MORE BODY LANGUAGE I am walking past Connolly Station and I see everything: I see the people swarming out of the station itself, I see the crowd surging against the light to cross to Talbot Street, I see the taxis pulling out of the rank, I see the buses trundling back up the coast road, and in the distance, I see the LUAS curving away towards Abbey Street. I see it all, I take in all the information, because my head is up, my eyes are forward, and my chin is down.
I’m fairly certain I’ve spent most of my life walking with my head in the pavement rather than the clouds. When I lived in NYC, I was pathologically obssessed with picking up pennies— because I always saw the poxy things. I always saw them because I was always always looking down. I was walking up Seventh Avenue once, saw a penny, picked it up, and some homeless dude passing on my right smiled at me and said, ‘Good luck!’ I replied, ‘I think I should be looking up at the sky, or something, you know?’ Sadly, he had places to go, and our conversation ended there.
Lorraine said last week that she’s started to drive like she’s riding; I’ve started to walk like I am. I feel myself leaning forward, walking from, I don’t know, the end of my nose or something, and I consciously sink back into my hips, I tuck the back of my neck into my collar, I drop my chin. Now that I see what that looks like in writing, I reckon I must look like eight shades of a fucking loony. I’ll have to have to take a peek at myself in a shop window on the way home. But I am working to keep my eyes up, and pointed forward; I swiftly catch myself when I’m spacing out, gazing into the gutter, and I pick up my head. [I also ride the bus like I’m riding a horse, and let me tell you something, bucking around on Rebel is child’s play compared to some of the Dublin Bus journeys I take. I’m sure my seat has gotten better having sat in the back of the 130 bus belting for city centre on the last run of the evenning.]
The whole thing about the hips has been instructive. My canter is improving because my seat is better, and my seat is better because I’m working on ‘cupping’ my pelvis as if it were full of water. That’s how the books describe it, anyway. And funnily enough, it’s opening up a brave new world of footwear beyond the humble paddock boot.
I never had to learn to walk in heels because I thought heels were for height, bless my heart, not for sex; having hit 5’8′ in eighth grade [and topping out at my present 5’9″ soon thereafter] and sporty on top of it, I mostly ran around places in sneakers or flats. It’s not that I didn’t own shoes of all shapes and sizes, because I was also [am] girly, but I didn’t know how to manage the sweet sweet slingbacks for a long long evening.
There may be hope. I had on my very hot, very pointy, heeled ankle boots last night, and okay, I didn’t walk a mile for a Camel, but every cell in my body was not screaming for comfort— my feet didn’t hurt. These boots are not high, but I’ll upgrade my heels as I do with my fences. I’ll tell you sometime about how I sometimes, um, like to walk like I think it feels, er, for a horse? Hey, yeah, some other time. It may be my first example of drunk blogging. So… right! Kthxbai!
MANY BRAVE FOOLS 
Interesting about how your body changes after you learn to ride, I found that my posture and my breathing improved. Drunk blogging is always fun!
You mention here about how a book describes it and somewhere else you mention things you’ve picked up from books. Do you have any good recommendations on books that were worthwhile? Especially any with exercises geared towards riders?
hi what book was it that described this ‘pelvis full of water’ of which you speak (write)?! I’m also curious about the ‘bellybutton thing’ you were talking about in another post….that one sounded very intriguing!