Rupert Isaacson: Thanks for joining us.
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So now let's jump in.
Welcome back to the show.
I've got Karen Rolf here.
A lot of you already know who she is.
Her work precedes her and her program.
Dressage naturally has been one of the, I'd say lynchpin approaches to trying to
bring something a bit more humane back to dressage, which unfortunately, over
the last few decades seems to have become dressage in, for horses and humans a bit.
But more than that, she, she's got a lot more to her and her life and her
work and her philosophy is something which I've been, you know, wanting
a chance to explore for a while.
So I'm, I'm quite excited that she's one of the people who.
Has really trot a path of sort of horses and self-actualization and bringing
together certain aspects of nature and the mind through the equine field.
So Karen, thank you for coming on.
Can you tell us, you know, a bit about your work, who you are and, and sort of
how you got here, or why did you get here?
Karen Rohlf: That's a lot.
Well, first of all, Rupert, thank you so much for asking
me to join you on this podcast.
It's it's fun to, to be able to sit and, and speak with you and hang
out with you for a little while.
So I really appreciate being here.
But let's see where to start.
I mean, I, I started, and this is really important to mention because it's,
it's pervasive through, through me.
It's just a little kid.
In love with horses.
You know, I was just one of those horse, crazy horse girls.
I want a horse.
And lucky enough that my mom had a horse for a little while when I
was seven and was all very low key.
This was like property at the end of our street.
She did some fox hunting for a little while.
I was not a, a showgirl, you know, it was not like Where
Rupert Isaacson: was this, where did you grow up?
Karen Rohlf: This was on Long Island.
Rupert Isaacson: Okay.
Karen Rohlf: Yeah.
Smithtown Hunt the Smith.
Yeah.
Smithtown Hunt.
Rupert Isaacson: Yeah.
Karen Rohlf: Near where Harry Dele was.
His place was near us.
And yeah, in the historic town of Au New York, part of the Revolutionary War.
So there's some history.
But yeah, I was not into showing.
It wasn't, that was never my goal.
I just like loved horses and wanna hang out with horses and
got a horse when I was a kid.
And did pony club and all that, and mostly spent a lot of time alone with my
horse in the bushes doing stupid things.
But luckily I survived.
So, the, the dressage training came through Pony Club.
You know, we had to do dressage in order to do the fun stuff of jumping and, but
my the, the first horse I had took off with me once during a a junior hunt, and
we passed all the hunt's people and the red coats, and we galloped right through
the hounds, which is really not okay.
Yes.
Rupert Isaacson: It's like taking your clothes off in St.
Peter's.
Karen Rohlf: Yeah.
Oh my God.
Yeah.
So the Huntsman galloped after me, grabbed my horse, led me up to my mom and said,
take this kid for dressage lessons so she can learn how to control her horse.
Rupert Isaacson: Well that was quite enlightened when I was
growing up hunting in England.
They probably would've just taken us to before a firing squad for that.
So yeah, things have improved a bit.
Karen Rohlf: Yeah, so, so my mom, I was like, okay, my mom did what she was told.
And when I outgrew that horse and then got another horse I ended up going, I
was taking lessons at the barn where of Anne Grins who was on Long Island and
she's now, you know, international level judge and well known in the dressage
world, really a pioneer dressage in the USA and she took me under her wing
and that second horse off the track thoroughbred with an old bow tendon doing,
you know, local, local hunter classes.
Ended up learning everything and we represented the Young
Riders team four years.
And, you know, through him I became a professional.
I didn't mean to become a professional, I was gonna do something else.
But you know, when you're a horse crazy girl and people pay you to
ride their horses, you know, why get a real job when you can do that?
And yeah.
And so that's how I ended up being a dressage professional.
Rupert Isaacson: But why dressage?
I mean, it sounded like if your first love was to go off into the
bush and do silly things with your horse and go hunting and jump and
do all the fun stuff as you put it.
Okay.
So the dressage had to be a way to get control of your horse.
Why did it, why'd you get bitten by the bug?
Karen Rohlf: Yeah, it was at, at one point my horse was pre St.
George and getting ready to event preliminary level and I realized I'm
kind of a chicken and we'd go, you know, galloping up to these jumps.
And in my mind I was telling my horse, if you wanna jump this, I'll stay on.
But if you don't, that's okay with me.
And I thought, I'm gonna die.
'cause like you, that's not a way to, to be an event writer.
Rupert Isaacson: No.
Karen Rohlf: So, and I really, so I was a little bit of a chicken
and I really was getting into the the complexity of the dressage.
I thought it was like a amazing, I mean, I remember riding in my diary like, horses
can go sideways, you know, and drawing a little diagram on my first leg yield.
I'm like, I had no idea.
And what was interesting being at Noll Farm, like I actually, I had
my horse in the bushes behind my house, and then I would trailer
maybe once a week to Noll farm.
And, but I would go in the afternoons after school when all the fancy
horses were done being schooled.
So I never, I never got, like, I was never comparing.
I would just go do what I was told.
We'd learn our stuff and I'd go home and practice and I didn't
know that that shouldn't work.
It shouldn't work.
That someone, a kid who doesn't know dressage on a horse
that doesn't, no dressage.
Should be alone training in the bushes.
But we just kept going.
And I, because I didn't go there and compare myself to all the fancy horses
that Anne had, 'cause I never saw them, we just kept going of the levels and
uh, and yeah, then I was just hooked.
I, I love the precision.
I think it's amazing that you can teach a horse to do dressage movements because
it's like teaching an alien to play piano.
I mean, you know, jumps, horses get it, I gotta get over the jump.
Cows, horses get that.
So I thought it was really amazing that I could teach a horse to
prance and skip and go sideways.
And just because we asked them to.
When it works.
It's amazing.
Rupert Isaacson: She was clearly a very good teacher, Anne, right?
Karen Rohlf: Yes.
She is a really good trainer, really good teacher, really supportive of youth in
dressage and yeah, she taught me to ride.
She taught me to train.
She taught me to teach and she gave me lots of opportunities to like
ride her horses when she went away or teach her students when she went away.
And I was so scared, but like, she, she really supported me
and, and she's, you know, nice.
She's very petite.
She's fiery and strong, but very petite.
How unusual
Rupert Isaacson: in the
Karen Rohlf: horse world.
Yeah.
Had to be clever.
Yeah.
She had to be clever.
She's not a brute force rider.
Yeah.
You know, she, she had to be light,
Rupert Isaacson: right?
But as you know, I mean, so precision can very quickly
turn into that tyrannical word.
That pervades the dressage world and has done for generations.
I was just reading yesterday max, you know, one of the August dead
dudes, you know, of history, who was the teacher of Ziga, who was the
teacher of Steinberg to eth on the right hand of God of German dressage.
And
you know, he talks endlessly about Correct, correct, correct, correct.
Instead, a German accent must be correct.
German accent and there's a tyranny to that word.
And, and innate stress to that word.
Mm-hmm.
And the difficulty as you know and I know, is that we have
inherited the dressage tradition.
In fact, the entire tournament riding tradition of any discipline.
Outside of Western from the military and with military comes being an asshole
because you've actually supposed to be an asshole because you're supposed
to teach the humans and the horses how to cope with stress under fire.
So they idea is you stress them.
I was at military school, that's what they did to us.
So what surprises me is that given how incredibly toxic the dressage world is,
and I know this 'cause I'm in it because I'm a trainer why was it, do you think
that in that moneyed suburb of New York, somehow you and Anne dodged that bullet?
Why did that not end up?
Because, you know, when you're an impressionable teenager, the, and
then, you know, and then, okay, you didn't start with the shows, but
pretty soon you were at the shows.
Karen Rohlf: Mm-hmm.
Rupert Isaacson: And you were rubbing shoulders with that culture,
and to some degree, that culture must have rubbed off on you a bit.
Karen Rohlf: Mm-hmm.
Rupert Isaacson: I mean, one bit, you know, only human.
How did you, how did you and she manage to navigate, to
not be sort of subsumed by it?
Karen Rohlf: Yeah, I mean, I think, I think she was much more in that culture,
but on the nice end of the scale.
Right.
So there was enough things just in the way, I mean, there's a
sliding scale of this, right?
Yeah.
So, but the still horses lived in stalls until they came out to work.
And they shouldn't use too much energy when they're turned out
'cause we need that for the dressage.
So like, there's still that, but that's very traditional, you know?
Mm-hmm.
Well, it's military, that's the word.
But, you know, the language that she used was all educational.
It wasn't force and make, and that's stupid thing, but
it was still sy systematic.
I, I think my personality is so, I'm so, I don't know, born with
this like fierce independence.
Like I, I don't join stuff.
So somehow I was enough in love with the horse that I, I didn't buy into anything
that was forced, that I saw going on.
So I think Anne was on the nicer side of the sort of
normal dressage things for sure.
But even some of the just lifestyle stuff within dressage, I, you know, I
was part of it that I had horses there.
I trained training horses, but I, I never liked it.
Like, I still wanted my horses to be turned out and I wanted
to go do fun things with them.
And as far as the, like, the precision for it was really clear that there
is riding and training and there's competing and those are separate and
there's a certain additional skill that you need when you compete, which
is the art of making things look like they're working even when they're not.
Right.
So, in the moment of the test, you have to kinda keep it together
and put a little more leg on and hold them a little bit there and
kind of, you know, use that skill.
It's a skill and it's not a bad skill, but it needs to be used consciously.
So the whole idea of.
You know, classical versus competitive in, you know, and I
don't even, who knows what classical means, so maybe I won't use that.
But there's training, which is you ride today, so tomorrow's better.
Rupert Isaacson: Mm.
Karen Rohlf: Right?
You ride today, so tomorrow's better.
And in competition you ride.
So right now looks as good as possible and is good as possible, but if
it's not good, make it look good.
And I think a lot of times people look at dressage and they think
competitive dressage, and then they're learning the skill of make it look
like it's happening, even if it's not.
And then that's what's taught to train.
But you,
Rupert Isaacson: yeah,
Karen Rohlf: if you use that for training, you're, you're missing the chance to take
something apart, deconstruct, educate, so that then tomorrow it comes out
Rupert Isaacson: and there's a key, there's, I, I think
you hit it on the nail there.
The,
going into an arena, you know, arenas are where.
One focuses attention, right?
And things like gladiatorial combat happen, you know, with blood upon
the sand or people being eaten by lions or doing a dressage test.
So there is an innate pressure and stress simply to the
environment of the arena itself.
And the, the footing of the arena in sand was also partly to drain blood.
Originally, not just it's, it's also, it's still there for the bull ring.
You know, I live in southern Spain and you know, that's what an arena is.
It's, it's, it's there to give grip and to drain blood.
So it, if one understands that, one always knows that when one enters an arena, even
in a training context, there's going to be an in an innate sort of a pressure, which
comes simply from the spirit of the place.
The Romans had a great.
A great way of understanding this.
I dunno, you're probably aware of this, that the Golish Celtic goddess, a French
Celtic goddess Aona, who sometimes represented as a horse and sometimes
represented as a female goddess with a horse and of fertility in Plenty as
well, was one of the only goddesses ever to be adopted by the Roman Army.
The Roman Army often adopted gods from other cultures because they'd
adopt anything from other cultures that they thought was so, the
culture of Myth Rat, for example, was a military cult, but a poona.
She's about peace.
She's not about war yet.
The Roman cavalry adopted her and they, you see shrines to her in
Roman barracks that have been dug up, you know, all over Europe.
There's often a dedication that you see where, which was an inscription
above the horse training area, which was a, a sort of a dedication to
opponent herself and the spirit of.
Spirits of the training ground.
So there was an understanding that the training ground had
its own spirits, had its own
Karen Rohlf: mm-hmm.
Rupert Isaacson: Ghost if you like.
And I think we feel that today, but we maybe don't express it like that.
And that force can feel benevolent or malevolent depending upon a
whole range of external factors.
Right.
And internal factors.
W when you were going into the arena to compete, as you say, you're this girl
who actually likes to do turn your horse out and likes to do naturalistic things
with your horse and you're accepting.
Okay, now I'm going into the gladiator phase.
Talk, talk to us about your competitive career and how you as that type
of personality coat, are you in fact, deep down, very competitive
and you just hide it quite well?
Are you fiercely competitive?
Karen Rohlf: It, there's, there's nothing like the feeling of having a good ride
and being rewarded and acknowledged and getting a, a, a pretty thing and
standing up there and everybody pointing at you going, look what you did.
Right?
So, so I mean, that feels good, but the, one of the reasons I stopped competing was
because I would go do the class and then I'd, you know, pack up and go and I go,
oh wait, I forgot to look at how I did.
Right.
So I realized that you could be riding one horse who tried his heart out
and did everything that you asked and might never score better than another
horse who clearly was stressed out and you were wrestling the whole time.
But he was a good mover.
So he is gonna get a better score.
And I just found that the, the results.
I mean, I could see within one horse you do one test and then over
time see how that score improves.
But I, I, I stopped being interested in how we did, and I
thought, this is way too expensive.
If I don't really care, like I'd, I like the professional opinion, but
I could get that a different way.
I don't have to go to show, but I liked the showing as a
moment to rise to the occasion.
It's like, can I plan on having a best day?
In this place at this exact time with this horse.
Like that's exciting to me.
But and I, and I, as part of my education, the showing dressage
levels was, was hu beautiful?
Like we go, okay, this year's first level, okay, now we're gonna work on second and
third level stuff and then we'll do this.
And like, as a student learning to go through that progression on one
horse, the first time doing dressage to take the one horse from zero all
the way up the levels was pure gold.
Priceless to my education.
Rupert Isaacson: Mm-hmm.
Karen Rohlf: Because I know how a system can work and I know how it
progresses and I know how doing this level then changes the stuff underneath
and improves the basics and what do you need in order to do the next.
So that's why I don't, I'm not at all anti-competition.
It's, it's just a date on the calendar, on a particular piece of dirt.
And can you rise to the occasion and train in a way that gets there?
Then the, the tricky part is can you as a human with an ego
Rupert Isaacson: mm-hmm.
Karen Rohlf: Do that and still have boundaries, and still have things that
you won't do in order to get that, even if you spent a lot of money on it,
can you still do right by the horse?
And so that's the, that's the competition and the mental, emotional part of that
as being a human invested in this.
Can you still, you know, be right by your horse?
And that's a whole other skill set.
Rupert Isaacson: Indeed, I mean, I'm, I'm sure once you had taken that professional
track, there would've been a certain amount of pressure to consistently win
or at least place because, you know, you need cred In those days, particularly
the most of the credibility was based upon your, your competition record.
How did you resist.
And also with that first horse, how far did you, did you go with that horse and at
what point did you encounter limitations beyond which perhaps he could not go?
Karen Rohlf: Yeah, he, he learned everything except massage, interestingly.
Interesting.
Yeah.
And so, and I remember we, you know, we tried, and then there's one, I
remember one day when my trainer was riding him, which he rarely did.
And and he had a great pee off and a really good cantor, and
he, like, he should massage.
But at one point it was getting a little, you know, hard and then he broke out
into this perfect pace and Ann and I just stopped and we said he, it's like he, he
just, he's trying, like, he tried so hard.
He, he broke the diagonal rhythm of his gait to try to please us.
And we both just looked at it and go, he's not gonna do massage.
And that, that was fine.
He, he had done, he had done enough.
And so that, like, I remember that moment going.
He's really trying to figure out what the heck we want.
And we just decided that, you know, it wasn't fair to
push him to do that anymore.
Rupert Isaacson: Mm-hmm.
Karen Rohlf: Yeah.
So, and I just, I think I like on the professional track, yeah.
There's that moment where you're like, okay, it's going, it's going.
And yeah, here comes the part where someone, you know, puts a really
expensive, fancy horse under you.
And, and you know, so I was seeing that happening around and you know, oh,
how come nobody and does it with me?
And then like, but it's, there was one moment where, you know, I'm reviewing
my goals and I realized, like, I could imagine, oh, it would be so cool to
be on the podium at the Olympics, be, but then I realized, oh, I think
that's the goal I think I'm supposed to have, because that's the narrow track.
What else are you supposed to do?
Mm-hmm.
And I realized.
I was not interested in any, in most of the parts involved in having that happen.
Rupert Isaacson: Hmm.
Karen Rohlf: I didn't wanna pour my heart into horses that other people owned.
I was doing a lot of that and starting to get very heartbroken.
I'm like, I can't imagine being, I don't wanna be in that situation where I'm
just a, a rider on a sponsor's horse.
I really didn't wanna take, you know, I didn't have enough
money to buy my own horse.
I really didn't like the idea of flying horses all over the world.
I didn't like how these competition horses were kept.
I like being home and I just like, wait.
I don't think I actually have that goal.
I think it's just sort of a nice idea, but it, it wasn't actually a goal that
I really wanted to do, so I let go of it and I realized I really enjoy just
working with any horse to help them.
Move better, or the horse and the rider understand each other
better and have fun and be healthy.
And you know, I just, I was in that scene and I realized it wasn't,
it didn't fit my personality.
Rupert Isaacson: How long were you in that scene?
Karen Rohlf: Gosh, from, you know, like from when I was like 16, started
really competing and then I came to Florida in 2003 and that's when I
left, you know, Ann's I left the, the training thing and I came to
Florida and that's when I had started dabbling in the natural horsemanship.
And I just came to Florida for the winter season for two months.
And after six weeks I called home and I said, I'm not coming back.
I like doing my own thing with my own horses.
I am free and I can do all my silly stuff.
And yeah.
Well,
Rupert Isaacson: that's interesting though.
You said most people go to Florida out of the dressage world to
do more sport dressage, right?
I mean that's
Karen Rohlf: Well, that's what I, that's what I did.
It just I had already started to fiddle around with natural horsemanship with
some horses of, with a horse of mine.
And yeah.
Then I had it where I went in Florida, just happened to be like seven miles from
Pat and Linda Pelli, who was, which was the program I was learning at the time.
And and I just, all of a sudden I was out of this training facility
with all the eyes on me and I was all by myself, you know, in this barn.
I mean, there were other people around, but I didn't know them and I could kind
of do whatever I want and I was like, yay, I can just be who I wanna be.
And and I just like that this is because I was really ready to quit horses.
Rupert, like, I was burned out.
I was working, I was tired of the attitude I was.
I'm tired of riding everybody else's horses and just, I was, I
thought I was gonna quit horses, so I did the winters, you know,
came down to just be in the warmth.
And a student had moved down here, so I was like, just work
with her and some other people.
And then I was like, oh, it's not horses that I wanted to quit.
It was, it was the professional dressage trainer lifestyle and
circumstance that I wanted to quit.
And so now I was in Florida riding bareback and bridal
list as much as I wanted to.
And I was a little kid in love with horses, and I'm like,
just more of this, please.
Rupert Isaacson: How did you afford it though?
Because, you know, if you're not coming from a money background and
Karen Rohlf: mm-hmm.
Rupert Isaacson: You're now making your living as you say, riding
other people's horses up the levels.
Karen Rohlf: Yeah.
Rupert Isaacson: And then you make a sudden break.
You're in Florida, those parts of Florida where say the Perellis live,
that's not a cheap area of Florida.
That's not a cheap area.
So how did you, how did you manage to make that transition?
Karen Rohlf: Yeah, no, it's a good question.
But I mean, I was working my butt off in New York and giving
a lot of it to the facility.
Rupert Isaacson: Mm.
Karen Rohlf: So, you know, I brought I had three horses in
training here, plus my own horse.
And it's amazing how when you get to keep all that money and rent the stall, I was
doing all the work myself, but, you know, I was in my mid thirties, I could do it.
Yeah.
And you know, and I was just like doing the math.
I'm like, this is actually better.
Yeah.
I'm making more money riding fewer horses.
And you know, it's just different kind of work.
But it was time and then you,
Rupert Isaacson: it
Karen Rohlf: was time to change.
Rupert Isaacson: So you started building up at that point, a
clientele and a, and a practice.
Mm-hmm.
How long did it take you to bring that new practice into coherence, into the dressage
naturally thing that we know today and w.
Then what is dressage naturally and and how does it differ from what
other people generally would think of?
Karen Rohlf: Yeah, well, I came, I came to, I'd started fiddling
around with, you know, partnership based, natural horsemanship, be
kind of stuff in the late nineties.
And so then 2003 I came here and then I ended up going and taking
a clinic with Linda, and then they were just really generous then
Rupert Isaacson: lieutenant.
That would be
Karen Rohlf: Linda, sorry?
Linda Pelli.
Rupert Isaacson: Oh, Linda Pelli.
Karen Rohlf: Okay.
Rupert Isaacson: Yeah.
Yeah.
Karen Rohlf: And, and you know, that point mixed up, like no sport people or
dressage people for sure were anywhere interested in anything they're doing.
But I had seen some results with my horses, so I was curious
to learn a little bit more.
And they were really excited that a dressage person was interested.
So they were very generous and spent the, you know, a lot
of time with them in Florida.
And then they invited me to go to Colorado with them.
So I like, took, took some horses and went to Colorado with them.
And so for a couple years I kind of just did that, lived outta my horse
trailer and schlep back and forth from Florida to Colorado and was very happy.
And then, and then I ended up buying some property here in Florida.
And and then I was like, okay, I'm done.
I'm not hanging around with the pres anymore.
Like, I need to, you know, work as a trainer and.
I had to figure out like how, like I, I have all this like
foundational partnership stuff.
I have my dressage training.
I'm like, how am I gonna figure out, like when do you do what?
So I ended up writing the book Dressage Naturally.
And that was started out as a process for myself of like, how do I decis,
how do I know when to do what, when, when do these skills come in?
When do these skills come in?
How do they dovetail?
How do they reconcile?
'cause some of them is so opposite, like most natural horsemanship
then was like so Western and the horses weren't moving anywhere the
way I wanted my horses to move.
So, yeah, in 2005, six, I wrote the book and made a video and it came out in 2007.
And so it was during those years that I really sat myself
down and go, how does this.
How does this fit together?
And I'm, I'm pretty happy with how it turned out.
And so, so dressage naturally really is, for me, hopefully
the best of both worlds, right?
The mental emotional parts that I learned from more partnership, e training,
and the physical from the dressage.
But it's, I think how it's different than most dressage training is, it zooms out.
It's like dressage is just one little piece of my time with my horses.
Like if any particular horse, okay, so five days a week I spend 40 half hour to
45 minutes doing dressage, quote unquote.
That's a small piece, but it really takes a holistic view.
And so my goal for it is that it helps, you know, horses and rider enjoy the
process of learning to be in harmony, but you have to have a holistic view of this.
And so what I, I have a.
Training scale that I use.
But underneath that is like the, the principles and the priorities.
So much of the humans get like laser focused on techniques.
Rupert Isaacson: Mm.
Karen Rohlf: And there's so many different techniques and yeah, they
can all work or not depending, but where things fall apart I think is when
everything gets really narrow focus and no one's zooming out and looking
at the horse's life and, and the, the holistic view of where this silly folly
of training my horse to prance falls in.
Right?
So, you know, so there's like some, some basic principles.
So number one, five ba five basic principles.
If I had to pick the, the top five.
So one dressage should be for the horse.
The basics should be for the horse and feel good to the horse.
It's about healthy movement.
Principle two, everything comes from and returns to relaxation.
Three, mental, emotional, and physical are all equal doorways to the goal.
And four, precision.
You talked about precision.
I think precision arrives outta the possibilities that play creates.
And then the last, well, principle five is dressage can only be as good
as the partnership, the communication, the biomechanics and writing skills
combined and all of those matter.
So, so no matter what we do, like those principles need to be upheld.
And then, and then layered on that as these three priorities, one,
our respon, our responsibility to the horse, number one priority.
They did not ask for any of this and their entire life experiences in our
hands, and we owe it to them to give them.
You know, a, a decent life at least priority two is what I call
the happy athlete training scale.
So there's like prioritization within that and I can talk about that in a minute.
And then priority three is our never ending quest for our own self-awareness
and our own personal development.
So, we can be the best humans that we can be for our horses.
'cause horses make us happy, but they shouldn't have to.
Rupert Isaacson: That's a good quote.
Karen Rohlf: I know that's a lot in there.
Boom.
Rupert Isaacson: Let's talk about your training scale.
So some listeners and viewers will know what the training scale is, and
Karen Rohlf: yeah,
Rupert Isaacson: people talk about the training scale, but of course the training
scale is simply a set of principles coming largely outta the German school, which
is only one of the various schools of dressage, but it happens to be the one.
That prevails for historical reasons in what we think of as competition, dressage.
And there's an interesting accident of history that created that, which probably
is worth telling that story in a moment.
But, so what is it, if I remember correctly, it's rhythm, relaxation
contact or connection.
Karen Rohlf: Yeah.
Rupert Isaacson: Impulsion.
Straightness and collection.
Isn't that right?
Yeah.
More or less,
Karen Rohlf: yeah.
Something like that.
Yep.
And there's
Rupert Isaacson: some
Karen Rohlf: little variations.
Rupert Isaacson: There's some variations on this.
Some people call it a scale and some people call it a pyramid.
Karen Rohlf: Mm-hmm.
Rupert Isaacson: And one of the things I've always wondered at
with that is, well, two things.
There always seem to me one crucial word missing from it, and one
absolutely ignored part of it.
And what you said just now, you actually.
Spoke about the missing bit, and you spoke about the ignored bit.
So the missing bit to me was joy.
When you see a horse in nature, pull all the fancy moves, when do you see that?
You see that when a horse is playing, when a horse is flirting, courtship, rituals,
and when a horse is fighting, they lower their center of gravity just like we do.
Mm-hmm.
We dance, we fight, we play, we lower our center of gravity, and we move in
three dimensions as opposed to when we're just walking to the toilet,
when we walk in two dimensions or walking over the hill or whatever.
And that seemed, that's the dressing of the horses to be able to move in those
three dimensions for whatever reason.
But if horses are doing this in behaviors of passion and ecstatic emotional,
states, then surely that ought to be the primary thing through the training
scale because otherwise the horse could only do it in a sort of mechanical echo.
Karen Rohlf: Mm-hmm.
Rupert Isaacson: But they wouldn't be able to actually do it because
they wouldn't be feeling it.
So that would be the first thing.
And you did just now mention the enjoyment.
So my ears pricked up.
And then the other one is of course, the second phase of that training
scale that you always see relaxation.
It's the one everybody seems to ignore when one goes into your
average sport barn, you see everything except relaxation.
Mm-hmm.
And no one's relaxed with two legs or four.
The environment is set up so that you can't be because whether it's a horse
boiling over in a stall or whether it's a human terrified and anxious, or.
Fierce and ambitious, or the whole environment is artificial or whatever.
Just the fluorescent lights you're doing it under or whatever, you
know, it, it, the entire thing is designed to kill relaxation.
Karen Rohlf: Mm-hmm.
Rupert Isaacson: And
Karen Rohlf: also, and that's why that, sorry
Rupert Isaacson: go ahead.
Karen Rohlf: That idea of everything comes from and returns to relaxation.
Yeah.
That doesn't mean that in between you're supposed to stress your horse out.
It just means a well-regulated nervousness.
Rupert Isaacson: Oh, a hundred percent.
I mean,
Karen Rohlf: and it's like these bell curves of like, you're, you
have start with a calm, cool horse that loves his life, and then you
do hard stuff and then it returns.
And it's not just that, like training just gets harder and harder and harder and
Rupert Isaacson: Absolutely.
Or you can start with a five breathing dragon.
I mean, you, you come in on a stallion who's feeling very stallion today.
Mm-hmm.
But he's still in his authentic self.
He's, he's like, mm-hmm this is where I am right now.
And one has to be relaxed enough to say, okay, that's cool.
Let's be there together.
Karen Rohlf: Mm-hmm.
Rupert Isaacson: And to.
It always seems to me that the mark of a really good horse human
partnership is that you can fizz the energy up enormously, but then when
you drop the rain, it's over and you're both like, ah, yeah, okay.
That was cut.
That was cool.
That was fun.
Now let's go relax.
And there was an innate relaxation through the whole thing even.
Exactly.
Everyone was at the apex of a physical thing together.
Right, right,
Karen Rohlf: right.
And yeah, you take that, that horse, that's a little fizzy when he comes out.
It doesn't mean you just sit there and stare at him until he is relaxed.
It just means that that priority is like at the end of this thing,
you know, the goal is that he's like more relaxed than Yeah.
When we, you know, you're just trying to, to feel like that's the, the
goal we've got endorphin, cortisol.
Rupert Isaacson: Yeah.
Karen Rohlf: Yeah.
And horses can be up like relax, doesn't mean.
Dead.
Exactly.
Rupert Isaacson: So, no, exactly.
Exactly.
So it's, it's interesting to me that you've, you've, you've
yourself pinpointed those two
Karen Rohlf: mm-hmm.
Rupert Isaacson: Missing things because I've often wondered why
that isn't more spoken about.
Karen Rohlf: Yeah.
Rupert Isaacson: I
Karen Rohlf: mean, you take a, you know, think of, you know, how you would be
sitting if you were bored outta your mind or feeling or peed or scared, you know,
just think of what posture that would be.
And then if someone came along and put a strap on to make my head go there and
then did something with my shoulders and make, put my body in the shape of
someone who is engaged in athletic, you just described my, just get me excited.
Like there's a million dollars over there.
Ready.
He get set, go do it.
Rupert Isaacson: You just described my school days.
Karen Rohlf: I described your what?
Rupert Isaacson: My school days.
Karen Rohlf: Oh, right.
Yeah.
So yeah, so this training scale that I have, the dressage scale
can fit inside there somewhere.
But for me, the base is happiness.
Rupert Isaacson: Mm-hmm.
Karen Rohlf: Right?
Happy, healthy, calm content, comfortable for the horse and the
human meaning, like deal with your own stuff before you show up to your horse.
Right?
Because frustrations, anger, whatever garbage that we
humans, you know, carry with us.
So the first is happiness and, and what I'm, I like to think about when
I'm not with my horse, how's his life,
Rupert Isaacson: right?
Karen Rohlf: Mm-hmm.
Is he just staying in a stall or is he be like, no, I'm not good, you know, so.
Mm-hmm.
And so just happiness and, you know, that's a weird word,
but like, just not unhappy.
Like feeling okay.
Like, yeah, life is good.
Yeah.
And then, and then from there is harmony.
So the next layer up is harmony.
So that's the second priority.
That's where like self carriage comes in, that you, you and your horse
together can be in the space and there's trust, there's a attentiveness,
there's attunement, you're, there's an emotional connection, right?
So when, when you and your horse, you know, and two individuals that are happy
are gonna be easier to harmonize together.
And if two beings are in harmony with each other, then.
Okay.
Like, I'm good.
You're good.
We're good together.
Now, the next priority we can think about is communication.
All right?
And because if you're in harmony already, but you know when you
enter the space, your horse isn't running away or attacking you.
Like, now we can talk, right?
So now we can think about the quality of the communication,
responsiveness, eagerness, understanding, willingness, mental connection.
So many dressage problems can be traced to poor quality communication.
The horse looks in the good shape, the rider is told good by their instructor,
even though they feel like they have to ice their hands after their
ride and their legs are cramping up.
So to me, what it looks like means zero.
If the quality of communication between the horse and rider isn't
understood, isn't magical, isn't light.
So.
If you're two happy individuals, you get along fine together and
now they understand each other.
Now we can start thinking about how the horse is moving.
We don't care how the horse moves.
If the horse and rider are hating each other and the horse is trying to run out
the arena, like it's just ridiculous.
Right.
Who cares?
But that happens a lot in dressage.
Rupert Isaacson: Mm-hmm.
Karen Rohlf: Right.
So, mm-hmm.
You know, and, and PS when I go through these steps is even someone coming
with dress, very dressy problems.
When I work on the quality of the communication and the harmony and the
happiness, already the dressage already the horse is moving better, they're moving
differently, they're moving more freely.
The riders can let go because they trust, you know?
So there's already improvements in the horse's biomechanics.
Right.
So if the horse energized, balance rhythmic aligned, are they physically
connected and moving in a healthy way?
So that's the fourth priority.
And then if you got all that now, no matter what sport you're in now
you're ready for the sport specific.
So that would be the upper level dressage, the fancy stuff, right?
That you know, anything that you're, you're doing sports
specific skills, you're becoming more agile, athletic, strong.
You're strengthening the muscles of a happy, harmonious, connected under,
you know, understanding horse's, moving really freely and healthily.
You're strengthening those muscles, you know, coordination,
power, things like that.
And so when to keep that zoomed out view, you can start to see.
That a lot of dressage problems are not dressage problems.
There's something further down on the scale, and so many problems with
horses can be solved by just lifestyle changes or just taking little small,
simple things and just getting the communication between the horse and rider.
What did you ask for?
Did your horse answer you?
Did you give him feedback?
Did you tell him yes?
Was he feeling successful?
Can he anticipate it the next time?
Or are you just controlling him and wanting him to be mindless?
Some people want their horses to be mindless.
I like my horses to think.
So, so that scale I just find so helpful because it, it incorporates a lot, but
it also gives you some decision making.
Ways to decision make in your horse's training.
Like, well, this is not working well.
Is there anything below there that I could, you know, improve?
And it helps remind to have a holistic view that like how your
half passes is way up on that scale.
And there's this, an example I like to give.
I mean, you can probably think of a million examples, but, you know, dressage
clinic in a covered arena, young horse comes in, doesn't wanna go in the arena,
bulks at the door, they get him in.
Now he's in, now he's tense and he's kind of frozen and not going forward.
Come on, come on, get your leg, tap him.
Pretty soon the instructor's behind him with a lunge whip.
Now they're chasing the horse around the arena.
This is not dressage, but that was a dressage.
So they had to make it look like it was working when it wasn't.
And I'm sitting there going, there's an outdoor arena right next door that he
warmed up in that he was perfectly fine.
So for me, the choice would be stay in the covered arena.
But the goal is that he's confident in there that he trusts
you, that you have some harmony.
They were ruining harmony, they were chasing him with a whip
that's not very harmonious, right?
So stay in the covered arena and let the horse go, oh, I was
scared, but actually it's okay.
Or if you really wanna take advantage of the dressage of professional there
and have a dressage lesson, go outside.
'cause he is fine outside and you can actually do dressage.
And I'm watching this going, what the heck?
But they all went to the default.
Mode of, we must make it look like it's working, even if it's not.
And that what you said, that militaristic background attitude comes in.
He must, and I'm thinking No, he, he doesn't must.
Rupert Isaacson: Well, and, and the idea that one is doing this
to perform for a judge rather than
Karen Rohlf: Right
Rupert Isaacson: for its own sake is so built in.
I remember, I forget where we were training a horse in Pife and
the, we got the horse really gave this beautiful result and someone
said, yeah, but that wouldn't get you a nine in front of a judge.
I'm like, absolutely it wouldn't.
Karen Rohlf: Yeah,
Rupert Isaacson: because that's not the point of what we're trying to do here.
There could come a day where that might be a relevant thing to
think about, but that's not today.
Why, in your mind, are you already there?
Why are you not just within the joy of.
PFA, which is a joyful thing.
It, of horses do it in nature when they express joy.
And but you could tell that that person that made that comment was actually not
coming from a bad place, that it was just what had been drummed into them.
Karen Rohlf: Exactly.
Rupert Isaacson: And again, the tyranny of, of correctness
and then what even is Correct.
One of the things that yeah, if I'm, if I'm, I, I've, I've abandoned giving
clinics, actually what I will only do now is workshops where a certain
number of people will bring a certain number of horses, will kind of have
an idea of where they're at and where we quite like what concepts would we
like to introduce and are there things that maybe we would like to polish?
And then I'll, I'll involve everybody.
And if a horse is that way I don't have to rush and say There is this hour in which
this person and this horse, because that.
I, I fell into that trap and it began to stress me.
And then I realized I was stressing the horse and the rider as well,
because I was projecting my stress.
And I was like, hold on, hold on, hold on.
And, and it got to this point, I was giving a clinic, an island, and the, the
horse was so tense and I said, you know, we should just take off his saddle and
bridle and let him just walk around in here and let him roll and let him explore.
And luckily the rider saw the sense in that, and I said, you know, don't worry.
Just let him do that and then put him away and then come back an hour
from now, because I, I guarantee you, you, we won't run out of time here.
But anything that we do with the horse in this emotional state would be pointless.
Right.
Because we'd just be forcing something.
Frankly, it could even be dangerous.
Why, why, why do that?
And then I was, oh, right, okay.
I've been going about this the wrong way.
It should be collegial, it should be collaborative.
It should be something different when we come together for some
sort of learning experience.
What, so it's, it's very interesting to me what you're saying, but now
talk us through, paint us a picture.
Let's say you are out giving a clinic or somebody comes to you and they, they do
come say, okay, I'm a dressage writer.
I've got this dress problem.
It's my half pass, it's my pf, it's my flying change, whatever.
And you can tell that what they need is happiness and harmony.
Karen Rohlf: Mm-hmm.
Rupert Isaacson: Yeah.
And what they want is something, what we call in German in sport liquor, you know?
Karen Rohlf: Yeah.
Yeah.
Rupert Isaacson: How are you going to get them to see what you, and
then that's A, and then B, what actually would you do for them?
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.
com Sign up as a premium member.
and begin to take the Helios Harmony course, which will take you from zero
to the Piaf, where the horse is dancing on the spot in hand on the ground.
And then from there, you can develop out to anywhere you want to.
Heliosharmony.
com to unlock the secrets of the old masters.
Karen Rohlf: Okay.
Those a low that you.
Brought this up and shared your experience with teaching clinics, because you
know, in talking to lots of students and horse owners and professionals,
there's a, there's a group that isn't interested in this sort of conversation,
but there's a whole group of us that is, and there's this thing where the clients
don't always feel good about what's happening, but they feel like they have
to follow what the professional says.
And the professional doesn't like what's happening, but they feel like they have to
have meet the expectation of the client.
Yeah.
And so this is so good that you did that because both of them are feeling something
ain't right and no one's saying anything.
And I, by the
way,
Rupert Isaacson: I had another experience where I did the same
thing and the rider never came back.
They just thought I was full of shit.
You know,
Karen Rohlf: that's okay.
Rupert Isaacson: I wouldn't
Karen Rohlf: be able to do anything.
But see, this is okay and this is where.
So many problems that horses have are made.
It's a, it's a money decision.
Mm.
I don't wanna lose that client, or I don't wanna, so I think we all have
to be really brave in what I tell my professionals is like, you have to go
on record of stating what you're seeing.
That's what you're there for, your professional opinion.
And so I'll give an example of a clinic I gave and let me see which one.
Okay.
I have a couple, well this one, this is just a normal student.
And she was like, she had trouble getting to the clinic 'cause her
force wouldn't load in the trailer.
And then she got there and she wanted to work on her lateral work.
And so I, I, I would meet them where they are like, okay, show me your warm up.
Show me your shoulder ins.
Okay.
Show me the Shoulder Inn.
It was a mess.
So like, okay, well just talk me through, you know, your aids.
What are the aids for the shoulder in?
And so usually it's like a paragraph.
I'm like, okay, I got the paragraph of AIDS you're using for the shoulder
in, and then and they're like, okay.
So it was like leg and nessy.
It's like, okay, well, you know, are those aids working just in general?
So like, what happens when you just put your leg on and ask
the hind end to step under?
And so I just, just show me that and like, nothing.
You know, she's like squeezing with his purse.
So, and then like, okay, well show me what happens when you move
the shoulders in, like nothing.
So I was like, okay, all right, well that, this makes sense that
your shoulder isn't working.
'cause like, so like, I was like, let's, let's pick one, let's just work on,
you know, moving the shoulders around and okay, we got something like that.
I said, you know.
How about like, let me move the horse's shoulders, and you just
follow, so I move the horse's shoulders and she's twisting around.
So I'm like, okay, now try not to twist when, when I move the shoulders.
And then I was like, would you like, and then we got it going and I was like,
would you like to learn how to do that?
You're like, what?
I just did.
So pretty soon she's on the ground.
Now.
Could I have said we're gonna start with groundwork and do the basic yields?
And she came for shoulder for lateral work help?
Probably not.
Yeah.
But I followed the logic.
I was like, show me.
And I, I always like to do this.
I, I like students to just show me what they've got.
I rarely go in and just orchestrate a lesson.
I'm like, you show me what you are doing and tell me what's not
working and tell me what isn't.
I'll see if I can help.
And so I try to find the biggest pieces of disharmony and like, let's
clear, let's, let's clear that up.
If it's a trust thing, then it's like, okay, well what are you worried about?
If you're, don't trust your horse to let go of the reins?
What do you think is gonna happen?
Are they gonna run off?
Are they gonna.
Not be able to steer or like, what's the thing?
And then we work on that.
So I do a lot of talking to my students.
I ask them questions.
I listen to their tone of voice, and I, through those questions, we
usually go, okay, does it make sense that if we do this, it'll help that?
Yes, okay, you want something for that?
Great.
And now we're together.
And if I really butt heads with someone, then you know, they don't have to
stay, they don't, you know, that's, I'm, I'm not gonna compromise that.
But yeah.
And I, once I once worked with, I did a clinic and the owner of the
facility was a Grand Prix rider, and she's like, at the end of the clinic,
she's like, Hey, can you help me?
I've got this big horse and I need help with the canter pirouettes.
He's really gets, you know, he's heavy.
So I watched her ride around and we stopped to talk.
And the horse, I was standing in front of her and the horse kept
like wanting to inch forward.
And so she had like a grip on the reins and I was like, oh, just drop the reins,
like, we're gonna talk for a minute.
And she dropped the reins and the horse would walk forward.
So she'd, pretty soon she'd be gathering up on the reins holding.
It was like just standing there.
So it was clear the horse couldn't stand still on a loose reign.
And so I started talking about the importance of this and she
thought that was really boring and went on and did her thing.
And I was like, no, you really need to be able to stop your horse from your seat and
drop the reins and have 'em stay there.
And and she again thought, no, she needed to half halt and do all this fancy stuff.
And finally she wouldn't listen to me.
So I was like, just go ride around.
And I sat in the back wall and started checking my texts.
I'm like, you don't wanna listen to me, I'm not gonna watch you.
But I'm like, peeking.
And so I'd give her this, this example of like canter around and then halt and
drop the reins and have 'em stand there.
Like that's your exercise.
And she kind of got the idea and was trying to sort of work on it her way, but
then it started getting better, right?
And she's like, huh.
And she slowly started to ride closer to where I was and she's
like, it's starting to get better.
I was like, oh, okay.
So I put my phone away and went up and engaged and talked to her
and she still wasn't like fully committed, but I said, and she had
these two big mastiffs for dogs, two great big dogs, very well trained.
And I said, we're talking about the canter pirouette and sitting and all this.
And she couldn't figure out how what I was doing was related to
sitting in the canter pirouette.
And I said, how do you teach your dogs to sit?
And she's like, I tell them, sit.
And I go, okay.
And if they don't, she said, well, I lift up on the collar and push
down on the rear end and I go.
Then, and then she went, I let go and I went, oh.
And she said, oh, I get it.
So then she went back and played with canner to halt and drop the reins.
And then I said, okay, now collect the canner and drop the
reins, but stay at the cantor.
And we did that a little bit and pretty soon she did a canter
pirouette with a loop in the res.
Rupert Isaacson: Yeah.
Karen Rohlf: So it's, it's tracing.
It's like tracing.
But with her, I probably had to bridge it a little bit more,
but I thought I made it clear.
But just had to think of it differently and, and say, I need the communication.
I need the trust, I need to educate the horse on the elements, not just keep
trying to make it happen when it's not, or cont or just use controlling aids.
'cause you can't really control a horse.
If that's,
Rupert Isaacson: well, especially not in a pirouette.
No.
Because in a, in a pirouette, as you know Yeah.
There's a point at which the horse has to carry themselves in it
and we have to be out of the way.
And if we in the way, it'll destroy it.
Pf is the same.
Is the same.
Yeah.
Any of these things that have that really fine balance, if we stop, we have
to set it up and get out of the way.
Right.
If we try to,
Karen Rohlf: and if you drop the reins, it's not gonna cure everything, but
you'll find out what piece you need.
Like, oh, when you drop the res.
Right.
Do they need more engagement?
Do they need to be around or do they need to be a quicker t like
you'll find out stuff but you, you, it's got to come to a place where
the horse is carrying themselves.
'cause that's the point
Rupert Isaacson: I think.
Yes.
In your first story.
What I found of interest there particularly was.
You know, the, the school I came into, because I came into dressage through
the back door, I never intended to have anything to do with dressage.
It was only that when my son became verbal in the saddle in front of me.
And I noticed that it was when the horse was in a soft collected
rhythm that this was happening.
Karen Rohlf: Mm-hmm.
Rupert Isaacson: That I realized I needed to learn more about soft collected rhythm.
So that's when I went on this journey that ended up with dressage and I tried going
through this sport dressage riding lesson route, and I just saw everyone stuck its
shoulder in for 20 years for the very same reasons that you described and thought,
well, I, I haven't got time for that, so I need to find something more efficient.
And that's how I found my way down to the French Portuguese system down in
Portugal, in Lisbon with the Valencia, and realizing that the entire thing.
Could, was so much more efficient if you did it on the ground first.
If you did it.
Karen Rohlf: Mm-hmm.
Rupert Isaacson: In hand if you understood from the ground what was going on.
Can see it, get the feel the horse understands.
You're both together on the ground, then including the counter work.
And then you are in the saddle.
You are the sky monkey as I call it.
But you've got a ground monkey who usually knows more than you,
who's the one who's doing what's called the assisted in hand work.
And then you transfer the ground aids to the rider.
Slowly, slowly.
That says under, oh, I see.
When the rider does this with his leg, it means the same as when you
do that with a stick on the ground.
Okay, yeah.
I accept that.
I understand that there's no stress.
And then little by little the ground monkey kind of comes away and
leaves sky monkey and pony together.
And if, but if sky monkey and pony run into some difficulty, ground
monkey can come in again and help.
And this is entirely rational.
And I realize, oh.
When I was on the right, what we think of as dressage is
only actually one small niche.
There's this thing DOMA Vara, which is what people now call working quotation.
That is dressage.
Karen Rohlf: Mm-hmm.
Rupert Isaacson: There is this thing called eo, which is the bull
fight style, fast combat style, but it's dressage all the way.
And then there's this Dorma Classica thing where you formalize
it in a rectangular arena and do it in a sort of balletic style.
And not every horse likes some horses, like only one of those most, they almost
all like the working Equitation, Dorma, va Carra one, and some horses like all three.
And some horses like, you know, there's something there for everyone.
And this was very clear.
And so then we just went and started producing our therapy horses this way.
And what we saw was that within, you know, 24 months, 36 months, you
could get backyard quarter horses.
To like intermediate, you know?
Mm-hmm.
Because you're doing it on the ground with them, and then when you take it to the
saddle, they, they understand, and then I realize, oh, that's what self carriage is.
The horse is able to carry itself, either ride or I'm not carrying the horse.
This horse, no matter what mistake I make, and I make so many mistakes,
I'm such an imperfect rider.
My horse doesn't give a shit because they understand.
They, they're, they probably prefer it.
If I was a better rider, they're probably rolling their eyes a bit and going, oh,
Rupert's sitting off to the right again, and Rupert's collapsed his shoulder again.
Oh, well, you know, but I still know what it is Rupert wants, so I'm gonna do it.
You know, he is carrying himself, and of course I need that when
I'm up there with your child.
Karen Rohlf: Mm-hmm.
Rupert Isaacson: Because I cannot give my attention too
much to the horse at that point.
My attention is all with the kid.
So I need to say to the horse, can you please do this lovely rhythm thing
and can you sustain it, please, for as long as me and this child need you to.
And the horse, if they understand, can say, yeah, and then I can
give my attention to your child.
So the difficulty of, you know, 'cause dressage arose outta
doing jobs on horseback, right.
It arose out of livestock work, it arose out of war, it arose out of
hunting, and then it got formalized into the, managed, into the, and even
the managed the, what we call the arena, but the es comes from the word
ma, the hand mano and ma in, in French.
It's where you work the horse to the hand, which is the work on the
ground, and then taken to having the horse Don Ma, which we call on the bit
Karen Rohlf: Yeah.
To the hand.
Not from the hand.
Rupert Isaacson: Well in the hand don't.
Karen Rohlf: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
But it, you know, there's a difference between just Oh good.
I get to use my hands now.
Rupert Isaacson: Exactly.
Exactly.
And so, but this of course is so missing because in the, particularly the East
Coast American tradition, you know, it came out of the British colonial.
Tradition of riding, which abandoned all dressage in the 18th century and went to
forward seat jumping fox hunting, da da.
So we've had to rediscover it.
It was the same in the UK and we've discovered it through the German
sports system, which weirdly abandoned all the in-hand work somewhere
in the early to mid 20th century.
But when you read Zieger and Steinberg, they're all about the in hand work.
All those guys were doing it.
And then somewhere in the military schools around the early 19
hundreds, you you, you pick up those.
Was it HDV 12, that book from the German cavalry, suddenly
it's not really in there anymore.
And the Germans will still train the piaf and to some degree the
passage from the, the ground.
But the rest of it they don't.
And what it means is then I lived in Germany for eight years
and trained and worked there.
And I realized, oh my gosh, this country that is supposed to be producing all the
top dressage writers, mostly producers, really shit dressage writers actually.
And there's just a very, very, very few at the top mm-hmm.
That get money pumped into them that become the representatives.
But the vast majority of the people are riding no better than anyone that you'd
see in a, in a regional show in Missouri, and are not being taught any better.
The trainers are no better.
But somewhere in there it got lost.
So it's interesting that you found your way also through the natural horsemanship.
So, which of course is largely ground-based.
Mm-hmm.
And when you are training, do you get at a certain point, most of your
clients to understand then, ah, yes.
If I start from the ground, it's probably going to be clearer, or do
you still have the vast majority of people with a real emphasis on trying
to do the whole thing from the saddle?
Karen Rohlf: It's a, it's a mix.
I mean, the, definitely the ground groundwork is, is a part of it.
Rupert Isaacson: Mm.
Karen Rohlf: But I think, I think I have,
like, I really feel like if you, like, I'm not the one to go to, if you want to
like, learn all the classical stuff, you know, from the ground all the way up.
I really focus.
I mean, I can, I can't do it, but what I, what I really feel like I help people
with is whatever discipline you're doing
Rupert Isaacson: mm-hmm.
Karen Rohlf: To help create this.
This more harmonious relationship where like, whether you're gonna do jumping
or reigning or anything like the, I can get, I can help people like see that big
picture, get the happiness, the harm is the communication a freely moving horse
with a person who can not get, like, so many people get into dressage and then
they get frozen by, am I doing this right?
Mm-hmm.
Am I doing this wrong?
And correctness, before getting into that, just saying, you're,
you're asking the horse something.
What are you asking?
Rupert Isaacson: Mm-hmm.
Karen Rohlf: How is the horse answering?
Are you giving the horse feedback?
Does he know when he's successful?
And are you getting to this neutral place where, where, you
know, there is this harmony?
And then even with the biomechanics, it's like if your horse is not
moving well, like, just on a really basic level, like what you would
do maybe in a warmup or something.
He's, it's, it's, you've gotta change the energy.
You gotta change the balance.
Or you've gotta like, say something about the level of relaxation.
Like, can you talk to your horse about that?
Can you turn those dials and can you play around?
And so like when I, when I help people, you know, if they're like,
oh, my horse is, you know, say they're on the, on line, on the ground and
the horse is, oh, he keeps falling in on his shoulder, on the side.
I was like, okay, change something.
Like, what happens if you lower the energy or raise the energy?
What happens if, can you, are you able to talk to your horse to
move the shoulder here and there?
Like if you want, if your horse is getting wound up, can you tell 'em to chill out?
And, and then to teach people to play with that and observe.
And at, by the end of the workshop or clinic, they are telling me when
their horse is in the best mode.
Like it's less about, here is the perfect shape for this, and now
I'm gonna show you how to get it.
I'm like, feel your horse.
What adjectives do you want to use?
Like, did it change?
Did you understand what you asked them?
And that's what I really wanna help people with.
And then from that, you can take that and go do whatever discipline
you want, follow this path.
Do Domo, Vaquero, do this, get classes, do competitive dressage, like, you know, do
it in arena and do the pre Saint George.
Go ahead.
Because all you can shape that into what you want at that sport level.
So those conversations, all those things that we're thinking of, yeah, they start
on the ground and can you influence them on the ground and then, you know, when it
gets into the more gymnastic movements, yeah, we can do those on the ground too.
But I think where, where my focus really is, is no matter what you're
doing with your horse, what discipline.
You know, when a rider comes to me, I'll like, what's working?
What's not?
Show me what you're doing.
And show me, you know, I'll, I'll look at where I see the disharmony is,
or the confusion or the imbalances.
You tell me what you're feeling and let's get to a place where we can
resolve those so that then you can go on.
And sometimes they come and I, they check all the boxes.
I'm like, yeah, let's work on your counter Changes a hand at the half pass.
Now we're in the gymnastic sport mode and we can get into the details of that.
But no matter what discipline you're doing, no matter what groundwork or
classical this or that you're doing, you gotta think what's the happiness
level, what's the harmony level?
What's the quality of the communication?
Okay, now we can, we can get precise and say, okay, a shoulder in is a
shoulder in, and it's exactly this.
But if all the boxes below that are ticked, it becomes.
Easier so that, that's really where my focus
Rupert Isaacson: is.
Right.
As you say, a lot of people are frozen and stuck and scared, and when, as you
know this, you know when your brain is flooded with cortisol, when you are
in front of a triage instructor, your brain tends to be flooded with cortisol.
You can't think, and you can't really take in information and learn, and your feel
goes away, and you may not have ever been able to cultivate, feel, because you might
have been so controlled and micromanaged.
Mm-hmm.
Exactly.
You know, one sees so many of those dressage rides with a trainer
micromanaging every minor angle of the shoulder and thinking, gosh, well, even
if that is working without that voice in the ear, the whole thing would fall apart
because there's a lack of understanding, as you say, a lack of communication.
Lack happens.
Yeah.
So when, when somebody comes in and they're not aware of these things like.
One says free movement or quality movement,
it's by no means a given that any of us would necessarily
know whether our horse mm-hmm.
Is in that or not.
So what do you do when somebody comes in and they, they're actually really unaware
that they're perhaps in good faith.
Karen Rohlf: Yeah.
Rupert Isaacson: But they're really unaware.
So, so there is disharmony, but they don't know there's disharmony.
Karen Rohlf: Yeah,
Rupert Isaacson: there's unhappiness, but they don't know there's unhappiness
and there's poor quality movement, but they don't know that either.
And then of course, if you bring that to their attention, they're
gonna feel somewhat crushed.
How does one help them in a relatively short space of time to get there?
See that, and also not be destroyed by thinking, oh shit, I've been doing it all
wrong, and now I need to go kill myself.
You know?
As you know, if you followed any of my work, I'm an autism dad and we have
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When my son, Rowan, was diagnosed with autism in 2004,
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We really want to know.
We really want to help people like me, people like you, out there
live their best life, to live free, ride free, see what happens.
Karen Rohlf: Well, that, that part might be outta my scope,
but here, here's what I do.
This is actually the, this is the fun part for me.
Okay.
I'll try to think of an example.
I'll, I'll, I'll use there's a student, a very dedicated
student with a lovely horse.
She'd gone through several horses, you know, but this
is lovely horse number four.
But she was, you know, stuck, you know, stuck at the like
starting second level thing.
You the shoulder in will be the death of many people.
Yep.
Everyone
Rupert Isaacson: gets stuff at children.
Yeah.
Karen Rohlf: And she was, you know, very correct position.
I should use air quotes there.
Like, it looked good.
Lovely horse.
She was trying so hard to do all the right things, but like
Rupert Isaacson: mm-hmm Mm.
Karen Rohlf: She couldn't get like a working trot and she was frozen.
So, so here's what I do.
This is my, I go, what adjectives would you like to use for your horse?
You know, I, I, first I say, what adjectives do you
use to describe your horse?
You know, heavy, lean, all the things.
And I say, what adjectives would you like to use?
And I get them to get those adjectives and I like them, feel
springier or softer or flowier.
I'm like, okay, great, let's put those in the front of the mind.
And then I go, okay, well the best trot is gonna be some degree of energy, either
higher or lower than what you're doing.
There's gonna be some balance shift different than what you are doing.
I don't know what needs to change.
Maybe the haunches to the left, maybe the NCH is the right, I don't
know, maybe shoulders, maybe the neck lower, maybe the, I don't know.
So we're gonna muck around with that and we're gonna make sure at any time that
you can just exhale and stop and your horse can stand still in a loose reign.
So we begin, and I might pick one of those.
But let's say we'll pick, we'll pick balance.
So sometimes playing with the energy already.
You know, you'd be like, okay, at high try higher energy, try lower energy.
Where does your horse meet?
Mm-hmm.
More of those adjectives.
Right?
So same thing with shoulders.
So I might say, okay, move the shoulders one way or the other for
just a stride or two, and then just go back to neutral and we'll muck around.
And I said, tell me.
So I have them tell me when do you feel a moment where your horse is slightly more?
Any one of those adjectives that they just told me?
Mm-hmm.
I still haven't told them what they should be doing.
Rupert Isaacson: Mm-hmm.
Karen Rohlf: And so then what'll happen is I'll start to see it
change and I see this, the student, and I'll go, how about there?
And then they'll hesitate and now the horse won't be in that moment
and they go, I think that was better.
And I go, oh.
So I'm like, you gotta tell me in the moment.
I said, I want you to tell me yes if you feel like your
horse is even infinitesimally.
However you say that word.
Closer to one of the adjectives you were looking for.
Just muck around.
Change something, go to neutral, change it again.
Go to neutral.
And I have to, and I have to keep it lighthearted and give them permission
to dare to say yes when they feel it.
And so that's a big thing.
'cause there's this delay.
'cause they go, oh my God, I felt it.
Is that it?
Was I wrong?
Should I say it?
I might be wrong.
And now the moment's passed.
So I'm like, listen, your horse is under you going, how am I doing mom?
And I said, you need to tell.
So we get them going around, muck around.
I'll be like, encourage them.
How about now?
Like say yes.
Say it louder.
Yes.
Oh, okay.
Now we go and I say muck around.
Go to neutral.
It feels better.
Say yes and at the same time, reach forward and rub your horse on the neck.
Rupert Isaacson: Mm-hmm.
Karen Rohlf: You would not believe how breakthrough that can be the confidence
giving the, the rider permission to experiment because precision arrives
outta the possibility of the play crates.
Like move stuff around.
Mm-hmm.
Let's just, let's see what makes it worse.
You know, move stuff around the permission to dare to say yes out loud.
So you have to breathe while reaching forward, extending your fingers
and connecting with your horse.
There's a lot of cool things that happen with that.
And now the horse is going, oh thank God I did it.
Now the horse is getting this like, whew, I did it.
Oops, I lost it.
Muck around.
Yes.
Oh, I got it.
Oh, I lost it.
So then we just repeat this and it starts happening more and more frequently.
The rider now knows what they need to do 'cause they get to repeat
it a million times, not hold it together for one whole session.
Rupert Isaacson: Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm.
Karen Rohlf: And pretty soon now, now the ride, I was like, now you tell me when he
is in the better, the better spot today.
And now the students riding around going here?
Yes.
Here.
Oops, hang on a second.
And I tell them, I have two rules.
You gotta be either searching or enjoying nothing in between.
So, so either look for it or just sit there enjoying it.
And pretty soon the percentage of time searching gets smaller and the
percentage time enjoying gets longer.
And the, I never told them what to do.
They picked the adjectives, they mucked around.
I just gave them some things to muck around with.
They told me when is yes.
And Rupert like 99% of the time, I completely agree that what
they did improved things and that was better than it was before.
And I have not told them anything.
There's no right or wrong.
That is so powerful.
And there's so many students who are so.
Again, like frozen in this like, 'cause I read this technique and they said to do
it this way and is this the right thing?
I was like, get, get the connection between you and your horse going freely.
I was like, if you take that and go play in the bushes all by yourself just doing
that, you will be 80% more improved.
And I said, then go get an instructor and they'll tell you some more things
like, hey, I think a little quicker tempo or a little higher neck or
more, you know, more angle here.
I was like, that will be like easy to add on because you
already have this relationship and communication with the horse.
I was like, but I, I've never had anybody do that and come back and
now their horses choppier and more crooked and more, you know, heavy or
it's always better and it's empowered.
So that's what, you know, I tell people I'm empowered learning.
That sounds like you know, a nice thing to put on a website,
but that's what I mean by it.
It's like most clinics, I'm not telling.
At the end of the clinic I go, do you guys realize I never told you what to
what your working trot needed to be?
You guys ended up telling me what your horse needed.
And it's, it's for the basics, but like so many people are struggling
with the basics that it opens the door to then apply more refinement.
Rupert Isaacson: Indeed.
And in fact, I think one could say that no matter how educated you become,
you're always struggling with the basics.
There is no time that I'm not.
Oh my
Karen Rohlf: gosh.
Yeah.
Rupert Isaacson: Right.
One of the things that I love about what you just said, there were two things too.
I mean, I like, I liked it all, but two things again, stand out.
One was you encourage 'em to use their voice.
Yeah.
One of the inheritances of the military is have your voice taken away.
So you are either the officer in charge.
Or you're taking orders.
So, you know, when I was at military school, which I was the only acceptable
thing to say was, yes, Sarge, or yes sir, if it was a commissioned
officer, no more and no less, no.
If one takes that to horsemanship, so through pony club, which was taught by
ex-military, by it all comes to you were occasionally allowed, you know, going in
at a big fence when I was a kid to give your horse encouragement and also let
out some of your anxiety about going, oh, you know, as they go over the fence.
But that was about it.
But you were allowed to use your voice sometimes negatively.
Then I didn't realize how out of the use of the voice I was.
And then of course I'm faced with an autistic child who does not speak
and the greatest wish I'm having.
For voice.
And then through the horse side of the education I have to go through with this.
I run into Master Luis Valencia in Portugal who shows me that you can train
a horse right up through the air on the ground between two vocal tones basically.
Ah.
Which is, I like that a lot.
Please can I have more of that?
And ah, which is, I don't quite want so much of that, please.
And he said to me, Rupert, you've got to have about minimum 85%,
ah, or the horse will give up.
So you need this constant, and then he said, I said, well, what?
Okay, that makes perfect sense.
But what we going to do when we get back into a situation where we're not
allowed to use our voice anymore, IE an arena a, a a show ring or whatever.
I said, because I know people are gonna ask me that.
And he said, oh, well then there's all sorts of ways you can cheat Ruth.
You can just, and so he showed me all sorts of ways to bring it down.
So for example, if I'm doing, going between say, PF and massage and back again
if I just go make the sound of per, but
it, it, it's inaudible, but the horse of course hears it.
He'll spring into massage, but it starts with HA sar and it, and if
it's in PF and I put the vocal cue on it, you know, once we've, the
horse is understanding it and it's.
The one I was taught is rhythm, rhythm, rhythm.
Because I don't want to pee one 'cause I want to di I
want to distinguish up, right.
So that someone is standing, you know, some distance away, can't hear
what's going on, but horse sure can.
So I, you know, as, as you know, when you're going from passage down into p
that's notoriously difficult, you know?
Mm-hmm.
Going from the pi into the passage is somewhat more straightforward.
So in that deceleration, you know, if I'm beginning to say whisper rhythm, you know,
he knows exactly what I'm talking about.
Yeah.
And, but it's so interesting to have the voice repowered and your, your
point there of having a, a rider say yes and making it absolutely crystal
clear to their own nervous system, to the horse's nervous system and brain
and their endocrine, their emotional system, that this is good and that.
Blast of dopamine and that, you know, you're talking about
being in, in the seeking mode.
You're either searching
Karen Rohlf: mm-hmm.
Rupert Isaacson: Or you are enjoying.
I love that because the, in neuroscience, the, the seeking
brain is never the stressed brain.
Karen Rohlf: Right.
Rupert Isaacson: When we're hunting, when we're looking,
we're somewhere towards play.
Mm-hmm.
Always.
And horses are the same when there's, Ooh, what's that?
It's a problem to solve, you know?
Karen Rohlf: Yeah.
Rupert Isaacson: When that's taken away, we're almost
always in some form of stress.
Right.
Karen Rohlf: Yeah.
Rupert Isaacson: And I don't hear that being understood much
Karen Rohlf: mm-hmm.
Rupert Isaacson: In massage world.
So I love that you did that.
And then the physical connection.
Now I have this thing called spider fingers.
When I see people are tense, I, there's two things.
I, I make them sing silly songs.
I, I will go first.
Usually like the naughty limerick that we started this with, which I didn't
record, but if people want to email me, I will send them the Limerick.
But I, I make 'em come up with all sorts of silly songs about
being on the toilet and things.
'cause it's just, if you're laughing and feeling stupid,
it's a bit hard to be tense.
Right?
Karen Rohlf: Yep.
Rupert Isaacson: Anything I can think of.
But then what I'll also do is say, if you can do spider fingers on your
horse's wither and imagine that you were just massaging him a little bit as
you go along, you can still hold your reins with your thumb on top mm-hmm.
And caress your horse and make him feel, but you can also teach 'em to yield to
the outside reign that way actually.
Oh, look.
You know, and Yeah.
But make it pleasurable.
Karen Rohlf: Yeah.
Rupert Isaacson: This concept of joy and pleasure, that it should feel good to
your horse, that it should feel happy.
It is missing.
Karen Rohlf: I mean, why else are you doing this at these days?
Rupert Isaacson: Say that again?
Karen Rohlf: I said, why else are we doing this?
I mean, this is all human folly, and indeed, we're supposed,
supposed to be doing it for fun.
We don't, we're not fighting wars anymore.
I mean, this is, you know, I tell myself all the time, I'm like, you
know, what's it worth to get my horse to fancy PR on my property
around when nobody's looking like it?
It come on like this.
Rupert Isaacson: Well, it's an exercise.
Enjoy.
Yeah, yeah,
Karen Rohlf: yeah.
Rupert Isaacson: And an exercise.
Joy is inherently worth it for its own sake.
Provided the horse's sharing in that joy.
Absolutely.
And you're doing it together well, now that you've reached this sort of all gust
position of being the car, Royal Highness,
Karen Rohlf: whatever that means,
Rupert Isaacson: carer ness.
Karen Rohlf: Actually, wait, I wanted, I wanted just to say before you get onto
the important subject of me I just read somewhere that the uk they're allowing
voice or they're going to allow voice.
And I'm really curious of like, which words are they?
You like the, when you said like the negatives, you're allowed to say, like,
I'm just so curious of how that's going to be used, but it's really I mean, it
opens up to being able to use at least soothing tones or, you know, absolutely.
That's the latest.
It's the lightest of aids.
Like, why not, how is that cheating?
Rupert Isaacson: Also the most clearly direct of aids?
Because it's the aid that anyone more or less can use.
Because I think if there's anything that defines our
species, it's the larynx, right?
Karen Rohlf: Mm-hmm.
Rupert Isaacson: We, we are called homo sapien sapiens,
which means the thinking ape.
But that's not a terribly good description because anything with a brain thinks,
and some things have eight brains, like oc, you know, octopuses or whatever.
Karen Rohlf: Yeah.
Rupert Isaacson: Yeah.
So.
But what most animals vocalize and some of them vocalize in a
very complex way, but we are the ones who came up with Shakespeare.
We are the ones that do rap, you know, storytelling.
That's us.
Mm-hmm.
Right.
So for us to use our voice comes so naturally to us.
Karen Rohlf: Yeah.
Rupert Isaacson: Why would we cut away?
Karen Rohlf: Yeah.
Rupert Isaacson: The most powerful thing.
Karen Rohlf: I think.
So this'll be interesting to see how, how it's used, but it, it's a, it's
a moving in a really nice direction.
I think.
So, anyway.
Good.
A little tidbit there.
Rupert Isaacson: I think the whole thing is actually moving in a good direction.
I think it has to because it's,
Karen Rohlf: I was gonna say it has to.
Rupert Isaacson: Yeah.
It's, you know, if it doesn't, it'll die.
Now that you've reached this position where you have a platform and people
listen to what you say do you.
Are you being brought back into the tournament world
now to help with these tools?
Because I mean, you are, you're sitting there in Ocala, which
is, it's not quite Wellington.
Wellington is real belly of the beast, but Ocala is not, not belly of the beast.
It's, there's a lot of pretty serious high dollar, high money, high ambition,
you know, sport ridey stuff going on from thoroughbreds to dressage
and jumpers and all Points and Western and all points in between.
Who comes to you?
Karen Rohlf: I, you know, it's students who love their horses
and want to learn what I'm doing.
So I ha I do have students that compete.
A student just did their their horses first Pre St.
George.
It was horse that was given to them because it was about to be put
down for extreme behavior issues.
Mm-hmm.
And, major.
Yeah.
Anyway, they just competed, so I'm not anti-competition, but I,
I am here to spread the word and help whoever would like to come.
I helped a young girl with a, with a Grand Prix jumper, who did an amazing
job with her horse, who was trained originally by a guy who dug a pit on
his property, would get the horses in the pit and then beat them until
they figured out how to jump out.
And now she can do Grand Prix bridals.
So I help the people who are attracted to my stuff and would like help in this.
I don't feel like it, I think at first I felt this crusade of I'm
gonna go change the industry.
I, I feel as far away from the horse industry, I don't feel like
I'm part of the horse industry.
Most of the horse industry I don't like.
And I think there's this inherent.
Problem in industry of money and pressure, and I don't know the solution.
And
Rupert Isaacson: yeah,
Karen Rohlf: I don't even know if there should be a horse industry,
should there really be an industry of breeding million dollar horses
and then they have to perform.
I don't know.
I, I just do, I am with horses because I love horses.
I love the horses more than sport, and I love the individual horse in front
of me more than horses in general.
And yeah, I'm, I'm happy for the internet to be able to share this
and I'm happy for patients like this.
I just, in my part of my life, I'm, I'm, it's a weird blend of, I really wanna get
the word out and I will help who I can help and whoever would like this help.
But I really like peacefulness.
I.
Rupert Isaacson: Mm.
Karen Rohlf: And I love my horses.
I have seven and I want to Yeah.
Spend time being my, I think my goal for a long time as a professional
was to not live like a professional.
I'm like, I'm like, how come the amateurs get to have all the fun
hanging out with their horses?
Yeah.
While I'm doing professional horse trainer stuff.
So I live, you know, people say they wanna come see my facility.
I'm like, it's my living room, it's just my property and I have
my horses on it, and that's it.
'cause I like my horses to live free.
And if I have borders, then they can't live free.
And yeah.
So I am, I, I am trying to spread the message and the philosophy.
I have so much online access.
I will go yeah, I will teach anybody who's interested in this stuff.
I'm finding it even a little bit difficult to go.
Like you said, you stopped doing clinics, like I find even expos and stuff like
that, I find it more and more challenging.
I'm like, I still feel like I'm gonna have to go there and show something or
prove something or make some result.
And yeah, I think I, I am really focused on, at and in the one hand
spreading the word far and wide.
And on the other hand, the moments with the horses, I want it to feel
real and intimate and not like a show.
So
Rupert Isaacson: I think you put, that's the word intimate, isn't it?
Karen Rohlf: Yeah.
Rupert Isaacson: Because
Karen Rohlf: like you said, like I wanna be able to make the decisions and be real
and not try to like demonstrate something.
So it's, I'm just, it's a funny place and it's more in my head 'cause I'm
sure I can go demonstrate something.
But I'm trying to, I, I get think just on the personal journey, part
of things I've been working really hard to let go of my ego and then
I'm like, well, how do I do that?
And then do marketing and then go put on a show for people.
Like, I just wanna be in the moment and see what happens
and help, help the, the being.
You
Rupert Isaacson: can, you can do it, you can do that, you
can do that if it's in service.
Mm-hmm.
So for example, as obviously I go through that because when, when I stumbled
into this thing with autism, that we really did stumble into something that
worked first, my son became verbal.
Verbal, and then it happened again and it happened again and it happened again.
And then we realized there was a structure to it and we started to
get the neuroscientist to explain it and okay, we could replicate this.
And then I went through this real shit.
If we do that, I.
Then a people will throw 'em mud at you and that's always
uncomfortable, but b you're gonna have to get out there and do it.
And then I thought, yeah, but if I don't, I'm a wanker because there are so many
parents like me standing in a living room or a field lost not knowing what to do.
And if I happen to have stumbled into something that works and I don't put
it out there in the public domain for people to either use or not use
as they wish, then I'm withholding.
Karen Rohlf: Mm-hmm.
Rupert Isaacson: And given that, that, that what I'm withholding is a way to
alleviate suffering, I don't actually have the right to withhold it weirdly.
And I think that you are probably a little bit in that position.
So if you found a way that addresses this dressing of the horse thing
that takes the suffering out.
You kind of do have to put it in the public domain.
Karen Rohlf: Well, yeah.
No, and that's where I, you know, I have a lot of resources and, you know, one
of the online courses that we have, I'm so proud of because it's, it's not just
material, but we do weekly calls, so we're, you know, we're in conversation.
I think this is what, you know, there's a, the world is bombarded with online
courses, but it's really the live support, it's the community and the being able to
like, talk about what's happening and, and help people with the thought process.
And, you know, this glo this more holistic view because it's not just a technique,
it's in the context of the whole thing.
So, I mean, I have a huge community.
I've got instructors that help.
I have a lot of resources out there.
And that makes me really happy.
I love being on podcasts.
I'm presenting next week with a group that was, is talking about the
historical, you know, perspectives of cruelty and horse training.
And I was looking at that and I'm presenting like the modern ethical,
I'm like, I just, this is, you know, to bring this awareness.
People have the resources.
I think I'm, I think it's just at this moment I'm trying to
balance that with my own personal peacefulness and that's tricky.
Rupert Isaacson: Mm-hmm.
Karen Rohlf: So that's just yeah, that's,
Rupert Isaacson: yeah.
Well, it's always easier to keep your ego in check when
you're not in front of anybody.
Karen Rohlf: Mm-hmm.
Rupert Isaacson: Which means that you have to go get in front of
people in order to learn how to,
Karen Rohlf: to keep your ego.
Oh, yeah.
It doesn't count unless you're in the, it doesn't count to be a, the, a prize
fighter if you never get in the arena.
No, I get that.
I have, I have, yeah.
I have been in public play, so it's just, yeah, it's just a kind of a reshaping of.
You know how, yeah.
How I'm spending my time, how I'm spending my focus.
And at the same time, you know, we have a new course for the
Happy Athlete Training Scale.
We've got the sweet spot of Healthy Biomechanic.
We got tons of stuff.
And and like I said, I love the, I love the live conversation part of it,
because it's not just the technique, it's the, it's the daily, you know,
when you're out there doing it and then okay, it works and now your
horse is doing something different.
And how we think through that and how we support the people's their mental
state through the process and yeah.
So it's,
Rupert Isaacson: you say we, is it.
Is it you and the team at this point?
Is it you and a main collaborator?
Is it, or is it when you use we, are you referring more to your
community and the exchange of ideas?
Karen Rohlf: Yeah, a little, a little bit of all of that.
I do have instructors, so I have instructor in the Netherlands and then
three in the US and one in Canada.
And they, they do a lot of the coaching calls for the, for the live calls, for the
sweet spot of healthy biomechanics course.
And they do clinics and we get together and you know, so
there's continuing education.
So they're really helping with the boots on the ground.
Boots on the ground, yeah, hearts on the ground.
And, yeah.
And then I'm, I'm working with hopefully developing something with,
there's a wonderful Hungarian sport writer and she's being a pioneer and
introducing Bitless dressage in Hungary.
And so we're doing stuff together.
I've been
Rupert Isaacson: reading about this.
Yes.
Karen Rohlf: Yeah, she's lovely.
So we're she's been through my courses and she's just, yeah.
Wonderful.
So we're hopefully developing something to bring the happy athlete training
scale to more people in a more applicable way instead of just a concept.
Rupert Isaacson: Hmm.
Karen Rohlf: And yeah, so I, I really feel
a desire to spread the concept now that I have the pieces in place
where people can learn to just have these conversations and give people
a different way of looking at things.
And that more holistic view is so important to me.
So that's why.
Super happy to be here.
Rupert Isaacson: I'm gonna ask you to go obviously to tell us a bit more about
your online resources 'cause a lot of people are going to go check 'em out.
But before I do, can you tell me about that horse on the wall behind you?
So for those who are listening, some of you're watching on YouTube and you've
probably been, but like me wondering who's that horse on the wall behind Karen and
why has she got that horse on the wall?
There must be a story there, so let's hear that.
Karen Rohlf: Mm-hmm.
Rupert Isaacson: But for those of you who can't, who can't see it, she's
riding, I presume it's you or someone is riding a very lovely SC ball.
Mm-hmm.
What we, the bricks would call a SC ball, but others would call a, a brown
and white pinto, but warm bloody.
Yeah.
Who looks very similar to an ACO bred Dutch warm blood
Oldenberg cross mare that I had.
Karen Rohlf: Mm-hmm.
Rupert Isaacson: Who was jolly interesting.
Tell us about this horse.
Why is she on your wall?
Karen Rohlf: That is Ovation and he is a paint.
It was a, his father was a jumper paint horse, and his mother was a Hol Steiner.
And he was locally bred and yeah, he was bred just around the corner.
And when I bought my property, I didn't have a whole lot of
money left over, but he was just.
Just enough.
And I got him when he was three.
And he is, he's just lovely.
He's a goofball.
He's my magnificent goofball is what I tell him because he's just powerful and
sporty and he's does everything in the Grand Prix and he is a complete goofball.
Most people, if you see him, if you see me on Facebook getting licked
in the face by a horse, it's him.
He regularly, after I tack him up, he'll like grab his, his favorite traffic
cone and try to bring that with him When I go ride, he'll pick up anything
from the ground when I ride him.
But he is turning 23 this year and I feel like I'm just figuring him out.
He's collection did not come easily for him.
He is a big, powerful mover.
A lot of pushing power.
Collection, not so much.
So I had to be really clever in teaching him.
And I mean, I feel like just this year.
We were like, I, I told him, I'm like, ovation.
'cause he's like a, he's a bit of a brute, you know, he's just like raw.
He's a very physical kind of horse.
And I was like, dude, you're 23.
I'm now just past 60.
I was like, we, we need to enter the zen master stage of our relationship together.
So I had to explain to him what, like, what a zen, you
know, a dressage school master.
I was like, dude, you're the most educated horse on the property right now.
Like, you're the zen master.
And so, yeah, so that's now it's like, I feel like we're like in that like,
you know, the chef's kiss version of dressage where he's just light
and he's really carrying himself and powerful and, but his favorite thing
to do, his reward is extended trot.
He's like, gimme me the big stuff.
So yeah, he's, that's why he's on my wall and he's I'm writing him in a rope.
He's in a rope halter right here, so he's like bitless and
Rupert Isaacson: ah, I guess he's fantastic.
I can't see from the angle 'cause he's beautifully, he's beautifully round.
When you say you had to get clever to teach him that he
could collect, what did you do?
Karen Rohlf: Well, like things like, like when, you know, pee off.
So he has a big swingy hind leg.
Like, so, you know, as far as his action, he can really swing
under with his hind leg, but not necessarily articulate his joints.
So, you know, in doing some groundwork and doing like school halt, when I first told
him school halt, he'd just like lean back.
But like the hawks wouldn't bend.
Like, what are you doing?
Like, you have to bend your joints.
So he'd, he'd be very engaged as far as like his feet were under his body.
I'm almost say engaged, but his hin feet were well under
his body, but he wasn't caring.
He just like push, push from those.
So I had this puzzle, I'm like, ask him to school halt.
And he's just sort of leaning back over his legs.
I'm like, you're gonna, you're gonna sit down.
So not in a good way.
So I'd have to like start the school halt and then I teach him to pick up his.
Back foot.
I was like, you know, those joints bend and so we just do a little bit like rock
your weight back and like, you know, those joints bend and teach 'em to pick it up.
And at some point he connected, he went, oh, I can like bend
them when my weight's on them.
I like, yes.
Same thing, he's got a big powerful hind end and not,
not that free in the shoulder.
So like, we first would start, you know, trying to like lift the front
legs and he, like, I noticed when I picked out his feet, if I picked up his
foot, he'd actually drop that shoulder.
I'm like, no, stay level or, you know, so in doing like working on
like Spanish walk kind of stuff, I was like, okay, I need to teach you to like
lift, you know, forget the extension, just lift up through the shoulder.
And so we just played until I could, he could like, oh my, I can do this.
And then when he was there, then extend, and now he already knew how to.
And this hawk.
So, but I had to do a lot of fiddling like that on the ground.
Literally going, your body can move like this.
Did you know that?
And then, and then taking that into the riding and, you know, you figured this out
because you went and studied with masters.
Who knew this?
I kind of had to figure out myself 'cause I didn't come from that
kind of dressage background.
But whenever I, he had injured himself and it was a front leg injury.
And so when we got back to the stage where, you know, they're allowed to move
more, and I thought, well, okay, it's a front leg injury, so this is good news.
So that means they, I can collect them.
And I thought it'd be smart to keep 'em collected, not just bomb around.
And so we were just allowed to walk.
So I spent a lot of time at the walk and being very particular.
About his balance and halt and then back up and walk forward just like
these little moves until the dynamic of energy through his body was such.
And so I could feel him really collecting his walk and not
just getting jammed together.
And yeah, after, you know, doing weeks of that and then I can
start riding, I'm like, holy crap.
He's like more collected than before his injury because I took the
time to just fiddle and find that dynamic, you know, get the dynamic
working and then adding power to it.
So, he really helped inform me about the power of just seeing the dynamic,
seeing how the energy's flowing through the body and, and being conscious
about where, what I'm adding power to.
Because he'll, he'll go forward, you know, anytime.
But it's like I needed to, like, let me organize it and, and
educate, educate his body to what it, its possibilities could be.
And then he, he was like, mm-hmm.
Oh my God, my hind legs bend.
Like, yes, now you can pee off and you can pirouette.
And, and Spanish wok was very therapeutic for him.
Rupert Isaacson: Mm-hmm.
Karen Rohlf: Yeah.
So he's just, he's just a character that I just love.
He's so goofy and so powerful and so resilient and and he's pretty,
Rupert Isaacson: can't wait to come be him.
Yeah.
Hopefully I'll be later this year.
So
Karen Rohlf: yeah,
Rupert Isaacson: I'd love to drop in, pay homage to him.
So listen, I, I feel that there are points in the conversation we
haven't yet had time to touch on.
And as we approach the two hour mark, what I think maybe we should do is if
you give all the resources now, the online resources, all the plugs where
you can find you, how they can sign up for your online stuff, how they can come
and learn, live with you and whatever.
And then what I'd like to do with your permission is I'd like to have
a rematch of this conversation, and I'd like to look at the use
of dressage for equine wellbeing.
You've, you've just been touching on it, you know, in, in this, you
know, for example, how can the, you know, the lifting of the shoulder
and the Spanish book be therapeutic?
You know, how can the pf.
Be therapeutic, particularly as horses age, you know, et
cetera, et cetera, et cetera.
And I think this isn't something that is talked about much yet
within the dressage thing.
Again, I've had to, because most of the therapy horses that
we use are old donation horses that we have to yoga, right?
And so again, that perspective luckily sort of came with the package.
But IS we all know that the current relationship that the public has
with dressage is that it's, it's not there for EQU wellbeing.
And the, that's a little bit like if we were all suddenly, if, if yoga suddenly
became an Olympic sport and suddenly everyone would be like dislocating
their shoulders and displacing their hips, doing the very thing that is
supposed to prevent you from doing that.
You know what I mean?
It's, it's, oh yeah.
So with your permission, could we, could we.
Have a second conversation this year, another podcast where we
can talk about that because I, I do think that would be useful.
I'd love it.
Karen Rohlf: Yeah.
I, I'd love it.
And it's, it's so important and I just feel like, you know what you're just
saying, like, humans can ruin everything by then having to compete, like I
met somebody who's like, their hobby, their, their, you know, life passion
was, you know, orchids and then they're talking about all the competitions.
So I'm like, you got what?
There has to be like a best orchid.
Like, what the hell?
Can't we just enjoy them?
Rupert Isaacson: Yeah.
Karen Rohlf: Anyway.
But yeah, that'd be fun.
Yeah, because we have lots of stories.
Rupert Isaacson: Give us, how do people find you?
Tell us the, the names of your courses, your websites, the lot.
Karen Rohlf: Awesome.
Well, if you, if I'm very googleable, but if you go to dressage naturally.net,
you will find everything.
There's usually a little green bar on the top that gives whatever
is currently you know, the, the current thing that's happening.
But there's also a, a page called Learn and that will list all the courses and
it, it lists all the online offerings I have in kind of reference to that happy
athlete training scale of like, which part of the scale does it focus on?
So there's lots to choose from.
The, if anybody wants to kind of, the, the lowest price offerings
are my video classroom, which is just the entire library.
And you can go muck around and there's a free trial.
But a lot of people get lost and, and maybe don't want a subscription.
But the other one I recommend people go to is called How to Create a Happy Athlete.
And it's very concise and it goes through that happy athlete training scale so
that you really get the whole concept.
And then I have like key exercises in each section to, to help, help build that.
And so that's, that's my new favorite introduction to kind of get the
nutshell without being overwhelmed.
And I just leads you through, I just go through the modules and there's
a bunch of q recorded, Q and As.
Where you can hear me, you know, student questions and then how I think, talk
through and explain the logic and how I'm answering based on that scale.
So that's super fun.
And then twice a year we open our finding the sweet spot of Healthy biomechanics
course which is six months of you get lifetime access and then six months to
live weekly calls, which is super cool.
And that's gonna be opening up later in March.
And that's for anybody who's like, all right, I'm in.
We will hold your hand, we will walk you through it, and we will talk to you every
week to make sure you don't get stuck.
So that's it.
And we, you know, when you get to the website, if you look under the.
Contact us page or in, it's actually the link is also on the learn page,
but we do free private consults, which means you can get on the phone with
one of my instructors and my right hand person and you can sit and just have a
private conversation and tell her what's going on with you and your horse, and
she'll help point you to what she thinks will be the best the best resource.
And we are in touch all the time, so if you need to talk to me, you can.
But sometimes it's just in this internet world, it's so nice just to talk to a
human and be able to like, explain things.
So we really wanna offer, you know, the, the live support.
There's always someone you can talk to.
We welcome emails.
Yeah, just don't, don't be shy about reaching out if you
have a question or a comment.
We always available
Rupert Isaacson: and the book.
Karen Rohlf: Yeah, on the book you can get to that from our shop.
It's called, you know, dressage Naturally and it comes, the book itself comes with
three hours of video, which is super fun.
Rupert Isaacson: Cool.
Karen Rohlf: Yeah.
Rupert Isaacson: Alright, well you heard it lads, so go over there,
check it out, put your money down.
And we are gonna have Karen back on and we're gonna talk about, I, I think what
we'll do is I have a second podcast called Equine Assisted World, and I think that's
where we should have that conversation.
Okay.
Because sometimes, you know, we are assisting Equines Equines at assisting us.
Karen Rohlf: Yeah,
Rupert Isaacson: that
Karen Rohlf: interesting.
Rupert Isaacson: Look out for that one.
Please.
If you're listening and watching.
Karen, thank you so much.
This has been really educational and fun.
Well
Karen Rohlf: thank you.
Yeah, super fun.
And hey, will you come on my podcast sometime?
Rupert Isaacson: I would love to come on your podcast.
Karen Rohlf: Awesome.
We will, we will arrange that.
Then
Rupert Isaacson: shoot me an email or, or a text and we'll do, yeah, we'll do that.
Okay.
Until the next time, my friend.
Karen Rohlf: All right.
Thanks.
Rupert Isaacson: Bye.
Thank you.
Bye-bye.
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