Latest / Equine Assisted World with Rupert Isaacson / Beyond Crime: Healing Trauma, Restoring Humanity with Leana Tank | Ep 27 Equine Assisted World

Transcript

Beyond Crime: Healing Trauma, Restoring Humanity with Leana Tank | Ep 27 Equine Assisted World · Equine Assisted World with Rupert Isaacson

• 0:00
  Rupert Isaacson: Welcome to Equine Assisted World.
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  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.
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  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.
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  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.
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  If you'd like to find out more about them, go to newtrailslearning.
• 0:40
  com.
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  So without further ado, let's meet today's guest.
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  Welcome back to Equine Assisted World.
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  Most of us who work in this field either work with kids or who might
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  have a variety of neurocognitive conditions, sometimes mixed with
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  physical or young adults with anxiety.
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  I, you know, young adult autism, that sort of thing, or, you know, perhaps
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  trauma and also perhaps veterans, you know, but there's a whole other
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  group out there that I think a lot of us don't work with because it's,
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  it's really a specialized thing.
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  And so we're very lucky to have Leanna Tank here who's an occupational therapist
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  from Grand Rapids, Michigan, but also a very accomplished horse, woman and works
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  in the equine assisted field as well.
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  And she works with a population that I think most of us would
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  feel intimidated to work with, let's say and takes it in her stride.
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  And so I want to delve into Leanna's Toolbox and.
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  What, what makes her able to do this and to do it so well.
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  I'm gonna let her explain what she does.
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  So without further ado big drummer of the amazing Leanna Tank, one
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  of my great heroes, actually.
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  You are one of my great heroes.
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  Leanna, can you, can you talk to us about who you are and what you do?
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  Leana Tank: Sure.
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  Yeah.
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  So, yeah, thank you for having me here.
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  It's quite an honor to be included.
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  You've had many, like brilliant, amazing people on this podcast,
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  so it's great to be here.
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  Yeah, I mean, I, I'll say first off that the population I work with does struggle
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  with some pretty extreme the extreme end of the mental health continuum and
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  the challenges that people can can face, you know, in the course of their lives.
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  And that can be a little bit shocking to hear about as, as
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  just like a regular person.
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  So I just wanna validate that and just give people a little
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  bit of a warning or a heads up.
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  Like, like the, the challenges of the people that I work with are quite extreme.
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  I work in.
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  Residential behavioral health.
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  So these are programs for people who need 24 7 support in
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  the community, staff support.
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  They come to us from the state psychiatric hospitals, the prison
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  system, criminal justice system.
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  They have different diagnoses like schizophrenia, many on the
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  autism spectrum, personality disorders, cognitive impairments.
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  Many, many, you know, a lot of they might have dual diagnoses, so they
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  might have schizophrenia and a cognitive impairment and things like that.
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  Many
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  have committed crimes and so they're part of part of their, part of their
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  treatment because they have been found not guilty by reason of insanity is
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  to come and work in our programs.
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  So those are, that's the population of people that I'm working with,
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  and they really are people who are on the margins of society.
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  They really don't have a voice.
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  They're really not talked about something I find.
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  Quite often when I'm meeting people and they're asking
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  me like, oh, what do you do?
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  Who do you work with?
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  And I I tell them people are often not very curious.
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  I don't get a lot of other questions.
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  I think it it, they make people uncomfortable.
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  I think in our culture we are not great at looking at that like darker side
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  of our natures in ourselves or in, in, just like the culture in the, in
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  the, in our society, we want to kinda label them as other and as monsters
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  and we want to send them off to jail.
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  We wanna punish 'em.
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  We want to stick them in the state hospitals or say that they're
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  evil and send them to hell.
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  And they really get defined, I think, by the things that they've done because
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  they, that it can be pretty extreme.
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  But in my experience, like they are not what they've done.
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  They're, they're honestly, they're like the most sensitive
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  and vulnerable of all of us.
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  They're they're kind of the, the part of our society that is.
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  Hearing the burden or paying the cost of like the breakdown of
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  our, our care systems and our kind of social support network.
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  And they are the ones who are growing up in the foster care system.
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  They're the ones born to families that maybe they were exposed to drugs
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  and alcohol and utero, and they were born with a nervous system and a brain
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  that's just wired really differently.
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  And then from the get go, they're already in these institutions and systems.
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  There are really, really sensitive neurodivergent folks that just
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  get taken advantage of or put in the wrong place at the wrong time.
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  And really they, they, they could be any of us, you know, like any of
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  us are capable of those extremes.
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  If we're put in the right set of circumstances or we're one
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  calamity away from a brain injury or a serious condition, that
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  dismantles our ability to regulate ourselves and control our behavior.
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  And I think it is hard for somebody with a, a brain that is fully in control
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  and, and, and capable of managing.
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  Fight and flight reactions to understand what it's like to be
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  someone living in the world that doesn't have that same capability.
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  So, so yeah, like I, I really want to be able to do them justice and be able to
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  kind of express what's, you know, very, very human, fully human, fully unique,
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  creative, interesting, you know, people, they are, and I absolutely love working
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  with 'em, and I find it to be incredibly fulfilling and interesting every day.
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  So, so yeah, I'm glad to be able to be here and try to
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  be a good advocate for them.
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  Try to be a good voice for them because more and more I see actually less and
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  less of a place for them in our culture.
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  Our culture kind of wants to, to pretend that they're not there.
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  So
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  Rupert Isaacson: let me play devil's advocate then.
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  I mean, you, you, you let slip two words, I think, which were good clues.
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  One was monsters and the other was extreme.
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  Just to be clear, I don't want to trigger people.
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  Are these people who have done things that society would de
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  monstrous or that we would.
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  With good reason, say that's monstrous and it and extreme.
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  And then if that's the case, how does the act of doing something monstrous,
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  which perhaps cost somebody else their life and perhaps cost somebody else their
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  life in a horrible way, how does that not define the person who committed the act?
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  I think that's a fair question that many people would ask in that.
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  So whether or not one should ask that question, I think
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  it's a natural question to us.
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  What, what do you say to that?
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  Because your perspective is so unique.
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  Leana Tank: Yeah.
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  You know, and I've worked with a number of people who have you know,
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  committed crimes of that level of severity who have done things like that.
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  You know, for the folks that I'm working with, with their mental health
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  conditions, often they're in a state of like psychosis or extreme distress
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  when something like that happens and and then they're left really you know,
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  dealing with the trauma of that event.
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  I will say, you know, humanity is extremely, adaptable
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  and extremely resilient.
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  I have worked with people who have been through things, you know, either
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  things they've done or things that they themselves have experienced that are just
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  kind of beyond imagining and they move on.
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  I think that a big part of, of healing the, the trauma of something like that,
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  that has happened and I've, I've been able to like witness this process.
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  Like it's been such a privilege to like, be part of it and witness
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  it is moving from being defined by that thing that happened and kind
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  of being always hypervigilant to reminders of what happened or, you
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  know, per, you know, that that guilt or that having that self-perception
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  colored by those events and through through kind of that healing process.
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  And a lot of it is relationships with somebody who can be very nonjudgmental,
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  who can help them see themselves in different ways and, and also.
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  Organize those events and organize kind of what happened and understand
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  it through the lens of how their mental illness affected them.
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  And, and you know, just, just trying to find a different perspective on it.
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  See people be able to integrate those events, kind of figure out the lessons
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  that they've learned figure out how to kind of come into alignment with
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  what happened and how they, what, how they are going to use those things
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  to come forward and help others.
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  And honestly, something I've seen several different times, and this is
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  how I know that a person is kind of on that, on that path towards more
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  integration and more healing, is that they will tell me that they want to
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  help others and they want to use what's happened to them to support other people.
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  And they will kind of even take those other people under their wing.
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  They'll be.
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  A positive impact on the other people that live in those programs.
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  They'll kind of be a mentor.
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  They will take on that role.
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  So that's something I've seen several times.
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  It's really something.
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  Yeah,
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  Rupert Isaacson: I guess what, so that people can get their
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  head around it because it's outside most people's experience.
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  Most of us, if we think of someone has done something monstrous and
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  they're locked up the first, you know, it's, it's, it is usually a
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  Hollywood type of idea that comes in.
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  So I think the first picture that a lot of people would
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  have would be Hannibal Lecter.
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  Mm-hmm.
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  And so the Hannibal Elector explains in great clarity and detail and with
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  a sense of vindication that he's right for having done what he did
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  and to do what he still wants to do.
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  Which of course is what makes him scary.
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  'cause he's not just that he does these things, but he thinks them
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  through and he plans them and, you know, executes them as well.
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  I think it's very difficult for people not to have that idea.
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  And however, as you pointed out, these are people who were actually found not
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  guilty because of their mental conditions
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  in, in the English.
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  Lexicon English, English lexicon of British English lexicon
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  of sort of criminal justice.
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  I think what we call that is if someone, it's premeditated,
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  it's malice, a forethought, you know, that's the difference
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  between murder and manslaughter.
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  I think for example if somewhat it was planned out, it was done in cold blood,
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  it was rather than in the heat of the moment somehow, or blah, blah, blah, blah.
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  Of course adding psychosis to this is a whole other thing.
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  And
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  is that something, which I think there needs to be a greater understanding of
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  that psychosis can sort of happen to people and that when someone is in that
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  psychotic period, they're not who they were when they were not in that thing.
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  And then you also said something which made me prick up my ears, which is
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  that one might be just one calamity away from something that happens to
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  you that, an injury that causes that.
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  And I think you put your finger on something there, because I,
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  I do know people who sustained head injuries, who then went on
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  to do really quite crazy things.
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  And that seemed cruel and uncaring.
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  Because some part of their brain had been damaged and, and, and this could
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  actually be sort of traced and traumatic brain injury and criminal behavior.
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  Actually it's one of these areas that's getting more studied now,
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  but I don't think there's a lot of understanding of wider society.
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  But this of course is your bread and butter.
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  Can you just talk to us a little bit about this difference between
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  premeditation and non premeditation psychosis and nons psychosis?
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  How you can be one person in one moment and another person and
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  another traumatic brain injury.
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  I think this is really useful for, particularly for people in our field.
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  Leana Tank: Yeah.
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  Yeah.
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  And I think it's important to point out that people with mental illness are much
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  more likely to be victims of violence than to actually be violent themselves.
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  That's very true.
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  They are like three, I just saw these stats like three times more likely
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  to be victims of a serious assault.
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  Mm-hmm.
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  And then more than half, I think of like police killings in the
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  US are towards people with a mental illness or, or disability.
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  And that's a lot of the folks that I know that have gotten wrapped
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  up in the criminal justice system.
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  It's altercations with police.
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  They were, you know, being unusual in public or something, you know, and I.
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  The police were called and the police don't understand the mental illness
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  and they escalate and, and, and this happens all the time, all the time.
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  There's just not a good understanding.
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  But I think to go to what you were asking about, you know, with something
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  like psychosis which many people with schizophrenia may experience but also, you
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  know, people can have psychotic episodes.
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  When you have bipolar disorder, certain medications can induce psychosis.
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  People, older adults, when they are in the beginning stages of like Alzheimer's
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  and dementia, can be pushed very easily into psychosis, just with a little bit
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  of a change in their body chemistry.
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  They get a urinary tract infection and they start experience psychosis.
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  And psychosis is really a disconnect from like a shared reality.
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  So, there's different like chemical processes that go on in
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  the brain and it can be different depending on that diagnosis.
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  But people will develop delusions.
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  So ideas that.
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  Are not like logical or what we would deem logical.
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  They might, sorry.
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  They might have hallucinations.
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  So they might see things that other people don't see,
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  Rupert Isaacson: hear voices in their head.
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  Leana Tank: Yep.
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  They might hear voices in their head that seem very, very real.
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  And I've worked with people who are extremely distressed by the
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  voices they hear in their head and can barely maintain a conversation
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  because they're so distressing.
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  And then I've worked with people who really enjoy their, the voices that
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  they hear or might perceive people around them that they see as like
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  their family or like their friends, and they find them very comforting.
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  There's different levels of insight.
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  Some people can kind of be a little bit aware that they are not experiencing
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  like the same reality as other people.
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  And then some people have absolutely no insight at all and there's no arguing.
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  So there, there's different shades and levels to it.
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  I think when it becomes an actual dangerous situation is
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  when it is really fed by fear.
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  So when the person is in an extremely fearful state, when the
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  delusions or the hallucinations are terrifying and scary, sometimes they.
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  Present as like demonic or they present as they're being persecuted.
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  That's when you worry a little bit about violence because the person feels
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  like they have to defend themselves.
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  So it's usually pretty.
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  Right.
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  Rupert Isaacson: And if they you a demon, then all bets are off in that moment.
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  Yes.
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  Leana Tank: Yeah.
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  And any person, if you can kind of like for an empathy experiment,
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  you know, imagine if you truly, truly believed that a demon was
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  coming for you and, and saw it.
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  I mean, it, it's, it's a very multisensory experience.
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  So your entire body's sensations will perceive this as reality.
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  And the parts of your brain that are gonna check that and say, maybe this
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  isn't happening, they are just offline.
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  Rupert Isaacson: Yeah.
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  I think, I think it's, it's easy to underestimate the power of the amygdala.
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  Yeah.
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  It perceives that a threat has gone beyond a certain point.
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  It's, yeah.
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  Well, its job is to tell the body to produce cortisol to shut off thought
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  so that one acts and doesn't think.
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  Yeah.
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  It's, it's interesting.
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  Well, obviously it's fascinating, but.
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  I know, I think a lot of people have known friends or family members, or close people
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  close to than us who've gone through psychosis and this feeling of helplessness
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  that this person is unreachable
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  and yet you reach them.
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  So there they are.
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  Whatever has happened has happened, and they find themselves in the
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  situation now living where they live.
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  And Leanna Tank walks into their life.
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  What's your objective?
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  You know, a lot of people, again, it's very natural.
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  It might not be right, but it's very natural.
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  Think, well, they've done these terrible things, they should just be locked
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  up and the key should be thrown away.
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  That's just it.
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  Die in a dungeon somewhere.
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  But of course
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  actually life goes on and somebody has to be there to make
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  that a life that has meaning.
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  Again, you can hear the devil's advocacy.
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  No, they've lost the right, you know, they've forfeited that, right?
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  They should suffer and they should live in a situation of unpleasantness
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  and suffering as punishment for what they've done, even if they.
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  Were not themselves or didn't know what they were doing or whatever.
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  You then arrive, actually, let's back up a bit.
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  You weren't, you didn't come out of your mother's womb doing this job,
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  so how did you end up doing this job?
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  And then let's get to what happens when, when you arrive in that world.
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  So how, yeah, where does it begin for you?
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  How did you get into this?
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  Leana Tank: Oh gosh.
• 22:09
  Okay.
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  Rupert Isaacson: 'cause stay us way back because, you know, there must be stuff in
• 22:14
  your childhood that prepared you for this kind of, this kind of work that had to be.
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  Leana Tank: Yeah.
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  I'm like, trying to think how far back to go.
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  Rupert Isaacson: Because it's interesting when, you know, often when I'm asking
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  people about childhood in this, in this type of work, it's often about, well,
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  you know, some sort of trauma or that, but I, but we often overlook actually
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  the things that set one up really advantageously in one's childhood.
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  And so you, you do such extraordinary work.
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  It must have its roots in some deep sort of sense of security or something.
• 22:48
  Leana Tank: Yeah.
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  You know, I mean, I think that at my core I'm, I'm very, very curious
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  and very interested in kind of that full breadth of the human experience.
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  And I was very drawn.
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  Occupational therapy.
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  I, I studied in, in college, I studied psychology and literature
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  and philosophy, and I, I've been like a big reader all my life.
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  And I was drawn to OT because it is very, very broad.
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  Occupational therapy is at its core, just about using what people love to do as a
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  way to promote, like healing and meaning to help people do more of the things
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  that they love and are important to them.
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  And then to also use meaningful, what we call occupations are really like
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  anything that somebody might find meaningful whether it's, you know,
• 23:55
  playing chess or, or taking a walk outside or riding a horse or whatever.
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  It can be anything.
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  Using those things to promote healing.
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  So it's, it's really broad and you can apply it across just about any kind of
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  population, you know, from kids to older adults, to people recovering from a hip
• 24:17
  replacement to people with schizophrenia, you know, in a locked institution.
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  I really like that because I don't like being kind of pigeonholed and
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  siloed to one dogma or one set of beliefs or one kind of approach.
• 24:38
  I grew up in a pretty like fundamentalist home
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  Rupert Isaacson: fundamentalist criticism.
• 24:44
  Leana Tank: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
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  And that never, how did that prepare
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  Rupert Isaacson: you for, for seeing the breadth of the human experience?
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  'cause that's presumably about narrowing the human experience, is it not?
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  Leana Tank: Yeah, and it, yeah.
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  And I, I feel like growing up in that kind of a, it was a
• 25:04
  very, very, like, loving home.
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  And, and, you know, just like a great family good community.
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  But it was the, when you grow up in a very fundamentalist Christian
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  home, it's really about molding you to be the person that, that that
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  belief system wants you to be and not really supporting you in expressing
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  who you really are or really like,
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  it's more about.
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  You figuring out what's the right thing to feel, what's the right way
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  to behave, what's the right emotion to have, and not like tapping in and
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  understanding what you actually do feel and what you actually do believe.
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  So I feel like that whole process and being able to figure out how to do
• 25:57
  that came like really late for me.
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  So I almost how get them was really, gosh, like, like college
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  and even beyond, you know?
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  And I think as I have like worked through figuring out, you know, how to actually
• 26:17
  engage with that it really motivated me to like help other people do that.
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  And also to work in a way that is like, how can I help these people who
• 26:32
  are not acknowledged, are not seen, are not valued for who they are?
• 26:37
  How can I help them figure out who they are and, and be accepted for who they are?
• 26:42
  And when you are coming in to work with somebody in these settings, you
• 26:52
  have to walk in very nonjudgmentally.
• 26:55
  You have to, to the, to the extremes, dismantle your judgment about what
• 27:02
  they deserve and what they've done.
• 27:04
  You have to be pretty radical in in accepting kind of who this person
• 27:11
  is and, and who they've been in the world and be ready to meet that
• 27:16
  person exactly where they're at.
• 27:20
  So it's always really interesting.
• 27:24
  I will do a little chart review and read like what is, you
• 27:29
  know, what has this person done?
• 27:30
  What's their history?
• 27:31
  And it always reads pretty rough.
• 27:34
  It's always a little scary and a little shocking.
• 27:38
  It's like, I mean, how would you like it if before I met you, I read the
• 27:42
  rap sheet of every terrible thing you've ever done in your life, right?
• 27:46
  Like all probably the worst moments are all in these people's charts for
• 27:51
  everyone to read before they meet them.
• 27:55
  And then almost always the person I meet is like completely different.
• 28:00
  Like you would never imagine that that was their history.
• 28:06
  It's very, very rare that I meet anyone that.
• 28:11
  Actually like, wants to hurt people or, you know, has any intention of doing that.
• 28:17
  It's all these things that have happened when they were really
• 28:21
  pushed into their survival state.
• 28:24
  But I do meet people that like, don't really wanna work with me or maybe
• 28:27
  don't, maybe they're pretty disconnected from reality and they're hard to
• 28:33
  reach or they've been therapized and in, in institutions for so long that
• 28:40
  they're just kind of like, get lost.
• 28:42
  I don't want, you know, I don't want anything to do with you.
• 28:45
  But I feel like I have developed three different ways, like a, a way
• 28:51
  of kind of approaching people without an expectation, without an agenda
• 29:02
  and being just very, very open to meet them exactly where they're, they are.
• 29:12
  And where they are is completely fine.
• 29:16
  And often when I am asked to go meet with someone, it's because
• 29:24
  the team has an idea of where they.
• 29:28
  What they should be working on.
• 29:30
  Maybe they haven't showered in a year and they want me to help them do that.
• 29:35
  Maybe they struggle with managing their emotions and they want me to
• 29:40
  work with 'em on that or whatever.
• 29:43
  But I kind of have to put all that to the side and just meet
• 29:45
  this person and be like, well, what do they think is important?
• 29:48
  What's like,
• 29:49
  Rupert Isaacson: established relationship effectively?
• 29:51
  Leana Tank: Yes, yes.
• 29:53
  And there's people, and I have the luxury of doing this, where I can sit
• 29:57
  down and what they wanna do is like, talk about the rings and the jewelry
• 30:05
  that I have on and rocks and stones, or what they wanna do is, you know, just
• 30:12
  listen to music, you know, on my phone.
• 30:17
  And I can do that with 'em for weeks and weeks and weeks to kind of
• 30:20
  establish that relationship and then figure out like what's important to
• 30:27
  them and where do, where do they want to grow, where do they wanna develop?
• 30:33
  And a lot of times those other things just kind of fall into place when
• 30:39
  they feel like they have like a safe relationship when they feel like they
• 30:44
  have more meaning in their lives when they feel like they, you know, are actually
• 30:50
  Rupert Isaacson: heard.
• 30:51
  Leana Tank: Heard.
• 30:52
  Yeah.
• 30:53
  Yeah.
• 30:55
  Rupert Isaacson: Okay.
• 30:56
  How do, okay, you as growing up as a young fundamentalist Christian,
• 31:07
  were not probably schooled in this type of non judgmentalism, right?
• 31:10
  Because any dogmatic religion has pretty clear judgements.
• 31:16
  You're either in or you're out.
• 31:17
  You either follow the rules or you don't.
• 31:19
  You're either saved or you're gonna hell.
• 31:21
  And it's also a punishment based punishment and reward
• 31:28
  based culture, right?
• 31:30
  If you do these quote unquote bad things, you're going to hell and you're
• 31:34
  probably be ostracized and perhaps even physically punished, you know, here.
• 31:40
  And that includes if you just don't toe the line we'll,
• 31:43
  you know, won't support you.
• 31:45
  How did you get from that to what I think is, and I guess, I guess
• 31:53
  what I'm, what comes to mind here is what you are actually talking about
• 32:00
  is what Christianity is supposed to be, which is love thy neighbor.
• 32:08
  Don't be an asshole.
• 32:10
  If you are an asshole.
• 32:11
  It's entirely forgivable forgiveness.
• 32:17
  Redemption.
• 32:21
  Do you think that some really discerning part of you as a child thought?
• 32:29
  Yeah.
• 32:29
  All that punishment stuff, that's all shame, but all that love
• 32:34
  thy neighbor, redemption stuff.
• 32:38
  That's good shit.
• 32:40
  And what made you able to discern that?
• 32:44
  Because I don't think everybody who grows up in that can
• 32:50
  go back to your young self.
• 32:51
  Yeah,
• 32:53
  Leana Tank: yeah.
• 32:53
  You know, I mean, I think part of it was, part of it was just baked in me.
• 32:57
  Mm-hmm.
• 32:57
  I can remember being very, very young.
• 33:02
  I was a very like, magically minded animal loving, you know,
• 33:09
  kindergartner, first grader.
• 33:11
  And even, even in elementary school hearing that was the
• 33:17
  big, like environmentalism was like a big burgeoning thing.
• 33:22
  And I remember hearing about it and being like, that sounds cool.
• 33:26
  And then in.
• 33:28
  Church or wherever, and the dog mutt was like, oh no, we don't believe
• 33:31
  in environmentalism and we don't, you know, this is, it's all about
• 33:36
  supporting people and humanity and we don't, you know, we're, we want Man has
• 33:40
  Rupert Isaacson: dominion.
• 33:41
  Yeah.
• 33:41
  Man has
• 33:42
  Leana Tank: dominion.
• 33:42
  Yeah.
• 33:44
  And, and that never really made sense to me.
• 33:46
  I remember just being kind of like, oh, I don't know about that.
• 33:49
  And I think I, I read a lot.
• 33:54
  I, I, when I went to college, I studied philosophy.
• 33:58
  My, I had a really deep interest in like other cultures and traveling.
• 34:06
  My grandparents were missionaries in Africa and South America.
• 34:11
  So I grew up with all these stories about my dad growing up in these
• 34:15
  other places that I thought were really fascinating and intriguing.
• 34:22
  And my mom's side of the family, my grandfather was like a magician.
• 34:27
  And so I grew up with all these, like, you know, my, my mom and my
• 34:32
  uncle had all these like sleight of hand magician tricks and, and
• 34:35
  stories about his life as a magician.
• 34:39
  I mean, he was a lawyer, but he was like a big time magician.
• 34:41
  He was like the president of the International Brotherhood of Magicians.
• 34:45
  I, yeah.
• 34:46
  So I think I grew up with all these different ideas and when I went to
• 34:50
  college and studied theology I, not theology, but philosophy, when I
• 35:02
  actually started reading and thinking about the concept of hell and trying
• 35:07
  to make it make sense how all of these, like other cultures of the world, like
• 35:16
  90% of like the world's population would be just kind of resigned to hell.
• 35:21
  And somehow the Americans with all of our, like, you know, our money and our
• 35:27
  comfort also happened to be correct in our beliefs and, and we'll go to heaven.
• 35:32
  To me I was like, yeah, that makes absolutely no sense.
• 35:34
  The American.
• 35:36
  Yeah.
• 35:36
  Yeah.
• 35:37
  But I did I, I did like and believe in that idea of caring
• 35:44
  for like the least of these.
• 35:46
  And, and when I was just starting to look at like where to invest my, like my work
• 35:53
  and my energy and my time I, it was like, well, that seems like a worthy place.
• 36:00
  You know, to put my, to invest my, like, work life.
• 36:04
  I, I really loved, I read Oliver Sacks is a, I read his work in
• 36:11
  college and it was really, really, it really like connected with me and I'm
• 36:16
  actually reading his letters right now
• 36:18
  Rupert Isaacson: for a hat.
• 36:19
  Leana Tank: Yeah, he was a neurologist and he, but he was a very like,
• 36:24
  human kind of poet, neurologist that, like, he wrote these case histories
• 36:29
  of these really extreme cases of people, people's experiences with like
• 36:36
  different neurological conditions.
• 36:38
  But it was all about how they, how they kind of lost all foundation of like who
• 36:46
  they are, who they were in the world, how they experienced life, and then
• 36:50
  how they kind of remade it and, and adapted and, and kind of found their
• 36:56
  humanity and worked those conditions into their, into an another form of meaning.
• 37:04
  And I just found it to be really, really beautiful and interesting and
• 37:08
  I'd never, I didn't, wasn't even aware of, you know, it's just like beyond this
• 37:14
  imaginable experience, what, how people can wind up living and still having, I.
• 37:23
  A very full, meaningful, rich life.
• 37:27
  And that just really fascinated me.
• 37:29
  So yeah, I feel like I'm kind of like wandering away from the question.
• 37:36
  I don't even remember where we started.
• 37:37
  No, I, I think, I think you got that.
• 37:39
  And
• 37:40
  Rupert Isaacson: so, and it leads me to a, a triple question, which is this one.
• 37:46
  So how does one develop the ability to approach without agenda?
• 37:57
  And then my devil's advocate questions, is there actually no agenda?
• 38:01
  Because okay, maybe they haven't showered or they're not communicating.
• 38:06
  So presumably you're brought in there for some sort of healing.
• 38:10
  Is healing an agenda?
• 38:13
  And is th that an okay agenda?
• 38:16
  You know what I mean?
• 38:17
  So just
• 38:17
  Leana Tank: mm-hmm.
• 38:18
  Mm-hmm.
• 38:18
  Your thoughts on this, really?
• 38:19
  Mm-hmm.
• 38:19
  Yeah.
• 38:20
  Yeah.
• 38:22
  I, okay.
• 38:24
  Rupert Isaacson: If you're in the equine assisted field, or if you're
• 38:26
  considering a career in the equine assisted field, you might want to consider
• 38:31
  taking one of our three neuroscience backed equine assisted programs.
• 38:35
  Horseboy method, now established for 20 years, is the original
• 38:41
  Equine assisted program specifically designed for autism, mentored by and
• 38:48
  developed in conjunction with Dr.
• 38:50
  Temple Grandin and many other neuroscientists.
• 38:53
  We work in the saddle with younger children.
• 38:57
  Helping them create oxytocin in their bodies and neuroplasticity in the brain.
• 39:03
  It works incredibly well.
• 39:04
  It's now in about 40 countries.
• 39:07
  Check it out.
• 39:08
  If you're working without horses, you might want to look at movement
• 39:12
  method, which gets a very, very similar effect, but can also be
• 39:16
  applied in schools, in homes.
• 39:18
  If you're working with families, you can give them really tangible exercises to do
• 39:23
  at home that will create neuroplasticity.
• 39:25
  when they're not with you.
• 39:27
  Finally, we have taquine equine integration.
• 39:31
  If you know anything about our programs, you know that we need a
• 39:34
  really high standard of horsemanship in order to create the oxytocin
• 39:38
  in the body of the person that we're working with, child or adult.
• 39:42
  So, this means we need to train a horse in collection, but this
• 39:46
  also has a really beneficial effect on the horse's well being.
• 39:50
  And it also ends your time conflict, where you're wondering, oh my gosh, how
• 39:55
  am I going to condition my horses and maintain them and give them what they
• 39:58
  need, as well as Serving my clients.
• 40:01
  Takine equine integration aimed at a more adult client base
• 40:06
  absolutely gives you this.
• 40:08
  Leana Tank: A couple of things to say on that.
• 40:09
  I'll start with in, in my experience, the most powerful real healing has
• 40:20
  always come from that person themselves.
• 40:23
  So I really don't, and I've gotten more and more and more to where I feel like.
• 40:32
  My role is really just to help remove whatever barriers
• 40:35
  are there for that person to,
• 40:40
  you know, find what healing is for them.
• 40:45
  And it can just be these really small shifts in like greater, greater
• 40:50
  participation, greater connection to themselves, greater connection to others.
• 40:56
  It's for a lot of the people that I work with, like they're not going to whatever,
• 41:03
  what it, what even is healing, you know, like what is healing isn't like they're
• 41:07
  fixed or they're cured or they're healed.
• 41:09
  It's like, well, it's difference between healing.
• 41:10
  And
• 41:10
  Rupert Isaacson: it's a good question.
• 41:11
  I think in my mind there is a big difference between healing and cure.
• 41:14
  Like people often think knowing when I went off to Mongolia with
• 41:19
  Roman, for example, oh, you were looking for a cure for autism.
• 41:21
  No, I wasn't, but I was looking for healing because we were all suffering
• 41:26
  and we did find it, but the autism wasn't what was causing the suffering.
• 41:29
  It was reactions to other things.
• 41:31
  But yeah, so I, I think that is just worth drawing attention to that.
• 41:37
  Healing and cure are two slightly different things.
• 41:40
  And so, but, so Go on.
• 41:42
  Yeah.
• 41:42
  Leana Tank: Yeah.
• 41:43
  Yeah.
• 41:43
  And I think that is definitely the, the way I am operating and the way I
• 41:49
  am looking at things like a lot of the people I work with are always going to
• 41:53
  need some degree of like, support just, just to be safe and to live in the world.
• 41:59
  But often they are really, really disconnected from themselves.
• 42:07
  They're disconnected from other people.
• 42:08
  They're not, they don't have a lot of meaning or purpose in their lives.
• 42:12
  There's, their days are kind of full of like
• 42:19
  nothing avoid.
• 42:20
  So if I'm able to even shift that a little bit and, and bring in some purpose,
• 42:28
  bring in some movement, bring in some energy, some vitality, some, you know,
• 42:34
  just yeah, any kind of like change in that I see as as progress as healing.
• 42:41
  And I've seen small shifts and I've seen really big shifts and I've seen,
• 42:46
  I've worked with people that I've been like, I didn't do anything for them.
• 42:49
  And then a year later I, I will hear a story that, you know, actually there
• 42:54
  was an impact or there was a big change.
• 42:56
  So, but generally I.
• 43:01
  If I come in with some kind of preconceived notion or idea of like,
• 43:05
  what that's going to look like and what's gonna help them, it doesn't go very well.
• 43:12
  And so coming in with no agenda and just really, really radically listening to
• 43:19
  that person and where they are and what's important to them and what they feel could
• 43:26
  be, you know, would, what that would mean for them is, is always the way to go.
• 43:32
  And then my job is just to be like, yes, great idea.
• 43:36
  How are we gonna do that?
• 43:37
  You know?
• 43:37
  And honestly, the systems that we're working in are so
• 43:40
  dysfunctional and so broken.
• 43:43
  It's, it's really basic stuff for a lot of people.
• 43:46
  You know, in, in, in the program where our probably most intense, it's like
• 43:53
  locked all men mostly in that like not guilty by reason of insanity.
• 44:00
  So they have, you know, all part of the criminal justice system.
• 44:03
  It sounds really gnarly.
• 44:05
  Most of the time what they wanna do is take a walk outside.
• 44:10
  You know, I take people if it's safe for me to do so.
• 44:14
  And, and most of the time it is, I'll just take them walking.
• 44:18
  We live by.
• 44:19
  They're about 15 minutes from Lake Michigan, which is beautiful.
• 44:24
  And I'll just take them out to the lake and we'll walk on the beach.
• 44:28
  And I'm like one of the only ones that does that kind of thing, you know, like
• 44:32
  it's just not really part of the medical, healthcare system frame of reference
• 44:36
  to see that as like a healing activity.
• 44:39
  But for me it's like a no brainer.
• 44:40
  Like let's go see some beautiful nature.
• 44:44
  And I just did that recently and had this young man who was really struggling
• 44:49
  and it, it's been like a cold winter and there was, we went out to the lake shore
• 44:54
  and there's just this little patch of blue sky and he like pointed at it and he
• 44:59
  was like, that, that's telling me that, that God's telling me he's got my back.
• 45:05
  You know?
• 45:06
  And and that led to a really, you know, beautiful conversation about like,
• 45:10
  yeah, like that, that's beautiful.
• 45:14
  That's such a, like what a lovely way of like, nature showing you
• 45:19
  that like it's there for you, it's showing up for you and like what else,
• 45:23
  what else tells you that, you know?
• 45:25
  And he's like, well, sometimes I see birds and that, you know, that
• 45:28
  tells me everything's gonna be okay.
• 45:30
  You know, and like, and just conversations like that that help give people a sense
• 45:34
  of connection, a sense of like, insight and get them thinking, thinking along
• 45:40
  those lines I think is like, really healing and letting, you know, bringing
• 45:48
  people into nature and then letting nature show up and do what it's gonna do, and
• 45:56
  then be just prepared to frame that and organize it and kind of like give them
• 46:03
  a way to synthesize it is, is one of the most powerful and easiest ways I think.
• 46:10
  And then the other thing in that program that everyone wants to do is cook.
• 46:16
  That's interesting.
• 46:17
  Why?
• 46:18
  Yeah.
• 46:19
  A lot of them have been in prison or institutions a lot of their lives
• 46:23
  and they never, ever got to cook.
• 46:24
  They don't know how even in that facility,
• 46:28
  Rupert Isaacson: do they tell you, or is this something that you suggest?
• 46:31
  Leana Tank: A lot of times it's like, the only thing they wanna do with me.
• 46:35
  So it'll, it'll be like, what do you wanna do?
• 46:39
  Nothing.
• 46:40
  And then maybe I'll give options and they'll be like, actually,
• 46:44
  yes, I would love to make brownies.
• 46:46
  People love food.
• 46:48
  Cooking is a really, really just foundational functional skill.
• 46:51
  Like, if they're gonna like, move on from there and, and everyone wants to be more
• 46:56
  independent, you know, for, you know.
• 47:00
  The day-to-day life of most of us of like driving a car, having a home, having a job
• 47:05
  is like beyond the wildest dreams of like most of the people that I'm working with.
• 47:10
  So if they feel like they can like work towards skills that will give them
• 47:15
  some level of independence, they're a little more motivated for that too.
• 47:19
  And so I'll do whatever I can to, like, I'll, I've like rigged up
• 47:24
  little hot plates so we can like, make burgers or pancakes or I'll take 'em
• 47:30
  to another, there's other programs that have kitchens where we have
• 47:33
  kitchen access and we'll cook things.
• 47:35
  And if you think about like promoting a sense of safety and
• 47:40
  like community and connection like cooking is, is just great for that.
• 47:46
  You know, if you think about like,
• 47:48
  Rupert Isaacson: it's wellbeing, I guess, isn't it?
• 47:49
  Yeah.
• 47:50
  Leana Tank: Yeah.
• 47:50
  And like if you are like cooking in the kitchen with a friend or something,
• 47:54
  or making dinner with a friend or, you know, it's just a very like,
• 47:58
  safe, connected, enjoyable, ancient, ancient thing to, to be engaged in.
• 48:08
  And I, that's, so many of them wanna do that with me.
• 48:10
  So I try to do that as much as I can.
• 48:13
  Rupert Isaacson: This was actually, you've sort of partly answered, but I, I
• 48:16
  still want to pose the question because I think it bears more discussion, is,
• 48:18
  you know, I, I would imagine that quite a few of the people are in a fairly
• 48:21
  profound state of despair, and when you're in despair, you lose motivation.
• 48:27
  So if you were to say, well, I'm, I, I, I do what they like the way they love
• 48:30
  music, or they want, but I should imagine that a lot of people have lost a sense
• 48:35
  of what they like and what they love.
• 48:36
  Leana Tank: Mm-hmm.
• 48:37
  Mm-hmm.
• 48:37
  Rupert Isaacson: But what you've just described is effectively nature, because
• 48:42
  I would put cooking in that category too, because you're using natural elements,
• 48:48
  natural processes for a natural process.
• 48:53
  When you are encountering that nihilistic despair that people have given up,
• 49:03
  is, is nature always the key?
• 49:07
  Leana Tank: That is usually the easiest, most effective,
• 49:11
  most powerful thing to access?
• 49:14
  Yeah, I would say.
• 49:16
  Rupert Isaacson: So.
• 49:17
  Why is that not prescribed?
• 49:20
  Leana Tank: That's a very good question.
• 49:24
  Rupert Isaacson: What do you seriously, why given that, I think
• 49:27
  deep down we all know this, right?
• 49:29
  And that mental health started with the Quakers and asylums
• 49:32
  and asylums were supposed to be, asylum means sanctuary, right?
• 49:36
  That's its actual meaning that the, that they created gar effectively
• 49:39
  gardens that people could rest in and come back to themselves in and so on.
• 49:45
  And so, and we've known this forever
• 49:51
  and you are now getting some physicians prescribing nature, but just begun
• 49:56
  to happen, I think, post covid.
• 50:01
  Why do you think that
• 50:05
  given that, you know, intelligent people are
• 50:11
  helping to create the policies that affect people in mental
• 50:17
  health institutions, what, yeah.
• 50:18
  Why isn't it just a fundamental, what's blocking it?
• 50:22
  What,
• 50:24
  Leana Tank: yeah.
• 50:24
  I mean, I think a lot of it is just the state of our medical systems is very,
• 50:32
  the, the perspective is very mechanized.
• 50:37
  It's very reductionistic.
• 50:38
  So the focus is much more on medications behavior management, behavior plans
• 50:48
  and you know, things like that.
• 50:53
  More focused on diagnosing, prescribing and there's just not as much
• 51:02
  thought put into the environment.
• 51:06
  The indoor environment, the outdoor environment things are pretty siloed.
• 51:11
  There's, you know, lawn care people that take care of the outside and then there's
• 51:16
  maintenance for the inside and yeah, it's just that whole picture isn't considered.
• 51:24
  Even just the consideration of like, the impact and power of like the culture and
• 51:30
  the community in of a program can have such a powerful, powerful influence on
• 51:37
  that person's progress and their healing.
• 51:41
  Because, I mean, our neurobiology is not to be like in this vacuum, like
• 51:48
  our brains and nervous systems are.
• 51:52
  Designed to be always engaging with and connecting with and resonating with the
• 52:01
  other people around us and the nature around us and the environment around us.
• 52:07
  And that is like the number one most powerful de determinant of kind of
• 52:14
  like where someone is gonna be, you know, what they're gonna be doing
• 52:19
  with their time, you know, what kind of state they're gonna be in.
• 52:22
  But that's just, it's, it's a very complex, dynamic
• 52:28
  system that is not linear.
• 52:30
  And I think that the medical system wants everything to be very linear.
• 52:36
  Linear and very, like A plus B equals C, and let's just change this one thing,
• 52:43
  or let's just look at it this one way.
• 52:46
  Or they look at that person in a vacuum and they don't look at the
• 52:49
  whole web of every determinant that is contributing to that person's health.
• 53:02
  Rupert Isaacson: I guess there's also presumably a desire both
• 53:07
  negative and positive for control.
• 53:08
  Mm-hmm.
• 53:09
  To say these people are outta control, not safe.
• 53:13
  They're not safe to be out in the community.
• 53:15
  Mm-hmm.
• 53:16
  So therefore a walk in nature is.
• 53:19
  Out in the community.
• 53:21
  We can't risk people.
• 53:25
  We can't risk these people.
• 53:26
  You know, the service user, if you like, losing control, having a psychotic, you
• 53:32
  know, and while one can understand that you seem to some degree to be putting the
• 53:40
  lie to that, which is interesting to me.
• 53:43
  Are you ever afraid, let's say you take them out to Michi late Michigan, that
• 53:47
  they're gonna do something crazy that you yourself are in danger or that other
• 53:50
  people on that beach could be in danger?
• 53:52
  I mean, admittedly I've been out to the late Michigan beaches, unless you're
• 53:55
  going to a hotspot, it's a lot of, you know, it's wild what, you know?
• 53:59
  Mm-hmm.
• 53:59
  So it's not like there's a ton of people around, but nonetheless is it
• 54:03
  irresponsible to take them out like that?
• 54:07
  It's, you know, just, just talk, talk through all these complexities
• 54:10
  that I could see going through the heads of policy makers.
• 54:13
  Leana Tank: Yeah.
• 54:14
  You know, I mean, I'm always mindful of who I'm working with and I know them well
• 54:25
  and there are safety measures in place.
• 54:28
  There's assessments, there's safety plans, and there, there's all of this
• 54:33
  structure in place to kind of determine.
• 54:38
  Levels of safety for people going in the community if
• 54:42
  they need, I presume sometimes
• 54:43
  Rupert Isaacson: minders, you know?
• 54:45
  Leana Tank: Yeah.
• 54:45
  Extra people.
• 54:47
  Some will say you need two staff, some can't go with a female,
• 54:50
  some have to go with a male.
• 54:52
  Like there's, there's a lot of structure of safety in place
• 54:57
  around working with these people.
• 54:59
  And I'm very, very mindful.
• 55:01
  There are certain people that I will totally go for a hike in the woods
• 55:06
  alone with and feel completely safe.
• 55:11
  And there's people I would never do that with.
• 55:14
  And you know, for most of the folks, when you know them, you know, it's,
• 55:23
  you know, when they're in their own, they're, they're, they're connected
• 55:30
  to themselves, they have a good sense of themselves, they're in control,
• 55:34
  whatever, you know, whatever that means.
• 55:35
  They're, they're aware of their actions and they're in a good head space.
• 55:42
  And you know, when someone is struggling, when someone's activated,
• 55:47
  when someone is when they're so higher risk of, you know, them.
• 55:53
  Getting triggered into some kind of distress.
• 55:56
  And that wouldn't be a time when I'm, you know, taking somebody out or maybe
• 56:00
  I would have someone else come with me if I'm trying to take them out to
• 56:03
  like help them manage their stress.
• 56:07
  But for the most part, when I'm working with people, they're in a good head space.
• 56:12
  They're pretty centered.
• 56:14
  They're, you know, not in crisis.
• 56:18
  There's a really, really big difference between when someone is in active crisis.
• 56:24
  And that is when you see a lot of those like really distressing,
• 56:28
  challenging behaviors.
• 56:30
  And it does happen, but it's, there's a completely different
• 56:36
  difference, you know, when someone is in crisis and when they're not.
• 56:40
  And you're not
• 56:40
  Rupert Isaacson: worried that a, a crisis could be triggered by
• 56:43
  something outside of your control.
• 56:45
  Leana Tank: It can happen, but you kind of know your person and you know what
• 56:49
  kind of things are gonna trigger that.
• 56:51
  And you can take precautions and I'm pretty proactive.
• 56:56
  Like I know how to assess the situation and I know my person and
• 57:04
  I know what might be distressing to them and I avoid that or I.
• 57:12
  Maybe sometimes we're like, I have people that going out in the
• 57:16
  community does trigger some anxiety triggers some hallucinations.
• 57:24
  They might hear people saying mean things to them that are not like really real.
• 57:29
  And that might be something that we talk about.
• 57:33
  Maybe we practice like some grounding tools.
• 57:38
  You know, I, I go, I have a lot of tools in my little trauma toolkit,
• 57:45
  sensory toolkit for helping people manage that kind of distress.
• 57:50
  So that would be something that we are like building awareness
• 57:54
  of and we're working on.
• 57:55
  And I can very intentionally kind of push their window of tolerance
• 58:04
  without them going over the edge.
• 58:06
  So, yeah, talk to us.
• 58:08
  Rupert Isaacson: Take us through your toolkit.
• 58:09
  That's fascinating.
• 58:10
  I think a lot of us would like to have access to those sorts of tools.
• 58:13
  Leana Tank: Oh, you know, a lot of it is, I, I use a lot of
• 58:18
  body-based sensory strategies.
• 58:22
  So as an OT I did a lot of training on like sensory integration.
• 58:32
  I.
• 58:33
  And understanding how we, how our senses kind of shape our reality,
• 58:43
  Rupert Isaacson: our nervous systems, in fact.
• 58:45
  Leana Tank: Yeah.
• 58:45
  Yeah.
• 58:46
  And it's, it's so fascinating that it's one of my areas I'm so
• 58:50
  fascinated by and, and it really is a growing area in mental health.
• 58:58
  I think people are understanding more and more that like mind and body connection
• 59:03
  and that it's not just that mental health is this like disembodied thing that just
• 59:10
  happens in our brains, but it's really
• 59:13
  Rupert Isaacson: Right.
• 59:13
  A
• 59:13
  Leana Tank: whole bodies, you know,
• 59:15
  Rupert Isaacson: it started to, okay, we understand, okay, let's
• 59:18
  take into account the nervous system.
• 59:20
  And nature presumably has fewer bad sensory triggers because we
• 59:23
  are organisms, you know, therefore.
• 59:24
  Leana Tank: Mm-hmm.
• 59:26
  Rupert Isaacson: But for avoiding crisis or for dealing with crisis.
• 59:30
  Leana Tank: Mm-hmm.
• 59:32
  Rupert Isaacson: Can you be specific about some tools that you think might be,
• 59:34
  'cause we all go through crisis, right?
• 59:36
  Leana Tank: Mm-hmm.
• 59:37
  Mm-hmm.
• 59:37
  And we
• 59:37
  Rupert Isaacson: all crises in our families and we have crises in ourselves.
• 59:39
  This's gonna happen several times a day just in the most normal situations.
• 59:43
  So, because you work on the cutting edge of this, you know?
• 59:47
  Mm-hmm.
• 59:48
  Leana Tank: Mm-hmm.
• 59:48
  There are some
• 59:49
  Rupert Isaacson: tools.
• 59:49
  Leana Tank: Yeah.
• 59:51
  Well, first is I.
• 59:55
  I'm very, very aware of myself and where my system is at.
• 59:59
  I, you know, have a lot, have developed a lot of tools just
• 1:00:05
  to keep myself like grounded.
• 1:00:08
  Keep myself in kind of that calm, regulated nervous system state, being
• 1:00:12
  able to use my voice, my body language my breathing to take advantage of
• 1:00:21
  the, that like mirroring, reflection, resonance with the other person's system.
• 1:00:26
  You use these tools to kind of become that like safe anchor for that person.
• 1:00:33
  And it, a lot of it is in like, the language that you use and
• 1:00:38
  just the way that you show up.
• 1:00:42
  And then I'm always going to try to organize so using things like rhythm,
• 1:00:52
  so music, offering to play music offering to you know, seeing like what
• 1:01:01
  kind of music do you wanna listen to?
• 1:01:02
  Let's put it on, let's rock to the music, let's walk to the
• 1:01:07
  music, let's try to sing along.
• 1:01:10
  I have done a lot of training to, in like the different nerve nervous system states.
• 1:01:16
  So being able to observe if somebody is edging into more of a fight response
• 1:01:23
  or a flight response or a freeze, I, you have to really train your eye to
• 1:01:31
  see those very subtle shifts in that person's physiology that tell you that
• 1:01:40
  they are starting to become activated.
• 1:01:42
  And it can be as small as like they're holding their breath.
• 1:01:49
  And being able to, in a very curious, nonjudgmental way, notice those things.
• 1:01:56
  A lot of times if somebody feels like you are that aware and noticing that kind of
• 1:02:02
  a shift in their state that alone will bring about a lot of safety for them.
• 1:02:08
  And
• 1:02:11
  so, so being able to see that and kind of.
• 1:02:15
  Headed off before things escalate really higher, because once somebody
• 1:02:19
  has really shifted into an activated fight or flight state, it's a
• 1:02:24
  lot harder to to bring them down.
• 1:02:27
  But,
• 1:02:29
  Rupert Isaacson: okay.
• 1:02:29
  Quick question about the music.
• 1:02:30
  So what if they want to listen to music that, you know, is gonna
• 1:02:32
  dysregulate them even further?
• 1:02:37
  Leana Tank: I, you know, I'd give some options.
• 1:02:39
  No, let's listen to Moza.
• 1:02:41
  No, I wanna
• 1:02:41
  Rupert Isaacson: listen to, you know, whatever and
• 1:02:44
  Leana Tank: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 1:02:46
  Rupert Isaacson: You don't wanna then get into it.
• 1:02:47
  No, you can't.
• 1:02:48
  And right time you're trying to follow them and, but you also know
• 1:02:54
  it's gonna trigger them, so, yeah.
• 1:02:55
  Mm-hmm.
• 1:02:55
  Like how would you, how'd you deal with that?
• 1:02:57
  Leana Tank: Mm-hmm.
• 1:02:58
  Yeah.
• 1:02:58
  Yeah.
• 1:02:59
  It's tricky.
• 1:02:59
  I mean, it, I would maybe give some choices within that like, area
• 1:03:05
  that they're looking at and I have like a Spotify account that I can,
• 1:03:08
  like, pick just about anything.
• 1:03:11
  And even if, you know, there's music that is gonna trigger them, you know, and
• 1:03:17
  it's hard to say like how much it would, even if something is really, really like
• 1:03:21
  Ragey we might be able to put that on.
• 1:03:24
  And I might still be able, within that, I'm going to try to organize a rhythm.
• 1:03:31
  I'm gonna try to organize like maybe we.
• 1:03:35
  Get out a drum or we get something out and we try to like, go along to the beat
• 1:03:39
  with that, you know, to try to like build a rhythm, build an organization within
• 1:03:44
  like, the music that they wanna listen to.
• 1:03:47
  Or maybe we're gonna go and like power walk to it, or maybe we're gonna try
• 1:03:50
  to sing along as a way to kind of like get that energy out in a positive way.
• 1:03:55
  Rupert Isaacson: I'll to it.
• 1:03:56
  That's cool.
• 1:03:57
  Leana Tank: Yeah.
• 1:03:57
  I mean, a lot of times, like I, I mean I use music all the time.
• 1:04:01
  Rupert Isaacson: And, and I'm just thinking even let's say that's
• 1:04:04
  what I'm think these tools are so useful in more mundane situations.
• 1:04:08
  I remember when I was a, a kid and wanting to listen to lots and lots and
• 1:04:12
  lots of metal and, you know, there was always in the house that kind of, no,
• 1:04:16
  this is go away from your horrible metal.
• 1:04:18
  I hate your metal.
• 1:04:18
  And that, so of course, you know, metal became a point of rebellion, but at
• 1:04:22
  no point, for example, did anyone say, actually, why don't we just clean the
• 1:04:27
  house really, really hard to this metal to this day, it's my house cleaning music.
• 1:04:32
  Like if you put on metal mm-hmm.
• 1:04:33
  You're gonna get a clean house, you know, if I'm mm-hmm.
• 1:04:35
  I'm just gonna start cleaning, you know.
• 1:04:37
  So it's interesting that you say that the idea of sort of taking
• 1:04:40
  even a ragy energy and channeling
• 1:04:43
  Leana Tank: it.
• 1:04:43
  Channeling it,
• 1:04:44
  Rupert Isaacson: yeah.
• 1:04:45
  Leana Tank: Mm-hmm.
• 1:04:46
  Rupert Isaacson: Mm-hmm.
• 1:04:46
  You have to be, you have to have some sort of inner security to be able to do that.
• 1:04:50
  What do you do then?
• 1:04:51
  If they are, if they have gone over the edge?
• 1:04:55
  Leana Tank: Then it's really just about safety, you know?
• 1:04:58
  And that's when you have to be aware of like who else is around, who can
• 1:05:03
  have your back, how working together just to like keep the situation safe.
• 1:05:08
  And, and, and the folks that I work with, like when they do go over the edge
• 1:05:12
  and when they are their, their systems can be so sensitive that that's when
• 1:05:17
  things can get pretty extreme and unsafe.
• 1:05:19
  So honestly, in my nearly 10 years of working there, I really haven't
• 1:05:28
  experienced much of that myself, honestly.
• 1:05:31
  I have certainly worked with people who then I hear about like, you know, oh, I
• 1:05:36
  worked, I, you know, made cookies with this person this morning, and then last
• 1:05:42
  night they destroyed the whole entire program and destroyed, you know, went and,
• 1:05:49
  you know, threw rocks at the staff's car.
• 1:05:51
  And I'm like, oh dang, they had a bad night.
• 1:05:55
  What'd you put in those cookies?
• 1:05:56
  Right?
• 1:05:58
  The cookies did not create the happiness I was hoping for.
• 1:06:01
  But I think because, and some of it is just my, the nature of my
• 1:06:07
  position, I'm kind of the good guy.
• 1:06:08
  I'm kind of the safe.
• 1:06:13
  Friendly, fun person that is doing the things that the person wants to do.
• 1:06:17
  And I am, pretty skilled at where that person's zone of tolerance is
• 1:06:24
  and not to push them over that edge.
• 1:06:27
  Yeah.
• 1:06:28
  And honestly, the things that really push people into that fight or flight are those
• 1:06:35
  more author authoritarian, controlling dominance based ways of engagement.
• 1:06:43
  And, and, and we struggle with that, you know, with like, with our staff and, and
• 1:06:49
  those kinds of interactions because that can be like the go-to for a lot of people.
• 1:06:53
  That's how a lot of people were raised.
• 1:06:56
  That's how a lot of people feel like they need to keep things safe and keep
• 1:07:00
  things locked down and in control.
• 1:07:03
  And those are the kinds of ways of interacting that really escalate people.
• 1:07:08
  And so I have found that if you're not meeting people with that kind of energy,
• 1:07:13
  like most of the time, that I just don't, I just don't see that side of them.
• 1:07:19
  Rupert Isaacson: And it's interesting because, yeah, I,
• 1:07:20
  I obviously in my line of work, your line of work, you know, ones.
• 1:07:25
  Meeting a lot of people who are dealing with people struggling with mental
• 1:07:28
  health and getting attacked, punched, kicked, bitten, can be part of the game.
• 1:07:34
  And one of the things I find really interesting about talking to you is that
• 1:07:39
  I'm not hearing those stories from you.
• 1:07:41
  Even though you are in there with people who certainly could
• 1:07:45
  and perhaps do with others,
• 1:07:49
  I don't wanna jinx you, but why do you think beyond the fact that you don't adopt
• 1:07:56
  an authoritarian escalating approach?
• 1:08:01
  As you say, if they do flip over the edge, it has to be about safety
• 1:08:04
  and therefore a certain amount of coercion is going to come in.
• 1:08:08
  You could end up on the end of a flying fist.
• 1:08:13
  Why don't you, do you think,
• 1:08:17
  Leana Tank: I mean, I think that's, that's a big part of it, is not coming
• 1:08:21
  in with that mindset of trying to control people, trying to dominate, trying to,
• 1:08:26
  Rupert Isaacson: there's so much of it about intention.
• 1:08:28
  Leana Tank: Yeah.
• 1:08:29
  I think, I think the energy that you bring to it is a huge part of it.
• 1:08:33
  And then I'm also just really, really attuned to where they're
• 1:08:38
  at and, and listening to them and kind of me, you know.
• 1:08:44
  Using myself as a way to help them connect more to themselves.
• 1:08:48
  And I think when you show up to work people with people in that way, like
• 1:08:53
  you're really a lot less likely to run into those kinds of challenges.
• 1:08:59
  I'm not saying it can't happen and, and honestly, if somebody's in active
• 1:09:04
  crisis, I'm not gonna go and try to work with 'em because that's not really
• 1:09:08
  the time that that's not the time where I'm gonna really be effective.
• 1:09:13
  Right.
• 1:09:13
  That's not the time when people are learning and growing,
• 1:09:15
  Rupert Isaacson: that the people are like, sorry Leanna, they're
• 1:09:19
  just, you know, busy Yeah.
• 1:09:22
  Kicking the doors in.
• 1:09:23
  Yeah.
• 1:09:24
  Would, would you say, okay, I'll see you tomorrow in that case?
• 1:09:27
  Leana Tank: Mm-hmm.
• 1:09:27
  Yeah.
• 1:09:28
  Rupert Isaacson: Yeah.
• 1:09:28
  Yeah.
• 1:09:29
  When, okay.
• 1:09:32
  I'm, I'm torn between going further into nature or into art
• 1:09:36
  and aesthetics here, because which actually is perhaps the same thing.
• 1:09:41
  Let's just talk a bit about indoor environments.
• 1:09:44
  So taking people out into nature.
• 1:09:45
  Fantastic.
• 1:09:46
  Okay.
• 1:09:48
  The indoor environment.
• 1:09:50
  What do you feel is the importance of art and aesthetics in mental health,
• 1:09:56
  including our everyday mental health?
• 1:09:59
  Leana Tank: Yeah.
• 1:09:59
  I mean, I think it's enormously important.
• 1:10:02
  And it's, that's an area.
• 1:10:05
  Yeah, I mean that's an area that I've been really trying to like,
• 1:10:08
  think outside the box and in our programs, because they do tend to
• 1:10:11
  look pretty institutional just because things get ripped up and destroyed.
• 1:10:18
  And so everything has to be really, really durable.
• 1:10:21
  But I know, like I, I I read this book called Healing Spaces that just goes
• 1:10:27
  into so much detail and research about the importance of the environment on
• 1:10:33
  people's mental health and their healing.
• 1:10:35
  And there was even, I recall a steady, like done in hospitals that if somebody
• 1:10:39
  is in a room with a window where they can see outside and they can see
• 1:10:44
  like trees that they heal faster from medical conditions, then a room with
• 1:10:52
  a window facing like a brick wall.
• 1:10:54
  And there's so many different aspects of like the indoor and the outdoor
• 1:11:00
  environment, you know, just lighting and color and the furniture, you
• 1:11:06
  know, and like the sounds and the smells and even just like the space,
• 1:11:11
  how the space is laid out itself.
• 1:11:15
  And I do a lot of evaluating that when I.
• 1:11:21
  I, I help a lot on the teams that are deciding like, okay,
• 1:11:24
  this person should go here.
• 1:11:25
  This person should go here.
• 1:11:27
  And we have homes that are specifically for like autistic adults who have really,
• 1:11:34
  really intense, challenging behaviors and trying to make sure that they have
• 1:11:41
  environments that are optimal for them.
• 1:11:44
  And it, it can be a challenge to advocate even for like, let's make sure
• 1:11:48
  they have some rocking chairs, right?
• 1:11:50
  Like, and when you're talking adults, it's, even with autism, it's even more
• 1:11:58
  challenging because like, you can have a little swing for a little kid or
• 1:12:02
  whatever, and that's easy, but I've got like 300 pound dudes that also could
• 1:12:08
  use a swing, but it's a lot harder to find a swing that's gonna hold up.
• 1:12:14
  And even our rocking chairs, like we will buy recliners that rock and they
• 1:12:18
  get destroyed within a few months.
• 1:12:22
  So really like trying to figure out what is gonna do the job, what's gonna
• 1:12:28
  hold up, what's not gonna get destroyed, what's gonna be cost effective.
• 1:12:32
  It can be really challenging and the same, you know, putting
• 1:12:35
  art and things on the walls.
• 1:12:37
  It's finding things that are.
• 1:12:41
  Aesthetically pleasing that are not gonna get ripped down and destroyed.
• 1:12:47
  There was also like research on even putting up like nature, like fractals,
• 1:12:52
  like, nature art that has like, those, like repeating patterns and things in
• 1:12:55
  it reduces like anxiety and depression.
• 1:13:00
  I found a research study about that.
• 1:13:01
  I thought it was so interesting to
• 1:13:02
  Rupert Isaacson: me that would make sense because of course it,
• 1:13:04
  it mimics the environment that our organism is designed for.
• 1:13:09
  Leana Tank: Mm-hmm.
• 1:13:09
  Mm-hmm.
• 1:13:09
  Rupert Isaacson: It's interesting.
• 1:13:10
  As you were talking, it made me remember a guy I had a very fascinating
• 1:13:15
  conversation with once, who his job was to, it's in England to take pubs that
• 1:13:24
  had a, he worked for the brewery and his specialty was to take pubs that had
• 1:13:28
  a real problem with violent culture.
• 1:13:32
  Those British listeners know what violent pub culture can truly be in the uk.
• 1:13:38
  They can be murderous places, the wrong pubs and turning, turning them around.
• 1:13:43
  And he was this really small expert.
• 1:13:45
  You expect a bloke like that to be, you know, huge shave and head, you know,
• 1:13:48
  tattoos everywhere, mouth intimidating.
• 1:13:51
  He was this little hippie and I said, how are you so successful at this
• 1:13:56
  that they pay you the big bucks?
• 1:13:57
  He said, Ru, it's so easy when people wanna fight, they want a fighting space.
• 1:14:05
  So the first thing we do is we take that space away.
• 1:14:09
  So almost all violent pubs will have a big open area with all the seating
• 1:14:14
  Leana Tank: around the walls
• 1:14:14
  Rupert Isaacson: effectively.
• 1:14:15
  Mm-hmm.
• 1:14:16
  So that there's a place for people to do this.
• 1:14:18
  They might call it a dance floor, but it's, it's not, it's
• 1:14:21
  a, it's a gladiatorial arena.
• 1:14:24
  The first thing, the first thing we do ru, is we put nice big
• 1:14:27
  comfy sofas and armchairs in there that are sort of deep and comfy.
• 1:14:34
  He said mm-hmm.
• 1:14:34
  People sit in them and they chill out and they sort of don't much feel
• 1:14:38
  like getting up and throwing punches.
• 1:14:41
  That's so
• 1:14:42
  Leana Tank: interesting.
• 1:14:43
  Rupert Isaacson: And he said, and then we put all sorts of nice
• 1:14:44
  art on the walls, and he said, and then we play classical music.
• 1:14:50
  We pipe classical music.
• 1:14:52
  And there was another place I knew of this happening in a bad shopping
• 1:14:58
  mall in another area of England that can be quite violent, where local
• 1:15:03
  youth were coming and, you know, smashing up and looting and things.
• 1:15:08
  And it, there was one of the shopkeepers who'd, who'd read something similar
• 1:15:12
  and he started piping classical music from speakers that no one could get to.
• 1:15:17
  And apparently he said it was amazing, Rupert, that, that people just evaporated.
• 1:15:21
  They, they just wouldn't hang out there because they could be hungry.
• 1:15:24
  Had to take their anchor somewhere else.
• 1:15:26
  And it's, it's so interesting how in these really practical situations.
• 1:15:34
  What we know chills us out.
• 1:15:37
  A comfy armchair, nice art on the walls, nice lighting, classical music.
• 1:15:42
  So why on earth again, wouldn't that be an institutional staple?
• 1:15:50
  Yeah, you know, again, maybe it comes down to this idea that, well, they,
• 1:15:53
  they've done wrong, they should suffer.
• 1:15:55
  But of course it's, that's not just in punitive, you know, criminal
• 1:16:01
  justice places that's in schools, and that's in places where people
• 1:16:04
  are actually supposed to be nurtured.
• 1:16:07
  Leana Tank: Yeah.
• 1:16:08
  And I, yeah.
• 1:16:08
  Yeah.
• 1:16:08
  And I don't think it's, it's that matter that like, oh, they don't deserve it or
• 1:16:12
  they shouldn't have something comfortable.
• 1:16:14
  I think it's just there's not a lot of thought and intention given to it.
• 1:16:19
  You know, when I, or the furniture that is initially bought that will actually
• 1:16:26
  hold up is not comfortable at all.
• 1:16:29
  And, and that just is kind of what sticks around.
• 1:16:32
  And it's, it's just a cost thing.
• 1:16:35
  You know, our, it's, there's not much money for these folks at all.
• 1:16:39
  There's not a lot of resources for them to have a very
• 1:16:44
  aesthetically pleasing environment.
• 1:16:47
  And it is hard that, I mean, they, when they are struggling.
• 1:16:54
  The behaviors can be very destructive.
• 1:16:56
  So there's holes in the walls, there's the furniture gets destroyed.
• 1:17:01
  You know, I've had a guy struggle with autism when he would throw all
• 1:17:05
  the furniture outside of the house when he was struggling, you know?
• 1:17:08
  So it's hard to have nice things when that's the situation.
• 1:17:14
  But
• 1:17:15
  Rupert Isaacson: unless I suppose you make the sofa and furniture so
• 1:17:17
  heavy that it's just so difficult to pick up that you, and that's Yeah.
• 1:17:20
  We have now.
• 1:17:21
  Yeah.
• 1:17:21
  Leana Tank: Yeah, yeah.
• 1:17:22
  Yeah.
• 1:17:22
  And that's what we have in a lot of the places now.
• 1:17:24
  But it's that, that kind of furniture isn't super comfy.
• 1:17:27
  You know?
• 1:17:27
  It's not, and it's not very aesthetically pleasing.
• 1:17:30
  Rupert Isaacson: Yeah.
• 1:17:30
  No, fair enough.
• 1:17:32
  Maybe, maybe we need to start enlisting designers for this.
• 1:17:35
  Mm-hmm.
• 1:17:36
  Okay.
• 1:17:36
  So now I would like to talk a little bit about how you maintain your own
• 1:17:44
  resilience and one of the things that I think everyone is struck by when they
• 1:17:49
  know you and know what you do is how you seem to retain this likeness of heart.
• 1:17:55
  That there isn't a, you know, I, I know quite a few people who work in
• 1:17:59
  difficult situations with difficult populations that there can be a
• 1:18:02
  certain bitterness that can creep in.
• 1:18:05
  I've never seen that in you.
• 1:18:06
  I also happen to know, of course, that you are an accomplished and avid horse woman.
• 1:18:13
  And we have a mutual friend Warwick Schiller.
• 1:18:16
  That's how we know each other.
• 1:18:18
  And those listeners who know Warwick know that he's a horse
• 1:18:22
  trainer, but also a podcaster.
• 1:18:24
  And his thing is a attunement.
• 1:18:27
  And that if you can attune to your horse your hor your relationship with
• 1:18:33
  your horse will change so radically that things that seemed really, really
• 1:18:37
  difficult for impossible suddenly just become kind of every day.
• 1:18:39
  And he, I think he's been born out in this and that's why he's as popular as he is.
• 1:18:43
  And I know that you followed his attunement mm-hmm.
• 1:18:47
  Stuff with horses.
• 1:18:47
  Mm-hmm.
• 1:18:47
  And I, you told me once in a, a conversation that this had actually
• 1:18:52
  helped you, this attunement thing had actually mm-hmm.
• 1:18:54
  Mm-hmm.
• 1:18:54
  Work.
• 1:18:54
  Can you talk to us about how you understand what, first, what's
• 1:18:59
  your relationship with horses?
• 1:19:00
  How does that impact your resilience?
• 1:19:06
  And then talk to us about this attunement thing and how one can
• 1:19:11
  transfer sort of species to species.
• 1:19:14
  Just wrap on that.
• 1:19:15
  I, I, I'd like to know your thoughts.
• 1:19:17
  Leana Tank: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 1:19:20
  Working with warwick's, like attunement practices absolutely radically
• 1:19:27
  changed the way I was able to work with the people I worked with.
• 1:19:30
  And I saw so many parallels.
• 1:19:33
  So I'll talk about that in a minute here.
• 1:19:35
  I.
• 1:19:36
  Like I, yeah, I do.
• 1:19:36
  I have my older two, I had two horses, my older mare, Sonny, who is just my heart.
• 1:19:42
  And I think that having that practice and working with horses really, really is a
• 1:19:50
  way for me to like, take care of myself.
• 1:19:52
  And I think that to do this kind of work with other people, you
• 1:19:55
  have to very radically take care of yourself and be really mindful of
• 1:20:00
  your own mental and emotional health.
• 1:20:03
  And people, our culture, like really loves a martyr and really
• 1:20:10
  perpetuates that kind of mindset that you're supposed to just kind of
• 1:20:13
  like sacrifice yourself to your job.
• 1:20:16
  Any job.
• 1:20:16
  Not, not even necessarily a job in the human services field.
• 1:20:20
  Like, it's just a culture of kind of burnout.
• 1:20:22
  And so I think for me, having a horse really helps me keep
• 1:20:28
  my own mental health level.
• 1:20:31
  But I got involved in, in Warwick's work when I got a young horse.
• 1:20:34
  I got, I had this six month old Norwegian fjord pony kind of fall into my lap.
• 1:20:40
  And I had never, I.
• 1:20:42
  Trained a horse before, like started a horse as a baby.
• 1:20:46
  And she was really challenging.
• 1:20:48
  My older mare is very easy, very, just like a joy to work with.
• 1:20:54
  And this young horse was puff like she, I would, she was, she was just like on you
• 1:21:02
  all the time, kind of like nipping and biting and you would try to like, create
• 1:21:06
  space or like, I would read different things like use a whip to back them
• 1:21:09
  up and things, and she would just like bite the whip and try to run me over.
• 1:21:13
  And like she did not hair like what I did.
• 1:21:18
  And that I somehow kind of like stumbled upon warwick's approaches.
• 1:21:24
  And his really connected, I think with with me and like what I felt was possible
• 1:21:29
  for me because I just don't, I don't have a lot of that like really like
• 1:21:34
  aggressive, intense energy, I think.
• 1:21:36
  And I think my, that young horse saw that in me and was just like,
• 1:21:40
  I'm just gonna run all over her.
• 1:21:42
  And I think I didn't have a really good sense of, even
• 1:21:47
  Rupert Isaacson: you, you say that though, Leanna, but I, I know you well enough to
• 1:21:49
  know, I've seen you in situations where it is true, you don't get aggressive, but you
• 1:21:54
  do very clearly express your boundaries.
• 1:21:57
  If you're a horse nerd, and if you're on this podcast, I'm guessing you are, then
• 1:22:02
  you've probably also always wondered a little bit about the old master system.
• 1:22:08
  of dressage training.
• 1:22:09
  If you go and check out our Helios Harmony program, we outline there step by step
• 1:22:18
  exactly how to train your horse from the ground to become the dressage horse
• 1:22:24
  of your dreams in a way that absolutely serves the physical, mental and emotional
• 1:22:31
  well being of the horse and the rider.
• 1:22:33
  Intrigued?
• 1:22:34
  Like to know more?
• 1:22:36
  Go to our website, Helios Harmony.
• 1:22:41
  Check out the free introduction course.
• 1:22:43
  Take it from there.
• 1:22:44
  Leana Tank: And that I learned from my young horse.
• 1:22:47
  Rupert Isaacson: Okay.
• 1:22:48
  Okay.
• 1:22:49
  So it was not always so,
• 1:22:49
  Leana Tank: no, I don't, not at all.
• 1:22:53
  No.
• 1:22:53
  That was a massive thing I learned from, from that horse that she taught me.
• 1:22:57
  But yet you must have been how to do that,
• 1:22:59
  Rupert Isaacson: setting your boundaries in, in, in the work that you do?
• 1:23:03
  Leana Tank: I think, yes, but it, it's gotten much, much more
• 1:23:09
  intentional and much better.
• 1:23:10
  Okay.
• 1:23:10
  And I, this was maybe, gosh, this was like four years ago that I started
• 1:23:17
  working with this young horse and started kind of down that path.
• 1:23:20
  So, you know, it's been something I've been developing for a little while now.
• 1:23:24
  But yeah, I think, you know, it's interesting how those horses, that
• 1:23:27
  kind of horse will just kind of like find your weaknesses and,
• 1:23:30
  and like really show them to you.
• 1:23:32
  And Warwick's work is very, very like, trauma based, trauma informed,
• 1:23:38
  you know, his work on, you know, kind of built on this understanding
• 1:23:41
  of the nervous system and polyvagal theory and all of these things.
• 1:23:45
  And these were all things that I was a little bit aware of in the
• 1:23:48
  periphery like through, through the mental health work that I was doing.
• 1:23:52
  And then, you know, kind of in the horse world.
• 1:23:56
  But I hadn't really.
• 1:23:59
  He was the first one that kind of like put it all together into one
• 1:24:04
  place that really made sense to me.
• 1:24:07
  And I also just really, really connected.
• 1:24:10
  He would talk about being a little bit emotionally shut down and kind of in his
• 1:24:15
  head and not really in touch with his own emotional life and, and experiences.
• 1:24:22
  And I think that I was a little bit in that place too.
• 1:24:24
  Like I think through my upbringing and through, through that kind of like
• 1:24:29
  lack of emotional awareness or like validation I just had never really
• 1:24:37
  learned how to like actually feel those feelings and, and connect with them and
• 1:24:45
  let them process in a way that wasn't just like intellectually in my head.
• 1:24:49
  And so I think for me, I started practicing his attunement
• 1:24:58
  practices and he with my young horse as a way to work with her.
• 1:25:03
  Give us some examples of tools.
• 1:25:04
  Yeah, I'll, because what he does, and I think what it really is, is like a way to.
• 1:25:14
  Physically embody the practice of becoming an attuned person, which is something that
• 1:25:19
  I don't think you can just read about and learn about and understand it and do it.
• 1:25:25
  You have to experience it and embody it and practice it.
• 1:25:29
  So he had, he has a flow chart that he has videos on, and it's an actual
• 1:25:35
  flow chart that you do with your horse before you ask it to do anything.
• 1:25:42
  So you show up without judgment, without an expectation depending on what the
• 1:25:48
  horse does, your whole intention is to respond in a way that shows the
• 1:25:53
  horse that you see them, that you get them, that you kind of like, are
• 1:26:00
  aware of what's going on with them.
• 1:26:03
  That's the intention of the flow chart.
• 1:26:04
  And it's, it's where you start before you ask the horse to do anything.
• 1:26:10
  And it, the intention is to get the horse kind of in a calm, open, receptive state.
• 1:26:17
  So you start, and like if the horse is just kind of walking, you
• 1:26:20
  just match steps with the horse.
• 1:26:22
  And you literally just, wherever they go in the arena, you just kind of match
• 1:26:26
  their steps and follow along with 'em.
• 1:26:28
  And if they stop, you stop.
• 1:26:31
  And if they kind of look into the distance, you just kind of like.
• 1:26:34
  What are you looking at?
• 1:26:35
  You look at them and if they seem like they're kind of just tuning you out
• 1:26:41
  there's a scratching for connection tool that I also will use a lot on its
• 1:26:47
  own, where you just kind of give them a scratch and you wait and really watch and
• 1:26:53
  see like for a little acknowledgement, like a little ear flick or a blink or
• 1:26:59
  for them to kind of turn and look at you and then you stop scratching to show.
• 1:27:03
  Like, I saw that and it's so interesting because you'll see if
• 1:27:10
  you do this with a horse, they'll kind of like give you a double take.
• 1:27:14
  When you do that a couple times they'll kind of turn around and look at you
• 1:27:16
  like, oh, are you listening to me?
• 1:27:20
  Like, like it's, I've had this experience with so many horses now
• 1:27:23
  'cause I just kind of do it naturally.
• 1:27:26
  And I'll have the same experience with autistic people.
• 1:27:33
  Like, if I am working with someone who is not speaking or kind of in their own
• 1:27:40
  little world and I do something that kind of mirrors them or this, like, am am
• 1:27:46
  using my, even like, sometimes I'll give them little scratches or something and
• 1:27:50
  I'll, I'll know I've made a connection when they, I get the same look from them.
• 1:27:53
  Like, oh, are you actually paying attention to me?
• 1:27:56
  Like, are you actually on my wavelength?
• 1:27:59
  It's really interesting, but.
• 1:28:02
  Anyway, so, so yeah, there's just this whole very, very, very kind of
• 1:28:07
  like organized thing that you do.
• 1:28:12
  And I did it a lot with my young horse and I kind of practiced it too with
• 1:28:16
  like other horses I was taking care of.
• 1:28:19
  And it just kind of like puts you in this meditative flow centered space and
• 1:28:30
  you, I would start to kind of find myself going into that space, like working
• 1:28:35
  with the people that I worked with too.
• 1:28:37
  You know, being able to show up very nonjudgmentally without expectation
• 1:28:41
  and also really watching them for their little signals of like when they were
• 1:28:49
  getting upset or activated or anything.
• 1:28:51
  To be able to kind of reflect that back to them.
• 1:28:53
  Like, oh, hey, I see you.
• 1:28:54
  That's the intention.
• 1:28:57
  And that really helps people connect to themselves too.
• 1:29:04
  So
• 1:29:04
  Rupert Isaacson: is what we're talking about here, really listening, but
• 1:29:07
  listening on a cellular level, not just on a kind of auditory processing level.
• 1:29:13
  Leana Tank: It's kind of listening with your whole body, but it is like you
• 1:29:18
  kind of become that, you kind of become.
• 1:29:22
  Safety.
• 1:29:23
  Because for people like that sense that somebody is really like seeing them and
• 1:29:28
  hearing them is like safety for them.
• 1:29:35
  Rupert Isaacson: And I guess with horses it's a fight flight prey animal.
• 1:29:38
  So if you can become safety, then you're going to be able to
• 1:29:43
  bridge the predator prey divide.
• 1:29:46
  And I suppose when people are living very much from the amygdala, then
• 1:29:54
  they are effectively behaving like a prey animal, which also might
• 1:29:59
  have to fight for its life if that's what it perceives it has to do.
• 1:30:03
  Leana Tank: Yeah, I mean, I, I take a lot of the, the big trauma courses
• 1:30:08
  with the big trauma people like the Peter Levine of Somatic Experiencing
• 1:30:14
  and all of these, you know, different names and like everyone's talking about
• 1:30:18
  attunement as like the number one basis for that, like relational healing of
• 1:30:27
  trauma because that we as a species feel safety with other people, you know.
• 1:30:35
  Rupert Isaacson: And is, is attunement something you think we should actually
• 1:30:38
  all do in no matter what walk of life to get along better and have less drama?
• 1:30:46
  Leana Tank: Yeah, I mean, I think it, it's.
• 1:30:49
  It can go beyond just, you know, attuning with other people.
• 1:30:53
  I think that it, it's, you can attune with other species of animals.
• 1:30:59
  You can walk out in nature and experience everything as kind of a communication.
• 1:31:05
  You know, you're really looking, you're looking to listen, you're looking for
• 1:31:11
  like, okay, what is this saying to me?
• 1:31:13
  What is, you know, what am I taking from this?
• 1:31:15
  So I think that it, it really is like kind of a state of being you can get into.
• 1:31:20
  Yeah.
• 1:31:22
  Rupert Isaacson: So makes me think of a recent conversation I had
• 1:31:25
  with Craig Foster, who made that amazing film, my octopus teacher.
• 1:31:30
  Leana Tank: Mm-hmm.
• 1:31:31
  Mm-hmm.
• 1:31:31
  But you
• 1:31:31
  Rupert Isaacson: know, where if, if one wants to see a tuning
• 1:31:34
  and crossing a species divide, you know, that's it, I think.
• 1:31:39
  Mm-hmm.
• 1:31:39
  But one of the things that he points out, which I think is in line with
• 1:31:45
  what you're saying, is that one's relationship with one's environment,
• 1:31:50
  IE the planet, IE, other people, IE the weather, IE vegetation, IE,
• 1:32:00
  the noticing the slug trails on.
• 1:32:04
  Paving stones in London and noticing that there are these little tooth marks
• 1:32:10
  where they're actually eating the algae.
• 1:32:12
  And that if you begin to attune to this level, whether it's with
• 1:32:16
  individuals or with something like that, as you say, I think you, you put
• 1:32:20
  it there that it's actually, that the environment is communicating with you.
• 1:32:25
  Leana Tank: Mm-hmm.
• 1:32:26
  Mm-hmm.
• 1:32:26
  Rupert Isaacson: And that, that is actually the natural human condition.
• 1:32:28
  And I think to be divorced from that leads to, well, let's say poor mental health.
• 1:32:36
  We know that we've got a loneliness epidemic and particularly in men, young
• 1:32:40
  men, and this is something we could maybe go into in another podcast because I
• 1:32:43
  think that's, its, I'm actually thinking about doing a whole series on this
• 1:32:47
  because I think it's one, become one of the sort of epidemics of our time.
• 1:32:52
  You are dealing with severely lonely people.
• 1:32:55
  Leana Tank: Mm-hmm.
• 1:32:56
  Mm-hmm.
• 1:32:56
  Most
• 1:32:57
  Rupert Isaacson: of the, many of them are, but this attunement and being able
• 1:33:02
  to help people attune with the environment back to you say, or take them into nature,
• 1:33:07
  how do you help them without it being like, do you notice the tree and how
• 1:33:12
  it's moving, you know, without, without sounding kind of like, this is forced
• 1:33:16
  fun now, or something where people just gonna automatically rebel against that.
• 1:33:19
  Mm-hmm.
• 1:33:20
  How do you, how do you help people with this kind of despair and loneliness?
• 1:33:27
  Find this attunement and what effects do you notice?
• 1:33:36
  Leana Tank: Yeah, I mean, so how we learn attunement, like how we learn to
• 1:33:42
  be connected to ourselves and to feel our emotions and express 'em in all of
• 1:33:46
  these, like, we're supposed to learn that from our parents and childhood, right?
• 1:33:50
  And so we start learning it in, in infancy when our parents kind
• 1:33:57
  of like respond to our needs.
• 1:33:59
  Sure.
• 1:34:00
  And, and, and, you know, show us even kind of like that back and forth, like
• 1:34:05
  smiling back and forth with your child.
• 1:34:07
  Kind of kickstarts that part of your brain.
• 1:34:10
  It's like the right frontal lobe.
• 1:34:11
  That is where we do a lot of that connection.
• 1:34:17
  And so when I am practicing in a very intentional way that attunement
• 1:34:23
  with the people I work with, they are like learning it from me.
• 1:34:26
  Just, they're just absorbing it.
• 1:34:28
  And I will often kind of narrate what I see, so I'm not like teaching
• 1:34:34
  them or telling them something.
• 1:34:36
  But I am maybe observing like.
• 1:34:40
  Oh, I just notice that you are like holding your breath and
• 1:34:45
  you seem really tense right now.
• 1:34:48
  Are you feeling a little anxious about something?
• 1:34:51
  You know, I might, you have to stay more in like, curiosity than telling.
• 1:34:59
  So I might just like very curiously observe like, you know, are you
• 1:35:05
  a little worried about this?
• 1:35:06
  Or I noticed, oh, hey, like, I remember working with one guy who was totally in
• 1:35:12
  his own world staring into space and I was just kind of like, what's he looking at?
• 1:35:18
  You know?
• 1:35:18
  And I noticed, oh, he is looking at like the clouds over there.
• 1:35:22
  So I was just like, is there's some interesting clouds kind of dark.
• 1:35:25
  Maybe it's gonna rain, you know?
• 1:35:27
  And he is like, yeah, I think it might rain.
• 1:35:30
  And that was actually a reality based response to me that he gave that
• 1:35:37
  he was actually before that it was like there was nothing, you know?
• 1:35:41
  And that was kind of my in, right?
• 1:35:43
  So you're kind of just looking for your way in to further that connection.
• 1:35:50
  And I've had these experiences, you know, like, like walking in nature.
• 1:35:54
  And things will just kind of come up, you know, like, we'll run into a little.
• 1:36:00
  Wooly bear Caterpillar, and it'll turn into this whole conversation about their
• 1:36:05
  childhood and, and their mother who had different superstitions about, you know,
• 1:36:10
  the Caterpillar bands and what that means.
• 1:36:13
  And I've even had like how you know, just like really beautiful moments of
• 1:36:17
  like, I was walking with a this man who also very disconnected from reality
• 1:36:22
  and we're walking and like all of a sudden these little butterflies come
• 1:36:25
  and just kind of like spiral around us and it's just like this little moment of
• 1:36:30
  joy that then I can kind of like refer back to at different times to kind of
• 1:36:34
  like build that sense of connection.
• 1:36:36
  But you're really just
• 1:36:40
  really trying to stay present and in the moment and ready for like
• 1:36:43
  whatever opportunities come up to help them connect to themselves and
• 1:36:50
  connect to the environment outside of them and like connect to me
• 1:36:53
  because a lot of these mental health con conditions are really just like
• 1:37:01
  problems of like connect disconnection.
• 1:37:04
  They're disconnected from their own emotional experiences, are
• 1:37:08
  disconnected from other people.
• 1:37:10
  They're disconnected from the world around them.
• 1:37:14
  And.
• 1:37:16
  Using like movement in nature and you can, you know, if you think about,
• 1:37:21
  like, I've learned a little bit about even like EMDR and processing
• 1:37:24
  trauma just through eyes moving from left to right to left to right.
• 1:37:30
  It's like integrating the right and left hemispheres of the brain.
• 1:37:34
  And I can incorporate that if we're walking outside in nature just by being
• 1:37:40
  like, oh look, there's a bird over there.
• 1:37:42
  Or look, there's the cloud over there.
• 1:37:45
  Let's look at the colors of the trees.
• 1:37:47
  And I can guide that to look to the right and look to the left.
• 1:37:53
  And they don't even know that's what I'm doing.
• 1:37:56
  You know,
• 1:37:57
  Rupert Isaacson: not everyone who's listening will know what E MDR R is.
• 1:38:00
  And I, I think it's fascinating.
• 1:38:02
  I've had a little bit of it myself and it absolutely healed a trauma
• 1:38:06
  that I had in about 10 minutes.
• 1:38:09
  It was mm-hmm.
• 1:38:10
  It was extraordinary.
• 1:38:10
  Mm-hmm.
• 1:38:11
  Talk to, just for the listeners that aren't familiar with it, can you
• 1:38:14
  just walk us through what that is?
• 1:38:16
  Leana Tank: Yeah.
• 1:38:16
  It's, it's a, it's a trauma tool.
• 1:38:19
  It's like very, very well established for healing, especially kind of
• 1:38:24
  those, like, especially at the shock traumas or like if you've had
• 1:38:27
  like a one traumatic event mm-hmm.
• 1:38:29
  That gets the, gets kinda lodged in the, in the brain and the body and.
• 1:38:35
  It started with a psych psychologist.
• 1:38:38
  I think noticing that when someone was processing something, their
• 1:38:42
  eyes were kind of moving from right to left and right to left.
• 1:38:45
  And from that developed this whole modality where someone can be kind
• 1:38:53
  of, even, they don't necessarily even have to be talking about the trauma.
• 1:38:56
  They can just be kind of thinking about it internally, but shifting
• 1:39:00
  their eyes from left to right.
• 1:39:02
  And now there's even tapping the left side and right side of the body that
• 1:39:07
  people will do, or there's even like a musical modality where they listen
• 1:39:12
  to headphones, a tone left and right.
• 1:39:14
  But there's something about the activation of the different hemispheres and the
• 1:39:19
  different sides of the brain with the trauma processing that just speeds along
• 1:39:25
  the ability of the brain to like integrate that trauma and process it through.
• 1:39:29
  Yeah.
• 1:39:29
  Rupert Isaacson: Eye movement desensitization.
• 1:39:32
  Mm-hmm.
• 1:39:33
  Mm-hmm.
• 1:39:33
  Processing EMD.
• 1:39:34
  Leana Tank: Mm-hmm.
• 1:39:35
  Yeah.
• 1:39:35
  Rupert Isaacson: Yeah.
• 1:39:36
  So you can sort of in, you can incorporate that into a nature walk by guiding.
• 1:39:44
  Mm-hmm.
• 1:39:44
  The movement of their eyes.
• 1:39:46
  Mm-hmm.
• 1:39:46
  Leana Tank: Mm-hmm.
• 1:39:47
  And even, you know, when somebody is in a little bit more of like a freeze state,
• 1:39:53
  their eyes just naturally kind of lock.
• 1:39:55
  Mm-hmm.
• 1:39:55
  And they don't really scan their environment much.
• 1:39:58
  Like everything is just kind of rigid and stiff.
• 1:40:01
  And I can see it in the way they move and I can see it in their posture.
• 1:40:05
  And in just kind of a playful, fun way, I can shift them outta that
• 1:40:12
  state by looking around or even, like, I will loosen up the way I walk
• 1:40:19
  and maybe I'll say like, Ooh, you're like not looking where you're going.
• 1:40:24
  Like, let's look out for trees.
• 1:40:26
  Let's look out for what we're doing.
• 1:40:27
  You know, and then that might kind of create a little bit of
• 1:40:31
  a shift in their nervous system.
• 1:40:33
  And I've actually seen really, really massive powerful shifts in
• 1:40:38
  people's engagement and in their, in their posture and the way they move.
• 1:40:44
  And then in the way they kind of are able to do lots of other things.
• 1:40:47
  There's this like reciprocal.
• 1:40:51
  Mirroring between people's kind of emotional states and then their
• 1:40:55
  bodies, the way their bodies present.
• 1:40:57
  And you can kind of like come from, it's like there's this idea of like
• 1:41:03
  top down processing and bottom up.
• 1:41:05
  And the top down would be trying to like, manage the thoughts and
• 1:41:09
  manage the ideas like in their head.
• 1:41:11
  And there's like different therapy modalities that do that, like that, sit
• 1:41:16
  in an office and like talk about it, you know, cognitive behavioral therapy
• 1:41:20
  or you can come from the bottom up and you can try to facilitate more space in
• 1:41:26
  their system through like movement, you know, and that sometimes shifts things
• 1:41:32
  more powerfully emotionally than trying to come in through the, the intellect.
• 1:41:38
  And for a lot of the people that I work with, they don't have, the intellect
• 1:41:43
  isn't there, that foundation isn't really there to begin with because
• 1:41:47
  they have an intellectual disability.
• 1:41:49
  Or, you know, they're just not in a space because of their trauma
• 1:41:54
  or their ABD being activated where they're gonna like be able to like
• 1:41:57
  cognitively process through things.
• 1:42:00
  And so you have to come at it from a different angle.
• 1:42:03
  Rupert Isaacson: It's it's interesting.
• 1:42:05
  There seem to be quite a lot of studies at the moment coming out that cognitive
• 1:42:09
  behavioral therapy talk therapy works.
• 1:42:13
  Perhaps quite well for certain populations, but not for others.
• 1:42:17
  And it seems that men and particularly young men do not
• 1:42:20
  really respond to it that well.
• 1:42:22
  And this is now, it is just interesting.
• 1:42:26
  It seems a number of studies are coming out.
• 1:42:27
  And I certainly know from my own point of view that when I had anything
• 1:42:31
  like that, it just felt awful.
• 1:42:33
  It just felt like I was, I was a dog that had done a do-do on the floor, and it was
• 1:42:38
  having my nose rubbed in it, you know, it made me wanna jump off a bridge, you know?
• 1:42:41
  But, and of course, as, as we now know with the science of, of movement, you
• 1:42:46
  know, this protein in the brain, brain derived neurotrophic factor, BDNF as the
• 1:42:52
  neuroscientists call it which sort of changes your brain chemistry, your brain
• 1:42:56
  structure opens up your intellect, makes you, you know, it's cognitively optimal.
• 1:43:02
  Movement is key for this.
• 1:43:04
  And of course, men, young men in particular, very physical creatures.
• 1:43:07
  I'm not saying all genders are not, but it, it seems to be particularly
• 1:43:11
  acute with that population.
• 1:43:12
  Do you, was there a moment when you realized, oh my gosh, yes.
• 1:43:16
  Movement's the key, and
• 1:43:21
  I mean, obviously you're an occupational therapist, so it comes
• 1:43:23
  a little bit with the territory.
• 1:43:25
  But obviously you must have also tried to talk with people,
• 1:43:32
  in that more top down way.
• 1:43:33
  At what point do you think it really became clear to
• 1:43:36
  you that Yeah, it's movement.
• 1:43:39
  Leana Tank: I mean, I think I've always been really fascinated with movement
• 1:43:42
  and I think that when I came into the mental health world, I started more
• 1:43:49
  in the physical disability world.
• 1:43:51
  I, the first six years of my career was more in like rehabilitation and I
• 1:43:55
  did a lot with neuro rehabilitation for people who'd had strokes and things.
• 1:44:00
  So I did neurodevelopmental training, which is a lot of facilitating movement
• 1:44:09
  and, and getting muscles to move that haven't moved before and things like that.
• 1:44:13
  And then sensory integration, which that is all about movement.
• 1:44:19
  Like when you think about the sensory systems, when we learn
• 1:44:22
  sensory integration, when you're actually doing it it's foundational
• 1:44:29
  that you are moving and activating like deep pressure, the vestibular
• 1:44:35
  system, like the sense of balance.
• 1:44:38
  And I.
• 1:44:39
  Proprioception, which is your sense of body awareness and space.
• 1:44:42
  And it's not sensory integration if you're not integrating some other sense
• 1:44:48
  with those foundational senses because they give you a sense of security,
• 1:44:53
  safety and who you are in the world.
• 1:44:57
  And that was a little bit my background coming into mental health.
• 1:45:01
  So I was already really fascinated with how those concepts played into
• 1:45:09
  mental health and the psychiatric conditions that I was seeing.
• 1:45:13
  And then when I was working with people, I just saw movement
• 1:45:20
  challenges everywhere, you know?
• 1:45:22
  And I think that as an ot, I was a little uniquely positioned to know what I was
• 1:45:28
  looking at because I would see somebody as being very challenged with their
• 1:45:35
  coordination and their motor planning.
• 1:45:37
  And like, you know, they're spilling their food and they're having
• 1:45:41
  trouble like holding their spoon and they're kind of slouched.
• 1:45:45
  And I asked the staff like, what, you know, what do you think's
• 1:45:49
  going on with this person?
• 1:45:50
  And they were like, well, I just thought they were lazy.
• 1:45:53
  And, you know, for me, I'm like, they are dyspraxic, which is like
• 1:45:58
  somebody who just can't, doesn't have an awareness of their body and space.
• 1:46:02
  Or people are labeled as having like boundary issues because they are walking
• 1:46:08
  up and talking to you really close and getting in your personal space.
• 1:46:13
  But what I would see was that they just don't have a good sense of
• 1:46:16
  like their body's position in space.
• 1:46:20
  I would see a lot of like asymmetries and posture or just collapsed postures,
• 1:46:26
  low muscle tone and, and through.
• 1:46:30
  And so I was just like really, really fascinated about like, what's
• 1:46:33
  going on with all that because they don't have a physical disability,
• 1:46:37
  they have a psychiatric diagnosis, and how is this, like, what, what's
• 1:46:42
  being mirrored in their neurobiology?
• 1:46:45
  And I, you know, so I've, in different like learnings and research and courses
• 1:46:50
  I've taken, like, you know, I feel like I have really, really evolved
• 1:46:55
  in my understanding of like how all of those things interplay and, and
• 1:47:01
  what's showing up for people and how to kind of read it and work with it.
• 1:47:04
  But I think it's kind of a newer growing area of understanding because when I
• 1:47:11
  first started in this field 10 years ago, I couldn't find anything like I.
• 1:47:17
  I could, I, every, all the research and everything was just with kids like kids
• 1:47:22
  with autism and not adults and not adults with other neuropsychiatric conditions.
• 1:47:30
  So that, you know, I mean, that's part of why I was like so fascinated with
• 1:47:34
  like, things like movement method.
• 1:47:36
  I was fascinated with anything that would talk about movement with autism
• 1:47:44
  or other mental health conditions because I, I feel like it's an area
• 1:47:49
  that's still not very well understood.
• 1:47:55
  Rupert Isaacson: We touch on your relationship with your horse and how you
• 1:48:01
  use that for your own resilience, how it's also helped you with attunement to attune
• 1:48:06
  to the populations that you work with.
• 1:48:08
  We've also talked about nature, we've talked about movement, obviously
• 1:48:11
  working with animals, obviously working with large animals, obviously
• 1:48:14
  particularly working something like a horse presumably brings all of
• 1:48:17
  these things together, synthesizing.
• 1:48:20
  Leana Tank: Mm-hmm.
• 1:48:20
  Mm-hmm.
• 1:48:21
  Rupert Isaacson: Have you had a chance, and obviously these facilities
• 1:48:23
  are not equine, but have you had a chance to bring that into the
• 1:48:28
  work with some of your population?
• 1:48:30
  If so, could you talk just about how and
• 1:48:35
  your ideas for developing this a little bit?
• 1:48:39
  Leana Tank: Yeah.
• 1:48:39
  Yeah.
• 1:48:40
  So we do have a partnership with a therapy barn where we could create a little group.
• 1:48:48
  I'll bring a group from one of the programs I go to, which
• 1:48:52
  is a pretty cool program.
• 1:48:53
  It it's, it's one of our more intensive programs men and women.
• 1:48:57
  A lot of them have a pretty significant cognitive impairments,
• 1:49:02
  but also psychiatric conditions challenging behaviors and really high
• 1:49:08
  staffing ratios, really small homes.
• 1:49:10
  So a lot of support.
• 1:49:11
  And so I will bring a group of them out to this farm, and they will do a little
• 1:49:18
  bit of work for about a half an hour.
• 1:49:20
  So they'll help clean the pastures, or maybe they'll give
• 1:49:23
  a horse a bath or clean tack.
• 1:49:26
  And then they get to ride the, they have these great big draft horses
• 1:49:31
  and, you know, really, really calm.
• 1:49:34
  And they kind of just give them like a pony ride, you know, or like, take 'em on.
• 1:49:39
  They have some trails, so they'll take 'em on the trails and they
• 1:49:41
  don't, it's nothing too elaborate, but it is, has been great for them.
• 1:49:46
  You know, we I never have any behavioral challenges when we take them there.
• 1:49:52
  They, that's interesting.
• 1:49:54
  Feel.
• 1:49:54
  Yeah.
• 1:49:54
  Yeah.
• 1:49:55
  Why,
• 1:49:55
  Rupert Isaacson: why do, why,
• 1:49:56
  Leana Tank: you know.
• 1:49:58
  I think they're all just so engaged and interested in what they're doing, and they
• 1:50:02
  feel like they have this like, sense of purpose and they're excited to be there.
• 1:50:09
  And yeah, they're just like, there's, there's nothing going on that is gonna
• 1:50:15
  like trigger their particular challenge.
• 1:50:20
  And, and you know, I'll have people that need more support and I certainly
• 1:50:24
  dot have to be proactive, won't have
• 1:50:26
  Rupert Isaacson: example, like, I don't think this horse likes me, or the crows
• 1:50:30
  over there are saying bad things about me.
• 1:50:32
  I, I use that one because I actually know someone who has that
• 1:50:36
  particular psychosis about Crohn.
• 1:50:38
  Leana Tank: Mm-hmm.
• 1:50:39
  Rupert Isaacson: Do you find that that actually quietens
• 1:50:41
  Leana Tank: Yeah.
• 1:50:42
  Rupert Isaacson: That EQU therapy?
• 1:50:43
  Leana Tank: Yeah.
• 1:50:44
  Yeah.
• 1:50:44
  And I do, I have brought people there who do struggle with those kinds of
• 1:50:48
  challenges and that's not really, they have like the best time there.
• 1:50:52
  Rupert Isaacson: So what's going on?
• 1:50:53
  What's special about the horse?
• 1:50:55
  Leana Tank: Well, I mean, I think we know like that the horses do like project kind
• 1:51:00
  of calm and they have their, you know, large electromagnetic field from their
• 1:51:06
  heart, you know, that is very regulating.
• 1:51:09
  I think they elicit a kind of respect from a lot of our people.
• 1:51:14
  I think that they.
• 1:51:17
  Will are more apt to actually be motivated to like, follow safety rules and,
• 1:51:24
  and, and policies and things like that because they actually, it's clearly a
• 1:51:28
  large, there's this really large animal.
• 1:51:29
  Yeah.
• 1:51:30
  And it's so funny, we had one guy we would bring who's like a pretty big dude,
• 1:51:35
  pretty like rough and tumble, big guy.
• 1:51:38
  And he was really scared, like really scared of the horses.
• 1:51:41
  He actually didn't come back and he was even the mini, we'd get
• 1:51:44
  out a mini horse and that was act.
• 1:51:45
  He was just intimidated and scared.
• 1:51:47
  Some of like the biggest, most heavy hitting people have,
• 1:51:51
  like the most fear honestly.
• 1:51:54
  But yeah.
• 1:51:56
  Yeah.
• 1:51:57
  I think I have people, it's like the middle of winter right now and we're
• 1:52:01
  not really going for like a month while it's, you know, five degrees outside.
• 1:52:05
  And everyone's still bugging me about wanting to go because I think
• 1:52:10
  they don't often get to feel like they are productive or giving back,
• 1:52:15
  or that they are, you know, like really contributing to something.
• 1:52:20
  And I think that's something that is really lacking for this group of people.
• 1:52:25
  It's, you know, they, the, the, in the mental health lingo, they're labeled as
• 1:52:31
  consumers is like what they get called.
• 1:52:35
  Because they consume mental health resources.
• 1:52:38
  And I just, I really hate that term because it just kind of puts them in
• 1:52:42
  this position that they just take, take, take and they have nothing to give.
• 1:52:45
  And I think it's really important for people to feel
• 1:52:47
  like they have something to give.
• 1:52:49
  And so having them come and like, feel like they're taking care of the
• 1:52:53
  horses and then they get to ride.
• 1:52:55
  And I've seen like wild, I had another person with this
• 1:53:00
  very like, strange posture.
• 1:53:02
  They were like very, very crooked and for like, there's no medical reason,
• 1:53:09
  but when they got on the horse, they're just completely straight and aligned.
• 1:53:14
  And I could use that body sensation later on.
• 1:53:18
  We could talk about it and be like, Hey, remember what it felt like, you
• 1:53:22
  know, when you were on the horse?
• 1:53:23
  Can you kind of like find that feeling again?
• 1:53:25
  And they could kind of straighten up and like we could kind of use
• 1:53:29
  that new sense in their body of like what straight felt like to like
• 1:53:34
  bring that forward into their life.
• 1:53:37
  And now they're straight actually.
• 1:53:39
  Rupert Isaacson: That's so interesting.
• 1:53:40
  Leana Tank: Mm-hmm.
• 1:53:41
  Rupert Isaacson: You know,
• 1:53:44
  obviously my story might work, you know, with horses it's time and time again.
• 1:53:51
  We've seen things that one regards as miraculous, but happen so often that.
• 1:53:59
  We have to then start saying, well, is it a miracle or is it actually just the
• 1:54:04
  product of, as you say, electromagnetic resonance of the heart, you know,
• 1:54:09
  production of certain hormones, oxytocin, et cetera, BDNF in the brain, but all
• 1:54:14
  coming together in a perfect cocktail, in the right sensory environment.
• 1:54:19
  A lot of studies have also shown that when people engage in animal assisted
• 1:54:25
  therapies, they tend to finish the program because they have a relationship with the
• 1:54:34
  animal and they want to keep coming back.
• 1:54:37
  Can also be with dogs, for example.
• 1:54:39
  But particularly with equine, it seems that horses, I guess they're so beautiful
• 1:54:43
  aesthetically, they make us feel good in a way that I think very few other
• 1:54:48
  animals in this idea that they carry us.
• 1:54:50
  Maybe y you know, ke Sullivan university of Bournemouth, she's
• 1:54:56
  affiliated there, you know, researcher.
• 1:54:58
  They did a study that in domestic violence, people who mm-hmm.
• 1:55:05
  Had been perpetrators of domestic violence going to equine assisted programs.
• 1:55:13
  Not only finishing the program, but apparently a 51% reduction
• 1:55:18
  in domestic violence, even one year after the program had ended.
• 1:55:23
  So it does seem that there's a, a massively
• 1:55:29
  still to be properly explored
• 1:55:31
  Leana Tank: mm-hmm.
• 1:55:33
  In here within
• 1:55:33
  Rupert Isaacson: mental health.
• 1:55:34
  Can you yourself, I mean, you, you have a certain amount
• 1:55:36
  of autonomy in, in your job.
• 1:55:37
  You, you are looking after quite a few facilities, you're
• 1:55:40
  traveling between them people are listening to you to some degree.
• 1:55:44
  Leana Tank: Mm-hmm.
• 1:55:45
  Rupert Isaacson: Have you got plans to develop more the
• 1:55:47
  nature, the art, the equine?
• 1:55:50
  Where's it going?
• 1:55:52
  Leana Tank: Yeah, you know, I, I feel like I've been doing this long enough now that
• 1:55:57
  I feel like I have a pretty good idea of what you get the most bang for your buck.
• 1:56:04
  You know, in terms of like programming and like implementing and, and scaling things.
• 1:56:11
  'cause I'm always thinking about how to be as effective as I can.
• 1:56:16
  'cause I do cover like a lot of programs and I can only do so much
• 1:56:19
  like working one-on-one with people.
• 1:56:21
  And I really find like trying to support the staff in these programs
• 1:56:27
  is really, really important.
• 1:56:29
  The.
• 1:56:30
  They are the ones that are, that like source of relationship for the people
• 1:56:36
  in the programs and they really create a lot of the culture and I've seen really
• 1:56:42
  good staff be the source of like so much progress and healing for people.
• 1:56:48
  And then I've seen staff just completely torpedo people's progress.
• 1:56:53
  And I, I do like, I have a really, really a lot of compassion and care for the
• 1:57:00
  people that I work with, but also for like, the people that are supporting them.
• 1:57:04
  'cause it's a really, really hard job and they're not given a lot of resources.
• 1:57:10
  They're, they're kind of expected to be the bandaid on a really broken system
• 1:57:17
  and they're kind of like sandwiched in the middle of these really, really
• 1:57:22
  challenging you know, residents.
• 1:57:24
  And that a system that is like always more and more demanding.
• 1:57:27
  So like finding ways to support the staff so that they can support
• 1:57:34
  the people that they work with, I think is like something I really,
• 1:57:38
  really would like to develop and do.
• 1:57:41
  I ideally, I would love all the staff to be able to like.
• 1:57:46
  Go do an attunement workshop, you know, and like learn like how to like really
• 1:57:50
  embody it because I think that it if you can kinda work from that kind of a space,
• 1:57:55
  it actually like prevents burnout too.
• 1:57:57
  'cause you're not always like controlling and resisting and it's,
• 1:58:01
  you know, I think it just I think, I think that would be a really nice
• 1:58:05
  thing to be able to give people.
• 1:58:07
  And yeah, like being able to really look at the environments,
• 1:58:10
  look at bringing in more nature.
• 1:58:11
  Look at, I think a lot of the groups and things still tend to be very cognitive.
• 1:58:20
  And I would love to see more intentionality in the programs around
• 1:58:25
  designing groups and activities for the residents that are more like humanity
• 1:58:30
  building, like more music groups, more just group dancing, more drumming, more
• 1:58:37
  just things that we know, like promote a good, healthy nervous system and
• 1:58:42
  connection and, and all of that stuff without it feeling like a therapy group.
• 1:58:47
  So I'm, I'm kind of working to try to build those into different
• 1:58:51
  programs that are open to it.
• 1:58:52
  So stuff like that.
• 1:58:54
  More, more awareness for staff, more training.
• 1:58:57
  A lot of them come in from like a high school diploma.
• 1:59:00
  You know, or it's their first job, or maybe they worked in like a factory
• 1:59:04
  and it's kind of a, a low bar of entry.
• 1:59:08
  And not the highest paying and not it's just not a very valued job in our economy.
• 1:59:14
  But it's actually highly, requires a high degree of skill.
• 1:59:20
  I mean, if you think about it,
• 1:59:22
  Rupert Isaacson: well undervalued Well, people looking after
• 1:59:23
  other undervalued people.
• 1:59:25
  Leana Tank: Exactly.
• 1:59:26
  Yeah.
• 1:59:26
  Yep.
• 1:59:27
  Exactly.
• 1:59:27
  Rupert Isaacson: W what, you know, as you talk, and it's interesting
• 1:59:30
  'cause we, we we're approaching now, I think we've probably just
• 1:59:32
  over the two hour mark and mm-hmm.
• 1:59:34
  I could keep going and I think I, I'm gonna have ask you to come back on
• 1:59:37
  actually, and there's a, a number of things I think listeners and myself
• 1:59:41
  would like to go into more detail on, but what springs to mind as you begin
• 1:59:47
  to, as you're talking now about those systems, is those communities and
• 1:59:54
  the staff there and the people living in them, it sounds like families.
• 2:00:01
  And oftentimes our family dynamics are not as functional as they could be.
• 2:00:07
  What can, let's say you switch hats and you became a family therapist having
• 2:00:15
  brought in the insights of working.
• 2:00:20
  At this high stakes type, human community environment, what are like
• 2:00:26
  the five count 'em on your fingers type things that all of us who are
• 2:00:32
  parents, who are spouses, who are kids ourselves to older parents, what are the
• 2:00:44
  things that you feel if everybody did
• 2:00:51
  it, would just ease
• 2:00:56
  everybody's life?
• 2:00:57
  Leana Tank: Mm-hmm.
• 2:00:58
  Mm-hmm.
• 2:01:01
  Well, you know, the first thing that comes to mind is that idea of
• 2:01:07
  really radical acceptance and just letting people be who they are.
• 2:01:11
  And I think that is something I think about that a lot as a parent and thinking
• 2:01:18
  about how I was parented to kind of be molded in a certain direction.
• 2:01:24
  But instead to look at it as I'm an apparent, as a way to kind of
• 2:01:28
  just discover who this person is and help them be more of who they
• 2:01:32
  are and just celebrate, celebrate what we all discover together.
• 2:01:38
  Taking that.
• 2:01:41
  Attitude of like, or I guess looking at what your expectations are and what
• 2:01:47
  your judgments are about what this person should be, who they are, what
• 2:01:52
  their life should look like, and being able to just really radically let go
• 2:01:58
  of that and just see who this person is that's kind of creating themselves in
• 2:02:03
  front of you is something that I think, you know, will feel very, very, very
• 2:02:11
  freeing and validating to the person that is like on the receiving end of that.
• 2:02:14
  Something I wish I would've had.
• 2:02:16
  And I think, you know, and, and I do try to do that for
• 2:02:18
  the people I'm working with.
• 2:02:19
  I try not to bring my judgments and my notions about who they are and who they
• 2:02:24
  should be and where they should be at.
• 2:02:27
  You know, I think when you get into that mindset of where you should be,
• 2:02:32
  that kind of puts you in this like frozen state of immobility, like you
• 2:02:37
  can't really move forward from there.
• 2:02:39
  You have to be totally accepting of where things are before you can take
• 2:02:47
  those next steps of moving on from there.
• 2:02:50
  So I think a lot of it is looking at your judgments, looking at your expectations,
• 2:02:55
  and being very, very accepting of where things are and knowing that.
• 2:03:03
  If you can get to that space, things can actually change really, really
• 2:03:06
  fast and really radically in ways that you don't even realize it.
• 2:03:09
  I think looking at, always trying to look at what's going on underneath the
• 2:03:18
  problem or the behavior that you're seeing that when you're seeing a
• 2:03:26
  behavior that's not so, nice, you know, or challenging or not so constructive,
• 2:03:34
  like getting curious about it, you know, before you just go right to like
• 2:03:40
  shaming it or trying to shut it down.
• 2:03:41
  Looking at it with curiosity and trying to figure out now what's
• 2:03:45
  really going on underneath, you know, is there an underlying stressor and
• 2:03:51
  anxiety, a lack of safety, a lack of connection, you know, there's always
• 2:03:55
  something going on under the surface.
• 2:03:57
  There's always a reason for it.
• 2:04:00
  And sometimes the answer isn't this direct addressing of the behavior,
• 2:04:05
  but it's more something else that needs more support or is lacking.
• 2:04:14
  Rupert Isaacson: It's funny, one often thinks of family as.
• 2:04:19
  One's relationship with one's kids.
• 2:04:24
  So often we don't do this with our spouses either.
• 2:04:28
  You know, we have this kind of, well, you should, you know.
• 2:04:32
  Mm-hmm.
• 2:04:32
  Mm-hmm.
• 2:04:33
  You're an intelligent person and you should blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
• 2:04:35
  You know, with our kids, you know, we, hopefully anyway we
• 2:04:37
  can give them a bit more leeway.
• 2:04:39
  But it's so interesting, isn't it, how little we let each other off the hook
• 2:04:44
  Leana Tank: mm-hmm.
• 2:04:44
  Rupert Isaacson: As spouses, when we're actually on this boat together and mm-hmm.
• 2:04:50
  Supposedly pulling on the same ropes and manning the same rudder and
• 2:04:54
  down in the engine room trying to figure out what's up with the boiler.
• 2:04:58
  But what I think what you said about radical acceptance is, is really useful.
• 2:05:03
  And I think I would like you to come back on and I'd like to
• 2:05:08
  explore that in greater depth.
• 2:05:11
  And I'm hoping that you will begin to run some workshops and some retreats
• 2:05:17
  on this concept of radical acceptance.
• 2:05:19
  And I will absolutely put my money down and come because I think you
• 2:05:23
  have an unusual set of qualifications to give you those insights, which
• 2:05:33
  I think are, are, are, are rare.
• 2:05:35
  And I'm going to read you something that you wrote to me.
• 2:05:40
  Leana Tank: Gosh.
• 2:05:41
  Oh no.
• 2:05:43
  Rupert Isaacson: Which I felt, that's why I asked you to come
• 2:05:46
  really on, on, on the show.
• 2:05:47
  I mean, obviously you're awesome and why would one not want you on the show?
• 2:05:50
  But it was particularly, it was back on the 21st of December actually, and
• 2:05:54
  I had been introducing you to a group of people and said, you know, wow.
• 2:05:59
  The work she does and the population she works with, it's, it's so extreme.
• 2:06:04
  I, you know, I dunno if I could do it, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
• 2:06:06
  And, you know, I'd meant that as a compliment.
• 2:06:10
  And this is what I mean by how well you handle boundaries.
• 2:06:14
  It's very elegant.
• 2:06:15
  I, it made me, it made me sit up and I, I just want listeners to hear this
• 2:06:19
  and say, so with your permission, I'm gonna read this 'cause we, okay.
• 2:06:23
  Leana Tank: Okay.
• 2:06:23
  Anyway,
• 2:06:24
  Rupert Isaacson: but I'm gonna pretend I'm asking you permission.
• 2:06:26
  Okay.
• 2:06:27
  So you wrote, the way you ask me to explain the folk I work with never quite
• 2:06:35
  sits right with me, and I haven't been sure why, but I think I can articulate it.
• 2:06:39
  So I'm gonna try not to make you feel bad at all.
• 2:06:43
  More just for my own clarity.
• 2:06:45
  I feel like they're being made out to be these monsters and
• 2:06:49
  they're not, they're like the most sensitive, vulnerable of all.
• 2:06:54
  And the ones that are paying the cost of an inhumane culture,
• 2:07:01
  they're, they're the shadow side and we are all capable.
• 2:07:05
  Of any of the things they've done, which is why I think they make
• 2:07:10
  people really uncomfortable and they get stuck into the margins.
• 2:07:16
  Beautiful things can be dangerous and outta control, like a poison
• 2:07:20
  plant, but like a poison plant.
• 2:07:23
  They still have a place in the world.
• 2:07:26
  They just need to be treated with extra care and respect, but they're not
• 2:07:30
  monsters totally just as human as anyone.
• 2:07:35
  And we all have these parts in us.
• 2:07:39
  People have a hard time facing that.
• 2:07:41
  So the ones who can't hide it get labeled monsters and completely othered.
• 2:07:47
  I want to find a way to talk about them that doesn't make them so othered.
• 2:07:51
  Same, doesn't make them seem so othered, if that makes sense.
• 2:07:58
  I think that was one of the most insightful things anyone has ever
• 2:08:02
  written to me and that I've ever read.
• 2:08:04
  And this idea of the poison plant resonated because it's what are
• 2:08:10
  poison plants often, but medicine?
• 2:08:12
  Leana Tank: Mm-hmm.
• 2:08:12
  So many
• 2:08:13
  Rupert Isaacson: of the medicines that we take are extracted from plants where
• 2:08:17
  if we didn't get the dosage right.
• 2:08:20
  It could kill us or knock us out or have some very severe effect.
• 2:08:23
  But if we can get the dosage right, it's incredibly ameliorative.
• 2:08:27
  And in fact, the entire drug industry is based around those plant compounds.
• 2:08:31
  So anything that you can think of that's been used as a poison, like hemlock or
• 2:08:36
  nightshade or any of these things are also medicines.
• 2:08:41
  Very powerful, very good medicines.
• 2:08:43
  Things that have strong psychoactive effects on us, like dacher or ayahuasca
• 2:08:48
  or peyote or these strong, strong hallucinogens that could induce
• 2:08:54
  psychosis in the wrong setting, in the wrong environment, if misused
• 2:09:00
  also are incredibly healing.
• 2:09:02
  And I think that you are
• 2:09:05
  bringing our attention to these, to this population of people
• 2:09:10
  that can actually heal us.
• 2:09:11
  Leana Tank: Mm-hmm.
• 2:09:12
  Mm-hmm.
• 2:09:13
  Because it
• 2:09:13
  Rupert Isaacson: can make us accept those parts of ourself
• 2:09:16
  and not have to other ourselves.
• 2:09:18
  I think there's a, there's a real merit in that.
• 2:09:20
  But, but it's not talked about because it's outside of our can.
• 2:09:24
  I've also noticed that in the hunter gatherer communities I've lived
• 2:09:27
  in, although you do definitely see psychosis, that psychosis is almost
• 2:09:31
  always channeled into healing.
• 2:09:32
  Mm-hmm.
• 2:09:33
  So the person with schizophrenia or whatever tends not to do.
• 2:09:38
  Something destructive to the community.
• 2:09:42
  Often that person is the shaman.
• 2:09:44
  Whenever I saw things happening that were destructive to the community,
• 2:09:47
  it had always been where people have been displaced and put in,
• 2:09:52
  you know, marginal environments and dispossessed and traumatized and
• 2:09:56
  given alcohol and, you know, okay.
• 2:09:59
  But in the, in the, you know, any of us in that situation do the same
• 2:10:05
  thing, but in the right environment know that the psychosis was
• 2:10:09
  actually a, a mechanism for healing.
• 2:10:13
  As we close, can you just give us your thoughts on that?
• 2:10:17
  Psychosis and healing?
• 2:10:20
  Leana Tank: Yeah.
• 2:10:21
  Yeah.
• 2:10:21
  I mean, a lot of what you just said definitely resonates, and I feel
• 2:10:27
  like in a lot of ways this group of people have been my teachers.
• 2:10:32
  You know, I've never had the chance to work with a shaman,
• 2:10:36
  you know, or learned from really.
• 2:10:41
  I haven't had these really strong like mentors in this, in this field.
• 2:10:47
  I feel like all my learning has been from these people themselves.
• 2:10:51
  And they've taught me a lot.
• 2:10:52
  I think there's a lot to learn from them.
• 2:10:55
  If you are.
• 2:10:57
  In a space where you can hear, hear what they have to teach.
• 2:11:02
  And, and in my experience too, that sensitivity, you know, they,
• 2:11:09
  they are the most sensitive of us.
• 2:11:13
  And, and when I am working with them in a way that honors that and sees
• 2:11:21
  that and acknowledges that and I have this awareness a little bit of like,
• 2:11:27
  when you're working more from, from the heart and from understanding like
• 2:11:34
  people's energy and connection and connection to the earth, like they
• 2:11:39
  really, really resonate with that.
• 2:11:41
  I, I work with people who they're very sensitive to if the lights are on or off
• 2:11:48
  or where's the furniture in the room, and they'll talk about things in terms of like
• 2:11:54
  good energy and bad energy and their qi and, and, and it's perceived as part of
• 2:12:01
  their mental illness and their psychosis.
• 2:12:03
  But when I'm looking at it, I'm like, but it kind of makes sense, you know,
• 2:12:06
  like, I know what they're trying to say.
• 2:12:08
  I think that there is even in the most like, out of touch, you know, kind of
• 2:12:15
  like, psychotic sounding statements.
• 2:12:18
  There's an underlying sense to it, emotional sense, symbolic sense.
• 2:12:23
  And, and like, I'm not the arbiter of like, reality, you know, like I
• 2:12:29
  think it's important that we're not always thinking like, I'm the one who's
• 2:12:36
  right about reality and they're wrong.
• 2:12:37
  I think there's these shared realities.
• 2:12:40
  There's kind of the general consensus of what reality is, and then there's
• 2:12:43
  people that are perceiving things on a very different level and, and
• 2:12:48
  expressing it in a different way.
• 2:12:50
  And who's to say that they're not perceiving something
• 2:12:53
  that we just can't perceive?
• 2:12:54
  You know, there's, there's a lot out there that we don't understand.
• 2:12:58
  So, so yeah, I mean, I, it, it's honestly a really beautiful, interesting,
• 2:13:10
  you know, lovely group of people to work with and know, and I'm act I'm
• 2:13:15
  really sad that the general population doesn't get to know these people.
• 2:13:20
  And I, and because of confidentiality and privacy and things, I can't give a
• 2:13:24
  lot of specific stories because they're such characters and they're such unique
• 2:13:29
  human, real fabulous people that like.
• 2:13:35
  Any one of you would enjoy.
• 2:13:37
  So it's hard for me to be able to explain that without getting
• 2:13:40
  into a lot of specific details.
• 2:13:41
  But yeah, I think, listen, it's
• 2:13:42
  Rupert Isaacson: just to hear that you say, well, I, I work
• 2:13:44
  with this population every day.
• 2:13:48
  That what they weren't expecting, what none of us would expect to hear
• 2:13:50
  is, and they're fabulous people.
• 2:13:52
  Leana Tank: Mm-hmm.
• 2:13:53
  Mm-hmm.
• 2:13:53
  Yeah.
• 2:13:54
  Which
• 2:13:54
  Rupert Isaacson: we must all be fabulous people because if they're
• 2:13:59
  fabulous by nature, by by, by, by definition, by extension, surely,
• 2:14:05
  therefore, the rest of us must be, and we all go around beating ourselves up.
• 2:14:08
  Leana Tank: Mm-hmm.
• 2:14:09
  Rupert Isaacson: But thank you.
• 2:14:10
  Also, you know, we get into this conversation a lot here
• 2:14:13
  about self-actualization.
• 2:14:15
  And I think there's no question, you, you know, you, you, your working
• 2:14:20
  life, your, how it's brought into your own personal life and so on.
• 2:14:24
  It's, I think you are a shining example of someone who's in the
• 2:14:29
  process of constant self-actualization.
• 2:14:32
  But what's interesting is the people that you're working with, you know,
• 2:14:36
  I think we, we do actually, funnily enough, have a place for the psychotic
• 2:14:40
  in our culture, for self recognizing self-actualization, if we call it genius.
• 2:14:45
  Mm-hmm.
• 2:14:45
  And then you can have someone who's insane.
• 2:14:47
  You can have, you know, a Vincent Van Gogh, or you can have mm-hmm.
• 2:14:50
  I can never remember the name of the, a high selling Japanese
• 2:14:53
  artist who, who lives in a shut in a lockdown, but she mm-hmm.
• 2:14:58
  You know, amazing stuff, you know, or a musician or something in the
• 2:15:01
  arts, or a mad scientist or something.
• 2:15:03
  We can, but what's interesting to me here is that we sort of reserve
• 2:15:08
  that respect for those ones that are so clearly productive in that way.
• 2:15:14
  Leana Tank: Mm-hmm.
• 2:15:15
  Mm-hmm.
• 2:15:15
  But
• 2:15:16
  Rupert Isaacson: of course, not everyone can go around being a genius.
• 2:15:19
  And not every type of genius is obvious, and not every genius is
• 2:15:23
  necessarily productive in that way.
• 2:15:26
  Perhaps it might
• 2:15:30
  be of comfort to, and part of a self-actualization process for the
• 2:15:38
  people that you work with to know that they help us, perhaps to heal ourselves.
• 2:15:50
  Might that be worth communicating?
• 2:15:55
  And if you are, if you are the advocate, if you are the person who can relay
• 2:16:00
  that message both to us and to them, when are you gonna write a book?
• 2:16:07
  Because we, because I, I haven't read any, anything.
• 2:16:10
  Yeah.
• 2:16:11
  Like this.
• 2:16:11
  And it's, it's, I think this is, this is.
• 2:16:16
  Necessary is, you know, well what's necessary, you know,
• 2:16:19
  an apple tree is necessary.
• 2:16:20
  Mm-hmm.
• 2:16:20
  You know, growing a wheat.
• 2:16:22
  But I think it is necessary in terms of, because I, I I, I also believe
• 2:16:25
  that in the culture that we're in, none of us is meant, is not mentally ill
• 2:16:32
  because none of us are living in the environment that we we're designed for.
• 2:16:36
  So how can we not go mad on the stress?
• 2:16:39
  It's just that some forms of madness are
• 2:16:44
  more,
• 2:16:44
  Leana Tank: more, more acceptable.
• 2:16:46
  Rupert Isaacson: Yeah.
• 2:16:47
  You know, can, can be, let's say more easily assimilated.
• 2:16:49
  Leana Tank: Mm-hmm.
• 2:16:50
  Mm-hmm.
• 2:16:51
  Yeah.
• 2:16:51
  But I think
• 2:16:51
  Rupert Isaacson: we all know bonkers, you know, and umhmm that
• 2:16:55
  therefore the grace of God go.
• 2:16:56
  I feeling
• 2:16:58
  closing words also.
• 2:17:02
  You don't yet, you're not at the point, you know, a lot of people I interview,
• 2:17:05
  you know, they have websites or, you know
• 2:17:07
  Leana Tank: mm-hmm.
• 2:17:07
  Rupert Isaacson: Contacting to my knowledge you don't, and I, no, don't
• 2:17:12
  think you probably wanna be giving out your email on the, in the thing,
• 2:17:15
  but if people were to contact me
• 2:17:18
  Leana Tank: mm-hmm.
• 2:17:20
  Rupert Isaacson: Questions
• 2:17:20
  Leana Tank: mm-hmm.
• 2:17:21
  Rupert Isaacson: Including when is Leanna gonna run a retreat
• 2:17:25
  Leana Tank: mm-hmm.
• 2:17:26
  And a
• 2:17:26
  Rupert Isaacson: training.
• 2:17:28
  I will be very happy to relay those.
• 2:17:31
  And I think.
• 2:17:34
  If you would put together some sort of initial retreat or training.
• 2:17:39
  Here we are, I should date this.
• 2:17:41
  We are in February, 2025.
• 2:17:43
  If you're listening to this, five years from now, she's probably already a me
• 2:17:46
  mega celebrity in mental health instead of Leanna, but we got here first.
• 2:17:51
  So
• 2:17:53
  is that how we should do it, do you think?
• 2:17:56
  Leana Tank: Yeah.
• 2:17:56
  That, that might be the best.
• 2:17:58
  Yeah.
• 2:17:58
  Yeah.
• 2:17:58
  I'm still kind of like in the process of figuring out what
• 2:18:04
  that all might look like.
• 2:18:05
  You know, I get very torn because I feel very committed to the group of people I
• 2:18:10
  work with, and I very much feel like I am always gonna work with that population.
• 2:18:17
  Like, I just would be sad not to.
• 2:18:20
  But I also do feel very, a very strong sense of wanting to share like, the
• 2:18:28
  things that I've learned, you know, and, and, and, and support the people who
• 2:18:31
  are supporting these people and kind of like spread a better understanding
• 2:18:37
  and awareness for them story.
• 2:18:38
  I'm sure he wanted both.
• 2:18:39
  Yeah.
• 2:18:40
  Yeah.
• 2:18:41
  Yeah.
• 2:18:42
  Rupert Isaacson: What we hope is that what that looks like?
• 2:18:45
  Leana Tank: Yeah.
• 2:18:46
  Yeah.
• 2:18:47
  Rupert Isaacson: Or at least an advisor to lawmakers.
• 2:18:50
  Leana Tank: Yeah.
• 2:18:51
  Yep.
• 2:18:51
  I would love to support a better world for, for them, for sure.
• 2:18:56
  In any way I can.
• 2:18:57
  So, yeah.
• 2:19:01
  Rupert Isaacson: Well, Leanna, it's been brilliant.
• 2:19:03
  Thank you.
• 2:19:05
  Leana Tank: Yeah, thank you.
• 2:19:07
  Rupert Isaacson: I look forward to the conversation.
• 2:19:10
  Alright, my friend.
• 2:19:11
  Leana Tank: All right,
• 2:19:11
  Rupert Isaacson: so bye.
• 2:19:12
  So anyone listening, if you wanna get in touch with her, contact us.
• 2:19:16
  You've got all the email links and website links, and if you want to put
• 2:19:22
  your name down for a retreat and training with this clear genius send it to us.
• 2:19:29
  We'll get a group of you together and we'll figure out where to do it.
• 2:19:32
  Could be stateside, could be Europe side.
• 2:19:35
  Could be both.
• 2:19:35
  Why not?
• 2:19:36
  Okay.
• 2:19:39
  All right.
• 2:19:39
  We'll come sit at your feet.
• 2:19:44
  Okay.
• 2:19:45
  Till next time.
• 2:19:46
  Leana Tank: All right,
• 2:19:46
  Rupert Isaacson: bye.
• 2:19:47
  Thank you.
• 2:19:48
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• 2:19:51
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• 2:19:56
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• 2:20:00
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• 2:20:02
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