Infinity Pattern: Connecting our Programs

At ManeGait, the infinity pattern shows up throughout our therapeutic riding program and our GaitWay to the Brain program, from the GaitHouse to the arena, and even in homes.

Tracing an infinity pattern, with your eyes, hands, or body helps connect the brain's left and right hemispheres. When a rider guides a horse through this pattern across the arena, that connection helps organize the entire brain-body system. This allows a rider who is struggling to calm down to settle into a more focused state. That calmer state, in turn, helps the rider pay closer attention, allowing them to get more out of their ride.

In the GaitHouse

In the GaitHouse, GaitWay staff use the infinity pattern with both riders and non-riders. They have found that tracing, drawing, or walking this pattern helps build the brain’s capacity for attention, improving focus on whatever task is in front of a participant. It’s such a reliable tool that it’s often included as part of a participant’s home program.

In-clinic, we use the infinity pattern in a few different ways:

• Tracing or drawing it on a whiteboard

• Tracing or drawing it on carpet, which adds tactile input

• Walking the pattern while looking at and naming pictures

How Families Use It at Home

The infinity pattern doesn’t stay in the GaitHouse. Parents have told us they have their child walk an infinity pattern at home while studying spelling or vocabulary words, and even while working through math. The reports we hear back are consistent: when kids study this way, their grades in that subject improve.

It really does come down to attention.

In the Arena

A few times a year, our GaitWay staff bring this work to our Riding Instructors as continuing education, because the infinity pattern is just as valuable on horseback as it is on foot.

Using the infinity pattern in the arena is a great warm-up for our riders, volunteers, and horses. Riding instructors give each rider team an "infinity pattern of cones" to stay on for multiple rounds, riding it in both directions. They have found that this helps calm the riders, bring their focus to their steering and planning, as well as quiet them. It helps warm up our volunteers to help our riders steer, or, if needed, with reminders, so that when they go out onto the pattern, both riders and volunteers are focused and prepared to steer and communicate with their horse. The infinity pattern, practiced multiple times, also helps connect the rider and horse so the horse begins to listen to the rider’s cues.

Practiced repeatedly, the infinity pattern does something else, too: it builds the connection between rider and horse, so the horse begins to truly listen to the rider’s cues.

Building Attention Through Movement

Whether it’s traced on a whiteboard, walked across flooring, or ridden through a line of cones, the infinity pattern works the same underlying skill: attention. That’s what makes it such a versatile tool across every part of ManeGait’s programming and why it keeps showing up in homes, classrooms, and the arena alike.