Sally taught riders that if you get the skeleton in alignment, the muscles will follow–the opposite of “muscling” the rider into position or the horse into obedience.

travel details, led horses in lessons,

and rode whenever there

was a spare horse. I got

to ride everything from

a grand prix dressage

horse to a mule (and I

learned a lot about cen-

tering from the mule!)

I was often asked to

lead a horse as Sally

taught her favorite body

awareness lesson, which

involved the rider being

led so they could ride

with their eyes closed

and go into

“pure feel.”

This was a rev-

elation even to

very advanced

riders; I was

privileged to

lead Lendon

Gray’s horse

while she took

a lesson from Sally, who said she’d

never seen any rider get so much from

a lesson; she only had to say it once

and Lendon had it! Another duty of the

apprentice was keeping horses from

getting too close to Sally and possibly

knocking her over; this was not always

easy, because in every lesson the

horses would move closer and closer

to Sally until they were standing

with their heads over her and their

muzzles near her hair; they knew she

was their friend. I also spent a lot of

time sitting beside Sally as she taught

and taking notes; my way of taking

notes is to make sketches with a few

notes, so I wound up with a visual

record of what I learned from

Sally. Many of those sketches be-

came the illustrations for Sally’s second book, Centered Riding II: Further Exploration.

One of Sally’s favor-

ite sayings was, “Ride