How did Tom Dorrance think about pressure and release?

Tom Dorrance's understanding of pressure and release was more nuanced and more philosophically grounded than the mechanical application of the concept that the term sometimes suggests in contemporary natural horsemanship education. For Dorrance, the release was not simply the cessation of physical pressure but a genuine offering of peace to the horse — a complete removal of demand that allowed the horse's nervous system to settle and that communicated clearly that the horse's response had been correct and had been received. He was concerned not just with when the release happened but with the quality of the release — whether it was genuinely complete or whether some tension, some continued demand, remained in the trainer's body and energy even after the physical pressure was removed. Dorrance believed that horses were sensitive enough to feel the difference between a genuine release and a partial one, and that the quality of the release determined the quality of the learning rather than simply the timing. He also understood pressure in a broader sense than just physical contact — the trainer's direct gaze, squared-up body position, and focused energy all constituted forms of pressure that the horse experienced and responded to, which is why his approach to even the earliest groundwork involved managing these non-physical forms of pressure as carefully as the physical contact of the halter and lead. The concept of working at the appropriate pressure level — enough to motivate the horse to search for the release but not so much that the horse was pushed into a flight response where learning was no longer possible — was central to Dorrance's approach and is one of the most practically important ideas that the natural horsemanship tradition has carried forward.