While I was riding with Arthur Kottas, I learned more about the program for foreign students at the Spanish Riding School. Based on passing an entrance examination, both men and women could be accepted at the school for a three-month period. They were taking one or two foreign students at a time. I aspired to become one of those students.
I talked to Kottas about this after I had been training with him for some months. At that time, he told me that I would need at least another year before he would feel comfortable allowing me to take the entrance examination. I continued training with him throughout 1978.The training program was demanding. As a student, you were rarely praised. The feedback was almost always negative, and the constant criticism served as the encouragement to improve.
In addition to taking lessons at Kottas's barn, his students were allowed to watch the morning classes at the Spanish Riding School. At least three or four days a week, I would go to the school in the early morning. I never tired of watching the riders.
When I first arrived in Vienna, I had left Gesar in Boulder. He stayed at the Court with Pat because I didn't know if my living situation in Europe was going to be stable enough for him. It was difficult for him to be separated from me. He used to ask Pat to call me so that we could talk on the phone. He was quite concerned about when he could join me. After about six months, I found a nice house to rent, with a garden with plum trees and a beautiful lawn.
When I moved into my little house in Vienna, on Roterdestrasse, I arranged for Pat to bring Gesar over to live with me. (By this time Jeanine had returned to the United States.) Pat and her new husband, Tom Adducci, both lived in the house with us. Soon after Gesar arrived, I took him to a performance at the Spanish Riding School, which he loved. It gave him some idea of what his mother was doing all this time in Vienna.
When he was four-and-a-half, Gesar enrolled in kindergarten at the British Diplomatic School in Grinzing, a very nice area of Vienna. Although his school was conducted in English, he also learned German during his time in Vienna. I think this was a positive time in Gesar's life. He found it exciting to live in Europe. However, the other children sometimes teased Gesar on the bus to school. They called him Quasar, and then they called him Gay-sar. For the winter, I bought him a Russian-style fur hat, and he looked very cute in it. The kids would steal his hat and throw it around the bus.
As the end of 1978 approached, Kottas and I agreed that I was ready to take the entrance examination to become a foreign student at the Spanish Riding School. I was both terrified and excited by the prospect that I might actually be riding there in the new year. I wrote a letter to the director of the Spanish Riding School, Colonel Albrecht, requesting that I be allowed to take the entrance examination. My test was scheduled for the middle of December.
The day of the examination arrived. Afterward, I wrote to Rinpoche, describing my experience:
The whole thing was quite fantastic. It should have been a time to be most paranoid, because I was being judged by the best school in the world. Strangely, I felt very at home. I arrived at the Spanish Riding School twenty minutes before the test and was very nervous. I roused my sense of confidence.
As I set foot into the sand of the arena, I was overwhelmed with the feeling that it was sacred ground. Siglavy Beja, the riding master's star horse, was led out. He was wearing a bridle inlaid with gold. The groom held him as I mounted and then I put all four reins in one hand (left) and dropped my right hand and as I walked past the portrait of Emperor Karl, I saluted. I then proceeded to ride. The reins are held in the traditional manner with three in the left and one only in the right to leave room for the sword.
The commands were called and as I started to ride, I realized that I felt completely at home. The horse was the most wonderful one I have ever ridden. He is a Lipizzaner stallion, like the old sculptures with a baroque neck. He felt so strong and energetic. There was never speed, but only rhythm and power.
At some point I was told to stop. I dismounted and saluted. The director came and shook my hand and told me that I had passed. I am very grateful to my teacher for his support throughout the test.
Riding in such a beautiful environment on such a magnificent horse, I was totally carried away. The environment had its own magical wholesomeness, and I lost all awareness of myself. Only afterward did I realize that it had been like a dream with only impressions of color and energy. It was very brilliant. I hope I don't sound overdramatic, because I feel very grounded. It was the most intense experience of my life. I now understand what you mean when you talk about 100 percent lack of doubt.
You know, without your teaching, I never could have appreciated the experience. Thank you.
Even now, when I look back on the entrance examination, I remember how awe-inspiring it was to ride in that hall for the first time. The manege, or the arena, itself is huge: fifty-five meters long, eighteen meters wide, and seventeen meters high. Forty-six columns support the gallery. The interior is entirely painted in white and bathed in light, which comes both from the windows in the hall as well as the magnificent chandeliers that hang from the ceiling. It felt like such a gift to be able to ride in these circumstances. During the test I remember thinking, "Even if I don't pass this examination, at least I've ridden in this hall."
Spanish Riding School
As Christmas 1978 approached, I felt a quality of joy and celebration in my life. It had been a long and difficult journey with many ups and downs, but I felt now a sense of satisfaction that I had accomplished a cherished goal: to be accepted as a student in the Spanish Riding School. I looked forward to beginning my studies there in the new year.
On December 24, 1978, I rode in a Christmas quadrille at Kottas's barn. A quadrille is when a number of riders execute all of the same dressage movements in formation together. It is quite beautiful and requires a great deal of harmony and communication among all of the riders and their horses. After the quadrille, we had a party where a hot alcoholic punch was served. I had invited Gesar, Pat, and Tom to come and watch the quadrille and stay for the party. Pat had driven her car to the barn, and she took Gesar home early in the evening. Tom and I stayed later, and we both got a bit intoxicated. I had just purchased a used powder-blue Mercedes. Tom volunteered to drive my car home, and I accepted. On the road from the barn going through the Vienna Woods, there were steep hairpin turns. The road was quite icy. At a certain point, as we were driving around one of these hairpin turns, Tom said to me, "Hang on." Up to that point, I hadn't realized that anything was the matter. However, the car was skidding out of control on the ice, and the road was about to go into an even sharper turn. Tom tried to drive the car off of the road between two trees so that we could come to rest in a field. However, the passenger side of the car, just behind my seat, impacted with the tree. The tree crushed my seat forward against the dashboard, and I knew immediately that I was seriously hurt. I wasn't wearing a seat belt. I think if I had been, I would have died, actually, because of the way the tree came through the back seat. The only thankful part was that Gesar had gone home earlier with Pat. If Gesar had been in the back seat, he would have been killed.
I remember knowing that I must have broken some bones, but I still wanted to get out of the car, which I probably shouldn't have. People from the barn pulled me out of the car, and I remember lying on the road. Tom was fine, but he was hysterical. He nearly got run over because he was completely panicking. A doctor who had been at the quadrille stopped to help us, but without medical equipment, he couldn't do much.
They called an ambulance, and I was taken to the hospital. I didn't have any say about where the ambulance took me. They drove me to what they call in Germany a Gastarbeiter Krankenhaus, which is a sort of immigrant workers' hospital. Most of the patients were Turkish workers who didn't speak German. At the hospital, I told the staff that they absolutely were not allowed to cut off my riding boots. It's funny the things you fixate on in a situation like this. It turned out that I had fractured four ribs and that I had a fair amount of bleeding into my lungs and chest cavity.
The facilities at the hospital were primitive. The beds didn't even crank up and down. There was a metal bar that hung from the ceiling, and if you wanted to sit up, you had to grab hold of it and pull yourself up. It was Christmas Eve, so they had to get the doctor on call to come into the hospital from a party he was attending. A rotund, white-haired Austrian doctor arrived. As he leaned over me and was asking me how I was feeling, he exhaled what seemed to be pure Schnapps. I became terrified about what might happen to me at that point. Altogether, the hospital stay was frightening and uncomfortable. The only good thing was the food. However, I couldn't appreciate it that much because I was in a considerable amount of pain and they were stingy with the pain medication. My ribs weren't just cracked; they were actually severed. I had a liter of blood in my left lung.
When word of the accident got back to Colorado, the rumor went around that I'd been driving the car and that I shouldn't be allowed to drive myself anywhere ever again. Actually, of course, I hadn't been driving. But we hadn't gotten insurance on the car yet, and the car was destroyed. It was a total disaster.
I remember feeling somewhat devastated while I was in the hospital. My teacher Kottas didn't visit me once. My mother didn't call me either. I had been fighting with my mother over the phone for a few weeks prior to that, over petty things. But she couldn't let things go enough to just pick up the phone and ask if I was okay. I felt abandoned by her once again.
I talked to Rinpoche frequently by phone from the hospital. After a few days, I told him that I wanted to come home to the United States to recuperate, but he was concerned about my traveling when I was badly injured and said that I would have to stay in Austria and weather it out: In fact, I don't think they would have let me get on a plane at that point. Mitchell Levy, Rinpoche's doctor and my very good friend, stayed in communication with me. He explained to me that the doctors in Vienna didn't feel I was stable enough to travel. I was quite miserable. After a week in the hospital, I was allowed to return to my house in Vienna, but then I had to return to the doctor because I hadn't reabsorbed some of the blood from my chest cavity and I continued to be in a great deal of pain. The doctor decided to insert a needle in my chest to try to drain off some of the blood. Something went wrong, I became very ill again, and I had to go back into the hospital for another week. When I was finally sent home, I had to stay in bed for over a month. I was laid up altogether for seven weeks. I wasn't allowed to ride at all for several months. This was depressing to me because it delayed my entrance into the Spanish Riding School.
In May of 1979, I was finally well enough to start riding at the Spanish. I would go to the school in the morning, and then I would go back to Kottas's barn and ride there in the afternoon. It was a busy schedule.
There was a strict dress code at the school. Every day I would ride in white breeches and immaculately clean boots, and I polished my spurs every day with silver polish. I wore a white shirt with what we call a white stock tie, a blackjacket, and a black derby, which is a hat somewhat like a bowler hat.
The horses live across the road from the manege in stables built for the Spanish Riding School. In the morning, they are led by the grooms under the big arches across the road, right through the traffic, and all the traffic stops for the horses. The horses are born black, and as they grow older they become first gray and then white. However, to this day, they still try to have a dark horse in the school, just one horse of a different color. Lipizzaners are not very big horses, but they're very powerful. They have short backs and strong necks, and often a baroque look to their head, somewhat like the Michelangelo paintings of horses. Some of them have a bit of a Roman nose.
I would arrive at the school at 6:30 to 6:45 every morning and pick up my plan, which would tell me which horses I would be riding and who my instructors would be. Every day began with a longe lesson, followed by two other lessons. Sometimes the head rider would be kind enough to let me ride his horse, in which case I would have a longe lesson and then be allowed to ride three other horses.
The format of the lessons was extremely formal and traditional. The rider comes into the arena at exactly the prescribed time for the lesson. You would salute the portrait of King Karl, the founder of the Spanish RIding School, and then you would track to the right. You would perform the exercises and make corrections as dictated by the instructor. At the end of the lesson, you would line your horse up parallel to the short side of the arena. Then, you would dismount, salute your instructor, and then, if you. wished, you could ask him a question. At this point, periodically the director would come out and you would face him and salute him also.
Dressage has been practiced in an unchanged form at the Spanish Riding School for the last four hundred years. The transmission of this equestrian art form is mainly an oral tradition, handed down from one rider to the next. The form that is practiced at the school is a little different than the form of dressage that's practised in competition today. Although the Lipizzaners are not used for competition, the Spanish Riding School is still to this day the holder of the classical ancient tradition of dressage, as it was practiced in the sixteenth century.
I remember my first day there vividly. My initial lesson was a longe lesson, which seemed to go fairly well. For the second lesson, they brought in a horse with a snaffle bridle (a single set of reins with one bit), and I started to ride him around the arena. The instructor said "Oh you think you're so good, but you're terrible. You can't even put this horse on the bit. [This refers to the horse having the correct head positions.] You're a dreadful rider. What's more, your posture is terrible. You don't sit up straight at all. We're going to ask you to ride with a whip behind your elbows to make you sit up straight. Don't lean on it; don't apply any pressure, because this is the property of the Spanish Riding School, and we'd prefer that you don't break it."
I was in physical pain that day as I rode because my broken ribs were still healing. At a certain point, I started to sweat, and my hat started to slip. The instructor said, "Look at you. You look like you came out of the heurigan," which is a wine bar in Vienna. I remember thinking to myself, I wish I had come out of the heurigan. This would be more pleasant if I were drunk." Then the instructor said again, "Oh look at you. You think you're so good, but you still can't put the horse on the bit." It was a dreadfully demeaning experience.
Later on, I learned that none of the riders at the school could put this horse on the bit in a snaffle bridle. They only rode it in the double bridle, which is much more refined and powerful. The instructor was just being nasty because it was my first day and this was how they treated all the new riders. As well, I think there was definitely a stigma about women and foreigners riding in this venerable Austrian institution. But fundamentally, this is just their way of teaching.
After I finished for the day, I was upset and also noticeably disoriented. Driving back to the barn to ride my horses in the afternoon, I took a wrong turn and ended up heading in the direction of Czechoslovakia. I was preoccupied by my disastrous ride that morning. When I finally got turned around and made it to the barn, I said to Kottas, "So, are they going to kick me out?" He laughed at me and said, "No, no, this is normal."
I had been waiting for so long to study at the Spanish Riding School, and after just one day, I was feeling deeply discouraged and humiliated. However, I was determined to go forward. I remember thinking, "If I want to get the training and I want to learn this properly, I am going to have to take my personal feelings out of the situation. I'm going to have to take nothing personally and try to take only the good out of this. I have to use my time to learn. I must try my best and not become upset with anything that anybody says." Amazingly, I stuck to this, and this attitude held me in good stead the entire time that I rode in the school. Rinpoche had given me the basic advice that I needed when I started riding with Kottas, and now I found that I could give myself the advice to persevere at the Spanish, knowing that this was a precious opportunity that would not come again.
There's definitely value in the approach they follow at the school. Putting intense pressure on people creates such a sharp edge that people have to push themselves very hard to absolutely do their best. On the other hand, sometimes this approach can have a demeaning and degrading aspect to it. When you are trying your best and the teacher is still relentlessly criticizing you, ultimately you may begin to loathe your instructor. In fact, I think this method encourages that. I definitely went through periods of that when I was training in the school. The mentality is that you will get good in spite of your instructor. You feel that, because they're so demeaning, you're going to show them.
When I'm working with my own students, I try not to rob them of their self-esteem. When people are learning a discipline, it's essential at times to put pressure on them. I had witnessed Rinpoche using this approach with people, including myself, many times. You have to inspire people to perform at their best. However, if you make people feel worthless, you create aggression between teacher and student. I feel that 99 percent of what I learned in the Spanish Riding School was fantastic, but I percent was, for me, about learning what not to do as a teacher. This is just my opinion. I don't feel qualified to pass judgment on the methods they use at the school because they've produced brilliant riders and brilliant horses. It is my personal feeling, however, that we should always work with students in an uplifted manner.
As time went on, my experience in the school became more and more enriching. I think I earned respect by sticking with the program and not being overly reactive. I was given exceptional horses to ride, and I had exceptional instructors. I also had the opportunity to broaden my knowledge about dressage and horsemanship in general by reading books in the wonderful library at the school.
At the Spanish, I also began to understand dressage in another way, as a true Shambhala discipline. The discipline of dressage is a very direct way of harnessing windhorse. At times when I was training there, my riding would completely "click." When everything clicks into place, the experience is unbelievable. You feel that nothing whatsoever is happening, in a very positive sense. How do you verbalize that? Your mind and your horse's body become as one. You experience a regal, uplifted feeling that Rinpoche would describe as the experience of the universal monarch. At times it goes beyond even that. You can have an experience of non-thought, mind beyond mind. The horse also shares some of this experience, I believe. The horses get absolutely hooked on the energy and the discipline if the rider is good.
Recently, I was listening to one of the top coaches in the United States talk to his students before they went around the ring at a horse show. He said: "Pull yourself up. Let them know that you're there. Radiate confidence when you go around the ring. Make the judges say, 'look at me.'" From my perspective, he was basically explaining in his own way how to raise windhorse. He had obviously had this experience himself, and he was trying to communicate it. I believe that the best riders all understand this.
So much of riding is working with your own state of mind. If you let your mind get in the way, you can't work with your horse. I see that in terms of my own development, and I see that in watching other riders and working with students. To be a good rider, you have to go beyond your conceptual ideas about it. You've got to constantly question yourself, to question your state of mind, to push yourself, to constantly be looking at yourself. Otherwise, you don't get any better. There's never a feeling of having mastered the discipline. You can never master dressage. Anybody who's any good is constantly learning. There's never a sense of having arrived at an ultimate destination.
Dressage also teaches you the ability to focus. If you're riding well, even at the most basic level, you don't think about anything except what you're doing. You are completely focused. You have to have control over your mind. If you can't control your mind, you definitely can't control your horse's mind. I learned this over and over again while I was training at the Spanish Riding School.
The head rider, Ignaz Lauscha, was extremely generous to me during my time at the school. He was in his sixties at that point and close to retirement. He took me under his wing, and he would sometimes let me ride his best horse, which led the quadrille at the school on a regular basis. Lauscha was a wonderful instructor, and the horse was also an amazing teacher because he was fantastically trained. With this horse, you could go from the extended trot into passage and back into the extended trot with the most delicate of aids. The extended trot is when the horse is able to trot with the farthest possible reach of the legs. Passage is a very slow, floating trot. (It covers ground, unlike the piaffe, which is trotting in place.) In passage the horse is able, as he trots forward, to hold a very high degree of suspension. He's able to hold himself in the air for longer periods of time, giving a very noble gait. It requires a great deal of strength. One might say it's sort of like equine push-ups. Lauscha's horse was gifted in both the passage and the extended trot, and he could move from one to the other flawlessly.
Ignaz Lauscha had the most beautiful tack on his horse, the most beautiful bridle inlaid with gold. Once when he let me ride his horse, he asked me to ride a half halt before I performed the next movement. A half halt is a rebalancing of the horse. You brace your back, you close your leg, and you push the horse more up to the bridle, so that you are encouraging the horse to shift the center of gravity more to the hind legs. It's sort of punctuation in your riding. He asked me to rebalance the horse, and he wasn't satisfied with the way I did it, so he said to me, "Come on. Half halt!" Then, I made a much bigger one, at which point his gold bridle broke into all these little pieces. I remember them falling to the ground. He said, "Well, you did what I told you, but you broke the bridle!" He was really nice about it. I'm sure it must have been already weak.
Another time I had some difficulty when the director gave me his horse for a lesson. He was well known as an international judge, but he wasn't a fantastic rider. He thought he was an excellent rider, but he had some problems. He had a stallion that he used to ride all the time, and everybody used to laugh at him when he was riding because he used to ride around the arena in a peculiar gait, which he thought was passage. He looked very snotty, with his nose and his chin held up as he rode. We would all sort of snicker at him because his horse was doing the strangest thing with only his front legs whilst the hind legs shuffled along. Then the terrible day came when he said to me, "Because you've been studying so hard, I'm going to allow you to ride my stallion." I thought, "Oh no," because I knew I could never produce passage on that horse. It was a dreadful lesson because he kept saying to me, "Ride passage, ride passage." Probably the horse was doing exactly the same thing with me that it did with him. He obviously had no idea that this was what the gait looked like when he was riding, so he could only be critical of me. Everybody was laughing while I rode.
Another movement that I worked with quite a lot at the Spanish was the flying changes of lead, when the horse changes from one leading leg at the canter to the other leading leg at the canter, without any trot or intermittent walk steps. He just reverses which leg he's leading with in midair. At Grand Prix, the highest level of dressage, a horse learns to do that on every single stride. It's a very difficult movement, because the horse is really no longer cantering at that point. According to the classical view, which is that dressage uses only the natural movements of the horse in the field, the flying change at every stride is a controversial movement because you actually have lost the gait of the horse at that point. So you're taking the training beyond what the horse would naturally do.
One day when I was riding Siglavy Dubovina, the horse of the head rider, he said to me, "All right, just canter down the center line, through the pillars, making flying changes every stride." I had no clue how to do this. (The pillars, by the way, are two posts that are two-and-a-half meters high, with one-and-a-half meters of space between them. As part of their training, the most advanced horses often stand between the pillars and do piaffe, the trot in place, for a long time.) Flying changes at every stride was one movement I hadn't yet ridden. As I rode past Kottas, I said to him under my breath, "How do I do this?" And he said to me, "In the Spanish Riding School we don't ask questions." So I just turned down the center line, and I gave the horse the aids that I thought would be correct for flying changes every stride. The horse was so beautifully trained that he just did it for me. I was thrilled.
There are many classical movements, classical figures, in dressage, just as there are positions in ballet. In dressage, however, many of the figures have their roots in battle movements. For example, canter pirouette was used in battle when you came with a sword toward your enemy. Then, to leave, you'd continue in the full pirouette. The canter half-pass and the trot half-pass, when you go both forward and sideward, were supposed to confuse your opponent, because he couldn't know on which line you were traveling. The flying changes of lead in the air made it possible to turn and escape quickly.
The military origins of dressage are reflected in many customs at the Spanish. For example, when you ride with a double bridle with four reins in the Spanish Riding School, you ride with three reins in the left hand and one in the right. (I mentioned this in the letter I wrote after my examination.) This tradition came about so that your right hand wouldn't be too encumbered to use a sword in battle. Normally, outside of the Spanish, we ride with two reins in each hand. Some military traditions are ubiquitous, however. For example, the main reason that one always mounted the horse from the left side was because the sword used to be on the left hip, so you didn't want the sword to hit the horse as you went over the top. That is now the universal convention. Also, in the Spanish Riding School the mane has to be on the right of the horse's neck. This was so that if you drew your sword, you wouldn't have the mane caught up with your sword.
There are also classical dressage movements that are only practiced at the Spanish. These make up what is called the "haute school," or the airs above the ground. They are not practiced in modern-day competition. However the Lipizzaners are especially talented at these movements. I had the opportunity to experience many of them while I was riding at the Spanish. When I had photos taken at the end of my time there, I did some of these movements for the photographs. I didn't do them on a daily basis, however. One, called the levade, is an amazing expression of collection and shifting of the center of gravity to the hindquarters. The horse actually sits down and brings the forehand completely off the ground. You see many statues in Europe in that pose. Unlike when a horse rears up, in the levade the horse's legs are bent. In the pesade, the horse also has his weight completely on the hind legs, but he is raised up even a little bit higher, but is still on flexed hind leg. This is completely different from when horses rear, which is disobedient.
Then you have the capriole, which is a battle movement in which the horse jumps off the ground and kicks out violently with both hind legs. You could unseat your opponent in that way. There is another movement called the courbette in which the horse comes up on his hind legs, and he jumps forward four to six strides on his hind legs. In battle, you could use that move to advance on your opponent. All in all, it must have been a beautiful war!
I remember the rich feeling of being immersed in the training at the school. Periodically my mind would just stop, and I would think, "How incredibly fortunate I am to be in such a wonderful situation as this." It was so brilliant riding on those horses in that hall, which itself was exquisite and uplifting. There is nothing I've done either before or after that matches that experience. I feel extremely fortunate to have ridden in the Spanish Riding School, and I had that sense of appreciation and almost awe during the whole time I was there.
At the end of my three-month session, I talked to the director, Colonel Albrecht. I said to him, "I know I've almost completed the session. However, I want to understand this tradition more fully, because I want to become a well-trained instructor in the future. I'd like to request that you let me stay for a further few months. In that way, I can learn even more, so that I can take some of this tradition home with me." When the director told me that it was all right and I could stay longer, I was so happy that I gave him a huge hug. He was appalled, I think, but he said I could return.
After I received the acceptance to stay on, I went home to Colorado for a few weeks of the summer, knowing that I would be allowed to return in the fall. I began to ponder what I was going to do in terms of future training after the Spanish. I had a wonderful situation training at Kottas's barn, but after riding in the Spanish itself, I felt that my time in Vienna was drawing to an end. When I was home, Rinpoche and I discussed my future direction. At one point, he suggested to me, "The training at the Spanish Riding School is excellent classical training for you. However, from what you've told me, the competitive tradition is centered in Germany at this point, and I think you will want to understand both schools and both traditions. To complete your training properly, perhaps you should ride in Germany for a few years."
Rinpoche's instincts about my riding career were amazingly accurate. As I said earlier, he had a connection to horsemanship that went back to Tibet. Rinpoche had a white Chinese thoroughbred in Tibet which he rode from earliest childhood on. His horse could do passage, the slow, floating trot in which a horse hovers above the ground a little bit, in moments of suspension. It looks very elegant and lofty. He said that when he would travel to a new monastery, he would do passage as he entered.
Horses were part of his culture. People there still traveled everywhere on horseback; in fact, in parts of Tibet they still do. He always loved horses. But how he knew what was good for me in the Western riding world is a bit of a mystery. His advice to me at this time was instrumental in my decision to leave Austria and go to Germany. I don't think I would have gone there without his influence.
In the latter part of 1979, I wrote to Herbert Rehbein, who was the current German professional champion and legendary in terms of his ability to produce Grand Prix horses. In my letter, I asked if I could bring my horses up in late 1979 and study with him when I had finished in the Spanish. I was happy to receive a letter of acceptance, and I took my horses up to northern Germany just before Christmas in 1979.
Herr Rehbein worked for a man by the name of Otto Schulte Frohlinde, an elderly gentleman who was a patron of dressage. He had built a facility north of Hamburg, which had a stunning indoor arena, as well as beautiful stalls for the horses. It was a first-class, state-of-the-art riding facility. The floors in the barn were mosaics in brick, and everything was Immaculate and magnificent. After my horses were transported up there, I had a chance to settle in over Christmas.
After the Christmas holidays, I met Herr Rehbein. I was struck by his persona from the start. He had the real air of a master. He was very genuine, a man who had a thorough mastery of his riding yet was always gentle and kind. He was someone whom Rinpoche would have said had authentic presence. He was a wonderful instructor. I remember thinking during the first few weeks that I rode with Rehbein how accurate Rinpoche had been in recommending that I go there. I had experienced some difficulties with my big Hanoverian horse, Warrior. Herr Rehbein was brilliant in helping me to sort out these problems.
When I was at Gronwohldhof, Rehbein's barn, I was also given the opportunity to ride other horses apart from my own. I had many opportunities to feel Grand Prix movements on different horses. Rinpoche termed the place a factory for producing great horses, and it was quite a marvelous environment in which people could learn. Rehbein provided a very open ground, and when you saw the people working around you, they didn't make many mistakes as riders. You found yourself going along with the program, and it worked. It was very different from Vienna. There wasn't a lot of external pressure. The approach was quite positive for everybody. Things went well for people, and so you went along.
I'd heard about Herbert Rehbein for a number of years before I began studying with him. He was known at that time to be one of the greatest dressage teachers and riders. He was quite selective about whom he would teach. He also had a reputation for ignoring people who had come to study with him. Sometimes he would say, "Good morning," and that was it. He wouldn't teach them directly at all. He was thought of as a moderately outrageous character, in his own way. This was familiar to me, so it didn't really bother me. I found that he was very helpful with my riding. Herr Rehbein taught that if you're rash and aggressive with your horse on a regular basis, this reflects a lack of knowledge. There are many different ways to communicate something to your horse, and you have to be flexible. If you try to teach your horse something, and he doesn't understand right away or doesn't respond, you don't become aggressive. You have to think, "Can I explain this a different way? Do I need to break it down? What in the communication isn't working? What do I need to establish again in terms of the basic rules?" He stressed that trainers who frequently beat their horses and are abusive to them are never going to produce a good end product.
Max left his dog, Myson, with us. One night after supper Rinpoche said, "Get Myson and bring him in here." I dragged the shaking dog into the kitchen and following Rinpoche's instructions I sat him on the floor and covered his eyes with a blindfold. I set up stands with lighted candles by either side of his head. Myson couldn't move his head without being burned. Rinpoche took a potato and hit Myson on the head with it. When the dog moved, the fur on his ear would catch on fire. I put out the flames. Now and then Rinpoche would scrape is his chair across the tiled floor and whack him again on the head with a potato.
"Sir," I began hesitantly, trying to stop him.
"Shut up," snapped Rinpoche, "and hand me another potato."
I started to empathize with the dog. In fact, I became the dog. I was blindfolded and was banged on the head with a spud and if I turned my head my ears would burn and there was the squealing sound of the chair on the floor. Pissing in my pants I was that dog not being able to move, feeling terrified and at the same time excited. Finally, the scraping chair and the potato throwing stopped and we released the shaking dog, who ran upstairs to Max's empty room.
"That's how you train students," Rinpoche calmly stated to me.
-- The Mahasiddha and His Idiot Servant, by John Riley Perks
I've seen horses that shake before their saddles are put on, and I've seen horses that, when they're taken to learn piaffe, will actually lie down because they're so afraid. I witnessed this during my time in Vienna -- not at the Spanish, but at other barns. You need to be firm, but you never need to be abusive. Of course, if the horse is really out of control, sometimes you have to use very strong methods, but that should be rare.
Herr Rehbein had an enormous amount of experience and seemingly endless psychological resources. He was able to help me train my horses in a very kind way. I learned a great deal from him in a short time.
In this training environment, I felt a sense of genuine relaxation for the first time. In my heart, I'd always known the way that I wanted to ride my horses. When I came to Rehbein, I felt that I was given the freedom to experiment. Everything started to come together. It was a magical time; the riding became very cohesive. In terms of learning how to train horses, it was the first time I was able to trust my basic instincts thoroughly and take possession of the knowledge that I'd accumulated. I felt that he empowered me to do that. I always felt that the hallmark of Rinpoche's teaching was his ability to appreciate people's strength and then to give them the freedom to express this and to develop their own intelligence. Herbert Rehbein was that type of teacher too. Studying with him, I started to come into my own.
I remember watching Herr Rehbein doing a canter pirouette on his horse. He had a feeling of complete, total relaxation. I was watching him ride in front of the mirror, and he was looking at himself in the mirror. His horse was executing an absolutely perfect canter pirouette. I looked up and realized that Rehbein had the reins in one hand and was fumbling in his breast pocket with the other. I finally realized that he was looking for his cigarettes. He managed to pull out a Marlboro and light it, while the entire time, his horse stayed in a double or triple pirouette that was absolutely perfect, right in front of the mirror. Rehbein was really a riding genius, the likes of which the century did not see again.
After spending a few months at his facility in the beginning of 1980, I took my horses over to England for a few months. Gesar had been enrolled in school there the previous fall. Tom and Pat had taken him over. I didn't want to keep putting him in and out of school, and I knew that -- at this point in time -- I could only stay at Rehbein's for a few months. We had rented a small house in England that was called the Deerkeeper's Lodge, on a large estate. You went down a long driveway to this ancient house, built in the sixteenth century.
I came over to England to have the opportunity to compete my horses there. At that time, all foreign horses in England had to go through a test at the National Riding Centre, and then you were told at which level you had to compete. But I felt that I was forced to compete at a level that was too difficult for my horses, especially for Warrior. I think the English didn't want foreigners to bring their horses into the country and then start winning in all the shows. There was a bit of a prejudice toward me, I felt, because I had trained my horses on the continent. However, all in all, I enjoyed the time I spent in England reconnecting with my English roots.
When the Tao is present in the universe,
The horses haul manure.
When the Tao is absent from the universe,
War horses are bred outside the city.
-- Tao Te Ching, by Lao Tsu, by Gia-fu Feng and Jane English
This was the end of a long period when I had quite a bit of independence in my marriage. Although I felt very committed to Rinpoche, at the same time, I was living my own life. There was an interesting tension there. I had realized years ago that I couldn't spend my life having doors slammed in my face, and there was definitely an element of that when I was around him. Everybody wanted to get to Rinpoche, and I was sort of superfluous, on some level. Once when we were on vacation in Mexico, the person helping Rinpoche opened a swinging door for Rinpoche to go in, and then just let it go in my face. At times, it was like I was invisible. I felt that I needed to pursue something for myself or I was going to get depressed. As a creative person, I couldn't play the role of his passive wife all the time. People didn't feel they could be judgmental about Rinpoche, but it was easy for people to be judgmental about me. I didn't want to get caught up in that. Instead, I concentrated on developing myself, through engaging in a discipline that I had a great passion for.
During the years that I was in Vienna, I tried to spend seven months in Europe and seven weeks back home. I had that formula in my mind, seven months and seven weeks. I made a point of coming back for things that were important to Rinpoche. I also started the Shambhala School of Dressage in Boulder, and it continued during my absence. A student of mine and fellow rider, Mary Louise Barrett, would run the school when I was away. I would teach when I came home.
Marie Louise Barrett on Aragorn. HITs/Centerline Dressage, MFS, 8/21/2010
During the summer of 1981, after spending several months in England with Gesar, I decided to leave England and return to Colorado for an extended period of time. I wanted to concentrate on developing the Shambhala School of Dressage, where I was trying to introduce classical dressage training. I decided to bring one of my horses, Shambhala, home with me.