How did Ray Hunt run his clinics?

Ray Hunt's clinics had a distinctive character that was inseparable from his personality and his conviction that horsemanship had to be felt rather than simply understood intellectually — and the experience of attending a Hunt clinic was described by participants as unlike any other horsemanship education they had encountered. Hunt typically worked with groups of riders simultaneously in an arena setting, moving among the horse-and-rider pairs and working with each one in turn while the rest of the group worked independently and observed. His observations were specific and often unexpectedly perceptive — he could identify the precise moment at which an interaction between horse and rider had gone wrong, the specific quality of the release that had missed its timing, or the particular tension in the rider's body that was preventing the horse from finding its balance. His teaching style was direct to the point of bluntness, and he was known for comments that cut through the participant's habitual thinking about their horse and about themselves in ways that could be uncomfortable but that were consistently aimed at genuine improvement rather than at criticism for its own sake. Hunt did not teach from a program or a curriculum — he taught from what he saw in front of him, responding to the specific horse and rider at the specific moment rather than delivering prepared content. The multi-day format of most of his clinics allowed participants to work through their specific situations across multiple sessions, with each day building on what the previous day's work had revealed. The atmosphere at a Hunt clinic was serious — he took horsemanship seriously and expected participants to as well — but was also characterized by genuine warmth for both the horses and the people working to improve their relationship with them.