Arts and sciences of course, are completely connected to
the classical riding thing.
We've talked about xenophon having been a philosopher,
having been a military tactician.
And philosophy, of course, back in the ancient Greek era was not limited to
sitting around talking about stuff.
It meant science as well.
It meant anything that was inquiry.
So all these guys were playing with the sciences.
And then I've noticed in a lot of the books that you've published,
is a from the 18, from the 17th century is a good example.
From the 18th century is a good example.
Eisenberg from the 18th century is a good example there.
A lot of these people are talking about the link between classical riding,
effectively three dimensional riding, not just going from point A to point B,
but going to the side to side, going up in the air, going down to the ground,
going backwards, spinning, being able to do this in a soft, non-resistant way.
There being a real correlation between people that do this and people that
do arts and sciences and that you need academies that teach all of this stuff.
Can you go into a little bit of this history and you publish all these people?
Why were they saying this?
Why were they noticing?
This link between this type of riding and training of a horse and this type of
mind that could then go into the sciences and the arts and further on from there.
Talk to us about this link.
Richard Williams: I'm looking to see if I have a copy of
that book, if you don't mind.
It,
Rupert Isaacson: which one?
Blue.
Blue Al or
Richard Williams: no, it, the one that I'm looking for is the one by Toni.
Rupert Isaacson: Oh, yes.
While you're looking for it, I'm gonna tell the, the viewers
and readers what that is.
So there's a really good book that's by the Xon Press, by an Italian
author and academic called Tamini.
And I think you need to find his age of chivalry website.
He really goes into this he.
Wrote a very good book recently about the early Renaissance Italian masters
and how they founded academies based upon the idea of Socrates, Zenon, and Plato.
But, you know, a couple of thousand years later where you could come to learn
usually in Naples, but then they grew out from Naples the arts of horsemanship
riding, but also fencing, mathematics, languages astronomy you name it.
And the reason was that rather than just teaching people how to
be warriors on horseback, they were now teaching people to be diplomats
so that you would go into a foreign court and be able to hold your own.
In the saddle, in conversation, in science, et cetera, et cetera, and
you would be perceived as a man of, of who is, who's cultivated
and civilized and three dimensional what we now call a Renaissance man.
But it starts, of course, in the actual Renaissance and it
horsemanship at the key with this can.
Yeah.
I've, I've given a bit of preamble to Thomas Sini.
Take, take us in.
Richard Williams: So this is the book is that, is that visible?
Rupert Isaacson: It blurs and then it comes out.
But we, we'll put a, we'll put a link in the, at the end, just read us the title.
Richard Williams: So the name of the book is called The Italian
Tradition of Equestrian Art,
Rupert Isaacson: the Italian Tradition of Equestrian Art,
Richard Williams: and it's by Giovanni Batista Toni.
And the subtitle is A Survey of the treatises on horsemanship from the
Renaissance and the centuries following.
And, and I, I think it's about 10 years ago.
It was about 2016 that we published this.
And GB is what I call him.
That's what a lot of people call him short for Giovanni Batista.
So GB actually has his own press now and he publishes works in Italian.
Some of the authors that we have published in, in English, for
example, GB Thomasine in Italy, they are publishing works in Italian.
And another notable example is Werner Pusher in Austria.
We published the Austrian Art of Writing in English and he has since.
Opened his own press and publishes, you know, Austrian works in, in German.
And I'm just kind of proud of that because they sort of, I think they sort
of saw what I was doing in English and I'm really happy that they're publishing
those works in their local countries.
But and bringing back a lot of these works and we have very, very
friendly relationship with these authors who are now publishers.
And I'll tell you another story about them, but, but what was
going on in the Renaissance?
As you know, Italy was just a series of little, city states, you know,
there was little fiefdoms, you know, that's probably an English word,
but there are little principalities.
So you would have there, it wasn't a nation, it was an area that was separated
off from a lot of the rest of Europe by its geography being a long peninsula.
But these land, and they
Rupert Isaacson: had the legacy of, of the Roman Empire and the papacy of course.
Richard Williams: Right, right.
So they had these land areas and they would have a certain area that let's say
a Duke or or a Baron or whatever would.
Be in charge of protecting the local people.
And it was of course the futile system.
So there were serfs in the field working the fields, and
it was a hierarchical system.
But at the head of that was usually a family.
You know, one that comes to mind is the cheese, right?
Rupert Isaacson: Mm-hmm.
Richard Williams: So all of these medic cheese, and it was a
patriarchal system pretty much.
So the Medici senior would have offspring and, and then these offspring would
sooner or later become teenagers.
So the little tiny baby that was cute.
The new male heir to the, to the family fortune or to the response rose into a
Rupert Isaacson: psychopath like Chere Boer.
Richard Williams: Yeah.
Because as soon as he turns goes into puberty at the age
of 12, 13, 14, 15 suddenly.
His parents become stupid and he's rebelling against them.
He doesn't listen to them, and they just, he
Rupert Isaacson: declares war in his local neighbor.
Richard Williams: Right, right.
Yeah.
So what they learned is like, oh, we'll send him off to a,
a kind of boarding school.
The name of these schools back then was called the School of Horsemanship.
So, but horsemanship was not the only thing taught there.
And so what was the goal?
It was like usually a, a four year process on average between the
age of 14 and 18 or 16 and 20.
And sometimes the, they the, the curriculum lasted longer than four years.
Sometimes it was six years.
Sometimes it took longer if somebody was stubborn, but many things were
taught in the school of horsemanship.
And in including, but not limited to, you know, fencing,
public speaking, mathematics
Rupert Isaacson: sciences.
Yeah.
Richard Williams: Dancing
Rupert Isaacson: sportsmanship
Richard Williams: and, and horsemanship.
Why was horsemanship so important?
Because that was transportation.
There were no, there were no cars.
There were the, the transportation was the horse.
And if you were going to be a leader, you needed to be moving out
front to direct either surveys of the land or patrols or what, what
you tried to do, do is avoid war.
Mm-hmm.
But if you had to go to war, you had to show yourself as a leader.
And, and so you knew, you had, you had to know how to ride a horse and once.
The, the offspring graduated from this, this school of horsemanship
through this wide curriculum that included these life skills.
Then they could go back to their village or their principality
Rupert Isaacson: that
Richard Williams: coastal
Rupert Isaacson: Yeah.
Richard Williams: And, and be, you know, next in line for the
throne or next in line as a leader.
So you start out as a snot-nosed teenager, lipping off your parents.
And here's what, here's the great equalizer.
When a lot of the horses that were used in these schools, the stallions, the males
and the female horses were kept separate.
So in the tradition was that female horses were used at breeding farms, and
they were also used often in carriages.
So for carriage riding, basically because of the mare's
structure of having the longer
Rupert Isaacson: back
Richard Williams: Yeah.
Longer back and having the abdomen be able to be opening and having the pelvis invert
a little bit to be able to birth Foles.
And the stallion has a more tucked pelvis in general from breeding
and from, you know, fighting with other stallions naturally.
So the stallions were the horse of choice and castration wasn't really widely done.
And in some countries, like on the Iberian Peninsula, male horses are often just left
as stallions as a normal course mm-hmm.
Of, of protocol, but.
What would happen is these teenage boys who had been liping off their parents
and telling them that they didn't know what they were talking about, they
would go to these schools and, and then the teacher, the ride in teacher would
basically say, okay, you're everybody off.
Just go ahead and ride the stallion and try that with the stallion,
with the 1200 pound pound stallion.
And pretty soon the stallion gave feedback as to what kind of behavior
was going to be acceptable and what was going to be thrown off.
Mm-hmm.
So if you know, I have this story of when my, when we got our very, very first
horse I was 11 and my brother was 13.
And my sister was eight, and I may have told this story before, but my
brother was right at that age of 13.
So he had been watching shows like gun smoke and and Bonanza, right
on tv, black and white versions.
So my parents didn't know what to do.
We got this little pony and my brother got on the Little Pony and it was a
marere and it was probably 14 hands.
And he got on and they looked at the three of us and they said, okay,
this is actually for Kathy, my little sister who is eight, but we're not
going to sacrifice Kathy first.
Let's put Mark on.
So they put my brother on and my brother, who had not ridden horses before,
and his only example was gun smoke.
And bonanza of the TV shows.
He just remembered a guy getting on and kicking the horse with both legs and then
taking off, you know, after he fell out of the second floor, you know, the John Wayne
movie falling out of the second floor, balcony of the saloon and then taking off.
So he got on and he just kicked the horse while she took off with him
and, and galloped out of sight behind the L-shaped barn galloped and, you
know, the very fast movement of feet.
And then, he completely disappeared and she promptly galloped straight towards
the muck heap, which was a giant pile of straw and horseshit that was being
pushed into a wet area on the farm.
And then did a sudden lurching stop very much like the Thewell
cartoons, Uhhuh, and he went ass over tea kettles and was thrown off.
She didn't even buck, she just went from a Gallup to a sudden stop.
And he landed directly in the manure pile.
And so we didn't even keep up with this because it was around the corner and the
mayor came trotting back with the rains, drooped down, very proud of herself.
And we, we were thinking, where, where's Mark?
And he came around the corner and I heard many, many swear words that I
had never heard up until that point.
I didn't even know they existed, but it was a new list of vocabulary.
And, but this is an example of how a horse will tell you that
what you're doing is unacceptable.
And so the horse being 1200 pounds and us not being 1200
pounds, the horse guides us.
It has this civilizing effect on people because it sorts for
the right kind of behavior.
So if a rider is going to learn from the horse, the rider starts to refine
their aids and starts to eliminate the.
Abusive coarse rough aids because a lot of horses just won't tolerate that.
Rupert Isaacson: Mm-hmm.
Richard Williams: And then we can take that to the nth degree when we, when goes
towards art, where we start culturing the riders TT or the tactfulness of
the rider, where we see riders, and we've seen in the, in the 18th century.
Like in Eisenberg or Inal or in sinned, where, where the big boast, the big
bragging about what makes a great horse person, a great horse person, is
that we basically cannot see the aids.
We, the rider sits there.
Rupert Isaacson: Mm-hmm.
It looks, it seems like to happen just by like Jimi Hendrix playing the guitar.
It just seems like right.
Richard Williams: Right.
Rupert Isaacson: Guitar plays itself.
Yeah.
Richard Williams: Make playing the guitar without moving your fingers.
Rupert Isaacson: Mm-hmm.
Richard Williams: Yeah.
And, and so this was, people realized that this is, that is mastery.
Rupert Isaacson: Yeah.
As you know, if you followed any of my work, I'm an autism dad and we have
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Richard Williams: That is when, because the horse has now welcomed you because
you deserve to be welcomed because you acted, you know, in a way that
respects the horse's nature and sees him as a partner and not as a vehicle.
Rupert Isaacson: Yeah.
Richard Williams: So, did I answer your question?
You
Rupert Isaacson: did.
And, and it, it, I think we could, what it's coming down to is preparing the
person that goes through that academy as to be a diplomat and an ambassador.
You know, it's interesting, Leonardo da Vinci said a man in public life must
learn to ride beautifully because he will be seen on horseback everywhere he goes.
If he looks like a dick, you know.
And he's bouncing about up there like a sack of potatoes he'll be laughed at and
clearly he won't have mastery and he could be unseated easily and fall in the mud.
If you chuck something at his horse, if you spook his horse down goes the king.
And when, but also it will humble the young prince so that he
doesn't get too above himself.
And I've actually had personal experience of this when I was a boy
growing up as a young teenager in Leicestershire in the uk, which is a big
fox hunting area, lots of big jumping.
And Prince Charles, who's now King Charles, used to come and hunt with us.
And you would see him, you know, face down in a ditch the same way you'd
see anyone else face down in a ditch because that's just the laws of physics.
And the laws of physics don't care if you have a, a title that
other monkeys thought up for you.
The laws of physics are the laws of physics, and he wouldn't.
Stand upon his dignity or his honor.
If he was chucked off the horse and then ordered the horse's head to be cut off
or anything, he'd get up, laugh, brush himself down, say, well, we're only
human if he could get back up and go on.
And so I, I think with the tradition of horsemanship and people in power,
there has been this really interesting interplay through the classical ages
of, it's both an exercise in humility and it's an exercise in mastery.
And of course, there is no mastery without humility.
What everyone who comes into contact with a horse and tries particularly
to ride in three dimensions, I think encounters, is that the horse does
not care what's in your bank account.
You had better humble yourself to the system that is necessary because
this animal thinks fors itself and has its own reactions, its own
opinions, its own sense of humor.
You, by the way, are the butt of the joke.
'cause who else is there to be the but of the joke?
And how you deal with that is going to be to some degree how
you deal with your commonwealth.
If you are forcing and terrorizing your horse, you're probably
gonna be a tyrant to your people.
You know, we can actually see this, I think in
generally in how people behave with animals is often how
they'll behave with, with humans.
So you then published of course a book which was written in the early 16 hundreds
by a man called Antoine de Plu who had been one of the northern European, in
this case, French students at one of these academies because of course, the sons
of the nobility of Northern Europe also sent their scions or so were, were also
sent down to these academies to learn all these arts and come back and become
sort of polished courtier back home.
And Pelle came back to the King of France where he was then
hired to train the king's horses.
And he said, listen, siah, we need actually four of these academies,
which we have down in Italy.
France is a square.
Let's have one sort of at each point of the square on the inside because
our young nobility are outta control.
They are, if they're not dualing with each other.
And of course, when they kill each other in duals, this breaks up states.
It shatters the local economy.
And then when they get older, if they survive, they just simply declare war on
each other, or worse war on the crown.
We've had a hundred years of, you know, chaotic civil war.
Spain is to the south of us, and it's dominating the world Right now.
We have a much richer agricultural base and trade based than Spain does.
Apart from the Americas.
We could supersede Spain.
In Europe as the dominant power, as long as those pesky
englanders don't get there first.
But we'll never do it unless we get control of our young
aristocracy because right now they're just messing everything up.
What he said is Xenophon.
These guys from the Greek, these guys from these renaissance academies down
in Italy are making a good point.
If you are going to train a horse and learn to ride a horse three dimensionally
like this with these invisible aids and contain and manage all this power
gracefully, then you have to do one thing.
You have to be able to get control of your emotions.
Emotional regulation, we talked about oxytocin, emotional regulation,
being able to handle your shit.
If you can do this, you can probably kind of get by in life, but if you can't.
Maybe not.
And he said, you know, this is what our aristocracy needs.
They need to learn how to handle their emotions, their hotheads.
And the king went for it because of that book that you now still publish.
And that's why we of course ended up with all those French words
because they nationalized it.
That's why we have dressage massage pf Robert Traver, all these words.
So I think it's been really born out that to learn to ride a horse in this
complex way is, requires you to get control of your own complexities.
How do you feel that your publishing of this canon of people doing
this over the last few hundred years could kind of help us today?
'cause we are, I would say, I think it's fair to say we're
living in uncertain times again.
And a lot of the stability that we have taken for granted in the last 90 years.
80 years is beginning to fray and fragment.
What can your books, what can this kind of classical horsemanship teach us and
help us with now in this modern era?
Richard Williams: So the reason I'm, I'm going to answer that, but the
reason, so why was, why was horsemanship effective at getting those, those
French youths or the Italian youths, or the Europeans able, why and how,
what is the nature of horsemanship?
This is the question that, how is it that that
taught those people for emo to do emotional regulation?
Rupert Isaacson: Mm-hmm.
Richard Williams: So I have the an I know the answer to that because when we are
emotionally dysregulated in our minds, we are often worrying or fretting about the
things that might happen in the future.
Rupert Isaacson: Mm-hmm.
Richard Williams: We're also regretting or having guilt about the things
that did or didn't have in the past.
Rupert Isaacson: Mm-hmm.
Richard Williams: And what the horse does for you to succeed and let's just say even
survive on horseback today, or whether it's in 1562 or in 1658 or tomorrow, what.
Good horsemanship, classical horsemanship, and this is not really
maybe underlined in these classical texts.
It's probably assumed for you to succeed.
You.
The horse lives in the present, the horse lives in this moment and the next second.
But the horse isn't regretting, isn't living a life of regret
and the horse not really worrying about what might happen tomorrow.
The horse is just dealing with what is happening now, and if you want to be a
horse, a good horse man, or a good horse woman, or a good horse person, mm-hmm.
Then you need to become more like the horse.
You need to ride empathizing, understanding how the
horse perceives the world.
Rupert Isaacson: Ah, it's mindfulness.
It, yeah.
You have to be in, you have to be present with the horse
Richard Williams: and, and you have to, you can't, your mind cannot
be racing forward into the future.
Mm-hmm.
Rupert Isaacson: Mm-hmm.
Richard Williams: And it can't be living a life of, oh my God, when I
was 13 that appaloosa took off with me through the barbed wire fence.
And that's gonna happen, you know, in the next five minutes.
Well, you're not riding an appaloosa.
There's no barbed wire fence.
Fence.
You're riding a draft horse now.
So it's, things are quite different.
So this, this idea of worry.
A fretting about the past, worrying about the future does not serve you
because while your mind is preoccupied with those threats and worries and
the emotions that go along with them, these thoughts that are, you know,
your, just because your thought is happening doesn't mean it's real.
Rupert Isaacson: Absolutely.
Richard Williams: It does not mean it's real.
I have
Rupert Isaacson: noticed this about my thoughts.
They're often, they're often wrong.
You know
Richard Williams: what is actually real is what is actually occurring right now.
That is what we're doing, and that is actually where we belong.
So this is the, this is why horsemanship worked more than the lecture on physics
or more than the lecture on here's how you give a public address or and really
to be a good DA dancer, you know, with a partner, you need to be right in that
moment and planning maybe four, three seconds ahead of where you are now.
There's not,
Rupert Isaacson: and it is a dance.
It is a dance when you with a
Richard Williams: horse.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
So this is why and how it was a sorting process and effective if, mm.
Now, I don't think, you know, I'm looking for the place in the, I'm looking for
the place in these texts where they really te tell about this idea of like,
bringing yourself back to the now.
And there's two words that come that we have the benefit of that do this for us.
Mm-hmm.
And this is what I try to imbue all of my teaching with what I
try to do the as basically the first step and one is breathing.
Rupert Isaacson: Mm-hmm.
Richard Williams: That, and, and it, it's not really, I'm looking forward in
de lag but I don't necessarily see it.
That may have been like common sense or just assumed that people
are going to continue to breathe.
Mm-hmm.
But this breathing of bringing yourself.
Into the now of, of what is actually going on right now.
What are not, what you're worried about or not what he did five minutes ago
or what he didn't do five minutes ago.
And the other huge important thing is that you need to trust your feel.
You need to develop, feel in these parts of your body, your inner thighs,
your inner calves your backside.
You know, there's not really in these disparate parts of our body, like
we in in the way we go through life.
We do a lot of this feel by our hands and by our eyes, right?
And our sense of balance.
But it, it, it trains us to create neuro pathways to.
Other parts of our body, like basically the whole, the, the parts
of our body that may be ignored.
And I think this is the, this is actually the mechanism by which it calms this
is necessary to, to be a good rider.
This is what is kind of.
Therapeutic for me as a writer, I, I mean, I have, you know, this
person that wants a check, did I remember to fill out that form?
Mm-hmm.
Have I returned this library book?
Rupert Isaacson: Mm-hmm.
Richard Williams: Is my, has my computer updated?
Did I call the plumber?
Did I remember to go get the dishwasher, the replacement dishwasher?
All of this stuff.
And that I can't remember whether I've done or all this worrying, right.
When I go through the gate to our barn, I have a commitment
to myself and, and Francis.
And we have a commitment to each other that we're just going to focus on the
horses where we can't be talking about other stuff because it's actually unsafe.
It's completely unsafe.
Rupert Isaacson: Mm-hmm.
Richard Williams: To be distracted.
Yeah.
So if you're
Rupert Isaacson: operating dangerous machinery, you, you gotta be.
Richard Williams: Completely, completely and utterly focused.
So this, this skill of focusing on what is the, just the next right thing to
do, the next one right thing to do.
Rupert Isaacson: Mm.
Richard Williams: This is a skill that is, first of all, it's calming because
you're only having one thing to do.
And people who think that riding is multitasking, I really think are wrong.
I think that what you need to do is hold yourself in balance and then only.
Feel, what is going on right now and what is the next one thing, one thing that
I could do to improve the status quo.
And then look at, okay, I'm going to do this one thing that I guess, or
remember this is the right thing to do.
And now we have a new, two seconds later we have a new status
quo and we have a new moment.
And then that moment we can ask the same question, do I
need to make any changes here?
What do I feel?
So this idea of feeling and going from moment to moment and then
asking ourselves, this is a kind of physical meditation, and what
the horse is to me is the horse is this three dimensional mirror.
It's just reflecting back.
And it's reflecting back your inter your interface, your physical and spiritual
interface with this living being
Rupert Isaacson: mm-hmm.
Richard Williams: That is kind of adjudicating.
It's kind of judging you.
It might be ignoring you, it might be resisting you and it might be responding
to you and it might be responding to you in ways that are challenging.
And there's also responses where the horse is yielding and saying,
yes, I will, this, these experiences are what happens in life, right?
Mm-hmm.
When you go to the villagers and say, well, we really need to make this fence
around here so the sheep don't get out.
Right?
We really need to do that because the sheep are wandering
and then you have a villager.
Who doesn't wanna make the fence or is going to resist you.
Mm-hmm.
And, and so these skills of like, well, how do you deal with that?
How do you deal with that?
You have to keep regrouping and reinforcing.
You have to repeat.
But on the other hand, the other villager who makes the sheep fence,
you say, good job, fantastic job.
I have more responsibility for you.
I'm going to reward you for keeping the flock together.
So these skills that you learn on horsemanship, in horsemanship, they're
still, they're still valid today because they teach us, the horse
teaches us this feedback system.
If you're willing to pay attention, these same things are going on.
In life.
This is why therapeutic horseback riding is not a gimmick.
Yeah.
Because the horse is always giving you this honest feedback and it's
either, you know, following you, following your lead because you
proved yourself as a reliable mm-hmm.
And believable leader, or the horse is ignoring you mm-hmm.
Because you were not compelling or the horse is opposing you.
Mm-hmm.
Basically, or the fourth thing is you and the horse have harmonized
and seem to be doing the same thing.
These are basically the four conditions of horseback riding.
But these in a way you could argue, are the four conditions of life.
Rupert Isaacson: I agree.
It's interesting.
Two things came up for me while you were talking, of course.
One is that, you know, in the, in these previous centuries this type of
fine riding was seen as a way to train people who are gonna have to be leaders
to lead well, because it's not just about finding and maintaining balance.
Of course, what we know is that it's about what you do with the
loss of balance, the process that you were just describing with.
You know, one villager opposes you, one villager goes with you,
one villager is neutral, but this can shift moment to moment.
The horse's reactions to you shift moment to moment.
You have this great moment and then you have a terrible moment.
Then maybe you retrieve that and you have a great moment again.
And if this is in war or out hunting, this could be life or death for you.
If it's in the man in the arena, that's perhaps where you are refining the
skills so that when you go out into those other situations when balance is lost.
You can retrieve quicker.
And then I thought, okay, and that's sort of the old patriarchal
world which was largely run by particular types of psychopath.
And, you know, great, great genocides have been committed on the backs of horses as
we know by very skilled riders, but also very human humane riders have opposed
that process of genocide and inhumanity.
And it seems that the people who really dedicated themselves to
the write the kind of books that you now publish were generally in
the early centuries, men of great humanity and compassion and kindness.
And they were, the, the underlying message they're saying is, be kind
and compassionate to your horse.
Be kind and compassionate to your fellow man.
Then of course, you hit the 19, the early 19 hundreds and we have suffrage.
And suddenly we have a massive influx of women into the upper echelons of riding
who prove that it's, it's not a male dominated thing at all, and it seems to
serve as a bit of a springboard for the feminist movement in that an awful lot
of those economically powerful women who got behind the suffrage movement in
the early 20th century were horse women and were horsewomen who tried to ride
and deal with their horses in this way.
And now we are at this next juncture where we are rethinking our, our relationship.
With horses at all.
And we are realizing that, back to that oxytocin thing we were talking
about earlier, and this emotional intelligence thing that we've been
talking about subsequently, that the same system that was perhaps created
for us to sit on a horse to harm our fellow man in the most efficient way
possible by being in three dimensions of movement, could, like martial arts,
could also be used to heal our fellow man.
And we've seen, I think in recent years, a growing dysfunction with
sport riding, particularly sport dressage, where it seems to be
harming horses and people again.
And now I feel that the bubble is beginning to burst and that
the, what we've learned through therapeutic riding, as you just
said, is now perhaps gonna spill out into taking us into a new form of.
What the next form of, if you like, classical riding is, we've talked about
the effect of the good effect of this type of horsemanship, and this is the
books that you publish on the human.
What about on the horse?
What does this classical thing do for the animal that is giving
itself to us so generously and so
Richard Williams: well?
Right, so the horse's probably the, I, I read this recently, the horse's, the
biggest single other living entity that has contributed to the civilization
of man and, and to our progress because, and, and this went on for
centuries, they allowed us to be mobile.
Rupert Isaacson: Mm-hmm.
Richard Williams: They allowed us to save our backs.
They allowed us to move around.
They allowed us to lead, they allowed us to go borrow their legs and go really fast
and, and get around and and survey lands and all, all the things that horses do.
So, because it wasn't dogs
Rupert Isaacson: mm-hmm.
Richard Williams: And it wasn't oxen and it wasn't giraffes, and you
can't have elephants go everywhere.
Rupert Isaacson: Mm-hmm.
As you may know, if you've been following my work, we are also horsey folk here.
And we have been training horses for many, many years in the manner of
the old classical dressage masters.
This is something which is often very confusing for people.
We shine a light on that murky, difficult stuff and make it crystal clear.
If you'd like to learn to train your horse in the manner of the old masters and
really have fun and joy for you and your equine, go to our website, heliosharmony.
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to the Piaf, where the horse is dancing on the spot in hand on the ground.
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Richard Williams: So, so the, the horse more than any other
living creature has had that.
So we have a lot of experience over, you know, millennia working with horses
as you know, you know, the riders from the steps and, and earlier people,
you know, the North American, native Amer North Americans were on the
planes and had already, you know, been riding horses around hurting buffalo
and hunting, et cetera, et cetera.
So there, in, in disconnected cultures
Rupert Isaacson: mm-hmm.
Richard Williams: Geographically disconnected, humans were
coming to the same conclusion.
Mm-hmm.
So, and the bonds that people had with horses were extremely rewarding and
people were very beholden to the horse.
So I think for these reasons that we're, we're
we know have historically benefited us, it's not necessary.
It's not necessary for the same reasons.
Rupert Isaacson: Mm-hmm.
Richard Williams: That it was in the past because now we
have, you know, Teslas, right?
So we have a,
Rupert Isaacson: mm-hmm.
We
Richard Williams: have a Tesla or we have a Volkswagen Jetta or we have a moped.
So we're not necessarily using them for transportation, but the horse
is not obsolete because it still has these character building qualities.
And we know from experience that delving into waywardness, let's just
call it waywardness, that has been in the human condition as long as we
have had humans waywardness of people losing the path, losing the way through.
Debauchery or indulgences?
This has always been, this is, you know, we hear about the opium dens
and we hear about, you know, crime.
These are people who are, are not availed of the benefits of horsemanship.
So horsemanship does have this ability to heal.
If you're an executive and you have a high stress job, then going to
the barn and spending time with your horse is super rewarding.
It can be su and very, very therapeutic.
And therapeutic in an interactive way.
That's not the same as going to see a therapist going to see
in talking about your problems.
But actually it is a.
Physical Asana.
It's a physical meditation.
It's a, it's a experience.
You know, you're moving through when you're, when you are going to see your
therapist and you sit in, you lay on the sofa, you sit in the chair, that's
talk therapy, which is legitimate.
It's, but the, the physical, the physical meditation, and it's
really, it's, it's all of the things.
It's your action, it's your motion, it's your touch.
It can be also your speech.
The validity of that.
That is really what needs to be put forward, because I think, okay, the
window might be why ther, why is therapeutic riding like a thing?
Because maybe it was discovered and.
People realized, okay, well all this talk therapy is not really helping these
people, but we do this physical asana.
We do this kind of physical kind of meditation and experience,
and then like with your son and, and others, it awakens something.
Well, that is just as therapeutic.
Rupert Isaacson: Mm-hmm.
Richard Williams: For an, for a, an everyday person.
But why did you seek this?
Well, you didn't necessarily even seek it.
You stumbled upon it, right?
You had the, you were doubling your son in front of you and you're like, wait,
I'm noticing he's actually talking now.
So you, you, you, I, I don't know exactly what your experience is, but
so you were really, really looking.
For a solution.
So you were open to like anything, you know.
What about a sailing trip?
What about riding horses?
It could have been, it could have what?
A camping trip.
Rupert Isaacson: Just 'cause I like riding horses doesn't mean I was
in any way attached to this thing happening on the back of a horse.
Absolutely.
Richard Williams: Right, right.
So, but one could, not to put words in your mouth, but you might have
been somewhat desperate, right?
Mm-hmm.
Like you're Or I more than somewhat desperate.
Rupert Isaacson: Yeah.
Richard Williams: You're, you're at your wits end and I'm like,
I will actually try anything.
Rupert Isaacson: Yeah.
Richard Williams: So, so it is a healing it ha Horses have a healing.
Quality to them.
I mean, I have people that come to my barn and they're not real.
They've had, you know, touch and go experiences with horses and they, they
come and they just say, can I just come and groom your horses for you?
And they're like, they're, I watch, I, I le I give them the safety, you
know, don't go behind the horse.
This is how we tie them.
We close the stall door, you know, this is how you pick up their feet.
And then I basically leave them on their own.
This is how you brush, you brush, you know, directionally with the,
the, the direction of the hair.
And I look on them and I don't hover and I just watch the
effect that this has on people.
And it's.
Completely regenerative.
Not even riding.
Not even riding, just being around the horse.
Rupert Isaacson: Absolutely.
Richard Williams: So through observation, I just know Yeah, that's really valuable.
And they are a species on this planet, and we have, when we ignored or we
exploited other species they became extinct when we didn't take care of them.
So I, there's a huge value.
It's not just like, yeah, it's nice to have some horses running around.
I mean, humans will always, you know, want to say the human nature is always
gonna say, well, what's in it for me?
What's in it for the human?
How is this gonna make our life better?
And so I think that's really what is incumbent upon moving
from this point forward.
What is the future of horses?
And I think to the work that you're doing with therapeutic riding, but it really,
we could just expand that and just say, you know, are you tired of scrolling on
Facebook and looking at your screen time being seven, eight hours a day times 365
days a year, times the rest of your life?
Is that really bringing you meaning in your life?
Is it really helping you or is it making you more anxious or is it making you less?
Physically active.
Hmm.
And that in itself is an addiction.
I mean, we also run, you have other enterprises that you run.
One of the things that, that we run is an addiction practice.
And both Francis and I are involved in that.
And I would really like to start exploring that, the use of horses with addicts.
Rupert Isaacson: Yeah.
Richard Williams: You know,
Rupert Isaacson: that's, that's a, that's a, a no brainer.
And I think that is perhaps the next place you and I should go together.
Richard Williams: Yeah.
Rupert Isaacson: Yeah.
'cause you know, with our, with our programs ta, the TA program in
particular, which is classical horse training from the ground as its
own therapy, you know, and back to.
That, that program arrived out of necessity for us.
Also out of desperation because once we were working in our therapeutic riding
program, with so many people starting to come in and, and having to produce horses
that could go collectively and had enough wellbeing had, were overflowing with
wellbeing, physical and mental themselves.
That's of course what the classical approach gives you because it gives
you a horse that's well muscled over the back, particularly where
you're gonna sit that is supple.
Basically a horse that's effectively going through a constant yoga
process for the body and the mind.
That is really what classical horsemanship is.
We ran out of time to.
'cause it's time consuming to do this for horses.
And we began to panic a bit.
Okay, what's gonna happen?
We can't let our horses go downhill if they haven't got wellbeing.
How can they give wellbeing?
And then we're like, duh.
Our clients should be the horse trainers.
They are perfectly capable of doing this.
And then it became this four way win, win, win win thing because the
horse was getting what it needed.
We were getting what we needed, which was lack of stress.
The clients, the adult clients that were coming in were getting empowerment
through learning how to rehab and maintain these donated horses.
And of course the child that was going to then benefit from that same horse down
the road was also getting that benefit.
And, but it was the classical system that allowed it to happen.
And without your books, we wouldn't have been able to do it because
yes, we went and we studied with a.
Real classical masters, like the great new Luis Lenza in Portugal, who's a product
of the great Nuno Olivea who you publish.
But you can't be 24 7 with these people.
And you have to, as Nuno Olivea has himself said, don't let
the classical writing books on your bookshelf gather dust.
You know?
Mm-hmm.
Constantly go to them and learn and then try to apply it in practice.
Without you producing this cannon, it wouldn't happen.
So what I wanna ask is, we come towards the close, 'cause we're at the two and
a half hour mark, and we can pick this conversation up again in a later podcast.
And I think we should is if you were gonna get going, you're a newbie to
this and you want to explore like the four or five books through the centuries
that are gonna give you the best.
Trajectory, the best overview for the human point of view
and the horse point of view.
What are those four or five books that you could say out of this entire cannon,
these are the guys you should start with.
Richard Williams: Well, I would ask you the same thing.
Rupert Isaacson: Ooh.
Does that mean I get to have a go?
Richard Williams: Yeah, you get to have a go.
I mean, all right.
I'm interested in, you know, I always think it's more fun to answer a
question with a question, you know?
Rupert Isaacson: Okay.
Richard Williams: It's a
Rupert Isaacson: way, well, okay.
All right.
I'll, I'll, I'll have a crack.
I'll have my crack at it and see, see where we intersect.
We'll make it like a Venn diagram.
I reckon you have to start with Xenophon because it's the, it's the
genesis and then what one realizes with Xenophon is, oh, he's actually writing
almost two and a half thousand years after this thing has been invented.
Out there somewhere on the Western Russian Ukrainian step and has
gone down through Mesopotamia.
He's just happens to be the first European who writes about it, but it is way older.
And he tells us this, he tells us, I got this from the Persians, and the
Persians got this from other people.
And that puts it in perspective.
And I think that's really useful in our post-colonial society as well to say it's
not a white person thing became adopted by white people, but it didn't start there.
That's an, that's an interesting common humanity pulling together thing.
Okay.
So I think you've gotta start with Xenophon and his basic principles.
Then I think for me the next one is a big jump.
And it's, thomas's book, which you talked about, about the early Italian masters who
were coming out of the Iberian tradition.
And there was a historical reason why the Spanish Portuguese
thing jumped across into Italy.
I won't bore the readers with it.
Now.
You can we'll talk about it on another podcast and how these academies began
that reflected the old Greek academies.
And this to some degree changed the political landscape of Europe.
And then I think for me, the next one is lager writing in Francois Hoon lager
writing in the early 18th century in.
France because he is the one that I find is the clearest to follow.
You can, if you have a basic understanding of the classical principles, you can,
you can use him like a textbook in your arena today and it's gonna work.
He's, he's thought it all through and he presents it in non esoteric
language and really does give you a, an overview to work from, which also
shows you how it benefits your horse.
After that, I think it's important to do a dual reading of both the
German dude Steinbeck and whatever you can read around the French dude
Boer, because they had to cope with different kinds of horses coming in.
A change in horsemanship and that created the schism that we have today between
these two types of dressage, which have been forever at war with each other.
It's good to understand why these people did what they did, but I think
Boucher himself is hard to read.
So I would favor that book Resonate on Boer, where he explains Boer and
then Steinberg himself in gymnasium de the, the, the, the gymnasium,
the training of the horse where he's pointing us towards how you gotta
kind of go with warm bloods a bit.
And then I feel that after that one has to look at Nuno Oliver Oliveira.
But the problem with Nuno Oliveira, because he brings all these traditions
together, is that his own stuff is really tricky to operate from.
It's esoteric.
It's, it's not brilliantly clear, even though he was clearly a genius.
So I, from my mind, have really benefited from reading the books that
you published from his students where they published their letters to and from
Nuno, where he was advising them step by step on the training of their horses.
People like, you know, Michelle or Kay and those people.
And you've got three or four books in these short volumes, which are
these correspondences with Nuno.
And I've learned a ton from those, a ton.
Like I'd say I use the exercises.
I, I, I don't think a day goes by where I don't use those exercises and it not a
day goes by where I don't use lag as well.
So for me.
That would be my sort of go-to canon.
And I've been a bit vague on those last books 'cause it's
about four or five of them.
You would have the titles.
But I know one was from Michelle Enrique and, but there were a couple of others
from his English speaking students.
But I have found Nuno answers to their questions about how to train their
horses up through the levels to be really, really, really useful to me.
Mm-hmm.
What do you think, what are your, what's, what's, what are your four or five?
Richard Williams: So those titles that you, that you were mentioning were
30 years with the Nuno Oliveira, with Master Nuno Oliveira by Mic, Michelle
Akay, the Wisdom of Master Nuna Oliveira by Antoine Deko, the Legacy of Master
Nuna Oliveira by Stephanie Millham.
And the fourth one is The Truth in the Teaching of Master Nuna
Oliveira by Eleanor Russell.
And
Rupert Isaacson: oh, and I want to add one more.
Richard Williams: Yeah.
Rupert Isaacson: I want to add d Dio Braganza.
Richard Williams: Yeah.
Rupert Isaacson: Right.
And he's t he's writing 20th and 21st century.
He's coming out of that whole tradition.
He's pulling it all together.
Gimme the name of his book.
Richard Williams: Dressage in the French Tradition.
Rupert Isaacson: Yeah.
That book I feel, I I'm reading it currently actually
really synthesizes the lot.
Richard Williams: Yeah.
Rupert Isaacson: In a way that is clear.
Richard Williams: Well, what's great.
Well, so, so well we have a lot of the same books and I don't disagree with any
of the books that you, that you said.
Currently we don't.
Have, we don't have our version of Xen, but it's a little bit ironic
since that's the name of our press.
So that's probably on my list to do.
My, my wife is Greek, so, and she speaks Greek, so that's kind of a no-brainer
that we should probably do our version of annotated sapin from the Greek.
Rupert Isaacson: Mm-hmm.
Richard Williams: So we'll probably do that, you know, in our spare time.
So I don't disagree with any of these.
And this is kind of a historical list.
Your list is more than five,
but you're allowed to have a list of more than five.
I would say, if I have to limit it to five I think there's value in
bringing people through the centuries.
Rupert Isaacson: Hmm.
Richard Williams: And, and not just saying, okay, you gotta
only read 18th century stuff.
I don't think that's good.
So the, what you're doing is you're pushing people from, you know, 2000 plus
years ago, all the way up to, you know, something written in the 20th century.
I would say for me, the, the book that I kind of force everyone to
buy is I and is to get is de laier.
Yeah.
Rupert Isaacson: Yeah.
Richard Williams: I, I just, I
Rupert Isaacson: called the vocabulary.
Richard Williams: Yeah.
I just kind of, you need to have this, 'cause I'm gonna say on, you know,
chapter 11, go read it, memorize it.
It's gonna be your next lesson in chapter 12.
Mm-hmm.
And chapter 20, you know, and.
And I often say to people, you do not have to read the whole book.
Just read those chapters first and then go back and read.
So I'm very directed in that because I want them to know what a shoulder end is.
Mm-hmm.
I want to know what a croup to the wall or VE is, and I need them to know about
how to ride the horse in open country.
Rupert Isaacson: Mm-hmm.
Richard Williams: So, which is what that chapter 20 is about.
Maybe we should do a, a little short, you know, another long-winded
podcast on just chapter 20.
Okay.
I would say I also agree the value of Dom Diago de Braganza, that mine are
not in a particular order because.
He, he, he brings it all together.
He also says, well, what are the limitations of like, how
collected can you get a horse?
Mm-hmm.
Or how stretched can you get a horse Is what, what happens when you take
stretching to the ultimate degree?
Mm-hmm.
And is that a good thing?
And what happens when you collect a horse to the ultimate degree?
Is that a good thing?
And, and have we gone too far or what are the limitations when we have impulsion
taken to the ultimate degree and this, and then he historically, he also, in
not a very large book, he gives you this survey of like, this is how we
got from long stirs to short stirs.
And this is why.
And in my riding, when I am training horses and teach, well, especially
when I'm training horses, I tend to.
With certain horses experiment by pushing the envelope slightly.
Like what happens if we really get a whole bunch of impulsion or what
happens if, let's push the edge and see what the horse will show us.
And then often I say, okay, well now I'm a little bit out of balance or
I'm out of rhythm and now I know the edge that I can, that I can go to.
Right.
That I can,
Rupert Isaacson: I know.
Yeah.
I know the borders.
I know.
Richard Williams: And I've actually gone a slightly too far and now
I'm going to come back from that.
So that, that aspect of that book as well as the historical benefit of that.
I think that the book that was thumped for me when I was growing up was PO's
complete training of horse Rider.
Rupert Isaacson: Mm-hmm.
Richard Williams: And that is, it's kind of a textbook.
He was the director of the Spanish Writing School for 26 years.
It's a 20th century thing.
It's slightly Germanic.
But it has a lot of good definitions in it.
Like he defines what a trod is.
He defines, you know, what a shoulder in it's, it's, it's more
a manual on like how to Yeah.
So, and not with a ton of feeling.
Okay.
So, so I think that's a really good book.
For people who are really visual learners, believe it or not, I
I actually recommend Sally Swift
Rupert Isaacson: Okay.
Richard Williams: Centered writing because.
It appeals to people who are kind of touchy feely and want to create visual
images so people learn in different ways.
It might not be the book for me, per se mm-hmm.
But it does, it creates pictures for people.
And for that reason alone, she's doing this graphic imagery.
And that's often the key, that's the key that opens the door to
understanding for some people.
Rupert Isaacson: Mm-hmm.
Richard Williams: And then, and then I think I actually like,
like for to understand Boche.
And so the complete training of horse and rider would be the
understanding of the German system.
But for example, the carpentry does a good job of, in an
unbiased way of analyzing Boer.
So if you want to know about Boer, his book called Boer in his school.
Mm-hmm.
He writes a, a big essay about like who the heck was Boer and,
and who were his detractors.
Rupert Isaacson: Mm-hmm.
Richard Williams: And even talks about, he talks about Louis Seger, who is like,
you know, vehemently against Boer, but also he talks about, I think there's
an appendix in there about Louis Rule who was one of Boucher's students.
And, and so I, that's a very, very, I don't disagree with any of your lists.
We probably have like 10 books here.
So I think I.
Rupert Isaacson: Hmm.
Richard Williams: Than anything around these.
So for like, for Dier to, to read Al or to read Eisenberg, it's very interesting
to see the similarities at ex, you know, within a six year time period mm-hmm.
About what is written around.
So, of course, Stein Brecht is important, but for somebody who's a visual learner,
they're not going to fi, Stein Brecht didn't make any diagrams in there.
Rupert Isaacson: Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm.
Richard Williams: So it is, so there are books that kind of explain Stein
Brecht, for example, Garret Mann's, you know, bend and Positioning.
That book kind of explains a section.
So, there are a lot of these treatises that explain other books
and that they can be of a big help.
It doesn't really make a lot of sense to well, for example.
Boer, you can actually skip reading Boer because he wasn't a great writer.
Rupert Isaacson: Mm-hmm.
Richard Williams: And he's very, very confusing.
So reading the treatises that explain Boer is probably more valuable than trying to
read Boer and getting lost in the weeds.
Steinbeck you can learn, but you need to read, you know, you can read that, you
know, one or two or three pages a day.
Yeah.
So you, you've got about a hundred days, you know, of that, of that rate.
Maybe five pages a day, so maybe it's less.
So I think those books, and there's always new books we are doing we talked about
earlier, you know, a while back we talked about how people lived, ate, breathed
horses there around horses all day.
We have a we have a book coming out this month called, the Enlightened, enlightened
horsemanship, 18th century the Enlightened Horsemanship of 18th Century Britain.
Mm-hmm.
So it talked, and they're talking about the long 18th century, so they're
already talking about like late 16th, hundreds into the early 18 hundreds.
So they're kind of doing a 150 year span.
But Allison Moeller does a really good job of showing us
how horses were for carriages.
They were for racing, they were for farming, and then they were also for the
menage and how horses were, had completely saturated into life on the British Isles.
There, there's no living without them and mm-hmm.
And so that's a, these hi historical context, books like Thomasines.
And this I think is really important to, to know what our history was because
there's, for example, she does a whole chapter on stable design and, and barns.
And she Right.
The
Rupert Isaacson: loose box comes out of the 18th century.
Richard Williams: Absolutely.
Right.
But she has these like fascinat, the, our our turnout, you know,
where you have a turnout shelter.
All of our turnout shelters right now
Rupert Isaacson: mm-hmm.
Richard Williams: Are rectangular or square.
Rupert Isaacson: Mm.
Richard Williams: They have turnout shelters that are round,
they're like a cylinder and they're dotted all over England.
Well, she found these things and went basically on an archeological, you
know, expedition across Britain and she's done incredible research on it.
It's like, well, why don't we make round turnout?
Um mm-hmm.
Shelters for horses.
It would be better for the weather.
They wouldn't get cast as easily.
No one
Rupert Isaacson: can corner anyone.
Yeah.
It's
Richard Williams: true.
Exactly.
So, you know, there's an endless list.
A long
Rupert Isaacson: okay,
Richard Williams: longwinded answer.
Rupert Isaacson: But what I think it comes down to for people who
are, who are listening or watching is go check out Xenophon Press.
Go through the centuries.
Don't worry that Xenophon Press don't actually publish Xenophon yet.
'cause they will.
And anyway, you can find Xenophon himself.
But those others we talked about, Tamini.
We'll, and we'll list all these afterwards.
You know, Stein Breen Boer, the people that analyze Stein Breen, Boer
Nuno, and the people that analyze Nuno, and then dio de braganza.
If you're into horses and you are into what horses can bring out of the human
soul, as well as how this system of kind of yoga can really benefit a horse and
how the two can come together and create a sum that's greater than the parts.
It's, it's, it's what you do, my friend.
It's s on press.
So listen, thank you so much for coming on and doing this.
I think we'll do it again.
And for those who really want to kind of nerd out, nerd out, nerd out Richard
and I nerd out massively on YouTube about aspects of classical writing.
And you might wanna check out some of our videos there.
We've got more coming up.
And we also both are gonna start teaching together because I'm a bit of an in
hand on the ground specialist, and Mr.
Williams is a bit of a in the saddle specialist, and we can kind of do
our little and large show together.
And we are gonna be doing that actually to raise money for two nonprofits.
The Horse Boy Foundation, which of course, deals with autism and
other neuropsychiatric conditions of and healing with horses.
And Xenophon will have its own educational foundation as well too, so that we
can keep this library of Alexandra and Alexandria alive and not have it burned
down like the other classical libraries.
So watch this space basically.
If they want to contact you, give us, give us the links, give us the plugs, Richard.
Richard Williams: It's very simple.
It's zin press@atzinpress.com
and I'm happy to, I answer all emails.
It's zin press@gmail.com
and happy to answer any questions we do.
We also have views, books, we outer print books.
I have a book search service, so if you're looking for a book, I can try to
find it or I may, we may have copies.
Rupert Isaacson: Perfect.
So it's also if you wanna get into the antiquary inside too.
Richard Williams: Yeah, we and, and we have williams dressage.com,
which is our, our riding site.
Rupert Isaacson: Yeah.
And I do suggest rich, again, those of you who are looking to experience
this knowledge made practical.
Richard has come and hung out here with me and my horses.
And I've seen him ride.
I've seen him train.
It's very, very good.
Go check him out.
And his wife Francis.
If you're looking in the USA for somebody cool to set you on the right track
they'll, they'll help you with that.
Richard Williams: And you're coming to us right in June,
Rupert Isaacson: yeah's, right?
I am.
So we need to talk about that.
Yeah.
Now of course these things are evergreen, so someone could be,
we're in early January, 2026 here, but you know, hopefully someone's
watching this 10 years from now.
If they are, then we may be in your hood sooner.
Just looking a little bit grayer.
So, yeah, we'll be, we'll be there and working together,
so watch out for us lads.
Alright.
Richard Williams: Thank you
Rupert Isaacson: sir.
My pleasure.
Thank you so much for coming on.
Richard Williams: Yeah.
Rupert Isaacson: Until the next one.
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