Canter work

Practice (especially as you say, lunging without stirrups and reins) is the best thing, as there's nothing off-horse that can really replicate the motion of the canter, and thus truly teach us to engage those muscles. However, ensuring that you have good strong core and back muscles will help, as you'll be more able to 'plug in' to the horse's back and link in with the back muscles. What I find helps is keeping my 'back corners' down (so, basically think of your backside as a box, and the back two corners of that box have to be firmly pulling downwards, but not by any means 'driving' with your seat, or any of that malarkey; you have to stay 'stacked up', as if the sections of your body are squares on a rubix cube which all have to remain lined up and straight), also dropping the shoulders back and down and ensuring that the elbows remain around your side but pushing forward, if that makes any sense? Think of having your thigh out in front of you (not at such an angle that you lose the shoulder-hip-heel line) and engaging the muscles in the back of your thighs to absorb the movement of the horse. The muscles in the front of your thigh catch that movement and if you can almost feel as if they're lifting up (though it's isometric, so you're not actually lifting your thighs up and away from the saddle), then this will help to keep you back and down in the saddle, and also to lift the horse's shoulder and forehand.
... I really hope that makes sense, I'm not too great at putting sensations into words!
 
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