Latest / Equine Assisted World with Rupert Isaacson / Resilience, Mules & Pediatric Wisdom: Dr. Mark Uranga on Community, Horses & Healing | EP 36

Transcript

Resilience, Mules & Pediatric Wisdom: Dr. Mark Uranga on Community, Horses & Healing | EP 36 · Equine Assisted World with Rupert Isaacson

• 0:00
  Rupert Isaacson: Welcome to Equine Assisted World.
• 0:02
  I'm your host, Rupert Isaacson, New York Times best selling
• 0:05
  author of The Horse Boy, The Long Ride Home, and The Healing Land.
• 0:08
  Before I jump in with today's guest, I just want to say a huge
• 0:12
  thank you to you, our audience, for helping to make this happen.
• 0:15
  I have a request.
• 0:16
  If you like what we do, please like, subscribe, tell a friend.
• 0:22
  It really helps us get this work done.
• 0:24
  As you might know from my books, I'm an autism dad.
• 0:27
  And over the last 20 years, we've developed several
• 0:31
  equine assisted, neuroscience backed certification programs.
• 0:35
  If you'd like to find out more about them, go to newtrailslearning.
• 0:40
  com.
• 0:41
  So without further ado, let's meet today's guest.
• 0:44
  Welcome back rockers.
• 0:45
  We have Dr.
• 0:47
  Mark Uranga here from Idaho.
• 0:51
  And if you're worrying, wondering, not worrying, wondering where
• 0:54
  the name Uranga comes from.
• 0:55
  It's Basque, Basque Spanish well, so Basque French, which is this
• 1:01
  interesting corner of the Atlantic, semi Celtic Fringe in Europe.
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  And some of you may know that there was a large scale immigration of
• 1:14
  Basque Shepherds to the United States in the 19th and early 20th century.
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  So there is an interesting subculture and I went and did a training in Idaho last
• 1:24
  year and was lucky enough to meet Mark who brought his mule to the training.
• 1:29
  And the mule was the Star Fi show for sure.
• 1:32
  And, mark intrigued me because as a doctor and a pediatrician,
• 1:36
  he has some interesting insights on the work that we all do.
• 1:41
  And I think it is always useful for us to know that doctors
• 1:47
  actually do support this stuff.
• 1:49
  And, you know, don't, don't just roll their eyes and say, well, you
• 1:52
  guys are just playing with ponies.
• 1:53
  So it's, it's nice that we have a chance to get 'em on here and ask him
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  why, why does he think that equine assisted stuff is, is, is valid?
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  What does it do?
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  And so on.
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  So without further ado, mark, who are you?
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  What do you do?
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  And yeah, take it from there.
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  Mark Uranga: Well, thank you first for all the work that you do to advance the
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  idea that there's growth to be had for, families and for children outside of a
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  clinical model, specifically speaking, one confined to buildings and to
• 2:26
  people with different types of degrees.
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  My background is, as you mentioned, as a Basque Idahoan, and I don't
• 2:33
  know that I can separate the two.
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  I was born and raised in Boise, Idaho, and from an early age,
• 2:39
  thought I might be a veterinarian.
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  At about the age of 20, when it was time to take the test for veterinary school or
• 2:46
  medical school, I felt drawn to a little bit richer involvement with families and
• 2:53
  complexities of human-centered medicine.
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  And from there I went to medical school and trained in pediatrics,
• 3:01
  and I've been practicing for about 14 years in the Boise area, a year or two
• 3:07
  before that in New Hampshire and the richness of the clinical environment.
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  Is something that I treasure every day.
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  It is not always the place to make inroads for people that struggle to
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  sit still or to be in a confined space.
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  But it is a place that about 20 times a day, I test the
• 3:30
  interactions with children, adolescents, and their caregivers.
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  And the, the draw of that for me was initially to show parents how interacting,
• 3:46
  even in moments of time can really help children feel more safe, more comfortable.
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  Clearly the, the pediatrician's office, if any of us remembered, it's mostly
• 3:56
  about shots and it's mostly about inconveniences and fear, either because
• 4:02
  of going with illness or getting a shot.
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  And some of our training, I was lucky enough to have mentors who.
• 4:09
  Emphasize the value of making a child comfortable.
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  And what I quickly found is that a comfortable child is a more reliable
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  patient, somebody that I can learn their nuances much more quickly.
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  I think that having been drawn to pediatrics, it came from a background
• 4:30
  where I was lucky enough, as you mentioned, to grow up in a kind
• 4:33
  of a community within a community.
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  So in, in current life, a lot of us aren't around children anymore.
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  And I was lucky enough to go to a daycare from eight weeks old to about
• 4:46
  12 years old where an Basque woman modeled the interactions with children.
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  And I was surrounded by little kids at a time where I didn't have necessarily a
• 4:54
  lot of cousins or 10 siblings or anything like that, but that early experience
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  helped me be comfortable with children.
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  So.
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  As I was modeling that in, in clinic, it, it's become more and more clear
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  that this communication that we develop in moments within a, a clinic
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  visit, really makes a difference in the interactions with a child.
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  Rupert Isaacson: You said you were lucky enough.
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  I, I don't hear many people say, I was lucky enough to go to a daycare, you know?
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  So clearly that was a positive experience.
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  What is special do you think about the Basque approach to children and family?
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  Mark Uranga: It's a, it is a great question and one that I
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  I've had a couple opportunities to explore that well think growing.
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  The Basque culture has always been a little stubborn and has also been defined
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  by a language that doesn't easily, it's not a romance language by background.
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  So the, the overlap with invaders or visitors from Roman elsewhere was
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  more problematic for the conquerors.
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  And so there's sort of this history of a, of a little bit of nuanced and, and
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  more isolated approach to, to community.
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  And within that, the, the family becomes a really important kind of seed.
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  And so as many immigrant stories are families coming over, came with different
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  attachments different sponsors and the sort of things that allowed them
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  to start to thrive in our community.
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  And as I grew up, my grandfather was an immigrant.
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  We're so, we're removed from the immigrant experience per se, but the, the culture
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  that that followed, that was one in which grandparents knew grandchildren and
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  grandchildren were friends with cousins.
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  And, and so the modeling and that.
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  Combined ability to reach out yet feel protected is something that I think is
• 7:00
  really well modeled in our community here.
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  Now, having maintained a connection, the, the very social, the hyper social model,
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  I would argue within vast society really is one that encourages a give and take
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  at the daycare and younger age level.
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  And simply by I suppose absorption of those ideas, it just felt
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  more comfortable, I think, to be around children and to allow those
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  children to drive towards their areas of interest and and comfort.
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  Whereas in a, in a group that's maybe a little bit more nuclear family
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  or family centered, where it's been kind of gratifying or I suppose it's,
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  it's been held up as a standard.
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  A single adult or maybe two adults will provide the role modeling and the
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  limits and the interactions outside of the family can be more limited.
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  I think a, a community oriented upbringing allows people to see those different
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  models and to feel more comfortable within a time where, you know, an
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  8-year-old is carrying around an eight month old and these things that, that
• 8:10
  don't always happen so much anymore.
• 8:12
  Rupert Isaacson: Is that was, that was what was going on at your daycare.
• 8:15
  Mark Uranga: Yeah.
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  Yeah.
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  Certainly.
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  That's very some of that unusual Yeah.
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  Rupert Isaacson: In our culture.
• 8:18
  Mark Uranga: Yeah.
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  Quite unusual in the American culture that even in, within many
• 8:23
  daycares it's, you know, the kids under one year and then one to two.
• 8:27
  Yeah.
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  They do a different thing 'cause they're walking and more mobile and
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  then there's this kind of napping age and the age after kindergarten.
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  So yes, it, it does isolate those peer groups.
• 8:36
  Rupert Isaacson: It's interesting, I mean, it seems to me what you are
• 8:38
  putting a finger on here is tribe.
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  Mm-hmm.
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  Would you say?
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  Yeah.
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  Mark Uranga: Yeah, yeah.
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  And, and tribe is something that.
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  Has value and has downsides.
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  But I think that the, the value in tribal upbringing, as it were,
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  is that trusted adult that adds something to what a parent's offering.
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  The increasing responsibilities that you touch on in a lot of your
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  work, the, the learning that goes along with that so that it's more an
• 9:11
  experiential approach to especially social problem solving, I think.
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  Rupert Isaacson: Do you feel also that I mean not all tribes are nice tribes,
• 9:22
  but let's assume that you had a good exp it, it seems that you had a good
• 9:25
  experience so, that this tribe is good.
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  Do you feel that the Basque community is particularly good
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  at letting things be child led?
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  And if so, why might that be?
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  Mark Uranga: I, I do believe that and.
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  Much, much more clearly in the, the current European bas, the
• 9:48
  ones who are still in, in Spain and, and somewhat in France.
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  And I think that's because they want to keep talking to their adult friends and
• 9:55
  let the, the children have their space.
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  I think there's that recognition that their safety mm-hmm.
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  A, a given plaza or a, a shared common space where things are safe, but there
• 10:10
  are, there are conflicts, there are sharp edges, you know, there are things
• 10:15
  that, that scrape knees and, and hurt feelings and, and those sorts of things.
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  But they're in a, in a location where they can recover from that with a
• 10:25
  still, with a feeling of, that's
• 10:26
  Rupert Isaacson: interesting.
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  So, so why do you feel that that kind of tribal model builds
• 10:31
  resilience then, as you say, so, scrape knees and hurt feelings.
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  You know, we are so shy of that stuff now.
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  We, we think we, you know, people are really quick to jump to
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  immediately to trauma, you know?
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  Yes.
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  Rather than, and then of course, now there's interestingly a movement coming,
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  saying, well, yes, but there's a whole kind of growth after trauma thing.
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  Mm-hmm.
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  You know, getting scraped me in and hurt feeling as a kid
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  isn't necessarily traumatic.
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  It might be unpleasant, but it's also kind of necessary preparation for the,
• 11:00
  for what we're gonna meet in the world.
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  What, again, just I'm intrigued by your experience as a basc, um mm-hmm.
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  And then how this has informed your approach to pediatrics and the
• 11:12
  equine assisted world, which we're gonna come back to in a minute.
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  But I do think this is great context for people.
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  'cause not everyone is coming out of this kind of tribal background,
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  particularly in the west, you know, so you're quite unique in this way,
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  and I think there's a lot to offer.
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  I want to sort of mine that vein for a while.
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  So when you say sharp edges, you know, scrape knees hurt
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  feelings, but in a safe space.
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  Can you, can you elucidate a bit more on what you feel the value of
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  that is and what that leads to in adolescence and adult life for people?
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  Mm-hmm.
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  Mark Uranga: Yeah.
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  I think that, that we have lost, that graded did experience of living of the,
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  the things that I learn where I'm not protected, but where I can recover.
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  So there's, as you mentioned, that the trauma literature, which is an
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  area that affects d different people differently and can be expanded by its
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  scope to include things that are more an opportunity for growth in some people
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  than an opportunity for destruction.
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  Rupert Isaacson: Mm-hmm.
• 12:26
  Mark Uranga: And what.
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  Even within the, what I'll call allopathic medical literature, the literature
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  that's largely informed by MDs and people with degrees and these sorts of things.
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  Um hmm.
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  The, the paradigm about mental health or, or resilience does start to include
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  some ideas that the practiced resilience, the, the times that somebody had
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  recovered from trauma, as it were Yes.
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  Is that, is it builds that resilience.
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  An example is, is well known within pediatrics now, where children who are
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  seeking an independent experience, let's say in Idaho, maybe walking to the store
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  to buy some tic-Tacs or whatever it is, you know, as a, as a trauma focused
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  society, our first thought would be cars.
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  Bad people.
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  What if they don't have the right change?
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  All these sorts of things.
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  As a resilience associated paradigm, we look at that as the opportunity
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  to to interact with somebody that might cut in line to, to have to
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  figure out the math on their own.
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  And, and these early steps are the same things that, that apply when a
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  high school senior doesn't get accepted to their number one choice of school.
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  And if everything has been bubble wrapped up until that first negative
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  experience, then there's no, there's no practice, there's not been a pattern
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  of rebound that a family can, can mine and, and then can take advantage of.
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  Rupert Isaacson: It's really interesting because, you know, there's
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  a lot of talk, you know, people tend to think in extremes and so.
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  In the sort of trauma informed world, there's also this idea of adverse
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  childhood experience, you know, and, and that this lessens the chances
• 14:24
  of, of success and thriving later.
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  And, but what I find interesting about that is so many of the people
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  I know who do thrive, have had adverse childhood experiences.
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  And then is a scraped knee falling out of a tree, falling off your horse,
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  breaking a limb, that sort of thing, an adverse childhood experience, or is
• 14:44
  that a just planet earth experience?
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  Like is have we allowed trauma and adverse experience to now?
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  Become a sort of abused term that has now sort of bled into normal
• 15:02
  experience so that now we are afraid of normal experience, you know?
• 15:07
  Yeah.
• 15:07
  Just talk to us a little bit about the dance there, psychologically and
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  emotionally for the, for the sort of, for the young growing human.
• 15:15
  Mark Uranga: Yeah.
• 15:15
  I think one of the best areas I see that it's just so concrete, and I think
• 15:19
  all of us can relate to it, is the, the child who falls in front of a parent and
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  what is the message sent by the parent.
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  So two years old, they trip on their own feet, and is the response
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  concern, is it overconcern, is it on the more negative side?
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  Is it mockery or something else like that?
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  The, the way I can predict, not based on the fall, how that child will react, but
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  based on the parent's reaction, right?
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  So the, the mechanism is, is immaterial to the response and.
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  That is where I get back to the sense of safety.
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  Like you were talking about a sharp edge, yet a safe recovery from that.
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  So, the child who falls and whose, whose parent is like, oh yeah,
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  let's get up and keep moving.
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  Or too bad that happened, or, or make a joke about not breaking
• 16:15
  the floor or whatever it is, you know, they, they move on.
• 16:18
  But the, the one who's concerned or so sad or, or anything that
• 16:24
  child is, is much more likely to escalate based on the signals they
• 16:27
  receive from their trusted adult.
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  And I think that getting, moving forward as we build these patterns, we basically
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  have experiences that are pre-verbal and through general development.
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  We build upon those verbal experiences and, and our emotions.
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  And yes, we add words to them, but in the background and experience is usually
• 16:55
  going to elicit an emotion first.
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  So if our experience has been to rebound, then our first response
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  to a lost job or the death of a loved one is that sense of rebound.
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  If it's, if it's been signaled to us that those are traumas,
• 17:17
  then, then they become traumas.
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  And I'm fortunate, I believe, to have models in the community and
• 17:24
  in, in parents and in others where the, the rebound is emphasized.
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  And I think as you look at this variability of what do we
• 17:34
  call an adverse child event?
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  What do we call a trauma?
• 17:39
  And the response to that as you.
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  Basically I, I'm a pediatrician.
• 17:44
  I love to think of all people as grownup toddlers.
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  Toddlers are just more honest.
• 17:49
  I certainly am
• 17:50
  Rupert Isaacson: in that, in that category.
• 17:52
  I've never really stopped being a toddler.
• 17:53
  I just got bigger.
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  Yeah.
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  Mark Uranga: Yeah.
• 17:55
  Right.
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  And, and it's true of all of us.
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  Some of us embrace it and so all more power to you, Rupert, to have em
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  embrace that, but we have that response.
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  Rupert Isaacson: It's civil to deny
• 18:07
  Mark Uranga: we have that response.
• 18:08
  So we move forward from that based on our experiences and it's all practice.
• 18:14
  Rupert Isaacson: Do you feel that this type of, this emphasis on
• 18:16
  resilience in the Basque community?
• 18:19
  I see.
• 18:19
  I'm, I'm half Jewish.
• 18:20
  I'm half Ashkenazi Jewish, and obviously in our heritage, even
• 18:25
  though I look like a Viking, because my mother's side is Viking.
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  But my father's side is Ashkenazi Jewish.
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  My father looks like Saddam Hussein.
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  And we had this joke when they were looking for Saddam that, you know,
• 18:35
  I was gonna show up at the Pentagon with him, say, look, I've got him.
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  And then he and I would split the money, you know.
• 18:40
  But the Ashkenazi experience was pogroms, you know, it was you know,
• 18:45
  always have to have one eye on the exit.
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  'cause you never know.
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  And how the, the, the more you thrive as a community mm-hmm.
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  The more likely it is that some busted somewhere is gonna come
• 18:57
  along, decide to take it from you.
• 18:59
  Yep.
• 19:00
  So, and your community in a nasty, bloody kind of a way.
• 19:03
  So you.
• 19:04
  Better kind of have options.
• 19:06
  So you want to have family and you wanna have family in other
• 19:09
  countries and other cities so that you've got lines of, of, of exit.
• 19:16
  And if you, if you, there's always more of them than there are of you.
• 19:21
  So, and there is no homeland.
• 19:23
  Now you, on the other hand, come from a, the somewhat the opposite, but mm-hmm.
• 19:30
  So there is a homeland.
• 19:31
  Yeah.
• 19:32
  However, there's lots of invaders, you know, so.
• 19:34
  Mm-hmm.
• 19:34
  For those, for those who dunno, their European history, everyone on
• 19:38
  their dog has tried to invade the Basque territories at some point.
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  Why?
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  Because they sit at the, at a very, very sort of strategic
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  and fertile and pleasantly climate juncture of the western.
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  You know, European Atlantic right there, sort of at the top of Portugal
• 19:58
  and Spain and the southern bit of France, and it's jolly nice there.
• 20:01
  So anyone who ever came through went, oh, it's nice here.
• 20:03
  I think I'll have some of that.
• 20:04
  And the mountain people living there who, as you said, you know, were
• 20:08
  speaking a language that predates all of these other European languages
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  and have been there seemingly as, as a, as a, as a, as a composite
• 20:16
  community, much, much for millennia.
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  Despite all of these tribal migrations going across Europe and measure, hold
• 20:22
  their own in this mountain fastness, yet everyone tried to take it from them.
• 20:28
  And the fact that they are still there is somewhat of a miracle.
• 20:31
  It's, it's not dissimilar to the Kurds up there in northern Iraq
• 20:34
  and Eastern Turkey and so on.
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  Somehow managed to hold onto that area despite, you know, it ridiculous
• 20:41
  amounts of, of, of, of assault.
• 20:44
  So do that can create a certain bitterness or it can create a certain.
• 20:51
  Let's seize the day and live type.
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  And, and, and we've survived this long, so probably we'll survive again.
• 20:59
  And from the pogrom point of view is, well, they killed so many of us
• 21:02
  that we sort of whittled down to, you know, the special forces now.
• 21:07
  So, you know, we're quite good at survival.
• 21:10
  Mm-hmm.
• 21:10
  Do, do you feel that that is there, is there a bit of a heritage that way?
• 21:14
  Like you bit the Native Americans of Europe, of Western Europe in a
• 21:17
  funny way, you know what I mean?
• 21:18
  Yeah.
• 21:19
  Just, just mm-hmm.
• 21:19
  Talk through that idea of resilience and survival a little bit for us before we
• 21:23
  go into actual equine assisted stuff.
• 21:26
  Mark Uranga: Sure.
• 21:26
  Yeah.
• 21:27
  I, I think you get to both of those, having a creation story
• 21:30
  or a creation myth, depending on how you'd like to think about it.
• 21:33
  Oh,
• 21:33
  Rupert Isaacson: go on.
• 21:34
  That's
• 21:34
  Mark Uranga: interesting.
• 21:35
  The, the creation story.
• 21:37
  We all have a creation story.
• 21:38
  I, I love the, the nexus of how my creation story.
• 21:44
  Interact with the creation story of the Idaho Basques or
• 21:47
  the, the Basque country itself.
• 21:50
  Your story of migration continuing as long as written Torah stories were
• 21:57
  placed, the, the Jews were on the move, and you've moved from South
• 22:01
  Africa confidently to, to Germany and, and how we each fit in these stories.
• 22:07
  The relationship, I believe to, to parenting and pediatrics lies in a
• 22:12
  concept of what is called authoritative parenting, not authoritarian author.
• 22:17
  Author parenting.
• 22:18
  Yeah.
• 22:19
  Okay.
• 22:19
  How is that different from authoritarian Exactly.
• 22:22
  So, and different from passive parenting or permissive parenting.
• 22:27
  The middle ground is that which recognizes the variability of a child and does
• 22:35
  not force upon them certain things, but provides the background, the framework.
• 22:42
  From which a child essentially defines themselves.
• 22:45
  So whether that definition is in contrast to the family expectations
• 22:52
  or in alignment, there's still a foundation that's provided with that.
• 22:58
  So the, the idea being that a family exists within a community, a community
• 23:05
  of, of basks is, defines themselves as partly stubborn, quite social very
• 23:13
  committed to their shared background.
• 23:19
  And within that BASC community, defining our family as being committed to each
• 23:28
  other, having a shared background and being somewhat stubborn or persistent,
• 23:34
  those allow for our children to consider.
• 23:39
  A model that is either in tune with their growth or in contrast with that.
• 23:45
  And, and, you know, all communities have their rebels or their black
• 23:49
  sheep, and those people are equally as defined by their community.
• 23:53
  I think where it provides that foundation, there's a little bit less wallowing
• 23:59
  around for who am I or what am I?
• 24:03
  So where we see that, I think breakdown in a community or in permissive parenting,
• 24:09
  what can happen is that a child lacks the tools to discern largely right or wrong
• 24:19
  because somebody is, is just following the child without that bigger view of
• 24:27
  a goal in mind or an ideal per chance or, or however we choose to define that.
• 24:34
  So they, those, those children can kind of cast about thinking.
• 24:38
  At two.
• 24:40
  Is it okay for me to throw food all over and yell at mom and dad?
• 24:44
  Or is it not okay?
• 24:46
  And when I get to be four and five, maybe I can do the same thing to my
• 24:49
  teachers, and why would I expect to follow the, the laws when I'm 15 and 16?
• 24:56
  And, and, and lacking that experience, that kind of defined set of values can
• 25:03
  really lead kids to, to place of anxiety or kind of driftless experimentation.
• 25:11
  Whereas kinda getting back to the idea of how a community defines itself,
• 25:17
  itself, you're absolutely right.
• 25:19
  As you mentioned earlier, some tribes are not all good guys, as it were.
• 25:24
  And, and yet if a, if a child is given that experience within a, a
• 25:33
  tribe of, of learning, then from the outside world that, oh, that life is.
• 25:36
  Better or different, they're still able to contrast that
• 25:42
  to their, to their background.
• 25:44
  So I'm not sure if that gets entirely to the idea.
• 25:47
  Well,
• 25:47
  Rupert Isaacson: yeah.
• 25:48
  The, the, the question's also about, I think it's, it's really good for
• 25:51
  people to have a clear idea about authoritative versus authoritarian.
• 25:58
  Can you just define that?
• 25:58
  And then I want to go to follow the child.
• 26:00
  'cause as, you know, follow the child is one of our, you know,
• 26:03
  prerequisites within the work we do.
• 26:05
  But yes, it's not follow the child aimlessly, it's follow the child.
• 26:08
  Exactly.
• 26:08
  Because someone isn't speaking.
• 26:11
  So you're not there to, if you're not there to observe, then Uhhuh
• 26:15
  you haven't got much to go on.
• 26:17
  And you need to follow what motivates people.
• 26:19
  And, and, and that is true whether they're speaking or not.
• 26:21
  If you don't follow what motivates them, then you are in conflict.
• 26:25
  Um mm-hmm.
• 26:26
  But.
• 26:27
  And, and, and authoritarian to me is defined by conflict.
• 26:31
  You know, it's mm-hmm.
• 26:32
  I, I grew up, not with my own family, but with the school system that I went
• 26:36
  through a very, very authoritarian mm-hmm.
• 26:39
  System.
• 26:40
  It's interesting, you know, I meet conservative Americans and they meet
• 26:43
  me and they think, oh, you're such a hippie as like, you have no idea what
• 26:46
  auth, what conservative really is.
• 26:47
  You know, you, if you'd gone through the school system that I went through Yes.
• 26:51
  Where we were beaten, you know, daily, and we were all in the military and we
• 26:56
  were all, you know, it, it very different.
• 26:59
  Very, very different.
• 27:00
  Very violent, very, you know, blah, blah.
• 27:01
  Okay.
• 27:01
  But all that aside, it was authoritarian.
• 27:04
  And so what it meant was that the, there were, there were two things that
• 27:08
  designed the school system, de defined the school system I went through.
• 27:12
  One was that they said, you are all or you boys are going to, 'cause
• 27:16
  it was only boys are going to be in competition with each other.
• 27:19
  We are going to set you into competition with each other,
• 27:22
  which means some of you will fail.
• 27:25
  And they, they were saying this to you at age 11 and we're gonna break
• 27:29
  you down so that we can then build you up and give you privileges later.
• 27:34
  Mm-hmm.
• 27:35
  Why would they do that?
• 27:36
  Well, they would do that so that a hundred years ago people
• 27:40
  might go out and run the empire.
• 27:42
  And that was creating an officer class where people would go and sort of with
• 27:47
  both a sense of personal confidence and a sense of absolute belief in the system,
• 27:55
  go and sort of die of malaria in the Sudan age 30 while trying to administer an
• 28:01
  area four times the size of Germany, you know, just one province and deal with the
• 28:05
  tribal wars and this and that and do, and have the kind of resilience to do that.
• 28:09
  But there would be a wastage, and you saw this wastage also happening in sort
• 28:12
  of World War I where the officer classed the young officers first over the trench.
• 28:17
  You were supposed to inspire the, I say the average.
• 28:21
  Average lifespan, you know, of a young officer in World War One, in the
• 28:25
  British Army was six weeks, you know, because you had to be first over the
• 28:28
  lip of the trench and so on and so on.
• 28:30
  However, those that survived would then become the building blocks of the empire.
• 28:35
  And you can see how that worked very well for the people
• 28:38
  that were running the empire.
• 28:39
  You, you, you needed a group of people like this, but what it meant was that
• 28:44
  at the bottom line, if you bucked the system, if you said, I don't really
• 28:48
  want to follow these particular rules, you were met with violence immediately.
• 28:51
  That it was, it.
• 28:53
  So if you were going to go against the authority in any way, it was
• 28:58
  instantly physically violent.
• 29:00
  And what a lot of us learned was to actually cope with that and to say,
• 29:07
  Ooh, actually I can survive that.
• 29:10
  And.
• 29:11
  Now, what are you gonna do?
• 29:13
  You know, because now I'm not afraid anymore.
• 29:15
  However, there were others who were completely destroyed by it.
• 29:19
  So as obs, you know, I observed this growing up and thought, well,
• 29:24
  there has to be a better way.
• 29:26
  And so when you use the word authoritative, I like,
• 29:31
  and I'm intrigued by that.
• 29:32
  Could you, could you explain really to your, what we, we can, I think we can
• 29:36
  understand what authoritative means but au sorry, what authoritarian means.
• 29:40
  Right.
• 29:40
  But let's go to authoritative.
• 29:44
  Mark Uranga: The idea of an authoritative parenting model or community for that
• 29:49
  matter, really, is that there's an, there's an expectation, there's a, a
• 29:56
  standard that we might move toward.
• 30:01
  It is a model that allows.
• 30:05
  For the ex exploration that you might think of with a permissive,
• 30:09
  permissive parenting model.
• 30:11
  But when, but when that child turns to the parent, to the community to
• 30:17
  look for an answer that they don't, they truly do want an answer for,
• 30:21
  they're looking for assistance.
• 30:23
  It's willing to provide that.
• 30:25
  Whereas a permissive parenting model kind of renes on that responsibility, you
• 30:32
  have a, an underdeveloped brain or person coming to you looking for an answer.
• 30:40
  And with a permissive model, it's a reflective, let's say well, should I have,
• 30:47
  should I have a cookie or an Apple mom?
• 30:50
  Should I have a cookie or an Apple dad?
• 30:51
  Should I have a cookie?
• 30:51
  And Apple, a truly permissive parenting model, would say,
• 30:55
  well, what would you like?
• 30:57
  Well, with food engineering being what it is, it's a cookie.
• 31:02
  With a, with an author authoritative model, it would be, I think an apple's
• 31:08
  gonna make you feel healthier, or I think you should start with an apple.
• 31:12
  It's, it's offering that guidance where it's due, and ultimately all
• 31:18
  of us look for some structure there.
• 31:22
  We are not living in an anarchy.
• 31:24
  You and I would like to go through a green light thinking that somebody is not gonna
• 31:28
  drive through the red light, you know?
• 31:30
  Yeah.
• 31:30
  There are clearly levels of these, but what, what the authoritative
• 31:35
  model provides is it gets a little back to that safety as well.
• 31:41
  Like if I'm lost, if I'm casting about, I can provide you something
• 31:46
  that will provide you comfort or safety in the longer term.
• 31:52
  Rupert Isaacson: Right.
• 31:52
  It, it, I was writing, I wrote a note here as you were, it, it sounds
• 31:56
  to me like you're talking about service to the community that mm-hmm.
• 31:59
  First, there's the idea of what serves you.
• 32:01
  So do I have the cookie or the apple?
• 32:03
  You know, so my, my answer to that would be, I totally get why you want the cookie.
• 32:07
  Mm-hmm.
• 32:07
  I want the cookie too.
• 32:09
  Yeah.
• 32:09
  And there will be cookies.
• 32:10
  Don't worry.
• 32:10
  Yeah.
• 32:11
  There will be cookies.
• 32:12
  Mm-hmm.
• 32:12
  However, maybe not those cookies.
• 32:14
  'cause those cookies are full of shit.
• 32:17
  Right.
• 32:17
  But how about these cookies?
• 32:18
  But before we have those cookies, let's talk about the apple.
• 32:21
  Now, I'm not going to force you to have the apple.
• 32:24
  Right, but look, I'm gonna have the apple and what if we had both?
• 32:29
  What about apple and cookie?
• 32:30
  How about that?
• 32:31
  You know, and then I would be prepared with, to go through a
• 32:34
  certain amount of, nah, nah, nah.
• 32:36
  Because I have the same Nah.
• 32:37
  Inside me.
• 32:38
  So I, you know, I'm, I'm not gonna say someone else shouldn't have it.
• 32:41
  But at the same time, I would take a slightly humorous approach
• 32:44
  to that and say, look, but, and also sympathetic, like, I get it.
• 32:47
  I get it.
• 32:48
  They've marketed these cookies to us and, and we are driven by sugar.
• 32:52
  Yeah.
• 32:52
  So of course you want it, but why don't we also have this apple as well?
• 32:56
  And I would hope that with that continued thing and, and say one, you know,
• 33:00
  there, there's gonna be no force here.
• 33:02
  There's gonna be no, you must have the apple or Right.
• 33:05
  There'll be some sort of terrible consequence.
• 33:07
  Mark Uranga: Mm-hmm.
• 33:08
  Rupert Isaacson: But as you say, the cookie may not, may make you
• 33:10
  not feel so good and you know, maybe you need to go through that feeling.
• 33:14
  Mark Uranga: Yeah.
• 33:14
  Rupert Isaacson: And when you go through that feeling, then I'm
• 33:16
  still here with the apple, you know?
• 33:17
  Mark Uranga: Mm-hmm.
• 33:18
  Rupert Isaacson: And someone will say, well, Ruper, why don't you
• 33:19
  just tell them to have the apple?
• 33:20
  Is that because, because then, because then the cookie
• 33:22
  becomes a holy grail, you know?
• 33:24
  Exactly.
• 33:24
  And so, you know, how you tread the line between permissive
• 33:30
  and authoritative mm-hmm.
• 33:31
  Seems to me about what serves you best.
• 33:36
  Mm-hmm.
• 33:36
  Right.
• 33:37
  And if you can appeal to the child to say, well, what's in the child's
• 33:41
  best interest on the end of the, and then clearly mom and dad are
• 33:45
  thinking about my best interest then is it a sort of logical thing?
• 33:50
  For me to think about the best interest of the community, the family, and Right.
• 33:56
  The, the note that I took there is, is service to the community,
• 34:01
  what actually provides for happiness and fulfillment in life.
• 34:06
  Mark Uranga: Yeah.
• 34:06
  I think that evidence about that is, is increasing in a way that just makes a
• 34:13
  lot of sense when you have a, a community and an evolutionary perspective that
• 34:20
  shares resources or serves each other when we were all just barely scraping by
• 34:25
  and caves are on a Savannah or whatever.
• 34:27
  Those, those, what people call selfish genes do replicate by, by providing
• 34:34
  that service, there's the evidence surrounding a sense of fulfillment
• 34:40
  is universally supportive of.
• 34:45
  A sense of service or commitment or attunement or any of these sorts of
• 34:50
  connection sort of ideas that when we can place a child in, help them
• 34:59
  find their place in that world.
• 35:03
  I think a lot of the, the work that you share about experiences with hunter
• 35:07
  gatherers and these sorts of things, these are very concrete contributions
• 35:11
  that children make at a small age.
• 35:14
  And their sense of attachment is, is so much more community focused than our
• 35:21
  world where it's in a, in a generally speaking western world where we have
• 35:29
  work to do, that's specialized work.
• 35:32
  We have bills to pay that are, you know, technical and we have projects
• 35:38
  to do that are too skilled then.
• 35:40
  Then the child feels a little isolated.
• 35:42
  They lack that sense of service and their, their kind of drive for that
• 35:50
  leads them to look for attention.
• 35:51
  That, that I think, often we wrongly think is attention that wants play or
• 35:59
  immediate gratification, whereas that attention seeking that's so hardwired
• 36:06
  is about finding that attunement, finding that connection and then that
• 36:10
  safety that I can do these things and, and somebody's with me and watching
• 36:16
  me and helping me through those.
• 36:18
  Rupert Isaacson: Right.
• 36:18
  You know, I guess in the old days we had, although, you know, we, we didn't grow
• 36:24
  up in hunter gatherer community, sadly, where absolutely the, the community,
• 36:29
  everyone's in service to the community.
• 36:31
  But two generations ago.
• 36:34
  Most people were growing up in some sort of family business, family farm family,
• 36:39
  you know, or not most, but certainly many.
• 36:41
  Mm-hmm.
• 36:42
  With kids being included in what was going on.
• 36:47
  Maybe they wanted to, maybe they didn't, but they were
• 36:50
  certainly included, you know?
• 36:51
  Mm-hmm.
• 36:52
  And they were skilled from quite an early age in not just the physical or
• 36:59
  mental competences required in the family tailoring business or the family farm, but
• 37:07
  also the financials and the economics and the balancing the books and the mm-hmm.
• 37:13
  You know, I've got to buy in this amount of feed and fertilizer or this amount
• 37:17
  of cloth and, and you know, needles and balance it against, you know, mm-hmm.
• 37:22
  Blah, blah, blah.
• 37:23
  And that of course seems to have gone, you know, that, that,
• 37:25
  that now, barring very few.
• 37:29
  Sort of isolated communities or people that are just lucky enough to grow up
• 37:34
  in certain types of family business.
• 37:37
  Now the family farm, it, it's, it's something that almost exists in myth now.
• 37:42
  You used twice in the last five to 10 minutes the word attunement.
• 37:47
  Attunement.
• 37:47
  Mm-hmm.
• 37:48
  Right?
• 37:48
  And this is a word which many of, many of the people who listen to this podcast also
• 37:53
  listen to Warwick Schiller and Warwick Schiller uses the word attunement a lot.
• 37:58
  And those of you who listen to l Leanna Tanks podcast where she's talking
• 38:05
  about the use of attunement with working with the criminally insane.
• 38:10
  And how that's, if you haven't heard that one, by the way,
• 38:13
  listeners, you've gotta go back and.
• 38:15
  Find Leanna Tank's interview.
• 38:17
  It's, it's, it's, it's meaningful and there's a lot in there that helps us all.
• 38:21
  What do you mean Mark by attunement and what should we understand from this term?
• 38:31
  Mark Uranga: Well, yeah, I, I lean heavily on, on Warwick chillers
• 38:35
  shorthand, which he always de, he describes as being seen, being heard,
• 38:42
  feeling, felt, and getting gotten.
• 38:44
  And the first parts of that are, are very sensory.
• 38:50
  So they are and again, with toddlers in my life every day, I, I always
• 38:57
  think of the toddler model when, when a toddler approaches me, do I look at
• 39:03
  them or am I seeing what they're doing?
• 39:06
  When, when I come into the room, does the toddler turn from me?
• 39:11
  Do they make nonverbal cues that, that they're concerned?
• 39:18
  And again, I just think toddlers are honest people, whereas the
• 39:21
  rest of us have this overlay of politeness and what should I do?
• 39:25
  And these sorts of things.
• 39:26
  Yet we signal these things as well, without a doubt
• 39:31
  as we talk to other people.
• 39:33
  And the idea of attunement is, is with toddlers, with mules, with horses is
• 39:41
  that awareness that is not verbal.
• 39:47
  I think that it can have a verbal overlay, but the richest attunement
• 39:53
  with adults as well is, is more of a nonverbal, sort of a, of a dance.
• 39:59
  And the, the role that that plays in, in my life is.
• 40:08
  Again, 20 times a day I enter a room and I could have a kid that's gregarious, a
• 40:13
  kid that's hungry, a kid that was just told they can't be on their phone or
• 40:17
  within, within moments, their physical reaction to me informs which way I go.
• 40:24
  Are they already goofy and do they want me to make jokes?
• 40:29
  Are they quiet?
• 40:30
  Do they want me to use a quiet voice?
• 40:33
  Do they do I see that their shoes light up and they want to jump up in
• 40:38
  the ground, up and down on the ground?
• 40:40
  And when a child has that sense of being seen, then they can start to develop
• 40:49
  a sense of comfort and safety and move away from that protective stance that
• 40:56
  the stranger danger that's typically going to accompany at least a physician
• 41:00
  visit, but often any other new adult.
• 41:05
  Rupert Isaacson: That's brilliantly put.
• 41:08
  I think you answered it incredibly succinctly.
• 41:10
  The, the nonverbal cues which we learn through horses really,
• 41:16
  really help us with the nonverbal cues with our fellow monkeys.
• 41:20
  And ultimately our fellow monkeys are much more dangerous than our horses are.
• 41:24
  You've used the, you've referred to the word stubborn quite
• 41:28
  a few times as well, right?
• 41:30
  And you, you stubborn with the bass community, but you seem to
• 41:34
  have referred to it as a positive.
• 41:37
  Mark Uranga: Mm-hmm.
• 41:37
  Rupert Isaacson: You've also now included the word mule
• 41:41
  Mark Uranga: and,
• 41:42
  Rupert Isaacson: I know you as a handler of a very good mule that
• 41:46
  I was lucky enough to meet when we were doing some training together.
• 41:49
  I wouldn't say that Mule was stubborn.
• 41:51
  I would say that Mule was, was a hundred percent present and cooperative.
• 41:55
  I wouldn't have wanted to make that mule do anything it didn't want to do.
• 41:59
  But I wouldn't wanna make any equine or human do something
• 42:02
  they wouldn't want to do.
• 42:03
  But nonetheless, you, you, you've sort of gone bask stubborn mule in your life.
• 42:11
  Talk to us about that.
• 42:12
  Why have you gone for mules?
• 42:14
  Why do you feel stubborn is good?
• 42:17
  What do you mean by stubborn?
• 42:18
  Because people have different meanings around that word.
• 42:21
  And then talk to us a little bit about mules.
• 42:24
  Mark Uranga: Yeah.
• 42:24
  I, I use stubborn as you picked up with it.
• 42:30
  Some sense of pride, some, some sense of irony.
• 42:34
  It's, it's obviously quite close to persistence and okay.
• 42:38
  Rupert Isaacson: Perseverance, perhaps
• 42:39
  Mark Uranga: perseverance, persistence, stubbornness.
• 42:42
  And it just
• 42:43
  Rupert Isaacson: mountain people.
• 42:44
  You don't give up.
• 42:46
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• 42:48
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• 42:52
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• 42:57
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• 43:12
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• 43:15
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• 43:19
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• 43:25
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• 43:37
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• 43:39
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• 43:44
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• 43:47
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• 43:49
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• 44:04
  So, this means we need to train a horse in collection, but this
• 44:08
  also has a really beneficial effect on the horse's well being.
• 44:12
  And it also ends your time conflict, where you're wondering, oh my gosh, how
• 44:16
  am I going to condition my horses and maintain them and give them what they
• 44:20
  need, as well as Serving my clients.
• 44:23
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• 44:28
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• 44:34
  Mark Uranga: Yes.
• 44:35
  Yeah.
• 44:36
  So the reason I like to lead with stubbornness is because
• 44:42
  of the baggage that it has.
• 44:43
  Yet we flip the idea to persistent and all of a sudden to perseverance
• 44:49
  all of a sudden this is an attribute.
• 44:51
  Right.
• 44:51
  And I suppose it's the goal to which that's directed.
• 44:55
  The, we, we talked about creation myths and the idea that.
• 45:00
  The Basque people would be stubborn enough to run off the Romans and
• 45:03
  to stop the Moors as they came up across from southern Spain and
• 45:06
  Rupert Isaacson: Charlemagne and the Franks and everyone, everyone had to go
• 45:10
  the vi goth, the vandals, whoever it is.
• 45:13
  Yeah,
• 45:14
  Mark Uranga: yeah.
• 45:15
  So, so it, it comes to define that group and the mule I know you have
• 45:20
  listeners of, of all backgrounds, and it's always fun to, to step
• 45:24
  back to the, the making of a mule.
• 45:27
  A mule is the product of a male donkey, a jack, and a female horse, a mare.
• 45:33
  There can be a converse, which could be a hiney, which is a
• 45:37
  female donkey and a male horse.
• 45:39
  But the vast majority of hybrids are mules.
• 45:43
  And the mule in our life has the value of being one of the most surefooted
• 45:51
  of the equines in the mountains.
• 45:53
  So Idaho has.
• 45:55
  The largest wilderness area within the contiguous 48, the lower
• 45:59
  48 states as it were in area.
• 46:02
  I've been lucky to move through as we talked about movement and experiences.
• 46:06
  Mm-hmm.
• 46:06
  As hunter gatherers, I've shared those experiences with many people in many ways.
• 46:11
  And as our family got into equines that lure to be able to safely
• 46:17
  travel through rugged country is what drew us to work with mules.
• 46:22
  And the, that stubbornness is also a sense of self preservation.
• 46:28
  So the background of the donkey is more a mountainous breed to be
• 46:33
  around cliffs and other places where standing their ground was an option.
• 46:38
  And it was not the steps of Asia where flight is always the survival mechanism.
• 46:47
  So the mule.
• 46:49
  And we, we get the pause, the stubbornness as it were.
• 46:54
  And, and I remind myself and my kids that, that we want this in
• 46:58
  our mules because their sense of self preservation keeps us safe.
• 47:03
  And I think one of the fun things that I've come to learn, we, in our family,
• 47:08
  we have a, a Navajo pony, we have an appaloosa horse, we have a mule, two
• 47:14
  mules one of which may or may not be a Henny, but those, the mule will pause.
• 47:23
  And usually with the attunement that we have developed, carry on for example,
• 47:30
  through a goalie that maybe smells a coyote or through something that's
• 47:35
  changed in the environment from when they walked out to when they walked back the
• 47:40
  horse, our ponies, there are times where we will use them to lead because they.
• 47:45
  Again, with that attunement that we've built, we'll be willing to
• 47:49
  override their sense of hesitation to try to move through something.
• 47:54
  Whereas the value of the mule in our area is really to take that pause.
• 47:59
  They see all four feet and they can move slowly and and safely
• 48:03
  through those environments.
• 48:05
  And Sam came to us as a, a purposefully bred mule who lived with a, his previous
• 48:12
  owner for 20 years approximately.
• 48:16
  And the time you saw him, he was 27 and Wow.
• 48:19
  Wow.
• 48:20
  He looked so good.
• 48:22
  Yeah, he looked so good.
• 48:23
  And he as you know, he's, he's a willing mule.
• 48:27
  And, and that's because what people have ha have asked of him in the past
• 48:33
  have been safe questions have been trustworthy questions, largely speaking.
• 48:38
  He's not been forced, he's not been compelled to do something and.
• 48:43
  It's, I, I, I hear this in your background from a military school of
• 48:48
  breaking somebody down and building them up and the old breaking a horse.
• 48:54
  You know, I guess it still exists somewhere, but we've been lucky enough
• 48:57
  to have models and yeah, mentors who start horses who, who, who meet
• 49:05
  the horse where they are and, and move forward with that goal in mind.
• 49:10
  And, and Sam came to us largely in that path and, and we've been lucky enough
• 49:13
  that Samuel continues to help us grow.
• 49:17
  I love that he's
• 49:18
  Rupert Isaacson: called Samuel.
• 49:19
  Yeah.
• 49:19
  Right now let's go back to the word stubborn, though.
• 49:22
  Stubborn can mean in its pejorative sense, in its negative sense.
• 49:26
  Unwillingness to change basically, right?
• 49:28
  Unwillingness to take on new perspectives, which of course is not a way of self
• 49:34
  preservation because you know, when the.
• 49:37
  When, when the Vikings or whoever are coming over the hill, you can't say,
• 49:41
  well, they're not coming over the hill.
• 49:42
  Or, you know, I've lived here and this is my grandfather and my grandfather
• 49:46
  before him was on this land.
• 49:47
  And yeah, I know dude, but there's like 8,000 dudes coming
• 49:50
  over the hill waving xis.
• 49:51
  So you know, how about we make a plan B or C.
• 49:54
  Mm-hmm.
• 49:54
  Or D.
• 49:55
  Mm-hmm.
• 49:55
  And the people that could make the plans, you know, A to e were
• 49:59
  more likely to survive than the one who said, I will not move.
• 50:03
  Mark Uranga: Mm-hmm.
• 50:03
  Rupert Isaacson: We love to think of the kind of Gandalf, you know, you shall not
• 50:06
  Mark Uranga: pass,
• 50:07
  Rupert Isaacson: you know?
• 50:08
  But then again he did get killed when he did that with the bowel rock.
• 50:11
  And there might be a time for that type of self sacrifice.
• 50:14
  And of course, you know, we, we also assume that Gandalf is coming with
• 50:18
  a certain amount of self-confidence of magic behind him, and he
• 50:20
  happens to know the king of the Eagles who happens to come along.
• 50:23
  So, you know, he's got, he's got, he's got backup.
• 50:25
  And he wouldn't have stood there with his stuff and done that if
• 50:27
  he didn't feel he had backup.
• 50:29
  So.
• 50:31
  You are not using the word stubborn in that pejorative way.
• 50:35
  Yet nonetheless you are using that word.
• 50:37
  And I feel that when we're working with particularly
• 50:42
  people on the spectrum mm-hmm.
• 50:44
  Who are in the less flexible stage of their life, and I talk about this a
• 50:51
  lot with my son Rowan, who's 23 now.
• 50:53
  He's here in the house.
• 50:54
  You know, he'd be the first to come up and say yes.
• 50:56
  When I was young, I was incredibly inflexible.
• 51:02
  I made it extremely stressful on everybody around me and myself.
• 51:07
  It's just that I didn't have any choice in the matter because that's where my
• 51:10
  brain and my nervous system were at.
• 51:12
  But little by little I learned to be flexible.
• 51:15
  Mm-hmm.
• 51:16
  Talk a little bit about the dance between stubbornness and flexibility because.
• 51:22
  There are nuances there that I think deserve to be explored.
• 51:26
  Mark Uranga: Yeah.
• 51:26
  Rupert Isaacson: And then I want to, to talk a little bit about how you've
• 51:30
  gotten involved in equine assisted work.
• 51:33
  Mark Uranga: Mm-hmm.
• 51:33
  Rupert Isaacson: And then we, I want to go into a little bit about,
• 51:35
  as a pediatrician, what you see as the value of equine assisted work.
• 51:39
  So let's start with that dance between stubbornness in the
• 51:43
  pejorative sense and flexibility.
• 51:47
  And then let's go to mules and equine assisted.
• 51:51
  Mark Uranga: Perfect.
• 51:52
  Well, I think one of the patterns that I see in pediatrics and these
• 52:02
  interactions, you know, throughout the day is somewhat of a default coping in,
• 52:08
  in all of us at a first level of stress.
• 52:11
  Are we, do we cry?
• 52:13
  Do we dig in?
• 52:14
  Do we, do we freak out?
• 52:17
  Do we shut down?
• 52:18
  And the idea mule is a great example of this and not always
• 52:24
  because they have the horse as well.
• 52:26
  And so sometimes it goes to flight, but, but a tendency to just stop.
• 52:31
  Like, this is not okay, let's stop,
• 52:35
  Rupert Isaacson: stop and observe perhaps.
• 52:37
  Mark Uranga: Yeah.
• 52:38
  And that, that starts, that, that plants the seed of stubbornness, I suppose.
• 52:45
  So if that in a person persists and we stop and we do not change,
• 52:51
  then what is an acceptable coping strategy becomes a maladaptive
• 52:57
  coping strategy, I would suppose.
• 52:59
  And the same, you know, can be true of flexibility.
• 53:02
  If, if I change at a whim every, you know, passing pad, then, then I've
• 53:08
  lost a sense of self and where I might move forward with something.
• 53:13
  So the dance, and it's a dance as I mentioned, I think I see with
• 53:18
  every kind of identity or coping strategy or however a person would
• 53:23
  think, is that time where it serves us well are in, in kind of bulking
• 53:32
  as it were, or stopping, am I safe?
• 53:34
  Is it safe to continue?
• 53:38
  Now I can move on.
• 53:40
  That is where I, I think, I hesitate to think of stubborn
• 53:46
  as always maladaptive, right?
• 53:49
  And I, and I do, you know, it gets to the nuance of definition, but I think
• 53:54
  that it's fair to call it stubborn first because I do believe that it's,
• 54:00
  that it becomes persistence when it's adaptive and that it, it becomes a
• 54:04
  bad thing when it, when it isn't.
• 54:06
  Like you said, you just hold fast to something that is a lost cause.
• 54:11
  That, that's not so good.
• 54:13
  Rupert Isaacson: Right.
• 54:13
  And I think the reason why it was good to have hear you explore that is
• 54:19
  because for a lot of people that are working with you know, inflexible,
• 54:23
  neuropsychiatric, cognitive conditions you know, I, I had no choice.
• 54:30
  I was a dad and I found myself in that situation.
• 54:33
  So I just had to cope and I had to figure out a way.
• 54:36
  So obviously what I did is I went for mentorship and I
• 54:38
  went for mentorship with Dr.
• 54:39
  Temple Grandin.
• 54:41
  And she said, do these three things.
• 54:43
  I did those things and they worked.
• 54:44
  So, you know, so my persistence and my stubbornness is like, I will not give
• 54:48
  up on this child in this situation, even though it's beyond my current resources.
• 54:55
  What I'll do is I'll look for someone who's got those resources and I
• 54:59
  will have them, you know, mentor me.
• 55:02
  A lot of the people that are working with special needs, needs, they may not
• 55:05
  be coming out of this type of situation.
• 55:09
  So let's say you are an 18-year-old and you are finishing college and you
• 55:12
  decide, or, or just you're going out into the way say, I I like this world.
• 55:17
  I, I, I would like to help these people.
• 55:22
  I myself am adolescent, which means I come with a certain
• 55:26
  inflexible mindset, you know?
• 55:27
  Right.
• 55:28
  And because my amygdala is still not, you know, our, our brains are
• 55:31
  developing up until the age of about 25.
• 55:34
  I mean, they're always developing, but you know what I mean?
• 55:36
  There's, there's these imbalances between the amygdala and the, the
• 55:39
  hippocampus and the prefrontal cortex that don't really even out for a
• 55:43
  while, which is why, you know, we, we are rocky and self-absorbed as,
• 55:47
  Mark Uranga: as adolescents.
• 55:48
  Rupert Isaacson: Right, right.
• 55:48
  And we, we come by it, honestly, you know, it's just how our brains are developing.
• 55:52
  And then we kind of cool out a little bit.
• 55:53
  But many people are, you know, as young people are going into the field
• 55:58
  before, really their own brains have, have gone through these changes.
• 56:02
  Mm-hmm.
• 56:02
  And then horse people, we horse people and notoriously close-minded.
• 56:08
  Mm-hmm.
• 56:09
  It's, it's, it's a, it's a drum that I thump a lot because I, I'm
• 56:13
  a great believer that all horse people should go and learn other
• 56:17
  disciplines of hoarseness mm-hmm.
• 56:19
  All the time.
• 56:21
  Rather than saying, I don't do this, or I don't use nose bands, or I don't use
• 56:25
  bits, or I won't do this, or those cowboys are terrible, or that hunter jumpers
• 56:29
  are terrible or that this is terrible.
• 56:30
  That, that's you won't know until you go and learn it.
• 56:33
  If, if you think it's bad, go learn it and then decide.
• 56:37
  I'm often encouraging people in our trainings to say, if you are asking
• 56:42
  Mark Uranga: mm-hmm.
• 56:42
  Rupert Isaacson: People who have difficulty adapting.
• 56:47
  To do really difficult things like communicate or mm-hmm.
• 56:51
  With a horse, go into that trailer, which is a big dark hole, or yeah,
• 56:55
  accept a rider on the back, or get toilet trained if you're a kid or whatever.
• 57:00
  Then what difficult, challenging,
• 57:04
  Mark Uranga: mm-hmm.
• 57:05
  Thing are
• 57:05
  Rupert Isaacson: you doing?
• 57:06
  What language are you learning?
• 57:08
  What difficult physical skill are you learning?
• 57:11
  What computer programming, scratchy, heady thing are you trying to learn so
• 57:16
  that, because if you're not constantly finding yourself back at the beginner
• 57:21
  stage of things, what tools have you really got to lead somebody else with
• 57:29
  two legs or four through that process?
• 57:32
  So I like that you are talking about the need to persist.
• 57:38
  Mm-hmm.
• 57:39
  How do we cultivate.
• 57:45
  Enough open-mindedness so that we can do what a meal does
• 57:51
  so that we can pause mm-hmm.
• 57:53
  And observe.
• 57:54
  Mm-hmm.
• 57:54
  So that, and then go and discern ah, right.
• 57:57
  Okay.
• 57:58
  I guess the way down the mountain is actually there.
• 58:02
  Yeah.
• 58:02
  Or, yes, it smells of cougar, but two weeks ago, you know.
• 58:07
  Mm-hmm.
• 58:07
  Or yeah.
• 58:10
  How so?
• 58:12
  We don't wanna always override, but sometimes we need to override, sometimes
• 58:16
  we need to say, smells of cougar half an hour ago, but I gotta get down that slope.
• 58:20
  You know?
• 58:20
  Yeah.
• 58:21
  Alright.
• 58:21
  Now how do I, how do I do it?
• 58:22
  So that to some degree is the equine assisted world.
• 58:27
  It's, it's, it's, it's dancing.
• 58:28
  That dance, um mm-hmm.
• 58:31
  How do we, how do we take this pausing positive stubbornness
• 58:37
  Mark Uranga: mm-hmm.
• 58:38
  Rupert Isaacson: And turn it into looking for opportunity for
• 58:46
  ways through dilemmas, basically.
• 58:52
  Mark Uranga: Well, I, I think your work does an excellent job of
• 58:55
  providing that idea of, I have a goal of improved communication in mind
• 59:03
  with somebody I'm working with with autism in an equine assisted sense.
• 59:09
  And when I see an opening, that's what I can go with.
• 59:15
  When I see a pause, I reflect on why the pause, why, what caused a
• 59:24
  loss of that sense of safety was.
• 59:28
  Was it something to validate?
• 59:31
  The awareness of that is critical for moving forward.
• 59:37
  That being attuned to that hesitation is what allows the next step.
• 59:45
  So I like
• 59:46
  Rupert Isaacson: that being attuned, being attuned to that hesitation
• 59:49
  allows for finding the next step.
• 59:52
  Mark Uranga: Yeah, and I love those times of opportunity with, with
• 59:57
  patients, with the, the times that I've gotten too close to their bubble and
• 1:00:04
  they went from smiling to shut down.
• 1:00:07
  That's in a, in a nutshell, when I'm building that five minute relationship,
• 1:00:11
  which I get, that's my time to, to rec, to, to realize that with them, give them
• 1:00:20
  that pause and, and then move forward.
• 1:00:23
  And in a bigger sense, in a relationship that.
• 1:00:26
  You're developing therapeutically or we're developing in an equine
• 1:00:30
  assisted sense, those pauses and that asking of a yes question.
• 1:00:38
  This is a horsemanship, mule manship idea.
• 1:00:41
  Right?
• 1:00:41
  Let's ask a question that our horse can achieve.
• 1:00:45
  Let's ask a question that our patient, that our child, that
• 1:00:49
  our colleague can say yes to.
• 1:00:52
  That's what builds the trust and, and that that connection and attunement, especially
• 1:00:59
  with our non-verbal learners is, is really validating to their existence.
• 1:01:09
  Rupert Isaacson: Right.
• 1:01:09
  So you are, you're a pediatrician.
• 1:01:12
  Mm-hmm.
• 1:01:12
  To you, is the value of equine assisted work as a whole, why is it a good thing?
• 1:01:22
  I think
• 1:01:22
  Mark Uranga: one of the biggest things it does is, is it provides a different model.
• 1:01:26
  We're in
• 1:01:30
  a model in science that has a lot of value for breaking down questions of
• 1:01:36
  is this medicine gonna kill bacteria?
• 1:01:39
  Is this vaccine going to save lives?
• 1:01:44
  But it, but it is not as good at the holistic pattern.
• 1:01:49
  What combination of things for a given child create progress?
• 1:01:57
  We, we know that certain models a, BA for example, and, and something
• 1:02:01
  you're well aware of is one that shows, shows promise for a number of
• 1:02:09
  people, and we have outliers to that.
• 1:02:13
  Are those.
• 1:02:14
  We know that from the scientific model, but what we don't always pick
• 1:02:20
  up is the subtleties of the why.
• 1:02:22
  Why is that person an outlier?
• 1:02:25
  Was it you know, time of day person that we're working with whatever it is.
• 1:02:29
  The, the equine assisted model allows an entirely different paradigm.
• 1:02:36
  And I think that the work you do to bring that back to all kinds of
• 1:02:44
  neurotransmitters and the science behind that validates that the equine assisted
• 1:02:50
  world in, in a scientific model in some regards, provides the observation.
• 1:02:56
  Science starts with an observation and a subsequent hypothesis, and
• 1:02:59
  then a testing of the hypothesis.
• 1:03:01
  And then as we is that a, a testing?
• 1:03:04
  Is that.
• 1:03:05
  Repeated testing, do we get the same result?
• 1:03:09
  And the observation that being around horses helps me feel better,
• 1:03:14
  helps our autistic son feel better, allows us to take the next step in
• 1:03:21
  medicine, in the, the research model of saying, well, is there something
• 1:03:28
  that we can isolate from that?
• 1:03:30
  Is it the horse?
• 1:03:32
  Is it the movement?
• 1:03:33
  Is it the production of oxytocin?
• 1:03:34
  Is it, is it just the handler?
• 1:03:38
  And they could be riding a tricycle.
• 1:03:41
  The medical model, the scientific model allows us to delve into that.
• 1:03:46
  But there's, there's the mystery of the horse, the, the of the
• 1:03:52
  horse that is just not easy to replicate in my experience, I think.
• 1:04:00
  We started with a horse and a, and then a pony, and then, and then added mules.
• 1:04:04
  And there's just enough more resistance in a mule to feel a little bit more
• 1:04:10
  like a toddler in that a horse, when as I worked with them, their pause or
• 1:04:20
  hesitation would tend to be more active.
• 1:04:22
  And in, in my start, I, I felt confident.
• 1:04:27
  Let's say we were trying a new movement and the, the LOP starts,
• 1:04:32
  well, you wanna elope, let's lop.
• 1:04:34
  I, I love loping.
• 1:04:35
  This is a great excuse for that.
• 1:04:37
  Whereas the mule will tend to have that pause and forcing through doesn't, doesn't
• 1:04:45
  really get us to the right direction.
• 1:04:47
  It's in, in the horse, in my horse experience.
• 1:04:50
  I kind of lost that moment.
• 1:04:52
  Why was that?
• 1:04:53
  Because the movement allowed me to move past it.
• 1:04:57
  Whereas I think that that pause that I see in a, in a mule more commonly is, is
• 1:05:03
  a little more analogous to a toddler and and to people, you know, to our peers.
• 1:05:08
  Mm-hmm.
• 1:05:09
  Because there's, there's that not just, well, I'm gonna flee the scene that's
• 1:05:13
  a little more inherent to the horse.
• 1:05:15
  The, the response of a mule still has that opening for, okay, now we're both
• 1:05:22
  here not doing what I would like to do.
• 1:05:25
  How do we still get there?
• 1:05:29
  Rupert Isaacson: Interesting.
• 1:05:30
  So it kind of forces more inventive communication in a way.
• 1:05:35
  And I think we also all know that mules are hyper intelligent.
• 1:05:38
  They're, they're more intelligent than the sum of their parts.
• 1:05:41
  Right?
• 1:05:41
  So they tend to be more intelligent than, horses are more intelligent
• 1:05:43
  than, than ass certainly than my ass.
• 1:05:48
  So yourself, you must be familiar with that.
• 1:05:52
  With the poet Ogden Nash.
• 1:05:54
  He was a poet American jazz age poet, writing in sort of sophisticated New York.
• 1:06:00
  And he wrote funny, often satirical poems about everything from sort of
• 1:06:06
  marriage to making a martini to, and he had lots and lots of ones about animals
• 1:06:11
  and, you know, the giraffe or the, the lion or the elephant he won about mules.
• 1:06:15
  And I love it.
• 1:06:16
  It's two lines.
• 1:06:17
  It's in the world of mules.
• 1:06:20
  There are no rules.
• 1:06:26
  Mark Uranga: Perfect.
• 1:06:27
  Rupert Isaacson: Yeah.
• 1:06:28
  Yeah.
• 1:06:28
  And to me that Oh, that's funny.
• 1:06:30
  Yeah.
• 1:06:31
  That really is good.
• 1:06:31
  And in, in the in, I've done two really big mountain trips
• 1:06:35
  in my life using with mules.
• 1:06:37
  One was in Spain 30 plus years ago, and another one was in Latu in
• 1:06:42
  the highlands of Southern Africa.
• 1:06:44
  And.
• 1:06:46
  What you could really see was the discernment that the mules had
• 1:06:50
  about how to handle situations.
• 1:06:53
  And that if you were to try to force anything mm-hmm.
• 1:06:57
  The mule might actually react badly and push you off the cliff.
• 1:07:00
  But if you when with the mule and did allow the pause and the slowness
• 1:07:07
  and the, the mule would get you and your stuff down or up safely.
• 1:07:12
  Mm-hmm.
• 1:07:13
  Yeah.
• 1:07:13
  But you had to meet them more than halfway.
• 1:07:18
  And I felt that, but it was a fair exchange by, you know, because
• 1:07:21
  I mean, they're gonna get you.
• 1:07:22
  Yeah.
• 1:07:23
  You are involved in a in an equine assisted organization.
• 1:07:28
  Tell us about that.
• 1:07:29
  What, where is it?
• 1:07:30
  What is it?
• 1:07:31
  I, I know 'cause I went, you know, to do a training there, but I'd still like you
• 1:07:34
  to, to introduce it and talk about it.
• 1:07:35
  Yeah.
• 1:07:36
  And what do you feel the value of, of their particular approach is
• 1:07:40
  that, that, that jives with you?
• 1:07:43
  Mm-hmm.
• 1:07:43
  As a pediatrician, not just as a dad who wants to do nice
• 1:07:47
  things for, for kids with horses.
• 1:07:49
  So yeah, tell us what is, what is this, what is the equine assisted
• 1:07:52
  organization that you're involved with?
• 1:07:54
  Just start there.
• 1:07:56
  Mark Uranga: Sure.
• 1:07:56
  The, the organization is called the Warm Springs Care Farm.
• 1:08:01
  And it's probably the one and the only, if you were to Google Warm Springs Care Farm,
• 1:08:06
  it pulls its name from the geothermal hot water that runs down the street,
• 1:08:10
  the warm springs that heat all these historic homes around along warm springs.
• 1:08:14
  Historically, all those homes came with enough land for
• 1:08:17
  horses and a carriage house.
• 1:08:19
  And the Warm Springs Care Farm is one of the few that's
• 1:08:22
  maintained enough acreage to have.
• 1:08:25
  An arena and they've since added some goats and, and chickens
• 1:08:29
  and these sorts of things.
• 1:08:31
  And the value, I'm lucky enough to live on the same road and have the same
• 1:08:38
  experience in my backyard, is to come over a bench and down over a canal into
• 1:08:44
  what feels like an oasis within the city.
• 1:08:47
  And Warm Springs Care Farm really embraces that.
• 1:08:50
  It's not a forest based learning environment.
• 1:08:54
  It's it's an, an oasis.
• 1:08:58
  And that comes with small animals as well.
• 1:09:04
  Ducks, chickens, as I mentioned, goats the, just the break that
• 1:09:10
  adults, you know, we kind of, again.
• 1:09:13
  Circle back a little bit to the idea that we're, we're all
• 1:09:15
  nonverbal in communication.
• 1:09:17
  These emotions, these senses that we have, we don't lose them, we
• 1:09:20
  just choose to ignore them at times.
• 1:09:23
  And basically crossing this threshold at the Worm Springs Care farm, you know,
• 1:09:28
  you're in a place that is a different pace and the, the role that they play is
• 1:09:36
  creating this space for growth or therapy that is driven by the participants.
• 1:09:47
  They are not so solely focused on equine work that they don't
• 1:09:51
  welcome the drumming circle.
• 1:09:52
  They have a, a farm club for kids.
• 1:09:56
  They they have some dance groups and other things.
• 1:09:59
  They welcomed your clinic, which was, I think, a breakthrough
• 1:10:03
  for a lot of us in the idea of how to engage with work that is.
• 1:10:10
  Demanding and compelling yet tiring.
• 1:10:14
  And, and so that organization basically provides the openness with the physical
• 1:10:22
  location to make those experiences rich for anybody that visits there.
• 1:10:29
  Rupert Isaacson: You what, what, what role do you play there and what do you
• 1:10:33
  feel your insight as a pediatrician brings to you doing that work?
• 1:10:39
  Mark Uranga: Well, I think it's is such a great
• 1:10:43
  refreshing thing to be able to say, I know of this place that is magical
• 1:10:49
  that is not another appointment.
• 1:10:55
  It's not another, you know, therapy that a child is compelled to go to it.
• 1:11:01
  Is something that's engaging and you know, not all kids are engaged
• 1:11:05
  in that model of growth, but the ones who are find it so reassuring.
• 1:11:11
  And I think that
• 1:11:14
  with the involvement that that fortunately I've been able to have some, not as much
• 1:11:19
  as I, as I would like based on demands of being a working dad and a pediatrician
• 1:11:24
  and a, a mule owner and other things, but that there's some, some clear validation
• 1:11:31
  to that approach that within medicine we will have patients that have not done
• 1:11:38
  well in therapy, even though for, for some people that's the right answer.
• 1:11:42
  Who haven't done well in occupational therapy building where it's a
• 1:11:46
  more of an artificial environment.
• 1:11:47
  Some kids thrive with what's provided in that setting.
• 1:11:51
  And the, the role I think that, that I'm able to play is.
• 1:11:56
  To advocate for the value that they provide and recognize that as a, a
• 1:12:00
  legitimate and important way forward for, for families and, and kids, and
• 1:12:07
  that it's not some, you know, hippie thing that is just, just playing with
• 1:12:12
  animals and, and not growing, but instead it, it provides that kind of,
• 1:12:17
  that crucible in which growth can occur.
• 1:12:21
  Rupert Isaacson: It's so interesting that, you know, we
• 1:12:23
  use the word hippie in Peor here.
• 1:12:25
  I say I'm total hippie, obviously.
• 1:12:27
  Yeah.
• 1:12:27
  As a pejorative, because of course the counterculture otherwise known as the
• 1:12:32
  hippie culture arose out of science.
• 1:12:35
  You know, that the, the, the Allen Ginsburg and these people who were, they
• 1:12:39
  were all PhDs, they were all doctors.
• 1:12:40
  Most of them were at Ivy League schools.
• 1:12:43
  The, a lot of the people that engendered the counter culture
• 1:12:45
  movement were actually scientists.
• 1:12:48
  The reason they were, experimenting with altered states of consciousness
• 1:12:53
  was for the same reason that the CIA were and still are, you know?
• 1:12:56
  But, you know, with an idea to heal rather than to harm or control.
• 1:13:01
  And yet we still have this almost sort of slightly guilty thing of, even
• 1:13:07
  though it was clear, the hippies got it right in terms of quality of life.
• 1:13:11
  Like what would you have rather have been in the early 1960s?
• 1:13:13
  Would you rather have been the, the, the bloke who was just
• 1:13:20
  chain to that corporate ladder?
• 1:13:22
  Or would you rather have been a Woodstock, you know, I mean, and, and then gone
• 1:13:27
  away and founded Ben and Jerry's?
• 1:13:28
  You know, I mean, which would you rather, I'm not saying there's anything
• 1:13:31
  wrong with being on the corporate ladder, and there's also not anything
• 1:13:34
  wrong with being a hippie that does not go and found Ben and Jerry's.
• 1:13:38
  But many of the hippie generation, of course, actually did become
• 1:13:41
  really good entrepreneurs as well as, scientists and so on.
• 1:13:45
  And, and really were the kind of blaze the trail for the freedom that
• 1:13:53
  we think of now as western culture that we can clearly see in this world
• 1:13:58
  where it's under threat and Sure.
• 1:14:03
  Challenge.
• 1:14:03
  You know, would we rather live in a, in a totalitarian society where we
• 1:14:08
  can't express these things or what would we, well, I think we all know
• 1:14:11
  what we'd rather we'd all, you know, rather have a bit more rock and roll.
• 1:14:14
  So, and this of course starts with our children, yet we do still feel this sort
• 1:14:19
  of slight guilty thing about going one.
• 1:14:23
  But I am supposed to be a very serious person.
• 1:14:25
  And even though none of us ever wanted to be, because we we're just toddlers at
• 1:14:29
  the end of the day, and you talk about saying yes, it's good as a doctor to be
• 1:14:36
  able to give validation, you know, we, we now know the neuroscience behind.
• 1:14:41
  Hippy dom, why it works.
• 1:14:42
  Mm-hmm.
• 1:14:42
  You know, whether it's an altered sense of consciousness and why they
• 1:14:45
  work or whether it's why working with horses through oxytocin and BDNF brain
• 1:14:49
  derived neurotrophic factor, which is actually neuroplasticity, why it works.
• 1:14:53
  These things have now been looked at.
• 1:14:55
  And then you can get to the more esoteric stuff, you know, like the
• 1:14:59
  HeartMath Institute, you know, looking at the emission of photons outta
• 1:15:03
  the heart and electromagnetic plus people say, oh, that's all bollocks.
• 1:15:07
  Well, I live in Germany, it's not bollocks.
• 1:15:09
  The University of Castle up the road, which is very German.
• 1:15:12
  Mm-hmm.
• 1:15:12
  Did a whole study about 20, 25 years ago into the emission of photons
• 1:15:17
  from human hearts and how in states of empathy, we actually, they go way
• 1:15:21
  farther out and therefore, you know, we do actually affect the people
• 1:15:25
  around us in this really positive way and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
• 1:15:28
  So it's well studied.
• 1:15:29
  Right?
• 1:15:29
  It's well studied.
• 1:15:30
  Mm-hmm.
• 1:15:31
  Absolutely.
• 1:15:32
  But, but yet it.
• 1:15:35
  The authoritarian thing because we all inherited this religious
• 1:15:40
  and militaristic thing.
• 1:15:42
  Mm-hmm.
• 1:15:43
  There's some little part of us that did drink the Kool-Aid.
• 1:15:46
  Mm-hmm.
• 1:15:46
  And even though it's cultish, it is frankly cultish feels a set slight
• 1:15:51
  sense of kind of guilt for the fact that we know that that's the better way.
• 1:15:56
  So I I, I love that as a doctor, you can, you can then say, well, look.
• 1:16:01
  Yes.
• 1:16:01
  While certain types of very structured therapies will provide some answers,
• 1:16:07
  there are not just a few outliers, there are hundreds of thousands of them.
• 1:16:12
  Yeah.
• 1:16:13
  And yeah.
• 1:16:13
  You know, my, my son did not do well with a, BA, you know.
• 1:16:17
  No.
• 1:16:17
  Right.
• 1:16:17
  Absolutely not.
• 1:16:18
  And, and a BA people they do not invite Temple Grand into their
• 1:16:21
  conferences because they know she's going to say, sorry lads,
• 1:16:25
  but it's too limited, you know?
• 1:16:26
  Because at the end of the day's, coercive, you know, yeah.
• 1:16:29
  But.
• 1:16:30
  You have also talked about I don't wanna talk about what we're against
• 1:16:34
  because also I know very good a, BA therapists and in the state of California,
• 1:16:39
  you can actually get Horse Boyer movement method approved as a BA yeah.
• 1:16:43
  You know, because there are certain BCBAs down there who believe in what we do.
• 1:16:46
  So I, I don't want to be in this sort of them and us thing.
• 1:16:50
  But one thing I love that you have said is that I've written them down, you have
• 1:16:54
  said, as well as stubborn and attunement.
• 1:16:58
  Mark Uranga: Mm-hmm.
• 1:16:59
  Rupert Isaacson: You said a place that is magical.
• 1:17:03
  Mm-hmm.
• 1:17:04
  You also said the mystery of the horse.
• 1:17:09
  Mm-hmm.
• 1:17:09
  You also said the of it all.
• 1:17:15
  And yet you're a doctor where your job is to be the,
• 1:17:20
  not the, you know, not, not, I've got, I'm sorry.
• 1:17:25
  So magic mystery, being comfortable saying, I don't know.
• 1:17:32
  Mark Uranga: Mm-hmm.
• 1:17:33
  Rupert Isaacson: When we go into a pediatrician's office, that's
• 1:17:36
  not the language that makes people feel at ease, and yet of course we
• 1:17:40
  know that this is 50% of reality.
• 1:17:43
  Talk to us about that as a doctor, the importance of magic and mystery and qua.
• 1:17:50
  Why is it important?
• 1:17:52
  Mark Uranga: I think that it's built into pediatrics.
• 1:17:57
  It's, there's, there's no mystery greater than that gap sometimes between the.
• 1:18:08
  The adult and the, the parent this, the parent, I'm sorry, and the child
• 1:18:13
  this like, I want this and I don't want this and this, this, this is a,
• 1:18:16
  a mystery to me what's going on here.
• 1:18:19
  And, and I, I see my role as kind of entering that mystery.
• 1:18:25
  And I've, I've learned this from, from the equine world of now, first of all,
• 1:18:32
  because of my background as we talked about and my experience, I, I have
• 1:18:35
  felt comfortable with children and, and I'm kind of enter their world.
• 1:18:39
  Maybe I'm still a little, I just like you, a toddler, adolescent,
• 1:18:42
  and all these things all at once, and I'm willing to enter that.
• 1:18:46
  And then interpret for the family.
• 1:18:50
  The, what I've learned as a, as an adult learner in mules and horses
• 1:18:56
  is mentors that talk me through the process that, that, what seems.
• 1:19:04
  You know, I've been called Baby Whisper or whatever else like that.
• 1:19:07
  And, and, and that's, that's a nice compliment.
• 1:19:09
  It's mysterious and it seems unachievable to families, but when I say, well,
• 1:19:16
  your baby wanted it to be rolled over on its stomach with its chin propped
• 1:19:20
  up here and, and watch, they want this much bouncing, not that much.
• 1:19:24
  Bouncing the mystery unravels in a positive way.
• 1:19:31
  What I think was somewhat appealing in an early part of my career was
• 1:19:38
  to think, oh, I'm just good with kids, and like, too bad these people
• 1:19:41
  can't figure it out or whatever.
• 1:19:43
  But, but they are the people to figure it out and it's, and it's
• 1:19:47
  something that can be translated.
• 1:19:49
  It's, it's not a mystery as, as much as it might be.
• 1:19:54
  And I think this is as a learner, something where.
• 1:19:59
  The way that you can transition to an in hand PO is mysterious to me,
• 1:20:06
  but, but it's, it's broken down.
• 1:20:08
  And, and you, you do that and it's, it's no mystery.
• 1:20:12
  That's a, a little different than I think the mystery I was referring
• 1:20:15
  to earlier of that connection, the, that primordial movement on the top
• 1:20:22
  of a horse that takes us back to Mongolia or, or places beyond that.
• 1:20:28
  That we are something
• 1:20:29
  Rupert Isaacson: ancestral, perhaps.
• 1:20:30
  Yeah,
• 1:20:31
  Mark Uranga: ancestral, absolutely.
• 1:20:32
  That we are still a monkey on a horse helping it move.
• 1:20:38
  And, and that communication doesn't matter.
• 1:20:41
  You know, our horse doesn't have an iPhone.
• 1:20:43
  It turns out they still have the, the mammalian drivelines
• 1:20:48
  and the main mammalian responses.
• 1:20:50
  And when we can practice those with this unadultered version.
• 1:20:55
  Of the mammalian nervous system.
• 1:20:57
  We bring that back to these, to infants.
• 1:21:02
  And, and I love the early stage where, you know, lots of questions, lots
• 1:21:07
  of TikTok videos and, and gizmos and gadgets and, and AI assisted bassinets.
• 1:21:14
  And yet it's just a baby that is gonna respond to the same cues
• 1:21:23
  that a baby 200,000 years ago did.
• 1:21:26
  Is it hungry?
• 1:21:27
  Is it, is it comforted in a swaddled sense?
• 1:21:31
  Is it feeling unsafe?
• 1:21:34
  Is it wanting help?
• 1:21:35
  Is that it's crying because it wants help.
• 1:21:38
  So, so the, I think that there's a mystery that, that we in a good sense
• 1:21:47
  can break down with some of these things with horses, a mystery with.
• 1:21:51
  Babies.
• 1:21:51
  And yet a sense of mystery.
• 1:21:53
  The, the awe is something that I, I don't think I lose with children.
• 1:22:00
  Their their honesty, their quirkiness, their sense of humor.
• 1:22:04
  And that is, I think something that, as we mentioned, was
• 1:22:08
  celebrated in my upbringing.
• 1:22:09
  But is it one of those that's a universal, I think experience that from children in
• 1:22:17
  the Bible to how children are perceived in different cultures around the world?
• 1:22:21
  I think there, there's an elevation of that sense of innocence
• 1:22:26
  and, and maybe the, kind of the mystery that lies within that.
• 1:22:31
  Rupert Isaacson: Yes.
• 1:22:32
  And, and perhaps you talk about the mammalian sense, although
• 1:22:35
  there are occasions in mammalian things where infanticide happens.
• 1:22:41
  Yeah.
• 1:22:41
  Yeah.
• 1:22:41
  You know, when the lion takes over the pride that.
• 1:22:44
  Croley goes and kills, or the, or when the stallion takes over the herd, uh mm-hmm.
• 1:22:50
  Has sex with the mares to the, make them all abort mm-hmm.
• 1:22:53
  The fetus to the next one.
• 1:22:55
  And it, it, these are brutal, horrible ways of, of serving the DNA requirements.
• 1:23:00
  But you're also talking about the mammalian nervous system.
• 1:23:05
  I'd like to talk about that a bit because the, I often call it
• 1:23:10
  the mammalian caregiving system.
• 1:23:11
  Mm-hmm.
• 1:23:13
  The, you know, it's actually not difficult to figure out what mammals want.
• 1:23:19
  Mm-hmm.
• 1:23:19
  Because whether they're loner mammals, like tigers
• 1:23:23
  Mark Uranga: mm-hmm.
• 1:23:24
  Rupert Isaacson: Or whether they're group ones like lions mm-hmm.
• 1:23:29
  They do when they're young, require all the same nurture, and
• 1:23:34
  if they don't get it, they die.
• 1:23:36
  But before I go there, and I want you to talk a bit about what is
• 1:23:39
  the mammalian nervous system, I, it's useful to have it mm-hmm.
• 1:23:43
  Actually sort of broken down.
• 1:23:45
  Is it, this is the place, the places that is magical, is the important
• 1:23:51
  of magical, A magical feeling place is that it's whimsical.
• 1:23:55
  And what I mean by whimsical is beautiful in a natural way that's on
• 1:24:02
  a human scale, or at least on a scale that we feel we can participate in.
• 1:24:09
  And does that make us feel safe?
• 1:24:11
  Because it feels like biodiversity, which feels like abundant food, which
• 1:24:18
  feels like an environment that we can thrive in as opposed to harsh
• 1:24:22
  concrete or harsh cliffs, which.
• 1:24:27
  While they might be impressive, we can't thrive in and, and
• 1:24:31
  actually are threatening to us.
• 1:24:33
  So is is magical in the positive sense, whimsical meaning we can thrive here.
• 1:24:38
  Mm-hmm.
• 1:24:40
  And then is the mystery of the horse and the s quo, is that actually listening?
• 1:24:47
  Is that actually the, what appears to be mysterious is, is it just
• 1:24:51
  that one has to learn to listen?
• 1:24:53
  You talk about the mule that takes the pause, the mule listens.
• 1:24:56
  The mule says, all right, well I dunno what's going on here.
• 1:24:58
  So let me listen with all my senses.
• 1:25:02
  To try to make the correct decision here.
• 1:25:05
  And then you say, okay, well, Rupert, when you transition a horse into the
• 1:25:08
  papp, it looks, it looks magical.
• 1:25:10
  And I say, well, no, it's actually 300 little stages, each of
• 1:25:13
  which is very logical by itself.
• 1:25:15
  But when you put them all together, it has a magical look
• 1:25:17
  to it or a mysterious look to it.
• 1:25:19
  But if you break 'em down, it's the same process as any other process, but it
• 1:25:23
  does require a certain kind of listening.
• 1:25:26
  Mark Uranga: Mm-hmm.
• 1:25:26
  Rupert Isaacson: To discern those 300 little things or to
• 1:25:29
  know how to approach those 300 little things with a given horse.
• 1:25:34
  And then you talked about, or do we respond well to, or, and this is, there's
• 1:25:41
  a lot of studies now about, or Right.
• 1:25:42
  Because it gives us a sense of perspective IE that our, yeah.
• 1:25:47
  I stand in front of the mountain.
• 1:25:48
  I stand in the face of a beautiful piece of art.
• 1:25:51
  I stand in front of the, the horse and.
• 1:25:56
  Feel the sense of awe, which means I get a sense of perspective of on myself, and
• 1:26:00
  suddenly I'm transported from my ego.
• 1:26:02
  I'm not now hearing the little voice in my head that's telling
• 1:26:07
  me I'm shit all the time.
• 1:26:08
  It's gone beyond that.
• 1:26:09
  It's gone beyond me.
• 1:26:10
  And now mm-hmm.
• 1:26:11
  I have the sense of perspective, which is healing because I actually
• 1:26:13
  get a break from my own bs, you know?
• 1:26:15
  Right.
• 1:26:16
  Right.
• 1:26:17
  Is that actually what's going on with all these things and is that
• 1:26:21
  why they're actually really not?
• 1:26:23
  And then you talk about the mammalian nervous system.
• 1:26:25
  How does the mammalian nervous system engage with these things as a doctor,
• 1:26:30
  you know, to create wellbeing?
• 1:26:34
  Mark Uranga: Right.
• 1:26:35
  Yeah.
• 1:26:35
  The, the starting point, I think for that, it certainly bring, brings us back
• 1:26:43
  to the mammalian nervous system and its job, first and foremost to keep us alive.
• 1:26:50
  Rupert Isaacson: Mm-hmm.
• 1:26:51
  Mark Uranga: And then from there.
• 1:26:55
  To help us be comfortable and proliferate and in the, in that order.
• 1:27:04
  So when we are considering any of these things that the, the the horse, the mule,
• 1:27:14
  the toddler find uncomfortable, they, that's the starting point is the safety.
• 1:27:20
  If we're not safe, we don't get to eat a, a cheeseburger and make a baby.
• 1:27:24
  We, we have not passed.
• 1:27:26
  Go.
• 1:27:26
  Right.
• 1:27:26
  So the, the safe starting point the combination of, and we, and we
• 1:27:34
  live in the arid west and we have both crickets and rattlesnakes.
• 1:27:38
  And on a given run I could see either, but I suppose it's DNA
• 1:27:46
  and a little bit of learning, but.
• 1:27:48
  The first response to a cricket on a run is always rattlesnake, no cricket.
• 1:27:54
  It's that safety first.
• 1:27:56
  And but by learning on that, on that same run as I start cross
• 1:28:01
  passing more and more crickets, it's never a rattlesnake until, oops.
• 1:28:06
  Like I misjudged that one and, and that's a rattlesnake.
• 1:28:09
  But, but the role simplistically, I think of, of the mammalian nervous
• 1:28:14
  system are those two things, safety and proliferation, okay?
• 1:28:19
  And where
• 1:28:23
  we
• 1:28:26
  enter into somebody else's world, a toddler, a mule, a
• 1:28:31
  a nonverbal autistic child.
• 1:28:34
  We need to enter providing a sense of safety.
• 1:28:39
  And if we don't provide that, then.
• 1:28:43
  Any well-meaning degree approach environment is gonna fall flat.
• 1:28:50
  And so the role in healing as a physician, that sense of kind of
• 1:29:01
  the combination of mammalian brain safety and mystery comes in is that
• 1:29:10
  the trust that I build with a child is what extends to the family's buy-in.
• 1:29:17
  And in the equine assisted world, it's, you know, you've had, you've had guests
• 1:29:24
  on, on your podcast for like, you know, Rupert Isaacson's, my last shot
• 1:29:28
  and this, this quirky stuff that's not a medicine is not, you know, covered
• 1:29:33
  initially by insurance or this or that.
• 1:29:35
  Is, is yet.
• 1:29:37
  By providing that engagement.
• 1:29:43
  And what I, I, I love, I don't live with an autistic child, but I love
• 1:29:48
  about pre-verbal chi kill children and non-verbal children is the
• 1:29:53
  authenticity of their responses.
• 1:29:55
  Rupert Isaacson: Mm.
• 1:29:55
  That
• 1:29:57
  Mark Uranga: especially when their families lived with that, they
• 1:30:00
  can see what you create, what we create in an equine assisted
• 1:30:06
  world within moments at times.
• 1:30:09
  Now that isn't immediately the word count or the toileting or whatever it
• 1:30:15
  is, but, but, but the safety that's provided, the downregulation of all the
• 1:30:22
  stress hormones is what then allows for building of those other connections.
• 1:30:29
  And that gets back to the idea of.
• 1:30:35
  A goal, the authoritative model of it's fun to play on ponies and playing on
• 1:30:44
  ponies when we count the hoof beats, moves us in a direction that we value.
• 1:30:50
  And so that I, I was lucky enough this, this past week, I, I work as,
• 1:30:57
  as a river guide on the middle fork of the salmon, which is a hundred
• 1:31:00
  miles of Wilderness River through man
• 1:31:03
  Rupert Isaacson: of many talents.
• 1:31:04
  I want to come and I want to come and do that.
• 1:31:06
  Mark Uranga: Yeah, we'll put you on the list.
• 1:31:08
  You would thrive.
• 1:31:10
  And with this upcoming inter conversation I was expecting, I, I
• 1:31:16
  floating through on a raft in this wilderness area where Bighorn sheep
• 1:31:21
  thrive and mountain lions and, and this sense of awe, and I'm thinking.
• 1:31:26
  Why, why?
• 1:31:27
  Awe, why do I have awe?
• 1:31:31
  And and I, I don't know, but I do believe that you're right about
• 1:31:36
  that humbling factor of it, the perspective that that's provided.
• 1:31:42
  Why?
• 1:31:43
  I mean, it's, it's nice to think of this as the smart ape,
• 1:31:47
  the homosapiens, I suppose.
• 1:31:49
  But, but what, what purpose has that served us?
• 1:31:53
  And I, I know what purpose it serves me now.
• 1:31:55
  And maybe that's what it's always served.
• 1:31:57
  It's a, a purpose of recentering, a purpose of humility and appreciation
• 1:32:05
  that, you know, those rocks, we have a lot of concerns in our world.
• 1:32:10
  But, but those rocks and those cliffs, like they're gonna be there.
• 1:32:15
  They may have noxious weeds on them, they may be deforested,
• 1:32:18
  but something about that.
• 1:32:20
  Is eternal.
• 1:32:21
  And, and maybe that's that sense of awe allows us to let
• 1:32:28
  go of things and always had it.
• 1:32:31
  It's, we think of ourselves as extremely challenged, but how many
• 1:32:35
  of us are fearful for lions behind our back while we're still struggling
• 1:32:41
  to get enough berries collected before, you know, before we starve.
• 1:32:45
  So those, those same emotions that underlie that and that again, that
• 1:32:54
  combination of how those things move us forward is still a mystery.
• 1:32:59
  And, and I think that's one of the richness of delving into how working
• 1:33:07
  with a horse or a mule can, can solve a problem that is not answered by our.
• 1:33:17
  Reductive approach or breaking apart of pieces and numbers and substances
• 1:33:24
  and neurons and all that stuff.
• 1:33:27
  If we can embrace that mystery it, I think it, it offers a, a feeling
• 1:33:34
  of hope as well for families.
• 1:33:38
  Rupert Isaacson: if you're a horse nerd, and if you're on this podcast,
• 1:33:41
  I'm guessing you are, then you've probably also always wondered a little
• 1:33:46
  bit about the old master system.
• 1:33:49
  of dressage training.
• 1:33:50
  If you go and check out our Helios Harmony program, we outline there step by step
• 1:33:59
  exactly how to train your horse from the ground to become the dressage horse
• 1:34:05
  of your dreams in a way that absolutely serves the physical, mental and emotional
• 1:34:12
  well being of the horse and the rider.
• 1:34:15
  Intrigued?
• 1:34:16
  Like to know more?
• 1:34:17
  Go to our website, Helios Harmony.
• 1:34:22
  Check out the free introduction course.
• 1:34:24
  Take it from there.
• 1:34:25
  Yeah.
• 1:34:26
  And let's talk about nurturing.
• 1:34:28
  And then there's, there's something else I want to return to with nature.
• 1:34:31
  What is the mammalian caregiving system?
• 1:34:34
  I think, I think this is really worth drawing some attention to.
• 1:34:40
  'Cause I don't feel this is emphasized in the sort of training which one
• 1:34:45
  gets in most therapeutic paradigms.
• 1:34:48
  I mean, it comes with things, yes, we want to be empathetic or we want to be.
• 1:34:52
  Mm-hmm.
• 1:34:53
  Yeah.
• 1:34:53
  Okay.
• 1:34:54
  And we certainly wanna be good to our horses and so on, but.
• 1:34:58
  I think it's often missed why physical nurture
• 1:35:04
  Mark Uranga: mm-hmm.
• 1:35:04
  Is
• 1:35:04
  Rupert Isaacson: so important to a mammal.
• 1:35:07
  Right.
• 1:35:08
  And what a horse can give with this.
• 1:35:12
  Just can you talk us through a bit the, the mammalian caregiving
• 1:35:15
  system as a pediatrician?
• 1:35:17
  Sure.
• 1:35:18
  Mark Uranga: Mammalian caregiving system.
• 1:35:19
  I love thinking about this.
• 1:35:21
  In two ways.
• 1:35:23
  One is the cold scientific way, and that would be, it provides us with
• 1:35:27
  procreation and advancement of our genes.
• 1:35:31
  And I do believe that even within that cold scientific kind of approach, there's
• 1:35:39
  now been extensive work done into.
• 1:35:45
  How that interaction relates to things we would think of as mental
• 1:35:49
  health and wellness and fulfillment and these sorts of things.
• 1:35:53
  So ultimately the, that interaction where a baby comes out looking, quote
• 1:36:01
  unquote cute, they are, and we are programmed to consider this animal
• 1:36:08
  vulnerable deserving of attention.
• 1:36:11
  And that in turn leads to that physical connection.
• 1:36:18
  And, and whether riding on the back of a horse or, or holding a toddler or dancing
• 1:36:24
  with your partner, those connections create a whole cascade of, of wellbeing.
• 1:36:33
  That is what we think of as the bond.
• 1:36:37
  Rupert Isaacson: Right.
• 1:36:38
  Mark Uranga: And ma mammal, the term mammal comes from mammary gland, which
• 1:36:43
  linguistically speaking, mo most languages that I've learned have a ma in a ma
• 1:36:49
  ma ma in the mom, the ahma, the madre.
• 1:36:53
  Because the m sound is just an early phonetic sound that babies make.
• 1:36:57
  And so getting back to that connection, the first thing they're associating
• 1:37:03
  sound with, we have associated sound with as a, as a culture.
• 1:37:06
  And a, a scientific pursuit is still rooted in that, basically that request
• 1:37:13
  for attention that comes from the infant.
• 1:37:15
  And what we see is that in time we've had this fluctuation of,
• 1:37:23
  well, what is good for a baby?
• 1:37:26
  Well, it's good for a baby to have contact and to feel safe and.
• 1:37:32
  Yet, as I alluded earlier, we have so little experience with babies that
• 1:37:39
  our first thing when we think about their safety is not dropping them.
• 1:37:42
  Be careful, don't do this, don't do that.
• 1:37:44
  And, and they're treated with such fear and tension that, that it doesn't
• 1:37:49
  take long for some kids to, to kind of already kind of internalize that.
• 1:37:53
  Whereas that sense of bringing something together, the, the night
• 1:37:58
  and day difference between a an hours old baby who's un swaddled
• 1:38:02
  versus swaddled is very simple.
• 1:38:05
  And, and it gets back to that connection.
• 1:38:07
  And if that connection, the swaddling occurs, and then that baby's with dad or
• 1:38:11
  with mom or uncle or whoever, there's, there's this basically a connection that
• 1:38:19
  occurs that causes both parties to relax.
• 1:38:22
  And one of our ongoing struggles and.
• 1:38:27
  Modern medicine is, is the isolation that occurs in, in that bonding.
• 1:38:32
  So we have a baby in a hospital, which is a safer place to have a baby than
• 1:38:38
  a Savannah, but we have a baby in a hospital and send a dyad, a mom and
• 1:38:44
  a baby, and a, and a dad three, three people home to have a isolated experience
• 1:38:50
  where there's trip, you know, ideally there are people hand off to and that
• 1:38:54
  sort of thing, and, and the, those are the, the families that thrive.
• 1:38:58
  But, but our, our current model separates that grouping in a
• 1:39:04
  way that's not supported in any prehistorical evidence or any other
• 1:39:11
  kind of primate models necessarily.
• 1:39:14
  So.
• 1:39:15
  That that mammalian bond, the, the need to feed a baby and to nurture them.
• 1:39:21
  Our, our babies are not pre-programmed to swim to the ocean and make more babies.
• 1:39:26
  Our babies need to be fed.
• 1:39:28
  They need to be nurtured.
• 1:39:29
  And that
• 1:39:33
  process, because it's, it's risky for the adult, it, it's consuming of resources
• 1:39:40
  and all that other sort of stuff.
• 1:39:42
  It, it has evolved to create feelings of goodwill.
• 1:39:47
  Good, good feelings that, that make us as parents engaged in that process.
• 1:39:52
  And most new parents of children or new dog parents or whatever it is, get that
• 1:39:58
  early sense of attachment that this is a different thing that I am invested in,
• 1:40:03
  and that that's essentially hardwired because that's necessary for them.
• 1:40:09
  Procreation and the advancement of our species.
• 1:40:12
  So that mammalian caregiving system is one that we, we really interrupted
• 1:40:19
  in, in the modern world where we had small family groups that were
• 1:40:27
  surrounded with other babies and other caregivers and and now it becomes a
• 1:40:32
  kind of an individual stress that can, that can be really hard to, to bear,
• 1:40:36
  especially lacking any practice in it.
• 1:40:39
  So we really, we recently and historically have disrupted that, and for whatever
• 1:40:45
  reason, the movements over the years have sometimes elevated the, the stay
• 1:40:50
  at home mom or the wet nurse or, you know, name your model that was supposed
• 1:40:56
  to be a better way to raise children.
• 1:40:59
  And they, they've all had their struggles and.
• 1:41:02
  And when we get back to that sense of community that we kind of started with
• 1:41:07
  the other trusted adults, that's where we see kids thrive when they have Yeah.
• 1:41:14
  That variety of engaged people.
• 1:41:18
  Rupert Isaacson: Right.
• 1:41:19
  And, and the hugging, the, the, the contact, the physical contact of course.
• 1:41:23
  And the breastfeeding.
• 1:41:24
  But you know, any, any of Absolutely good.
• 1:41:26
  Absolutely.
• 1:41:26
  Yeah.
• 1:41:26
  Oxytocin.
• 1:41:28
  Mm-hmm.
• 1:41:28
  And oxytocin makes us not only feel good and safe and soothed,
• 1:41:33
  but it makes us communicate.
• 1:41:34
  Right.
• 1:41:34
  It's the hormone of communication.
• 1:41:36
  So it's our survival strategy for problem solving, for conflict resolution,
• 1:41:40
  and making sure that we don't all end up eaten by the hyenas, you know?
• 1:41:43
  Mm-hmm.
• 1:41:44
  And it seems to me that, you know, when, particularly when people are coming from
• 1:41:49
  a place of high stress, high cortisol.
• 1:41:52
  Mark Uranga: Sure.
• 1:41:53
  Rupert Isaacson: One of the things a horse can do is provide
• 1:41:54
  an awful lot of oxytocin.
• 1:41:56
  Mm-hmm.
• 1:41:57
  Either through the movement, knocking of the hips or through the body to body
• 1:42:00
  contact of such a large, welcoming animal.
• 1:42:06
  Mark Uranga: Yeah.
• 1:42:06
  Rupert Isaacson: It's interesting though that yeah.
• 1:42:09
  It seems such a mystery when really mm-hmm.
• 1:42:13
  All that's going on.
• 1:42:15
  Just a reinforcement of, of the basic human needs.
• 1:42:18
  You must be, you must be familiar, obviously with Maslow's MAs
• 1:42:22
  something, call him Maslow of MAs, some people it Maslow.
• 1:42:25
  Mark Uranga: Mm-hmm.
• 1:42:26
  Rupert Isaacson: The social, you know, psychologist and sort of
• 1:42:29
  general scientists who, who came up with the system of human needs.
• 1:42:32
  Right, right.
• 1:42:33
  As you were hierarchy mm-hmm.
• 1:42:34
  The hierarchy of human needs.
• 1:42:35
  And as you were talking, I pulled them up on my phone.
• 1:42:38
  Mm-hmm.
• 1:42:39
  So for those who don't know, it starts, it's a pyramid.
• 1:42:41
  Mm-hmm.
• 1:42:42
  And it starts with physiological needs, so.
• 1:42:45
  Mm-hmm.
• 1:42:45
  Water, food, shelter.
• 1:42:48
  Sleep.
• 1:42:49
  Mm-hmm.
• 1:42:50
  Warmth, air to breathe, you know?
• 1:42:52
  Mm-hmm.
• 1:42:52
  And then safety needs, personal security.
• 1:42:56
  I, no, violence, crime, war.
• 1:42:58
  Mm-hmm.
• 1:42:59
  Health and wellbeing.
• 1:43:00
  Stable environment, financial security, safety nets, you know, food.
• 1:43:04
  And then only after those two do you get love and belonging.
• 1:43:08
  Only after those two can you get family, friendship, community, romantic
• 1:43:13
  relationships, group memberships.
• 1:43:15
  So like those two things have to be there.
• 1:43:17
  And then after that you can get esteem, self-respect or
• 1:43:21
  respect within the community.
• 1:43:22
  And finally some idea of self-actualization.
• 1:43:25
  But you need all of these building blocks in place.
• 1:43:27
  What's interesting about that is I've, I've heard, I've had, you
• 1:43:30
  know, many social psychologists in, in my family, and, you know.
• 1:43:35
  What I only found out recently, and you talk about living in the
• 1:43:38
  arid West, was that Maslow himself came up with that because he lived
• 1:43:42
  with the Blackfoot Indians oh.
• 1:43:45
  For about six weeks in 1938.
• 1:43:47
  Mark Uranga: Mm-hmm.
• 1:43:48
  Rupert Isaacson: And he had this explained to him and then never, never credited
• 1:43:56
  the indigenous people that he'd gotten it from, because I think he was at Harvard.
• 1:44:01
  He would have been censored back then.
• 1:44:03
  He would've lost his job.
• 1:44:05
  Interesting.
• 1:44:05
  Because, you know of mm-hmm.
• 1:44:07
  Western arrogance and racism, you couldn't say that, you know, these UGA booga
• 1:44:12
  people over there had given you this.
• 1:44:14
  But of course, so many of the modalities that we use are indigenous.
• 1:44:17
  Right.
• 1:44:18
  So, cranial sacral work totally came out of Native American stuff.
• 1:44:22
  So did, so, did oh gosh.
• 1:44:24
  Feldenkrais.
• 1:44:25
  And the Feldenkrais method and you know, it's almost what I do.
• 1:44:30
  I was mentored by the Bushman, by the son in the Kalahari, and the list goes
• 1:44:37
  on and, and then of course you get into allopathic medicine and we're
• 1:44:40
  giving drugs and all of this stuff.
• 1:44:42
  Well, where do we get these drugs from?
• 1:44:43
  We get them from pharmacological, pharmaceutical, pharmacological compounds,
• 1:44:47
  which are actually mostly plants, which we get from indigenous people who show
• 1:44:52
  the people from the pharmaceutical companies what works for mineral cramps
• 1:44:55
  and what works for headaches and so forth.
• 1:44:57
  And we get aspirin from Willow and it's all ancestral knowledge.
• 1:45:02
  And then we have bedside manner, you know.
• 1:45:05
  There are doctors that kill their patients because they're arrogant pricks.
• 1:45:08
  And there are doctors that, you know, whose patients seem to get better, even
• 1:45:12
  though they didn't do as well at medical school as the arrogant prick doctor.
• 1:45:15
  Right.
• 1:45:15
  Because they just have a good empathetic bedside manner.
• 1:45:17
  And that would seem to be love and shamanism and alterative of consciousness
• 1:45:22
  and placebo effect and all of these things coming into an interplay.
• 1:45:27
  And yet we, we feel we have to, to view these things through a
• 1:45:30
  sterile lens when actually Right.
• 1:45:34
  They're not at all.
• 1:45:35
  You are dancing that dance between the ancestral and the modern, the
• 1:45:41
  allopathic and the, and the holistic.
• 1:45:44
  Mark Uranga: Mm-hmm.
• 1:45:44
  The
• 1:45:45
  Rupert Isaacson: mammalian caregiving system and the clinical.
• 1:45:50
  Mark Uranga: Mm-hmm.
• 1:45:50
  Rupert Isaacson: And in the middle of this stands the horse.
• 1:45:53
  Mark Uranga: Mm-hmm.
• 1:45:53
  And there you are
• 1:45:54
  Rupert Isaacson: on the heart and what is the horse, of course, but.
• 1:45:57
  To really, for many of us, a personification in personality of nature.
• 1:46:03
  Mark Uranga: Mm-hmm.
• 1:46:04
  Rupert Isaacson: As we sort of, we've hit the two hour mark here, but as a doctor.
• 1:46:08
  Mark Uranga: Mm-hmm.
• 1:46:10
  Rupert Isaacson: What about nature?
• 1:46:12
  Do you prescribe it?
• 1:46:14
  Does na a growing number of doctors are prescribing time in nature now?
• 1:46:19
  Is there such a thing as Nature deficit disorder?
• 1:46:22
  What does it do to the human nervous system to not be in contact with nature?
• 1:46:29
  You're a doctor.
• 1:46:31
  Mark Uranga: Yeah.
• 1:46:32
  The role of a doctor is to heal.
• 1:46:37
  And if we take any tool out of our tool belt because of arrogance
• 1:46:43
  or a preconceived notion, we're already neglecting our role and.
• 1:46:52
  Absolutely.
• 1:46:53
  I prescribe nature.
• 1:46:56
  Absolutely.
• 1:46:57
  I prescribe community and absolutely there are some families
• 1:47:05
  that, that's not available.
• 1:47:07
  And, and medicine has, I always talk about the medicines that affect mood
• 1:47:15
  or learning as a bridge, and it's a lifesaving bridge for some people.
• 1:47:22
  And the, the and of medicine is recognizing ideally, and, and often I fall
• 1:47:31
  short a goal of, of self-actualization, a goal of, of getting to that best self.
• 1:47:43
  And it's kind of like following the child.
• 1:47:49
  Well, it is following the child.
• 1:47:51
  This patient this person is where they are, and if where they are has
• 1:48:00
  homelessness and school volatility, and A DHD and Ritalin stabilizes that,
• 1:48:11
  then that's the safety that medicine can provide to move to that next step.
• 1:48:18
  And it's, it's a constant compromise.
• 1:48:22
  I can't bring everybody out to ride Sam and my clinic Samuel would love it.
• 1:48:30
  And I wouldn't have the life that I have now because it
• 1:48:35
  would all be volunteer work.
• 1:48:36
  But the, the awareness of that is, is so much bigger than the clinic room.
• 1:48:43
  And, and this is where.
• 1:48:46
  Relying on people like yourself or others that expand the conversation
• 1:48:51
  that don't foreclose Different ways of both providing safety and growth.
• 1:49:00
  That's where families can, can find some validation, I think.
• 1:49:07
  And, and, and those families that are able to move from change their learning
• 1:49:13
  environment and integrate horses into their learning or the movement is a
• 1:49:19
  part of the learning that they provide.
• 1:49:22
  That's something that I can walk with them as well.
• 1:49:26
  And I just feel so lucky to have happened in to, to people that can expand my
• 1:49:33
  horizons that allow me to incorporate that vision into the work that.
• 1:49:42
  The clinical work that has medicines, the clinical work that has metrics,
• 1:49:49
  the clinical work that, that has numbers yet the clinical work
• 1:49:56
  that always has a patient with it.
• 1:49:57
  And, and that's, and that's a beauty that's not lost in modern medicine.
• 1:50:01
  It, it may be lost in modern healthcare, but that relationship that you
• 1:50:10
  mentioned that can, can help a patient heal despite worse numbers at the
• 1:50:15
  start is I know I speak for the vast majority of my colleagues when I say
• 1:50:19
  that's what keeps us here for all the, the struggles that patients feel.
• 1:50:26
  It's, it's day in and day out as a physician.
• 1:50:30
  And so when we have models that can enrich that.
• 1:50:35
  In equine assisted world sort of models, when we can bring in something where
• 1:50:45
  we're constantly learning, and I don't get any CMEs for all the horse and mule
• 1:50:49
  clinics I've done, but, but boy has it informed my ability to communicate with
• 1:50:54
  families and when, when those things combine in, in my world, serving that
• 1:51:02
  patient and that family, that that ultimate test is, is what I'm looking
• 1:51:07
  to, to pass that, that meeting them where they are and walking in that, that
• 1:51:14
  journey it's, it's really rich and I'm really blessed to have that opportunity.
• 1:51:21
  Rupert Isaacson: Should all pediatricians go volunteer at some
• 1:51:24
  sort of nature-based thing to give them that type of perspective of how
• 1:51:30
  human communities thrive basically.
• 1:51:34
  Mark Uranga: Yeah, absolutely.
• 1:51:35
  We should all, should it be there
• 1:51:36
  Rupert Isaacson: in medical school?
• 1:51:37
  Mark Uranga: Yeah.
• 1:51:37
  Yes.
• 1:51:38
  And it absolutely, and, and it, and it is through some of your work
• 1:51:43
  obviously, and, and, and others.
• 1:51:45
  I think that that era of arrogant medicine is hopefully passing and
• 1:51:54
  humble, humble medicine that's not, this is similar to the, the balance
• 1:52:00
  that we talked about with authoritarian, authoritative, and passive mm-hmm.
• 1:52:05
  Guidance.
• 1:52:06
  Rupert Isaacson: Mm-hmm.
• 1:52:07
  Mark Uranga: There is expertise in medicine.
• 1:52:08
  There are
• 1:52:09
  Rupert Isaacson: sure studies,
• 1:52:10
  Mark Uranga: there are medicines, there are are known
• 1:52:13
  approaches that should be given.
• 1:52:17
  When, when people are looking for a paradigm that offers that
• 1:52:23
  it should be provided, it should be allowed that we have this.
• 1:52:29
  That we have other opportunities.
• 1:52:30
  What, what isn't fair to a, to a family and to a patient is to just
• 1:52:35
  give them a menu and say, I'll come back when you're ready to order.
• 1:52:39
  It's it's, this is your menu.
• 1:52:41
  And or
• 1:52:41
  Rupert Isaacson: worse, say, you must go down only this path
• 1:52:44
  Mark Uranga: or even worse.
• 1:52:45
  Yes.
• 1:52:45
  Or medications or whatever, or Exactly.
• 1:52:48
  Right.
• 1:52:48
  These, these either extremes are those that don't serve families well.
• 1:52:54
  And we, with a place like the Worm Springs Care Farm and other practitioners in the
• 1:53:02
  area, we are, we're lucky to, to hold those up as options and we are quite
• 1:53:08
  fortunate that we can provide certain medicines that serve as a bridge for those
• 1:53:17
  families that aren't in the, the place of safety and security to embrace that
• 1:53:23
  next step and that self-actualization.
• 1:53:25
  Rupert Isaacson: Mm-hmm.
• 1:53:26
  Mark Uranga: It's, it's a rich area that that we get to play with
• 1:53:31
  as, as hopefully equine assisted work movement method sort of work.
• 1:53:38
  Those things that embrace the holistic improvement in, in function of any person
• 1:53:46
  whether a neurodivergent a DHD anxious.
• 1:53:52
  Those, those combination of things are gonna be the most successful.
• 1:53:59
  Rupert Isaacson: It's a
• 1:53:59
  it's a great delight to hear a doctor say this and we are
• 1:54:03
  beginning to see this change.
• 1:54:04
  There's a.
• 1:54:06
  A horse boy Movement method center in the UK called Move the Mind run by an
• 1:54:09
  amazing person called Nicole Gillard.
• 1:54:11
  And they're close to Bristol University, which is one of the
• 1:54:14
  big medical schools in the uk.
• 1:54:16
  And now she gets the medical students that she was contacted by the university.
• 1:54:21
  Of course, a lot of the medical students are horsey girls and they now
• 1:54:25
  come out and the university pays her to do their mental health electives.
• 1:54:30
  Mm-hmm.
• 1:54:30
  There and as you may know there's a, a, a fairly eminent physician, Dr.
• 1:54:35
  Megan Mcal
• 1:54:37
  Mark Uranga: Yep.
• 1:54:37
  Rupert Isaacson: In Virginia, who is an autism mom who runs a really
• 1:54:40
  good practice autism movement method and horse boy practice called Chats.
• 1:54:45
  Mm-hmm.
• 1:54:45
  In Yorktown in Virginia.
• 1:54:47
  But she, her work was instrumental in getting East Virginia Medical School,
• 1:54:51
  which is part of Old Dominion University.
• 1:54:55
  To put on last year a neuroscience conference specifically for pediatricians,
• 1:55:01
  looking at nature-based solutions.
• 1:55:03
  And we, we ran it last year with various neurosciences and so on.
• 1:55:07
  Would you, I think we're gonna do it again next year.
• 1:55:10
  Would you come and be a speaker there and present and people could
• 1:55:14
  then come and talk to you and,
• 1:55:17
  Mark Uranga: yeah, sure.
• 1:55:18
  I'd be questions.
• 1:55:19
  I'd be honored.
• 1:55:20
  I'm not sure if I'll be able to bring Sam to Virginia.
• 1:55:25
  Rupert Isaacson: You have to at least show us some video.
• 1:55:27
  There we go.
• 1:55:28
  Mark Uranga: Yeah.
• 1:55:28
  I would be honored.
• 1:55:30
  Rupert Isaacson: I missed
• 1:55:30
  Mark Uranga: that last opportunity, but, but it would be a pleasure.
• 1:55:34
  Rupert Isaacson: And then Warm Springs Care Farm.
• 1:55:38
  Mm-hmm.
• 1:55:39
  I presume people can find this online if they type in Warm Springs Care
• 1:55:42
  Farm, Boise, Idaho, that, yeah.
• 1:55:45
  Right.
• 1:55:46
  Yep.
• 1:55:47
  And, you probably don't wanna give away your private email over the,
• 1:55:50
  over the internet, but perhaps
• 1:55:52
  Mark Uranga: I, I'm okay.
• 1:55:53
  I've actually inspired by you and others, I've just started
• 1:55:57
  to dabble in, in a podcast that I do have an associated email.
• 1:56:01
  Great.
• 1:56:01
  My podcast is called The Kid Wrangler so far it's just on
• 1:56:05
  Spotify the Kid Wrangler on Spotify.
• 1:56:09
  And then the email address that people are welcome to email me at
• 1:56:14
  is the Idaho Kid wrangler@gmail.com,
• 1:56:18
  the
• 1:56:18
  Rupert Isaacson: Idaho Kid wrangler@gmail.com.
• 1:56:22
  Brilliant.
• 1:56:24
  I look forward to listening.
• 1:56:25
  Mark Uranga: Yeah.
• 1:56:26
  Well, thanks.
• 1:56:27
  Thanks for inviting me.
• 1:56:29
  I, I am largely here because of the amazing work you're doing and,
• 1:56:33
  and seeing any improvement and, and how people do is just rewarding.
• 1:56:40
  Thank you.
• 1:56:40
  Shared as a community.
• 1:56:42
  Rupert Isaacson: Wow.
• 1:56:43
  I shall be seeing you down the trail then.
• 1:56:45
  Mark Uranga: Alright.
• 1:56:46
  Rupert Isaacson: All right.
• 1:56:47
  Thank you again.
• 1:56:48
  Mark Uranga: Thank you.
• 1:56:49
  Bye.
• 1:56:50
  Rupert Isaacson: I hope you enjoyed today's conversation as much as I did.
• 1:56:53
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• 1:56:58
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• 1:57:04
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