Found this great tip for creating a 'soft halt' and encouraging softness in general. I found this one while looking for tips to manage a horse leaning on the bit.
Riding & creating softness.
Start with creating a soft halt.
As you stand still, pick up a light contact and just hold it.
Wait.
Your horse might do nothing, might pull against you, might up their head, etc to get out of it. Don’t increase the contract, don’t move your hands, again just hold it and wait for softness. When your horse gives his head a little, and you feel the strain gone from the reins, immediately loosen them a little as a reward.
Do this often enough and when you hop on, and pick up the reins, your horse will automatically soften his mouth. The idea is now your horse is balanced – he could just as easily take a step forwards or take a step backwards, whatever you choose to do. A lot of horses, when you sit up and take alight contact, they immediately push their weight forward, so you’re not at the 50/50 forwards / backwards balance, you’re about 80% forwards, 20% backwards, and so not balanced and not really ready for all manouvres.
Once the soft halt was establish, do this again from halt to backup. Once this is established, then it is time to start doing it in a walk. Looking for one step of softness first.
Walk around. Pick up a light contact. Hold it and wait. Your horse might pull against you, ignore you, etc. Just wait. When you get that moment of softness, relax the contact a little. Eg. On Saturday your horse might be up to doing this for three steps in a row in walk, and on Sunday it might have built up to five or more steps of softness together in walk.
Homework would be to continue this in walk, slowly in increasing the steps required with softness. When you’ve a solid walk, then the next step would be to go through all of this again in trot, etc.
Source: http://irishnhsociety.proboards.com/index.cgi?board=usefulinformation&action=display&thread=406
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