I've been thinking about the difference between noticing every stride, riding every stride and micromanaging every stride.
My favourite thing when riding is when I am going along a direction of travel and I feel the horse depart congruence, then I do a bodyscan and realize I had slipped a little, and I manage to change my own posture a midgeon and the horse responds in their posture by returning to our shared congruence
I promise you hand on heart I've had horses ask me to come back into shared balance along a particular line of travel. Often repeatedly, every time I lose and regain a particular facet of my balance :D
I swear when I can ride like this noticing our shared alignment every stride it's like the whole world is glowing and it becomes impossible to tell if I'm shaping the horses posture or if they are shaping mine. I can't always do it. But when I can it's glorious.
I didn't have the words for this before this week - I've tried to explain what I was talking about to humans a few times and mostly just said things like "ya know?" and "yes, yes, yes, yes, ah, oh, eh, GOT IT, YES, yes, yes, erm, YES, yes, yes, GOOD" and random flappy hand gestures :D
Examples - the horse who changes the rotation in their barrel depending how well I maintain the equilibrium between my thigh muscles or the horse who moves his sacrum slightly in or out to tell me about the symmetry of my seatbones or the horse who tips his withers to the side depending on which of my lungs I am more fully breathing into.
Ive been pondering for a while whether riding like this is micromanagement. Perhaps it is - since I'm making tiny adjustments in myself every few strides. But I'm not holding the horse in a fixed place, or correcting them back to a "proper position". I'm not even really asking for 'a thing'. Both me and the horse are just changing our posture in small ways in response to each other. It feels very mindful to me.
I don't have perfect equitation, far from it. But I love noticing the interactions between my horses posture and mine.