Latest / The Horsehuman Connection Matrix / First expereince with equine assisted healing case studies. Man is very surprised by what the horse did next.

Transcript

First expereince with equine assisted healing case studies. Man is very surprised by what the horse did next. · The Horsehuman Connection Matrix

• 0:01
  This is the Horse Human Connection.
• 0:04
  A captivating podcast where we extend into the world of equine assisted learning.
• 0:09
  Horse Training.
• 0:10
  and gentleness in working with these magnificent creatures.
• 0:15
  Captivating stories from the leading professionals and ordinary people alike unravel novel ideas in being with horses.
• 0:24
  The horse human connection is an idea, a place, and a voice.
• 0:30
  The idea is to support the quiet revolution and recognize the intelligence and true nature of the horse.
• 0:37
  The place is a destination farm near the Umpqua Forest and River that slows down visitors and patrons enough to experience the shift.
• 0:47
  The Voice is this podcast.
• 0:50
  Welcome to today's episode.
• 0:53
  Hi, I'm Ishi Abel with the Horse Human Connection Matrix Podcast.
• 0:58
  And today I have with me Willicks, who was instrumental in helping me when I was doing my first case studies after returning from equinicity retreats, and learning about the horses and healing.
• 1:15
  And we thought we'd have a conversation tonight about all of that and anything else.
• 1:22
  So welcome, Willicks.
• 1:25
  Well, thank you, and I appreciate you taking the time out for this podcast, this interview.
• 1:32
  I've been looking forward to doing this and talking about my experience with the horses and the healing experience that I had with them.
• 1:40
  Yeah, I'm so glad we could, we could do this.
• 1:42
  We've been trying to schedule for a while.
• 1:44
  So Yeah, here we go.
• 1:46
  So what do you remember?
• 1:47
  What stands out in your mind about the whole thing when we first started talking about it, when you, when you came and met the horses?
• 1:56
  Well, for me at the beginning, I was just kind of like, not necessarily skeptical, but I was just like, well let me just try it and see what happens.
• 2:05
  You know, I had never had an experience with working with horses in that capacity, you know, for them to do some healing work on me.
• 2:11
  And I was very curious about the experience and I wanted to see what was going to happen.
• 2:17
  And so I just followed your instructions and had a very profound experience on so many levels.
• 2:25
  Can you describe what happened?
• 2:28
  I would just like to hear you re replay the memory for me.
• 2:33
  Well, I, when I first got out there, I saw the horses and.
• 2:38
  You told me I was gonna go sit on the chair in the middle of the field, and at first I was like, sit in the chair in the middle of the field of the horses.
• 2:45
  That didn't seem kind of like, okay, well I've, I've been in, in the room with horses in, in the rings with horses and stuff, but I never sat in the middle of a chair.
• 2:55
  And so that was my first impression was like, okay, that's, this is going to be interesting.
• 2:59
  But when I sat down in, in the chair and I was just waiting for the horses to do whatever they're going to do, and I was looking around and I just kind of settled into.
• 3:08
  The experience I kept looking over at you to see what you were doing and, and you were, had your little notepad in hand and I was just waiting for something to happen.
• 3:20
  And the horses have their own way of doing things.
• 3:23
  And so I didn't know what to expect.
• 3:25
  So I just sat there and then slowly the horses start moving around and started moving towards me.
• 3:33
  And there was, what were the names of the horses that were there?
• 3:37
  It was Sipsi, Firefly, and Hulapai, or Pi.
• 3:40
  Pi.
• 3:41
  And maybe Maddy, maybe Maddy was there back then.
• 3:44
  No, there was three.
• 3:44
  There was three that were in there with me.
• 3:47
  And I remember the horses coming over, you know, like one of it at a time to just kind of like greet me or to check me out.
• 3:57
  And so I was just sitting there allowing them to come up to me.
• 4:01
  And it wasn't a position that I was comfortable in.
• 4:05
  Just sitting there and having the big horse walk by me and seeing its big body in my face and not being able to like, really like move away from the horse.
• 4:16
  So I thought it was getting too close.
• 4:18
  Like when you're standing with horses and stuff like that, and it, you can move away and stuff like that.
• 4:22
  Here.
• 4:22
  I was just sitting there and the horse just had its own jurisdiction to just move how he wanted to, however close to me he wanted to get.
• 4:30
  And so that was kind of, at first it started, you It was a little unnerving to not be able to like, quote unquote, protect myself by moving away.
• 4:38
  Very vulnerable.
• 4:40
  Yes.
• 4:40
  I felt very vulnerable.
• 4:41
  And I think maybe it was part of that vulnerability that allowed me to just kind of relax into the experience because I didn't really have a choice.
• 4:49
  I kept looking at you for some type of reassurance to feel that I was, it was safe for me to be there when this horse was still alive.
• 4:56
  That close to me and doing whatever it was going to do.
• 5:00
  So after they walked around me for a few moments, they were both checking me out.
• 5:06
  And then a couple of the horses walked away and started eating grass.
• 5:09
  And I think it was hula pie that came up to me and started sniffing like my head.
• 5:17
  And that day I remember it was kind of cool outside and I had a little skull cap on.
• 5:24
  Yeah.
• 5:25
  And so I was just sitting there and it was.
• 5:27
  It was kind of nipping at my head and I got this real deep impression that the horse wanted me to take my hat off and I did really didn't want to take my hat off, but I, I don't know if it was like a communication that I picked up from the horse, but the sense was that it wanted me to take my hat off.
• 5:50
  So I just thought to myself, I'm not taking my hat off.
• 5:54
  And as soon as I thought that thought, Hulapai walked away from me.
• 5:58
  He, he gave me a look like, okay, if you want to be like that, then be like that.
• 6:04
  And it walked away from me and started eating grass and I thought, Oh no, what happened here?
• 6:10
  It's just like the whole dynamic.
• 6:12
  I felt the energy shift from, from the, I guess the healing modality to like, well, I'll just go back and do my horse thing.
• 6:20
  And so I just took the hat off my, my head.
• 6:25
  And then he looked over and he saw that my hat was off and he came back over to me and he walked over to me and I think he started kind of like sniffing around my head.
• 6:36
  And that was kind of uncomfortable because my normal reflex would be to move away.
• 6:41
  And I remember looking over at you and you're saying just trust, just trust.
• 6:46
  And he was, he was sniffing at my head and then kind of like, like nipping at it, not really like biting it, but just kind of putting his lips on it.
• 6:55
  I had, and that felt kind of strange and I was like wondering like, okay, what's going to happen next because horses have big teeth, they do.
• 7:04
  And I, you know, and I had never had a horse's big teeth that close to my skull before.
• 7:12
  And so, you know, so I'm, I'm going through like a lot of.
• 7:15
  emotional things just out of anxiety and fear that, you know, this is very, very intimate experience with the horse and I'm, I don't feel safe, but the horse kept doing this thing.
• 7:27
  And then it let's see here.
• 7:29
  It walked around in front of me and it was facing me like head on.
• 7:35
  And it started to like move its head up and down my chest.
• 7:41
  And I looked over to you and I think you said something about chakras or you know, it was clearing my chakras.
• 7:47
  So I felt, okay, well, she knows what the horse is doing, so it's okay.
• 7:51
  It's safe.
• 7:53
  And so it, it, it did that.
• 7:55
  It went up and down my chest and then it walked away from me.
• 8:00
  And If I remember correctly, it stood in front of me, you know, sideways so I could see the side of his body and it opened its mouth and it just started like blowing air out of its mouth.
• 8:13
  It just stood there blowing air out of his mouth.
• 8:15
  And I remember you saying something like, you know, it's, it's, it's.
• 8:20
  Exhausting the, the energy, releasing, releasing the energy and I'm like, okay, okay, that's cool.
• 8:28
  So it, it clears some energy.
• 8:30
  I didn't really feel any, anything going on inside of me at that moment in time, but they said, okay, it's releasing energy.
• 8:36
  That's good.
• 8:37
  So, and then after it did that, it, it walked around, I think it walked around me and it came back to the front of me again.
• 8:44
  And this time, you know, it was doing the same thing.
• 8:47
  And so I, I felt a little more comfortable knowing, okay, what it had done the first time and what it was doing this time.
• 8:54
  But this time it went, you know, he, he, he stuck his head all the way down between my legs.
• 8:59
  He was like in my crotch and he just stopped there.
• 9:06
  He stopped right there.
• 9:07
  And I was, I looked over at you and you were like, Just trust.
• 9:11
  I couldn't think about trusting because I could think all I could think about is like horses have big teeth.
• 9:16
  Right.
• 9:16
  And this is like the family jewels and he's got his big head between my legs and I'm kind of, you know, I'm struggling with not panicking.
• 9:26
  And you looked like you were completely calm and cool.
• 9:29
  I did not know that it was an odd situation.
• 9:33
  Oh, having a horse horses head between my legs was an odd situation.
• 9:39
  And they kept telling us to do the case studies.
• 9:43
  To just trust and allow that that's the mantra.
• 9:45
  And that's what we did when we were up at these at this retreat.
• 9:49
  And so coming home to do these case studies, I'm like, okay, I have to learn how to trust my herd and completely allow whatever they want to do.
• 9:58
  And that's why I had the pad is because if I'm writing stuff down, then my job was not to interfere.
• 10:04
  That's what the case studies were for.
• 10:06
  You do 20 case studies and you don't interfere.
• 10:10
  And trust and allow and it took a lot of faith for both of us.
• 10:14
  So when you were telling me trust and allow You weren't weren't just comforting me.
• 10:19
  You were comforting yourself.
• 10:20
  Absolutely Okay, well if I had known that It'd have been a different different thing.
• 10:25
  I thought you had it under control I thought I thought you had it under control too.
• 10:29
  I didn't know you were you were panicking because you look so Yeah, well maybe it's because you were so calm Okay, she's she's got this And I'm just going to trust her and so the horse was down there for like it seemed like I don't know like ages, you know, because I'm, you know, I'm trying to like breathe through this and not go into panic mode because I, I could sense at that point that the horse could read my thoughts, so to speak.
• 10:57
  Yeah, it could, it could figure out what I was thinking.
• 11:00
  And so I didn't want to have a vision of it, like, you know, having you know, some nut crunch at that moment, you know, you want to keep everything positive, right.
• 11:10
  I just keep it neutral.
• 11:12
  And so after a while it stopped, I don't know how long it was.
• 11:17
  Maybe it could have been like a minute or maybe two minutes or three.
• 11:21
  It just seemed like forever.
• 11:23
  Yeah.
• 11:23
  It got up, you know, walked away and it stood in front of me again.
• 11:29
  And then it started to urinate and I'm like, okay, and, and I think you said, no, he is releasing energy.
• 11:38
  Yeah.
• 11:38
  And so letting go.
• 11:39
  He's letting go.
• 11:40
  Yeah.
• 11:40
  And I was trying to figure out, okay, well, what did, what type of energy did he extract from me at that point in time?
• 11:47
  But I didn't really dwell on that too much because I was just happy not having that horse head between my legs.
• 11:52
  Right.
• 11:52
  Right.
• 11:54
  So it did that, it urinated, and then it kind of walked away and then Sipsy came up to me.
• 12:05
  And at that point, I had kind of relaxed into feeling what the horses were thinking and kind of communicating on that level.
• 12:16
  And so she was a little hesitant at first.
• 12:20
  To approach me and I remember saying to her, like, come on, you can do this, you know, this is, this is easy.
• 12:26
  You're a great healer.
• 12:28
  I was thinking that, yeah, I was thinking that in my mind and she, she came a little bit closer, took a few more steps and kind of looked around and then she came a little bit closer.
• 12:37
  And and then she walked behind me.
• 12:40
  I remember she walking behind me and and she, I think she walked behind me and stopped.
• 12:46
  And I looked over at you and you were like, you know, again, trust.
• 12:50
  And she, she did like a complete circle around and she backed, she backed off, she came back towards me and then she lifted up her, her hoof and put it right on my left side.
• 13:06
  And I looked at you again, cause that was another panic moment and I was panicking inside, but you know, I was looking at you, the cool, calm face of, of Courage and I, I didn't know because I'm thinking like, if this horse puts any pressure on my leg, it'll just snap it in two.
• 13:22
  I mean, it's a 2, 000 pound animal and it was just resting this hoof right on my leg.
• 13:29
  And, and then it started to pet my, my thigh.
• 13:33
  To tap with it.
• 13:34
  Yeah, it was tapping it.
• 13:35
  You know, it was just tapping it with his hoof.
• 13:39
  And even, even it was very light tapping, but I was still thinking like, if it's just a hard tap, I'm going to be walking out of here in crutches.
• 13:49
  Right.
• 13:50
  You know, because, you know, horses are very powerful animals.
• 13:53
  And it did that tapping for You know, my, my experience of time was like kind of warped because once you get in there and you start working with the horses, you don't have like a you know, the experience of, of, of literal time, our linear time falls away when we slow down and we enter their world.
• 14:14
  Right.
• 14:14
  Yeah.
• 14:15
  That's what the experience was.
• 14:16
  I had entered into their world, their world of time, and it was a different experience of time in itself.
• 14:23
  Because everything just seemed more ethereal in that space.
• 14:28
  You know, it was just, I had stepped into their world, like you said.
• 14:32
  And so it did that and it walked away and then it came behind me and I started nipping at the, my lower back and I could feel it like, it's kind of like biting, not biting, but massaging with their lips and kind of like, yeah.
• 14:50
  And their teeth kind of nipping at my belt.
• 14:53
  I felt a few little tugs on my belt.
• 14:55
  And it did that for you know, a few minutes, but like you said, I don't know how long it could have been like five seconds, but it just felt like a long enough time for it to do what it's going to do.
• 15:10
  And it, it, I think it did a circle around me again.
• 15:14
  And once it got behind me, it wrapped itself around me.
• 15:20
  I remember the horses behind His rear end was on the left side of me and his head was on the right side of me and it had completely encircled me.
• 15:31
  And I don't think I could see you at that point in time, but I remember you saying, Oh, she's giving you a hug.
• 15:40
  And at that moment I felt, Oh, okay, that's, that's nice.
• 15:43
  It's comfortable.
• 15:43
  I felt comfortable with it.
• 15:45
  But just being totally enclosed by the horse's body.
• 15:49
  She made like a crescent around you.
• 15:50
  Yes, exactly.
• 15:52
  She made a crescent around me and do you remember during these times anything that was going on inside you?
• 16:00
  Like, do you remember feeling any particular way?
• 16:03
  Well, as it progressed into the healing process, I felt myself like moving into their, their experience of time and moving out of my experience of time.
• 16:16
  And so I wasn't really.
• 16:21
  What I noticed was like, you know, my consciousness was shifting and it was shifting more out of like a state of fear and into more of a state of acceptance because I was starting to feel comfortable with whatever the horses were doing.
• 16:40
  I didn't feel as if, you know, at like the first time when, when he first approached me and put his head between my legs, I didn't feel like that type of anxiety that felt like I could trust the horse, they knew what they were doing, especially after.
• 16:54
  You know, sipsy was patting on my leg.
• 16:57
  At that point, that was, that was like a realization for me, like the horse is actually doing some work and it knows what it's doing and it's really doing some therapy on me.
• 17:11
  You know, that was a moment that when I had a an experience of just like, okay, let me just relax into it.
• 17:18
  And it seemed like when I did relax into it, the horses were able to to do work on a, on its own level.
• 17:26
  And I remember, I think it was Sy, she walked around in front of me and she did a release too.
• 17:31
  But she just, oh, you know, she just stood there and she was just like, you.
• 17:34
  She, she closed her eyes.
• 17:36
  and just stood there and as if she was meditating.
• 17:41
  And you, you, you said something to me to the effect that, okay, she's just doing the same thing fly was doing.
• 17:49
  It's just releasing energy, but she was doing it in her own way.
• 17:53
  So I just sat there watching her meditate for whatever length of time it was.
• 18:00
  And And then when she finished, you know, she walked away and who was the other horse, the third horse that was there?
• 18:07
  Firefly.
• 18:08
  Firefly.
• 18:10
  Was that the?
• 18:12
  The old, the old one.
• 18:14
  The old one.
• 18:15
  Yeah.
• 18:15
  Okay.
• 18:15
  With a blonde mane.
• 18:17
  Right.
• 18:19
  Firefly didn't come over.
• 18:21
  The third horse didn't come over to me.
• 18:23
  I get the names confused and everything.
• 18:25
  It didn't come over.
• 18:25
  It came up and it looked at me, and I was looking at it, and, It was as if I was tipsy I was I was told I was encouraging to come on, you know, come in and do what you're going to do.
• 18:38
  And, but with the third horse is it like firefly firefly.
• 18:44
  I just kind of looked at it and it looked at me and.
• 18:48
  I don't know if we, we didn't connect or if we were just like looking at each other and, and it was analyzing me and saying, well, you look like you're done.
• 19:02
  You don't need any more or whatever, but it didn't come over and do any direct work on me like the other horses did.
• 19:10
  And so it did walk around me and when it started walking around me, the other horses started.
• 19:16
  walking around me.
• 19:17
  So they had like a little circle.
• 19:19
  They had circled the horses around me and then they walked behind me and they formed a triangle.
• 19:26
  You remember that?
• 19:27
  The sacred geometry that they do.
• 19:29
  The sacred geometry.
• 19:29
  Okay.
• 19:30
  And I had my back to them and I didn't really want to like You know, turn around and stare at them to see what they were doing because I knew that they positioned themselves behind me for a reason and I was just to like, look forward and they were going to do, they were doing whatever they were doing.
• 19:48
  And so I looked and I saw them standing there and they were all like, they all have their heads, like in the same position, the same height from the ground, you know, just kind of like a, like, like a military position that they were in just frozen in that state.
• 20:06
  And we were there for, I don't know, another period of time.
• 20:10
  It could have been five minutes or could have been two minutes, but I was in horse time at that moment.
• 20:18
  And, you know, I looked at you and I think you said, you know, the sacred geometry.
• 20:22
  And so, So at that point, I just started trying to feel into what was going on there and what, you know, what type of energies I was getting from the horses.
• 20:32
  And I don't know if at that moment I started to feel like, you know, a lot of emotional energy welling up within me as they were just, you know, being like these silent sentinels standing behind me, you know, guarding my back.
• 20:47
  I was trying to go through a lot of rationalizations as to what they could be thinking, what they could be doing.
• 20:53
  But something said, just let go of all that mental turmoil that you're putting yourself through and just relax into, you know, the sacred geometry of it.
• 21:06
  So that's what I did.
• 21:08
  And I think once they finished with that, I think that was kind of like the end of the experience.
• 21:19
  And then they kind of went back to doing what horses do is eat grass and whatnot.
• 21:24
  And I was just sitting there and you asked me a few questions, how I was feeling, but at that time I really couldn't.
• 21:31
  articulate anything because I was really spaced out.
• 21:35
  You know, I, at that moment, I realized I'm, I'm in an altered state of consciousness.
• 21:40
  And you know, I just wanted to kind of stay in that state.
• 21:45
  I felt like there was some healing going on.
• 21:48
  And, but I couldn't really put my finger on it.
• 21:51
  And we were having a little dialogue at that point in time.
• 21:55
  And I remember getting up from the chair that I was in and starting to walk away.
• 22:02
  Everything kind of seemed in slow motion, but what I noticed is that the pain, I had like a pain in my back, lower back where I had.
• 22:10
  injured my spine L4, L5, I had like some herniated disc and, you know, that would happen a long time ago, but sometimes because I sat in a chair at work all the time, you know, that would, you know, I could feel like it getting sore or stuff like that.
• 22:25
  And so I had that pain when I walked into the arena with the horses, I wasn't thinking about it because, you know, you get used to a pain.
• 22:32
  You try not to think about it.
• 22:33
  Right.
• 22:34
  Yeah.
• 22:34
  But when I got up, you know, my expectation was like, okay, here comes that pain again.
• 22:39
  Cause it was always kind of like, I got up, but I didn't feel any pain at all.
• 22:45
  And I moved my body.
• 22:46
  I started moving my body around a little bit.
• 22:47
  And I was like, my, my pain in the back is gone.
• 22:51
  And then I realized, Oh yeah, the horse was working on the left side of my body, you know, with the tapping and was also like nipping at the back of my.
• 23:00
  My back on that side of my body and they knew exactly where to go.
• 23:04
  I mean, they just, okay, he's got some pain over here and we'll work on that.
• 23:08
  And they took away the pain and I got up and, you know, I walked over to you and you had your notes and we chatted a little bit and then we went down.
• 23:17
  I think down towards the house and sat, sat in the shade and, and did a little debrief, more of a debrief.
• 23:23
  But I was still like in an altered state of consciousness.
• 23:26
  And so our conversation was like, in my, my awareness was kind of, you know, really slow.
• 23:32
  We're just talking, right?
• 23:34
  And the sun was beaming, the day was warm and the horses were grazing.
• 23:39
  And it was just one of those type of like, surreal type of experiences.
• 23:43
  Yes, yes.
• 23:44
  Yes.
• 23:45
  Yeah, well, those that thank you for recounting the whole thing.
• 23:50
  Yeah.
• 23:50
  From my perspective.
• 23:52
  I had no idea that you were having any trouble trusting the horses.
• 23:56
  I thought you quite brave and and calm and confident looking and I do remember I used to do the intakes.
• 24:05
  You know, like, do you have any pain or tightness in your body, one to ten?
• 24:09
  Do you have, you know, like, there were these questions I would ask going in and then as the exit also after the session.
• 24:17
  And so there were those.
• 24:18
  And then you kept bringing me people.
• 24:20
  Like, you were so great about talking about the experience and, and bringing people.
• 24:26
  I remember there was that one woman Who is visiting you from another state.
• 24:30
  And I don't remember her name.
• 24:31
  We never really talked.
• 24:33
  I didn't get to know her, but she sat in a chair in a metal folding chair in the middle of the field.
• 24:39
  And Pi came over and bit the third finger pinched with his teeth, the third finger on each of her hands.
• 24:45
  And she sat in that chair and cried for 20 minutes, never said a thing.
• 24:48
  Got up and said, thank you.
• 24:49
  That was just the most profound experience.
• 24:51
  Never heard what it was about.
• 24:53
  Right, right, right.
• 24:55
  Yeah.
• 24:55
  I remember watching that myself.
• 24:58
  I was just curious to see what the horses were going to do with her.
• 25:02
  But their treatment was totally different than what I experienced.
• 25:05
  Like I said, you know, at first it looked like, you know, when they were doing the biting, it was just like, Oh, that, that doesn't, you know, I'm, I'm thinking like, well, that doesn't look right.
• 25:15
  You know, they didn't bite me like that, but that wasn't what I needed.
• 25:20
  You know, they did what they, they had to do for me.
• 25:22
  And I remember her crying and I, I didn't know if they had, at first I thought, well, did they hurt her?
• 25:29
  But I figured, well, if they had heard it, then she would have made some type of move to escape from the experience, but she just sat there.
• 25:37
  in that, that, that grief, or maybe it wasn't even grief.
• 25:40
  Whatever it was, it was cathartic.
• 25:42
  Yeah.
• 25:42
  Yeah.
• 25:42
  And it was just, so I just sat there and just held, holding space on the sideline on the outside of the the arena until she finished.
• 25:50
  And like you said, she, when she finished and she was done, she got up and came out of the arena.
• 25:56
  And I could tell she was like in another state of consciousness as well, but whatever the horses had had analyzed.
• 26:05
  Was needed.
• 26:07
  I don't think they analyze things.
• 26:08
  They just into it or whatever.
• 26:10
  Yeah, whatever they did they just did the right thing the right medicine for her and She got a benefit from it and then I brought another friend Down there to have the experience as well.
• 26:25
  And I remember her she was recounting where the horse was She had on a vest and the horse grabbed the the little zipper and was trying to pull it down.
• 26:38
  He, he unzipped her.
• 26:40
  Yeah.
• 26:40
  He unzipped her and, and then started working on her.
• 26:44
  And that was a totally different experience than, than the other, my experience and my other friends experience.
• 26:52
  And so, yeah, that was you know, because I was curious at that point to see how this was happening.
• 26:58
  Yeah.
• 26:58
  And how did, and thinking about how do they know what to do?
• 27:02
  And that was a, an experience of me, you know, firstly, understanding the, the nature of the, the horses and how broad and expansive.
• 27:15
  their consciousness is right, being able to take in what's going on in our consciousness to however they're doing that, whether they're reading our energy and our bodies, where our bodies hurt, right?
• 27:30
  Yeah.
• 27:31
  And being able to take that energy.
• 27:34
  and then discharge it, which was a good thing.
• 27:37
  I wouldn't want the force taking the energy in for me and holding it in its own body.
• 27:42
  But and so I was, I was quite amazed at the, the entire experience.
• 27:47
  So yeah, I was like, man, you got to come and check this out.
• 27:51
  Let these forces work on you.
• 27:52
  And I told them about my experience and they were like, wow.
• 27:55
  That sounds interesting.
• 27:56
  Let me, I want to check it out.
• 27:57
  So that's why I was bringing more people to you.
• 27:59
  Yeah.
• 28:00
  Yeah.
• 28:00
  Those were good times.
• 28:01
  I was so appreciative of that and all the learning that I did of trusting them and staying out of the way.
• 28:08
  And it's constant.
• 28:09
  It's not like I learned it.
• 28:11
  And I have it every time I'm with the horses and people, I don't know what's going to happen next.
• 28:18
  And it takes, it takes faith and trust all the time.
• 28:23
  And, and there's a line of like, you know, should I, should I let the horses bite people?
• 28:30
  I mean, it's usually just the gildings.
• 28:31
  The girls don't do that, but I have a different horse other than pie pie passed away, I have Charlie and gildings are more mouthy than mares.
• 28:42
  And there've been lines where I'm like, no, just use your lips, just your lips.
• 28:46
  And he still likes to use his teeth sometimes.
• 28:50
  And I'm always back and forth on this fence of, you know, should I make sure he doesn't do that?
• 28:55
  Can I even make sure he doesn't do that?
• 28:57
  Or can I completely trust and allow, you know, the horses to do their healing work and it, and they, it's different every time it's always different.
• 29:09
  Right.
• 29:10
  One experience that I recall now is that the first horse, Pi, Pi, it circled around, after it done all the releasing of the energy, it did a circle around me, and then it came back and it stuck his head down between my legs again a second time.
• 29:29
  And at that point, I wasn't as anxietal about the whole experience.
• 29:35
  And it was just down there and I could feel it's, it's hot breath from its nostrils, you know, you know, between my legs.
• 29:44
  And, you know, it got up and it just walked away and did whatever it was going to do at that point.
• 29:51
  But I do remember the second time, but the second time it wasn't as, as scared or frightened about the experience.
• 29:57
  Of just having a big horse's head like down there.
• 30:00
  Did you ever make any sense of that?
• 30:02
  Did it ever, like, have any meaning for you?
• 30:05
  Well, I think that, you know, it was, perhaps it was just clearing some toxic masculinity or energy of that sort.
• 30:16
  I couldn't, that was the only thing that really registered with me.
• 30:21
  I didn't think of anything else that it could have been doing.
• 30:25
  So, you know, it was doing some healing work.
• 30:28
  Of course it had to do with some, with masculinity.
• 30:32
  That's that's the sense that I got as well, but we never had that conversation really about, about it.
• 30:39
  So maybe it was the energy of masculinity that, that we refer to as toxic, but also at the same time, it's, it was like a undeveloped wounded.
• 30:51
  Energy that needed to be healed as well.
• 30:55
  The wounded part of it was, you know, I can relate to that from my experience with my father.
• 31:02
  And the wounded masculinity that I saw in him.
• 31:07
  And perhaps that was, you know, the thrust of it.
• 31:10
  Maybe it was more of the wounded.
• 31:11
  Masculine as opposed to the toxic masculine, but it probably was a little bit both because you know, I had my my days of toxic masculinity in my Teenage early days, you know, my wild buck days and and that, that definitely needed to be cleared.
• 31:30
  And so that was probably part of the whole process.
• 31:35
  I always felt like Pi really understood that because when we got him, he had, he was a BLM Mustang and he was also a foundation Appaloosa and we bought him from some people and they'd had him about a year and he had been gelded.
• 31:52
  at a later age, been caught and gelded at a later age at like six.
• 31:57
  So he was, when we first got him, stallions have different, like their muscles are much more developed than geldings.
• 32:03
  And so he had like, you know, muscles on his head and his neck was really big.
• 32:08
  And, you know, he was a, a much bigger horse.
• 32:11
  And when I think about, you know, gelding a horse later I mean, that's almost the definition of wounded.
• 32:17
  Masculinity in a very physical way.
• 32:19
  And so that was the sense that I, I made out of what, what was going on.
• 32:24
  Although I never, you know, you never know for sure.
• 32:27
  Well, do you think that, you know, with him having experienced that gelding and understanding how he went from like big module or to more mild mannered horse he could have since that in my own person you know, because I was never like, you know, like you know, like that alpha type of personality, you know, but I still presented myself as such.
• 32:54
  And so it could have been like, okay, well, here's some more alpha energy that you might need to move forward in life as well.
• 33:02
  I hadn't thought about it in that sense, but.
• 33:05
  in retrospect and looking back at the things that I needed in order to to, to go out into life and to do the things that I needed to do.
• 33:14
  You know, there is like that alpha element to that and to go out and create your reality, create your world takes a lot of that, that yang energy that you know, on the masculine side.
• 33:27
  And so that wasn't a, a trait that I was, had carried.
• 33:33
  In particular because I was just, you know, going along with the, the status quo of, you know, you go to school, you get your college education and you go out there and you get a job, you know, as opposed to, like, going out there and building a business or something like that.
• 33:49
  You know, there's a difference between.
• 33:51
  Getting a job and building a business.
• 33:53
  There is a difference.
• 33:54
  Right.
• 33:54
  And there's a little bit more alpha.
• 33:55
  And when you go out there and say, I'm going to build my business and make something happen.
• 34:00
  And I think that that was something that was lacking in my life at that time to go out there and to make, make my life happen as opposed to accepting what was given to me, and perhaps it was.
• 34:12
  Helping to instill some of that energy in me.
• 34:14
  Do you feel like there was a shift after your time working with the horses and bringing people?
• 34:20
  Well, I, in terms of just the shift in the energy that you're saying, let you, that you needed at that time.
• 34:29
  Well, let me think.
• 34:32
  I think there was a there was a shift in energy in that I became more proactive in wanting to do my own thing.
• 34:42
  And, and to focus on the things that I had been putting off like writing the things that, you know, the book that I was going to write, I said, okay, let me start writing this.
• 34:51
  Let me start putting this together.
• 34:52
  Let me collate my data, start gathering my information.
• 34:55
  So, so yes, I think that it did help give me a little more impetus to, to go out and start making things happen for me as opposed to waiting for a raise or a promotion or something like that.
• 35:12
  Yeah.
• 35:13
  And I do remember like afterwards, you know, I've had a greater interest in learning more about You know equine therapy And i've read, you know started reading materials and looking at you know videos On online about how horses work with people And I saw this one video where this person was actually laying on a massage table And the horse was going back and forth on top of the person's body, you know with his long nose and everything And I was like, wow, you know, I I didn't know that it was You As extensive as that is having someone on a massage table because in my experience was just sitting in the chair and having them work on me in the field, but this is like in a massage room.
• 35:56
  Well, maybe a stall or whatever.
• 35:59
  And the person was laying on us that this is this is really amazing.
• 36:02
  Yeah.
• 36:03
  And so I would imagine that there's probably other processes.
• 36:06
  Besides that, now I've, I've looked at into like the, you know, working with the horses, working with children, like autistic children, I've watched a lot of videos on that and how the horses interact with the children, how they are able to discern exactly as in my case, exactly what it is that that particular child needs and how to work with that child's energy to bring about a positive and beneficial change.
• 36:33
  and adaptation in that child.
• 36:35
  And, and so I, I really developed like an interest in, in wanting to be more involved in the equine therapy after watching that in my own experience, because I was still buzzing from that experience for a few days afterwards.
• 36:52
  Yeah, it was very profound.
• 36:54
  How was it today?
• 36:56
  We spent a little bit of time with the horses.
• 36:58
  It was maybe, maybe less formal.
• 37:02
  Yeah, it was enough, less formal experience for myself.
• 37:05
  I was just looking at it from the perspective of other client that you had there getting the experience for herself and not so much for myself.
• 37:15
  I was just wanted to be like part of the herd at that moment and just hold space along with the horses, you know, for her because they started working on her and they didn't really seem to be paying a whole lot of attention to me.
• 37:29
  So I just said, okay, well, it's not my, it's not my party and just let her have all the attention.
• 37:36
  But it was interesting watching them.
• 37:37
  Yeah.
• 37:38
  And then after she left, you had a little, there was you and I were in the ring together and then they paid more attention to you.
• 37:46
  Right?
• 37:46
  Yeah, they were.
• 37:47
  Yeah, they were just kind of like doing their, their, their Sentinel type of just standing there, right next to you, right next to us.
• 37:57
  And whatever energy work they were doing, they were, they were doing it.
• 38:01
  And so I just closed my eyes, because that's what I felt like was needed when they're there and you're in their space.
• 38:10
  You may feel that that way you may feel like you just want to close your eyes and just Surrender to whatever it was that they were doing and so that's what I did Until it was time to to go on to the next thing.
• 38:24
  It's interesting to me the way you began to describe about Pi and your hat.
• 38:30
  Like that you just had this sense that you wanted, he wanted you to take the hat off.
• 38:35
  And it's not like a voice, it's not like a picture, it's not even like the feeling of your hat coming off.
• 38:41
  It's just this idea that seems like, It could have been your own, but it probably isn't right.
• 38:48
  It was a knowing, a knowing.
• 38:49
  Okay.
• 38:50
  Because I've had, I had the same thing not too long ago, this last summer where I'm sure Sipsy wanted me to lay down and it kept coming to me like that.
• 38:59
  Like, you want me to just lay down, just lay down and, and I finally did.
• 39:06
  And she went and she put her hoof on my chest and I was feeling very, very vulnerable.
• 39:13
  And, but I'd had this, like this problem in my back that had not healed.
• 39:18
  It was like six months.
• 39:20
  And I think it was a type of adhesion, you know, from your fascia.
• 39:24
  And I'd been to massage therapists and all kinds of things, trying to get this thing fixed or, or just resting it and trying to get it to heal and put creams on it and, you know, And she put her hoof on my chest and I immediately wanted to put my hands under her hoof and like push her hoof away.
• 39:39
  Right.
• 39:40
  But before I did that, she kind of slid her hoof off the side of my ribs, not terribly hard, and my back was fine.
• 39:49
  She fixed my back.
• 39:50
  Right.
• 39:51
  Yeah, right.
• 39:52
  That must have been pretty intimidating though.
• 39:54
  I mean, she's my horse and the following week I've been saying, Oh, I completely trust this horse.
• 40:00
  And then when I'm underneath her thinking she's going to step on me, I really got to put, you know, put my body where my mouth is.
• 40:06
  Right.
• 40:07
  Right.
• 40:07
  Right.
• 40:08
  It's, it's not always easy, but it's never been a mistake.
• 40:13
  Trusting the horses has never been a mistake.
• 40:16
  Yeah, I hear you.
• 40:18
  I hear you.
• 40:18
  I mean, you're looking at a 1500 pound.
• 40:21
  But it was like gentle.
• 40:24
  It was a gentle.
• 40:26
  They just had like the right amount of pressure.
• 40:30
  Like on your chest.
• 40:31
  Like on my, on my leg.
• 40:33
  To not injure us, but to do the, you know, to, to affect the healing.
• 40:38
  Right.
• 40:38
  And Sipsi has gotten really good at being so careful and deliberate in her movements.
• 40:45
  You know, which I think helps people trust her.
• 40:48
  You know, like it's not an accident.
• 40:49
  She's not rushing anything.
• 40:51
  She's, she's moving really slowly and really deliberately and asking for trust.
• 40:57
  Right.
• 40:58
  Yeah, she, I think she understands, you know, people from a more sensitive.
• 41:04
  Feminine way if you want to say that because like you said the gelding's they're just like aggressive They just go for it and hey, I don't care what you're gonna think.
• 41:12
  It's like whatever It's like hey, this is what I need to do and you either go along with it or else, right?
• 41:18
  But The the horses relate to you I guess from what they experience is From their own personalities as well because all the horses have their own personality Their own healing capacity, their own healing skills, their own healing knowledge, even though they're, they're healing you from the perspective of the horse, they each have very unique techniques.
• 41:42
  And they work together sometimes and they work separately and they take turns and they back each other up.
• 41:49
  It's it's really interesting.
• 41:50
  I'd, I'd like to do more, you know, I've taken some time off.
• 41:54
  I've experimented with some different things and it's good to arrive back here.
• 41:59
  It's good to remember with you those, those first case studies and discovering all of that and, and the work they did, it was phenomenal.
• 42:09
  Yes, indeed.
• 42:09
  It was.
• 42:10
  And.
• 42:11
  You know, and that's, like I said, it spiked my interest in learning more and, and to getting wanting to get involved in the equine therapy because I saw the benefits of it for myself.
• 42:24
  And it also helps to bring back that, that.
• 42:29
  human connection to the earth, the earth connection to the horses, you know, that cycle of life where we're all here to, to, to, to assist and celebrate each other.
• 42:41
  And because we work on the horses, you know, we take care of them.
• 42:44
  And, and this was an opportunity for them to take care of us, to return that in, in, in the way that they know how to.
• 42:52
  Yeah.
• 42:52
  And you know, and I can see how people can develop these, these really intimate relationships with the horses when they have that, that, when they know that the horse understands them, the horse sees them right.
• 43:07
  And in a, in a, in a completely nonjudgmental way.
• 43:12
  You know, you don't get any type of flack from the horses about, you know, anything about who you were or what you did or how you got to this place.
• 43:21
  They're so forgiving.
• 43:22
  Right.
• 43:24
  They're so forgiving and it's totally, yeah, totally unconditional love, if you want to call it that.
• 43:31
  Yeah.
• 43:32
  And you feel that, and maybe that's part of the The, the, the consciousness shift that occurs because we shift into like their, their world, their reality and what it's like to be in a place of 24 seven unconditional love and belonging and belonging as, as one's natural state, as opposed to it's like some desired state that we are, you know, we're chasing, I feel like they really are trying to teach humans that.
• 44:03
  There's another way to live.
• 44:06
  Absolutely.
• 44:07
  Our culture doesn't embrace that.
• 44:09
  Right.
• 44:10
  And the things that I've read about people that have been around horses, you know, the relationships that they, the bonds that they create, you know, is an attestment to that.
• 44:21
  There is another way that we can live.
• 44:24
  Not just with the animal world, but with ourselves, with each other, with other humans.
• 44:30
  And, you know, when I asked Rupert Isaacson, who does the work with autistic children and the horse boy method and wrote the book horse boy and the movie when I asked him if he was part of the quiet revolution, he zoomed out.
• 44:43
  And talked about what you're saying, the, the revolution of, yeah, there's another way for humans to be with humans, not just with horses.
• 44:53
  Right.
• 44:55
  And I think that's, that's where humanity has to go in order to return to our humanity.
• 45:02
  Because things right now, when you look around, it's just crazy.
• 45:05
  War is fighting, violence, everything on television is violence, violence, violence.
• 45:10
  And I experienced in that circle with the horses.
• 45:16
  You know, a world where there was no sense of violence.
• 45:20
  Like that there was just it was a very tranquil environment a very tranquil space and you you felt held by the the energy of the space itself.
• 45:34
  You know what I'm saying?
• 45:35
  Right.
• 45:37
  And they, they do they come together and they form that and even like when you would notice that Firefly wasn't directly participating.
• 45:44
  She's always there holding the space.
• 45:46
  Mm hmm.
• 45:47
  You know, that's.
• 45:48
  That's what they do.
• 45:49
  And, you know, maybe that's just a little thing that we can do for each other, too, is with the intention of holding space for when other humans are going through things.
• 46:03
  It doesn't really require much, but the intention of it is.
• 46:07
  And being quiet, right?
• 46:11
  I know Myself when I first started doing my my healing work, you know, I was it was Difficult for me to just hold space without trying to be, you know, the savior, you know helping them and learning from the horses What holding space was like enabled me to just be quiet and listen?
• 46:32
  and if and if that was all that was needed was just listening without trying to You Reach out and do anything, you know, sometimes it's just necessary to just be there and hold that space And the feel held in the space by, you know, by the horses was a learning experience because I hadn't experienced it to that degree of intensity.
• 46:54
  Because when they ground, they are so grounded.
• 46:57
  Right.
• 46:57
  That it spreads.
• 46:58
  And, you know, Firefly has shown me that lots of times that when things are chaotic, the best thing to do is just to ground yourself and hold your space and make that intention and wait.
• 47:09
  Right.
• 47:11
  I've watched her do it.
• 47:12
  She's demonstrated it for me.
• 47:13
  And then I've gone into hectic situations right afterwards and applied what she taught me.
• 47:18
  And it's only a matter of maybe 10 minutes before the chaos stops, everybody gets quiet and they start asking questions.
• 47:26
  Right, right, right.
• 47:27
  You know, exactly.
• 47:29
  This has been a really great talk, Willis.
• 47:31
  I'm so glad we finally could get together and recount the memories from the early work with the horses and I always enjoy it when you come visit.
• 47:42
  Yes, this it was good.
• 47:43
  It was good to be out with the horses again and to see them do their thing and just to be in that space in that arena and not like learning how to train the horses, but allowing the horses to train me and in, in their world and their way of being.
• 48:04
  Good stuff.