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Thank you Vincent, for your message,and thank you for your translation.One wonders whether, without a very good seat, that the hands can ever be used correctly.
Safe riding,
Sandy Dunlop.

You're perfectly right Sandy! Hands can only be used correctly when the rider is able to use all aids independently and this requires if not an excellent seat, at least a perfect balance. Jean d'Orgeix always asked the riders to stand up in the stirrups and try to stay in balance while the horse was moving in the three gaits. This simple exercise... is often not well done because of lack of balance.
To improve the seat, we organized in Luxembourg some training sessions with the equestrian simulator to try to make understand the functioning as a "global swing" (see all post of Peteris Klavins) and this is helping a lot.

I think that in the learning process of riders, hands should only be used when the seat is OK. You can do all basic work without hands (all what a beginner should be able to do: go, stop, turn, transitions). Learning without hands refocus on the importance of the entire body as aid. Once this is correctly learnt, understanding what "contact with the mouth" means becomes obviously more simple!