There is a RWYM clinic being hosted pretty local to me and I have been interested in such a clinic but it will still be quite the commitment to do it. Paul Boland is the clinician so in particular interested in anyone who has ridden with him. I am typical AA that could use a lot of work on many things but I really need to get my tense body to the point of working with or at least not blocking my horses. I know the recommendation is to do two lessons. Opinions/experiences on doing a single lesson vs the two on back to back days? Anyone done 3 or 4 by using a second horse? My issues are bad enough (in my opinion) that I am not opposed to doing 4 if my other horse is sound enough to do so by then.
I will speak in generality
while riding is great , I would not dismiss the value of observing all the days possible. So much potential to learn
I wish, when I was riding , that I had more opportunity to learn how to unlock and get that centered feel. It just never came right for me.
It might be worth asking if you or the organizer can communicate with the clinician and ask what he thinks. Two days on two different horses may be a situation he knows well. Perhaps all 4 days with the horses alternating each day.
Sorry. What’s RWYM?
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I’m guessing Ride With Your Mind but don’t know anything about it
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I think its a biomechanics person, follower of Mary Wanless.
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Depends on your goals. If that stuff makes you happy then ride, but I would observe.
Its kind of a chicken or egg thing - and really boils down to if you like bopping around working on body position anaogies or if you want to learn how to train your horse. If its the latter - just watch and write down the tips.
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I need the do it physically for it to stick better. Even taking notes to review later if I am not making changes and feeling the difference it isn’t going to stand out to me. I do lesson but my attempts to steer towards working on me only usually results in circling back to them working on influencing the horse again vs my equitation. I am totally to the point that I want to be hounded about my hands and leg and upper body posture. I need to get these bad position habits kicked so I can start to make real progress.
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The only thing that has ever helped me kick a bad position habit was to go to the gym and do more planks. Unstsble hands = unstable core = more planks. Unstable legs = more lunges. Then your body will be able to hold the position your trsinrr tells you to.
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Mary used to regularly visit a farm near me and there’s a local RWYM freelance trainer. IME, the people who really enjoyed that style of teaching are highly verbal processors. They wanted their instructor to describe what every inch of their body should be doing in minute detail and preferably with metaphors. The people I knew best were not competition oriented so I can’t speak to show-ring results, but they were safe and effective riders and their horses were happy doing their jobs.
I had half of one lesson with the local RWYM instructor, filling in for a friend. She was lovely and working on the right things, but I cannot ride and understand paragraphs of language and if you tell me to shoot a laser beam out of my belly button I might fall off my horse cackling. “Outside leg back… Good!” (or “your other outside leg” 
) is more my jam. To each her own.
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Mary Wanless used to come to a barn near me several times a year pre-pandemic. I audited several times. My impression was that there is a lot of unique terminology, and a whole “system” of her own that is ALL that is taught at the clinics. It would be a good idea to audit and/or read her book first in order to benefit from riding. Otherwise you will spend your expensive rides learning her terms instead of trying to use them. I decided I wanted to stick to a more standard dressage system that I have spent decades learning. People who rode either loved it or hated it. A friend who is a prelim level event rider rode in the clinic. Her lessons were mostly at the walk working on position and learning the terms, and to my surprise she loved it and felt it helped her riding. Another friend who lessoned with the local RWYM instructor for about a year now calls it a cult and feels that her riding suffered for the attempted reboot. Nobody was neutral in their opinion.
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I’ve never watched a clinic but I’ve heard the same. I have friends that swear by the method and friends that have warned me to stay far far away from it too.
