Welcome to Riding with Softness by Christina Holmbaeck

My training philosophy is rooted in the belief that our horse must understand what our light aids mean and maintain its form when we release pressure. This leads to the horse continuing the exercise while we sit still, doing nothing more.

The most important thing for me is that you understand and are capable of training your horse yourself. Training and educating a horse is quite complex, requiring experience and routine, but everyone has to start somewhere. It’s crucial to gather all the golden insights from the beginning, so you don’t have to reinvent the wheel. The more you understand your horse, the better you can shape your own technique and apply what suits both you and your horse.

I believe that most people need to learn to see first, and later they can learn to feel the movement. That’s why my teaching is very practical at first. Once you know where to look and how to assess your horse’s movement quality, it becomes easier for you to feel what’s happening.

I’m highly motivated by seeing my students succeed. Success is when we can start to feel what’s happening, and we begin to trust that we know how to help our horse understand what we’re asking for. To achieve success, we need to know why we do what we do, understand how our horse learns, and grasp the learning process. The key to staying engaged in this process is feeling safe enough to experiment. Only by daring to do too much or too little can we find the correct balance.