Proportions

As a person who rides a lot of different horses and dances with different people, I am always amazed how much more connected I feel when I am riding or dancing with a body that fits my physical specifications. My two personal horses, Jaz and Ultimo, are both narrow horses, so they allow my legs to hang from my hips. I am able to create a triangle from my torso balanced over my hips, through my legs hanging down with a clear weighted connection into the stirrups. I can feel the contact of the stirrups as if I am standing on the ground with equal pressure in both feet. With their narrowness, I can use gravity as part of my inner weight to help my balance. If I am riding something too wide, my legs fall at a "less natural" angle from my hips, etc. Of course, I learn to adapt and find a way to work positively in that avenue as well. Dancing with a body of similar proportions (height and width) is the same. I can center to the person in a more refined way since it becomes more obvious with a "like sized" person when the shared center is out of alignment. Also, I have noticed that it is easier to feel the subtleties of the rib cage's position and timing of the swing action in the horse or the position and rotational action of the dancer.