Latest / Equine Assisted World with Rupert Isaacson / Warwick Schiller on Attunement, Connection, and Trust in Horsemanship | EP 24 Equine Assisted World
Transcript
- 0:00Rupert Isaacson: Welcome to Equine Assisted World.
- 0:02I'm your host, Rupert Isaacson, New York Times best selling
- 0:05author of The Horse Boy, The Long Ride Home, and The Healing Land.
- 0:08Before I jump in with today's guest, I just want to say a huge
- 0:12thank you to you, our audience, for helping to make this happen.
- 0:15I have a request.
- 0:16If you like what we do, please like, subscribe, tell a friend.
- 0:22It really helps us get this work done.
- 0:24As you might know from my books, I'm an autism dad.
- 0:27And over the last 20 years, we've developed several
- 0:31equine assisted, neuroscience backed certification programs.
- 0:35If you'd like to find out more about them, go to newtrailslearning.
- 0:40com.
- 0:41So without further ado, let's meet today's guest.
- 0:44Welcome back to Equine Assisted World.
- 0:46I've got a treat for you.
- 0:48I've got Warwick Schiller.
- 0:50His Warwick ness is here and the reason I asked him to come on this
- 0:56podcast is because obviously Warwick does many things and does many things
- 1:02well, but what I think a lot of people really find practically useful, well
- 1:10actually this, people find many things practically useful about what he does,
- 1:13but what keeps coming up for me is this word attunement, and how attunement,
- 1:22being able to attune to your horse, to your client, to the environment,
- 1:31to what's going on in the sensory system, to perhaps things that are
- 1:37less rational than those things.
- 1:40It seems that the people that do this and really do this
- 1:44consciously achieve great success.
- 1:47And I've just seen this time and time again, within the horse
- 1:50boy work within the dressage work that I do within all of it.
- 1:53Anyone who's doing Warwick's Attunement stuff seems to be able to
- 2:03pretty much a level of success that I'd say is a.
- 2:09Above the norm.
- 2:09So I wanted I think why we need to talk about this on Equine Assisted World
- 2:13because it's just something that People need to be more aware of about how to
- 2:16do but they don't want me banging on about it They want the man himself.
- 2:21So here he is Warwick.
- 2:23Welcome
- 2:25Warwick Schiller: Thanks for having me, Rupert.
- 2:26I'm glad you quantified your, your statement before when you said, yeah, that
- 2:32the one thing that Warwick does that's kind of useful is this achievement stuff.
- 2:37No,
- 2:37Rupert Isaacson: that's not fair.
- 2:38You know, he also, you know, lives next to a brewery and
- 2:42will take you there sometimes.
- 2:43I mean, it's Yeah, I will.
- 2:44Warwick Schiller: And I live across the road from a winery too, so yeah, I do have
- 2:47other, I do have other good qualities.
- 2:50Rupert Isaacson: But this attunement thing is something which I think
- 2:54is a word that people, when they hear it, they go, Oh yeah!
- 2:58But then when one actually thinks about it, well what does it actually mean?
- 3:01And what does it mean in terms of,
- 3:06we'll start with horses, but then I want to move to people.
- 3:10And then I want to bring it back to horses and people.
- 3:13All right, Attunement Warwick, what is it?
- 3:18Why do we need to be aware of it?
- 3:20Warwick Schiller: Well, let's, maybe let's talk about, you know, it's
- 3:23interesting you mentioned, you know, you want to start with the horses, but
- 3:26it's also for people and, you know, for me, a lot of the stuff that I have
- 3:30found that I've changed over the years with horses has been human psychology
- 3:36stuff that I've used with the horses, cause you know, the horses are mammals
- 3:40the same as we are, we have a mammalian nervous system, all that sort of thing.
- 3:44But for me, I first heard the word attunement in a book by, I
- 3:49think he's a UCLA professor of psychology named Daniel Siegel.
- 3:55His definition of attunement was the sense of being seen and being heard.
- 4:01And then later on, I had a guest on the podcast Sarah Schlotter.
- 4:05You've met Sarah, you met her at the first summit.
- 4:09And she kind of expanded upon it and she said that attunement is the
- 4:12sense of Being seen, being heard, feeling felt and getting gotten.
- 4:18And so it's, it's really like in the human sense, I really believe it's, it's,
- 4:25it's getting someone on a level that most people don't get them on.
- 4:28Like they fully, you know, when someone tunes with you, they,
- 4:32they get you on a deep level.
- 4:35Like, it's almost like you've, I had a conversation with someone.
- 4:39And our last summit actually when the presenters one night and I said
- 4:43to her afterwards, you know what?
- 4:44I don't think I've ever felt that scene before like she got me On a level that you
- 4:54know I don't think i'd ever met anybody who got me on that on that level like
- 5:00basically understood where I came from You know one of the i've suffered migraines
- 5:04all my life and we were talking about different things and I said to her We're
- 5:08talking about traumas and then I said, you know, I've suffered migraines all my life.
- 5:11And she looked at me, she nodded and she says, of course you have.
- 5:14Like she knew where that came from.
- 5:17You know what I mean?
- 5:18And so, yeah.
- 5:18And it just gave me this real sense of maybe like emotional safety around her.
- 5:26Anyway, that's the, that's the human side of the achievement thing.
- 5:29But let's talk about.
- 5:30The horse side of the attunement thing, and you know, this attunement
- 5:33is really about connection with horses, but for me, it's not about
- 5:37the connection for connection's sake.
- 5:40It's not that I want to connect with the horses.
- 5:43I think a lot of people really get excited about the connection stuff because it
- 5:47gives them the warm and fuzzies and my horse will love me or whatever, but
- 5:52really the connection of the attunement stuff is about the horse feeling safe.
- 5:58Safe with us, safe in the environment, and I think the reason this stuff works
- 6:05so well with horses is because you don't have to be a terribly good horse trainer
- 6:10to, or rider, to train or ride a horse that feels safe in your presence, with
- 6:17your decisions, and in the environment.
- 6:19Most, most people that have problems with horses are dealing
- 6:22with a dysregulated nervous system.
- 6:26Problem that turns into rearing, backing, bolting, pulling
- 6:30back, running over, whatever.
- 6:31All those things for me, they're a fallout of not feeling safe.
- 6:36And I might go into explain why I feel attunement makes horses feel safe.
- 6:43And, you know, this is all conjecture.
- 6:46This is my take on the whole thing, but I feel what the, the, the, you
- 6:52know, if you go into a pasture with a group of horses and you catch
- 6:54one, you take him away from there.
- 6:55Sometimes people will take their horse out of a pasture and now he starts running
- 6:59around in circles, screaming his head off, wanting to go back to his friends.
- 7:02And I feel, you know, most people when that.
- 7:05They mentioned that I'll say, well, why does he want to go back to his friends?
- 7:08And they go, well, he likes hanging with me.
- 7:10He feels safe there.
- 7:11And I'm like, yes, but what, what is the sense of safety he
- 7:14gets from being with his friends?
- 7:16And I don't feel the sense of safety gets from being his friends with
- 7:19his friends is a physical safety.
- 7:21It's not like two of his friends go to kickboxing classes on Wednesday nights.
- 7:25And so if the saber to tiger shows up, they're going to drop, kick
- 7:28him in the head sort of thing.
- 7:29What I feel.
- 7:32It that horse, the sense of safety horses get from other horses
- 7:35is there's a shared awareness.
- 7:38So I don't have to stand and look 360 degrees for, you know, I don't have to
- 7:42be alert and look 360 degrees for danger.
- 7:45I could have my head down grazing.
- 7:47And if you think about.
- 7:49Let's say there's five horses, let's go with four horses in, you know,
- 7:53like out in a pasture and let's call them North, South, East and West.
- 7:57And they're grazing and if the horse on the North side notices something
- 8:00while he's grazing, his posture will change and his energy will change.
- 8:04So his head will pop up and his body will get a little more tense than it was.
- 8:07And the other horses will feel that energetic change and see that postural
- 8:11change and they'll be alerted to the fact there may be some danger.
- 8:15And so their heads will pop up and they're like, what are you looking at?
- 8:17And then he, you know, he.
- 8:21Summarizes the situation or he analyzes the situation.
- 8:24You kind of guess I'm okay and he goes back to relax and they
- 8:26go Okay, we're all good again.
- 8:28So I feel like this is conversation that goes on both posturally and
- 8:33energetically in a herd of horses and
- 8:40You know, it's, it's the ability for every other horse in the herd
- 8:44to recognize danger and communicate that that makes the others feel safe.
- 8:53And this is where it comes down to like, you know, what I've learned from
- 8:55you about hunter gatherers I've had.
- 8:58Several different people who really get horses explain that they're
- 9:02just like hunter gatherers, you know, everybody has a job to do.
- 9:06Everybody has a role to play and the one that plays that role is the
- 9:09best one in the herd for that role.
- 9:12And this is where we get into thinking that there is you
- 9:15know, there's a hierarchy.
- 9:16There's a number one, a number two, a number three, which is not, that's,
- 9:19you know, that's really been debunked, but You know, one of the things that
- 9:24one of those people I'm talking about has explained to me is that horses
- 9:28are always Testing other horses with positions in the herd and they're always
- 9:36testing them to make sure that they are still the best Horse for that job.
- 9:40So it's a it's a it's a care for versus a power over dynamic That horse is in
- 9:47that that leadership role, whatever it might be might be sentinel might be
- 9:51whatever They're in that role because they have the attributes needed for that
- 9:58role and the other the other members of the herd keep Testing them to see if
- 10:03they're still the best horse for that role And but like I said, they're in
- 10:06that role out of a care for you know They they are in that role for the good of
- 10:11everybody not for the good of themselves.
- 10:13It's not a power over role and You know, so being aware, just being aware of
- 10:22things, I think is, is the, the thing that other horses are looking for.
- 10:26So when you attune with a horse, when you work on this attunement stuff, which
- 10:32you have to be very present to do, and you have to be in the moment all the
- 10:35time and communicating your awareness of being in the moment all the time.
- 10:39I think that's what makes them feel safe when you, you know,
- 10:41when, and I've had experiences over the years at clinics that like.
- 10:50This is the Holy Grail right here.
- 10:51And I guess I'll probably tell you the first one because this is where I
- 10:56really started to understand it, but I'd really started thinking about things
- 10:59a bit differently and maybe working on something that was back then, what,
- 11:07the beginnings of what was attunement, but I had no idea what I was doing, but
- 11:10I was, I was at a clinic in Texas and this lady had a Mustang at this clinic
- 11:15who he has a random bolting issue.
- 11:17He's at nine years old.
- 11:18He's been out of the wild for six years.
- 11:20He's been ridden for six years, but he has this random bolting issue.
- 11:25And it's usually not the same thing twice that causes it and something
- 11:29that bothers him One time that makes him bolt doesn't make him bolt the
- 11:32next time and you know the lady and the trainer really at the wit's end.
- 11:38And this was a three day clinic and I don't know why, cause I usually do two day
- 11:42clinics, but this is a three day clinic.
- 11:43And the first day of the clinic, I don't even remember this horse.
- 11:47And at the time I would have a morning group and afternoon group.
- 11:49So I have 12 people in my clinics and I used to have a morning group and afternoon
- 11:54group, and she was in the morning group.
- 11:55I don't remember this horse the first day of the clinic.
- 11:58The second day of the clinic, and she did some groundwork the first
- 12:00day, but nothing amazing happened.
- 12:02The second day of the clinic, she was doing some groundwork with a horse
- 12:06and she went to walk down beside him.
- 12:09So from in front of him, down the side of him, and she's going to ask him to just
- 12:13yield his hind end over, just step across his hind legs, just step over behind.
- 12:17And when she went to do that, she went to walk down beside him, he
- 12:20turned his head and blocked her.
- 12:22And she said to me, Hey, and he did it repeatedly.
- 12:25And she said to me.
- 12:26Hey, this horse keeps blocking me with his head.
- 12:28What should I do?
- 12:30And I said, Oh, well, let me try.
- 12:31So I stood in front of him and I went to walk down beside him.
- 12:34And as I stepped to go around his head, he turned his head and he blocked me.
- 12:39So it was almost like he was trying to keep me in his right eye.
- 12:41Like I was in front of him, I'm in both eyes.
- 12:43And as I went to walk down that side, it was almost like he was trying
- 12:45to keep me out of his left eye.
- 12:47And in the past, I would have just reached my hand under his jaw.
- 12:51Moved his head over and then proceeded down that side, but there was
- 12:54something I don't know There was some sort of intuition said don't do that
- 13:00Actually step back and acknowledge the fact that he turned his head.
- 13:04So he said no in a very subtle way.
- 13:06I could have walked around his head very easily.
- 13:08He wouldn't have lunged at me or shoulder charged me or anything.
- 13:11He would have just let me walk around him.
- 13:14But I didn't.
- 13:14I stepped backwards, back to where I'd came from.
- 13:17And his head straightened up.
- 13:18And then I waited for him to show some sign of relaxing a little bit more.
- 13:22I don't know.
- 13:22It's not something as big as a lick and a chew.
- 13:24Maybe his ears started to move a bit.
- 13:26Maybe his eyes started to blink.
- 13:27Cause as you'd know, you know, when the horses get tense, the
- 13:30rate of blinking slows down.
- 13:31So maybe he started to blink a bit more.
- 13:33I'm not sure.
- 13:34Then I tried it again.
- 13:35I went to step over there and he blocked me with his head.
- 13:37So I stepped back again and this went on for five or 10 minutes.
- 13:41I had no idea what I was doing.
- 13:42But after five or 10 minutes, I can, I know he now doesn't block me up.
- 13:47So I go to walk down his side.
- 13:48He doesn't block me up and he's been ridden for six years.
- 13:51So I figured you can settle him, which means you can touch him.
- 13:53And so I just thought, I'm just going to put my hand on his withering
- 13:56and gauge his reaction to that.
- 13:58And I was closely watching his head and his ears and his eyes.
- 14:02And as I went to put my hand on his wither.
- 14:04His head raised up, just half an inch.
- 14:06He just tensed very slightly.
- 14:08And so, oops, I took my hand away.
- 14:09I said, sorry.
- 14:10And I waited till he relaxed again, I tried it again, and I probably
- 14:12did that for five or ten minutes.
- 14:14I have no idea why I was doing it, but I did it.
- 14:17And then pretty soon I can put my hand on his wither and he doesn't, he
- 14:20doesn't get the slightest bit tense.
- 14:22And so then I said to her, now I'm going to ask him to step over behind, ask him
- 14:27to step over behind, he's been trained perfectly well to do it, and he just
- 14:30yielded his hind end over, and I said to her, you know what, you've been riding
- 14:34for six years, and that's a very basic exercise, I think he's probably sick of
- 14:39you drilling him on it, I think that's why he, why he was blocking your way out.
- 14:44And I'll prove it to you.
- 14:45So I'm going to go back to the front of him, and then if he lets
- 14:48me come down his side, I'm going to ask him to step over behind.
- 14:51Then I'm going to go back to the front, and if he lets me come down his side,
- 14:53I'm going to ask him to step over behind.
- 14:54I'm going to keep doing it, and after three or four of those, he's
- 14:57going to go, Nah, I'm sick of you and your stepping over behind.
- 15:00So I went back to the front, walked down the side, he let me,
- 15:03I asked him to step over behind.
- 15:05I did it 10 times in a row, and he didn't block me out, he let me do it.
- 15:09So now my hypothesis is blown out of the water.
- 15:13I'm like, I have no idea why he was blocking us out because he's
- 15:17not now and I can't break it.
- 15:19So yeah, no idea.
- 15:21So I handed him back to her and I said, just, she said, what do you want me to do?
- 15:24And I said, I'll just hang out with him.
- 15:26So she kind of stood there with him and I went and helped somebody else.
- 15:29And about 10 minutes later.
- 15:31There was this collective this gasp from everybody there, and I turned
- 15:34and looked, and this horse has buckled at the knees, dropped to his belly
- 15:38on the ground, and started, like, snoring little dust clouds in the dirt.
- 15:42And then he lay on his side, had a big ol roll, rolled over both ways,
- 15:46stood up, had a big ol shake, and then Down he went again, and fell
- 15:50asleep, sound asleep, and he slept till lunchtime, and that was probably
- 15:54ten o'clock in the morning by then.
- 15:56So he slept for two hours, with loudspeakers going off, and whatever.
- 16:01Other horses riding around, and I said, does he normally lay down that much?
- 16:06And she said, I've seen him lay down once in six years.
- 16:10And I was like, wow, anyway, so then we had, she had to wake him up when
- 16:15that group was done at lunchtime for the other group to come in.
- 16:17So the next morning she brings him back in the last day of the clinic.
- 16:19And she said, what do you want me to do with him?
- 16:21And I said, stand there with him.
- 16:23Let's just see what happens.
- 16:24She stood there with him about 20 minutes later, boom, down he went,
- 16:27laid flat on his side for four hours.
- 16:31Didn't get up for four hours.
- 16:32Slept the whole time.
- 16:33We actually had to wake him up to get him out of the arena again.
- 16:35And she went home from that clinic and she said he slept for a week.
- 16:39And so I knew, I knew something had happened.
- 16:43I didn't know why it had happened.
- 16:45But I knew something, I could, this horse has laid down once in six years
- 16:49and now he's laying in an arena at a clinic with a crowd and loudspeakers.
- 16:55So I came home and I, I started looking up the internet, sleeping habits of
- 16:59horses, because I knew horses can sleep standing up or laying down, but what I
- 17:02didn't realize at the time is they need to lay down to get REM sleep, okay?
- 17:11Standing up is just a light dozing, but laying down, they have to, they have
- 17:17to lay down to get this deep, the deep restorative sleep that we all need.
- 17:22And we know in humans, if they don't get enough REM sleep, they're
- 17:26either irritable or anxious.
- 17:29Thanks.
- 17:30What would, what might cause random bolting in a horse
- 17:34is just unresolved anxiety.
- 17:36Anyway, it turned out he never bolted once after that clinic.
- 17:42And, you know, first it was six months out.
- 17:44She said he didn't bolt.
- 17:45Then a year out, she said he hadn't bolted.
- 17:47Then two years out and he just passed away four or five months
- 17:50ago, maybe middle of last year.
- 17:52And it had been five years, I think, since that clinic that he hadn't bolted.
- 17:55So I knew something had happened then.
- 17:59And.
- 18:01After reading the sleep thing, I realized, okay, in order for a horse to lay down
- 18:05and sleep prone, they have to feel safe.
- 18:08There has to be another horse standing guard and aware.
- 18:15And so if you think about what happened when he turned his head, when I said, I
- 18:20notice you turn your head and I notice you're slightly concerned and I'm going
- 18:24to step back and give you some time.
- 18:26That's that attunement thing.
- 18:27You know, I basically said, yeah, I get what you're telling me.
- 18:31And that made him feel safe enough to lay down and have a sleep.
- 18:34And I had a, you know, you've spent lots of time in Africa.
- 18:37I had an experience a few years before that in Kenya that I I'd
- 18:42witnessed that was still in the back of my mind that really.
- 18:47Added to that too.
- 18:48And I, I stand at this place in Kenya that was surrounded by 3000 acres of, of
- 18:55undeveloped land, and there was herds of zebras there.
- 18:57So I'd be working with horses in the arena, and you could
- 19:00see this herd of zebras.
- 19:01And in the morning, I'd get up and out of the house and go for a walk
- 19:04and look at the zebras and stuff.
- 19:05And I noticed that, you know, as you're walking towards, and they're, all
- 19:09their heads are down there grazing.
- 19:11And when one notices you, his head pops up and then they all, they all stop grazing.
- 19:15Their heads pop up.
- 19:16And if you just stand there for a while, they'll.
- 19:19Go back down to grazing, but what I also noticed too was that
- 19:24Certain times of the day, some of those zebra would lay down and sleep, and the
- 19:27other ones would kind of stand in a big rough circle around them, and no one
- 19:31grazed while the zebras were sleeping.
- 19:34They were standing, they weren't, they were aware, but they weren't alert.
- 19:38They didn't have alert postures, they had relaxed postures, but we Aware, and
- 19:44I realized that those ones in the middle who are sleeping totally comfortable
- 19:50with the security of the awareness of the ones who were standing around.
- 19:56And so I'd, I'd kind of witnessed this without even realizing what I was seeing.
- 19:59And then later on, when that horse had that sleep at the clinic,
- 20:02I realized that's what I did.
- 20:05I told him that I'm a two legged, who's aware.
- 20:07I noticed little things and I don't have an agenda.
- 20:10Like when he turned his head, I didn't say, I noticed you turn your head, but
- 20:13I want to walk down the side of you.
- 20:15So I'm either going to push your head out of the way or walk around it.
- 20:18I stepped back and said, Hey, I, not only do I see that, but
- 20:22I get that you're saying no.
- 20:26I don't understand why you're saying no, but I know that you're saying no.
- 20:30And so I'm going to wait here till you feel better about.
- 20:33Me approaching you again.
- 20:35So that was the start of the whole, that was the start of the whole thing
- 20:39but I really feel that for me the attunement stuff is about making them
- 20:45feel safe and the making them feel safe around us basically takes away
- 20:54all the problem behaviors a lot of people, you know, deal with with horses.
- 20:58Rupert Isaacson: No, I would agree and it's funny as you're, as you're telling me
- 21:01the story, I'm looking at my screensaver, which is a photograph I took in Namibia
- 21:07a year and a half ago, and it's of two young lions playing, roughhousing, and
- 21:15in the middle ground behind them, there's some sentinel zebra watching them.
- 21:23Behind those sentinel zebra are some other zebras who are grazing quite
- 21:27contentedly, even though these lions are Full of action and their mums, by
- 21:33the way, that, that, that they're big enough to participate in the hunt.
- 21:36They're not cub cubs, but they're maybe, you know, three quarters
- 21:40grown and their mums are also there and would rush in to make a kill if
- 21:44there was something opportunistic.
- 21:45And then behind the zebras are a bunch of springbok who are completely unconcerned
- 21:50because the zebra are looking out for it.
- 21:53And my horses I mean, I'm lucky I can keep them all in a herd.
- 21:58So, and they're very established, long established herd.
- 22:00So that they spend the night in a large area where they can come in under shelter
- 22:07get out of the rain get out of The wind it's winter in Germany right now, but
- 22:10then in the mid in the day, they'll just take themselves out into the field
- 22:13and The first thing that will happen Is they'll take shifts to lie down and
- 22:20sleep because they probably won't have slept like that in the nighttime because
- 22:25Maybe they're alert for predators.
- 22:27Maybe there's you know, and there's all sorts of stuff around them There's
- 22:30wild boar that come around and this and that but they will always take
- 22:33that opportunity and it's funny and I've Instinctively learned I don't
- 22:38mess with them when they're doing that.
- 22:40So sometimes if I need to work that horse Well, I'm not working that
- 22:44horse if he's lying down and sleeping And it's a really interesting thing.
- 22:48It's it's really instinctive No more than I would wake a friend.
- 22:54Unless there was some really, really pressing reason.
- 22:59But just because I want to put a saddle on his back, well I can wait.
- 23:02However, there's a couple of questions that come up with
- 23:04that story that you told.
- 23:06I think the one really natural question is, it's not It's related
- 23:12to the attunement, but it's,
- 23:15it's, why do you think the horse was blocking it?
- 23:19Why was there a no in that particular moment?
- 23:21What's your surmise?
- 23:23Why do you think it was important to him to say no to that thing?
- 23:28Because it's, it was an interesting and rather perplexing
- 23:31thing for him to say no to.
- 23:32You know, there's other more obvious things a horse might say no to.
- 23:35That one seems interesting to me.
- 23:38What, what do you think was going on there?
- 23:41Warwick Schiller: Well, it was a very subtle no because it would
- 23:44have taken two steps just to walk around it You know, he's just
- 23:47turned it wasn't even 45 degrees.
- 23:50Rupert Isaacson: You think it was just an desire to Field test some form of self
- 23:56expression and just see if he could I
- 23:59Warwick Schiller: well I
- 23:59Rupert Isaacson: do think more fuzzing.
- 24:01Warwick Schiller: I don't know That's not I don't think that's
- 24:03anthropomorphizing at all.
- 24:05So let me tell you a story.
- 24:06I've got a horse named Bundy I think you met Bundy when you were
- 24:09here Bundy's quite orally fixated.
- 24:13You know, he's a, he's a cribber cause he broke a, broke a bone in his foot
- 24:16when he was young and had to spend three months in a stall in a cast.
- 24:20He couldn't even be hand walked.
- 24:21And so he's very busy minded.
- 24:22So he, he learned to crib when he was there and he lives, you know, he's lived
- 24:26in a pasture with other horses for about 10 years and still, still crib, still wind
- 24:30sucks, you know, but for about six years.
- 24:35Every time I went to put the halter on him, he would grab the nose band
- 24:39of his mouth and chew on, and I would get, let me have that thing.
- 24:43And I just gently pulled it out of his mouth and then put it on.
- 24:46But then when I started thinking about things differently
- 24:49and, and horses testing us,
- 24:55I thought I'm going to try and experiment.
- 24:56So I went to catch him one day, I went to put the halter on and he got the nose band
- 24:59in his mouth and I just let him chew it.
- 25:01I just
- 25:01Warwick Schiller: stood there and I just let him chew it.
- 25:03Then he chewed it for a couple of minutes and then spat it out and when I put the
- 25:06holter on he didn't try to chew it again.
- 25:08Okay, so the next day, same thing, I let him chew it.
- 25:12The next day, same thing, I let him chew it.
- 25:14Anyway, he did that for four days in a row and I waited for as long as he felt
- 25:20the need to chew on that nose bend.
- 25:23The fifth day I went to put it on.
- 25:25He didn't do it the sixth day.
- 25:26The seventh day didn't do it for another two years.
- 25:30And I, I really feel observing things like that.
- 25:34It's like, I think these horses are always testing us not to be testy, but like,
- 25:41who are you, are you the obedient guy?
- 25:43Are you the patient guy?
- 25:44I, I don't care who you are.
- 25:47I would just like to know who you are because then I can base
- 25:51my interactions on, on, on that.
- 25:55And so, but I feel like that's what that horse was doing when he
- 25:58turned his head, like, I'm going to just do the little test thing.
- 26:01And if you just walk around me and you know, I think it's, are
- 26:03you paying attention or not?
- 26:05Are you how aware are you?
- 26:07I really feel like a lot of things horses do asking questions of.
- 26:11How aware are you?
- 26:13Because they're looking for, you know, they're looking for, you know,
- 26:18I think the nervous system's looking for homeostasis and they want to
- 26:22know, are you aware enough for me to completely relax around you?
- 26:25You were talking about your screensaver
- 26:27Rupert Isaacson: there.
- 26:28Warwick Schiller: A really interesting happened, thing happened
- 26:30at that same place in Kenya.
- 26:32There was this male wildebeest who lived kind of outside the arena there.
- 26:35And I looked up wildebeest after I got back there and
- 26:41and when I got back from there, Cause I want to know more about him.
- 26:43And I realized that the male wildebeest territorial.
- 26:47And so if they can, you know, they'll occupy a certain piece of land.
- 26:51And if that land's got good water and food, the cows will come
- 26:55to him and they will, you know, they'll fight over boundaries.
- 26:57Anyway, so this guy, he's solitary.
- 27:00And every time I see him laying down, he was laying up, laying down up
- 27:03against like some camel thorn bushes or something, something protective.
- 27:07So he only had to look in one direction.
- 27:09I noticed that every day, but then one day the zebra were all up closer to the
- 27:15house there and he ended up in their big circle while some were sleeping.
- 27:21And it's the only time I saw him lay down where his back wasn't
- 27:24up against something protective.
- 27:26There was no camel thorn bush or whatever it was he was laying up against.
- 27:30And I'm like, Oh, he's using the, he doesn't need to, to lay up
- 27:35against something to have a little nap because the zebra are going to.
- 27:40Be the sentinels.
- 27:41And you just said those springboks in the background were grazing away
- 27:44because there's, it's something
- 27:47Rupert Isaacson: I've often wondered with the way we keep horses these
- 27:50days, you know, when I was growing up we almost always mixed cows and sheep
- 27:54with horses and we did it largely actually for pasturage reasons.
- 27:58It makes your pastures better, blah, blah, blah.
- 28:00And it's also good.
- 28:02The horse is just no other animals, but I've noticed that that has
- 28:08gradually disappeared as the norm.
- 28:10You see it.
- 28:11Sometimes, now, but you used to see, it used to be just the norm, and I do
- 28:17wonder if when horses are doing that kind of thing with us, there is a
- 28:22sort of automatic cross species thing.
- 28:25That is built into pretty much all those big herbivores that they're
- 28:29supposed to hang out together They're supposed to Go a bit cross species.
- 28:35So for example in you know, I've got Lusitano horses and in their wild
- 28:40state They would have been in big herds with lots of wild cattle in those big
- 28:46marshlands where the Targus River or the Guadalquivir River come out to the
- 28:51sea and they would have Buddied up like the African animals do cross species
- 28:57because even up to about the 6th century AD of the common era There were lion
- 29:03in southern Iberia and most of southern Europe not just wolf, but big cats.
- 29:08So Just like the African things they're hanging out and they've got,
- 29:11you know, there are the wild cows.
- 29:14They're quite aggressive Very territorial, carry these little, like
- 29:18African Cape Buffalo, they, you know, carry these territories around them.
- 29:21If you cross inadvertently over that, they'll attack you.
- 29:24But if you step outside, just one step, they'll leave you alone again.
- 29:28You can imagine the horses were just constantly, you know, testing,
- 29:32going over those boundaries and having to sort of zip sideways.
- 29:34And then everyone's accommodating everyone else and trying to say, you know.
- 29:37Are we all right?
- 29:38Are you okay?
- 29:39But we all want to be together because we know we're safer together.
- 29:42And now here we are keeping them in isolation.
- 29:45But here we are presenting them with a cross species opportunity, which
- 29:50is presumably built into the DNA.
- 29:53Why wouldn't they bring those behaviors, ancestral behaviors, out to us?
- 29:59And then equally, how could we in our modern state possibly recognize them?
- 30:05Because we are so far removed from that way of life ourselves.
- 30:10And then it, we're sort of blind leading blind and then we end up with
- 30:13pathological behaviors that everyone's misunderstanding everybody, perhaps.
- 30:21Something which I wanted to ask you about that business of the sleeping.
- 30:26Most people these days do not have the luxury, unfortunately, of keeping
- 30:31their horses in herd situations.
- 30:32I wish it were not, you know, I wish it were otherwise, but
- 30:36it's, it's just how it is.
- 30:38And I sometimes get sad when I'm at Horse exposed and that sort of thing
- 30:44and you hear people say, oh you've got to keep your horse in the herd And if
- 30:46you don't know and they're often like people from Wyoming or whatever and
- 30:50like dude Well, you've got the state of Wyoming, you know But yeah, if you're
- 30:54in the suburbs of wherever you don't have that option and you can't say to
- 30:57those people They shouldn't own a horse.
- 31:00The herd situation is not necessarily available.
- 31:05And then even if it is, like if it's an what you call an active style you
- 31:10know, a sort of open stable in Germany, the herds are relatively fluid.
- 31:15They're not established herds of years and years and years that have
- 31:19the luxury of that kind of stability.
- 31:21And in therapeutic barns, for sure this is often the case, I mean there's, there
- 31:27are many therapeutic barns who do have land, but there's an awful lot that don't,
- 31:31and I'm thinking about in particular one really good project that we have with
- 31:35Horseboy in the middle, and I mean the middle of Dublin, and some people would
- 31:40say, well you shouldn't keep horses there, other people would say, yeah, but.
- 31:44Those kids in the middle of Dublin would have no access otherwise and Their horses
- 31:50are performing a great service and healing and the people who are running the barn
- 31:54of course are you know Behaving rationally and rotating them in and out from a place
- 31:59in the country where they can actually go out and blah blah So they're doing what
- 32:02they can but Can you speak to this a bit?
- 32:05Because I, I think this is a dilemma for a lot of horse owners and particularly
- 32:10horse owners that have really sort of active programs, you know, lots
- 32:14of clients, that sort of thing.
- 32:16And they, they haven't got the luxury of necessarily waiting
- 32:19for a horse in that way.
- 32:21They haven't got necessarily the staff that are attuned.
- 32:26They're not coming out of a culture that values that.
- 32:29They might say, well that's the horse.
- 32:31You know all the things they'd say and into the bargain.
- 32:34Well, maybe that horse isn't getting enough sleep So knowing what you know now,
- 32:38what would you what advice do you have for people in these imperfect scenarios?
- 32:45Through no fault of their own.
- 32:49Warwick Schiller: Well, probably the first thing I'd say is
- 32:53Horses are very resilient.
- 32:55They will adapt to whatever's going on And if you know if a horse is exhibiting
- 33:05anxious and possibly therefore dangerous behaviors, then you want to try to
- 33:10remedy that because they're, they're not going to be, if they're in like
- 33:14a therapeutic thing, they're not going to be able to work for that.
- 33:17But you know, that's on the, that's on the, the fight flight.
- 33:21That's on the, that's
- 33:22Rupert Isaacson: on the extreme end.
- 33:23It's on,
- 33:23Warwick Schiller: well, that's it's on the sympathetic nervous system part of it.
- 33:30Many times for a horse to exist in those types of conditions, they kind of can
- 33:35go inside their head a bit and they're more in a, if you're into polyvagal
- 33:37stuff, they're more in a, like a dorsal vagal shut downy type existence.
- 33:43And a lot of people get really bent out of shape.
- 33:46Like they shouldn't be like that.
- 33:48You know, in my marriage, my wife has.
- 33:52Even though she no longer identifies as anxious, she's been the anxious one.
- 33:55And I've been the, what I thought was the cool, calm and
- 33:58collected one all of my life.
- 34:00Then I realized that, Oh, no, she's been living in a sympathetic state.
- 34:04She's been living in anxiety and I've been living in shutdown.
- 34:08The thing about being in shutdown, like think about if you're
- 34:12anxious, you know, you're anxious.
- 34:14It's not a good feeling if you're in shutdown and you've only ever lived in
- 34:17shutdown and you don't know anything else, it's not a bad place to be.
- 34:22It's a pretty.
- 34:22Pretty peaceful sort of a place.
- 34:24Now there is more to life than living in that dorsal vagal tone but if
- 34:32a horse
- 34:36in say like a Healing scenario like you know Like you know some of the
- 34:41programs you're talking about and you deal with if they're in a bit of that
- 34:44state In order for it to work, they're quite happy to be in that, you know,
- 34:49they're, they're not, they're not wishing they were some, they're not
- 34:52suffering, they're not suffering at all.
- 34:55And like I said, speaking from personal experience, when you shut
- 34:58down, you're not suffering at all.
- 35:00You're not, you're not aware.
- 35:03That you're suffering, you know, the world may be a bit gray,
- 35:07but Hey, it's, it's all good.
- 35:10So, you know, I'd say as long as, you know, as long as a horse is
- 35:17well, the thing about if, you know, like I said, if they're anxious and
- 35:20they're, they're, they're exhibiting anxious behaviors, which can be
- 35:23dangerous for them or dangerous for the humans around them, they're not
- 35:28going to get looked after very well.
- 35:30They're probably going to end up in France.
- 35:33You know what I mean?
- 35:34Yeah.
- 35:34Whereas if they.
- 35:36You know, they're more tractable sort of thing that they will,
- 35:39they will have a purpose.
- 35:40They'll be fed.
- 35:41They'll be looked after.
- 35:42They'll have a life.
- 35:43So I don't, I'm not really judgmental about people who, you know, can't have
- 35:50a horse in the most perfect situation.
- 35:52They're very adaptable and, and someone that you and I both know, a lady from
- 35:56Sweden named Emily Kay's daughter is a.
- 36:00Well, I wouldn't, I wouldn't call her an animal communicator cause that would
- 36:03be selling her, her powers very, very short, but like she, she connects with the
- 36:10actual, the consciousness of all horses.
- 36:13And she will tell us that the horses are like, we'll do whatever we need.
- 36:17We're like, we don't hold any grudges.
- 36:18When you, when you show up differently, we can show up differently.
- 36:22We don't hold grudges.
- 36:23We.
- 36:24You know, and so I don't, you know, I think people can get,
- 36:31you know, maybe a little emotional about horses if they don't have
- 36:36just the most perfect life.
- 36:40You know what I mean?
- 36:41Whereas I feel like they're, they're a lot more adaptable than that.
- 36:46And I think about the, you know, horses in that shut down sort of a
- 36:50state, if you, you know, if you think about nervous system states, you go
- 36:52from, you know, you go from you know, relaxed or, you know, having a regulated
- 36:57nervous, you know, you're relaxed and then fight or flight comes after that.
- 37:01And then if you're captured or fight or flight's not, doesn't work, then
- 37:05the free state comes after that, that dorsal state comes after that.
- 37:09So you have to be careful about trying to bring a horse out of a dorsal state,
- 37:14if you so choose, because the next step on the ladder is going to be more of
- 37:21a sympathetic state and not going to go from dorsal to, Oh, now he's good.
- 37:25And so you really, you know, I think for a lot of horses.
- 37:31Leaving him in that bit of a dorsal state.
- 37:33I'm not talking about comatose type thing or catatonic sort of a thing.
- 37:38And we see, that's what that Mustang would do though.
- 37:40He'd be in this kind of a dorsal shut down.
- 37:42He'd kind of a state, but then he'd come out of it.
- 37:47And
- 37:48Rupert Isaacson: yeah, it's interesting.
- 37:50I think as you speak, I'm thinking about, well, the lives that a lot of the horses
- 37:54that I know that are in, for example, our programs now that said that the
- 37:58programs that we've got, the people who run them, they're excellent horse people.
- 38:02And they.
- 38:03Do everything for the horses welfare, but one of the things I've noticed that
- 38:06even in the, in the situations where the conditions aren't everything we
- 38:10would like them to be, what the horses do have is a really interesting set of
- 38:16relationships with a really interesting set of humans, as well as the other
- 38:21equines that are there, but the humans that are coming in and not coming in and
- 38:24saying, you must do this and sort of just bossing them about that they're coming
- 38:30in with an enormous vulnerability and you definitely see horses showing all sides
- 38:36of their personalities in a way that
- 38:41from the outside it appears that the horse is feeling fulfilled and has a
- 38:47sense of purpose and a sense of pleasure in the relationship with this variety
- 38:56of interesting but vulnerable humans that are coming through the door.
- 39:00Here's a question I wanted to ask When I got my dressage hat on and I'm being
- 39:06brought into clinic, in that the biggest problem I usually see isn't fear or
- 39:13stress in that particular type of stress.
- 39:16Usually it's boredom.
- 39:17The horse is just bored.
- 39:19And you said something, as I made a little note here, back in your first, when you,
- 39:25story, you were saying, well, is the horse just bored with endlessly going through
- 39:29the same drill again, and then After a while, you thought, well, maybe not.
- 39:32Maybe it's something else.
- 39:38Dressage is part of what I do for reasons that have to do more with
- 39:42nervous system effects on people.
- 39:46I've never thought that it needs to be boring because you can
- 39:49vary it in so many different ways if you want to make it playful.
- 39:52And, you know, it can be whatever you want it to be.
- 39:55But naturally, most people are presented with it.
- 39:59as something that's come out of the military.
- 40:03So therefore a very regimented sort of drill thing.
- 40:06And similarly, you see similar things in the Western world and you see similar
- 40:10things in I think any of the disciplines.
- 40:12When the horses are in this level of boredom, but they're also activating
- 40:20sympathetic nervous system because they need to perform really use their
- 40:23bodies and then presumably they're also getting endorphins you know presumably
- 40:27that it's not all bad but you can see this boredom you can see this desire to
- 40:32just express yourself and then of course there's the odd horse who can express
- 40:36themselves in that situation and they tend to win a lot of prizes but the
- 40:40average one does not with the attunement
- 40:46what do you say to people who are with a horse that is kind of doing
- 40:52the same thing every day, all day.
- 40:55And you know that that person doesn't feel safe doing anything else.
- 41:01So no matter what you say, not much is going to change.
- 41:04What are the, what are the, and this can happen in the not so good therapy
- 41:09settings as well, where the horses are just being pulled out and Effectively
- 41:13give them pony rides and they're stiff and they're arthritic and this sort of
- 41:16thing But again, people will come up with a bazillion reasons why they can't
- 41:19change it, you know And then you realize that you can't push this boulder uphill.
- 41:23So you realize that okay, that's how it's going to be What do
- 41:26you what's your like minimum
- 41:30set of tools that you will try to leave people with to?
- 41:36Make it as optimal as it can be even if you know, it's not going to
- 41:40be everything you'd like it to be
- 41:47Warwick Schiller: I'm not exactly sure of your question, but I
- 41:50wanted to, you know, this whole attunement thing is not just about
- 41:57listening in the beginning.
- 42:00It's listening all the time and noticing the horses getting bored and changing
- 42:06things up would be part of listening.
- 42:09You know what I mean?
- 42:09It's not this, you know, listening is not, yeah.
- 42:12I listened to the, I listened to you when I first got you and now we're, we're
- 42:17training, you know, I, I feel, you know, if you've ever heard the, the, the saying
- 42:22to do with training horses, you know, you want to reward the slightest try.
- 42:26Okay.
- 42:27When you reward the slightest try, not only are you rewarding the slightest
- 42:31try, which means usually would mean removing an aid or whatever, not only
- 42:37are you rewarding the slightest try, you're communicating your awareness.
- 42:43Of that try.
- 42:44And I really feel that is a huge part of a horse
- 42:51trusting
- 42:54you.
- 42:54You like, you just, you just you, you're repetitively
- 42:57saying, I noticed little things.
- 42:58I notice little things.
- 42:59I notice little things.
- 43:00I notice little things.
- 43:00And I think that's, I think that's part of the thing that makes them feel safe.
- 43:06And I just want to talk about that while it was on my fresh in my mind.
- 43:09Rupert Isaacson: If you're in the equine assisted field, or if you're
- 43:11considering a career in the equine assisted field, you might want to consider
- 43:16taking one of our three neuroscience backed equine assisted programs.
- 43:20Horseboy method, now established for 20 years, is the original
- 43:26Equine assisted program specifically designed for autism, mentored by and
- 43:32developed in conjunction with Dr.
- 43:35Temple Grandin and many other neuroscientists.
- 43:38We work in the saddle with younger children.
- 43:42Helping them create oxytocin in their bodies and neuroplasticity in the brain.
- 43:48It works incredibly well.
- 43:49It's now in about 40 countries.
- 43:52Check it out.
- 43:53If you're working without horses, you might want to look at movement
- 43:57method, which gets a very, very similar effect, but can also be
- 44:01applied in schools, in homes.
- 44:03If you're working with families, you can give them really tangible exercises to do
- 44:08at home that will create neuroplasticity.
- 44:10when they're not with you.
- 44:12Finally, we have taquine equine integration.
- 44:16If you know anything about our programs, you know that we need a
- 44:19really high standard of horsemanship in order to create the oxytocin
- 44:23in the body of the person that we're working with, child or adult.
- 44:27So, this means we need to train a horse in collection, but this
- 44:31also has a really beneficial effect on the horse's well being.
- 44:35And it also ends your time conflict, where you're wondering, oh my gosh, how
- 44:39am I going to condition my horses and maintain them and give them what they
- 44:43need, as well as Serving my clients.
- 44:46Takine equine integration aimed at a more adult client base
- 44:51absolutely gives you this.
- 44:53Warwick Schiller: Can you ask your question again though?
- 44:54'cause I don't think I really got, yeah.
- 44:55Well read of your question.
- 44:56Rupert Isaacson: When people are locked into a system where they are doing.
- 45:02The same stuff over and over again.
- 45:04And they feel that they have to.
- 45:07And no matter what you say, they're going to defend that.
- 45:11And you know that you're going to have to walk away from that clinic,
- 45:15that situation, that whatever.
- 45:19Trying to leave a set of easy tools that will hopefully shift things just
- 45:27a little bit in that listening way in a culture that Not only doesn't
- 45:32listen, but doesn't know how to listen.
- 45:35And there are many cultures like this.
- 45:39Do you have a set of tools?
- 45:42Okay, you coming to, let's say you come to my barn and you just notice that I'm
- 45:46not really listening much and you try to show me a bit about how to listen and
- 45:52I'm just not listening to you either.
- 45:55Really, not much.
- 45:58You know, you're gonna leave day after tomorrow.
- 46:02What do, do you have like a go to strategy?
- 46:05Three or four things that
- 46:08With somebody like that with somebody like me in that situation you would
- 46:11say, okay I'm gonna give Rupert these three easy things and if he
- 46:16does these three easy things the rest will kind of begin to shift
- 46:24Warwick Schiller: My my go to is I don't offer advice unless people are asking
- 46:34So I don't look over the fence and go hey, you should be doing it differently
- 46:38so that's like the the first part is if I was at your place and Unless I didn't
- 46:44know you, and I was at your place, and you were doing something that I didn't
- 46:46agree with and thought you could do it differently, unless you said, Hey, any
- 46:50suggestions on how to do this better?
- 46:52I wouldn't.
- 46:53Say a word.
- 46:54And the other thing is, I'm, you know, they say you create your own luck and I'm
- 47:00very lucky that I've been very upfront like on social media and things like
- 47:05that about the way I view the world.
- 47:08And so I don't get people coming to clinics who aren't terribly interested
- 47:15in the way I'm doing things these days.
- 47:18So I'm very, very lucky.
- 47:20I don't, I don't, I don't, I don't deal with people and this
- 47:24is not, I don't deal with them.
- 47:25I don't I don't get confronted with people who want to defend their position.
- 47:30Who are doing
- 47:30Rupert Isaacson: a lot of resistance to, yeah, yeah.
- 47:32Warwick Schiller: Yes.
- 47:33And, and, and, you know, I do quite a few horse expos, but I recruit
- 47:37the people for the demo too.
- 47:39So I look for horses with a certain problem.
- 47:41I have them send me videos and I can see the problem, like, yeah, I can help you.
- 47:44So I don't have a good answer for that.
- 47:47Cause I really.
- 47:48I'm not, like I said, I'm very, very lucky that I'm not ever in
- 47:51a position to where I have to try to convince people of something.
- 47:56All right, well then I'm
- 47:57Rupert Isaacson: going to pose the question differently because sometimes
- 48:00I am in that position sometimes.
- 48:02The, the old god of therapeutic riding also came out of the military to some
- 48:08degree and isn't really attuned for people like my son when he was young.
- 48:19People are too bossy.
- 48:20There's an assumption of top down instruction being understood.
- 48:23People are irritable.
- 48:24There's a, there's, if you, as you know, if you boss People around who've got,
- 48:30who don't understand what you're talking about and have overactive amygdalas.
- 48:34It will just cause distress and harm and so on and so on, but the people
- 48:38who, who might be in that situation, they're in there still for the right
- 48:43reasons and therapeutic riding when it was born was really addressing
- 48:50physical injury.
- 48:52With some psychological trauma things attached to it, but the people who
- 48:56had basic top down understanding their cognition was quote unquote normal
- 49:00And they were basically motivated to be there motivated to get on
- 49:03horse with A non verbal autistic kid, this is not the case at all.
- 49:08And I myself would not have been able to listen in the way that I
- 49:13can have my own son not trained me, because nothing else worked.
- 49:17Fortunately, I'd also lived at the Bushman.
- 49:20I'd learned some things there.
- 49:22But it was hard enough for me.
- 49:24When I go in, I do have a set of tools which I try to
- 49:30to leave.
- 49:30The first one is follow the child.
- 49:33And then I break down what follow the child means.
- 49:35Follow the child is physically, you actually physically have to kind
- 49:38of follow them around and observe.
- 49:40Otherwise you've got no idea what motivates them because they're not going
- 49:42to tell you because they're not verbal.
- 49:44You know, the second one is emotionally because that's often.
- 49:48Sensorial, sensorally, one will think that the tantrums and meltdowns and
- 49:52whatever are coming out of the blue or the sudden states of ecstasy But they're
- 49:56actually not, they're usually in response to something hitting the nervous system
- 50:01and because you're observing this kid because you're physically following them
- 50:04around you begin to notice what's in the environment when they're upset and
- 50:08when they're happy and You can begin to organize their environment because you
- 50:12see these patterns Then the third way the final way is following them intellectually
- 50:17and this is about finding out.
- 50:19What are their obsessions?
- 50:21And really diving into those even if you don't like them, even if they bore you
- 50:26even I don't care much about minecraft Frankly, you know i'm not into Computer
- 50:31games, but I will absolutely get into that, why that kid is into them and then
- 50:37learn to talk about it and print out and cut out and laminate the characters from
- 50:42that show or that game and tie them to trees so that we got a treasure hunt to
- 50:47follow that because that's where the kid's interest is that I'm going to follow that
- 50:50and I'm going to, those would be like, that's a standard tool that I would go in
- 50:55with and it's not mine that I thought up by the way, Temple Grandin gave it to me.
- 51:01Most of my good ideas are not my own.
- 51:05People are listening to you now, and they're wondering what they can do without
- 51:09Warwick Schiller being in their barn, coming to their place, saying, I would
- 51:14like to get more attunement with my horse.
- 51:17I would like to listen more.
- 51:18How do they do this?
- 51:21Warwick Schiller: Well, you know what's funny is, ahem, You the, the, the
- 51:25three basic things that you just talked about, the following, all the stuff.
- 51:33It's, it's, it's, it's my basic rule too, which is first
- 51:37you've got to give up control.
- 51:38Rupert Isaacson: Okay.
- 51:39Warwick Schiller: Giving up control is the very, very, very first thing.
- 51:45Rupert Isaacson: Mm hmm.
- 51:46Warwick Schiller: And, you know, you, the thing about, the thing about giving
- 51:49up control is you have to be able to.
- 51:52You know, when you're dealing with a thousand pound animal is you've
- 51:54got to be able to give up control in a situation to where Giving up
- 51:58control is not going to get anybody hurt them or you but you know for me,
- 52:06you know, having them give it usually usually the You know helping people
- 52:14with their horses a lot of times.
- 52:16There's they have these Transformational moments.
- 52:19I'm not trying to do equine assisted therapy, but helping people with their
- 52:24horses So many people have like of these little big aha And a lot of, a lot of
- 52:30times it's because they gave up control and it worked out and they've almost never
- 52:37been able to give up control in their entire life because they've been scared
- 52:41of giving up control because what's on the other side of that fear sort of thing.
- 52:44And when I can help somebody.
- 52:47Give up control and it actually helps them solve the problems with their horses.
- 52:51They've been trying to solve It's almost like a metaphor for life Like the the
- 52:56magic is on the other side of your other side of your fear and and you know
- 53:01Not giving up control is all the you know, it's a very fear based Fear based
- 53:07type thing, but it's interesting in your tongue about the following thing.
- 53:10So I had a
- 53:13And a lady came to a clinic years ago and riding her horse, he would,
- 53:17he has, he has sleep deprivation.
- 53:19So he'll be, she'll be sitting on him and he'll just buckle at the knees
- 53:22and almost fall down and jump up.
- 53:23And very, very shut down horse, like really in his head sort of thing.
- 53:27And one of the, she'd been to, I'd probably see her every six months.
- 53:31She'd, she probably went to clinics for a number of years.
- 53:34And initially she, she trained this horse with another person's program
- 53:38that was very, very obedience based.
- 53:41You do this, you do that, you do this.
- 53:42And she got him to where he was like a robot, like very robotic and low energy.
- 53:48She couldn't get more energy out of him.
- 53:50And one of the reasons she wanted, she sought me out was how do
- 53:53I get more energy out of him?
- 53:54Well, she was trying to have more.
- 53:56Input go in to get more energy out.
- 53:58But the thing was, this horse was completely dorsal, you know,
- 54:02like he was very, very shut down.
- 54:04And so any energy that went into him, he just basically blocked it out.
- 54:09And, you know, for her, I was trying to get her to start the conversation, but
- 54:15there was no starting point because the way he'd been interacted with, he was just
- 54:20like, humans suck sort of thing, you know.
- 54:23And one of the things I had to do was matching steps with him.
- 54:27So basically following him around, like if he walks, if you're on the ground
- 54:30there with him and he walks off, just go with him, go wherever he goes.
- 54:33Don't try to redirect him because the redirecting is not available anyway
- 54:37and he's been asked to do too much.
- 54:41And I wasn't doing that to solve any sleep deprivation issues.
- 54:46I was doing that to, like as a starting point for the conversation.
- 54:55And so she's at one clinic, this was in LA and she, I basically got a matching
- 55:00steps and just go on where he goes.
- 55:02If he stops, she stops.
- 55:03If he turns right, she turns right without putting any pressure on the lead rope.
- 55:09Anyway, she's leading him around and then he walks around a circle, lays
- 55:15down, goes to sleep, lays flat and starts almost like, not convulsing,
- 55:23but like, almost like a dog chasing rabbits in his sleep sort of thing.
- 55:27Rupert Isaacson: Okay.
- 55:28Warwick Schiller: And he's weaning and his little legs are going and like she
- 55:31said, and one of the things she said is he never lays down, I've never seen him lay
- 55:34down, and so he lays down at this clinic and has this sleep for a while, and he
- 55:39never looks at the environment, like he walks around and stares at the ground,
- 55:43like he's just like a He's just mmm.
- 55:46It's almost like a non maybe like a nonverbal child sort of thing.
- 55:49You know what I mean?
- 55:51Anyway after this sleep he chases the rabbits, you know he's little legs
- 55:56are gone and then he jumps up and Looks over in the distance and snorts
- 56:01and stuck and like really alert with his head stuck in the air and his
- 56:04ears Prick, you know, and these are these are things he never exhibits
- 56:10But it came from, came from that following and where'd the following
- 56:14come from giving up control, stop trying to control the animal,
- 56:18Rupert Isaacson: you
- 56:19Warwick Schiller: know, and if you think about what I did with the
- 56:20Mustang, I gave up control, like he turns his head instead of me going,
- 56:25you are subservient to me and you need to move your head back there cause I
- 56:27want to walk down here and do my thing.
- 56:30I think that's the, that's kind of the, the start of the conversation
- 56:36and, and, and under saddle too.
- 56:38Undersaddle too, very much so, but that's, but like I said you know, I don't Talk to
- 56:41Rupert Isaacson: us about when you're giving up control undersaddle.
- 56:44I think that's hard for a lot of people to picture.
- 56:49Warwick Schiller: That's easy, ask him, you know, for me, a horse has to be able
- 56:52to walk, trot, and canter on a loose rein, but no steering, no influence
- 56:57from the rider, and use the whole arena before we even start doing much else.
- 57:02I want the horse to be as comfortable under saddle with a human on
- 57:06their back as they are walking around out there on their own.
- 57:09Like, you know, you don't see horses crab walking sideways or things like that
- 57:17when no one's, when no one's riding them.
- 57:19And so I, I, I basically want to have them to where
- 57:25you can, like I said, walk, trot, kennel, no steering on a loose run.
- 57:29You know, you think about a lot of times people, when they start riding a horse,
- 57:32they want the horse to go forward.
- 57:34But then there's all these limiting factors and what I call what do I call it?
- 57:40Opposing forces.
- 57:42Okay.
- 57:43When you're working on forward, it's forward only, not forward in a certain
- 57:46direction with a certain carriage, with a certain amount of contact.
- 57:48It's, can you go forward?
- 57:50And if they're standing still and you ask them to walk, don't, and you don't steer
- 57:55them, the reins are completely loose, the horse can do whatever they want.
- 57:58A lot of times they will tell you where their mind is at.
- 58:00And usually they'll just walk straight over to the gate.
- 58:03Okay, because their thoughts are back at the barn or back with
- 58:06their friends or whatever but
- 58:12You know, that's, that's normally what will happen.
- 58:14Well, either one or two things will happen.
- 58:15I'll do that.
- 58:17Or when they go to walk off, they'll walk and then they'll get a bunch of
- 58:23energy and they'll go off into a trot, you know, like they'll start to run off
- 58:26and that's when you can just pick up one round and redirect that energy back around
- 58:30until you kind of wind it back down.
- 58:34Rupert Isaacson: Right.
- 58:35Well, I think that's an essential point because it can sound very
- 58:39extreme to say I'm giving up control completely if the horse.
- 58:42Now takes off at a fast canter in the arena heading towards the corner very fast
- 58:47or whatever or whatever and oh shit now suddenly Maybe they're gonna fall over.
- 58:51Yeah, but what you're saying is no you are still Directing a bit.
- 58:56Warwick Schiller: Well, you give up control until you need to take control.
- 58:59Rupert Isaacson: Okay, but that's you have control and if they control
- 59:02themselves Crucial point to make
- 59:04Warwick Schiller: they have still has to be control.
- 59:06Mm hmm.
- 59:06Okay, you give up control And the horse should be under their own control.
- 59:11And if they lose control, then you have to take control and, but you're not
- 59:15trying to stop things from happening.
- 59:17It's not out of a, it's not out of a out of a, you shouldn't
- 59:20be doing that mentality.
- 59:23It's, it's kind of like if, if a if an autistic child is having a meltdown,
- 59:28do you tell them, get in their face and tell them, stop doing that.
- 59:31You know what I mean?
- 59:32It's the same thing with a horse gets, gets emotionally activated trying
- 59:36to say, no, you shouldn't do that.
- 59:38You know, you can't, you can't stop energy.
- 59:40So all, you know, all you're going to do is just redirect that energy till it
- 59:44kind of winds back down and they come to a stop that is also a present stop.
- 59:49Meaning their mind, a lot of times people can get a horse to come to a halt,
- 59:54but their mind is still in the future.
- 59:56And that's where that energy was coming from.
- 59:58You got to wait till their thoughts change.
- 1:00:01And now they're in their body, their mind and their body are in
- 1:00:03the same place at the same time.
- 1:00:04Because a lot of times what happens is their thoughts run
- 1:00:06away and then their body runs away to catch up to their thoughts.
- 1:00:09So when you bring them back down again and they come to a stop but their
- 1:00:12thoughts are still going, you just wait till the thoughts come back to you
- 1:00:16and right there, they are now present.
- 1:00:19Their mind and body are in the same place at the same time.
- 1:00:22And what have you just done?
- 1:00:25Attunement.
- 1:00:25You just said, I noticed the moment that your thoughts went
- 1:00:29from the future to the present.
- 1:00:31And when you release the rain, right, then you've, you've got
- 1:00:35the physical thing where they're, they're, they're minding their body
- 1:00:37in the same place at the same time.
- 1:00:38But you've also said, I'm so in tune with you that I noticed when your thoughts
- 1:00:42changed, when you let go of that thought, when you let go of that anxious thought.
- 1:00:48And so the, you know, giving up control.
- 1:00:50It's not, it's not about being out of control.
- 1:00:53It's about giving up control and.
- 1:00:58But they still, but they have to be under their own control.
- 1:01:01That's this whole walk, trot, kennel, loose rein, but no steering.
- 1:01:03Before I start doing much with horses, they have to be under their own control.
- 1:01:08You don't control the horse.
- 1:01:09You control you.
- 1:01:10Presumably
- 1:01:11Rupert Isaacson: some horses are going to come in so far from that,
- 1:01:14that in 20, 10 to 30 minutes, they may or may not be able to
- 1:01:24Warwick Schiller: Usually when I'm doing a clinic if any horse has any anxiety
- 1:01:27sort of stuff, we start on the ground the first day, we don't, you know, I
- 1:01:31don't usually go, yes, let's start, let's start, you have, you have ridden issues,
- 1:01:38let's start there, I don't usually do that, you know, usually I tell, usually
- 1:01:41I tell them, you know, I've got this under saddle problem, I'll say that
- 1:01:45Einstein once said that approaching a problem at the level of the problem, Is
- 1:01:51the problem, you know, cause it's going to be an emotional regulation thing.
- 1:01:55It's not going to be a, there, there is no bolting issue or rearing issue
- 1:02:00or bucking issue, whatever it's their emotional regulation issues.
- 1:02:03And if you get the emotions regulated, the bodies, the body works just fine.
- 1:02:09Rupert Isaacson: When you've got, I'm thinking about people who are in
- 1:02:12really busy situations, for example, a therapy bar, loads of clients coming
- 1:02:18in, they're usually almost overwhelmed.
- 1:02:20And it's difficult to turn people away.
- 1:02:22So chances are they've got more clients than they can handle.
- 1:02:27That's usually what I see.
- 1:02:29People are overworked.
- 1:02:31So their worry is often, well, how am I going to find time to do anything
- 1:02:37other than serve these clients?
- 1:02:40Because, you know, that's where my primary, primary, you know,
- 1:02:44sense of service needs to be.
- 1:02:46We faced this issue ourselves when we were at our.
- 1:02:51sort of busiest at new trails in Texas and The work that we needed to do for
- 1:02:57the horses to condition them We're like shit, we can't do it because we're just
- 1:03:01overwhelmed and then I say, oh, hold on.
- 1:03:03Hold on I'm thinking about this the wrong way the conditioning work needs
- 1:03:07to be The work with the client and then why can't the client learn to also do
- 1:03:12the conditioning work because Many of these people absolutely can and then this
- 1:03:17whole other side of what we do called taking got born Just exactly that which
- 1:03:22was which took out the time conflict but it's very difficult for people to
- 1:03:25see beyond the time conflict when that's right in their face understandably and
- 1:03:30so Let's say people are listening to you now and they're going, well, I'd
- 1:03:35love to do some of this stuff that Warwick's talking about, but you know,
- 1:03:38where am I going to find the time?
- 1:03:40How could they mix that in with time working with clients?
- 1:03:45So for example, the first question they're going to have is what I
- 1:03:47can't, you know, lose control of the horse while they're with the client.
- 1:03:51So we faced this problem too.
- 1:03:53And we came up with this thing called crazy time.
- 1:03:55And so we realized that a lot of times the horses just needed play and they
- 1:04:01weren't getting it, for whatever reason.
- 1:04:04So we could create it and we would go in the arena, put a bunch of obstacles out.
- 1:04:10The horses liked jumping, there were jumps.
- 1:04:11If they didn't, there were other things.
- 1:04:13And we'd encourage the horses to play and About every two minutes we go and change
- 1:04:18it, to keep the horses sort of interested.
- 1:04:22And then, what we do is we start measuring out the distances, and widths and heights
- 1:04:28of the jump, and then the distance of the long side, and how fast do you, or
- 1:04:32the horse, or the dog, go down that long side, and then you can calculate distance
- 1:04:36over time, and suddenly you're doing math, you're getting speed, and there's
- 1:04:40also horsemanship, and there's also team building, and we suddenly realize,
- 1:04:42Oh my gosh, that's a whole program!
- 1:04:44And we can absolutely give the horses what they need to Not have any
- 1:04:47control without the time conflict, but it took us a while to get there.
- 1:04:52And we got there because, you know, We were getting stressed and our
- 1:04:55horses were getting stressed and we had to come up with something creative
- 1:04:59when people are Wanting to do what you're talking about There's time
- 1:05:06that they need to take to do this.
- 1:05:08Some of them may feel they haven't got it again Are there easy hacks
- 1:05:12that you can recommend that can just introduce aspects of this
- 1:05:19into quote unquote working sessions
- 1:05:24Warwick Schiller: Well, I, you know, I don't know much about
- 1:05:27the whole therapeutic writing.
- 1:05:29But I'm also thinking of writing schools, for example, I'm thinking
- 1:05:31it's sort of any writing, writing, writing, writing, writing, writing
- 1:05:35schools would be quite, quite easy.
- 1:05:39And let me tell you a little story.
- 1:05:41So there is a there's a couple of places here in America, they're
- 1:05:43resorts, they're very high end resorts.
- 1:05:46They're there's, there's two of them.
- 1:05:48I mean, there's a lot more than these two, but these two are like sister ones, you
- 1:05:51know, that's owned by the same company.
- 1:05:54And they do have a, like an equine assisted.
- 1:05:57One of the things you can do is go ride a horse, but it's meant to be,
- 1:06:02it's meant to be, you know, personal growth, self reflection type stuff.
- 1:06:08And.
- 1:06:10We actually had some of the people that run the horse park come to one of our
- 1:06:14retreats last year and they were saying, we want you to come and, we want you
- 1:06:18to come and help us because our horses, you know, tend to deteriorate over time.
- 1:06:25How do we, how do we, and we don't really have the time to.
- 1:06:31To do the right thing with the horses that you know, and it was all that and I said,
- 1:06:36oh, I've got it I've got a great idea because like I said before a lot of times
- 1:06:41when people come to a clinic They'll have a transformational experience on they've
- 1:06:45come to the clinic to have me help them with their horses But in the helping of
- 1:06:48the with their horses usually they've got a they've got a face Part of themselves.
- 1:06:55They don't normally face it might be giving up control.
- 1:06:57It might be they're too quick to anger It might be they're too timid.
- 1:07:02It might be one of those sorts of things And so I'm gonna go to one of these
- 1:07:08places to this place and I'm gonna spend a couple of days there and help
- 1:07:11They the instructors or whatever you whatever they are the therapists where
- 1:07:16they are show them some things they can do with the horses and the people at the
- 1:07:19same time and actually have the people training the horses, but the people
- 1:07:23will be getting the, the, you know, the personal growth, self reflection
- 1:07:27benefit out of it while they, while they are actually helping the horses.
- 1:07:33Be more consistent in their job, you know, because I don't I almost
- 1:07:37don't think you can separate the two I would so agree But these are these
- 1:07:41are you know, these are these people are going to be able bodied and you
- 1:07:46know, I'm not I'm not talking about
- 1:07:50You know if you've if you've got to have Two handlers leading the horse and two
- 1:07:54people holding the person on the horse.
- 1:07:55That's a totally different scenario.
- 1:07:58These are, you know, these are able bodied people.
- 1:08:02So, you know, like I said, I don't know too much about the
- 1:08:05whole Well, for example, when
- 1:08:06Rupert Isaacson: we're in exactly that situation that you just described,
- 1:08:09let's say we've, we've got someone who's not stable and there are.
- 1:08:13A couple of us on either side and we're having to create a very safe
- 1:08:17environment but what I need to do is also create oxytocin for that human's
- 1:08:22nervous system And I need to create BDNF brain derived neurotrophic factor for
- 1:08:28the cognition And I want the horse to be getting its yoga at the same time.
- 1:08:35So I'll be using in hand patterns, long reining patterns,
- 1:08:41while that person's up there.
- 1:08:44We'll be doing the jaw flexions, we'll be helping the horse to flex the neck,
- 1:08:48we'll be doing whatever we can do that we would be doing anyway in a conditioning
- 1:08:53session while the horse is working.
- 1:08:56Warwick Schiller: But it's a, it's a, it's a conditioning
- 1:08:57session, not a training session.
- 1:08:59Exactly.
- 1:09:00You're not, you're not teaching this horse to do this movement.
- 1:09:02No, I'm not going to teach the horse
- 1:09:03Rupert Isaacson: something new while they've got, or they
- 1:09:05have to take care of somebody.
- 1:09:06No.
- 1:09:07Warwick Schiller: Exactly.
- 1:09:07Yeah.
- 1:09:08Yeah.
- 1:09:09Rupert Isaacson: And I think that's actually a very good
- 1:09:11point that you just made.
- 1:09:11There is a big difference between conditioning and training.
- 1:09:14And what gets confusing is they often look quite similar.
- 1:09:17The same exercise could be for either, right?
- 1:09:19You know, rather like martial arts, you could use a certain movement
- 1:09:23of your arm to condition your arm.
- 1:09:25Or to actually learn how to punch.
- 1:09:27It's essentially the same movement, but how you do it.
- 1:09:31And the intention with which you do it, you know, but I think
- 1:09:35the point that you've raised, which I think is really useful is
- 1:09:41where the difficulty with giving up control is, I think, is that what we're
- 1:09:47all taught, what we're all conditioned to when we're small is this idea of
- 1:09:51separation, that we are separate from other things, that we have to separate
- 1:09:55our time, this is work time, this is play time, this is sleep time, this is,
- 1:09:59you know, this is relaxed time, this is alert time, whereas in fact it's, In
- 1:10:05a perfect world, it's much more fluid.
- 1:10:07And one doesn't have to separate out conditioning from the horse
- 1:10:12working, et cetera, et cetera.
- 1:10:14But it's a mental leap, I think for many of us.
- 1:10:16And it was for me to, to not automatically make those separations.
- 1:10:22Like when we're working in schools with our movement method
- 1:10:24program and trying to show.
- 1:10:29A teacher.
- 1:10:30No, you don't have to separate movement from learning.
- 1:10:32You can absolutely do it in the same time, but it's not your fault that
- 1:10:36you think that you have to, because that's always how it's been presented.
- 1:10:39To get over these things is tricky.
- 1:10:43You've talked about sleep deprivation a couple of times in this.
- 1:10:47How often is this something that you're seeing coming up
- 1:10:51Warwick Schiller: with horses?
- 1:10:52Not often.
- 1:10:53Okay.
- 1:10:55And you know, and there's a lot of reason for sleep deprivation.
- 1:10:57The ones that I have, there's been a few of them at clinics that it
- 1:11:03seems That the stuff that I'm doing has helped them with their sleep
- 1:11:07deprivation, but I wasn't trying to help them with sleep deprivation.
- 1:11:12It was more the attunement stuff was more communicating my awareness of
- 1:11:16their awareness that sort of thing.
- 1:11:19You know, there's a, there's a podcast, there's a vet that does a podcast and
- 1:11:24she did an episode on sleep deprivation.
- 1:11:25Someone said, you should listen to this vet on this podcast.
- 1:11:27She's really good.
- 1:11:28So I looked through, I scrolled through the whole list of podcasts you know, her
- 1:11:31episodes and one was on sleep deprivation.
- 1:11:33I thought, well.
- 1:11:34I've had a little bit of experience with that at clinics.
- 1:11:36I'll have a listen.
- 1:11:37And this vet said the only reasons horses have sleep deprivation is from pain.
- 1:11:44And it's from like being sore in their hocks and they can't lay,
- 1:11:47they don't want to lay down because they have a hard time getting up.
- 1:11:49And I'm thinking I didn't inject the hocks of these horses.
- 1:11:55So what I'm saying is I think there's a lot of different
- 1:11:57reason for sleep deprivation.
- 1:11:59Rupert Isaacson: Yeah.
- 1:11:59Warwick Schiller: Some of it can be pain.
- 1:12:01I've not encountered those because I didn't do any pain with, you
- 1:12:05know, the, the, the ones that I've encountered and I wasn't trying to
- 1:12:09resolve sleep deprivation, the ones that I've encountered, you know, they
- 1:12:14just had dysregulated nervous systems.
- 1:12:15And that was just the attunement stuff that I was working on
- 1:12:18to make them feel better.
- 1:12:20It just so happened.
- 1:12:21Some of them had helped them with their sleep deprivation that, you know, like
- 1:12:25that Mustang after he laid in and went to sleep, I said, does he do that often?
- 1:12:30So I knew nothing about, he doesn't lay down.
- 1:12:32The other one with the buckling knees, yeah, he was.
- 1:12:36He I knew that he had that problem, but I wasn't trying to resolve that.
- 1:12:40I wasn't trying to resolve that problem.
- 1:12:42So it's not like I'm any expert on sleep deprivation.
- 1:12:44I'm not an expert on much, but most everything I have come up with is all
- 1:12:50pretty being empiric and it's, I, I tend to come to the science from the backend.
- 1:12:54I will,
- 1:12:57maybe I'll intuitively do something with a horse at a clinic and it works and it's.
- 1:13:00Different than anything else I've ever done.
- 1:13:02And then you look at the science and you figure out, Oh yeah.
- 1:13:04Like polyvagal theory, I rejected polyvagal theory for the longest time.
- 1:13:10People said, you should read about polyvagal theory.
- 1:13:13Well, I wasn't interested in a theory.
- 1:13:14I want the facts, man.
- 1:13:16You know what I mean?
- 1:13:17But after I started reading about it, I'm like.
- 1:13:20Oh, that's what happened to the Mustang.
- 1:13:22That's what happened with this horse.
- 1:13:23That's what happened with that horse.
- 1:13:24And so I tend to come to the science from the background, bigger things
- 1:13:29that empirically, and then I read stuff that explains scientifically why that
- 1:13:36works, it's, you know, it's kind of like these days scientists, you know,
- 1:13:40like quantum entanglement and all that sort of stuff can explain religion and
- 1:13:44shamanic things in scientific terms.
- 1:13:47But you know, they, they, they were empiric things first.
- 1:13:51Rupert Isaacson: Yeah, no, absolutely.
- 1:13:53It's, it's, it's looking at why the thing is happening that we keep
- 1:13:56observing, but we know it's happening because we keep observing it.
- 1:14:00Warwick Schiller: Yeah, and you said, speaking of observing, you said something
- 1:14:02before about People think that their autistic children's outbursts, uh, random,
- 1:14:09but if you're observant and you go, what was going on right before this happened
- 1:14:14and you see things happen enough times, you're like, Oh, I know what triggers it.
- 1:14:18And that's, that's totally empiric, but it's, but it's about being observant.
- 1:14:23So it's about not having a story about what's going on and
- 1:14:30letting what's going on tell you.
- 1:14:32What's going on?
- 1:14:33You know, you and I have had a conversation some other time about a book
- 1:14:36I read by a guy named Charles Foster, who is a British Maybe he's an anthropologist.
- 1:14:44Maybe he's a I forget what he is, but he wrote a book called being a
- 1:14:51human exploration in 50, 000 years of consciousness and He goes, him and his
- 1:14:58son go to the north of England and live in the forests up there as hunter gatherers
- 1:15:02for six months or something like that.
- 1:15:04He was eating hedgehogs.
- 1:15:05And I think there was one time there he spent 11 days without eating anything.
- 1:15:09And the visions that he had from the hunger were like plant medicine journeys,
- 1:15:14but it was just from not eating.
- 1:15:15And, but anyway, one of the things he says in there, he's talking about the
- 1:15:18trees and he said In this book, he says, you know what, I've never really seen
- 1:15:22a tree as a matter of fact, it's been a long time since I've seen anything.
- 1:15:27He said, when I look at a tree, I don't see the tree because I'm a, he's a
- 1:15:31botanist or a naturalist or whatever.
- 1:15:33He says, when I look at a tree, I quantify what type of trees, is it deciduous?
- 1:15:37You know, what sort of things tend to grow around it?
- 1:15:40What, what.
- 1:15:42bugs eats it, what birds live in it.
- 1:15:44But he said, I don't really see the tree because I've got a story about the tree.
- 1:15:48And he said, I once met a man who could see a tree and it scared me so much.
- 1:15:53I left that temple, took a bus back to Kathmandu and flew
- 1:15:57straight home from the airport.
- 1:15:59And so he's talking about someone who could.
- 1:16:03See exactly what's in front of him without a story attached to it.
- 1:16:06And I feel like with the horses,
- 1:16:11part of this attunement thing is getting to the point to where you can just see
- 1:16:14what they're telling you without your own, without your own story attached to it.
- 1:16:19Cause I think there's a, there's a, there's a vibration
- 1:16:22and an energy to your story.
- 1:16:25And that's the thing I, I can't you know, you can't give somebody
- 1:16:32that they've almost got to, they've almost got to be able.
- 1:16:36Got to kind of work on that themselves.
- 1:16:38Rupert Isaacson: Yeah, we are the storytelling ape after all, we
- 1:16:40can't help it, you know, it's, it's, it's, that's also the best
- 1:16:43side of us, that's our healing.
- 1:16:45Yeah.
- 1:16:45But your original point, which is that basically what you're trying
- 1:16:51to do is make horses feel safe.
- 1:16:54If they feel heard, if they feel seen, i.
- 1:16:56e.
- 1:16:57observed, listened to, this kind of deep listening, they will feel safe.
- 1:17:00If they feel safe, then if they need to sleep, they can sleep.
- 1:17:02If they need to do this, they can do it.
- 1:17:04And then they can return to their sort of appropriate nervous system behavior.
- 1:17:11Well being.
- 1:17:12Well being, I suppose.
- 1:17:15There's been a couple of people that I work with.
- 1:17:17In our programs who've been doing Warwick Schiller achievement stuff
- 1:17:23for a while, and they report back to me that it really helps them,
- 1:17:27not just in the horse side, but it really helps them in the human side.
- 1:17:30One of them is a mutual friend of ours, somebody called Leanna Tank,
- 1:17:34who I'm looking forward to when you interview her because, as you know,
- 1:17:39she works in the criminal justice system in Michigan with people who
- 1:17:43have, Often committed quite monstrous crimes, the most atrocious of crimes.
- 1:17:50The most atrocious of crimes.
- 1:17:52But who were acquitted for reasons of insanity.
- 1:17:55So we're not talking about psychopaths who were delightedly planning it and
- 1:18:02laughing about it or anything like that.
- 1:18:03We're talking about people who were under extraordinary psychosis or
- 1:18:11such great distress or whatever.
- 1:18:13That this thing happened.
- 1:18:16And I've often asked her why is it Leanna that you can do this work over years
- 1:18:24and hang out in this situation where people it's not that Other people's
- 1:18:28lives have really suffered their own lifers, you know, and they're in
- 1:18:35lockdowns and you come in and You seem to be able to not lose your likeness of
- 1:18:46heart and at the same time you seem to be able to impart Some of that to help
- 1:18:52bring back quality of life and some degree of wellbeing to people who've
- 1:18:57lost a wellbeing and whose society might say do not deserve wellbeing.
- 1:19:01And she said, well, you know, a lot of the attunement stuff with
- 1:19:04Warwick actually helped me with this.
- 1:19:06She said, I wasn't actually maybe quite as, as, I think she always had a
- 1:19:09predisposition for it, obviously, but she said, I, I started really looking at.
- 1:19:18where their eyes were going, or really listening to what they were talking about,
- 1:19:22or really beginning to ask them things like stuff about their taste in music, and
- 1:19:28stuff about their taste in art, and she said what happened, and then taking them
- 1:19:33out into nature and realizing that, rather like the horse that you were describing,
- 1:19:38sort of suddenly looking off into the distance, people who hadn't been out for
- 1:19:42a long time, and they'd suddenly start doing this sort of thing, and Then she'd
- 1:19:49look where they were looking and think, well, are they looking at the clouds?
- 1:19:54Right.
- 1:19:54So making an observation about that and then the person, yes, yes, I
- 1:19:58think it is coming on to rain and this creating human connection, but I think.
- 1:20:04It does come down to safety.
- 1:20:09If you're a horse nerd, and if you're on this podcast, I'm guessing you are, then
- 1:20:14you've probably also always wondered a little bit about the old master system.
- 1:20:20of dressage training.
- 1:20:21If you go and check out our Helios Harmony program, we outline there step by step
- 1:20:30exactly how to train your horse from the ground to become the dressage horse
- 1:20:36of your dreams in a way that absolutely serves the physical, mental and emotional
- 1:20:42well being of the horse and the rider.
- 1:20:45Intrigued?
- 1:20:46Like to know more?
- 1:20:48Go to our website, Helios Harmony.
- 1:20:52Check out the free introduction course.
- 1:20:55Take it from there.
- 1:20:56Warwick Schiller: Can I just interrupt right there?
- 1:20:58There's a lady who's been to several of my clinics in Texas.
- 1:21:01And she's a
- 1:21:02she works in a juvenile psych ward.
- 1:21:06And she's some sort of a social worker, I think, you know,
- 1:21:09like a juvenile psych ward.
- 1:21:10And the last time I saw her, I said, I said, how's work, you know?
- 1:21:13Cause she had told me some interesting stories.
- 1:21:15I said, how's work?
- 1:21:15She goes, Oh, it's, it's terrible.
- 1:21:17You know, it's been really hard.
- 1:21:19She said, we've had, we've had kids in there as young as the.
- 1:21:24Who've been trafficked, some of them from as young as the age of four.
- 1:21:29And I'm like, Oh my God, where do you even start?
- 1:21:32Like they've got to be,
- 1:21:36you know, so broken.
- 1:21:37I said, where do you even start?
- 1:21:39And she said, well, most of them are nonverbal.
- 1:21:41And she said, the room we have each of them in has like two twin beds,
- 1:21:46one on either side, you know, but they don't put two people in the same room.
- 1:21:49And she said, a lot of times these kids will just curl up on their bed
- 1:21:52in the corner and face the wall.
- 1:21:54And she said.
- 1:21:55How, and you can't speak to them, speaking to them makes them cower.
- 1:21:59You know, you can't look directly at them.
- 1:22:01She said, where we start.
- 1:22:03And this is, you know, this is like what Temple Green had told you
- 1:22:05with, with Rowan, it's a type of following, but it's just mirroring.
- 1:22:10She said, if they're curled up in the corner on their bed, you
- 1:22:13go and curl up on the other bed, the same way they're curled up.
- 1:22:16And if they move their posture at all, you move your posture the same way.
- 1:22:20And you're telling them two things.
- 1:22:22And one of the things you're telling them is I don't want anything from you.
- 1:22:26I'm not going to approach you, I'm not going to come anywhere near,
- 1:22:28I don't want anything from you.
- 1:22:30But the other thing you're doing is communicating, I'm very aware of
- 1:22:34how you're feeling about everything.
- 1:22:37And you know, I'm very aware of where your posture, what your posture looks
- 1:22:39like and I adjust my, and after a while, she said those that's, that's
- 1:22:43the in, they'll actually start to
- 1:22:48let you in just a little bit.
- 1:22:49And like that horse that, that, you know, that had the sleep deprivation when he
- 1:22:54used to buckle at the knees that lay down at the clinic, that's what the, all
- 1:22:58that was about was having him let us.
- 1:23:01In, but you couldn't ask him to do anything to, he wasn't letting you in
- 1:23:06and the more you asked him, the more he'd figuratively literally figuratively
- 1:23:11curl up in the corner, like one of these kids would, you know what I mean?
- 1:23:13And he wouldn't, he wouldn't do that.
- 1:23:15He just stood there with no expression on his face sort of thing, you know,
- 1:23:20but pressure didn't do anything to him cause he wasn't letting anybody in.
- 1:23:23And so, yeah, I, I feel like when she told me that.
- 1:23:29What they do with those kids.
- 1:23:31It's like yeah, that's that's mirroring and you know, you know
- 1:23:33about mirror neurons and how all that stuff works But you know, not
- 1:23:38Rupert Isaacson: everyone listening does talk to us about mirror neurons.
- 1:23:40Warwick Schiller: No No, you I don't know much about it except it seems to
- 1:23:44be that you know Like if you if you're a salesman, they'll tell you if you want
- 1:23:48to make a sale Adopt the posture of the person you're talking to if they fold
- 1:23:53their arms you fold your arms if you put your feet a certain Way put your
- 1:23:56feet a certain way and and there's a subconscious thing people pick up on that.
- 1:23:59You're kind of getting them That that's a manipulative way of doing it, you know,
- 1:24:05you're like in the sales world, but So I don't really know not this is you know,
- 1:24:10this is all empiric for me to like hear about the science afterwards But there is
- 1:24:14something about These things called mirror neurons that recognize when people are
- 1:24:20mirroring you in it And I I feel like the the whole thing behind it is it it creates
- 1:24:26a level of connection if I'm not mistaken
- 1:24:30Rupert Isaacson: Yeah, you know often when I'm dealing with someone who's
- 1:24:32nonverbal, let's say they're in the saddle
- 1:24:37I'm not trying to get anything from him, right?
- 1:24:39But I am providing for example conversation but not conversation where
- 1:24:46I want them to converse with me And the conversation can be, I'm following what
- 1:24:51I know they're interested in, say for example, laminated cutouts in the trees.
- 1:24:57But equally, I could be
- 1:24:59simply looking where they look and trying to mirror their emotional state.
- 1:25:04Not if it's heightened, but for example, if it's very calm,
- 1:25:11then I just want to be very calm with them.
- 1:25:15If they're flapping and moving a lot, but it seems to be happy, I'm more animated.
- 1:25:24If they seem fearful, I try to be, to project just a feeling of, I am safety,
- 1:25:32but I can't do much more than that.
- 1:25:35And I can trust to the horse and the horse's motion and the nature around
- 1:25:38us to kind of do the job, right?
- 1:25:41I'm just really providing a way.
- 1:25:44To do that.
- 1:25:44But as you said, you know, what tends to happen if, if, if I do that is a
- 1:25:50relationship builds where at a certain point that person will reach out.
- 1:25:55It can take a while though.
- 1:25:56It can take many sessions.
- 1:25:58It's, it's might happen in that sessions.
- 1:26:00And you were talking about mirror neurons.
- 1:26:03I'm just looking it up so that we can get it straight.
- 1:26:05It says here on Dr.
- 1:26:07Google, mirror neurons are a class of neuron that modulate their activity.
- 1:26:15Both when an individual executes a specific motor act, so a movement, and
- 1:26:21when they observe the same or similar act performed by another individual.
- 1:26:28I'm just thinking what, what does that mean?
- 1:26:30And I'm, I'm thinking about like a healing ritual.
- 1:26:33So if we were, if you and I went into, we have been in a healing ritual
- 1:26:37together, but let's say we were in one that Involved think about actually
- 1:26:43that's actually not a bad thing.
- 1:26:44You and I found ourselves a few years ago in a sweat lodge.
- 1:26:49And we didn't really know the protocol.
- 1:26:54We were being told a little bit what to do, but we were observing everyone in
- 1:26:57there was observing each other and we could all pick up from each other's cues.
- 1:27:03And it didn't take long before we were all breathing in sync and chanting in sync.
- 1:27:08And
- 1:27:11rocking a little bit in sync.
- 1:27:14Warwick Schiller: And what was really interesting is one of our major
- 1:27:16senses was not available to us.
- 1:27:18That's true.
- 1:27:18It was pitch dark.
- 1:27:20We couldn't see, but there was that.
- 1:27:24So it's not just a, it's not just a mirror as in there's got to
- 1:27:29be an energetic thing to it too.
- 1:27:30Cause we ended up all doing the same thing, but we couldn't see each other.
- 1:27:33We could feel each other.
- 1:27:35We could sense where everybody was in the sweat lodge,
- 1:27:41you know, we can hear each other's breathing that sort of thing.
- 1:27:45Yeah.
- 1:27:45So it was, it was quite interesting.
- 1:27:47And it's interesting.
- 1:27:48You were talking about looking where they look, you know, that seems to
- 1:27:51be very helpful with the horses is when they get a bit concerned, look
- 1:27:58at what they're looking at and it's.
- 1:28:02I think, I think there's a couple of things to it.
- 1:28:07One of the things is you, as far as attunement is
- 1:28:09you're, you're communicating.
- 1:28:10Yes.
- 1:28:11I'm aware that you see something that could be a danger.
- 1:28:14Like I noticed you noticing, but the thing you have to do when you look at
- 1:28:20it, it's just like you said, if mirroring children, if they're fearful, you
- 1:28:25have to have that, that calm presence.
- 1:28:29So if a horse, you know, if a horse puts their head up and looks at
- 1:28:32something that they're concerned about, I will look at it too.
- 1:28:36Like I notice you notice that thing and I see it but then I'm
- 1:28:40projecting that calm energy like I see it But it's not gonna hurt us.
- 1:28:44It's
- 1:28:44Rupert Isaacson: yeah, I'm not gonna mirror your fear
- 1:28:46Warwick Schiller: I'm not gonna mirror your fear, but I will look at what you're
- 1:28:49looking at, but I will project a a Level of or I'll project a lack of concern
- 1:28:54about it But that's totally different than not looking at all because not looking
- 1:28:59at all tells them I didn't notice you looking at it And I didn't even notice it.
- 1:29:05And so you're communicating your lack of awareness of
- 1:29:07stuff, of stuff, of stuff there.
- 1:29:10So that's, that's one of the things I will do is, is, but I'll only do that
- 1:29:17unless it gets their anxiety gets so far gone that they need to move their feet.
- 1:29:24And then I'll redirect, then I'll redirect their thoughts so that their
- 1:29:28minds back with their feet, you know, what I like to call their presence.
- 1:29:31So their mind and their body are in the same place at the same
- 1:29:33Rupert Isaacson: time.
- 1:29:34Talk to me about how you do that.
- 1:29:36Warwick Schiller: Ah, well usually it's, you know, usually it's, this
- 1:29:38would be if you were, if you were, you know, if they're on line, they're
- 1:29:42on a lead rope and I will, if they've got to move their feet and walk off,
- 1:29:48I'll let them walk as far as they get to the end of the lead rope.
- 1:29:50I have like a, you know, 12 foot lead rope.
- 1:29:55If they get to the end of the lead rope, and this is where the training part comes
- 1:29:59in, they walk off and get to where they take the slack out of the lead rope.
- 1:30:03But as they, as the slack comes out of that lead rope, I usually have a little
- 1:30:08flag, I'll As the slack comes out of the lead rope, I'll kind of wave that flag a
- 1:30:13bit, probably towards their flank, but I'm not trying to move them over, I'm trying
- 1:30:17to have them think back down along their body, and so I'm really trying to get
- 1:30:20their mind connected to the lead rope, to where as when I pick up on the lead
- 1:30:23rope, any time they feel pressure on the lead rope, their mind follows it, I'm
- 1:30:27not really trying to get their body to follow it, their body follows their and I
- 1:30:31want their mind to follow that lead rope.
- 1:30:32So right there, I'd be, you know, they're, they're leaving, they're heading off away
- 1:30:39from me because their mind, their thought was so strong, it pulled their body.
- 1:30:44With it and when they get to the lead rope What I'm gonna do is I'm gonna redirect
- 1:30:48their attention back to the present So now their mind and their body are back
- 1:30:51in the same place at the same time, you know No different than if someone was
- 1:30:55experienced, you know, let's say I was with someone who said well, you know what?
- 1:31:00I'm like, I'm like, how you going?
- 1:31:02Like, oh, well, I've got this really really busy meeting tomorrow And
- 1:31:05and I'm afraid I might mess it up.
- 1:31:06And you know, so they're Their, their body's in today, but their mind's
- 1:31:09in tomorrow and they're thinking about, you know, some presentation
- 1:31:13they've got to do, I might say, Hey, let's do a little exercise.
- 1:31:16I want you to, I want you to cast your eyes around and
- 1:31:18name five things you can see.
- 1:31:22And now I want you to name four things you can hear.
- 1:31:26And then I want you to name three things you can feel.
- 1:31:29And I want you to name two things you can smell.
- 1:31:32And then one thing you can, one thing you can taste.
- 1:31:35And when they do that, their mind leaves tomorrow's presentation
- 1:31:40and comes back to the present.
- 1:31:42So all that, all that is right there is I'm just, with the horses, I'm just
- 1:31:45basically doing a little cognitive behavior therapy thing, getting
- 1:31:48their mind and their body back in the same place at the same time.
- 1:31:52But I'll only, I'll only interrupt that if their thoughts get so strong,
- 1:31:56their feet move and their feet move enough to where they get to, to the end
- 1:32:01of the, to the end of the lead rope.
- 1:32:05Rupert Isaacson: I could see that being a very very good exercise
- 1:32:08with certain people in the therapeutic writing environment to
- 1:32:18particularly people, you know, where there's a lot of anxiety.
- 1:32:21Because what's, what I love about what you just said there, there's nothing, there's
- 1:32:24nothing essentially triggering in that.
- 1:32:26It's just, no, it's not,
- 1:32:27Warwick Schiller: it's not that you're wrong.
- 1:32:28You're not wrong.
- 1:32:29It's not that you shouldn't be doing that.
- 1:32:31It's just a redirect and a redirection of their, their focus.
- 1:32:36Cause they're very focused on yourself when you're
- 1:32:38Rupert Isaacson: anxious.
- 1:32:39I
- 1:32:42Warwick Schiller: don't get anxious that often.
- 1:32:44But yeah, no, it's, it's, and that's something that, you know, my wife
- 1:32:47teaches that one quite a bit, the, the five, you know, she calls it
- 1:32:50the, the five things exercise.
- 1:32:53Yeah, it's just really good at bringing.
- 1:32:55Where
- 1:32:56Rupert Isaacson: did, where did Robin get that one from?
- 1:32:57Do you know?
- 1:32:59Warwick Schiller: Possibly from she's certified in something called neurofit.
- 1:33:02Maybe it came from there.
- 1:33:03I'm not sure.
- 1:33:03It's, it's, it's, it's a pretty common, I think neurofit behavior therapy, neurofit.
- 1:33:09Yeah.
- 1:33:09Worth looking into.
- 1:33:11It's, I think it's a pretty common sort of a.
- 1:33:16You know, cognitive behavior therapy thing.
- 1:33:17I was, I was going to some group therapy years ago and they were talking about
- 1:33:21this thing that they call the half smile.
- 1:33:23And they said, if you start to get in your head and get a bit anxious about
- 1:33:25something or other, do this half smile.
- 1:33:28And what the half smile involves is tightening up the muscles around
- 1:33:32your mouth to where you engage the muscles that would make a smile.
- 1:33:37Except if someone was watching you, they couldn't see it happen.
- 1:33:40So it's not a smile.
- 1:33:42It's less than a smile.
- 1:33:43It's like a half hold versus a hold.
- 1:33:45It's like this little engagement of these muscles.
- 1:33:48And I said, what is the physiological thing?
- 1:33:50What, what, what, what's the physiological thing that will
- 1:33:53make you calmer when you do that?
- 1:33:55And these, the two therapists couldn't tell me and I said, Is there a
- 1:33:59physiological thing or is it such a subtle movement You really have to focus on doing
- 1:34:07it and you have to let go of whatever you were worried about Whereas if it was
- 1:34:11a full smile You can that you can just whack on your face and not even think
- 1:34:15about it Your mind does not have to leave that other thing in order to do this.
- 1:34:20You ready?
- 1:34:21Ruid, here we go.
- 1:34:23You know, big old cheesy grin.
- 1:34:25You don't have to think about that.
- 1:34:26You can think about something else and do the cheesy grin.
- 1:34:29Rupert Isaacson: Also, the che, the cheesy grin could be gritting my teeth.
- 1:34:33It's almost gritting your teeth too.
- 1:34:34Warwick Schiller: But the other thing is, but this half smile, you
- 1:34:38actually have to constant because the thing is no one can see you do it.
- 1:34:43Right.
- 1:34:43If, if someone can see you doing it, you did it too big and so you've really got
- 1:34:47to get, go within and really think of it.
- 1:34:50So I think that's, I think a lot of those things do that is they just,
- 1:34:54they're exercises that take your mind off what you're concerned about
- 1:35:00and put it more in the present.
- 1:35:03Rupert Isaacson: I'm looking up half smiles again on Dr.
- 1:35:05Google as with, Oh,
- 1:35:07Warwick Schiller: is there a thing called a half smile on Dr.
- 1:35:08Google?
- 1:35:08There is a thing.
- 1:35:09Rupert Isaacson: It's a, it's a whole thing.
- 1:35:10And it seems to be.
- 1:35:12The first thing that comes to us is dialectical behavior therapy
- 1:35:16skill, half smile technique, engaging the facial muscles that are
- 1:35:21associated with positive emotions.
- 1:35:23It can help reduce feelings of stress.
- 1:35:24I'm just wondering though what, I might need to look into it.
- 1:35:29To see what chemicals are actually going on.
- 1:35:32I wonder if it's a small serotonin release, even.
- 1:35:35Warwick Schiller: Yeah, well that's, that was my question.
- 1:35:37Is, is, is there an actual physiological thing going on?
- 1:35:40Or is it just, is it just something so minutely technical that you have
- 1:35:45to, you have to think about it?
- 1:35:51Rupert Isaacson: Okay, it is a serotonin release, apparently.
- 1:35:53It is a serotonin,
- 1:35:54Warwick Schiller: okay, there you go.
- 1:35:55Look at that.
- 1:35:56So imagine there's that too, but there's also the And it relaxes your heart rate.
- 1:36:02Rupert Isaacson: Lowers your blood pressure.
- 1:36:04Warwick Schiller: Okay,
- 1:36:04Rupert Isaacson: there you go.
- 1:36:06Warwick Schiller: The half
- 1:36:06Rupert Isaacson: smile.
- 1:36:08Well, you know, jaw flexions, as you know, with horses, the, you know, the
- 1:36:14key to the back being the front, if the jaw is tense, where everything
- 1:36:18is tense, same in people, right?
- 1:36:20So frequently If I need to get people to relax, I'll have a bunch of silly stuff
- 1:36:28that I do which involves making stupid sounds and being consciously stupid.
- 1:36:34Because it just relaxes the jaw.
- 1:36:37Because our jaws get so tight so fast.
- 1:36:40Letting go of that sympathetic response that we're in.
- 1:36:46Listening to you talk, you know, you're talking about clinic,
- 1:36:50clinicking and workshop settings.
- 1:36:53And where one sees changes happening sometimes relatively quickly and in
- 1:37:00therapy sessions, equine assisted sessions, similar things can happen.
- 1:37:05But one of the things that springs to mind is, just as we were talking about
- 1:37:09how Many horses and most people don't get to live in the way that our organisms
- 1:37:15are designed for anymore And you were talking about that undirected movement
- 1:37:20and then you said things like well horses don't really go sideways in nature I say
- 1:37:23actually no But they do I've seen them like walking up the side of the fence
- 1:37:26that way and they'll absolutely cross their legs But they're not doing it
- 1:37:33But that's that's
- 1:37:34Warwick Schiller: That's, that's anxiety and, and there's also a
- 1:37:37human built structure in there.
- 1:37:39It might or
- 1:37:40Rupert Isaacson: might not be.
- 1:37:41Well,
- 1:37:41Warwick Schiller: I'm talking about, someone's trying to ride a horse in
- 1:37:44a circle to the left and the horse is running its shoulder out to the right.
- 1:37:47I got it.
- 1:37:48The horse wants to go right, he's going to go right, he's not going to go sideways.
- 1:37:51I get it.
- 1:37:53There's no one trying to control
- 1:37:54Rupert Isaacson: it.
- 1:37:55It's the no one's trying to control it thing.
- 1:37:57Yes.
- 1:37:58So.
- 1:37:59Let's take the fence away and the horse isn't stressed.
- 1:38:02Let's say there's just some sort of natural barrier there.
- 1:38:04I don't know, like rocks or.
- 1:38:07Brush, and they're
- 1:38:09Warwick Schiller: noticing, but the, but their body will, their
- 1:38:12body will be set up to do the thing they're trying to do exactly.
- 1:38:15Mind and their body will not be separated, but you see someone
- 1:38:18trying to ride a 20 meter circle to the left and the horse's mind is
- 1:38:20trying to drag him off to the right.
- 1:38:21But the horse is doing a 20 meter circle left while they're
- 1:38:24wishing that was somewhere else.
- 1:38:25That doesn't happen in nature.
- 1:38:26If a horse wants to be over there, he'll go over there.
- 1:38:30Rupert Isaacson: Indeed.
- 1:38:31As will a human, right?
- 1:38:33So a natural living human will also follow where their intentions and thoughts
- 1:38:39are because we're hunter gatherers.
- 1:38:41I guess that's that that's what springs to mind from what you're saying is the really
- 1:38:49natural way to be on a horse if one can ever say there is a natural way to be
- 1:38:52on a horse because obviously God didn't Make horses to carry monkeys and monkeys
- 1:38:56getting on horses as a monkey idea.
- 1:38:58Okay, fine, but maybe we are God I don't know but what I'm sure
- 1:39:04you've noticed and you know, you came back from the Gaucho Derby.
- 1:39:08And what I've noticed in long journeys on horseback that I've made, Mongolia's
- 1:39:13one, or all of the hunting that I did growing up, which are always kind of
- 1:39:18eight hour days on horseback, repeatedly, repeatedly, repeatedly, is that it's
- 1:39:24a saying, you know, as you know, the horse that you have in hour three is
- 1:39:28not the horse you had in hour one, and the horse you have by hour five is,
- 1:39:34there's just no separation, you just are.
- 1:39:36Yeah.
- 1:39:37And.
- 1:39:40whether it's in family systems, social systems, client based systems,
- 1:39:45healing systems, riding systems, we just don't get the time, you know.
- 1:39:53Let's say someone comes in and says oh, I've got this problem.
- 1:39:55Exactly what you're saying there They are in that 20 meter circle, but the
- 1:39:58horse's head is over, thoughts are over there, shoulders falling out Therefore
- 1:40:03there's kick and pull happening and blah blah blah blah blah But that same
- 1:40:06person and that same horse riding that same circle in hour five three of a day
- 1:40:15on horseback I would warrant that that thing would not be happening because
- 1:40:20there there would be that harmony of Usually you see, if they survive together
- 1:40:25that long, there's harmony of purpose.
- 1:40:28Similarly, you know, in a healing situation, in a true healing ritual,
- 1:40:31it's hours and hours and hours, you know, there's just time to relax into it.
- 1:40:37When someone comes for, I'm going to work my horse now, I've got a job, I
- 1:40:41come home from my job, I'm going to work my horse for an hour, and then
- 1:40:44I'm going to go, or I'm, the person is coming for this therapy session, they're
- 1:40:49coming for an hour, and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, or there's no time.
- 1:40:55And I wonder how much of the stresses that we see that become cumulative and
- 1:41:01compounded is just that we're not ranging across nature, you know, neither us
- 1:41:07nor the horse together as we should be.
- 1:41:10Warwick Schiller: Yeah, I think people with horses, it's not so
- 1:41:13much time Like with an example you gave there, it's not so much time.
- 1:41:18What people tend to do with horses is something they will not do in
- 1:41:21any other part of their life, which is have a plan that's unchangeable.
- 1:41:27And another, an analogy I like to use is what I call milk and eggs.
- 1:41:31So if I'm doing a clinic, I'll say, is anybody here write a shopping list?
- 1:41:35Someone put the hand up and say, okay, so where do you shop?
- 1:41:38And they might say Safeway is a popular supermarket here in America.
- 1:41:44And I said, okay, so you would write on your piece of paper, Safeway, underline,
- 1:41:48underline, and then below that you'd write milk and eggs, and they go, yes, and I
- 1:41:52said, okay, would you ever take that note, that's what I'm doing today, go out to
- 1:41:56the car, and as you go to get in the car, you notice you've got a flat front tire,
- 1:42:00would you consult your list, and let's see if I've got any tire pumping on my list
- 1:42:05today, nope, no tire pumping on my list, I'm just going to drive to the store.
- 1:42:09You would not do that anywhere in life.
- 1:42:12You'd go, hang on, let me put aside my list for a minute because
- 1:42:16I need to address this tire.
- 1:42:18We don't do it with cars, but we definitely do it with horses.
- 1:42:21People go, this is what I'm going to do today.
- 1:42:23I'm going to do this and this and this.
- 1:42:24And if the horse presents something else along the way, But being in the moment
- 1:42:29going, Oh, I need to fix this first.
- 1:42:32They will tend to just keep doing their they will tend to keep doing their plan.
- 1:42:37Whereas for me, training horses, it's like, okay, this is what
- 1:42:42I'm planning on doing today.
- 1:42:44But Oh, the horse tells me we need to work on this.
- 1:42:46Okay.
- 1:42:47We'll go, we'll go there.
- 1:42:48It's just like following Rowan.
- 1:42:49Rupert Isaacson: Yeah.
- 1:42:50No, totally.
- 1:42:50Totally.
- 1:42:51You know what I
- 1:42:51Warwick Schiller: mean?
- 1:42:51Like today, Rowan and I are going, when Rowan was young, like today,
- 1:42:56Rowan and I are going to, we're going to try and do this thing.
- 1:42:59Oh, hang on.
- 1:43:00There goes Rowan.
- 1:43:00Okay.
- 1:43:01Forget that.
- 1:43:01Rowan's down the Creek looking at frogs.
- 1:43:03Okay.
- 1:43:03We're now looking at frogs.
- 1:43:06Rupert Isaacson: You know what I mean?
- 1:43:07Yeah.
- 1:43:08And the looking at frogs is no loss because suddenly through
- 1:43:11the frogs, my God, the portals open to all these other things.
- 1:43:14Warwick Schiller: Yes.
- 1:43:15I really think that whatever shows up is what needs to be done right.
- 1:43:20Right then and that's where you kind of got to be got to be present,
- 1:43:23you know And I imagine it's hard in a therapeutic session with the
- 1:43:26horses and people and whatever but like I said, I'm not really in that
- 1:43:31Rupert Isaacson: Well, I think I think I think that there is a real value to just
- 1:43:34simply putting your attention there So as you say, there are certain pressures
- 1:43:44Because we have this follow the child thing for example within horse boy we talk
- 1:43:49to parents Or caregivers before they come and say we're going to work in this way.
- 1:43:55So you're not going to be surprised by the fact that it seems
- 1:43:58chaotic when we just follow the
- 1:44:00kid.
- 1:44:00Rupert Isaacson: Or if the kid doesn't want the horse that we're
- 1:44:02doing something else or whatever.
- 1:44:04But here is why.
- 1:44:06Because we do understand that in your mind you are coming here for
- 1:44:09this thing called a therapy session with a horse So therefore it's a lot.
- 1:44:14It's reasonable for you to be alarmed if you see that not happening but Therefore
- 1:44:21because of that we will honor that and explain in advance a lot why we work this
- 1:44:27way from the neuroscience point of view and tell you why It's likely to work and
- 1:44:34if it's really not for you, okay, fine.
- 1:44:36It's all right.
- 1:44:36We in our experience This is how it works better.
- 1:44:43I think the point that you're making you keep saying well I'm not you know
- 1:44:46familiar with that therapy environment, but of course really all of your
- 1:44:50Workshops are therapy environments.
- 1:44:52They are people come and they find change They find that they're
- 1:44:58liberated from constraints.
- 1:45:01Warwick Schiller: No, I, I, I get, they turn out that way, but, but not
- 1:45:04the setup therapy environment where this child is going to get on this
- 1:45:08horse and the horse has to do what he's got to do right now for the child.
- 1:45:12Indeed.
- 1:45:12Rupert Isaacson: I guess what I've been trying to sort of.
- 1:45:15Rope for when I, when I say, you know, ask, asking you what, what
- 1:45:20are the little tools you might use?
- 1:45:21And you have actually been quite articulate about them that you've,
- 1:45:24you've, you've really talked about matching steps, looking where they look.
- 1:45:27These kinds of things are actually not intuitive for people.
- 1:45:31And it's really helpful to hear them actually say, why not?
- 1:45:34Why not actually try looking where they look?
- 1:45:36Why not actually try matching steps?
- 1:45:38Why not actually try if they turn away, turn away, you know,
- 1:45:43so that you can show you don't.
- 1:45:44Want something?
- 1:45:45I think what you're touching on, which I think which is helpful, is if there
- 1:45:51is an Attention, you talked about where thoughts go, if the thoughts of the say
- 1:45:59therapeutic equine assisted practitioner Can go towards this attainment thing, just
- 1:46:06the thoughts Okay, they have to deliver the session, but just the thoughts.
- 1:46:13I would posit that it's going to go better, wouldn't you?
- 1:46:16Warwick Schiller: Yeah, I think it's, it's a bit like, it's
- 1:46:19a bit like bedside manner.
- 1:46:21You know what I mean?
- 1:46:21Can you imagine being an old person in a, in some sort of a home, like an
- 1:46:26aged care facility, and someone brings in your food, sits a tray down, walks
- 1:46:30out, someone comes in, dust your bed, whatever, cleans the room, whatever.
- 1:46:33They don't even look at you.
- 1:46:34They don't say hello.
- 1:46:35Like you're just an object.
- 1:46:37Whereas, and I feel a lot of horses are treated like objects, whereas
- 1:46:45Whereas if you can just make that connection and I'm not talking about
- 1:46:47I'm not talking about any magical thing, but just like Hey, how's it going?
- 1:46:53I'm like, I talk to my horses like they're people like, Hey, how's it going today?
- 1:46:56You know?
- 1:46:56I think that they, they know that, you know, you know what I mean?
- 1:47:00They, they're, they're aware of your awareness of them.
- 1:47:06And they're, they're aware of your non awareness of them and, and.
- 1:47:09How they interact with you depends on, on how you show up, you know,
- 1:47:13like I said about Bundy's testing thing, you know, I think they just
- 1:47:18like to know who they're dealing with.
- 1:47:20And I feel like if you can.
- 1:47:26Communicate your awareness of them and not, not just have
- 1:47:31them like an object in the room.
- 1:47:35It's, it's a, yeah, it's a, it's a, I think, I think it's a, the outcome
- 1:47:40can be totally different or at least significantly different, but they
- 1:47:43certainly feel different about, I think horses level of consciousness
- 1:47:48and their awareness is way more than, than you know, most people.
- 1:47:54Most people believe, and yeah, they really, they basically know when you're,
- 1:47:59they know when you're aware and they know when you're not, you know, I had a podcast
- 1:48:02guest a couple of years ago who was his name's Ty Murray, was a world champion
- 1:48:06rodeo cowboy, but he's really into the horsemanship stuff now, and he said one
- 1:48:10line during our podcast conversation that I wanted to circle back to, but we got
- 1:48:14off track and went somewhere else, but his line was, you need to be aware of
- 1:48:20them the moment they become aware of you.
- 1:48:24Like you walk out the back door and your horse is, you know, you know, six acres
- 1:48:28away and his head pops up and looks at you, you need to know that he noticed you.
- 1:48:33And there seems to be an awareness of your awareness
- 1:48:39Rupert Isaacson: and that, and
- 1:48:40Warwick Schiller: even before you get anywhere near him,
- 1:48:41that will make a difference.
- 1:48:44Rupert Isaacson: Yeah.
- 1:48:45Back to what you said about being seen.
- 1:48:47Why is being seen or gotten?
- 1:48:50Important because mammal to mammal, it makes you feel safe.
- 1:48:54Yeah.
- 1:48:55I mean, if, if I feel that you are noticing what I'm noticing and seeing
- 1:49:00me as me, then I think there's a chance that if there's a danger
- 1:49:05I don't see and you do, you might alert me to it and help me out of it.
- 1:49:11Warwick Schiller: Yes.
- 1:49:12I really believe that's the, that's the underlying thing of the whole thing.
- 1:49:18You know, I feel like horses You know, people talk about
- 1:49:21trust with horses and stuff.
- 1:49:22And I feel like there's two types of trust your horse can have about you.
- 1:49:28The first one's pretty easy.
- 1:49:29I trust you're not going to hurt me.
- 1:49:31I trust you're not a danger to me.
- 1:49:32That's very easy.
- 1:49:35But the other one, which is, I think quite a bit harder is I trust your
- 1:49:39awareness enough to communicate danger.
- 1:49:44If I don't notice it,
- 1:49:45I
- 1:49:47Warwick Schiller: trust you on that level.
- 1:49:49I trust you with, with my life.
- 1:49:51Not, not, I trust that you're not going to kill me.
- 1:49:55It's I trust that you are aware enough to alert me to danger that I don't see.
- 1:50:01S
- 1:50:02Rupert Isaacson: that you've got my back basically.
- 1:50:03Yeah.
- 1:50:03Warwick Schiller: Yes, that too.
- 1:50:04And, and so for me, every interaction you have with them all day, it's, it's
- 1:50:11raising and lowering the trust meter.
- 1:50:13Like just communicating your awareness of things.
- 1:50:17It's so true.
- 1:50:18That's, yeah.
- 1:50:19I think that's the, I think that's the holy grail.
- 1:50:21Rupert Isaacson: And then when, when a relationship gets damaged
- 1:50:24as well, it it, as you say, it's a holy grail because it allows you.
- 1:50:27You talked about resilience, it allows 'em to bounce back.
- 1:50:30Got a horse right now.
- 1:50:30Well,
- 1:50:31Warwick Schiller: sorry, can I just interrupt there for
- 1:50:33Rupert Isaacson: a second?
- 1:50:33Yeah, go ahead.
- 1:50:35Warwick Schiller: I, I saw something a while ago.
- 1:50:37A therapist actually showed me and, and it was like this circle and
- 1:50:40had three words around the circle.
- 1:50:41At the top of the circle.
- 1:50:42It said connection, and then there was an arrow went around the circle
- 1:50:46to the next word that said rupture.
- 1:50:48And then there was an arrow went around the next part of the circle
- 1:50:50to the next word that said repair.
- 1:50:51And then an arrow finished the circle off, went back to connection.
- 1:50:54Rupert Isaacson: Mm-hmm.
- 1:50:55Warwick Schiller: The thing about, I always tell people, don't worry about
- 1:50:59rupturing your connection because When it ruptures when you notice it
- 1:51:05ruptures and you take a make amends and you do the repair One thing is
- 1:51:09you're saying you notice the rupture
- 1:51:10Rupert Isaacson: Mm hmm,
- 1:51:12Warwick Schiller: and then you take the time and effort to do the repair and now
- 1:51:16you're back to connection But you're not in the same connection you were in before
- 1:51:19because you guys have just been through
- 1:51:21a little bit
- 1:51:22Warwick Schiller: of trouble and you've told them that you're aware
- 1:51:24of the trouble and you're Quite prepared to repair that trouble.
- 1:51:28And I said, it's, it's just a connection rupture repair cycle.
- 1:51:32You know, like no, no relationship is just connection.
- 1:51:35It's true.
- 1:51:36Otherwise you're not communicating probably with each other,
- 1:51:39but how you really feel,
- 1:51:39Rupert Isaacson: you
- 1:51:40Warwick Schiller: know?
- 1:51:40Rupert Isaacson: Yes.
- 1:51:41Yeah.
- 1:51:41Yeah.
- 1:51:41Yeah.
- 1:51:42And relationships.
- 1:51:43Cannot not rupture often for things that are outside the control of whoever the
- 1:51:52organisms are within that relationship They can be ruptured by distance.
- 1:51:56They can be ruptured by so many things
- 1:52:02Equally, you know somebody can have a bad experience on your watch
- 1:52:09and lose a bit of trust in you
- 1:52:14But it can be repaired and then it's usually a stronger
- 1:52:17relationship afterwards.
- 1:52:18Yeah.
- 1:52:19Warwick Schiller: Yeah, like you make a mistake You do something stupid, somebody
- 1:52:22else is offended, you can either ignore it or you go, Hey, I'm really sorry.
- 1:52:26I realized that I upset you when I said that.
- 1:52:28And I probably shouldn't have said that.
- 1:52:30When you get through that repair, they think more of you than
- 1:52:32they did before you screwed up.
- 1:52:34You know what I mean?
- 1:52:35I think that's.
- 1:52:37That's
- 1:52:37Rupert Isaacson: let's have a
- 1:52:37Warwick Schiller: look at
- 1:52:38Rupert Isaacson: that.
- 1:52:38Warwick Schiller: Just hold it down a bit.
- 1:52:39Just hold it still.
- 1:52:40Yeah, I, I, so, you know, I, a lot of people when they get into this whole
- 1:52:44connection stuff with their horses, they want to, I don't want to ever lose
- 1:52:49connection and that, that's the problem is not wanting to lose connection.
- 1:52:55Yes, it is.
- 1:52:56It is.
- 1:52:56It's, it's not, it's, I don't ever want to lose, like, Oh, I might, I don't want
- 1:53:01to do that cause I might lose connection.
- 1:53:02If you.
- 1:53:03Do that one thing, whatever it is, and you lose connection and
- 1:53:06you don't ever get it back again.
- 1:53:07It wasn't really connected in the first place.
- 1:53:08It was very, it was very superficial sort of thing.
- 1:53:13But it's, yeah, that whole, I'm really big on that connection
- 1:53:15rupture repair cycle these days.
- 1:53:17It's yeah, I, I believe that's how the relationships grow and that connection
- 1:53:22becomes much deeper and with horses, it's because you're communicating
- 1:53:27your awareness of the rupture.
- 1:53:29Rupert Isaacson: Rupture and repair, basically.
- 1:53:32It's faith, right, because it, it allows you to know that it can rupture, it
- 1:53:39will repair, so you can have faith.
- 1:53:42Warwick Schiller: Yeah.
- 1:53:43And if you've ever had a lot of those, the next time there's a rupture,
- 1:53:46it's not the end of the world.
- 1:53:48Yeah.
- 1:53:48Oh, okay.
- 1:53:49Cause I know we're going to come out the other side of this.
- 1:53:53Rupert Isaacson: Yeah, and you've got some skills you know what to do
- 1:53:55to come out of the other side of it Yeah, well, that's the other thing.
- 1:53:58Yeah, the
- 1:53:58Warwick Schiller: repair skills.
- 1:54:00Rupert Isaacson: Yeah.
- 1:54:02Well, I know it's a right about just over the two hour mark and We may have
- 1:54:09to rupture at this point Because I know that you have to go and do Things today.
- 1:54:15You are nine hours behind me.
- 1:54:17I'll leave you soon.
- 1:54:18So I hope that we can repair and reconnect Would love to And go further into this.
- 1:54:25Yeah, it's
- 1:54:29those people who most people are aware of you Most people are aware
- 1:54:32of me are aware of you But for the people who are not aware of you and
- 1:54:35also people who want to dive deeper into your resources on Attunement
- 1:54:44give us the resources.
- 1:54:45Where can they go?
- 1:54:47Warwick Schiller: My website warwickschiller.
- 1:54:48com or if you want to go to the video library it's videos.
- 1:54:51warwickschiller.
- 1:54:52com I have a Facebook page, I have a Facebook group, Warwick Schiller Attuned
- 1:54:57Horsemanship, and I have a podcast where I first met Rupert Sheldrake.
- 1:55:02Rupert Sheldrake, yeah, that guy too.
- 1:55:05Rupert Isaacson.
- 1:55:06I want him on mine.
- 1:55:07Yeah, I want him on mine too.
- 1:55:09And it's called The Journey on Podcast.
- 1:55:10It's available on all Journey all the podcast apps and it's,
- 1:55:15yeah, it's more explorations of consciousness than anything, but yeah.
- 1:55:18Rupert Isaacson: Brilliant.
- 1:55:20All right, Warwick.
- 1:55:20Well, thank you again.
- 1:55:23Once
- 1:55:23Warwick Schiller: again.
- 1:55:23Pleasure chatting with you as usual.
- 1:55:25Rupert Isaacson: All right.
- 1:55:26Till the next time.
- 1:55:27Give my love to everyone.
- 1:55:28Warwick Schiller: I shall.
- 1:55:30Bye.
- 1:55:31Rupert Isaacson: I hope you enjoyed today's conversation as much as I did.
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