The New Anatomy of Rider Connection Structural Balance for Rider and Horse

For the past 30-plus years, Mary Wanless and her bestselling Ride with Your Mind books and DVDs have helped revolutionize the art and science of riding horses. Now she takes her pioneering techniques—which combine a lifetime’s influences from the fields of psychology, biofeedback, neuro-linguistic programming, the Alexander and Feldenkrais techniques, Tai Chi, massage, dance, anatomy, sports psychology, and educational kinesiology—to a whole new level.
In her newest book, Wanless teams up with Anatomy Trains® creator and author Thomas Myers to examine how the “fabric” of our bodies (fascia) can potentially allow us to generate both stability and what so many riders find elusive even after years in the saddle—“feel.”

Recent research shows how the body-wide “net” of fascia that both wraps each muscle and connects your skin to your bones can be the source of postural imbalances and the resulting restrictions in your movement. Wanless posits that the difference between “average” and “elite” riders lies in the quality of connection and awareness within this fascial net, and she gives us the means to take practical and meaningful steps toward addressing such issues, resulting in extraordinary change in the way we look and feel on horseback.

Mary Wanless has B.Sc. degrees in both Physics and Applied Sports Coaching, and holds the BHSI (British Horse Society Instructor) certificate. She is the author of the highly successful Ride With Your Mind (published in America as The Natural Rider), Ride With Your Mind Masterclass, For the Good of the Rider, For the Good of the Horse, Ride With Your Mind Essentials, and New Ride with Your Mind Clinic,; she has also produced eight training videos. As well as teaching riders of all abilities, from club level to international, in the UK and USA. She runs dismounted workshops and gives lecture demonstrations. She also lectures internationally on learning, body-mind integration, and personal development. Mary lives in Oxon, England.

Thomas W. Myers studied directly with Drs. Ida Rolf, Moshe Feldenkrais, and Buckminster Fuller, and a variety of movement and manual therapy leaders. His work is influenced by cranial, visceral, and intrinsic movement studies he made with European schools of osteopathy.

An inveterate traveller, Tom has practiced integrative manual therapy for over 30 years in a variety of clinical and cultural settings, including 10 years in London, and practices in Hamburg, Rome, Nairobi, and Sydney, as well as a dozen locales in the US. He is a founding member of the International Association of Structural Integrators (IASI).

Author of Anatomy Trains and a set of supporting videos, and co-author of Fascial Release for Structural Balance (Lotus, 2010), Tom has also penned over 60 articles for trade magazines and journals on anatomy, soft tissue manipulation, and the social scourge of somatic alienation and loss of reliance on kinaesthetic intelligence. A certified Touch-in-Parenting instructor, Tom retains a strong interest in perinatal issues.

Living on the coast of Maine, Tom and his faculty conduct professional certification and continuing education courses worldwide.