America’s Horse, April 3, 2009 -- Editor’s Note -- Sally Swift, the 95-year-old creator of Centered Riding techniques, died April 2, just days short of her 96th birthday.
The American Quarter Horse Association's member magazine, America’s Horse, will feature in its May issue a five-page story on Swift and her contributions to the world of horsemanship. Although that issue had gone to the printers before Swift’s death and was not intended to be a memorial tribute, we believe it will now serve as a fond farewell to a woman admired by so many.
What follows is an excerpt of that story, as well as exclusive online material written by the story’s author, Randee Fox, a freelancer writer who has studied Centered Riding.
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| The cover of Sally Swift's second book, courtesy of Trafalgar Square Publishing. |
Born into an era when women mostly honored their husband’s demands and spent their time taking care of the family and household, Sally Swift was among the great American women who broke the mold: impressionism artist Mary Cassatt; modern dance pioneer Isadora Duncan; pilot Amelia Earhart; author and lecturer Helen Keller; seamstress and courageous leader Rosa Parks; and photojournalist Margaret Bourke White.
At the age of 7, Swift was diagnosed with scoliosis, a lateral curvature of the spine. Swift’s mother found physical therapist Mabel Ellsworth Todd to work with her daughter. Todd was the author of “The Thinking Body,” which was based on her belief that you could control parts of your body and reach muscles with your mind when you couldn’t direct them with physical movement. Her ideas involved using creative visual imagery and consciously relaxed volition to create refined neuromuscular coordination. It’s still a favorite of dancers, students of motor development and those concerned with questions of human fitness.
As she began riding horses more seriously after high school, she said, “I still had Miss Todd’s training in my mind about using my body, the ball inside my body, and if you dropped it into your pelvis as if into the mud, you could do anything. As I look back on it, I see this as the beginning of Centered Riding.”
She taught riding, but then had a hiatus as she went to college and worked at an office job with the Holsteiner-Friesian Association.
“It wasn’t until I was 62, however, when I decided that I had had all the office work I wanted, that I thought I would retire, teach my friends and travel a little,” she said.
Swift experimented, using her methods locally on the East Coast. Soon, her Centered Riding program evolved and gained popularity, bringing a demand for more Centered Riding teachers. So she started training only instructors in her clinics and traveling longer distances. Centered Riding formalized its teacher certification program in the late 1980s; the corporation of Centered Riding was formed in 1993. Today, there are 555 Centered Riding instructors in the United States, Europe and Canada. Of that number, only 14 are Level Four Centered Riding instructors. These highly experienced teachers, who also train new teachers, were lucky enough to learn directly from Swift.
When asked about the future of Centered Riding and what she believed lay ahead, Swift said, “In recent years, we have seen many therapies, bodywork modalities and even medicinal approaches built upon the theories of working with and directing the body’s energy. This energetic connection, I believe, is the future of the partnership between horse and humans. I think Centered Riding is going a long way around the world, and I would hope that it is here to stay long past my days.”
Comments From Those Who Knew Her
“Sally Swift was in her late 70s when I took my new instructor course from her. She was a ball of energy. And yet there was a peacefulness about her. Through her Centered Riding techniques she had figured out how to channel that energy into a quiet strength -- the kind of strength that calms and reassures horses, that gives a rider the ability to be a good leader, that builds respect and confidence in a horse. I recognized that if I could learn to harness my peaceful energy, it would enhance the rest of my life. It does.”
-- Elaine Meredith Steele, Level IV Apprentice Centered Riding Instructor
“Sally cannot be cloned, but that doesn’t mean that we can’t be inspired to find our own way, by the truth of her work. What Sally gave me was a great belief and confidence in myself, something that did not come naturally to me. She gave me a great sense of 'Yes, I do have something to give in this industry’ and that the path I was attracted to was a legitimate one to pursue, even though it was not, at the time, common for riding teachers.”
-- Richard Weis, Sally Swift’s first Centered Riding apprentice teacher from Melbourne, Australia
“Sally had a very positive approach to training with minimal stress on the horse or rider. I will always be grateful to Sally for being a pioneer who devised ways to teach people other than yell and scream at them and repeat things over and over again. It has been a wonderful thing for me to see how Sally’s ways don’t just make changes in people’s riding, but in their whole approach to life, as well.”
-- Ellie Jensen, Centered Riding Instructor
