continue with our example of the TV. We have the message (the aids), the transmitter (your independent seat), and the receiver (your horse). The receiver has been tuned to accept certain signals and turn them into information it can understand and respond to (the training of your horse). To close the loop you are the only missing item. Three small steps for you, one giant step towards harmony with your horse. Step one is your understanding of the aids, step two is your ability to coordinate your aids so you can move from shouting commands to maintaining a dialog with your horse, and step three is your skill to correctly analyze the signals coming back to you from your horse.
     Let me describe such a dialog in its chronological order. It starts with your mind (conscious or subconscious) needing to give your horse a message. This is translated into the language the horse understands (the aids). Your body then applies the aids and the horse receives them. Since he is a willing partner, he turns your command into action. This response then is received by you through your sense of feel.
     Once more I need to point out that only if you have developed the independent seat will you be able to feel your horse’s response correctly. Please do not become annoyed with me about these reminders. I only have one foul left. Besides, if your seat is already great you can just ignore these hints, and if it is not, you need to go to work. So as soon as you receive the information from your horse, you analyze it and determine whether your horse responded as you intended it to. If the response was as you wished, there is now harmony between the two of you, and this part of your dialog is complete. If, however, your horse has not reacted as expected, the cycle starts all over again. Your mind (consciously or subconsciously) formulates a correction to the horse’s mistake and sends it to the horse in the form of aids, etc. The same would hold true if the answer from your horse was the right one but was either too strong or too weak. Needless to say that while the process of the dialog follows in this order, it does happen almost simultaneously. The more experienced the rider, the faster this transaction becomes. This also explains why an experienced rider can sense a horse's incorrect response, correct it before it happens, and thus prevent a mistake.
     This is the theory behind the system that we employ to communicate with our horses. Now we must translate it into action in the saddle. As you sit on your horse, your seat and the inside of your legs touch the horse. You also make contact with your horse's mouth through the reins. That gives us the six points with which we apply pressure: your two seat bones, the insides of your calves, and the reins. Since we are to always work from the back to the front in combining and applying the aids, let us begin with the seat bones to explain what they tell the horse when we use them to communicate.
     Passively weighing both seat bones down means, slow down. Actively bracing your back so that both seat bones push down and forward means, move forward. Actively bracing and weighing one seat bone means, activate your hind leg on that side. Weighing down on one side means bend or turn that way.
     Next let us consider the leg aids. Unlike the seat, the legs can operate in two different positions on the horse and mean different things to the