Karen will share a way of improving your position, especially in order to increase stability and engagement. If you tend to be on the 'floppier' side of things, or if you are looking to develop your skills for riding in an engaged way, then you will love this simple-to-remember concept. Make sure...

Karen talks while she rides Hot Shot to demonstrate how she combines stretchability and collectibility in order to increase the quality of gaits and gymnastic ability of her horse. So many riders struggle with trying to develop collection without getting tightness in the back, and stretchability ...

Taking your horse off the property (especially for a competition or clinic) can sometimes be more ‘exciting’ than you want it to be. In this video, Karen gives some advice for how to set yourself up for success. Many people want a ‘magic exercise’ to ask the horse to do when he is distracted, ina...

It's so important to give your horses breaks during their training sessions. There are different ways to give breaks! This video discusses some different ways you can give your horse a break and helps you figure out which one to give in different moments.

Karen helps a student make a quick improvement on their trot lengthenings by showing them one of her favorite exercises for developing more power and balance in lenthenings. This video will help to start or improve your lengthenings.

In this video Karen discusses some of her strategies regarding how much time to ask your horse to stretch. This is not a 'how to' video, but more about if you are already able to cause/ask your horse to stretch, how do you decide how much should you ask your horse to do it. Karen uses her two ver...

In this video Karen gives you a very simple transition exercise of doing walk-trot transitions with invisible aids while maintaining the same speed. Karen shows how this deceptively simple exercise is the basis of what will later lead to piaffe.

Karen takes a close look at this horse's canter rhythm. He has three beats, but no moment of suspension. Through slow motion and freeze frame you can see how it changes as they make the improvement. She will discuss the exercises they used to achieve this change. This is an excellent video for an...

Karen gives you 3 Questions to ask yourself that will refine your circles. This short video will give you an easy-to-remember exercise that you can use to take your circles and bending lines from 'good' to 'great'. It will help you keep more consistency in the connection, more lightness and balan...

You will probably remember this as the 'Oops I dropped the reins' video ... Karen demonstrates a quick and effective exercise to help a student and her horse find more harmony together while riding. Sometimes on our way to finding a soft connection, it can start to feel stuck or like you and your...

Karen addresses a horse during the first session of a clinic. The student has no previous natural horsemanship experience, so it was a great opportunity to discuss how to use boundaries as a way to become the leader, and cause the horse to be more relaxed.

Karen coaches a student to help increase her horse’s collectibility at the canter by doing specific patterns using a box and the arena. This video is great for anyone with solid working gaits who is moving into collectibility and has trouble with adjustability at the canter.

Karen demonstrates the way that shoulder-in and half pass relate. She illustrates it with Ovation and also shows some more basic ways to begin to develop the skill.
This is an excellent video for anyone seeking to have a deeper understanding of how shoulder in and half pass relate to each other, ...

In this video, DN Licensed Instructor Michelle Young introduces an exercise on line that will build your communication skills and will set you up for starting to ground drive.

Karen shares some of her thoughts on how to make sure you are a happy athlete. Being a happy athlete is one of the main objects of dressage, but to Karen it is less a final goal and more of a starting point! This discussion will be interesting for anyone who is interested in achieving the object ...

Karen rides Natilla as she demonstrates a counter-intuitive exercise: To ride your horse down a hill in order to help get a feel for lightness in the shoulders! Of course, it’s all about HOW you ride down the hill! This video is good for anyone who is able to stop from their seat and is ready to ...

Karen coaches two students to do Hindquarter Yields - In Motion while riding. This movement is an important building block that will help you and your horse learn how to connect the inside hind with the outside shoulder (Essential Gymnastic Ability #5!). This skill, when refined, will help you in...

In this video, Karen coaches a student to achieve more lightness of aids in haunches in. This rider and horse are capable, but tend to get sticky and use more aids than ideal. This video will help anyone doing lateral work, and you can apply this concept of finding Active Neutral to any exercise ...

In this video, you will see a challenging but potentially powerful exercise to do to increase your horse’s collectibility. It is a simple pattern with a lot of relaxation built into it, but it also requires that you and your horse organize yourselves for collection! You will see a rider play with...

In this short video, we will look at a way to ride corners so it builds higher degrees of collectibility. You will also see how you can take that feeling and begin to ask for that higher engagement without the corner. This is a great video if you are ready to either start collection or to take it...

In this video, Karen discusses two possible ways to handle it when your horse doesn’t do what you ask: Try again with a different approach vs. Reinforcing your aids in the moment. She pulls from video clips from two other training videos to demonstrate and explain how she decides to use which met...

In this video, Karen coaches a student and her new horse to find a better connection from the inside hind to the outside shoulder by using the hindquarter yield in motion. Karen does this exercise with this horse because he is very different one side to the other. This exercise will be the "medic...

It is not uncommon for some horses to 'hop' into the trot from the walk. This can happen for several reasons, but it's often related to tightness in the back or lack of thoroughness. Some horses just tend to do it by nature, but often I see it appear at a stage when riders are asking for more col...

Karen and Marcel use some simulations to describe the power that you achieve when there is a positive connection within the body. You will see Ovation show this in a transition to lengthening, then we will explore it in simulations using a ball. Marcel joins us again in a very powerful exercise