Solene - Inspiration from the Masters

In my research to further improve our work with Solene, I discovered a wealth of guidance especially relevant to him from a book by Patrick Le Rolland about his 'Principles for Dressage'. I have always admired this exceptional ecuyer - just look at this wonderful picture of the Master on his famous Cramique,TB!-but I had not read anything from him until I found his book 'Les Principes de dressage' written by JM. Vié, one of his disciples, and himself. His teaching placed an overriding emphasis on energy management in motion, constantly concerned with regularity, cadence, rhythm, speed, balance and their subtle interactions with a paramount, overarching search for relaxation and happiness for the horse. After his career at the Cadre Noir, and his impressive international competition successes, he had become a world known teacher, but as General Durand wrote in the book foreword, his writings are not easily accessible because of his exceptional riding gifts which enabled an 'instinctive' perfection in managing aids and an extraordinary tact.
However, this warning should not be a deterrent for reading this book. The most interesting concept that I found in it is encapsulated in one of Le Rolland favorite phrase: ' keep what you have got'. My take on this somewhat sybilline expression is that any change in activity, horse position, degree of collection or bending within a given stride should not be done at the expense of a loss of 'propulsion', which I understand to be forward moving energy. One fall-out of this is that the rider shall never exceed what the horse can give at each stage of the training , even if this limit looks at times inferior to the rider's desire. Raising this sort of limit  hence becomes the main objective of the dressage, through a well thought-out programme spanning over time, requiring both patience and determination from the trainer. Increasing speed, or pushing the horse beyond his comfort zone is never a solution for improving the situation. Another point which spoke to me is the search for relaxation through working with neck downward extension, nose in front of the vertical. I did found that this approach was quite effective with Solene for dealing with his shoulder stiffness/pain.
Well, a lot more could be said about Le Rolland principles of dressage. I will stop here however, without though forgetting to mention than one way of learning from him is just to look and admire his pictures which tell so much as far as perfection is concerned...