Latest / The Horsehuman Connection Matrix / Ky Brown of Wiser River Wellness speaks about Eco-Therpy

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Ky Brown of Wiser River Wellness speaks about Eco-Therpy · The Horsehuman Connection Matrix

• 0:01
  Hi, this is Ishi Abel with the Horse Human Connection Matrix.
• 0:04
  Today I have with me Kai Brown from Wiser River Wellness.
• 0:09
  Kai is a therapist and he is using some new techniques in ecotherapy that I wanna hear all about.
• 0:17
  Welcome, Kai.
• 0:19
  Yeah, it's great to be here.
• 0:21
  She, thanks for having me.
• 0:22
  Yeah, so.
• 0:24
  So, yeah, I, I have my own practice called Wise River Wellness.
• 0:27
  And just a little background to the name'cause I think that might be important.
• 0:31
  I, in a former life I was working as a watershed scientist.
• 0:35
  I was involved in watershed restoration.
• 0:38
  And the short story is through a lot of that work, which brought me into connection with community a lot of different players come into how we preserve our watersheds.
• 0:47
  I realized my desire to bring people together and specifically with their connection with nature.
• 0:54
  And so as I transitioned into, into the mental health realm, I brought forward that aspect, which I think falls in the realm of what we know as sort of ecotherapy now.
• 1:06
  And I believe ecotherapy, if kind of to give it sort of a definition or somewhat of an understanding what that looks like oftentimes in the therapeutic space, we focus a lot on the human to human relationships in our life.
• 1:24
  And recognizing that we actually have relationships with all, all sorts of life around us, oftentimes the natural world and, and our ancestors had a lot of relationships with the natural world, with the places they lived with the changing of the seasons with the flora and the fauna.
• 1:44
  And so recognizing part of what might be happening in our world right now is this idea of.
• 1:51
  Eco anxiety this or eco grief this reality that we are disconnected from the world around us that we're, we're moving quickly and we're not maybe taking into the place that we're in, in a deeper way that allows us to feel connected.
• 2:08
  And so yeah, I'm happy to talk a little bit more about.
• 2:11
  Where I, where that comes in.
• 2:12
  Yeah.
• 2:13
  Yeah.
• 2:13
  That seems really important.
• 2:15
  I'm thinking back to one of my other previous podcasts and something someone said about you can't understand the organism unless you understand the environment, which I think is a very true, very, very general statement.
• 2:28
  But, you know, as it applies to what you just said, our environment as a species is really shifted and that disconnect yeah.
• 2:38
  Has certainly caused and had lots of impact on how we respond and react to things.
• 2:46
  Yeah, absolutely.
• 2:48
  I think the majority of people now spend quite a lot of time on screens and artificial interactions with machines and various things.
• 2:56
  And there's a lot of, there's a lot of when we think of sort of the somatic piece to therapy.
• 3:03
  So being in our bodies, like what's it like to be embodied in the world?
• 3:07
  We have a very cognitive culture.
• 3:08
  We have a very sort of heady culture and to be in a garden, to have your hands in the soil, to watch the plants go from a seed to an actual vegetable or crop of sorts, to watch a river through the year and to see the difference in the water level, the changes or the difference in the trees.
• 3:27
  This gives us an opportunity to feel not only the changes in nature, but to reflect along those changes with our own lives.
• 3:35
  It's very powerful.
• 3:39
  It's like an anchoring force.
• 3:41
  I know.
• 3:41
  I know those things are in my life.
• 3:43
  They're very grounding and very anchoring.
• 3:46
  So part of what you're doing is evidence based taking people out on a trail.
• 3:51
  Can you tell me more about that?
• 3:54
  Yeah, yeah, sure.
• 3:55
  So it You know, it's, and I, I wanna say it maybe seems very new, but it's not.
• 4:00
  It's actually something we've, again, we've been doing a long time, we just aren't doing it as much anymore.
• 4:05
  I think in the, in the pandemic, a lot of people discovered nature again, the, the rise in people being outside.
• 4:11
  I don't have the actual statistics on that, but it just seemed like, from what I heard, from my community here in Oregon, a lot more people were wanting to be outside a lot of trails got more busy.
• 4:21
  And yeah, people are starting to see the benefits of the fresh air, fresh, fresh experiences in nature.
• 4:28
  And so part of that for me, and also part of that is that in the and I think about even the therapy space, we're often sitting in a room or sitting on a couch.
• 4:35
  We're not really moving a whole lot.
• 4:37
  We're looking, we're under lights.
• 4:38
  Often, some places it's even fluorescent lights.
• 4:42
  And even as the therapist, I recognize I can't sit that long.
• 4:45
  It's a long time to sit.
• 4:46
  And I have clients where I sort of invite them in.
• 4:49
  I'm like, hey, would we want to move our bodies more?
• 4:51
  Would we want to go on a walk?
• 4:52
  Let's, let's mix it up.
• 4:54
  And even the act of just walking.
• 4:56
  So I think about.
• 4:58
  Oh, I think two years ago a book came out, and I can't, I can't recall the author at the moment, but it was a walk and talk book, and it talked a lot about the therapeutic benefits of walk and talk.
• 5:07
  Just getting out and walking with your clients, how that bilateral movement is almost similar to EMDR.
• 5:13
  That's right.
• 5:14
  Yeah.
• 5:15
  And so I'm just taking that.
• 5:17
  I have that idea only taking it a step further.
• 5:18
  Like, let's do that with the intention of being in nature.
• 5:22
  And let's use the journey on the trail.
• 5:25
  What's it like to go on a trail with all the bends and the curves are up the hill or down the hill?
• 5:30
  What do you notice in your body as you're walking?
• 5:32
  What do you notice around you?
• 5:34
  How do you open your vision?
• 5:35
  So, so often where our vision is so focused, Directly in front of us.
• 5:39
  And when we cast our vision to a wider view, we actually create more space in our experience to feel the things that are arising for us.
• 5:49
  Yeah.
• 5:49
  So these are just some examples.
• 5:51
  That's an interesting point about the perspective and the widening because as I've spent a lot of time with horses.
• 5:58
  I know that my awareness for any small movement in the distance has sharpened, and that my awareness of looking.
• 6:07
  Looking peripherally much further because I'm with them has changed because I'm with them and that's the way they see.
• 6:15
  So, you know what you're saying makes a lot of sense that it did it definitely broadens things and I'm sure there's lots of metaphor that happens out there, right?
• 6:26
  Yeah, absolutely.
• 6:27
  I'm glad you brought that point up.
• 6:30
  Yeah, so like a great example of that is when I, when I consider like, how do we, what is it like to work through grief, you know, recognizing in our culture, grief is something that we are, we don't have a lot of traditions for that.
• 6:41
  We don't have a lot of guidance, like what it's like to have grief.
• 6:44
  loss and grief in community.
• 6:47
  And a lot of people are often hesitant to even reach out regarding grief.
• 6:51
  So nature can be really powerful for that.
• 6:53
  The ability to see that, oh look, we're in a season of winter.
• 6:57
  Recently here in Oregon, you know, we're coming out of Getting closer to spring and so as we move through winter we can actually use that metaphor of noticing the trees falling back, the leaves falling off, things opening up.
• 7:10
  Sometimes we have that sense of sorrow that shows up that time of year and that going in and then the recognition that things will come back.
• 7:18
  Like life is like prevails, life comes forward abundant again and it's actually just part of a cycle of being being human and being connected to, you know, the ebb and flows of the natural world as well.
• 7:30
  Yeah, I've often felt that in the garden too, as you see the flowers die back and then as you learn more about plants or as I have learned more about plants, noticing that like some, like a peony, a peony can live 100 years, you know, a rose maybe 30, a marigold one season.
• 7:49
  So yeah, there's that, there's that difference of of all the variations of, of life and how long.
• 7:58
  You know, bugs live, how long different plants live, how long different people live.
• 8:04
  Yeah, and just, I think, to add to that too, like, again, going back to sort of the, and again, I do still do therapy in an office, and I think you can have, you can't have a site ecotherapy in an office, you can have plants in your office, you can have even just the discussion of nature and what that's like in people's lives.
• 8:23
  For some people, nature can be actually scary, or they can have They can have memories of nature being darker, harder in their lives as well.
• 8:30
  So I want to bring in that because I recognize that not to make the assumption that nature is just, you know, easy for people or always connecting, but it's more, what is it taking us to?
• 8:41
  And can we come back to it?
• 8:42
  Maybe it is, maybe there is an experience that was challenging with nature and that even can be a part of the healing to kind of go back out in nature and be with that and sort of use that as part of the process.
• 8:54
  Like an exposure.
• 8:55
  Yeah, that's interesting.
• 8:56
  I hadn't thought about that perspective because it's so far from, you know, from my own experience.
• 9:02
  So, if you're doing a lot of this you know, Carissa who connected us.
• 9:09
  She and I have had several talks about evidence based versus theory based with equine assisted therapy.
• 9:16
  And I'm kind of curious about how that plays in with the ecotherapy too.
• 9:22
  Like, is it a lot harder to be evidence based rather than theory based?
• 9:27
  And, and how do you, how do you walk?
• 9:29
  with that?
• 9:32
  Yeah, that's a great question.
• 9:34
  So I, so I took a training out of so again, I would say my training from nature has come from the formal training.
• 9:42
  I'd say it was being a scientist, being a hydrologist, and so really knowing, like, the science of ecosystems and really kind of diving into systems thinking.
• 9:53
  When I was in school that was sort of the beginning.
• 9:55
  This was several, many years, 15 years ago or something at this point.
• 9:58
  But when I was doing my first master's that was when science was starting to say, Hey, this, we have this reduct, we're really reductionist.
• 10:05
  We're not really integrated here.
• 10:06
  Like a biologist is not working with the chemist.
• 10:09
  They're not working with a hydrologist.
• 10:11
  So at that time, there's a lot of effort to cross collaborate and start to actually look at, like, how all these sciences interact through systems thinking.
• 10:20
  And I'm losing my train of thought there.
• 10:23
  Okay, evidence based and theory based and coming from a scientific background.
• 10:28
  Yeah, yeah.
• 10:29
  So, yeah, so so the evidence of Hang on one second, I'm going to come back to it.
• 10:38
  Totally take your time.
• 10:38
  Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 10:40
  Let me see here.
• 10:41
  Yeah, so I think where I was going with that was just the, the, the evidence that we have of ecosystem interaction and how we know these ecosystems interact.
• 10:52
  And then.
• 10:53
  We start to put the human being into that.
• 10:55
  Like, okay, what's the evidence that we know about the human being in ecosystems?
• 10:59
  And so I decided to add to that through through therapy by doing a training through Pacifica University.
• 11:07
  They have an ecotherapy certificate.
• 11:09
  And that training was, was helpful for me in the sense that it brought me to a lot of the evidence based research, which there is a whole lot out there, actually.
• 11:17
  And A lot of it actually comes out of Japan, there's actually a lot of movement there in the Japanese culture, they, they now highly value their forests so much so that they have a, they've taken forestry, and they've taken the health department and they've combined them, and so they sort of have this idea of forest medicine.
• 11:37
  Wow.
• 11:38
  Yeah.
• 11:39
  That's, that's potent.
• 11:42
  Mm hmm.
• 11:43
  Yeah, and what they'll do in, in, in Japan is they'll actually prescribe you, okay, we're prescribing you for your mental health to go out into the forest and to walk, and to do what in Japanese it's called shinrin roku, which basically means forest bathing.
• 11:59
  Mm hmm.
• 12:00
  And so there, there's actually quite a lot of evidence for this within that culture.
• 12:05
  And then there's also been a lot of research moving forward in the United States around, you know, what are the benefits with people's anxiety when they spend a little bit more time in nature, or their depression when they spend more time in nature.
• 12:20
  Yeah, really big, really big stuff.
• 12:22
  So there's no problem with insurance covering just because Whatever you're doing normally as a therapist in the office, you're doing it the same with the same evidence based criteria when you're on a trail or when you take people out.
• 12:41
  Well, that's a great question or a great point you bring up.
• 12:43
  So there is a, there is a challenge with insurance and that's actually probably one of the biggest conversations people are having around this and one of the big, for some, stopgap.
• 12:53
  So reason being is insurance is really concerned with HIPAA compliance often.
• 12:59
  And so one of the ways that people work with that is they meet, insurance requires us to meet at the office.
• 13:06
  So people will often meet at the office and then you'll have like a walk and talk form or some outdoor form that basically your client says, yeah, that I would like to do that.
• 13:16
  They sign that form and then that allows you to, to leave the office and to go out.
• 13:20
  On your walk or out in nature back to the office but that being said, I think that's a big challenge.
• 13:26
  Like, I think there are actually a lot of therapists that are not using insurance if they really want to do this work because to take a client out into the wilderness or to meet them in the wilderness becomes a challenge with insurance.
• 13:38
  And so one of the ways I navigate that is I, I do do the meet at the office or I, or I have some clients that unfortunately I, I might write them a super bill.
• 13:48
  And I might be meeting them out in the woods.
• 13:50
  And so that way I'm not directly involved with their insurance, but still try to provide them a way to get reimbursed if need be.
• 13:59
  Do you, it seemed like in our last conversation to prep for this, which was quite a while ago, we both got kind of busy and I dropped the ball.
• 14:08
  But it seemed like we had some conversation around retreats or creating workshops or things that could bring in more activities from primitive cultures that were really good for brain health that kind of fit into this model that we're talking about.
• 14:27
  You have you had some ideas about that or some visioning or even some experience?
• 14:34
  I have.
• 14:34
  Yeah, I definitely have.
• 14:35
  So one thing I've done the last two years, I should mention is there's a festival up near outside Portland called Love Oregon.
• 14:45
  And it's a festival that promotes all, it's, it's a lot of people from Portland, but it promotes all things Oregon, the food of Oregon, it promotes music.
• 14:55
  And then there's also like a mental health and a wellness side to it.
• 14:59
  And they've invited me to come up I'm also, I also play music.
• 15:04
  So I I've gone up to do that, but the main thing I've done is actually led a workshop around embodiment in nature.
• 15:12
  And so what I've done there essentially, and this is evolving is I've been able to take people and, and a group of people, and we actually.
• 15:22
  First, we start off and we talk about, okay, what are like pivotal experiences for you in that natural world?
• 15:27
  What's your relationship to the natural world like?
• 15:29
  And it's so interesting because people very much tend to have these formative experiences, like, oh, I remember that tree in my yard, or I remember when I used to go out in the field with a grandparent or the, or some fruit that we used to get And and so forth.
• 15:44
  Now some people might come from really urban environments and maybe have very little experience, but it may be a park that they used to go to, like just that little park or something nearby.
• 15:54
  And then I start to talk to people about what's it going to be like today, as, as we move through the woods, we're going to slow down and I'm actually going to have you all go off in different directions.
• 16:03
  And I'm going to have you listen.
• 16:06
  deeply to nature, listen to the rhythms.
• 16:09
  This is where some kind of music comes in.
• 16:11
  Like what, what are the, some of the rhythms of the sounds or the music that you hear in nature?
• 16:16
  And then how do you also sort of embody it?
• 16:18
  Like when you're walking, I want you to walk barefoot potentially, and I want you to walk like maybe you're an animal.
• 16:25
  Or maybe you're swaying like a tree.
• 16:28
  Or maybe there's a plant you see and you notice how it moves and I want you to move with it.
• 16:32
  So Nate, there's so much movement in the natural world.
• 16:35
  And so what's it like to actually try to take some of that movement and those sounds and bring that into your body?
• 16:41
  People have really different experiences with this, but often they come back and there's generally just like a sense of like, wow, I felt like I opened up.
• 16:49
  I felt like I was freer.
• 16:50
  I felt.
• 16:51
  Maybe a little more wild even.
• 16:53
  I think sometimes we feel that it's, we can't be wild and we can't be free in our bodies.
• 16:58
  We have, we're so often so constricted in how we can move.
• 17:01
  So it's playful.
• 17:02
  It's fun.
• 17:03
  It's expansive in that way.
• 17:05
  That's really beautiful and somatic.
• 17:07
  And, you know, it reminds me of some of the things that I've learned about, you know, how we can connect with horses too.
• 17:15
  We can connect with nature that way.
• 17:18
  But giving people permission to move in their body and to imitate nature is, I mean, for a lot of people, I know that's just got to be huge, huge.
• 17:26
  But it's also where there's an intersection between that and different types of dance, like, you know, in modern dance and in ecstatic dance, sometimes with prompts.
• 17:39
  They will talk about similar things and in learning how horses and animals connect, they often connect through rhythm, which is something that is out of our awareness a lot.
• 17:51
  And even falling in step with, with a horse or with other people, that rhythm that's created is also takes us there.
• 17:59
  Like all of these things define those connections and environments.
• 18:03
  So I can see how incredibly rich that would be.
• 18:08
  Yeah, absolutely.
• 18:09
  Absolutely.
• 18:10
  And, and again, I think that in a, in a somewhat mechanized world, it's in a linear world where we sort of see things in a mechanical and in a linear way.
• 18:20
  It's sort of this opportunity to say.
• 18:22
  Let's like let's let's move in a let's move with the natural rhythms of things like let's be let it go Let's be a little open and free in this And also I said I spent spoke to that word linear.
• 18:36
  I Nature is so cyclical.
• 18:38
  It's so it's so rhythmic and things aren't always linear and and so Again, when we think of systems, we think of like feedback loops, we think of, you know, things, things shifting.
• 18:52
  And so recognizing, like, I guess when we go back to grief, or we go back to some of these emotions, that these aren't, the healing process is never linear in, in, in addressing these things.
• 19:04
  Not at all.
• 19:05
  I, you know, I, I totally relate to that.
• 19:08
  I don't know if I'd shared this with you or not, but I've said it a couple of times now on the podcast.
• 19:13
  I have my youngest son passed away three years ago.
• 19:17
  And the roller coaster of the grief that I have experienced where there's just it's just, it's just so sad.
• 19:23
  No control, no bounds.
• 19:26
  You don't know when it's going to hit you, where it's going to take you, when your body's going to say, okay, we can't do this anymore and still function and shut it all down only to have it like erupt at the most, you know, unexpected time all over again, like I totally get how it's not linear at all and allowing that.
• 19:47
  I'm so grateful that I was allowed to allow that, and that I've had some help guiding me through some of it too, but yeah, huge stuff, huge.
• 19:57
  Mm hmm, yeah, yeah.
• 20:00
  Had you been in, had you utilized any, any nature in your, in your healing process, or any rituals?
• 20:07
  Yeah.
• 20:07
  Every single day.
• 20:10
  You know, I'm fortunate enough to have a creek in my backyard to have a park down the street where the creek is, and I would walk there every day with my dog.
• 20:18
  I would go, you know, just going out to take care of the horses puts me there following them around, you know, and then seasonally gardening.
• 20:29
  And then all of that, like I have, because I'm autistic, because I have a really sensitive nervous system, because I've had a ton of trauma, somehow my intuition has had me arrange my life where all of these things have helped tremendously.
• 20:46
  I can't imagine going through what I've gone through and being in an urban environment without access to these things every day, multiple times a day.
• 20:54
  I would, I don't know that I would have survived.
• 20:57
  Yeah, yeah, I hear you.
• 20:58
  And I love that you brought up your nervous system because I think when it comes down to it that's a lot of the evidence based research around nature is that it really gives our, our system, we're co regulating with nature.
• 21:10
  And I think when I'm out there with my, with clients, I recognize like, rather than, You know, in the therapeutic room, in the room, I tend to, I work with couples and I work with individuals, occasionally families, and a lot of that work is co regulation in the room, teaching them how to co regulate myself, working on my presence and co regulation with them.
• 21:32
  Sometimes, though, as a therapist, that You know, it can it can also it can be challenging, right?
• 21:38
  We're taking things on.
• 21:39
  We're really embodying that and that can become a lot for the sort of the single individual in nature.
• 21:45
  I feel this incredible support from the natural world around me as if I'm Hey, I'm just bringing you into this space and this space is going to naturally.
• 21:55
  Be available for co regulation.
• 21:57
  The trees are going to help you co regulate.
• 21:59
  The wind is going to help you co regulate.
• 22:01
  Just the, the lack of noise and sound and the natural sounds or industrial sort of car sounds, the more natural sounds we hear, there's really something peaceful about that.
• 22:12
  Yeah, it's huge.
• 22:13
  I'm getting goosebumps as you're talking about that.
• 22:15
  Because it's like, it's like the container, right?
• 22:18
  But it's not an artificial container.
• 22:20
  It's our natural container.
• 22:21
  It's our natural environment.
• 22:23
  And like you kind of started off saying, when we're cut off from that, like, of course, we're having trouble regulating.
• 22:32
  Of course, we're having trouble dealing with our traumas.
• 22:36
  Yeah, yeah.
• 22:39
  Yeah, and I think our I think our ancestors They had an intuition for this.
• 22:44
  They definitely had an intuition for going and visiting places and having these sort of rituals of returning to places and using places to offer prayer and offer offerings and various ways to, to sit in that.
• 22:59
  One thing I'm on a journey to is especially getting into this is sort of looking at like, what are my indigenous roots?
• 23:06
  Like, what are, what's my background?
• 23:08
  Recognizing that one of the important pieces about the ecotherapy is that we, we, It's our own journey to find what our ancestry is like, and not to necessarily, we can, we can often appreciate and we can pull from other ancestries, but often it's a journey of what's ours like, and how do we bring that and so I just started this but I'm very I have a lot of Irish in my background and so I'm very interested in like Celtic shamanism, and really like what.
• 23:33
  What was involved in the, in that ancestry in terms of how people would go out in the hills and spend many days in the hills, many days sort of going out on spiritual quests in order to come back with more awareness with a, with a deeper sense of, of their place.
• 23:48
  In the world, so not just connecting to environment but connecting to your DNA through your ancestry specifically in those rituals.
• 23:56
  Yeah, that's beautiful.
• 23:58
  Yeah, yeah, really good stuff.
• 24:02
  Yeah, yeah.
• 24:04
  So, what other thoughts do you have on on the subject?
• 24:11
  Yeah, yeah.
• 24:12
  Well, a big piece, too.
• 24:13
  And I will see where I go with this direction is just so I when I go back to my science years doing the science.
• 24:21
  One of the things is I was I was looking a lot of climate change at that time, and I was deep in the research.
• 24:29
  I was at the University of Arizona, and there were some people in that in that university that were on the Like the UN panel on climate change.
• 24:37
  So we're talking like top level climate scientists and hearing about a lot of things that are now happening, like an increase in wildfires more erratic events happening in terms of weather events and things.
• 24:49
  So hearing about all that happening and now living in that more and I recognize that Yeah.
• 24:56
  If we don't reconnect people to the importance of the world around us, to the natural world, we have no chance in shifting these things either.
• 25:08
  And so not only is this important for the individual healing, but I think it's also important to be able to continue to be in, to kind of continue to be in concert with the planet around us as well.
• 25:22
  And so for me as a personal journey, it's been a way to continue to do that work, but to do it on a much more one on one basis with people and to really bring people back into.
• 25:32
  And I have a lot of, I have a lot of clients and maybe this is because of Oregon, but I have a lot of clients that sort of already show up and at least have some appreciation, but often, but every now and then I'll have people who, as I surprise them when I'm like, Oh, Hey, do you want to go out and do you want to spend some time on a trail?
• 25:49
  Yeah, maybe.
• 25:49
  Maybe.
• 25:49
  And there's almost like this Kind of like we're not used to that.
• 25:53
  We're used to being inside, like, you know, therapy's always in a couch and in an office.
• 25:58
  And one of the things that's really cool is when we go outside, we have to step over, sometimes we step over, you know, I try not to do too crazy of hikes, but I mean, sometimes we do go over rocks or we step up stuff, and there's a, there's a shift there where We're both trying to get up that thing, or we're both trying to move around that trail, and there's a lightning, the relationship between us becomes a little less formal, a little bit more real, human in a way, and people tend to feel like they can open up more, because we're both on, we're both on this adventure together as well.
• 26:32
  That makes, that makes a lot of sense to me.
• 26:35
  That makes a lot of sense to me.
• 26:37
  I know I keep bringing it back to horses, but that's, you know, that's what I know.
• 26:42
  That's your world.
• 26:42
  Yeah.
• 26:43
  There are also studies that there are endorphins released when you travel in a herd.
• 26:48
  And I've myself have experienced it.
• 26:51
  And there were some studies that they did with some veterans actually here in Oregon.
• 26:56
  Where walking in a herd, if you have pain, the endorphins that are released end up taking care of the pain, at least temporarily.
• 27:05
  And so that's a little bit like there's a joining of what you're talking about, not just of opening up, but of connecting, of walking together.
• 27:13
  Like that act is is really powerful.
• 27:18
  You, you brought up something interesting too about like working with the individual and how it applies to us taking care of the planet in that, in that same way.
• 27:28
  And this might be a little bit, you know, throwing you a curve ball here.
• 27:32
  I know that you're a you know, that you work a lot with couples.
• 27:38
  And so an idea that's gone through my head quite a bit is we have a lot of, problems in our romantic relationships, our couple relationships that are, you know, I mean, you could probably name five that most people you see have five issues that are very common, maybe more.
• 27:56
  And I'm starting to see a lot of those things as cultural issues, not really necessarily individual issues.
• 28:03
  I mean, they're individual issues also, but by Healing them in individuals.
• 28:10
  It seems like there's a way to take that out to make shifts in the culture as well.
• 28:15
  Have you?
• 28:16
  I mean, does anything occur to you as I say that?
• 28:18
  Or have you even thought about that sort of thing?
• 28:23
  Oh, yeah, yeah.
• 28:24
  And I'm trying to think of where to sort of dive in there.
• 28:26
  Definitely.
• 28:27
  Yeah, I mean, I think Yeah, obviously with the well with thinking about the regulation piece right and finding a way to regulate.
• 28:36
  So we're, we're in a very self regulating culture, I would say like many of us have to self regulate we don't often have co regulation opportunities.
• 28:44
  And if we do, they might be with our primary partner.
• 28:47
  So now we have a lot of pressure we have this person that we have to regulate with and we may not have a lot of other resources so we have to be good at that.
• 28:55
  And if we're not good at that, it's really hard.
• 28:58
  It's really hard.
• 28:59
  A lot of pressure on couples these days with limited resources.
• 29:03
  So I think as the individual can find sacred spaces, spaces and getting back to being outside, or again, even being around plants, being around, you know, recognizing there's a lot of connection other than the sort of human to human, it allows people to build that sense of regulation and resiliency to then bring that inner peace towards relationships.
• 29:27
  Another piece too is I've actually taken couples outside.
• 29:30
  So I do a lot of, I do in the summer, in the, people are really into it.
• 29:34
  I might do it in the rainy season, but it'd be a little more tricky here maybe.
• 29:37
  But I've done a lot of work in parks and outside in long rivers with couples too.
• 29:43
  And it really is feels different.
• 29:45
  I think people show up we're sitting under a tree and we use that tree to start the session like notice the tree above you notice the way it moves notice how you what's showing up for you and your body and it's really amazing how the two people can use that to start.
• 30:03
  The process of regulating and come back to that.
• 30:05
  So once again, it's not just me.
• 30:06
  It's It's the environment.
• 30:08
  I'm in it's supporting that right?
• 30:11
  Yeah.
• 30:12
  Yeah, that's big too.
• 30:14
  Wow.
• 30:15
  So I'm not sure if I totally answer your question there if you might kind of come back to that.
• 30:21
  Yeah Yeah, I guess some of my thoughts on it get a little bit Yeah, more complicated.
• 30:27
  Well, control control comes up, you know, front and center because that's an issue that so many people deal with.
• 30:34
  And in what I've learned for myself, it's usually about safety and trust.
• 30:41
  And so if that exists in a lot of if, if too much control or illegitimate control or, or grabs for control, are part of Disfunction in a relationship you know, looking at our culture, how our culture like perpetuates that how our culture is a reflection of that, or is the relationship a reflection of how that plays out in our culture.
• 31:11
  Yeah, that's a great question.
• 31:13
  So like, is this coming from that's not kind of the couple and then moving out into society or is it coming from society of back?
• 31:21
  It's probably, I'm just throwing it out there.
• 31:24
  It's probably both to some extent.
• 31:26
  They're probably interweaving.
• 31:27
  Definitely.
• 31:28
  Yeah.
• 31:29
  And so I guess the second part of that is, as we address it.
• 31:33
  In either place, whether that's in the workplace or in some other larger place in our culture, or we address it in the individuals, can we take the intention.
• 31:43
  You know, that this will affect and that either the individual or the culture will respond to what happens with either the individual or the culture.
• 31:57
  I mean, they're tied together in my mind.
• 31:59
  They're tied together.
• 32:01
  Yeah.
• 32:01
  Absolutely.
• 32:02
  I mean, I think from a lot of my training and background, just recognizing like how much context affects our mental health, right, who, where we're from, like so much of that.
• 32:12
  So it is very much tied together.
• 32:15
  But I do think like.
• 32:17
  It comes when I okay when I bring it into the couple I, I sort of envision, like people come in to the to me and to see me and it's often like you know I'm not, we're not going to like.
• 32:30
  We're not going to stop.
• 32:32
  You're not going to stop fighting.
• 32:33
  You're not going to stop having issues.
• 32:36
  You're going to get better at repairing those issues.
• 32:39
  You're going to get better at acceptance and you're going to get more skilled with, okay, I'm again, back to like, I'm dysregulated.
• 32:45
  How do I reregulate?
• 32:47
  And what are the methods that we do for that?
• 32:50
  And so much of that is being resilient and adaptive and flexible.
• 32:55
  And so.
• 32:57
  And then I'm going to bring it back into having experiences as couples that allow you to adapt and to be open and to be flexible.
• 33:07
  I think a lot about like adventures that people might have where things go wrong, and how one couple that becomes the end of it, and they lose sight of it and it can, there's no control and it becomes a back and forth.
• 33:20
  And then I think about other couples that sort of embrace it and it ends up becoming a growth opportunity, an opportunity to be more flexible in life.
• 33:27
  And I think that this is how they respond, how they respond.
• 33:31
  Yeah.
• 33:32
  And how they support one another through that.
• 33:35
  Yeah.
• 33:36
  And I think in right now, societally, we're like, There's a lot of desire to control still, obviously, and there's a lot of pushback to that, too.
• 33:44
  There's a lot of people that want to see shifts in that and see more, see changing these systems.
• 33:49
  Like, not just going into the system and tweaking part of the system, but redoing the whole system itself, potentially.
• 33:56
  Yeah, I think we have a lot of that coming.
• 33:58
  Huh.
• 33:59
  Yeah.
• 33:59
  For a minute, for good or bad or whatever that looks like.
• 34:01
  Right.
• 34:02
  Yeah.
• 34:03
  It's time for some change.
• 34:04
  Yeah.
• 34:04
  Yeah.
• 34:05
  It's happening.
• 34:06
  Hold on.
• 34:07
  Yeah.
• 34:08
  Yeah.
• 34:09
  Yeah.
• 34:10
  No, that's, that's good.
• 34:11
  Yeah.
• 34:13
  Yeah.
• 34:13
  The perspective, the attitude, what we're able to do with it, but at the heart of all of it is this regulation, the ability to regulate, and that is so tied to our environment and you're able to take people back there and reestablish that.
• 34:26
  And to me, that is.
• 34:28
  Really powerful work and work that's just going to keep catching on.
• 34:33
  Yeah, thank you.
• 34:34
  And I think I'll give you an example as it comes up because maybe it's helpful to get.
• 34:38
  So I had a couple, this was like, oh, maybe three years ago.
• 34:41
  I was living in Bend, Oregon for a little while.
• 34:44
  And.
• 34:45
  Where that's where I was.
• 34:46
  This was before I was a license and I was working.
• 34:49
  Yeah, under a supervisor over there.
• 34:51
  And thankfully this person was willing to like, let me go out and with clients.
• 34:55
  And again, a lot of the clients over there would ask me like, Hey, can we go outside today?
• 34:59
  We really, we really want to do that.
• 35:01
  We'll meet at the office.
• 35:02
  So I had one couple.
• 35:04
  That I walked down to the Chutes River and we sat on some rocks on the river and, you know, I'm checking in.
• 35:09
  It's just, you know, you're always checking in, right?
• 35:12
  And you're kind of feeling where people are at and making sure people feel safe.
• 35:16
  And and we sat down on the rocks and then it started to rain.
• 35:19
  The clouds get, not a lot, but it started to drip a little.
• 35:23
  And It was just this interesting moment of me, me being like, okay, maybe they're gonna want to bail on this and maybe I, you know, maybe this is, I was kind of nervous about being outside with them in this setting.
• 35:35
  And sure enough, they just said, you know what, we're good.
• 35:38
  It's fine.
• 35:39
  Let's all sit here.
• 35:40
  It wasn't cold or anything.
• 35:42
  And they started to laugh, and then the rain came down, and it became like this, something shifted in them, they had been fighting a lot, and suddenly, like, they were having this experience of slight discomfort, but also an aliveness, and a sense to sort of take these things that, maybe these things that often were control issues, and suddenly realize we don't have control.
• 36:02
  It's kind of getting wet.
• 36:03
  We're okay with that, and we're having, and we're actually seeing each other.
• 36:06
  Differently now in a way that's opening up.
• 36:08
  And that was that.
• 36:09
  There wasn't a lot I did there other than to be in that space with them in that moment and later we kind of reflected on that though.
• 36:16
  So yeah.
• 36:18
  Yeah.
• 36:18
  The, the, those are the types of things that are so rich and and get provided.
• 36:23
  I mean, it always seems like the right thing gets provided at the right time.
• 36:28
  I mean, there's a synchronicity to some of the things that I've done with the horses and with nature and people to that it just, it just shows up.
• 36:38
  I love that you said that word.
• 36:40
  Yeah, because that that is very true the synchronicity of, you know, being out in nature and I also had a client once where we were sitting by a river and it was one of the last sessions we had and a group of ducks just kind of swam right up to us and literally sat there that we'd never happened before and we just looked at the ducks and we talked about what, and then the memory came up around the client like feeding the ducks with a grandparent many years earlier.
• 37:09
  And that how important that person was to them and we really use that moment to kind of talk about our relationship and what was ahead for this person and it was really beautiful moment.
• 37:21
  Yeah.
• 37:22
  Yeah.
• 37:23
  Lots of moments like that.
• 37:24
  Yeah.
• 37:26
  Well, I'm, I'm feeling like our conversation feels pretty complete.
• 37:30
  Is there more you want to add?
• 37:32
  You know, I just want to say thanks for having me here.
• 37:35
  Yeah.
• 37:35
  And yeah, and I hope that people who are listening, I hope that they take something from this and spend maybe a little more time outside or find a way to deepen the, deepen some kind of connection with the world around them.
• 37:49
  Yeah.
• 37:50
  Yeah, good, good words, good words to end with.
• 37:54
  Yeah.