Parelli Natural Horsemanship

From: Wikipedia

Parelli Natural Horsemanship (also known as Parelli or PNH) is a program of natural horsemanship, created by Pat Parelli.
Parelli Natural Horsemanship is a program that uses an approach to communicating with horses based on natural equine behaviors, to achieve trust and respect in the horse/human relationship. PNH methods are mentally, emotionally and physically similar to the ways that horses act with one another within a herd.
PNH allows for thresholds, boundaries and fears for both horse and human, and encourages issues to be worked through, using mutual communication, leadership and love. Key components in this are attitude, knowledge, tools, techniques, time and imagination. In the program, it is recognized that both the horse and human have responsibilities in the partnership.

One aim of the program is to preserve the dignity of the horse by continuously watching for subtle cues in the horses posture, movements and facial expressions. Building on the idea of horse personalities, it encourages riders to take the horse's individual characteristics into account. The program teaches people to interact with horses through communication consisting of the seven types of interactions that horses have with one another. These are referred to as the "7 games".

Pat and Linda Parelli developed a home-study program composed of progressive levels of knowledge and skill. The program defines four areas of skills: on the ground On Line, at Liberty, freestyle riding with little or no contact to the horse's head or mouth, and finesse riding with close head/mouth contact.
The program uses a concept, marketed as Horsenality to assist students in "reading" their horses during working sessions. A trait identification system (both positive and negative traits or behaviors) and index provides a picture of the characteristics of the horse and provides related strategies for managing behaviors and strategies for achieving success.
The system borrows from parallel concepts in human psychology derived from Analytical psychology, Personality psychology, the concepts of Four Temperaments, and the more modern Keirsey Temperament Sorter. No independent clinical studies verify or disprove this theory as applied to horses.

There has been criticism against the Parellis by the mainstream equestrian world. This is partly due to his dramatic performances and demonstrations with some of his own horses, his marketing programs to sell his personalized products, the general commercialization of his technique, and the cost of his programs.
Parelli supporters speculate that this criticism is partly due to the boldness of his demonstrations with some of his own horses, and possibly in part to the fact that he charges a premium price for his materials.
By highly successful marketing of horsemanship information that, according to critics of Parelli's tactics, is widely available and has been passed down for generations and considered to be common sense by those knowledgeable of the horse, many competitors to Parelli consider his methods to be inappropriately described as exclusive to the Parelli system, particularly when re-named by Parelli. In contrast, Parelli openly credits his mentors.
Finally, because some training techniques result in horses that do not respond to traditional horse-handling commands, when the horse is sold it may require either retraining of the horse or the new owner may need to learn (for a price) Parelli methods.The program, in fact, encourages sellers to sell their horses only to other Parelli users.This has led to criticism that Parelli is creating a cult.