Latest / Live Free Ride Free with Rupert Isaacson / EP 3: Jane Pike - Confident Rider

Transcript

EP 3: Jane Pike - Confident Rider · Live Free Ride Free with Rupert Isaacson

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  Rupert Isaacson: Welcome to Live Free Ride Free, where we talk to people who
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  have lived self-actualized lives on their own terms, and find out how they
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  got there, what they do, how we can get there, what we can learn from them.
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  How to live our best lives, find our own definition of success,
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  and most importantly, find joy.
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  I'm your host, Rupert Isaacson.
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  New York Times bestselling author of the Horse Boy.
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  Founder of New Trails Learning Systems and long ride home.com.
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  You can find details of all our programs and shows on Rupert isaacson.com.
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  Welcome back to Live Free, ride Free, where we talk to people who live
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  self-actualized lives and find out how they did it and how they still do
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  it, and what can we learn from them.
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  What's the true meaning of success?
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  What's the true meaning of fulfillment?
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  Is it money?
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  Is it career?
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  Is it how you feel inside?
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  Is it your creativity?
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  Is it all of the above?
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  Is it none of the above?
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  What does it mean to you?
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  So we have the amazing, by any standards, Jane Pike, with us
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  tonight, who is jolly interesting.
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  Why is Jane Pike jolly interesting?
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  Well, Jane Pike was an early pioneer of, the online membership, equestrian
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  learn to train your horse or learn to ride better type stuff That came
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  out a few years ago on the internet.
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  And, many, many, many people have done this.
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  I myself have signed up for quite a few of these things because hey,
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  it's always good to learn something.
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  And I know some people who've certainly made money at it.
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  I don't know many people who have managed to both be economically
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  successful at it and also genuinely help people out and also do it from
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  a perspective that is neurological.
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  showing people how to really access what's in their bodies, the sort of
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  wisdom of the nervous system, in a way that goes far transcends horses.
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  she's also a poet but she don't know it.
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  but you'll soon know it.
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  cuz there'll be something published quite soon and she's sort of all around awesome.
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  and she very definitely lives life on her own terms down there on the
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  south island of New Zealand when she's not traveling all over the world.
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  And so I feel that we could tap into some Jane Pike wisdom about
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  how do you do something like this?
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  How do you become financially, creatively, independent like this
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  and live in this extraordinary place and help people out all over the
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  world and still sort of remain cool.
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  So, without further ado, welcome Jane Pike.
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  Jane Pike: Thank you.
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  That was a bit of, that was the loveliest introduction I've ever, ever had.
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  And the, the stay cool bit is questionable, but we'll, we'll
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  Rupert Isaacson: see how we will Well it's, it's, it's nothing but the truth.
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  and, and there are many people who'll be listening right now
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  who are, followers of Jpi.
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  Jpi has a website called confident Writer Do com and a online Do com online.
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  Sorry.
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  Good lord.
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  Jane Pike: I did No, that's alright.
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  By the early pioneers and we'll just buy all
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  Rupert Isaacson: writer names.
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  Yeah.
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  Online.
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  I'll say it three times cuz if what, what I said three times is true Confident
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  writer.online, confident writer, do online Confident writer.online.
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  And her joyride program has thousands of people around the world.
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  And I'm always running into people go, oh, I'm a Jerry Penk,
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  so let's find out why they are.
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  so Jane Pipe,
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  Jane Pike: who are you?
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  Who am I?
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  in what sense?
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  In what sense should we begin the who I who, who are you conversation?
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  Rupert Isaacson: Well, you could begin it in the, physical sense as in I am
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  this person who lives here and does this.
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  Yes.
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  You could begin it in the esoteric sense of I was once this person who lived there
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  and did that, but then returned to source and came back as a, as a flee and then
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  went through my reincarnation cycles.
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  Or you could just tell us who you are.
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  Jane Pike: Yeah.
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  Well, I, I am Jane.
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  I'm Jane.
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  Thank you for having me here.
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  At the moment, I live in a little corner of the south island of New Zealand,
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  and I wasn't born here originally.
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  I was born in Australia.
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  but my travels took me to New Zealand when I was in my late teens, actually, which
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  is kind of a funny story because, one of my best friends from school, Claire,
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  we wanted to travel after we'd done a period of study and we wanted to go to
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  Asia and we went to the travel agent and said, this is where we wanna go.
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  And they were like, oh, well that's holiday time.
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  It's all booked out.
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  And she said, but what about New Zealand?
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  And both of us went, oh, New Zealand, why would we wanna go there?
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  It's just like Australia.
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  That was kinda our thought, at the time in our ignorant Australian mindset.
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  but then because we both wanted to get out of the country, we
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  were like, oh, okay, let's go.
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  And so we hired a little car and drove around the, south island
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  of New Zealand for two weeks, and I instantly fell in love with it.
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  and then we were, we decided, at that point that after the next semester
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  of university that we would come back and do a longest in over the summer.
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  and Claire pulled out on that longest stint and I decided to come by myself,
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  and then I just didn't go home, basically.
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  so that was my,
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  Rupert Isaacson: this was in your late and now.
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  You, you at this point, you know, we're fast forwarding to your current career.
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  So you've got this hyper successful online, business doing
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  equestrianism and the nervous system, the human nervous system.
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  I presume you weren't doing that in your early teens.
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  In your late teens, but no, what was the groundwork?
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  What were you doing then that's led to that?
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  Led to now?
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  Jane Pike: Oh my goodness, that's like a lot of territory.
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  a lot of territory to cover that's think we're doing so late podcast.
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  When I think about it, late teens is probably an inaccurate, it
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  would've been very early twenties.
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  I'm, I'm my, I'm time morphing now in my mind.
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  But, what led to it?
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  a period of massive indecision and not knowing what to do with my
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  life for like 10 years probably.
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  But, I, my start point was I was very academic at school.
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  and I was one of those people that had a very clear idea of what
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  I was going to do with my life.
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  I was like, right, I'm gonna tickle of these boxes and I'm
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  going to come out of school.
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  And I got a scholarship to Sydney University for Communications Law.
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  and I knew that at that point I had to,
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  Rupert Isaacson: get a specific Carlie Min Oak's lawyer
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  Jane Pike: to get a specific score at school.
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  And so my whole.
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  Like life literally was oriented around study and getting this
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  score that I needed to get, to get into the course that I wanted.
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  and they were very selective.
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  It was like, at that stage, the way that the school system worked, you took, you
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  took your best five subjects out of like a series of subjects that you were doing,
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  and each of those subjects had a score out of 20, and I had to get over 96 out of a
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  hundred overall to get the scholarship.
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  , and so that's what happened.
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  And so, so I got into, I got into this degree, this double degree, and I, I went
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  from a, a little town in rural Tasmania at that point, to, to the center of Sydney.
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  And, I had like an apartment and it was like a, a complete
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  shock to the nervous system.
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  And I just remember sitting there a few weeks in thinking, what am I doing here?
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  I was kind of like desperately homesick.
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  And I also had this very clear.
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  I don't know if you'd call it vision, but just sense of what the end of that
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  particular period of study would most probably look like, which is me sitting
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  in an office, sorting through paperwork, climbing my way up this chain of like,
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  whatever it is I need to climb up to get, to whatever position that I wanted to be.
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  And I just thought, I just, this is just not gonna make me happy.
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  I was like, this is, this is not gonna
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  Rupert Isaacson: make happen.
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  How long did it take you to make, to come to that realization?
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  Jane Pike: About four weeks.
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  Okay.
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  Rupert Isaacson: And so I remember pleading with, well,
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  Jane Pike: expedited process.
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  That's good.
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  Yeah.
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  I remember pleading with my parents and being like, can I
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  just, I just wanna come home.
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  And they were like, stay till the end of this, you know, period.
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  Get it sorted, go and see the counselor.
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  We think you're just homesick and all of these things.
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  And in the end I had like a little, Mitsubishi cult, which was like a
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  little red snotty car that, was probably questionably roadworthy.
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  And I just packed it up to the ceiling and drove, three states across Australia home.
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  And that was the end of, of that particular, moment in my life and also the
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  end of clarity, for what I was gonna do.
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  And then it just became like a hotchpotch for the next sort of,
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  Rupert Isaacson: but look at you now.
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  You've got, you've got nervous system expertise, which we're gonna dive into
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  because if you're listening, you do want to know some of the things that
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  Jane knows about your nervous system.
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  They're useful.
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  Mm-hmm.
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  and horses.
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  So where do
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  the horses come in?
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  Jane Pike: So my mom was and is a passionate horse woman.
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  and I had horses from the moment that I was born.
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  She had horses.
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  And I think it was a huge convenience that I happened to be interested in
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  what she was into, because I think if I hadn't been, I, I, I, I think I
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  just would've had no option basically.
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  So it was just kind of handy.
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  and she had a, a horse called Icon who was a Arab Cross, something, something
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  cross something, something that was, she had him since she was, he was a two year
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  old and he, he actually only relatively recently passed away in his forties.
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  So she had him literally his whole life.
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  And she used to ride all of the time.
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  And I've got photos of me plunked up on, on Icon from a very early age.
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  And then when I was about five, my dad said to me, come with me.
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  You're gonna come, come, we're gonna go for a walk.
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  And the, the area that we lived there was a, a road that led up to like the
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  end of a, a bush track or a clearing.
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  And mom rode this pony from a friend's house that instantly she had
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  got him from through the clearing.
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  And that was captain who was gonna be my.
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  Who was my pony, basically.
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  and he was rescued out of a bramble bush, on the side of the road in
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  kind of slightly dilapidated state and had been, brought back to health.
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  And now I had this like black, wild main, unidentified breeding
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  pony that was, that was mine.
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  And we, we were very fortunate at the time, that the area that we
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  were in was surrounded by farmland.
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  And the farmer also bred riding ponies on the side.
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  And so he was horse horse friendly and let us ride.
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  Overall his paddocks, which was sort of about 500 acres and very like hill,
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  massive h you know, hills and bush and rivers and all those sorts of things.
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  So I just used to take off on captain and like, ride around the, the paddocks.
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  And what was really glorious about it looking back was my lack of,
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  Just self-consciousness about that experience because he was
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  like a very wild looking pony.
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  But I used to take him in all the competitions with all the fancy ponies
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  that were all platted up, and I had no clue that I was like, completely
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  inappropriate for that setting.
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  I'd just be like, tering round, like, and both of our hair would
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  be going all over the place.
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  And all my, you know, I just didn't have the, didn't have the gear.
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  I was the opposite of all the gear and no idea.
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  I was like, no gear and no idea.
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  But it was, it was pretty fun.
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  Yeah.
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  And mum used to come writing as well,
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  Rupert Isaacson: with did at some point the gear and the ideas come together.
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  So did you and, and mum sort of get the showing thing together
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  and then end up sort of killing it in the shows at a certain point?
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  Yeah, my sister.
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  How, how'd that happen?
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  Jane Pike: My sister as well.
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  Well, I, I don't know.
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  I think that, Like it really is this unclear in my mind about what made
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  that decision come for my mom and dad.
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  But, they were both competitive runners.
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  and so that's how they met my mom was one of the first, was, was the first women,
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  woman to run competitively in Australia.
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  She came over on like the $2 ticket from the UK and there were
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  no races for women at that point.
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  So she started running with the men and she beat them.
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  and they were very put out about that, which c created some
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  women's races in Australia.
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  And so she was running the five and 10,000 meters and my dad was a sprinter and
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  so, they met and hit it off obviously.
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  And I think that why I mentioned that was because they had like a competitive
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  streak in them that , maybe when I was flying around with like main flying in
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  the wind and they saw these other people and they saw how into it I was, they
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  thought maybe there would be a possibility for me to take it a little bit further.
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  And so, or maybe they just couldn't stand it and they wanted to do better.
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  And so they brought me, they brought me a pony called Mini, who was a writing
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  pony and she was, amazing actually.
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  And I was just, I just remember being shocked cuz I went from like, I.
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  This little bush pony to like this quite fancy little, other pony.
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  You had lots of issues at the time.
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  It's so funny.
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  Retrospectively looking back where, you know, like she was very cold backed and
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  had issues that I would now treat from, from a variety of perspectives like
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  Rupert Isaacson: body wear, those who, who are not horsey.
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  Cold back means your lighties get back, bucked
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  Jane Pike: off when you Yeah.
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  So I used to like leap on and then there would be like a moment where
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  you'd go around the arena like two or three times and that was just standard.
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  Like my parents never used to think anything of it, which is so weird
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  because now if I put my child on a pony like that, I wouldn't do it.
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  But it was just like, oh yeah, she's fine.
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  You just need to sort of get through that first part.
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  so that's what we did and she progressively got better and better.
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  She was quite young when I got her.
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  and so we had quite a successful showing career together and and I had sort of
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  lots of other horses in between that were part of what I just did my whole life.
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  I just used to get up before school and ride and I rode after school and
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  I mucked out stables and did the whole works and, that was my life pretty much.
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  Yeah.
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  Rupert Isaacson: So you, you're in obsessive perfectionist,
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  competitive horsey family.
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  You are out there showing and
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  Jane Pike: Well, that, that's a strong label, Rupert, it's a strong label.
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  Rupert Isaacson: and then you decide to go off to university
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  to become Carlie minnow's lawyer.
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  Decide that
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  Jane Pike: that might be, but I actually wanted to be a journalist.
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  That was my, my true passion.
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  But, they offered like a double degree.
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  And so it was like, oh, why not?
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  Like, that was just my thought.
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  Why not?
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  Rupert Isaacson: yeah.
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  Then four weeks into that out of Tasmania, you decide, no, this is awful.
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  I need to get back home.
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  Yes.
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  and then you say, that was the end of clarity.
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  So knowing you now you are, you seem pretty clear.
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  I see you mentoring people on how to run businesses.
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  I see you mentoring people on how to do online stuff.
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  I see you mentoring people on how do you get their nervous
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  systems together and so on.
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  So what if you say that non clarity hit you?
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  how long did it hit you for and where did it lead you?
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  What, 20 years.
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  Okay.
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  That's good.
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  That's a good minimum.
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  Jane Pike: I'm sorry.
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  No, no, not quite that long, but I'm, I'm, I'm joking, but I'm
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  Rupert Isaacson: not joking.
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  We get to my 20 years.
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  It's sort of Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
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  Only 20
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  Jane Pike: years.
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  You know, it's like clarity is an interesting word, isn't it?
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  Because, I had been trained into an expectation of what I
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  should do when I left school.
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  And a smart person, who does well at school, you know, this is sort of the
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  labels that, I did well at school because I was so afraid of not doing well.
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  You know, from the point of like letting people down or getting in.
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  It wasn't motivated from a place of like, wow, learning's amazing.
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  Let's like make the most of this.
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  It was like, if I don't do this, I'm gonna disappoint someone.
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  Yeah.
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  And if I, if I, I don't wanna disappoint someone.
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  I don't wanna get in trouble.
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  I, I, I don't know that I learned this.
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  It's a lot of us, isn't it?
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  Yeah.
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  Yeah.
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  I don't know that I learned as much as I really was good at playing the game.
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  Mm-hmm.
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  I'm like, okay, I know what you need for this exam, and I will
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  learn exactly what you need.
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  I will predict the questions, and when I get there, I will spew out everything I
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  know and that will get me a perfect score.
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  Which is true.
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  Like, I, I was, I was smart in that I could decipher what was
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  required of me, and I could predict it and, and I gave it to them.
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  It's, it's different from learning, you know, because now I couldn't necessarily,
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  think back to what it is that I learn and, and tell you with passion.
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  I just knew that.
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  In this particular area of study like history or English or that,
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  this is probably the question that they're gonna ask me based on what
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  we've studied or one of these.
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  And so literally if I write the essay beforehand and I memorize it, I can
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  change the introduction and I can change the conclusion around the question and I
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  will just give you what you wanna hear.
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  And that's what I did.
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  and so I think that that brought me success at school.
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  and so when I stepped outside of that and all of a sudden the framework
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  that was comfortable to me, which was, here are my friends, here is
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  this institution, here is this place that I know, what the rules are.
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  And I notice, you know, the wider world.
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  I notice that actually for the first time, like, well,
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  shit, this is actually my life.
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  This isn't like getting to the next stage of like 17 or 18.
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  This is like where I'm supposed to sit when I'm 40 or 50 or 60 or 70.
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  Like, and is that what I want?
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  I think I've always had that little spark in me thinking about that.
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  And I just, it rebelled at the, at the, at that moment.
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  And and then it threw me into a huge amount of conclusion, confusion
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  because I became somewhat of the joke.
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  And this was a bit of a ego bruise because, but I was the
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  person that if my friends.
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  Were like, oh, who's gonna make it or who's gonna do the thing?
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  They'd be like, oh, Jane, Jane will do it.
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  Like she's, she'll do it.
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  And then all of a sudden I was the one blanking out of university,
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  and I was the one trying a million different things and going to these
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  crazy places, and it became a thing of like, oh, Jane's doing another thing.
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  Or Jane's like, oh, Jane's doing this now.
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  And it was, it was very challenging for me to take, I'm sure in some ways
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  they meant it lovingly and, and that, or they didn't mean anything by it.
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  But for me, who had created a lot of my identity, I think, and value around
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  academic success, it was a lot.
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  Like, I, I really was wobbling inside with that.
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  and did wobble for the next sort of 10 years, even though retrospectively
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  I did a lot of stuff, which people would think was very cool.
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  And I think on reflection, I, I can see how it was, I, I know at the time
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  I probably didn't get the most out of it because I just really struggled with
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  who I was at that point and where it was
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  Rupert Isaacson: going.
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  So, talk us through these wilderness years.
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  We know that at a certain point, you had a look at New Zealand and have ended up
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  there, but there's more so, so, so, so you, you, you come back from Tasmania,
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  you're thinking, oh God, what do I do?
• 19:18
  yeah, my identity's been right.
• 19:20
  What happens?
• 19:20
  Jane Pike: Where do you go?
• 19:22
  Yeah, I just rack up some student debt, like trying lots of different things
• 19:26
  that I never finish and have some kind of like financial, obligation
• 19:30
  to, which was, you know, as an adult I wouldn't do that, but at the time
• 19:34
  it just didn't really occur to me.
• 19:36
  Yeah, it didn't really occur to me that that was gonna be a thing.
• 19:39
  and I did study, health science and got into sort of naturopathy and
• 19:44
  herbal medicine as part of that, which was the beginnings I think, of, of
• 19:49
  leading to where it is that I am now.
• 19:52
  Rupert Isaacson: What led you from, from being journalist and wanting to
• 19:55
  be, Hugh Jackson and Kylie Menino lawyer to Herbs and her, I I had You
• 20:04
  always had a bit of a yen that way or?
• 20:06
  Jane Pike: Yeah, I think so.
• 20:07
  I think so.
• 20:08
  And there was a few, kind of key incidents in here, which, now again
• 20:14
  retrospectively I see that fe have fed into what it is that I'm doing now.
• 20:21
  So one of the big life changers at that point was that my parents moved from
• 20:25
  where we'd always lived from my like duration of sort of 10 to 19, to Victoria,
• 20:33
  which is in, on mainland Australia.
• 20:35
  So we'd lived in Tasmania up until that point.
• 20:37
  And, I moved over as well.
• 20:40
  I, I, lived on a different property to them with my horses, and just had
• 20:45
  a really, really hard time with like isolation and and kind of venturing
• 20:49
  out into the adult world in a way that perhaps wasn't the most ideal
• 20:53
  transition in that I moved to somewhere where I didn't know anyone, where I
• 20:56
  was very isolated with the horses.
• 20:58
  My parents were coming six months later, so my family wasn't there yet and it
• 21:02
  was just like this, I think health-wise that really started to knock me around.
• 21:06
  And again, looking back, I dunno why that was a supportive decision, but again,
• 21:11
  it's just a different time, isn't it, when you just do different things than
• 21:14
  what it is you do for your own kids now.
• 21:17
  But the reason that this is relevant is because, at that stage I was
• 21:21
  really suffering health-wise.
• 21:22
  I had like a lot of different back issues, which I'd had my entire teens,
• 21:29
  like to the point where my back would just burn and I couldn't escape, the
• 21:33
  pain that I was feeling in my back.
• 21:35
  And, I had a lot of anxiety.
• 21:38
  There was, that was definitely a feature.
• 21:41
  I would say I was a very imbalanced human at that moment in time for a
• 21:45
  few different reasons that fed in.
• 21:47
  And so I started to seek out different solutions to my own wellness.
• 21:53
  And at 1.1 of those solutions was to, I went to a, a fair, like a wellness
• 21:57
  fair and saw a chiropractor there who like got out all of the machines
• 22:01
  and like read the amount of tension that was in my system and, and put
• 22:05
  me on like this prescription of like ridiculous amounts of sessions with him.
• 22:09
  And he popped a vertebrae, popped a vertebrae, popped a disc in
• 22:12
  my back with his adjustments.
• 22:14
  And so, yeah, so that was, so then I, I became even more, incapacitated
• 22:20
  with my own stuff at that point.
• 22:23
  And so that led me, like I said, into being interested in different alternative
• 22:29
  therapies and I was quite stoic at that point in time and I didn't wanna take,
• 22:33
  I don't really know why, but I didn't wanna take traditional pain medication
• 22:37
  or painkillers and, and so I just, I, I think, well, when I say I dunno why,
• 22:42
  like I, I had seen people in my family, you know, struggle with different,
• 22:46
  medications for, for different reasons.
• 22:48
  And I guess that part of me was like very much not wanting to be in that same ilk.
• 22:52
  So that led me on the health science route rootin.
• 22:55
  And that led me further down, wanting to study yoga at a different period of time
• 22:59
  and breath work and all of these things.
• 23:01
  And, and that was definitely a huge part of the next sort of 10
• 23:04
  years that followed after that.
• 23:07
  Rupert Isaacson: So you just said yoga and breath work.
• 23:10
  And wellness.
• 23:11
  So, okay.
• 23:12
  You're, you're looking for solutions for your back.
• 23:14
  Yeah.
• 23:14
  You're there in Victoria wondering what to do.
• 23:17
  You've got the family horses, is that right?
• 23:18
  On a family property, but you are supposed to kind of look
• 23:21
  after, but you dunno anybody.
• 23:22
  Yeah.
• 23:23
  and now you've got a bad back, which, isn't helpful of course if
• 23:27
  you're gonna work with horses and it's young to have a bad back.
• 23:31
  So what do you find and how does that lead you to yoga and breath work and
• 23:36
  where does yoga and breath work lead you?
• 23:41
  Jane Pike: So there's so many odd transitions in this part of the story.
• 23:45
  This is like, you know, if you looked at like a ball of wool at this point,
• 23:48
  this is like the bit where it's all like tangled in together and there's
• 23:50
  lots of different moving parts.
• 23:52
  Yoga and breath work.
• 23:53
  So I decided at some point that I needed to do something a little bit different,
• 24:04
  to what it was that I was doing.
• 24:06
  And I really had got myself into a, a, a bit of a bad place mentally and
• 24:10
  physically, at that point in time.
• 24:12
  And, and the transition, came where I had horses that were, you know, that
• 24:22
  were either very young or that were.
• 24:25
  Able to be sort of semi-retired by that stage.
• 24:28
  So I had no kind of middle ground horses at that moment.
• 24:31
  And so what that meant is that my horses could go onto my parents' property and
• 24:35
  essentially they could look after them without it being a really big deal.
• 24:38
  Cause they had quite a lot of land at that point in time.
• 24:41
  And so there was an opening, I guess, for me to do something different
• 24:44
  because that, at that point my commitment to my animals would've
• 24:48
  probably stopped me doing other things.
• 24:51
  But it just so happened that that was possible, at that moment.
• 24:54
  And that was where, I decided to go to New Zealand.
• 24:57
  And with your back, back in New Zealand?
• 25:01
  Yeah.
• 25:01
  Well, my back was kind of like workable at that point, but it was sort of
• 25:04
  like just permanently not okay.
• 25:06
  So they thought I had rheumatoid arthritis.
• 25:08
  They thought I had like loads of different things that were going on
• 25:11
  because it was sort of unusual to have the degree of what I had, at
• 25:15
  the age that I was like you said.
• 25:17
  And so I went to New Zealand and the second stage of that, which is when
• 25:22
  I sort of jumped ship and moved over there for the summer, I met an Israeli
• 25:28
  and ended up going back to Israel with him like you do, like I do.
• 25:34
  Yeah.
• 25:34
  Yeah.
• 25:34
  And that was after, living in New Zealand for a period of time and
• 25:37
  starting to whle wobble around.
• 25:39
  And at that stage, I was in Tel Aviv and there was a gym across the road.
• 25:45
  I.
• 25:45
  And the gym was the first place that I started to learn Hebrew because I
• 25:49
  was doing this horrendous spin class, and they'd be like, LA, la la, la
• 25:55
  which is like up, down, up, down.
• 25:56
  And so I started to learn all, all my Hebrew was coming from, like the things
• 26:00
  that the gym people were shouting at me, in, in classes to, to do.
• 26:03
  And, and so I, I, I was just like, on a mission basically.
• 26:09
  I had this like window, where I wasn't working necessarily.
• 26:12
  I was living off savings.
• 26:13
  And I, decided to just get well.
• 26:16
  And as one of those classes was a yoga class, and I went into the yoga class
• 26:21
  and I, in my competitive mindset was like, I am really bad at yoga, which
• 26:26
  is like what a lot of people say.
• 26:29
  And it was just because I was like, had the flexibility of a
• 26:33
  concrete truck and , just kind of found everything quite challenging.
• 26:37
  But I kept going.
• 26:38
  And I thought, oh, maybe this is going to be able to help me in some way.
• 26:42
  And that really was kind of the catalyst for seeking, out physical therapies
• 26:51
  that would allow me to, find ease basically to just not be in pain.
• 26:56
  and.
• 26:57
  Alongside of that.
• 26:58
  Again, like I find this really difficult to explain because
• 27:01
  I can't make sense of it.
• 27:02
  A lot of these transitions myself, it's all kind of like bound together.
• 27:06
  But I think that there, like there'd always been a part of me that was
• 27:10
  a seeker, and they'd always been a part of me that was interested in,
• 27:14
  you know, spirituality and wellness.
• 27:17
  And that was motivated by like another parallel thread in my life where,
• 27:21
  you know, someone in my family was incredibly unwell for the duration
• 27:25
  of my life in, mental health wise.
• 27:27
  And I just remember thinking, that to be out of control of my own mind was
• 27:31
  like the worst fate that I can imagine.
• 27:33
  Rupert Isaacson: Before you, you were exposed to that as a kid, you saw
• 27:36
  Jane Pike: Yes.
• 27:36
  You saw mental illness within the family Yes.
• 27:39
  And had to deal.
• 27:41
  Yeah, very much so.
• 27:42
  And I think that kind of also informed a lot of what I talked about earlier
• 27:45
  as far as like, you know, just wanting to not rock the boat and to be the
• 27:50
  good girl and to tick the boxes.
• 27:51
  Because that just meant I could keep things as stable as possible,
• 27:54
  and probably wasn't an element of control in my own life.
• 27:57
  Right.
• 27:58
  And I think that's where a lot of the pain came from
• 28:00
  Rupert Isaacson: you.
• 28:00
  Cause I think, I think, I think for a lot of reader, listeners, they, they
• 28:03
  might be like, well, you know, hold on.
• 28:05
  She's, you know, lifting the stuffy spot and then she's got these horses and Yeah.
• 28:10
  This, but one of the things which we all know is that these things can mask
• 28:19
  other things under the surface and.
• 28:21
  So if you were indeed dealing with mental illness in a sort of, in your
• 28:28
  face kind of a way, then yes, indeed.
• 28:32
  No matter how many on the surface nice things are going on,
• 28:39
  there's an underlying insecurity.
• 28:42
  And as a child that is difficult because it's your security.
• 28:48
  So do you feel that your Yeah, your, your, your, the seeds of
• 28:54
  you as a seeker of human wellness?
• 28:59
  I, I feel this is such an overused term, but, can't think of a better
• 29:03
  one at this particular point.
• 29:05
  Human, okayness, really?
• 29:08
  Mm-hmm.
• 29:08
  Human, the healing that brings us to, that started actually quite early in your life.
• 29:13
  Do, do, do you feel that that was really
• 29:15
  Jane Pike: actually yeah.
• 29:15
  Very, very early.
• 29:16
  And there are three strands that, that aren't necessarily altruistic in the first
• 29:20
  instance, although they have hopefully become more so that, the first is to
• 29:25
  wanna save someone that you love, right?
• 29:27
  So, that was one of my initial motivations.
• 29:31
  And after I, you know, absconded from the, the journalist and the law
• 29:37
  degree, I thought, well, maybe I'll be a psychiatrist or maybe I'll be
• 29:40
  a psychologist because that, or, or a, a, a researcher that could study
• 29:45
  like the ways that the brain works and, and so that I could stop, will
• 29:50
  help you know, this person and also stop it happening from other people.
• 29:55
  And then the second thread of that was what if that's what
• 30:01
  if that's my destiny, right?
• 30:03
  Like, what if there's nothing I can do?
• 30:05
  What if this is my lot?
• 30:07
  What if this is what I'm going to become?
• 30:09
  Wow.
• 30:10
  And so that was the second thread of that.
• 30:13
  And then the third thread was, I used to get quite nervous as a
• 30:17
  competitor and I did love writing.
• 30:19
  And so the psychology of like positive thinking and being able to control
• 30:24
  yourself mentally and emotionally was always really interesting to me.
• 30:28
  Like, ever since I can remember my bedside table was like
• 30:31
  stacked with books about that.
• 30:32
  That was what I heard.
• 30:33
  Did you
• 30:33
  Rupert Isaacson: find those books yourself or did other, did did your, your friends?
• 30:36
  Jane Pike: I did find those books myself.
• 30:38
  Yeah.
• 30:38
  My mom had one.
• 30:40
  oh, I can see the cover of it.
• 30:42
  That winning feeling by, oh, she just recently passed away that her name's just
• 30:46
  gone out of my head and she was such a,
• 30:49
  Rupert Isaacson: I'm gonna look it up on my phone that
• 30:51
  Jane Pike: way.
• 30:51
  Yes.
• 30:52
  But that was, my mom had that like very doggy book and so that kind of
• 30:55
  sparked my, was that a helpful book?
• 30:58
  Would you say?
• 30:59
  Yeah.
• 30:59
  You know, at the time I think it was well ahead of its time.
• 31:02
  Now we'd see it as part of perhaps more the pop psychology, positive thinking,
• 31:08
  James boy, that winning queen and boy.
• 31:10
  Yeah.
• 31:11
  Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 31:13
  Yeah.
• 31:13
  I mean, because we're so fortunate these days to be exposed to so
• 31:16
  much more because of the internet.
• 31:18
  I think that a lot of what she mentions in there would perhaps say,
• 31:21
  we'd say as part of the mainstream, movement within like, you know,
• 31:26
  affirmations and positive thinking and visualization, that sort of thing.
• 31:29
  But at the time, that was pretty revolutionary,
• 31:32
  especially in the horse world.
• 31:34
  And so I used to have that as my Bible.
• 31:37
  Rupert Isaacson: And, did you used to do affirmations when you were Yeah, I did.
• 31:40
  Like I going with
• 31:41
  Jane Pike: the shows and such.
• 31:42
  Yeah.
• 31:42
  Did did it help?
• 31:43
  Yeah.
• 31:44
  Kind of hurt.
• 31:45
  I did.
• 31:45
  Okay.
• 31:46
  Yeah.
• 31:47
  Rupert Isaacson: Did you, did you feel a shift?
• 31:49
  Did you feel AK in your chest sort of thing
• 31:53
  Jane Pike: or No?
• 31:53
  I, I, no, I think that I always had that underlying, disease within myself,
• 31:59
  but it helped me hold it together.
• 32:02
  Okay.
• 32:02
  and then there were moments where, You know, there's a, it's kind
• 32:05
  of a, a funny, juxtaposition and parallel that like, in some ways
• 32:10
  the lead up was always the worst.
• 32:12
  So that transition coming into it.
• 32:14
  But as soon as I got on my horse, I did feel like I could conquer the world.
• 32:17
  Okay.
• 32:17
  so, and not from a, like, I'm gonna steamroll you type way, but just like,
• 32:21
  I just felt so at home, riding and doing what I did and I was so proud
• 32:25
  of my horse and loved my horse so much that it was, that was kind of
• 32:29
  all I needed to, to get out there.
• 32:31
  Rupert Isaacson: Did you, were you at the time were less successful, for
• 32:34
  example, you know, when you made the tr the transition to university and then
• 32:37
  found it wasn't for you, and then you became the sort of, you know, Jane Pike
• 32:42
  trying this, Jane Pike trying that, people ribbing you about that in your community.
• 32:45
  Were you also at that point trying affirmations in those areas of your
• 32:49
  life and then finding it wasn't working?
• 32:51
  Or did you sort of let it go and how mad Drift, did you really only
• 32:56
  use the affirmations and that sort of thing in your competitive life?
• 33:01
  Jane Pike: There was always a sense of something bigger than myself.
• 33:07
  I don't know that I was using the affirmations at that point.
• 33:10
  At that particular point you describe, I was struggling with a lot of things.
• 33:14
  I was struggling with food and I was struggling with exercise.
• 33:18
  And I used both of those things to punish myself.
• 33:20
  Mm-hmm.
• 33:21
  And I think I, I was so.
• 33:24
  I was in such a dark place at that time.
• 33:27
  And I was so full of self-loathing at that time.
• 33:30
  And now retrospectively I can see that I was just trying to grab onto some
• 33:36
  semblance of control in an experience that just felt completely out of control.
• 33:40
  But I, I would, you know, I would exercise obsessively for like four
• 33:45
  hours a day after I'd worked all day.
• 33:47
  And then I was really, really strict with food.
• 33:49
  And, and I can see that I had a very disordered eating and very
• 33:53
  dysmorphic view of my own body.
• 33:56
  And I, that is definitely, you know, that that's not a feature, thank
• 34:02
  goodness of my experience anymore.
• 34:03
  But it's, it was a very, at that particular moment in time,
• 34:06
  I think I was so, and you're
• 34:08
  Rupert Isaacson: dealing with this chronic pain?
• 34:10
  Jane Pike: Yes.
• 34:11
  Yeah.
• 34:11
  Yeah.
• 34:12
  And, and pain emotionally just of like where I was and, and just
• 34:16
  reconciling lots of different things that had happened in my life.
• 34:19
  So, yeah.
• 34:21
  Rupert Isaacson: So then you find yourself in the Holy Land, doing, Hebrew aerobics.
• 34:25
  Hebrew aerobics.
• 34:26
  Yeah.
• 34:26
  I can make that joke.
• 34:27
  Cause I'm, and so, so I'm the rabbi rubric make this, but at this point,
• 34:34
  and then you, and then you fall into yoga and you're saying, okay,
• 34:38
  well I've been a seeker for a while.
• 34:40
  This feels like you could have some answers for me.
• 34:44
  Yes.
• 34:45
  Where does this take you?
• 34:48
  Jane Pike: So the particular relationship that took me to Israel ended, but I had,
• 34:56
  I'd been there a little while and had quite a good community there and sort of
• 34:59
  was, went back and forth, but obviously I wasn't allowed to stay there, because
• 35:03
  I was foreign and didn't have the right visa requirements and that sort of thing.
• 35:07
  And had been doing bits and pieces there and I'm just trying to piece together.
• 35:11
  It feels like such a, is such a long time ago, but I, so the bit that
• 35:18
  kind of came up in between, gosh, what's the order of operation here?
• 35:23
  I've completely confused this part of my life in my mind.
• 35:26
  So the, at one stage I was in Asia, so I was traveling.
• 35:31
  I traveled quite, quite a lot.
• 35:33
  Yeah, yeah, I left, I went back to Asia, and I met some people in Did you,
• 35:38
  Rupert Isaacson: did you go to Asia looking o on the yoga trail?
• 35:41
  Was that what took you there or were you just traveling
• 35:43
  Jane Pike: now following you?
• 35:44
  I was traveling.
• 35:45
  I was mainly traveling at that moment in time, but the yoga thing was
• 35:48
  definitely like strong in my mind.
• 35:50
  And then intermittently, I was going back to Australia at that
• 35:53
  point, for work and I was working and and what were you doing?
• 35:57
  I, so as part of the health science thing, I'd done like a
• 36:00
  massage certifi certification.
• 36:02
  So I did massage at a APRs, clinic that paid quite well.
• 36:06
  Like, cuz you got like quite a decent amount of money for that.
• 36:09
  Rupert Isaacson: But at this point you've entered the healing arts?
• 36:11
  Jane Pike: Yes.
• 36:12
  Yeah.
• 36:12
  So I was doing that and I knew, you know, sort of a bit about, herbal
• 36:16
  medicine and, and all of these sorts of things and I, I would ride for people.
• 36:19
  So there was like a bit of a mishmash of things that, would
• 36:21
  happen when I went home.
• 36:23
  And, I'd met, someone in Thailand who worked for the Red Cross, and he was
• 36:30
  from Belgium and he was doing some like local on the ground things in Belgium.
• 36:35
  And and it ended up that we got talking quite a lot at that stage.
• 36:42
  It was like, I don't think I, did I have a mobile phone at that stage.
• 36:46
  I might have had a mobile phone, but it was like sort of the
• 36:48
  Hotmail Messenger type thing.
• 36:50
  Like that was like, you had to like log on at the same time and it was like, do
• 36:53
  you remember that there was like an M MSN messenger or something like that?
• 36:55
  It was something like that to me that only feels
• 36:57
  Rupert Isaacson: like five minutes ago, but I, I, I remember, remember when
• 36:59
  mastered on silver to mastered on Yes.
• 37:02
  The swamp.
• 37:03
  So yeah,
• 37:03
  Jane Pike: so that was us chatting at that point.
• 37:05
  And, and gosh, I'm trying to, I'm trying to place my years and the order that I
• 37:13
  did things in, But when I was in, so I, when I was sort of dipping around in yoga
• 37:19
  at home, there was a, there was a lady that I spoke to, so my natural inclination
• 37:26
  coming from a competitive family and also coming from a, family, so coming
• 37:31
  from a position where exercise was like self punishment and self-flagellation,
• 37:35
  and I was like using it.
• 37:36
  And your parents were
• 37:37
  Rupert Isaacson: competitive runners too, so certain amount of grueling
• 37:40
  exercise as part of the deal, right?
• 37:42
  Jane Pike: Yeah, yeah.
• 37:43
  It was, well, they just, like, we we're a very active family, but I
• 37:46
  don't know that, you know, that I used necessarily the gifts that were bespoke
• 37:51
  bestowed to me in the way that I do now.
• 37:54
  But, at that point I did the types of yoga, which was like, you just feel
• 37:59
  like you wanna die at the end of it.
• 38:01
  And that to me was success.
• 38:03
  Rupert Isaacson: What kind of yoga is that?
• 38:05
  Jane Pike: Well, you know, you do, like, I did Ashtanga, and like,
• 38:09
  couldn't sort of like talk us to, for
• 38:10
  Rupert Isaacson: those people that dunno what Ashtanga yoga
• 38:12
  is, talk to USGA yoga Ash.
• 38:15
  Lemme ask you one quick question.
• 38:17
  Yes.
• 38:17
  Had you found, had you found the answer to the pain in your back at this point?
• 38:22
  Jane Pike: No, but I, I could see that there was potential of moving
• 38:26
  in the right direction with it.
• 38:28
  Okay.
• 38:28
  So I, I saw like a light for that.
• 38:29
  Yeah.
• 38:29
  So you felt that the
• 38:30
  Rupert Isaacson: yoga was strengthening you?
• 38:31
  Yes.
• 38:32
  Yeah.
• 38:32
  Yeah.
• 38:32
  Okay.
• 38:32
  So, so tell us about Aang
• 38:34
  Jane Pike: Yoga.
• 38:36
  Ashtanga Yoga comes out of, so there were three main teachers that were students
• 38:42
  of the main kind of yoga guru who brought it to the west called Krishna Aria.
• 38:47
  And, Patabi Joyce was one of those yoga students, and he, created, he
• 38:53
  didn't really create, but he was the one that sort of popularized
• 38:56
  this form of yoga called Ashtanga.
• 38:58
  And there were two other teachers that were descendants of that lineage of the
• 39:03
  Christian Aria lineage and they were aen.
• 39:06
  So some, a lot of people will be familiar with yenga yoga, much more
• 39:10
  structured, a lot of rules around I, ien yoga that deals with body alignment.
• 39:15
  And they use quite a lot of props, like straps and blocks and like,
• 39:19
  there's ways of, Of shaping the body towards this particular outcome.
• 39:23
  And the third person who's much less known, was Mohan Ag Mohan
• 39:28
  and his wife, who are very much into the therapeutic side of yoga.
• 39:33
  And so there were these three, students that studied with him.
• 39:36
  Patabi Joyce is from Myo in India.
• 39:38
  There's kind of a big, movement in mys saw towards Ashtanga.
• 39:42
  And Ashtanga originally was, the form of yoga that was designed
• 39:46
  for teenage boys, basically.
• 39:47
  So a very active, very strength-based, very dynamic form of yoga that would
• 39:53
  suit, a boy with a lot of testosterone, a lot of strength, a lot of, you know, a
• 39:58
  lot of just physical capacity to do that.
• 40:01
  And not necessarily designed for.
• 40:04
  Women especially, because of the types of, breath work that it utilizes
• 40:10
  and the type of body movement that it utilizes has quite a strong
• 40:13
  effect on the reproductive system.
• 40:15
  And because women weren't in mind when that system was around.
• 40:19
  And so it's just a very, very physical, yoga, you go through a set of,
• 40:24
  postures that all form a part of a sequence that are constantly flowing.
• 40:28
  And you tie in the breath with that.
• 40:30
  And so it's, because there's these set sequences and set levels that you go
• 40:35
  through, in order to kind of like graduate to the next level, you, your body needs
• 40:40
  to be able to move in particular ways.
• 40:43
  And for me, that wasn't part of how my body liked to move, you know, in
• 40:47
  terms of, just my natural inclination.
• 40:51
  And so I found it quite challenging, but again, it fitted in quite well with
• 40:57
  trying to make my body do something.
• 40:59
  Rupert Isaacson: why were you attracted to that one and not the other two times?
• 41:02
  Why not the therapeutic type, or why not in the very structured type?
• 41:05
  Why this dynamic made for 18 year old boys type?
• 41:09
  Jane Pike: Well it was popular where I was at that moment.
• 41:11
  And I didn't, reali didn't really realize the lineage that it was springing from.
• 41:16
  And initially you were in,
• 41:17
  Rupert Isaacson: you went to my saw.
• 41:18
  Did you, you ended
• 41:19
  Jane Pike: up in No, I didn't.
• 41:20
  This was in, this was at home that I, that I was doing this and also, You
• 41:24
  know, I really thought that in order to be doing something good for my body,
• 41:29
  I ha you had to really feel it, like the no pain, no gain type philosophy.
• 41:35
  So, it just went in line with, I, I was just trying to escape myself ru like I
• 41:40
  was just so, I needed to sweat it out.
• 41:42
  I needed to push myself.
• 41:43
  I needed to like, punish myself to some degree, even though I wouldn't
• 41:46
  have said that's what I was doing.
• 41:48
  Yeah.
• 41:48
  That's what I needed at the time.
• 41:50
  And to think of being still just meant that I had to meet myself and that would
• 41:54
  probably be one of the worst things that I could think of at that particular time.
• 41:56
  And how
• 41:57
  Rupert Isaacson: did you feel it was working for you?
• 41:58
  Just in terms of building strength or, well, I
• 42:00
  Jane Pike: was sore.
• 42:01
  Like it wasn't really working for me.
• 42:03
  I was, I had sore knees, I had sore elbows, I had sore, you know, shoulders
• 42:07
  because I was, there's a lot of jumping and a lot of like, push up type motions
• 42:12
  and a lot of, very physical things, which for me, if you are doing it repetitively
• 42:16
  and you're not doing it in a way where the body's able to sustain itself,
• 42:20
  you develop compensation patterns.
• 42:21
  And so now it's like, oh gosh, my right shoulder hurts because I'm
• 42:25
  using that arm more and I'm doing this like 50 times a session.
• 42:28
  And so that starts to have a, have an effect.
• 42:31
  But the, the way out of that, was actually following someone that had
• 42:37
  most likely been in a similar position to me, who was one of my main Ashtanga
• 42:42
  teachers, and then started studying with Mohan, who was the therapeutic.
• 42:45
  Teacher and she came back from, Chenai, which is where he was based,
• 42:50
  and just started teaching this like incredibly slow, form of yoga.
• 42:56
  And I was like, what is this?
• 42:59
  Like this is doing nothing.
• 43:01
  I now need to go for like a 50 k run if I do this.
• 43:03
  Like, that was my mentality, you know, it's not enough to kind of
• 43:06
  keep me in shape or whatever it is I was supposed to be at that time.
• 43:09
  And so she sort of sparked a seed in me and then from there I did some,
• 43:16
  prodding around on the internet and decided that I was gonna go and study
• 43:19
  with them directly, when I was in India, where I was gonna go to India.
• 43:24
  Yeah.
• 43:25
  Rupert Isaacson: So you end up in India and now you're studying
• 43:28
  this therapeutic form of yoga.
• 43:31
  Yes.
• 43:31
  Yes.
• 43:32
  Is your pain
• 43:32
  Jane Pike: getting better?
• 43:34
  So, Mohan and his wife Indra are quite magical people.
• 43:39
  And the first course that I did was eight weeks.
• 43:42
  And you go and you sit on their concrete floor and you listen all day to them and
• 43:47
  you do practices and they teach you the Vaers and they teach you the everything.
• 43:52
  And you go and have a consultation with Indra.
• 43:55
  And Indra is like, because she's a woman, she doesn't get the
• 44:01
  same accolades as her husband.
• 44:05
  But actually she's probably the most skilled of the two.
• 44:09
  But she's just ag mohans wife, if that makes sense.
• 44:12
  But she's studied the same as him.
• 44:13
  She's actually, she's, she's really the magical, one of the two of them.
• 44:18
  And she, because I was female, she was the one that saw me.
• 44:21
  Cuz there's quite strict customs there in terms of who sees who.
• 44:25
  So we go into the room and she asks me to, she does like a, gets me to
• 44:30
  move in a couple of different ways.
• 44:31
  And, and their approach is they give you a personal practice.
• 44:34
  So they actually give you the postures to do based on your mind and your body.
• 44:39
  Which is a first for me because everything else had been generic up until that point.
• 44:43
  So they designed postures for you, they designed a sequence for you.
• 44:46
  And, I went in, I can remember it really clearly.
• 44:49
  I went into her little room and she is like, for the time you are
• 44:53
  here, you're only doing what I say.
• 44:55
  You're only doing these postures.
• 44:58
  Because I was doing my Ashtanga Pro practice in the morning.
• 45:01
  And then going to them, you see this is the level of my addiction actually.
• 45:04
  Like, I was like, I was doing something that I thought would like keep me
• 45:08
  strong and fear and then I was gonna go and do the therapeutic yoga,
• 45:11
  which was like the nice thing on the side that I could tell other people.
• 45:13
  And she was like, no, no, no, you you, you are not doing that anymore.
• 45:16
  You're not doing that.
• 45:17
  And that was like a crisis of, for me, for a month.
• 45:20
  I, I did do what she said cuz I was like, I'm here.
• 45:23
  It feels very disrespectful to not do.
• 45:25
  What she is asking if I'm gonna be in this.
• 45:28
  But I had a real moment with that, that was like the beginning, I think
• 45:35
  of breaking, it was basically like an alcoholic arriving and them saying, you're
• 45:39
  not drinking for the next eight weeks.
• 45:41
  And you're like, what?
• 45:43
  Like that, that's how it felt like I was, that's how I imagined it would feel.
• 45:47
  It's like I was so addicted to that as a way of like keeping my mind
• 45:54
  in a, in a container, that I could manage that to think about letting
• 45:58
  that go was actually terrifying.
• 46:00
  Rupert Isaacson: And so you felt that the Ashtanga was basically the keeping
• 46:04
  the lid on your, wobbly mental health and that if you were to let that go, you might
• 46:09
  wobble outside the jar sort of thing?
• 46:12
  Jane Pike: Yeah.
• 46:13
  Yeah.
• 46:13
  And, and also beyond that, I think that, and I, I don't know, sorry, this is
• 46:16
  going a little bit outside the REIT of what your podcast is about, isn't it?
• 46:19
  But it's,
• 46:20
  Rupert Isaacson: no, not at all.
• 46:20
  It's, it's, it's how we get, it's how we get, it's how we
• 46:22
  get to self-actualization.
• 46:24
  Jane Pike: Yeah.
• 46:25
  It's interesting as well.
• 46:26
  I think that for me, and the reason that I talk about this, well, I have no
• 46:30
  shame around it, but also I think that a lot of, I was gonna say women, but I
• 46:34
  think a lot of people will go through this, where, the way that I controlled
• 46:38
  my life was through controlling my body.
• 46:42
  And so my.
• 46:44
  Thought processes around controlling my body at that moment in time
• 46:49
  was with punishing exercise.
• 46:53
  And so if I let that go, I thought that would mean a, I would start looking
• 47:00
  a certain way, which was, again, I didn't even really have ideas about,
• 47:06
  like, I didn't, it's, it's funny to reflect on because it wasn't so much
• 47:11
  that I was like judging people's body shapes, but for me it was just control.
• 47:14
  Like, it was like I just was aiming to look a certain way
• 47:17
  in order to stay controlled.
• 47:18
  And that involved, I guess I had so much adrenaline crossing
• 47:23
  through my system, that that was kind of burning that up as well.
• 47:26
  And if it wasn't being burned up, then I had to deal with it in other ways.
• 47:29
  Right.
• 47:30
  But I found interestingly that, because I am a good student and I do do what
• 47:36
  I'm told, if I, into a certain extent at that moment in time, that I followed the
• 47:39
  practice, I was like, well, I'm here.
• 47:41
  And I, it was actually so beautiful, aside from I would get up in the
• 47:45
  morning, and for those of you who've been to India, it's like this very,
• 47:49
  it's a mishmash of different things.
• 47:50
  So on the one hand, you'd have the call to prayer that's very, very
• 47:55
  beautiful, like so, so beautiful.
• 47:58
  I'm up before the sun.
• 48:00
  It's, I've, I've laid out my little yoga mat.
• 48:01
  I'm on my little concrete floor.
• 48:03
  My, my place is super basic.
• 48:06
  You know, there's no toilet, no anything like that.
• 48:08
  I've got the colder prayer, the air is warm.
• 48:11
  I'm like, this feels lush.
• 48:13
  And then all of a sudden someone starts like hoking outside my window,
• 48:16
  like, like clearing your throat.
• 48:18
  And like, and you know, like the abolitions begin, you're
• 48:20
  like, what a j this is India.
• 48:22
  Right?
• 48:22
  Like the juxtaposition between this is the most sublime thing
• 48:26
  that's ever happened to me.
• 48:26
  And then all of a sudden someone starts like, just literally like throwing up.
• 48:31
  Rupert Isaacson: Take your shit right outside your window.
• 48:32
  Yeah,
• 48:32
  Jane Pike: exactly.
• 48:33
  You're like, well, right in the eye.
• 48:34
  Back to reality.
• 48:36
  Back to reality.
• 48:37
  And so that was, and what I noticed over the course of six weeks was
• 48:41
  with this very, very, very soft and gentle practice, everything started
• 48:45
  to shift for me, at that moment.
• 48:48
  And so that was a really huge, transition.
• 48:52
  And I kind of dedicated myself to them for a long period of time.
• 48:58
  How long, years.
• 49:00
  Like I studied with them for years and I did the practice for years.
• 49:03
  And I, I thought
• 49:04
  Rupert Isaacson: So you would say Indra all I want to do what?
• 49:08
  So it's Mohan and Indra.
• 49:11
  Mohan.
• 49:11
  Mohan Mohan is the, is the family name?
• 49:14
  Yes.
• 49:14
  Yeah.
• 49:14
  Yeah.
• 49:15
  They were, were they're still practice.
• 49:16
  The, the Mohans were your mentors basically?
• 49:19
  Yes.
• 49:20
  Yeah.
• 49:20
  But for how long?
• 49:21
  For like a decade.
• 49:22
  For like five years.
• 49:23
  Jane Pike: For, yeah.
• 49:24
  A decade.
• 49:24
  Yeah.
• 49:25
  Yeah.
• 49:25
  Okay.
• 49:25
  And at that stage as well, like, I really, I, and, and I think this suited
• 49:29
  me because it meant that I didn't have to show up in life for other things that
• 49:35
  were challenging to me at that moment.
• 49:39
  I thought I just wanted to go and be in a cave, and I was just gonna be that
• 49:44
  person that like, meditated and did yoga and I just was going to get enlightened.
• 49:51
  That was like my idea.
• 49:52
  I was like, yeah, I'm just, that's what I'm gonna do.
• 49:54
  I'm gonna like, check out.
• 49:56
  I'm just gonna do this.
• 49:56
  I'm gonna be in whatever way I need to be in life, as much as I need to be, and
• 50:01
  then I'm just going to do this thing.
• 50:04
  I'm just gonna be by myself and do the thing.
• 50:06
  And I think that, again, retrospectively, that was very convenient.
• 50:11
  Because it, you know, relationships are hard and like showing up
• 50:16
  in the world notice is hard.
• 50:17
  Yeah.
• 50:18
  Really.
• 50:18
  And, and if you can, like, if you can be like, wow, maybe actually the idea is
• 50:22
  that you should just like, be in a cave and like, and secrete yourself away.
• 50:27
  Like, was, that was quite a attractive, idea at that moment because, and
• 50:31
  Rupert Isaacson: was that promoted by the, the mohans?
• 50:33
  Was that more your, your own idea that that was what you had to do?
• 50:37
  Jane Pike: They were very much, not necessarily in overt ways, because I
• 50:41
  don't wanna seek to represent them at all.
• 50:42
  They're, they're very encouraging and will create a supportive framework
• 50:47
  around whatever your life is showing.
• 50:49
  Okay.
• 50:50
  But they're ultimately as a practice, you know, like they're aiming to bring the
• 50:56
  mind towards one pointed focus, and that is about controlling earthly desires.
• 51:04
  Okay.
• 51:05
  Right.
• 51:05
  So, leaving the
• 51:06
  Rupert Isaacson: senses behind, leaving the body behind Yes.
• 51:09
  The mind.
• 51:10
  Yeah.
• 51:11
  Transcendent everyth.
• 51:12
  Jane Pike: Yeah.
• 51:12
  So, and they're, you know, for instance, if I just remember hearing, him talk
• 51:18
  one day and, that when he traveled, he didn't go looking around at things, he
• 51:23
  would go back to his room and meditate.
• 51:25
  And I remember thinking, wow, like, that's interesting, isn't it?
• 51:30
  Like to not be interested in what's going on around you in a place that
• 51:33
  you've never been before, but instead to just do the work that you came for
• 51:38
  and then just go back and meditate was kind of like jarring thought for me.
• 51:43
  And that, you know, relationship has a purpose for recreation.
• 51:48
  And then, you know, beyond that, it's like, not that they weren't very loving
• 51:52
  towards each other, but the, they, they understood that their ultimate
• 51:56
  purpose was to unite with the divine.
• 51:58
  And that was.
• 51:59
  That was bigger than what either of them were individually or
• 52:02
  what their relationship was.
• 52:03
  And so, you know, there are a lot of beautiful things that came out of that
• 52:07
  experience for me and a lot of problematic things, that came out of that for me.
• 52:12
  I, I won't speak for them or their lineage, but for me from a, you
• 52:15
  know, cultural perspective and from the perspective of who I understand
• 52:19
  myself to be now and who I understand myself to have always been, but just
• 52:23
  didn't really recognize, because, so
• 52:25
  Rupert Isaacson: at, at a certain point, did you become like an
• 52:27
  instructor you were leading?
• 52:29
  Jane Pike: Yeah.
• 52:29
  Yeah.
• 52:29
  I was hard out teaching.
• 52:30
  Yeah.
• 52:30
  Yeah.
• 52:30
  Okay.
• 52:31
  You, you are you like I did all of the things.
• 52:33
  Rupert Isaacson: Yeah.
• 52:34
  Yeah.
• 52:35
  Being flown around the world, teaching wealthy Chinese businessman type thing.
• 52:38
  Yoga or,
• 52:39
  --- ------
• 52:39
  I did work in China for food in Hong Kong and like, went to China and I,
• 52:44
  I was teaching all over the place.
• 52:45
  I was in Bali.
• 52:46
  I was, going to set up retreat centers and yoga centers.
• 52:49
  So this is success.
• 52:50
  Rupert Isaacson: I mean, you've now found this, this thing with
• 52:53
  this, this therapeutic yoga.
• 52:55
  I presume it's making you feel better to some degree.
• 52:58
  It must be making other people feel better.
• 53:01
  Jane Pike: That's the irony, isn't it?
• 53:02
  It gave me a focus.
• 53:03
  I don't know that it made me feel better.
• 53:05
  Okay.
• 53:05
  It gave me a focus.
• 53:07
  And, and I think that that was a relief having been.
• 53:12
  Swimming around in this un, you know, what am I gonna do with my life thing
• 53:16
  all of a sudden, like I was something that I could attach something to.
• 53:19
  You're good at it.
• 53:20
  Rupert Isaacson: People want you, you're marketable.
• 53:23
  Yeah.
• 53:23
  You've mastered it.
• 53:24
  If you found mastery of something
• 53:27
  Jane Pike: Yeah.
• 53:27
  Enough to be able to impart
• 53:29
  Rupert Isaacson: some stuff.
• 53:29
  To where are the horses in this?
• 53:31
  Have they gone completely by the by at this point?
• 53:33
  Jane Pike: They have at this point, yeah.
• 53:34
  Mm-hmm.
• 53:35
  Yeah.
• 53:35
  Rupert Isaacson: Are you missing them somehow?
• 53:37
  Yes.
• 53:37
  I Are you not thinking about them?
• 53:38
  Jane Pike: Yeah.
• 53:38
  No, I am missing them.
• 53:40
  Yeah.
• 53:40
  I am missing them.
• 53:41
  Yeah.
• 53:42
  Yeah.
• 53:42
  And I, and I had like, you know, there's, I had crises of, of sorts again, because
• 53:48
  I was traveling quite extensively and I was doing other work in between there.
• 53:52
  But you know, you see a lot of people, in Bali for instance,
• 53:56
  I saw people that were expats.
• 54:00
  And there's like an expat community, and I just remember feeling deeply uncomfortable
• 54:05
  with the situation in that they're, they're very affluent in the country
• 54:11
  that they're, they've arrived in because obviously the currency that they have come
• 54:14
  with is worth a lot more than the currency they're playing with in that moment.
• 54:17
  They all have housekeepers and there's just this like residue of colonialism
• 54:22
  and, hierarchical living that really, really made me uncomfortable.
• 54:26
  And, and the.
• 54:28
  Yoga community in those places is very much a part of that because
• 54:34
  a lot of the reason why people go there in the first place is to seek
• 54:39
  some form of wellness, and wellness solutions and wellness retreats.
• 54:43
  And there's a lot of people that have set up things there, that are kind of
• 54:47
  doing so under this pseudo idea that they're, you know, helping humanity.
• 54:52
  But actually what I saw was just like, well, this is just a
• 54:55
  convenient, I don't know, it just really didn't sit well with me.
• 54:58
  And you, and you saw that in a, in a few different places that kind
• 55:02
  of, oh, we're helping out here.
• 55:04
  But actually it's like, no, you're under really good wicket and you are doing
• 55:06
  so at the expense of some local people.
• 55:09
  And it just is just, was weird to me.
• 55:12
  Yeah, but, and so I, I, I, I al I always had this thought of like, this can't be
• 55:19
  the end point because I watched, I just, I remember sitting in a cafe and I like
• 55:26
  saw a group of, men come in that were all in their little, like, you know,
• 55:31
  hos or whatever.
• 55:32
  I was gonna
• 55:32
  Rupert Isaacson: say seven dwarves outfits.
• 55:33
  I'm, I'm, I'm on there.
• 55:35
  Jane Pike: Like, they're in go.
• 55:36
  It's like there's a, there's a look.
• 55:38
  And I, I, and I looked at them and I thought, I can't be that.
• 55:42
  I just can't end up like that.
• 55:44
  Like I can't be that.
• 55:45
  And, and I thought at some point when you've stayed away
• 55:49
  too long, you can't go back.
• 55:53
  You know, because you've either absented yourself from your culture
• 55:55
  or financially you just can't go back because now you're used to living
• 55:59
  in India and everything is so cheap.
• 56:01
  And, and so I I, I always had this idea of this was temporary, but I wasn't quite
• 56:05
  sure where things were gonna lead next.
• 56:07
  Rupert Isaacson: so where did they lead next and what was the transition point?
• 56:11
  Jane Pike: So the transition point was,
• 56:14
  there are a few things that happened.
• 56:16
  Cuz this is sort of like a few, you know, over a, the course of many years,
• 56:20
  the, I was in Europe for a period and I went to see my friend who was
• 56:28
  the Red Cross worker that I mentioned.
• 56:30
  Oh, the Israeli
• 56:31
  Rupert Isaacson: guy previously?
• 56:32
  Yeah.
• 56:32
  No,
• 56:33
  Jane Pike: the Belgian guy.
• 56:34
  Belgian, yeah.
• 56:34
  Yeah.
• 56:35
  And there were some local projects that they were involved with, that I was just
• 56:39
  volunteering at and helping out with.
• 56:42
  And then around that time, The tsunami happened, it was like 2000 and, 2004.
• 56:49
  And so there were all people getting dispatched over there initially
• 56:52
  to Thailand, then to Sri Lanka.
• 56:55
  And, Chennai where I'd been studying in India was marginally affected
• 57:00
  like Southern India, but not so badly, as the, as the other places.
• 57:05
  And I had the opportunity to go.
• 57:07
  And I'd already been doing, different pieces of work, that were like
• 57:12
  aid humanitarian related, projects, whenever I could around the place,
• 57:17
  both personally and then kind of hooking in with other groups.
• 57:20
  And so I went, and decided to be a part of the, like,
• 57:24
  dispatch that went to Sri Lanka.
• 57:27
  and so shortly after that happened, that's where I arrived and was
• 57:33
  there for the next 12 months.
• 57:34
  Also, and I think that that was a real sort of turning point for me as well,
• 57:40
  where I was like, I need something.
• 57:44
  I, I, I just need to figure myself out.
• 57:45
  Like I really need to figure myself out.
• 57:47
  And I went back to New Zealand after that.
• 57:48
  That's where I was
• 57:49
  Rupert Isaacson: like, okay, I'll, oh, hold on, hold on, hold on, hold on.
• 57:51
  You must have done something quite interesting down there.
• 57:53
  And she like, what did you do?
• 57:55
  In the aftermath of the tsunami.
• 57:57
  Can't just gloss over that.
• 57:58
  Come
• 57:58
  Jane Pike: on.
• 57:59
  Yeah.
• 57:59
  Yeah.
• 58:00
  Well there were sort of different, okay, that's enough.
• 58:03
  Let's move on.
• 58:04
  Yeah, there were different parts to it.
• 58:06
  The first part was, anyone who's done any sort of aid work and, and I had
• 58:11
  been doing things prior, so it wasn't sort of my first foray, but the,
• 58:15
  there's a huge amount of corruption in Asia and in, you know, Indian
• 58:20
  subcontinent and all around there.
• 58:21
  And I'd been traveling and working all around there, so I was kind
• 58:23
  of used to the use of the game.
• 58:26
  But after the, tsunami kind of hit new levels, especially, especially
• 58:31
  with the president of Sri Lanka, who was, female at that time.
• 58:34
  I'm not quite sure who it is now, but she was, there was a huge outpouring
• 58:38
  of public donations, because, I mean, this is one of the first times really
• 58:44
  I think, where something to that scale had been caught on camera, for the
• 58:50
  mainstream to be able to experience.
• 58:53
  And so, you know, people holidaying had caught on their mobile phones
• 58:56
  and it was all over the, the news and it was so shocking.
• 58:59
  Like it was, it was really, really so shocking that, it moved people
• 59:03
  to give money in ways that they hadn't really given money before.
• 59:07
  And so, of course this goes to the powers that be initially in the country.
• 59:12
  That doesn't go to the people that who need it.
• 59:14
  It goes to the people who you hope are going to equitably distribute it.
• 59:19
  And in Sri Lanka, that definitely wasn't the case.
• 59:20
  So, she profited very handsomely and fabulously off people's,
• 59:24
  donations in that first instance.
• 59:27
  And so, When, when you work or are with a organization that are, that
• 59:35
  have a huge administrative background, there is also limitations in what
• 59:39
  you can do because everything has to go through, process of course.
• 59:43
  So, how, how publicly, good this is to talk about.
• 59:47
  But anyway, so that was the first part of it was with, with the organization.
• 59:49
  Then what we decided was that we would come back independently.
• 59:53
  And we thought, well, you know, if we had like you and a small
• 59:56
  Rupert Isaacson: group
• 59:56
  Jane Pike: of people there, yes.
• 59:58
  Yeah.
• 59:58
  If we came back and we independently raised money and we had like thousands
• 1:00:04
  of dollars in our own bank accounts that were, we just directly like
• 1:00:09
  went in and just helped people out.
• 1:00:11
  We could do something faster than we could if we have to wait for
• 1:00:16
  this whole process to happen.
• 1:00:18
  And so, the person I was with, he was a, a very skilled photographer.
• 1:00:22
  I had sort of other skills that were going on and the other thing that
• 1:00:26
  we did at that point in time was, my main role was I worked with the,
• 1:00:30
  the children quite a lot and it was very much making it up as you go.
• 1:00:33
  So I could see that, the kids were quite traumatized but
• 1:00:36
  also desperate to be children.
• 1:00:38
  And so I said to them, cuz one of the things I was really aware of was the.
• 1:00:44
  Sort of white savior thing that happens or you create that mentality
• 1:00:48
  where, you are handing out money and it's a very disempowering situation
• 1:00:52
  for people, especially individuals, you know, with their own pride
• 1:00:55
  and their own, stuff going on.
• 1:00:58
  And so with the children, I thought, well, how can we make it so that they feel
• 1:01:03
  like they're actually raising their own money, even if it's not actually the case?
• 1:01:06
  Like, so that there's like a sentiment that they have apart
• 1:01:09
  in what they're receiving.
• 1:01:11
  And so, I said, look, we've got a, art, a, a museum sort of art
• 1:01:15
  gallery, a couple of different art galleries that are interested
• 1:01:17
  in, auctioning off your pictures.
• 1:01:21
  Cuz I know that you do really good art.
• 1:01:22
  You've been drawing with me and you do really good pictures.
• 1:01:25
  So I do wanna draw some pictures for me.
• 1:01:28
  And so they started producing this artwork that was just like wild, like, and I
• 1:01:34
  didn't ask them to draw about the tsunami.
• 1:01:37
  I just said, you can draw whatever you want.
• 1:01:39
  Like, it doesn't, doesn't matter.
• 1:01:40
  And they drew these like big black waves with like teeth coming out of them and
• 1:01:45
  like bodies floating on top of the water and like, People hanging off trees and
• 1:01:50
  like, basically like whatever was in their subconscious, these little kids
• 1:01:54
  that were just like la la la would come out with these like dark pictures of
• 1:01:58
  like death and destruction and like metaphorical representations of the wave.
• 1:02:03
  And I was like, oh, wow.
• 1:02:03
  That's lovely.
• 1:02:04
  That's lovely.
• 1:02:05
  Thank you.
• 1:02:06
  Just be like, oh, like where am I gonna take this?
• 1:02:08
  Like it was, it was, it was a thing.
• 1:02:10
  And so I collected all of their artwork and I said, thank you.
• 1:02:13
  We're gonna take it.
• 1:02:14
  And there, there's people, you know, in places that might be able to help
• 1:02:16
  us right now that are gonna auction off your work and then we're gonna
• 1:02:19
  come back and, and, and help you.
• 1:02:22
  And that's kind of, and that's kind of what we did.
• 1:02:23
  And we also had prints and things that we made from there.
• 1:02:26
  And we were just hard out fundraising when we got home.
• 1:02:29
  And then we went back directly with the money in our bank accounts
• 1:02:32
  and just worked as nobodies.
• 1:02:35
  But already knew kind of the ins and outs of what was needed
• 1:02:38
  and, and where to put the money.
• 1:02:39
  So we just picked a few, we picked a village basically, and
• 1:02:43
  we picked families that we thought we could most influence and help.
• 1:02:46
  And, and then we just, did what we could there.
• 1:02:50
  Yeah.
• 1:02:51
  Rupert Isaacson: How didn't you keep doing that and what
• 1:02:52
  happened to the yoga in between?
• 1:02:54
  Jane Pike: Yoga, I was just practicing myself, but I wasn't, that, that was kind
• 1:02:58
  of the core of my work was being there.
• 1:03:00
  I mean, you can live very, very simply in places like that on next to nothing.
• 1:03:03
  Rupert Isaacson: So.
• 1:03:04
  Right.
• 1:03:04
  So you're doing this and you're helping rebuild communities there.
• 1:03:07
  Mm-hmm.
• 1:03:08
  With money that you've raised, directly.
• 1:03:11
  What takes you away from that?
• 1:03:14
  Jane Pike: It came to a natural conclusion, I think, where you realize
• 1:03:19
  the end of your capacity, well, a, you run out of money and b you
• 1:03:24
  get to the end of your usefulness.
• 1:03:26
  I think there's like a natural evolution of chapters that people go through in
• 1:03:30
  those experiences where you realize like, now something bigger needs to happen.
• 1:03:35
  And also just for myself, I had started to get to that place where I was like,
• 1:03:41
  I, I have to make a decision about, I have to be a grown up basically.
• 1:03:48
  Like what's, what can I, I I wanted to have roots a little bit.
• 1:03:54
  Like I wanted to, to find a place where I could.
• 1:03:57
  You've been traveling for a while by now?
• 1:03:58
  Yeah.
• 1:03:58
  Yeah.
• 1:03:59
  I'd been traveling for a long time.
• 1:04:00
  Yeah.
• 1:04:01
  Yeah.
• 1:04:01
  And a lot of it with a sort of lost feeling inside.
• 1:04:04
  And so I was like, I think I'm gonna go back to New Zealand and
• 1:04:08
  and I'm just gonna land there.
• 1:04:09
  The landscape always felt really good to me there or here, and I never, you
• 1:04:14
  know, there's aspects of Australia, which are always gonna be a part of
• 1:04:18
  me, which actually has to do with the landscape as well, and smells and
• 1:04:21
  animals and those sorts of things.
• 1:04:23
  But I never really, wanted to stay.
• 1:04:26
  I knew that wasn't the place that I was gonna stay.
• 1:04:28
  And I think actually, you know, I have a nomadic tendency anyway that perhaps I
• 1:04:32
  struggled to reconcile for a long time.
• 1:04:34
  But yeah.
• 1:04:36
  So
• 1:04:37
  Rupert Isaacson: back, so you, you end up back in New Zealand.
• 1:04:39
  Yeah.
• 1:04:40
  You've, you've followed healing, you've followed, yeah.
• 1:04:47
  You've become, you've achieved a certain mastery in a healing form of yoga.
• 1:04:52
  You've then taken that healing into social healing with advocacy and, rebuilding
• 1:04:59
  of communities up to the tsunami.
• 1:05:02
  And this is all pretty significant work.
• 1:05:04
  And then you arrive as Jane Pike again in New Zealand.
• 1:05:14
  What do you do then?
• 1:05:17
  Jane Pike: at first I was writing, at first I was writing, I,
• 1:05:21
  well, I had two things going on.
• 1:05:23
  I was just working in a shop, like just to have money.
• 1:05:28
  And, the shop that was, it was a retail shop selling like
• 1:05:32
  different clothes and other things.
• 1:05:34
  And so I was sitting there and
• 1:05:37
  Rupert Isaacson: Did that feel a little surreal after?
• 1:05:39
  Yeah,
• 1:05:40
  Jane Pike: it was very surreal.
• 1:05:41
  It was very, very surreal.
• 1:05:43
  But it was kind of welcome at the same time because I, I
• 1:05:48
  just, Was I needed to regroup.
• 1:05:52
  Like to put stable, right?
• 1:05:54
  Yes.
• 1:05:54
  Yeah.
• 1:05:55
  Yeah.
• 1:05:55
  It had been a lot.
• 1:05:56
  And, and so the, it was something where I got like a regular amount of income
• 1:06:00
  that was like very, very little and, but it was enough to kind of like pay
• 1:06:05
  rent and eat and do all the things.
• 1:06:07
  And then I started to, to write, because at that point, I wanted to write a book.
• 1:06:13
  And also I, it sounds like I was just dropping things in, but I'm not quite
• 1:06:19
  sure how they, how they happened.
• 1:06:21
  I did have a column, I had like a column in a couple of newspapers at one point
• 1:06:24
  in time, that I was writing for, and I'd managed to kind of whe on my way in there.
• 1:06:28
  So you arrived back,
• 1:06:29
  Rupert Isaacson: started freelancing a bit?
• 1:06:31
  Yes.
• 1:06:31
  Yeah.
• 1:06:32
  Yeah.
• 1:06:32
  Had you been dabbling and writing through this whole time?
• 1:06:34
  Like, I just pitched myself.
• 1:06:37
  Oh, really?
• 1:06:37
  But you had, you always sort of wanted to write?
• 1:06:40
  Jane Pike: I always considered, I always loved writing.
• 1:06:43
  Yeah.
• 1:06:44
  Words were always something that I loved doing.
• 1:06:46
  And so I thought, initially I wanted to write a children's book, but I,
• 1:06:50
  I don't know, I just, I always rose.
• 1:06:52
  So that seemed like, I mean, that's where the journalism came from, right?
• 1:06:55
  Like that's where,
• 1:06:55
  Rupert Isaacson: and what would you, writing, you writing what, what, what
• 1:06:57
  columns are you writing for these papers?
• 1:06:59
  Stuff from what you've been doing.
• 1:07:01
  Jane Pike: Yeah, so at one point I won a competition, and it was.
• 1:07:08
  And then afterwards I said, oh, actually we kind of like your work.
• 1:07:10
  Would you come
• 1:07:11
  Rupert Isaacson: on as a regular?
• 1:07:12
  We've had like, good responses to the work and it was, it was about, it was fashion.
• 1:07:16
  It was like a fashion, of course, it was after the human rights and I won a, I won
• 1:07:21
  a competition, to be like the reporter, if you like, over a fashion week.
• 1:07:26
  And so I did that and then that stuff came out of that.
• 1:07:30
  But it was such, I ended up quitting because it was such a,
• 1:07:33
  like wildly misogynistic, place.
• 1:07:36
  It was really stuck in the dark ages.
• 1:07:38
  That actually, that's probably one of my proudest moments where I like quit on
• 1:07:41
  principle of something and then later on, and they were really assholes about it.
• 1:07:46
  And then later on, they begged for me to come back and I got to say no again,
• 1:07:50
  which was like, you know, this beautiful moment in my life actually, you have a,
• 1:07:54
  a little plaque on the wall, so Yeah.
• 1:07:57
  No, to the misogynous.
• 1:07:59
  Totally.
• 1:08:00
  Yeah.
• 1:08:00
  Yeah.
• 1:08:01
  Okay.
• 1:08:01
  So now you've fallen into writing.
• 1:08:03
  Is it all fashion or do you start to go writing in retail?
• 1:08:06
  Yeah, that's right.
• 1:08:07
  Fashion and retail.
• 1:08:09
  It, so that was just literally for bill paying practices and
• 1:08:14
  then behind the scenes I was, playing with fiction writing.
• 1:08:18
  Yeah.
• 1:08:18
  And so the idea was that I was going to write my own thing, mm-hmm.
• 1:08:24
  And just.
• 1:08:26
  Be single and, and have enough money to get by so that I could do
• 1:08:30
  that and just be free basically.
• 1:08:32
  How long did that last?
• 1:08:34
  Not very long.
• 1:08:34
  I met my husbands fairly soon after that.
• 1:08:38
  So then how, how does it go from your, you're back from
• 1:08:44
  this significance adventure.
• 1:08:47
  Yeah.
• 1:08:47
  You, you've learned these skills, but now you appear to have abandoned them.
• 1:08:53
  You, you're, you've gone a whole new direction.
• 1:08:56
  You're writing now, you're doing bill paying fashion and retail stuff.
• 1:09:01
  You're, you're writing, how does, how do you go from that to running this
• 1:09:07
  really successful, interesting online equestrian and nervous system thing?
• 1:09:17
  Yeah.
• 1:09:18
  How does it happen?
• 1:09:19
  So being back in New Zealand, I, I did start to sort of play in the
• 1:09:22
  horse world again, although I didn't have my own horse to start with.
• 1:09:26
  And then when I met my husband, he, I was on the north island at that point.
• 1:09:30
  He was on the south island.
• 1:09:32
  And, I ended up moving down here and he, and we had some land together down here.
• 1:09:36
  And so, he said, do you wanna get a horse?
• 1:09:40
  And I said, I don't think you understand what that means.
• 1:09:46
  And he was like, oh, yes, so do, and I was like, no, no.
• 1:09:48
  Like if I ha if I have horses, I horse like, I'm like, I, I'm not a casual horse.
• 1:09:54
  I'm like, I, so it's either I'm in or I, and he is like, oh, no, no, no.
• 1:09:58
  And I'm like, no, no, no, no.
• 1:09:59
  I don't know that you, you really understand.
• 1:10:01
  And so clearly he didn't because we got a horse.
• 1:10:04
  And then that's led to me to where I am now.
• 1:10:08
  So, but it was, it was beautiful, you know, in that like, this is, I guess where
• 1:10:14
  all of the different seeds start to merge.
• 1:10:16
  And the initial idea for it was that, I thought, okay, there are
• 1:10:22
  a lot of people struggling with, physical things to do with writing.
• 1:10:27
  And, with my background in like therapeutic yoga and like body
• 1:10:32
  stuff, I, dabbled with starting to help people from that perspective.
• 1:10:37
  And then it became apparent to me through our conversations that a lot
• 1:10:44
  of what people were struggling with was like confidence and anxiety issues.
• 1:10:49
  And, and I had things to say about that, that were helpful to people, but
• 1:10:58
  they, I had never considered that to be something that would be like, it was so
• 1:11:03
  natural to me to talk about that stuff.
• 1:11:05
  And it was so.
• 1:11:06
  In me to talk about it, that it wasn't anything that I considered to be a skill.
• 1:11:10
  Mm-hmm.
• 1:11:11
  Until I recognize that, oh, maybe I do have something to say that people
• 1:11:15
  would, would like to hear about.
• 1:11:18
  And so what mainly started was I started a Facebook page, and this was kind of
• 1:11:23
  in the early days of Facebook where I just blogged like I wrote every day.
• 1:11:27
  And I blogged about the things that to do with the mind and emotions
• 1:11:31
  and the body from the perspective of all the things that I've been
• 1:11:34
  studying and learning about.
• 1:11:35
  And people were really interested in it.
• 1:11:37
  like I started to have a really solid following.
• 1:11:39
  I never sold anything for like years.
• 1:11:41
  I literally just wrote and put lots of free stuff out there.
• 1:11:45
  I just shared what I knew.
• 1:11:46
  And I, and I started to get a, a bit of a following off the back of that.
• 1:11:50
  And I'd always studied, like, it was in the meantime I was studying like loads
• 1:11:55
  of different, like, mental skills and, and you know, like I've studied, I've
• 1:11:59
  done masters in hypnotherapy and like, and like loads, loads of different
• 1:12:05
  things, different psycho psychology studies and, Lots of different things
• 1:12:08
  kind of running in the background.
• 1:12:10
  I actually started another university course in violence and trauma that
• 1:12:14
  when I got back from, the tsunami, how to cause it or how to recover
• 1:12:17
  from it, how to recover from it.
• 1:12:19
  But then I realized that, actually just at the time, that is something
• 1:12:23
  that I'd wished I'd continued on with.
• 1:12:25
  But being in the position I was at the time, I was one of the few people that was
• 1:12:30
  sort of working full-time and trying to study full-time and I just couldn't do it.
• 1:12:33
  I had no support from outside, so it was like I just, I can't actually, live and,
• 1:12:39
  and eat and, and do this at the same time.
• 1:12:41
  So that, that fell away at that point.
• 1:12:43
  And it really did evolve from there when, when I had my first
• 1:12:46
  child, Flynn, so he's 12 this year.
• 1:12:50
  That was kind of the, the seed of like, like I think part of partially it was the
• 1:12:57
  seed of frustration that bore the actual business in its form that it is now in
• 1:13:04
  terms of like, I've lost my autonomy.
• 1:13:07
  You know, my partner is working really, really long hours and is way a lot, and
• 1:13:13
  I'm completely reliant on other people to look after my baby if I wanna do
• 1:13:18
  anything that's like separate to me.
• 1:13:20
  So what can I do that will like, Feed this sort of intellectual energy that I have
• 1:13:26
  and creating Just by now, you're living in a remote part of the south island?
• 1:13:29
  Yes.
• 1:13:29
  Yeah.
• 1:13:30
  Okay.
• 1:13:30
  Yeah.
• 1:13:31
  And, having gone from this completely cosmopolitan life, now you are Yes.
• 1:13:34
  Yeah, yeah.
• 1:13:35
  Down there.
• 1:13:36
  Yeah.
• 1:13:37
  In but isolated.
• 1:13:39
  Yeah.
• 1:13:39
  And so that's how it started.
• 1:13:41
  I, I started putting together like little packages for, for well writing
• 1:13:46
  initially, like continuing on with the blog that I'd started and then
• 1:13:50
  putting together little packages.
• 1:13:52
  And, at that stage, like anything internet wise was a very new endeavor.
• 1:14:00
  Like now memberships and stuff like that are so common that everyone
• 1:14:04
  has a membership at that point.
• 1:14:06
  I remember talking to a software person, him not even knowing
• 1:14:09
  what I was talking about.
• 1:14:10
  He's like, oh, that's not a thing.
• 1:14:11
  You can't do that.
• 1:14:12
  It'll be, that would be like 20 million to like, create that.
• 1:14:14
  And I was like, oh, I have no money.
• 1:14:16
  Excellent.
• 1:14:16
  So, so everything started with zero money.
• 1:14:19
  Like I had no, no money.
• 1:14:20
  I had to do it all myself.
• 1:14:21
  If I wanted to figure it out, I needed to learn it and, or it
• 1:14:23
  needed to cost like only $5 and it was basically like my budget.
• 1:14:27
  And so I did, yeah, I'm, I'm sort of studying in the
• 1:14:31
  background all the way through.
• 1:14:32
  I'm studying to get like a small amount of people to the point where, The
• 1:14:36
  first thing I offered was a bootcamp.
• 1:14:39
  I called it a bootcamp and it went for six months and I gave people content
• 1:14:44
  like at the start of each month.
• 1:14:46
  That was, that was specifically focusing on like confidence type things.
• 1:14:49
  And I remember thinking, oh my God, I am like, this is so much money.
• 1:14:53
  I think I charged them like a hundred dollars each, and there
• 1:14:56
  was maybe 15 people in it.
• 1:14:59
  And I was like, this, I've made it like this is it.
• 1:15:02
  I've got like something coming in that just felt like
• 1:15:05
  this phenomenal achievement.
• 1:15:07
  And there was another really kind of cataclysmic moment where, all the
• 1:15:12
  way through I've had to teach myself.
• 1:15:14
  So I've always been doing like business courses or I'd look for someone that
• 1:15:17
  was doing something similar, in terms of a format that I thought was good, even
• 1:15:21
  if it was a completely unrelated topic.
• 1:15:23
  And I just studied their thing to like look at their format.
• 1:15:26
  And so at one point I signed up for this business course and it was $800.
• 1:15:32
  It was 800 New Zealand dollars, which for me was like, this is outrageous.
• 1:15:36
  Like, and I didn't tell anyone.
• 1:15:38
  I didn't tell my husband.
• 1:15:38
  I just put it on the credit card, put it on my credit card, and I was like, okay,
• 1:15:42
  I'm gonna put it on the credit card.
• 1:15:43
  And then, and because I've done this so deceitfully, I have to
• 1:15:48
  make it back by the end of it.
• 1:15:50
  Like I have to make it back like that.
• 1:15:51
  There's no choice about that.
• 1:15:54
  And so, within the six weeks I did, I did, I created two.
• 1:15:59
  Different courses off the back of that one, which was COMPETIT focused
• 1:16:02
  and one which was confidence focused.
• 1:16:04
  And then that kind of led me to the membership, just through
• 1:16:07
  realizing what different people needed at different moments.
• 1:16:10
  So yeah.
• 1:16:13
  Now, confident Rider and Joy Ride are these known things and, you've
• 1:16:19
  got a following all over the world.
• 1:16:22
  What would you say now it is that you do an offer, if you were to put it in your,
• 1:16:28
  not even the elevator pitch, but if you are, if you were to say more or less in
• 1:16:35
  a nutshell what it is you give people through this online, thing involving
• 1:16:43
  their nervous system now, what is it?
• 1:16:47
  So it's a movement based program and we are ultimately looking to
• 1:16:53
  create nervous system, adaptability.
• 1:16:54
  So we're interested in, getting people into a position and a place where if
• 1:17:00
  we, we think of it technically, their brain and body are responding accurately
• 1:17:03
  to what's going on in their life.
• 1:17:06
  And for lots of people, they're not responding accurately.
• 1:17:09
  They're either in Groundhog Day situations, they're finding themselves
• 1:17:13
  overreacting or underreacting.
• 1:17:15
  And that, That shows up in writing, that shows up in life, that shows up
• 1:17:20
  mentally, physically, and emotionally.
• 1:17:22
  And so, I look at biomechanics, but I look at it from a nervous system
• 1:17:26
  perspective, which is, which is quite a different lens to view it
• 1:17:30
  from than traditional biomechanics.
• 1:17:32
  We look at mindset and also, emotions within the template that
• 1:17:36
  the nervous system creates as well.
• 1:17:39
  But I think that there's a slightly different flavor, also to what I offered
• 1:17:44
  that perhaps I haven't been so vocal about in the beginning, in that, I'm,
• 1:17:50
  I'm really fascinated by the body and I have so much reverence and respect for
• 1:17:55
  science and, everything that it offers us and have, you know, gone deeply down that
• 1:18:01
  rabbit hole and will continue to myself.
• 1:18:03
  However, there also has to be room for the mystical and the magical.
• 1:18:07
  And I think that a lot of our conversations, while they're rooted
• 1:18:12
  in that scientific understanding, also allow space for, just what it means to
• 1:18:18
  be human and what it means to be, you know, a part of the world that we're
• 1:18:21
  in and the landscape that we're in.
• 1:18:23
  And, and to recognize that there is something bigger than us at play.
• 1:18:28
  So, you know, it's, it's all of those things.
• 1:18:30
  Does that make sense?
• 1:18:31
  This, this sounds like it goes far beyond helping people out with
• 1:18:35
  their confidence on horseback.
• 1:18:37
  Yeah, the horses are such a gift in that they're, well firstly they give people
• 1:18:42
  a reason to look at things that might not be, comfortable, acceptable, quote
• 1:18:49
  unquote, or okay to look at without them.
• 1:18:51
  So for instance, you know, people may well recognize that they struggle
• 1:18:57
  with anxiety generally, or they're feeling like, gosh, is this kind of
• 1:19:00
  it as far as their life is concerned?
• 1:19:03
  But they don't give themselves permission to really look at those
• 1:19:08
  things in isolation or they wouldn't go to someone to talk about them
• 1:19:13
  because that would be just kind of not something that they would ever do.
• 1:19:17
  But if it relates to their riding or they can use their horse as like the
• 1:19:21
  thing outside of themselves, which is the conversation, Kickstarter, then it
• 1:19:26
  takes the pressure off them, it takes the spotlight off them, and it just provides
• 1:19:31
  a way in to have bigger conversations that, that just feel more possible.
• 1:19:36
  What would you say?
• 1:19:37
  That's what my experience has been.
• 1:19:39
  Yeah.
• 1:19:39
  What would you say is the prevalent thing about the nervous system in
• 1:19:46
  the brain that you find yourself now helping people with the most?
• 1:19:51
  So I think that one of the gifts of the.
• 1:19:57
  The time that we're in is that this nervous system awareness,
• 1:20:02
  is becoming much more mainstream.
• 1:20:04
  That it is, it's not uncommon, especially in the world that you are moving in and
• 1:20:08
  the world that I move in for people to have some kind of understanding about
• 1:20:12
  the nervous system, whereas that used to be like 10 or 20 years ago, like
• 1:20:16
  such a foreign idea to talk about.
• 1:20:19
  And I think that just in science in general, it's really like
• 1:20:21
  there's been huge leaps and, and evolutions in understanding that.
• 1:20:25
  And so for me, what my work involves, which is not something that I see commonly
• 1:20:31
  talked about and or offered is this understanding, of the different motor
• 1:20:35
  reflex patterns that we move through when we're in the fight flight response.
• 1:20:39
  And so if we consider, as we go into our sympathetic system, there are
• 1:20:44
  these templates, if you like, that the body utilizers in order to fulfill the
• 1:20:49
  function of that nervous system state.
• 1:20:50
  So fight, flight, freeze.
• 1:20:53
  And there's a couple of different statements say just for those,
• 1:20:55
  for those people who are not, move, Nervous system people.
• 1:20:58
  The sympathetic nervous system is the fight, flight, freeze,
• 1:21:01
  fight, flight nervous system.
• 1:21:02
  Yeah, that's right.
• 1:21:03
  Yeah.
• 1:21:03
  Yeah.
• 1:21:03
  So go on.
• 1:21:04
  Yeah.
• 1:21:04
  So within, within the fight flight nervous system, there are these different,
• 1:21:08
  reflex patterns, which are essentially structural or movement patterns.
• 1:21:12
  That means that for any of us who move into a fight response for any of us
• 1:21:16
  that move into a flight response or a freeze response, there is a way that
• 1:21:21
  your body, moves itself a way that your body orients itself from the inside
• 1:21:25
  out, that is observable and, and, discernible in that like if, if RU or
• 1:21:33
  myself, whereas in a fight I can, I would be able to observe that by the
• 1:21:37
  way the structure of the body moves.
• 1:21:39
  So there's a template, that that creates.
• 1:21:41
  And so alongside that physical template, and again, it, it, we
• 1:21:46
  do that in order to maximize the purpose of that particular, state.
• 1:21:50
  So for fight, I'm really wanting to maximize my force for flea.
• 1:21:55
  I'm wanting to maximize my acceleration, and so the body orients itself in
• 1:21:59
  order to fulfill that function.
• 1:22:00
  And this has been such a revelation to me because a lot of, what we see
• 1:22:09
  as dysfunction disease, disharmony in the body is the body operating more
• 1:22:15
  often than not from one of these.
• 1:22:17
  Sympathetic patterns from one of these fight flight patterns.
• 1:22:20
  And the brain in and of itself, for a number of different reasons, has lost
• 1:22:24
  the capacity to move fluently between the different nervous system states,
• 1:22:28
  which is essentially, if I am, a human with adaptability and who isn't stuck
• 1:22:33
  on a particular channel, I'm able to flip in between any of the states,
• 1:22:38
  both fight, flight and parasympathetic.
• 1:22:40
  So parasympathetic is like just optimal mode functioning, sort
• 1:22:43
  of normal, everyday functioning, being okay, Bethany being okay.
• 1:22:47
  And the survival nervous system is really only, designed for me
• 1:22:51
  being under physiological threat.
• 1:22:53
  So, for most of us, hopefully, who aren't in a position where we're
• 1:22:56
  under physiological threat in the day-to-day, there is no reason for us
• 1:22:59
  to be in our sympathetic nervous system.
• 1:23:01
  But many of us are living there and that creates different,
• 1:23:04
  problems for us on every level.
• 1:23:06
  So would you say, would you say that, yeah.
• 1:23:08
  Would you say that the majority of people that you find that you're
• 1:23:12
  working with, despite the comfort of Western life, the physical comforts
• 1:23:17
  of Western life, are in fact for a multitude of reasons, basically living
• 1:23:24
  in their fight flight nervous systems?
• 1:23:25
  Yes.
• 1:23:26
  I would say that even when there is no elephant coming at them, Yes, exactly.
• 1:23:30
  Yeah.
• 1:23:31
  There's like a, you know, a, a meme that goes around saying, you know,
• 1:23:34
  I want my, my nervous system to my fight flight nervous system to kick
• 1:23:38
  on in response to the tiger not reading the email sort of thing.
• 1:23:41
  And it's like, it's, it's true, right?
• 1:23:43
  Like, I think Why do you think, why do you think we're, we're
• 1:23:45
  all living in this fight flight freeze when we're not in war zone?
• 1:23:51
  Because we have become 50 steps removed from our environment, we're no longer
• 1:24:00
  getting the amount of movement, novelty or sensory feedback that we would if we were
• 1:24:05
  part of a hunter gatherer type setting.
• 1:24:08
  And that starts to intimately affect how our nervous system
• 1:24:11
  is able to function and operate.
• 1:24:12
  So basically we're stressed because we're not living in the natural environment
• 1:24:16
  that our organism is programmed for.
• 1:24:19
  Yeah.
• 1:24:19
  It's what has happened now is that, meeting our life needs and meeting
• 1:24:25
  our survival needs is a cognitive choice rather than a physical reality.
• 1:24:30
  So if I was part of a, a living situation where I was required to
• 1:24:35
  be in the world, and that that meant that I had to move, so I had to look
• 1:24:39
  after the people in my community.
• 1:24:41
  I had to go out and search for my food, I had to tend to my shelter.
• 1:24:45
  I had to like be in my environment as part of that reciprocal economy.
• 1:24:51
  I'm always moving, I'm always my sensory system.
• 1:24:55
  My sensory nervous system is always getting stimulated.
• 1:24:58
  I'm always encountering novelty, which means that, my brain is always receiving
• 1:25:04
  information about my current reality.
• 1:25:07
  And now we're in a situation where movement has become a choice.
• 1:25:13
  And we are no longer required to be in the world, should we choose not to be.
• 1:25:18
  And so the amount, I mean, we could sit in our, sit in our rooms and order Uber each.
• 1:25:22
  Yes.
• 1:25:22
  Okay.
• 1:25:22
  Yes, absolutely.
• 1:25:23
  Yeah.
• 1:25:24
  So that's the example that I use.
• 1:25:25
  You know, like I can, I can be in this office, I can order food, I can
• 1:25:30
  ring someone to come and fix the roof.
• 1:25:32
  I can get on Facebook and I could essentially sit in my chair.
• 1:25:36
  Perhaps I wouldn't be thriving, but I could stay here for
• 1:25:38
  decades and still live.
• 1:25:40
  That's completely possible.
• 1:25:42
  And so now, if we think of it, do the lesson to that.
• 1:25:45
  Yeah.
• 1:25:46
  Well, the, the, it's, it's even more than that.
• 1:25:48
  It's like, if we use the example of a traumatic situation, if I go out and
• 1:25:53
  ride my horse or I just go out into the world and something happens to me that
• 1:25:56
  I register as upsetting to the point where I might label it as traumatic.
• 1:26:01
  If I sit in my office essentially, In order for that experience to
• 1:26:05
  have context in order for my brain to be able to contextualize it.
• 1:26:09
  As that happened yesterday, or that happened this morning, or that
• 1:26:11
  happened last year, I need to be constantly uploading new information.
• 1:26:16
  I need to be constantly in the world.
• 1:26:18
  My sensory system needs to be bringing in new information to my brain.
• 1:26:22
  So my brain is not prioritizing or sitting front and center that experience.
• 1:26:27
  It's because I'm, I'm required to be out there.
• 1:26:30
  And so when that happens, things get contextualized.
• 1:26:33
  It's like I had that kind of shitty experience with that happen last year.
• 1:26:36
  Now what happens is that we have this unpleasant event.
• 1:26:40
  We come and sit wherever it is, we are in our home and we don't go out,
• 1:26:43
  we don't engage our, our sensory system isn't getting stimulated.
• 1:26:47
  We're not moving in novel ways.
• 1:26:49
  And so it becomes the dominant process for the brain.
• 1:26:52
  It becomes the dominant pattern that isn't being challenged by
• 1:26:56
  any other information coming in.
• 1:26:57
  The, so basically the, the trauma doesn't get massaged out of us.
• 1:27:00
  We don't, we don't.
• 1:27:02
  We don't.
• 1:27:03
  Is that what you're saying?
• 1:27:03
  That, that, that this, I'm gonna go back to this novel movement thing.
• 1:27:07
  Cause it, yeah.
• 1:27:08
  It's a novel thing to hear.
• 1:27:09
  It's still a novel term to me.
• 1:27:11
  Novel movement.
• 1:27:11
  I think.
• 1:27:12
  I think listeners would like to have that explained to them.
• 1:27:14
  Jane Pike: Yeah.
• 1:27:14
  But basically these different form, are you saying that these different forms
• 1:27:17
  of movement that we would encounter in a natural situation where we've
• 1:27:20
  gotta walk or climb, we gotta swim, we gotta bump against the trees,
• 1:27:24
  we gotta dig, we gotta, whatever.
• 1:27:27
  Give us a certain input through the nervous system that assuages,
• 1:27:35
  quote unquote traumatic events and then leads us to resilience.
• 1:27:38
  And then if we don't have that, we kind of get stuck in those unpleasant experiences.
• 1:27:42
  Is that basically what you're driving?
• 1:27:45
  Yeah.
• 1:27:45
  Is, is it alright for me to give a little background to it?
• 1:27:47
  Please.
• 1:27:47
  I think it's, without it, it's a little more difficult to understand.
• 1:27:51
  If you think of it in very simplistic terms, the brain is always looking
• 1:27:55
  to answer the question, are we safe?
• 1:27:57
  That's the baseline of, of any type of conversation that the brain
• 1:28:00
  is having with the environment.
• 1:28:02
  And where relational creatures, meaning we're always looking to assess what it
• 1:28:07
  is, how it is we fit in this situation, in any situation that we come into.
• 1:28:12
  So the way that we do that is through sensory information.
• 1:28:15
  Sensory information comes into the brain.
• 1:28:17
  We have 19 different sensors that we're constantly feeling into the
• 1:28:20
  environment with, and it's coming into this place in our brain called
• 1:28:23
  the reticular activating system.
• 1:28:25
  And the reticular activating system is using that information to
• 1:28:28
  answer that question, are we safe?
• 1:28:30
  The answer is either yes, no, or maybe right?
• 1:28:33
  So if it's yes, then what gets sent out is a motor pattern, which
• 1:28:38
  is a movement pattern, right?
• 1:28:40
  So sensory in motor pattern out movement, pattern out.
• 1:28:43
  That motor pattern can either be a parasympathetic pattern
• 1:28:46
  or a sympathetic pattern.
• 1:28:47
  It's either one of those two things.
• 1:28:50
  If the brain says, yes, you are safe, then we create a new pattern that is
• 1:28:54
  based on matching the circumstance.
• 1:28:57
  So I create a whole new response based on what it is that I'm in, relationship with.
• 1:29:03
  And that's something I haven't experienced before because it's not a reflex, right?
• 1:29:06
  It's a new pattern that the brain creates.
• 1:29:09
  When I am, when the answer is no, then the brain chooses which of these
• 1:29:14
  reflex states are we gonna choose?
• 1:29:16
  Are we gonna put 'em in fight?
• 1:29:17
  Are we gonna put 'em in flight?
• 1:29:18
  Are we gonna put 'em in freeze or collapse?
• 1:29:20
  Those, that's the template that it chooses.
• 1:29:23
  If it's maybe the brain always errs on the side of caution.
• 1:29:26
  And so we go into the sympathetic system, right, just as a, just in case policy.
• 1:29:32
  So that's it.
• 1:29:33
  Sensory information comes in, a movement pattern gets set out.
• 1:29:36
  The movement pattern is either parasympathetic or sympathetic.
• 1:29:39
  That's, that's the sort of the basis of it.
• 1:29:41
  So in order for our sensory system to stay alive and remembering the
• 1:29:44
  sensory system is what the brain needs to make accurate decisions
• 1:29:47
  about the situation that it's in.
• 1:29:49
  In order for the sensory system to be alive, it needs to be constantly
• 1:29:52
  stimulated and it gets constantly stimulated through interactions
• 1:29:56
  with different experiences that capture our attention.
• 1:29:59
  We're always looking to be efficient.
• 1:30:02
  So basically the brains, as soon as something is no longer novel,
• 1:30:05
  it creates a pattern for it.
• 1:30:06
  It creates an understanding for it, so it doesn't constantly have to
• 1:30:09
  process what it is that's going on.
• 1:30:11
  And so novelty is what keeps our sensory nervous system alive.
• 1:30:15
  Now, if you're constantly engaging in your environment, it's constantly
• 1:30:18
  novel because it's constantly changing.
• 1:30:20
  If you're constantly putting change, the wind changes,
• 1:30:22
  the ground underfoot changes.
• 1:30:23
  Yeah.
• 1:30:23
  Nothing is ever the same, even if you're treading the same path every day.
• 1:30:26
  Got it.
• 1:30:27
  It could be hard depending if it's right.
• 1:30:29
  Yeah, exactly.
• 1:30:30
  And so, yeah, and, and if you put your awareness on different parts
• 1:30:33
  of your body as you go through the world as well, that that's changing.
• 1:30:37
  Like, because your body's in constant change.
• 1:30:39
  And so what we have in traditional societies is a setup where, where,
• 1:30:45
  where, where our nervous system is supported for optimal function.
• 1:30:50
  And so when we get into modern day living, what we have now is if you ask any adult
• 1:30:57
  that, you know, I will safely say this.
• 1:31:00
  The majority of them, I would say perhaps 10% will fall outside this window, will
• 1:31:05
  be able to tell you exactly what they do and how they do it over a given week.
• 1:31:09
  Like, they'll get up on Monday and maybe they'll go to the gym and then they'll
• 1:31:12
  go to go to work, and then they'll eat this lunch, and then they'll come home.
• 1:31:15
  They'll be like a predictable set of ways that they move their body.
• 1:31:19
  And most of the time they'll do that with headphones on, or they'll do
• 1:31:23
  that with some form of distraction.
• 1:31:25
  So they're not even really present with what it is that they're
• 1:31:27
  doing in their environment.
• 1:31:29
  And so the brain has already recognized this is no longer
• 1:31:32
  novel, like there's no new sensory information coming in through this.
• 1:31:35
  And so we get stuck in these sort of set patterns which start to become
• 1:31:39
  predictable to the brain, and it's not being stimulated in any way.
• 1:31:43
  And then as well, because of modern living, what happens as we enter
• 1:31:47
  our fight flight nervous system is the sensory system gets turned off.
• 1:31:50
  And so, and the reason for that is protective.
• 1:31:53
  So if someone punches me in the face, I don't wanna feel all the
• 1:31:56
  feelings because that limits my ability to respond in the moment.
• 1:32:00
  and if I'm in conservation of energy mode, for instance, which is like
• 1:32:04
  collapse essentially, it's sort of hibernation mode for humans.
• 1:32:07
  Or it's essential MAMs.
• 1:32:08
  Yeah, yeah.
• 1:32:09
  But you Yeah, exactly.
• 1:32:10
  You just, like, you, your, your sensory system is not,
• 1:32:13
  what's feeling into the world.
• 1:32:14
  You're, you are essentially in, in literally introverted
• 1:32:17
  at that moment in time.
• 1:32:18
  And so, By design.
• 1:32:20
  We're not supposed to live in our sensory, our sympathetic
• 1:32:23
  or fight flight nervous system.
• 1:32:24
  We're supposed to be like flicking in and out of it.
• 1:32:27
  But now we have a lifestyle set up where people are in their, in their sympathetic
• 1:32:32
  nervous system and not coming out, they're not being stimulated to come out of it.
• 1:32:35
  So the sensory system is getting switched off.
• 1:32:38
  Rupert Isaacson: The brain pressure no longer has, has anxiety that's
• 1:32:41
  no longer has fresh information.
• 1:32:43
  Jane Pike: And so it's just always ing on the side of caution and
• 1:32:46
  staying in the, in the reflex system.
• 1:32:48
  And so now we have all of these pathologies and all
• 1:32:50
  of these behaviors that are,
• 1:32:52
  Rupert Isaacson: so what do you do, with your web-based business that helps people
• 1:32:55
  to bust out of this and get back to a more natural way of moving that can then
• 1:33:01
  bring them back to their parasympathetic.
• 1:33:04
  Can you explain, how, how you help?
• 1:33:05
  Jane Pike: Yeah.
• 1:33:06
  So it's, it's, it's not even bringing back to parasympathetic, it's just
• 1:33:09
  creating that accurate responsiveness.
• 1:33:11
  So not nothing is good or bad.
• 1:33:12
  It's just like if you are supposed to be there, then you wanna be there.
• 1:33:16
  And if you're not, you're not, sort of thing.
• 1:33:17
  But we talk about being dominantly parasympathetic, which for me, in
• 1:33:22
  my life situation, for instance, I'm not under physiological threat,
• 1:33:26
  so there's no need for me to be,
• 1:33:28
  except for every time you climb in the saddle, you just, kid
• 1:33:30
  yourself that you're not Yeah, yeah.
• 1:33:32
  True.
• 1:33:32
  But, but, you know, more than 50% of the time I would wanna be
• 1:33:35
  operating out of the parasympathetic.
• 1:33:37
  That might be different if I'm on the front line in Afghanistan than
• 1:33:39
  it would be more appropriate for me to be operating for my sympathetic,
• 1:33:43
  more than 50% of the time.
• 1:33:44
  But I use movement-based, processes and a, a practice that really
• 1:33:51
  activates the sensory system.
• 1:33:52
  So it's all about reengaging the sensory nerves, habituating the sensory nerves
• 1:33:58
  to send signals to the brain again.
• 1:34:00
  and when that happens, you start to release some of the patterns
• 1:34:04
  that have been held there in over different periods of time.
• 1:34:07
  And so essentially what what I'm working with is a, a brain mapping
• 1:34:11
  or a body mapping process, where we're updating the brain map.
• 1:34:16
  Cuz your brain map gets distorted when you are, In sympathetic
• 1:34:20
  for a long period of time.
• 1:34:21
  I've probably complicated things now by introducing that, but basically just using
• 1:34:25
  movement to activate the sensory system.
• 1:34:27
  Rupert Isaacson: and how do you show, and what movements do you show people?
• 1:34:29
  Are you falling back in your yoga or are you doing other things
• 1:34:32
  and how are you all these things?
• 1:34:34
  Jane Pike: I don't do any yoga anymore.
• 1:34:36
  I don't do any yoga.
• 1:34:37
  I don't do any breath work anymore.
• 1:34:38
  I've completely, changed my tag and,
• 1:34:41
  Rupert Isaacson: and so I'm, if I'm, if I'm a member on this website,
• 1:34:44
  what, what are you showing me and how
• 1:34:47
  Jane Pike: Yeah, so there are a few different things.
• 1:34:49
  the movement practices themselves focus, the focus on specific body parts.
• 1:34:53
  So we'll go through like, what's some examples?
• 1:34:56
  So last week we did like the Tali bone, which is part of the ankle, and we'll
• 1:35:00
  do, the heel next week and we'll do the shin and shoulder blades and ribs.
• 1:35:04
  And we've done the rectus a dominous muscles, we'll do different
• 1:35:08
  developmental movement patterns.
• 1:35:09
  But basically it's based on the premise that, The body moves differently in
• 1:35:14
  parasympathetic and sympathetic system.
• 1:35:16
  the way that we start to activate sensory nerves is to bring awareness.
• 1:35:21
  I work with like a two point awareness process where we focus on two points
• 1:35:24
  in a specific part of the body and just observe what's happening.
• 1:35:27
  And that starts to activate the sensory system, which overall kicks
• 1:35:32
  back into the unconscious brain.
• 1:35:33
  And then you start to habituate, habituate these sensory feedback loops.
• 1:35:37
  But basically it's just like a movement practice that's, that
• 1:35:41
  focuses on different body parts.
• 1:35:42
  So we're like mapping the body by going through different structural
• 1:35:44
  parts, noticing different points on the part of the body that we're
• 1:35:49
  focusing on with view to activating the sensory system in that area.
• 1:35:53
  And, and that overall starts to, kick the brain back into a
• 1:35:56
  different mode of functioning.
• 1:35:58
  Rupert Isaacson: Okay.
• 1:35:58
  And then overall by then going through these various different parts of
• 1:36:01
  the body, through these different types of observation and movement,
• 1:36:04
  you get to a sort of a hole at a certain point where you've sort of
• 1:36:09
  retrained the body and the brain to basically come to more functionality.
• 1:36:16
  Jane Pike: Yeah.
• 1:36:16
  So if you think of it or functionality, yeah.
• 1:36:19
  Yeah.
• 1:36:19
  The, we have, something in our brain called place cells and grid
• 1:36:22
  cells and their cells of location.
• 1:36:25
  So basically my brain is, has a map of everything that's in
• 1:36:30
  my body, in relationship to.
• 1:36:33
  Each other.
• 1:36:34
  So for instance, it knows where my wrist is in relationship to my elbow
• 1:36:37
  cap, and it knows where my knees in relationship to my ankle, and
• 1:36:41
  it also knows where my organs are.
• 1:36:42
  It's at the end of your hands.
• 1:36:43
  Yeah.
• 1:36:43
  Yeah.
• 1:36:44
  It also knows where all my organs are and all of those sorts of things.
• 1:36:47
  So that's part of my sensory motor map that's in my, in my brain.
• 1:36:50
  And when that sensory motor map is, accurate, so when it's, it's updated and
• 1:36:56
  the, the brain has accurate information about the different location landmarks of
• 1:37:00
  the body, it's able to accurately place me in relationship to my environment.
• 1:37:06
  And so that is through my sensory system.
• 1:37:09
  I basically got a series of active sensory feedback loops that are feeling into the
• 1:37:14
  environment, giving my brain information so my brain can respond accurately.
• 1:37:18
  When we start to get into fight flight, more often than not that
• 1:37:22
  brain map starts to get distorted.
• 1:37:24
  It can get distorted through paying attention to sensation too much.
• 1:37:28
  So how I feel, the sensation that's in my body, that's separate to location.
• 1:37:33
  And when we have a distorted sensory motor map, the sensory system gets switched off.
• 1:37:38
  And again, the brain's unable to accurately make decisions, and.
• 1:37:42
  And you experience this all the time.
• 1:37:44
  When you're in a place of like high anxiety, it's like you're no
• 1:37:46
  longer responding accurately, or you can see that in someone else.
• 1:37:50
  They just have this kind of complete discombobulated view of themselves
• 1:37:52
  in relationship to the world.
• 1:37:54
  And so you don't actually have to, for, for as long as the brain has a
• 1:37:59
  few accu, few active sensory loops to go on, you can really start to
• 1:38:02
  change your experience of the world.
• 1:38:05
  And so we do that through this two point process, which is in line with
• 1:38:09
  activating these play cells and grid cells, which is just an awareness process.
• 1:38:13
  And the other thing is, everything that I talk about here might sound confusing.
• 1:38:16
  You don't need to know any of it in order for it to work.
• 1:38:18
  Like you don't need to know how it works in order for it to work.
• 1:38:21
  It's kind of like the horse boy stuff.
• 1:38:23
  Like if you experience it, it doesn't matter why or how, like it's just,
• 1:38:28
  it, it will work because there's a way that the body responds to the process
• 1:38:32
  that allows that to be the case.
• 1:38:34
  And it's the same here.
• 1:38:35
  Like my process is I love to understand things and there are other people
• 1:38:40
  that love to understand things.
• 1:38:41
  So I lay out these processes as to this is why it works.
• 1:38:45
  But the reality is if you come in and just do the practice, you can
• 1:38:49
  understand nothing and still get the benefits of it because it's just part
• 1:38:53
  of the physi physiological process.
• 1:38:56
  Rupert Isaacson: Did, did you have a mentor similar to, your mentor with yoga?
• 1:39:01
  Your mentors with yoga?
• 1:39:02
  Yeah.
• 1:39:02
  Who, who, who mentored you in.
• 1:39:05
  This, deep nervous system stuff because I, you know, I work a lot
• 1:39:08
  with the nervous system with advance to autism and that sort of thing,
• 1:39:10
  but I haven't dealt, I ha I have not dived into it as deeply as you have.
• 1:39:14
  And I'm, I'm, I'm fascinated by this.
• 1:39:16
  Who, who, who, who schooled you in this?
• 1:39:18
  Where, what's the story again?
• 1:39:20
  Jane Pike: Yeah, so I, I mean, I'm still being schooled.
• 1:39:22
  I still have multiple schoolings schoolings a week, with it and, have
• 1:39:26
  been now for the past few years.
• 1:39:28
  So I initially, Alicia Fado is my mentor.
• 1:39:32
  She works with holistic biomechanics and Alicia Fado.
• 1:39:36
  Yes.
• 1:39:36
  Yeah.
• 1:39:36
  And so she is my, my person basically, that I refer to and talk to and
• 1:39:42
  have learnt a huge amount off.
• 1:39:44
  And so when, how did you find your way to her at?
• 1:39:46
  Was it again, seeking answers for your own pain, or was it more curiosity?
• 1:39:51
  No, I mean, I mean, that has been, when we talk about the pain
• 1:39:55
  aspect, I've definitely, like I'm completely pain free now.
• 1:39:59
  Rupert Isaacson: That's been the, probably the last five years or so since I study,
• 1:40:04
  and that's been through this work.
• 1:40:05
  So would you say you are the Yes.
• 1:40:07
  This whole, this whole conversation we've had, which began with forms
• 1:40:11
  of physical and psychological and emotional physical pain Yes.
• 1:40:15
  Has been a asway.
• 1:40:16
  You could say, I, Joan Pike have experienced this in my body and brain.
• 1:40:19
  It's mm-hmm.
• 1:40:20
  The shit works, basically.
• 1:40:22
  Jane Pike: Mm-hmm.
• 1:40:22
  Yeah.
• 1:40:23
  And I see it in my membership as well, but it's not an easy process.
• 1:40:27
  Rupert Isaacson: How did you, how did you encounter, Felicia?
• 1:40:29
  I.
• 1:40:30
  Alicia.
• 1:40:30
  Yeah, sorry.
• 1:40:31
  Jane Pike: Yeah, yeah.
• 1:40:32
  I, so Alicia I got the Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 1:40:35
  You've got, yeah.
• 1:40:36
  So I, let me just think.
• 1:40:37
  So my initial interest, so I started the work, I guess from a much
• 1:40:43
  more mental skills perspective, like a top down perspective.
• 1:40:47
  And that was about, kind of like mental strength, I guess.
• 1:40:52
  Kind of like harnessing mental strength and like positive thinking and and,
• 1:40:57
  mental toughness and all of those types of words, which make me throw
• 1:40:59
  up in my mouth a little bit now.
• 1:41:00
  But all of those types of words, were, were my interests to start with.
• 1:41:04
  And, one of the things about those things is that you're always
• 1:41:08
  behind the eight ball, right?
• 1:41:10
  You can only change a thought to a positive thought after you've
• 1:41:12
  already had the negative thought.
• 1:41:14
  And so you're always kind of chasing your tail a little bit there.
• 1:41:16
  But, the interesting thing is that, I realized the, that those skills
• 1:41:24
  and understandings had to shelf life.
• 1:41:26
  As far as like, for some people they worked just sort of depended
• 1:41:29
  on the start, at the start point.
• 1:41:31
  And, and I got to a stage myself where I was having like
• 1:41:34
  a meltdown in the arena one day.
• 1:41:36
  That wasn't just in relationship to what was going on, it was more actually
• 1:41:39
  just a life circumstance at the time.
• 1:41:41
  This is at home Lone Horse in New Zealand.
• 1:41:43
  Yeah.
• 1:41:44
  And I remember thinking like, no, it was at a clinic.
• 1:41:46
  Even worse.
• 1:41:47
  I was at a clinic, with a public, with an audience, which is clinic.
• 1:41:50
  Rupert Isaacson: For those, for those non horsey people does not
• 1:41:53
  mean she went to the doctors.
• 1:41:54
  It means, no, but she should have at that moment a public horse
• 1:41:57
  training event for some weird reason.
• 1:42:00
  We horsey.
• 1:42:01
  People call them clinics.
• 1:42:02
  God knows why.
• 1:42:02
  True.
• 1:42:03
  I've seen that kind of.
• 1:42:03
  Yes, that's true.
• 1:42:04
  What do you mean you went to a clinic with your horse or they, they
• 1:42:06
  they allowed you to like tie it up outside or, and then Oh, see, yes,
• 1:42:10
  it's, no, I didn't go to the doctor.
• 1:42:12
  Ok.
• 1:42:12
  So fine.
• 1:42:12
  Yeah.
• 1:42:12
  So you're at, you're at a horse training event and, and you are at,
• 1:42:17
  you're there as a horse trainer?
• 1:42:19
  Jane Pike: No, I'm there as a student.
• 1:42:20
  Okay.
• 1:42:20
  Yeah.
• 1:42:21
  And you have meltdown?
• 1:42:23
  Yes, I have a meltdown.
• 1:42:24
  I mean, I'm not, I have an internal meltdown trying to hold it together
• 1:42:28
  and, and I just backing up because, I think it was more dangerous,
• 1:42:33
  the context of the situation.
• 1:42:35
  I had two, young, very expressive horses, but that normal,
• 1:42:40
  normal wouldn't bother me.
• 1:42:41
  It was more just, I think that, expressive.
• 1:42:44
  I had a closer.
• 1:42:46
  Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 1:42:47
  But, also just.
• 1:42:50
  I guess I had a lot of respect for the trainer.
• 1:42:53
  You know, I really wanted to do a good job and I felt like I wasn't doing a good job
• 1:42:59
  and there was just, I just put a lot of pressure on myself to be something other
• 1:43:02
  than what I was able to be in that moment.
• 1:43:04
  And that was what precipitated the, experience.
• 1:43:07
  But afterwards, it created a whole change because I was like, well, if I
• 1:43:13
  can't do this based on all the things I teach and I live and breathe this
• 1:43:18
  stuff, then how can I expect someone else to do it that perhaps isn't doing
• 1:43:23
  20% of the work that I do, or thinking about it the way that I think about it?
• 1:43:27
  How can I expect it to work?
• 1:43:29
  And so I had a crisis of sorts after that.
• 1:43:33
  And then I went on a whole different exploration, which led me in the first
• 1:43:38
  instance to somatic experiencing, which is a lot of the work that's
• 1:43:42
  based, the of Peter Levine's.
• 1:43:44
  And he does a lot of, you know, nervous system, trauma based work.
• 1:43:48
  And I did loads and loads of study and loads of different workshops with, people
• 1:43:55
  who were his colleagues and or students.
• 1:43:58
  And the work that I'm teaching now was, Alicia was a guest speaker
• 1:44:03
  on one of those, workshops.
• 1:44:05
  Okay.
• 1:44:05
  And I was there thinking, What is this?
• 1:44:11
  Like, this is so random.
• 1:44:13
  Like I just, I a and a little bit like your, your, your reaction to the, to the
• 1:44:19
  more therapeutic yoga after the hard yoga.
• 1:44:22
  Yeah, exactly.
• 1:44:23
  Like, it was like, but there was a part of me which was super curious,
• 1:44:26
  and I think that was the intuitive part that just was like, keep going.
• 1:44:30
  You know, like I had the little, like, you applied it to
• 1:44:32
  yourself, you've found something.
• 1:44:34
  Yeah.
• 1:44:34
  You've found something.
• 1:44:35
  You need to like, investigate this further.
• 1:44:37
  And, a lot of the questions that I had had that had very loose answers
• 1:44:43
  that weren't satisfying to me, you know, and I think I'm in a fortunate
• 1:44:46
  position in that because I'm teaching things, I'm not just finding out
• 1:44:52
  things from a personal perspective.
• 1:44:54
  Loose answers don't hold because I'm gonna be questioned as well.
• 1:44:57
  So it's like, you need to be able to tell me what's going on here otherwise,
• 1:45:01
  because I need to know, right.
• 1:45:03
  I need to know who this best suits, who this best fits.
• 1:45:06
  Rupert Isaacson: And, and Alicia could give you these answers
• 1:45:07
  sort of suddenly she's explaining it in a way that Yeah, exactly.
• 1:45:11
  Source inside the nervous system.
• 1:45:12
  Mm-hmm.
• 1:45:13
  Yeah.
• 1:45:13
  Quick question.
• 1:45:14
  You say you don't do any yoga anymore, or any breath work?
• 1:45:18
  No.
• 1:45:18
  Why not?
• 1:45:19
  Why not integrate the two?
• 1:45:20
  What, what, what makes you say, okay, well I'm moving away.
• 1:45:24
  I've moved away from that now.
• 1:45:26
  Jane Pike: Yeah.
• 1:45:26
  So one thing that I always encourage people to do is to.
• 1:45:33
  To investigate the lineage of whatever it is that they are engaging in
• 1:45:39
  as far as processes and not all.
• 1:45:42
  Cause I will, you know, I don't wanna ever paint the brush, widely across
• 1:45:45
  everything, but a lot of the lineages of yoga and the ones that I were pr I
• 1:45:51
  was practicing come from, aesthetic.
• 1:45:54
  Aesthetic.
• 1:45:55
  What's not aesthetic?
• 1:45:56
  Aestheticism, aestheticism, aestheticism.
• 1:45:58
  They come from aestheticism.
• 1:46:00
  Ah, removing yourself from the body.
• 1:46:01
  Removing, yeah.
• 1:46:03
  And, and so, and, and a lot of meditation practices are for that as well, right?
• 1:46:07
  Ah, so like, it's about moving towards enlightenment.
• 1:46:09
  It's about moving towards emergence with the divine.
• 1:46:13
  Like in whatever way that manifests for you, it is body
• 1:46:16
  develop the system, in fact.
• 1:46:18
  Yeah.
• 1:46:18
  And, and it used to be, it used to be a, got it aspirational to hear
• 1:46:23
  about like these advanced yogis, quote unquote, who would sit for 21
• 1:46:27
  days and not have food, not need to go to the toilet, not need to drink,
• 1:46:32
  not have any sort of earthly desires.
• 1:46:34
  And you'd think, wow, that's amazing.
• 1:46:36
  And now I think, wow, that's dysfunctional.
• 1:46:39
  Like, that's like not normal for a body, right?
• 1:46:42
  And so I was starting to have a lot of different physical issues from yoga.
• 1:46:48
  Like, you know, it's very common for women to lose their period.
• 1:46:52
  It's very common for people to develop, to develop different body dysmorphic.
• 1:46:58
  Syndromes or disorders.
• 1:46:59
  It's very common.
• 1:47:00
  Rupert Isaacson: It's interesting cause that isn't talked about.
• 1:47:02
  I I, it's interesting you say it's very common because I mean, I know
• 1:47:05
  so many people in the yoga world.
• 1:47:06
  I myself had not for very long, but I had a, I had a, a pretty good
• 1:47:10
  aang yoga practice myself for a bit until I became a dad and, then
• 1:47:15
  began to self-medicate with beer.
• 1:47:17
  And that went out the window.
• 1:47:17
  Yeah.
• 1:47:18
  But at the, you know, you never heard any of the Yoginis or any of these
• 1:47:25
  people saying, oh, I lost my period.
• 1:47:27
  Or that if they were, they certainly it to themselves.
• 1:47:30
  Jane Pike: I was teaching in the up, I was teaching in the upper echelons
• 1:47:32
  of it at one point, and I'm watching people who are writing for Yoga journal
• 1:47:36
  and I'm watching people who are like on Gaia and I'm watching people that
• 1:47:40
  are like, you know, really at the top, top of the profession there.
• 1:47:44
  And I know them personally and I know that their reality is different
• 1:47:49
  from what they're teaching.
• 1:47:50
  Okay.
• 1:47:50
  Like, and I'm like, this is just not right.
• 1:47:54
  Like this is not, something is really not right here.
• 1:47:57
  And so, For me, you know what I understand now about many of the
• 1:48:02
  practices is that they take people into collapse, which is the point, right?
• 1:48:08
  Like you've got, you're supposed to be at the end of your nervous
• 1:48:11
  system when you pass over.
• 1:48:12
  But the, the collapse feels better to a lot of people.
• 1:48:15
  A because now sensation is absent in the body, which feels safer.
• 1:48:19
  Most people equate any sort of feeling or sensation in the
• 1:48:21
  body with a degree of danger.
• 1:48:23
  You feel more in control because now your conscious brain and your unconscious
• 1:48:27
  brain are more in alignment because again, you're not at war with your body.
• 1:48:31
  And so you feel like you have a semblance of control.
• 1:48:34
  And, that's kind of the, the, the two things that are most stand out.
• 1:48:39
  And you, you, you, you, you do lose like a desire because your body's just not in the
• 1:48:43
  place where it's robust enough to have it.
• 1:48:46
  Rupert Isaacson: When you, when you, so is that the euphoria in collapse?
• 1:48:51
  This is interesting.
• 1:48:51
  Would that be for example?
• 1:48:53
  Jane Pike: Yeah.
• 1:48:53
  In the later stages of collapse, so like motor neuron disease, ms, a lot
• 1:48:57
  of those things are like the later stages of collapse and a lot of the
• 1:48:59
  studies they've done with people show those people to be very happy.
• 1:49:03
  Because the, the, the self-protective mechanism of the body when it is in
• 1:49:08
  that advanced stage of nervous system, I don't wanna say degradation cause
• 1:49:12
  that's not the right word, but just of, of where it's sitting is to actually
• 1:49:16
  like, Create a degree of euphoria as a handholding mechanism basically.
• 1:49:22
  Pump you full of, pump you full of Gilbert with hormones to take
• 1:49:26
  you into a, a smooth transition.
• 1:49:28
  Yeah.
• 1:49:29
  Rupert Isaacson: Is that for as well?
• 1:49:30
  Is that the, that Abe has, you know, when they're looking at the,
• 1:49:33
  while dogs pulling their guts,
• 1:49:35
  Jane Pike: they've gone and they have the, they have the level of
• 1:49:37
  thoughts and the hallucinations and, and they're not feeling the Okay.
• 1:49:41
  Maybe DMT being produced in the pineal gland.
• 1:49:43
  Yeah.
• 1:49:44
  Well, like the, the thing about the nervous system is it is a,
• 1:49:47
  it is designed to lead you in the best way possible towards death.
• 1:49:50
  Like, if you think about it, I, I could see that, I see what you're saying.
• 1:49:54
  Like the body to work supposed work for you, right?
• 1:49:56
  Yeah.
• 1:49:57
  But it's only supposed to happen at like six, for six weeks, right.
• 1:50:00
  When you're old.
• 1:50:01
  But now we're stuck in like 40 years in, in the collapse stage,
• 1:50:05
  you know, for, for, for some people.
• 1:50:07
  And so there's, there's this, this wear and tear that happens, but, okay.
• 1:50:11
  Yeah.
• 1:50:12
  And you know, for me, with the yoga as well, and I, I'll, I don't know, I think
• 1:50:16
  I can speak for a wider audience when I say this, in that like a, aside from the
• 1:50:22
  body denial, that idea of like oneness with consciousness is also, somewhat of
• 1:50:30
  a relief for a lot of people who have.
• 1:50:34
  You know, cultural expectations and sometimes not great experiences around
• 1:50:41
  sex and relationship and, intimacy.
• 1:50:45
  And so it's a ticket out of that, right?
• 1:50:48
  Like if it takes your away from ticket, your body, and that's, it's a ticket out
• 1:50:52
  of that to, to think, okay, well I don't, I just don't even have to deal with that.
• 1:50:56
  Now.
• 1:50:56
  I can be like, I can just be little old me merging with the universal consciousness,
• 1:51:01
  and I get to deny everything that feels uncomfortable in my body.
• 1:51:05
  I get to deny everything that feels uncomfortable emotionally.
• 1:51:08
  I get to deny, deny, deny, and just move towards this.
• 1:51:11
  And because actually being in a body affirming, life-affirming
• 1:51:18
  practice is freaking hard, right?
• 1:51:21
  Because then you have to be in life.
• 1:51:23
  And life is hard sometimes.
• 1:51:25
  Rupert Isaacson: I get it.
• 1:51:25
  I get it.
• 1:51:26
  So if you're, but if you're a mom, you know, dealing with your ki you,
• 1:51:29
  you haven't got that option, right?
• 1:51:30
  You've gotta, you've gotta get up, you've gotta deal with your kids,
• 1:51:32
  you've gotta have these relationships.
• 1:51:33
  You've gotta, you've gotta deal with life with the sensory system,
• 1:51:37
  with other people's sensory systems.
• 1:51:39
  Jane Pike: Well, the, the mohans would say that this is not a
• 1:51:40
  practice for family age people.
• 1:51:44
  Okay?
• 1:51:45
  Okay.
• 1:51:45
  Because you have responsibilities.
• 1:51:47
  This is the practice for when you get to be, you know, older.
• 1:51:51
  Rupert Isaacson: So if you, if you are a mom or a dad, going through
• 1:51:55
  what moms and dads go through, then.
• 1:51:57
  And you are firmly stuck in the,
• 1:52:01
  Jane Pike: then the asana part of the yoga journey is your emphasis
• 1:52:05
  at that point, the posture part.
• 1:52:06
  Okay.
• 1:52:06
  But it becomes less and less about posture.
• 1:52:08
  Right.
• 1:52:08
  And then it becomes more and more about, , emergence with
• 1:52:11
  the divine and one point of,
• 1:52:13
  Rupert Isaacson: but, but with your, with your work, then if I'm me dad,
• 1:52:17
  I'm dad, you know, dealing with dad stuff, I'll be up early tomorrow
• 1:52:20
  morning dealing with dad's stuff.
• 1:52:22
  There is no choice but to deal with relationships.
• 1:52:24
  There is no choice but to Yes.
• 1:52:26
  Yes.
• 1:52:26
  Then, then delving into my nervous system can help me to respond
• 1:52:36
  appropriately to what's in front of me.
• 1:52:38
  Yeah, absolutely.
• 1:52:39
  It just depends what, what Give, give me tools, right?
• 1:52:41
  Jane Pike: Yeah, absolutely.
• 1:52:43
  It's just about like, now I have the capacity to show up and meet what I need
• 1:52:48
  to show up for in a way that's real.
• 1:52:51
  Okay.
• 1:52:52
  And some people will opt out of that, by the way.
• 1:52:56
  Yeah.
• 1:52:57
  Some people will opt out of that because it bring, brings a degree of discomfort
• 1:53:01
  to be able to meet what's real.
• 1:53:02
  Sometimes you recognize your situation needs to change or your relationship
• 1:53:06
  needs to change, or you are not actually doing something that fulfills
• 1:53:08
  you or this wasn't the choice that you would've liked to have made.
• 1:53:11
  And so you have to meet that.
• 1:53:12
  You have to meet that.
• 1:53:13
  And, and that's takes.
• 1:53:16
  Resilience.
• 1:53:17
  That takes courage, that takes, you know, a lot of what we're
• 1:53:20
  fed in the world at the moment.
• 1:53:22
  No, I'm gonna go to a cave and just meditate.
• 1:53:23
  Thanks very much.
• 1:53:24
  Really.
• 1:53:25
  But really you can see that's an attractive option, right?
• 1:53:28
  Meeting the reality is not necessarily an attractive option,
• 1:53:30
  but I, I decided that like I would rather meet the reality in the full
• 1:53:33
  discomfort than be in the delusion.
• 1:53:36
  Rupert Isaacson: So, and was it, in that meeting of the reality, would you
• 1:53:39
  say that your pain began to dissipate?
• 1:53:43
  Jane Pike: Yeah, so, the body, the way the body leverages movement is different from
• 1:53:49
  sympathetic, so different from the fight flight system to the parasympathetic.
• 1:53:52
  So when I'm looking to create movement in the fight flight
• 1:53:56
  system, it's my lower back and my neck that leveraged the movement.
• 1:54:00
  The, the lower back is what is fueling movement in the lower part
• 1:54:05
  of the body and the, neck fuels the movement of the shoulder girdle,
• 1:54:08
  so moving in and out of the tube.
• 1:54:10
  And I think one of the missing pieces of information out there is that the,
• 1:54:18
  oh, I've just lost my train of thought, is that when we, when we think about,
• 1:54:22
  movement patterns, your movement is either rooted in your sympathetic
• 1:54:26
  nervous system or it's rooted in your parasympathetic nervous system.
• 1:54:30
  And so the movement patterns themselves are.
• 1:54:35
  The way that your body creates movement is basically, a product of
• 1:54:39
  where your nervous system is sitting.
• 1:54:41
  And so for me, I was stuck in a dominant mode of functioning, if you think about it
• 1:54:46
  like that, like a dominantly sympathetic or fight flight mode of functioning.
• 1:54:49
  And the way that my body was achieving everyday activities like walking
• 1:54:53
  around, going up and down steps, like getting up and down off the
• 1:54:56
  couch was a fight flight action.
• 1:55:00
  The dominant, mode of functioning was fight flight.
• 1:55:03
  And so even if my emotional framework didn't warrant a fight, flight response,
• 1:55:07
  the way that my movement was dominantly geared was in the fight flight system.
• 1:55:13
  So I was just firing off my nervous system every time I moved around.
• 1:55:16
  So overall, because, my lu spine is working so hard and my cervical spine
• 1:55:21
  is working so hard, from such an early age, and we tend to be gifted the nervous
• 1:55:25
  system of our mothers and our primary caregivers, I was just creating so much
• 1:55:31
  compression and leverage in my body that it was resulting in, chronic pain.
• 1:55:37
  And so when I changed the underlying nervous system state and changed
• 1:55:40
  the way that my body was leveraging movement, I don't get the pain anymore.
• 1:55:44
  Rupert Isaacson: Was that the aha moment?
• 1:55:47
  What point, at what point did you realize, oh my gosh, this is happening?
• 1:55:51
  Jane Pike: I instantly changed.
• 1:55:52
  So when I got, when I had a couple of questions answered
• 1:55:55
  that I hadn't had answered for a long time, I was like, Shit.
• 1:56:00
  Basically that was my first response because it's like, I've built this body
• 1:56:05
  of work on all of this study I've done over the last 20 years, and now I'm
• 1:56:09
  sitting here on a Zoom call realizing that actually I've got some stuff wrong.
• 1:56:18
  And so I am going to completely redo my program from the ground up.
• 1:56:22
  And that's what I did.
• 1:56:24
  And I told people, I was like, so you know how you've been working
• 1:56:27
  with me for like a really long time and we've been doing this stuff?
• 1:56:32
  Rupert Isaacson: Oh really?
• 1:56:32
  You had to go to, by now you've got the online memberships and all that.
• 1:56:35
  You had to go back and say, oh, by the way, that was all redid.
• 1:56:38
  Jane Pike: The whole thing.
• 1:56:39
  That was all whole, now we have to, yeah.
• 1:56:41
  Wow.
• 1:56:41
  That's great.
• 1:56:41
  I didn't think, I didn't think it was all shy, but I was like, I, I've got
• 1:56:46
  some question, I've got some answers here to holes that have been in the
• 1:56:50
  program and we're gonna take it from the ground up and I'm gonna change it.
• 1:56:53
  So you've got six months to go through what I've got here, and in six months
• 1:56:57
  time we're wiping it and starting again.
• 1:56:59
  Rupert Isaacson: Was it when you went through that kind of reboot?
• 1:57:03
  So you, you, by this time, you've actually established an, a successful
• 1:57:06
  online business, which presumably is getting results and helping
• 1:57:09
  people otherwise people would Yes.
• 1:57:10
  It's right.
• 1:57:11
  Right.
• 1:57:11
  It is.
• 1:57:11
  So did you have, did you have some confusion for people
• 1:57:14
  say, well, hold on Jay.
• 1:57:15
  It's actually working for me.
• 1:57:17
  Why should I, why do I need to do this other stuff?
• 1:57:19
  Jane Pike: Yeah.
• 1:57:20
  There are definitely people that were a little cross with me.
• 1:57:22
  Not many.
• 1:57:23
  I think that what I, I guess.
• 1:57:27
  I don't know, maybe people just didn't tell me.
• 1:57:30
  That's another thing.
• 1:57:31
  The people that talked to me were very nice, but I guess one of the
• 1:57:34
  things that I have always, how long ago was this, would you say that?
• 1:57:37
  You, you said Okay.
• 1:57:38
  I, so probably two or three years ago that I really changed the whole foundation.
• 1:57:43
  Yeah.
• 1:57:43
  Okay.
• 1:57:43
  Quite recently.
• 1:57:44
  Yeah.
• 1:57:45
  And I, I took people a, i I gave people a chance.
• 1:57:47
  Of course, they didn't have to stay with me.
• 1:57:49
  And it was quite scary because Yeah, I bet, you know, I'm the breadwinner and
• 1:57:54
  I've created this successful thing, and now it's just so intolerable to me to
• 1:57:59
  not be in alignment with what I teach.
• 1:58:01
  I just could, once I knew something different and I was practicing something
• 1:58:04
  different, I'm like, I can't teach people any different to what I'm doing.
• 1:58:07
  Like I, that's just, it.
• 1:58:10
  Just So there was no decision, like it was, well, I guess you were inviting
• 1:58:13
  'em to go along with the evolution.
• 1:58:15
  Yes, but not, but nonetheless, that is, that is a brave step.
• 1:58:19
  Not everybody would, as you said.
• 1:58:21
  Yes.
• 1:58:21
  You know, some of the yoga people perhaps that you met were walking one
• 1:58:25
  talk and walking, one walking, and some things that I teach now are a complete
• 1:58:30
  180 from what I was doing before.
• 1:58:32
  Okay.
• 1:58:32
  And so, but I can say why and, and I think one of the advantages maybe
• 1:58:36
  that I have within my membership is that, this is an advantage or not.
• 1:58:41
  I've always been really honest.
• 1:58:42
  Like I'm just, I, I, I really see myself as adventuring with these,
• 1:58:49
  this group of incredible people.
• 1:58:51
  And I don't.
• 1:58:52
  Discount their opinion or their thoughts, or, it's not like my way or the highway.
• 1:58:56
  It's just like, this is, this is information.
• 1:58:59
  Right?
• 1:59:00
  And one of the things that I've really learned about teaching, and I attempt to
• 1:59:05
  practice in life to varying with varying degrees of success, is that in order to
• 1:59:10
  be honest, you have to be willing to lose.
• 1:59:12
  So I was willing for everyone to leave me.
• 1:59:16
  I had to be willing for everyone to leave me in order to be able
• 1:59:20
  to present something new, because if I wasn't willing for people to
• 1:59:24
  leave, I wouldn't have done it.
• 1:59:26
  And so I was like, okay, I'm just gonna lay it all on the table.
• 1:59:30
  And, I don't think hardly anyone left.
• 1:59:33
  Like, and then it took a while, there was a transition, but I'd already
• 1:59:36
  been practicing for a good period of time before I started teaching it.
• 1:59:41
  Because of course, there's a, and that was a really annoying part of the
• 1:59:44
  practice as well, because coming from someone who's like, okay, gimme the book.
• 1:59:48
  Give me all the shit.
• 1:59:49
  I'm gonna sit down for a weekend, and by Monday I'm gonna have this
• 1:59:51
  nailed, and then I'll teach it.
• 1:59:53
  It wa it wasn't something that I could, think my way through this
• 1:59:57
  was a, an unconscious, like I had to have a, a resonance in my body
• 2:00:00
  and understanding in my body of the process before I could teach it.
• 2:00:04
  And so that required some practice on my part.
• 2:00:07
  And then I just said, right, okay, July, we're changing.
• 2:00:12
  You've got this amount of time.
• 2:00:13
  And I started to like cross pollinate conversations.
• 2:00:16
  So to bring in the material in conversation before we taught it.
• 2:00:20
  And, and then, and then it took a while for people to get into.
• 2:00:24
  And, yeah.
• 2:00:25
  Rupert Isaacson: So, so back to the where we began, which is what this
• 2:00:28
  whole podcast is about, which is about self-actualization of people
• 2:00:31
  who led self-actualized lives or, and are leading self-actualized lives.
• 2:00:37
  from the outside observing your, you appear to be self-actualizing.
• 2:00:42
  What I mean by that, it's, you began with, a problem to fix and a quest to go on.
• 2:00:52
  Some of it unconscious, some of it conscious.
• 2:00:55
  And then there were multiple reboots where every time, this is just sort of
• 2:00:59
  observing the story from the outside, every time you had sort of achieved a
• 2:01:04
  certain thing in a certain area, whether it was being the good girl school, whether
• 2:01:08
  it was, the human rights work, whether it was getting a, a mastery of this
• 2:01:14
  certain aspect of yoga, and then say, actually no, it's this aspect of yoga.
• 2:01:17
  And then saying, no, actually I'm going back.
• 2:01:20
  I'm gonna work in retail, but I'm gonna, I'm gonna write.
• 2:01:24
  And now I'm gonna build that.
• 2:01:26
  And what a confused individual.
• 2:01:28
  And meanwhile I'm gonna keep this writing thing going parallel.
• 2:01:31
  I've achieved a certain mastery sort of showing as a teen and young adult.
• 2:01:35
  But now moving away from that, I'm gonna move into this other aspect of horseman.
• 2:01:40
  You haven't really touched on that much, but I'd like to come back
• 2:01:42
  and do that in the next podcast.
• 2:01:44
  What, what, what emerges is a picture of growth where it's almost like you
• 2:01:50
  see, you know, from seedling to sapling to, I'm not suggesting that you're
• 2:01:59
  a big mature wide tree, but you know what I mean, you know, mighty, mighty.
• 2:02:05
  But you know, that, that that this maturing process and is so,
• 2:02:09
  it, it brings into my mind is, is self, is self-actualization.
• 2:02:14
  In fact, to a large degree maturing and not maturing mean,
• 2:02:19
  you know, you use growing up, God forbid any of us ever do that.
• 2:02:23
  And I wonder if the mighty yo, you know, considers itself to be grown up.
• 2:02:27
  Or it says, actually I still want to be a, I still want to be a
• 2:02:30
  big grown up tree one day, even though I'm now a hundred foot tall.
• 2:02:33
  And Yeah.
• 2:02:33
  is that what goes through trees minds?
• 2:02:35
  But the, it, it's really interesting to see, you know, people.
• 2:02:44
  I'd like to come back this, I think that every, a lot of listeners will
• 2:02:47
  have questions like, well, how did you build the business and how did
• 2:02:49
  you, you know, what is the secret of success of an online thing?
• 2:02:52
  And I, and, and I, I'd like to invite people to send those questions
• 2:02:56
  and we'll have Jane back Gifting your spleen to the universe.
• 2:02:59
  That's right.
• 2:03:00
  And, and Jane, we'll explain these things to you and we will have
• 2:03:04
  another podcast in which you will send these very natural questions.
• 2:03:06
  And, and Jane will tell you how to make billions on the internet.
• 2:03:09
  But that's not what you set out to do.
• 2:03:13
  That's, that's the interesting thing to me.
• 2:03:15
  You didn't sit down and say, okay, I'm gonna become this super successful
• 2:03:19
  online business showing people how to get back to their nervous systems in a
• 2:03:23
  way that's gonna improve their lives.
• 2:03:24
  It evolved out of a desire to share and write about that, which you
• 2:03:34
  knew, which you need to be helpful.
• 2:03:37
  And then from there, you learned some online business skills, which again, yes.
• 2:03:43
  We, I, I, I, I think we should have you back and it would be
• 2:03:46
  great to hear how you did that.
• 2:03:47
  Cause I think that's useful for a lot of people.
• 2:03:50
  But nonetheless, that doesn't seem to be in the primary motivation.
• 2:03:54
  It seems that the primary motivation was simply the acquisition
• 2:03:59
  sharing of this knowledge.
• 2:04:00
  Would I be right in saying that?
• 2:04:02
  Jane Pike: Yeah, totally.
• 2:04:03
  I just had a, an energy to do that.
• 2:04:06
  Mm-hmm.
• 2:04:07
  Yeah.
• 2:04:07
  That was, It's a seeking energy as well.
• 2:04:10
  Like it's, I talk about intellectual energy.
• 2:04:12
  I don't know if that's the right word, but like, I love to be considering
• 2:04:17
  and seeking and finding information and and sharing information.
• 2:04:22
  For me that was like a very rewarding process.
• 2:04:27
  It was, to, to do that and to share and to find people finding that useful.
• 2:04:32
  And like I said, it was, I mean, it was a couple of years before I even considered
• 2:04:37
  that that was a, anything there was anything financially viable in that.
• 2:04:42
  I mean, that was kind of a shock to even consider that someone
• 2:04:44
  would find me useful in a way that they would actually wanna pay me.
• 2:04:47
  And that wasn't like a, a thought in the beginning.
• 2:04:50
  And then, you know, the second thing out of that, just from a business perspective,
• 2:04:55
  cuz I kind of, well without downplaying other people's, experiences, I sort of
• 2:05:01
  chuckle to myself sometimes when people will email me and they'll like, now
• 2:05:05
  I've been doing this thing for three months now and I haven't made money.
• 2:05:07
  I was like, I work for five years without making any money.
• 2:05:10
  Like, it's like without even, it's just, you know, this kind of, I think the,
• 2:05:15
  the internet breeds like an instant idea of being able to financially translate
• 2:05:20
  something into dollars, you know?
• 2:05:23
  and so not to say that that's gonna be other people's experience, but just to,
• 2:05:26
  it is, it is sort of difficult to, Yeah.
• 2:05:29
  To, to put a, I've forgotten the question that you asked me.
• 2:05:31
  I feel like I,
• 2:05:32
  Rupert Isaacson: well, it, it's about self-actualization and, and so what,
• 2:05:37
  what, what comes to mind, maybe I'll pose this question slightly differently.
• 2:05:40
  Would you say that actually, one of the keys to self-actualization
• 2:05:44
  is putting what you do in service?
• 2:05:48
  Jane Pike: Yeah.
• 2:05:48
  And just being unemployable.
• 2:05:53
  I think I'm completely unemployable.
• 2:05:55
  Like the idea of working with someone else is so unacceptable to me that
• 2:06:00
  like, I, I just, I really loathe and I mean this, like, I really loathe having
• 2:06:07
  my schedule dictated by someone else.
• 2:06:09
  Yeah.
• 2:06:10
  Like the thought of having to get up and go.
• 2:06:11
  I just, I actually can't think of anything worse.
• 2:06:14
  Like, I love to be able to go and I work really hard actually, but I decide I'm
• 2:06:18
  Pick yourself Jane, your your schedule is completely dictated by your kids.
• 2:06:22
  That's true.
• 2:06:23
  That's true.
• 2:06:24
  They're your bosses, but yeah, that's true.
• 2:06:27
  Yes.
• 2:06:28
  Yeah.
• 2:06:28
  Yeah.
• 2:06:28
  Which is why I've struggled so much in very much I know the feeling.
• 2:06:34
  Yes.
• 2:06:34
  Yeah.
• 2:06:34
  Rupert Isaacson: But it, it seems to me too that that's been the other,
• 2:06:37
  that's been the other, long, you know, concurrent par, you know, thread
• 2:06:42
  through the story is that there's been an element of service at each step.
• 2:06:46
  Oh, totally.
• 2:06:47
  Yeah.
• 2:06:47
  And that without that, I wonder if one can self-actualize, because.
• 2:06:53
  Without that, you know, it, it's interesting, like, is somebody who
• 2:07:00
  makes an awful lot of money but without an element of service, without
• 2:07:06
  an element of sharing, without an element of, is that self-actualization?
• 2:07:11
  You know, that's, that's a question for the listeners.
• 2:07:13
  I, you know, I wonder, but it seems to me that the, you know, fulfillment must
• 2:07:22
  come with a feeling of satisfaction that you can't just get from dopamine.
• 2:07:27
  Haha, I got these zeros in my bank account.
• 2:07:29
  I got you.
• 2:07:29
  Well, it, it's gotta come from something richer.
• 2:07:33
  Well, I think my work, everything about my work is there's a,
• 2:07:37
  it's reciprocal in nature.
• 2:07:39
  Mm.
• 2:07:40
  Like it's, I benefit in the best possible way from my work.
• 2:07:46
  I benefit from it not only in knowledge and I get to share that knowledge,
• 2:07:52
  which if anyone has ever taught anything, you know, that you really
• 2:07:56
  have to know something to teach it.
• 2:07:58
  Cuz that's shut to show up what you don't know when you start
• 2:08:01
  to explain it to someone else.
• 2:08:02
  So there's a, you know, I've always launched myself into sharing knowledge,
• 2:08:07
  which has forced me to really understand what it is that I am.
• 2:08:12
  Sharing because, that process of like, you know, learn, do, teach,
• 2:08:16
  I, I, I activate very quickly.
• 2:08:19
  But beyond that, I, I have an incredible community of people that I work with.
• 2:08:24
  and I include my horses within that, and they save me many times.
• 2:08:30
  They save me.
• 2:08:31
  You know, I, on tough days or hard days that we all have, I, I still show
• 2:08:37
  up and I feel different after I've taught than I do at the beginning.
• 2:08:41
  And that's because it's not just me, right?
• 2:08:44
  Like it's an energetic exchange and, I feel equally valued and hopefully they
• 2:08:50
  feel valued and loved and appreciated and respected, as part of the process as well.
• 2:08:56
  And I think that that's, you know, that kind of experience is
• 2:09:00
  not something that you would ever gain by just selling a product.
• 2:09:04
  For me it's, you know, there's a couple of questions that I get asked, which is like,
• 2:09:07
  how do I get to do what you are doing?
• 2:09:10
  And I'm like, I've got no idea.
• 2:09:11
  Because so much of what I'm doing has been informed by my life experience.
• 2:09:15
  It's not so much just about like, sure, you can learn these things, you can
• 2:09:19
  study with these people and you can do that, but it's not quite just that.
• 2:09:23
  So I don't know.
• 2:09:24
  You kind of, you have to do you, which is like the, You know, a, a bit of a
• 2:09:27
  hard statement to say, but as well, you know, there's also a idea of passive
• 2:09:32
  income and of like floating off on the island and that sort of thing.
• 2:09:35
  And on the one hand, some days that sounds very, very appealing.
• 2:09:38
  But actually, ultimately when it comes down to it, I'm not really interested
• 2:09:42
  in just like the, the, the success in whatever way that has manifested, I
• 2:09:48
  believe comes through the connection.
• 2:09:51
  Having, seen your joy ride community in action, I was lucky
• 2:09:58
  enough to meet some of them.
• 2:10:01
  I can definitely attest to that.
• 2:10:06
  It seems an unusually mutually supportive, very incredible.
• 2:10:12
  Like, it's not like, you know, someone, someone going online to do multi-level
• 2:10:16
  marketing or something like that.
• 2:10:17
  Not necessarily anything wrong with that, but you know, you know why, you
• 2:10:20
  know why you're getting into that.
• 2:10:21
  You, I, I wanna go and I wouldn't sold these products in order to
• 2:10:24
  make money so I can get free.
• 2:10:26
  And, but really what people are saying I feel, I feel when they're going into
• 2:10:29
  those things is, yes, I want to be free.
• 2:10:32
  I feel that the money will make me free.
• 2:10:35
  You have achieved that freedom and to a large degree that it,
• 2:10:40
  that is also financial money does give one of these choices.
• 2:10:44
  Obviously you didn't start there,
• 2:10:46
  but I do wonder if, Those who are trying to go into an online business like yours
• 2:10:51
  with the idea of making money as the primary goal, even if they were to achieve
• 2:10:59
  that, would they feel self actualized?
• 2:11:02
  Would they feel,
• 2:11:04
  Jane Pike: I, I wonder if that's enough for what it takes,
• 2:11:08
  you know, for the longevity.
• 2:11:10
  I wonder if that's enough because it's, it's a lot of work.
• 2:11:15
  Not to say that people are work shy.
• 2:11:16
  It's definitely a lot of work.
• 2:11:18
  Like I, I work a lot.
• 2:11:21
  And so you are doing live sessions with people all the time.
• 2:11:25
  On, on, on, yeah.
• 2:11:26
  All the time.
• 2:11:26
  And then making content.
• 2:11:27
  Yeah.
• 2:11:28
  Yeah.
• 2:11:28
  Right.
• 2:11:28
  Yeah.
• 2:11:29
  On, on the daily Most, for the most part.
• 2:11:31
  And then, you know, there's hours, right?
• 2:11:33
  Yeah.
• 2:11:33
  There's lots of other things that come into it, but, and
• 2:11:36
  I mean, maybe it's enough.
• 2:11:37
  Maybe it's enough to keep going.
• 2:11:39
  But for me, I, I mean, I don't even know how much money I earn.
• 2:11:44
  I've got no idea.
• 2:11:45
  I mean, I don't mean that to sound like I don't even know how much money I own.
• 2:11:47
  Like I have enough to like, but, but I don't, I don't look at the Yeah, I don't,
• 2:11:52
  it's not the, you're not keeping score.
• 2:11:54
  No.
• 2:11:55
  And I guess that's a privilege because there must be enough coming in to not
• 2:11:58
  have to keep score to know that I can pay the bills each month, which is a thing.
• 2:12:04
  But yeah, it's not like, ooh, like it's, it's, it's just
• 2:12:07
  like I would keep doing it.
• 2:12:08
  Even if 10 people, five people, I, I dunno what else I would do.
• 2:12:13
  Like I, if someone said to me, you know, and, and occasionally you get
• 2:12:16
  used to this question like, what would you do if you won the lottery?
• 2:12:20
  It's like, well actually, I'd, I'd be doing the same thing.
• 2:12:23
  I, I would be doing the same thing.
• 2:12:25
  I'd probably have an indoor arena
• 2:12:30
  and there would be a few tweaks, but, but you know, as far as like where
• 2:12:34
  my life energy is being invested, I would be doing the same thing.
• 2:12:38
  Yeah.
• 2:12:39
  Just with like a really, really freaking nice saddle or something else like that.
• 2:12:43
  But like, yeah, like, I'm not gonna deny things, but Yeah.
• 2:12:47
  Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 2:12:49
  But you, you're, you're doing that which you love.
• 2:12:52
  Rupert Isaacson: Yeah.
• 2:12:52
  Well, with that, I mean, we, we we're at two and a half hours here and, there's,
• 2:12:56
  there's more that we could go into.
• 2:12:58
  And I think, so one of the things that I promised the, the, the Liberty rivalry
• 2:13:02
  listeners is that we then will have each person back to answer the questions.
• 2:13:07
  Oh, I'm sorry about that.
• 2:13:09
  Throw in.
• 2:13:10
  So would you, would you, would you consent to come back and, absolutely.
• 2:13:15
  Yeah.
• 2:13:16
  So let's have them listeners, send in your questions to Jane.
• 2:13:19
  She's a wealth of knowledge.
• 2:13:21
  It can be on the, how did you do it?
• 2:13:23
  It can be on the how, on the, what do you do?
• 2:13:25
  It could be on the, tell me more about that.
• 2:13:26
  Parasympathetic or sympathetic.
• 2:13:28
  Tell me more about those body maps.
• 2:13:30
  Jane, turned me onto a book.
• 2:13:33
  Is it The Body Has A Mind of Its Own?
• 2:13:35
  Yes, yes.
• 2:13:36
  About body maps and, brain maps, which even though I thought I
• 2:13:41
  knew quite a lot about the nervous system, I realized I didn't.
• 2:13:44
  And it was fascinating.
• 2:13:47
  And there's much, much, much more to learn.
• 2:13:49
  And I think next time we come back, Jane, I want to talk to you
• 2:13:53
  in more detail about that because now we've sort of had your story.
• 2:13:57
  I'd like to go into more depth about this, with
• 2:14:00
  Jane Pike: Yeah, I'm, I'm happy to answer questions on anything.
• 2:14:03
  Like there's really No, because it's helpful.
• 2:14:06
  Rupert Isaacson: I, I, I think a lot of us walk around in a state of
• 2:14:09
  anxiety and we don't even know why.
• 2:14:11
  You know, I, I think, I think that that's one of the, one of
• 2:14:13
  the symptoms of the modern age.
• 2:14:15
  Hold on.
• 2:14:15
  You know, my life's good.
• 2:14:16
  I've got a nice job.
• 2:14:17
  I, you know, I've got enough to eat, blah, blah, blah.
• 2:14:19
  Why?
• 2:14:19
  Why do I feel so shit?
• 2:14:21
  And I think that this is a question at the heart of our, our
• 2:14:28
  societal experience at the moment.
• 2:14:31
  We've never had it so good, really as a species, and yet we seem to
• 2:14:35
  have never been quite so unhappy.
• 2:14:37
  Yeah.
• 2:14:37
  Why is that?
• 2:14:38
  Jane Pike: And I think as well, like one of the, platform that's not as
• 2:14:43
  openly or often discussed in this.
• 2:14:45
  I doubt it goes outside what you wanna talk about here, but maybe it does, but
• 2:14:48
  I'll throw it in here and we can always talk about it somewhere else as well.
• 2:14:51
  It's just like that, you know, you and me have done those vitality
• 2:14:55
  workshops together as well, and like discussed what that means or what that
• 2:14:59
  looks like to live in a vital way.
• 2:15:02
  And, to me, the essence of what I was attempting to escape from, I think
• 2:15:11
  with a lot of the yoga practices, just me personally, like, again, I don't
• 2:15:14
  wanna paint a brush, but like, is really common for people's experiences.
• 2:15:18
  You know, like the, the, the struggles that we have with like ourselves,
• 2:15:23
  our relationship to ourselves, our relationship to others, our relationship
• 2:15:26
  to intimacy, our relationship to sexual expression, our relationship
• 2:15:31
  to passion, all of those things like really, all the difficult stuff.
• 2:15:34
  We separate them.
• 2:15:35
  Yeah, we separate them, but then they're, they're not separate.
• 2:15:39
  And yet it's still kind of a little bit taboo when we talk about this type of,
• 2:15:44
  these types of conversations or just not as openly discussed or talked about.
• 2:15:48
  And so that's really interesting to me as well.
• 2:15:51
  I mean, I get lots of, get lots of, it's not quite the right word.
• 2:15:54
  I, I have the honor of working with a lot of women in my program that are.
• 2:15:58
  In their seventies or in their sixties, and they got married very
• 2:16:01
  young and it's like they have one foot in a time where women's rights
• 2:16:05
  and expectations were very different.
• 2:16:07
  And another foot in this modern era where they recognize and see all these
• 2:16:11
  different opportunities around them.
• 2:16:13
  And, and perhaps they've changed and their husband hasn't or like,
• 2:16:16
  you know, and how to negotiate that.
• 2:16:19
  All of the, when we talk about self-actualization, and I feel
• 2:16:21
  like there's a lot of people in this like transition point both
• 2:16:26
  in time and both physiologically and both mentally and emotionally.
• 2:16:29
  That means that they're kind of a little bit at war with themselves.
• 2:16:33
  And yeah, that being of a sort of inner schizophrenia almost.
• 2:16:36
  Yeah, this's just a really interesting point.
• 2:16:38
  I just wanted to throw that in there alongside the nervous system
• 2:16:42
  stuff and alongside the other stuff.
• 2:16:44
  Cause it's interesting.
• 2:16:44
  Rupert Isaacson: Well, if you, so, listeners, if you're, if you are, if
• 2:16:47
  you got that, you've got that inner conflict, send us in the questions.
• 2:16:52
  What do I do about it?
• 2:16:53
  Please, Jane.
• 2:16:54
  Jane will sort you out.
• 2:16:55
  Tell, tell us how people can contact you and where they can find you.
• 2:16:59
  Jane Pike: Well, you can send love.
• 2:17:00
  You can just sit there and send really good vibes all the way through
• 2:17:04
  and it'll be happily received.
• 2:17:06
  But if you do wanna directly contact me, you can jump on my website.
• 2:17:09
  Confident writer.online is the best place to find me.
• 2:17:13
  And I'm on, on the socials as well.
• 2:17:15
  Or you can email me Jane competent writer.online and,
• 2:17:19
  Jane Confident writer.online.
• 2:17:21
  Yeah.
• 2:17:22
  And I will merely online reply.
• 2:17:24
  Yeah.
• 2:17:24
  Give me a few days.
• 2:17:26
  Sometimes I'm a little behind on emails, but it's not personal.
• 2:17:32
  yeah.
• 2:17:33
  So that, that would be amazing to hear from people.
• 2:17:36
  Rupert Isaacson: Okay.
• 2:17:37
  Well then, I can't wait till we can have you back.
• 2:17:40
  Jane, thanks so much for such a pleasure gracing us with
• 2:17:44
  your story and your wisdom.
• 2:17:47
  Happy me.
• 2:17:49
  For those of you, who want to hear more, we'll be having Jane back, to hear
• 2:17:54
  our other podcast on equine assisted, interventions, equine Assisted World.
• 2:18:01
  go to us@longridehome.com and if you're interested in the work we
• 2:18:06
  do with Autism, the Brain, and all the other stuff, ntls.co.
• 2:18:11
  Neutra, Neutra Learning Systems co.
• 2:18:14
  Send your your questions to Jane, but do bother with me to send the questions
• 2:18:18
  so that I can ask them of Jane.
• 2:18:19
  So please send the questions, say, I've got these questions for Jane.
• 2:18:23
  How'd you do it?
• 2:18:24
  Blah, blah, blah.
• 2:18:25
  And then we can have her back and she can tell us.
• 2:18:28
  All right, Jane, thank you so much.
• 2:18:30
  Thank you so much.
• 2:18:32
  All right, see you next time.
• 2:18:33
  Okay, bye.
• 2:18:34
  Bye.
• 2:18:35
  Thank you for joining us.
• 2:18:36
  We hope you enjoyed today's podcast.
• 2:18:38
  Join our website, new trails learning.com, to check out our online
• 2:18:43
  courses and live workshops in Horse Boy Method, movement Method, and Athena.
• 2:18:49
  These evidence-based programs have helped children, veterans, and people
• 2:18:54
  dealing with trauma around the world.
• 2:18:56
  We also offer a horse training program and self-care program
• 2:19:00
  for riders on long ride home.com.
• 2:19:03
  These include easy to do online courses and tutorials that
• 2:19:07
  bring you and your horse joy.
• 2:19:10
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• 2:19:15
  See you on the next show.
• 2:19:16
  And please remember to press, subscribe and share.