John Lyons? What are your thoughts on him?

I have watched John Lyons videos, I do like his methods but do not follow him directly. I mean, I do not use just his methods. What is everyone's thoughts on his methods?

I’d be interested in this too, I bought the guy’s book about 18 years ago but could never get past the first few pages, don’t know why.

He has been around a looong time. I did watch quite a few of his TV programs and bought a video. His methods helped me a lot with a mare I was having some issues with.
There are a lot of natural horsemanship guys with a lot of good info. I have found several helpful.

Yeah that's what I've found as well. Also I like his methods of how to gain control of the head using just your hands and reins.
And actually something I've kind of noticed, is a lot of the top natural trainers today quote and take things directly from Ray Hunt and the Dorrance brothers as well as using their own methods

Years ago, he wrote a series of training & troubleshooting articles for Horse & Rider magazine. I was a subscriber at the time and tried most of the techniques, as I was training for the public at that time. The best one was his fix for hard to bridle horses, worked like a charm. The rest were ok, but I preferred other ways. So I hold him in high regard for giving me a useful method that helped me out.

Lyons was my first introduction to natural horsemanship. Many of his techniques were real lifesavers for me, literally. Other things did not work for me at all.

There are several of the techniques that he has completely reversed his position on, In his early videos he recommended that everyone should be able to ride bridleless with spur cues as the main communication, later videos recommended using absolutely no leg or seat cues, that all communication with your horse was only with the reins, when I tried this approach I found the horses I rode got very heavy on the bit and began ignoring the reins because they were confused by my hands in their mouth all the time. Suffice it to say I got myself in trouble may times trying several Lyons technique(probably mostly errors on my part) and a few of them I found made my horse dull and/or angry.

Even though I'm not a big fan of John Lyons anymore (I think his son Josh has surpassed him) there are still things I learned from his program. I still devotedly live by his three prime training doctrines:
1.Human safety comes FIRST!
2.The horse should never be hurt.
3.The horse must be calmer/more focused at the end of the lesson than when you started.

While I have not followed him in a long time, I always was Very impressed with those 3 doctrines, as Fargosgirl mentioned. Unfortunately, I attended a clinic with one of his certified instructors and she spent 3 days whipping the living daylights out of my horse and screaming at me. The horse was really trying to do what was asked of and neither of us deserved the treatment we received. I never gave JL methods another thought after that.

Lost me when, after making big deal about religion, he got divorced, and to some family son had married into? Just a little too off to me.

And also when he started endorsing everything from Pampers to Kotex...just too much sugar for a dime.

And the nail in the coffin was when he was going to be in Mobile AL, and he was advertising that he wanted unbroken 2/3 year old for his wonder training demos.

TB farm contacted his people and said they could have their picks of AL breds. Got told real quick that "John Lyons does NOT work with Thoroughbreds", which tells me he is bunch of hot air...and was told he had refused Arabians and Saddlebreds too.

My trainers mom is john lyons certified and trained my trainers show horse the Lyons methods. I rode with her a short time but I found her hard to get a long as with. She wanted the horses head basically on the ground,hated when I would get after the mare for bucking (spoiled and it was basically one pop from a dressage whip) also very against anything but a snaffle with the slobber straps and heavey reins no metal chin strap or snaps as it was distracting and so on. I do think some of his methods are useful but I couldn't follow him completely.

The old barn I was at the owner became John/Josh Lyons ceritfied. Apparantly the guy she took training from was suprised she took a 3 yr old app to the training thing, I guess he had no interest in apps, thought they were too stubbourn. She showed him wrong, but I still am not sure I like the way of training. She said the first ride was sitting on the horse and then getting off.. I don't call that a 1st ride at all.