Looking for descriptions/explanations of the spiral seat and an internet search didn’t turn up much. 
I’d specifically like a good explanation of the spiral seat in canter. Has anyone got a suggestion?
Do you mean how you use your seat when spiraling in/out at the canter?
I thought you must be talking about a new kind of saddle or something.
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I wonder whether this is what Charles de Kunffy teaches for the canter. It’s a somewhat exaggerated turning of the body. I’m not exactly sure how to explain it, but it’s kind of like a pedaling a bicycle backwards with your seat bones.
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Maybe this is more familiar: remember that your hips are supposed to mirror the horse’s hips and your shoulders are supposed to mirror the horse’s shoulders, right? So in a turn at walk or trot your outside hip is further back than your inside hip and your inside shoulder is further back than your outside shoulder. In other words, your hips turn to the outside and your shoulders turn to the inside. Often referred to as a Spiral Seat.
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The best description I have heard is to think about your body like a spiral staircase, so you have an upright center and the outer side of your body is spiraling in the direction of travel, with the lower leg back a bit, but the outside shoulder more forward, which makes room in the outside rein. I don’t like to think of outside hip (seatbone really, they can’t be separated) coming back. That would cause you to be twisted in the saddle and potentially influence your horse to fall out off the line of travel. Your seat needs to be aligned in the saddle perpendicular to the horse’s spine since the horse and saddle are pretty inseparable (one hopes).
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Should work the same no matter what the gait. The purpose is to create and control bend.
Except it isn’t exactly the same because the horse’s inside shoulder is further forward when turning in canter, whereas at walk and trot it is the outside shoulder that is further forward. On a straight line at canter the rider’s outside shoulder should be back, and in a turn or circle the riders’ shoulders turn into the turn but not to the degree that they would at walk or trot. It’s a detail that gets glossed over regularly but it makes a difference! Particularly in maintaining counter canter on a horse with established flying changes but more subtly in the quality of movement in any canter.
Perhaps I need to write the article I wish I could find!
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Good description. I didn’t know it had a name. 
I ran into the concept from “Anatomy of Dressage” by Volker Schusdziarra and Heinrich Schusdziarra.
I got this book decades ago when it was titled “Anatomy of Riding”, same authors of course.
This is an excellent book. What they describe is the rider’s shoulders going with the horse’s shoulders while the rider’s hips go parallel with the horse’s hips. My riding teacher was happy to find that there was actually a term she could use to describe the action.
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I wont disagree that there are differences in degree depending on the gait. But at the extreme - canter pirouette - I have to turn my shoulders (upper body) quite a bit to bring the horse around. Will think about this later when I ride.
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I’ve been studying dressage for a long time and I’ve never heard that term. So I’m not sure I agree with, “Often referred to as a Spiral Seat.” Not often, I dare say. Besides that though, it’s been my experience that most riders are not able to dissect their position in relation to the position of the horse to that degree. It just messes them up. Are you asking in the context of saddle fitting (as it seems that is what you do)?
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I agree with Mondo. I have been fortunate enough to ride with and listen to some of the top clinicians and instructors. I have never yet heard that term.
I do agree with the dynamics mentioned.
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@Mondo, I’m asking as a riding instructor, as that is also what I do. 
@jackie Cochran, does Anatomy of Dressage/Anatomy of Riding specify how the shoulder position changes in canter as related to other gaits?
A student has asked for more resources as she mulls the concept and I’m trying to find something helpful.
Is there another term or phrase that I should be searching?
Jackie Cochran is correct. I own the book she mentions – it’s a good one! My coach teaches that the inside shoulder of the rider must come back, which in turn weights the inside seatbone and leg slightly more as you ask the horse to turn, ride a shoulder-in, a half-pass and so forth. Another way I describe it to my own students is to point your sternum towards the direction you want the horse to go. Other instructors have said “advance your outside shoulder as you turn”. it all adds up to the same idea – just whatever seems to help the rider understand what’s expected. It’s the same in canter as it is in trot or walk. You still want the horse to bend around the inside leg, so the rider’s posture is the same.
it’s important to remember that you don’t drop your shoulder towards the turn (a common mistake). Sally Swift recommended the rider think of those shoulder yokes that milk maids carried buckets of milk with – one bucket on either side. Don’t drop your milk buckets! Your hands go along with the “spiraling” shoulders – hanging relaxed from the shoulder joints, and not one hand pulling back while the other hand throws the rein foreward. The hands stay together over the front of the saddle/withers.
This is an interesting discussion to me because for the last few months, for the life of me, I could not"feel" my right seatbone, no matter how well I thought I was using my shoulder to initiate the turn, expecting my weight to go to/through my right seatbone and down my leg. Wasn’t happening. I visited my doctor (Chiropractor in this case). X-rays showed my sacrum had a 12-degree tilt down to the left! I also had an old whiplash injury to my neck that the Dr. wanted to fix. I’ve been going through treatments, adjustments, heel lifts for my “short” left leg & traction for my neck, etc., and lo and behold! I found my right seatbone again!
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Never heard of the term « spiral seat » either, and that’s probably the reason why you haven’t found much about it on the internet.
As an instructor, you should be able to explain your theories to your students.
Where did you get that term?
Have your student find a book by Müseler, he’s the first to talk about moving the inside seat bone forward for the canter departure and bringing the outside shoulder forward while turning.
If a rider wants to keep his balance in a turn, he has to keep it in line/above the horse’s own balance.
« Centered riding » by Sally Swift is also a good book to understand the biomechanic of riding.
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So I should have said “sometimes” rather than “often”. Oy. Yet I’ve never heard it called anything else. I have frequently heard the explanation without any label at all but that doesn’t lend itself to searches, does it? I think I initially heard the term on the old Classical Dressage Yahoo group run by the Ritters but it has come up in other places, such as the link I posted above (post #7).
@alibi_18 Obviously I can explain, as I did very briefly above. I have a student who likes to get very deep into theory (and she has said quite a few times that she is lucky to have found in me an instructor who can do that with her) and she likes to read. I’m trying to help her out.
Many thanks to those with suggestions.
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If it makes you feel better, I have heard about the spiral seat years ago, but I don’t use it because I find the term to be biomechanically confusing. It’s not a spiral system, it is a rotating axial system. If you teach it as the latter, it will be much clearer, IMO.
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Seen on Dingoes Breakfast rider biomechanics,and from Mary Wanless here are some links to pics, not sure if the websites work ?
https://www.pinterest.com.au/pin/331436853824553264/
http://www.dingosbreakfastclub.net/DingosBreakfastClub/BioMech/Spiralseat1.html
https://www.pinterest.ru/pin/720787115331754499/
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Nostirrups - Beth Baumert includes a beautiful description of the spiral seat in her book “When Two Spines Align: Dressage Dynamics”. She says that is German textbooks it is referred to as the “twisted seat”. Basically it is the way you described it - hips parallel the horse’s hips, shoulders turn inwards around the spine. This causes the inside leg to create a connection with the outside rein, which turns the horses shoulder’s around the turn. Baumert’s book is wonderful and should appeal to your student!!
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