If you’re not using the stirrups to stay light in the saddle, what are you using? I understand there are some no-stirrups equitation exercises that ask for half-seat, but I interpreted that as being more about hip angle and balance than clearing the saddle. Otherwise you’d just be squeezing the crap out of your horse’s sides to lift yourself up. I mean unless you’ve mastered the art of levitation you do have to use something as leverage, and I feel like it’s got to be better to use stirrups than to brace against your horse with your entire leg.
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Oops… that’s what I get for not reading the whole thread 
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Helpful exercise to develop a light, secure seat would be things that make your glutes and posterior chain stronger. Squats, goblet squats, barbell squats. Deadlifts, Romanian deadlifts, single leg deadlifts. Go to the gym. You’ll accomplish so much more strength building in thirty minutes in the gym than you ever could on a horse. And do more to improve your riding too.
Make sure you learn how to do them correctly. A whole lot about jumping position made a lot more sense to me when I realize that you don’t fold forward at the waist over a jump, but instead you squat over the top of the jump pushing your butt back.
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Don’t misinterpret thigh. The support comes from your upper calves. If you’re getting it from your thigh, you are pinching with your knee.
Ok here’s a potentially dumb question from me…If you are gripping with your calves, aren’t you asking the horse to go faster? 
Upper calves, right below the knee, should not be asking the horse to go faster. You need your “base of support” low, else you’ll come off in sticky situations.
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I’ll have to experiment with this next time I ride to see if I have this level of control. I’ve only ever thought of my legs/seat in three segments, lower leg, upper leg, and butt.
One exercise that you may wish to try is posting up-up down, up-up down, instead of up down, up down. You are out of the saddle for two beats, instead of one. Unless you can do this effortlessly and rhythmically (which perhaps you can), you are…weak and off balance.
In full transparency, this is a potentially dumb answer, but I don’t think you should feel you’re gripping in 2 point anywhere at all. In fact, when I warm up in canter, I try to visualize an “air vent” of space between my leg and the horse all way down. Sometimes at the walk, I even hold my legs as far off each side as I can, and imagine that if I put a piece of paper under each leg at any point, it would fall right out.
To me, I feel like the security in two point comes from core strength, not leg strength. And sinking your heels deeeep in your stirrups is like fastening your safety belt. I also feel like it helps a lot with leg swinging at the canter. If you keep your lower leg tight, it’s like sitting deep in the canter, you can’t help but swing a little with the motion. But if you sit light and keep your leg soft, you just kind of float there in balance—your upper body doesn’t swing, and neither does your leg. It also keep your horse sharp to leg pressure. I know mine can quickly get dead to the leg, so I always try to warm up with as little interference and body weight as possible, like I’m just a ghost floating up there in the saddle 
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I switch between a dressage saddle and a jump saddle. Back when I was taking actual returning rider jump lessons ten years ago I knew I didn’t have the light seat stability to do much. I’ve plugged away at it over the years doing a lot of trot two point, with my main disciplines being dressage and trail riding (semi back country trail riding).
Anyhow a couple of weeks ago I suddenly found myself one day able to hold a proper forward seat at the canter in the jump saddle. I could do two point, I could let my butt brush the saddle, and I could sit all in the same stretch of canter. It was completely different from standing up and bracing in the saddle.
I would say you hold yourself up by your thighs and core, but you don’t grip with them. Contact is around above and below the knee but you don’t pinch or cling, you just drop your weight into that area. Your calf is off the horse and your feet are below you. I also think you need a good canter. The other variables were, I still had on my winter breeches with silicon 
and I shortened my stirrups a bunch last fall.
The next day, I felt like I didn’t had quite the energy to do this, and maresy was giving me a flatter canter, so I just sat the canter.
So I’d say, shorten your stirrups if necessary and do a lot of trot two point until you can stay up indefinitely without using your hands on the neck.
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What happens if you do both thigh & upper calf?
I saw this comment on a different thread that gripping with the thigh is bad. However, I have recently got in to going to chiro & a kinesiologist, and I find with my newly “properly aligned” body a secure seat feels like there is even pressure from inner thigh to calf. This is with my seat bones in the saddle & my heel/lower leg off the horse.
I can distinguish between gripping with only my thigh (& pinch my knee) and gripping with my calf (which rotates my knee & toes outwards). My former “misaligned” body tended towards the latter where I would grip with my calf and rotate my toes out, in fact you can see the wear on my half chaps is towards the back of my calf. As mentioned, I’ve recently found a sweet spot and a very secure seat (to me & my coach), but it definitely feels like even pressure along where my inner ~leg~ touches the horse (all the way along the thing and into upper calf).
Just want to explore this more! Maybe there are some videos that would illustrate the concepts that you mention?
If you are secure that’s what matters.
Maybe because I grew up riding a lot of Western and bareback, I just don’t get how people can pinch with their knees or grip with their lower calves. It took me a while to recognize visually that’s what some beginners and intermediate riders are doing. I can’t replicate it.
I have some persistent faults but the pinching knees thing isn’t one of them.
