• When you get on a horse every thing you do with your body has the potential your your horse
• Balance is great attributes for a rider to have when riding, because having these qualities will make you far more effective as a rider
• Many things that will influence your horse rideability, trainability and performance including everything from environmemnt, care, management, equipment, and the list goes on
• To really get peak performance you have to being continually looking at the entire picture
• It is always amazing to my mom to see how a horse in one situation thrives and in another does not even appear to be the same animal.  This is just a reminder as to how significant a role we play in our animals abilities to perform and do their job. 

2.  Stillness is a necessary for  teaching and learning 

• The best way to teach is to effectively communicate 
• Communication is required for  training and teaching 
• If you are reacting you are not effectively communicating 
• The best way to learn or accomplish something is to focus 
• If you are reacting to a distraction neither you or your horse are are focused on the task at hand
• When distractions are reduced there is stillness 
• With Stillness both communication and therefore  teaching and learning are enhanced 

3.  To train we move from Stillness to Movement to Stillness to Movement …….

• We must first achieve stillness.  
• We teach a small skill and refine the communication to achieve the skill as we return to stillness. 
• We repeat this process to teach another skill and another skill.
• The constant flow from movement to stillness to movement is reflected in the Taiji symbol. 

4.  Every great accomplish is the result of learning a series of simple skills 

• First you need to master simple skills
• Then you can combine the simpler skills to learn  and teach your horse more complex skills. 
• The end result is the training of complex tasks executed with the simplest of communication 

5.      Taiji horsemanship embraces progressive levels of communication 

• As Tommie Turvey will say......Ask, Tell and Make 
• Only do you move to a more aggressive form of communication when you are sure that you have clearly communicated what it is that you are asking them to do and that the horse has been given the basic skills to be able to do what he is being asked to do
• Beating a horse is often not an appropriate or effective way to teach a horse.

6. Failure is a requirement of success

• Just as with the taijitu symbol…… also considered to represent ying and yang, where there is light, there is dark.
• The Taiji symbol is symbolic of how seemingly disjunct or opposing forces are interconnected and interdependent in the natural world.  No state is possible without it compete opposite also being present.  
• Where there is success, there is going to be failure.
• It is from our failures and mistakes that we are forced to problem solve and hopefully “Learn from our mistakes”
• You know if you keep doing the same …you will continue to get the same result.
• Failure reinforces the need for us to be ongoing problem solvers and use our failures to learn!
• Many people respond to failure with force or aggression when dealing with animals, when in reality we usually fail because we have skipped a step or haven’t mastered a step. Usually we are much further ahead of the game going back to stillness and rethinking our approach to how to solve the problem. 
• As Elizabeth Solter always says when a mistake is made or something doesn’t go as planned.  Done …..Over……Figure it out…… Fix it……..Next 

7.  Perfect balance and harmony results in achievement of  the “supreme ultimate”.   

• Supreme Ultimate can be the ultimate achievement of any goal or tasks and will be different for every single person.   

8.    Skills, goals and accomplishments should evolve, continually giving birth to new ideas and  skills.  

• Every single persons “supreme ultimate”  will change and evolve, as they change and evolve thus constantly giving birth to new skills.