Latest / Equine Assisted World with Rupert Isaacson / Ep 9: Linda Kohanov - Epona Quest

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Ep 9: Linda Kohanov - Epona Quest · Equine Assisted World with Rupert Isaacson

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  Rupert Isaacson: Welcome to Equine Assisted World.
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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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  Here on Equine Assisted World.
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  We look at the cutting edge and the best practices currently being developed and,
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  established in the equine assisted field.
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  This can be psychological, this can be neuropsych, this can be
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  physical, this can be all of the conditions that human beings have.
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  These lovely equines, these beautiful horses that we work with, help us with.
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  Thank you for being part of the adventure and we hope you enjoy today's show
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  Welcome back to Live Free, Ride Free where we talk to people who are living
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  Self actualized lives, and we'll find out what can we learn from them.
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  How can we help ourselves to self actualize More better, more fluidly,
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  more joyfully, more happily and also just their amazing life stories.
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  And I've got Someone rather incredible with me this week.
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  I have Linda Kohanov, who many of you horsey folk out there will know from
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  The Tar Equus and her other books.
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  But the Tar Equus was the groundbreaking one that I think
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  Brought to everybody's attention at the start of the twenty first century.
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  Really a new paradigm For looking at the experience of horses through
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  a very, very different lens and how that could help in one's life, not
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  just within one's equestrian sphere.
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  For those of you who do not know, who are not horsey About the Tao of Equis.
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  I'm going to let Linda talk to us about that.
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  But suffice to say, you probably know that Equis means horse, and
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  you probably know that the DAO or the tau means what it means, which,
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  of course, is a whole other thing.
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  So how could the DAO Well, the towel, one can pronounce it either way.
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  That which is not, that which at the moment one thinks of it is no
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  longer, That which is everything, that which is everywhere, the
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  DAO, and the horse be connected.
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  And How on earth might that help us self actualize?
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  Well, in fact, it seems that people over many, many generations of humanity for
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  at least four or five thousand years.
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  We've been seeing a connection.
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  And Linda has been bringing it to our attention in our Generation in a
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  particularly interesting and fruitful way.
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  So without further ado, Linda, welcome on to Live Free Ryd Free,
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  and thank you for being here.
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  Thank
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  Linda Kohanov: you, Rupert.
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  It's a
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  Rupert Isaacson: pleasure.
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  So, Linda, I think I did say a little preamble there, but I
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  know I didn't do you justice.
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  Could you please tell us who you are and what
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  Linda Kohanov: do you do?
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  I'm best known for writing five books on what humans can learn from horses.
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  So, essentially, There's there's many different elements to this over the years.
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  There's a mystical side, a spiritual side.
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  There's a personal development side.
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  There's a Leadership Factor.
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  So these books are really about what horses have to teach people
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  about becoming better humans.
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  And it seems like that I could write a whole encyclopedia of wisdom that
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  horses keep teaching all of us, that we keep seeing from different angles.
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  And As we go deeper, we realize that they have a lot more to teach us, I
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  believe, than we have to teach them.
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  Rupert Isaacson: If you were going to Preach to the unconverted.
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  I think that those of us who are horse obsessives, and I know a lot of
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  the people listening are, absolutely would See the connection immediately.
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  But imagine that you had really no connection to or
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  contact with horses at all.
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  Why the horse?
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  What makes the horse So special in the relationship between the the
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  human and, if you like, the universe and the cosmos and consciousness.
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  What's special About this relationship with this animal.
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  Linda Kohanov: It goes back thousands of years, and there's a lot of Scientific
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  evidence now to show that the animals that we, quote, unquote, domesticated
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  were actually domesticating us as well, that we we coevolved With these animals.
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  And there are certain things that you learn from dogs and cats and birds,
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  certain ways you're affected by them.
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  But most dogs, Cats and birds are actually predators.
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  So when you come to a really large powerful animal like the horse,
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  they actually teach you how to be Powerful, but in a non predatory way.
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  And I had to after a while the word the term non predatory because a lot of
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  times people, These are large herbivores.
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  They're vegetarians, obviously.
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  And a lot of times, they're preyed upon in nature, but they're fully
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  capable of protecting themselves.
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  Predators very rarely will attack a full grown horse.
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  Usually, they're slinking around the edges looking for the young horse or
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  the injured horse we're the horse who's wandered off without paying attention.
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  So large nonpredatory animals like horses are capable Of protecting
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  themselves and even performing altruistic acts to protect other herd members.
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  For many years, especially in the natural horsemanship field, People
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  would talk about horses being prey animals and humans being predators, and
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  this is where a lot of the dysfunction happens in these relationships.
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  And that's True to a certain extent, but humans actually are omnivores.
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  We have the eyes forward like a predator, of course.
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  And we can strategize, and we can Stock, in other words.
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  And at the same time, we have the teeth of a vegetarian, a
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  digestive system of an omnivore.
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  We actually have Aspects of both predatory and nonpredatory wisdom.
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  And if we can stop over identifying with predatory behaviors
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  They were used in conquest.
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  When you think about the whole world being settled by conquest and enslaving other
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  Races and enslaving other animals, you realize that there's been an overemphasis
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  on predatory behavior in our culture throughout the world Because it's all
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  about, you know, stepping in and taking over the lands and rights of others.
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  So we've grown up in this Predatory environment, but that is not who we are.
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  We actually have a lot more potential than that.
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  And From the horse, we learn how to be powerful.
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  You have to be powerful if you're around a horse.
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  You can't be a shrinking violet.
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  You you can find Courses that will take care of you if you're if you're
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  really looking, and that's that's fine.
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  But if you're really gonna step in as you have been a horse trainer and rider
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  So you know you have to engage a kind of power and presence, but it can't be
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  predatory or the horse won't trust you.
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  And so they teach us that.
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  And For my fourth book called The Power of the Herd, and it was looking
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  at a nonpredatory approach to social intelligence leadership and innovation,
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  I was researching the presence of the horse in various cultures throughout time.
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  And one of the things I noticed was that many like, an out actually,
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  outrageous percentage of innovative leaders Across multiple cultures,
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  we're also either exceptional riders or exceptional trainers.
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  So and a lot of people don't realize that the Buddha was an exceptional horseman.
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  And when I really looked at his background and began to discover more
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  about this, and I do talk about this in the power of the herd, It struck me
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  that a lot of the skills that the Buddha perfected that he later translated
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  into meditation and mindfulness Were actually things you really need if
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  you're gonna function with horses.
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  So I feel like, in some sense, the horses were teaching him a lot
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  of the things that eventually He translated into purely human terms.
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  But there's also people like George Washington.
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  In the US, I don't think there's any way On the planet that we would have
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  won that war without George Washington.
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  And George Washington was considered one of the best
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  horse trainers in the colonies.
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  And you can see from the way he operated with people that he had that knowledge
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  that he learned from the horses.
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  Winston Churchill was an exceptional equestrian.
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  We often think of him as this this beefy guy smoking a cigar all the time.
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  But when he was younger, he was in the cavalry, and he was a great rider.
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  I'm not sure about his horse training orientation.
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  You know, Elizabeth the first, Elizabeth the second Catherine
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  the Great, Ronald Reagan.
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  Even if you don't think of him as somebody that you're in sync with politically,
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  in including any of these people, actually, What you can see is that
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  his presence and his ability to engage with and motivate large populations
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  to follow him in a certain direction Is very much like what happens when
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  you learn how to ride and train well.
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  And he was a very fine rider And spent a lot of time riding at his ranch when he
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  was taking time off from the presidency.
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  So there's just multiple examples of this.
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  And so I've really been looking at this throughout history.
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  One of the other elements too is that from a mystical viewpoint or spiritual
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  viewpoint, In multiple cultures throughout the world, in multiple mythic complexes
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  and religions, the horse is considered not only a sacred gift From the gods.
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  But the horse is also an animal that can take People from this world to the other
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  world and bring them safely back again.
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  So a lot of mythology involves forces taking someone To the other world.
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  And by that, we mean other states of consciousness or even other dimensions
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  and then actually bringing them back.
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  So the horse is like a psychopomp and a guide throughout history
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  and and around the world.
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  So this is why I find It's so rich to bring horse wisdom into
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  the human world because they have things to teach that we've lost
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  sight of in our city based culture.
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  Rupert Isaacson: It's interesting what you're putting your your finger on there.
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  Obviously, you know, any aristocratic or military leader Since we domesticated
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  the horse has, to a large degree, been a horseman because we know that this
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  process of conquest that you talked about happened largely On the backs of horses
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  which I've always found intriguing.
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  Your you point out that, you know, you need to have the power
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  presence To affect a horse.
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  At the same time, if you bring the predatory aspect of that to the
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  horse, the horse, as you say, will not trust you because he's gonna think
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  quite rightly that we might eat him.
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  And he'd be right, by the way, because if we got hungry enough,
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  we'd eat every horse in our barn.
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  We wouldn't be happy about it, but they're right to be a little bit skeptical of us.
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  But Then, of course, we've taken this predatory behavior to our
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  fellow human on the back of a horse.
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  This we know that we've done.
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  However, although history recounts that well, I I feel that you put
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  your finger on something else there, Which is many of these leaders
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  were not necessarily warlords.
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  And you started with the Buddha, and it's interesting that you say that Siddhartha,
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  As he would have been as the prince before he became what we know as the Buddha.
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  I hadn't thought about it in that regard before, but, yes, you must be
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  absolutely right because if you were a Prince of North Indian, Southern
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  Nepalese kingdom at that time.
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  You would have de facto been a horseman both chariots and riding.
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  He there's no way he could have not been with his upbringing.
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  So you're absolutely it's it's intriguing that you bring that up.
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  So here's my question.
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  Because we have to get over.
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  We have to be powerful without being predatory in order to
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  be effective with horses.
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  Do horses teach us tact?
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  Do horses teach us diplomacy?
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  Linda Kohanov: If if you're really going to have a horse form a real partnership
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  with you, you have to learn that.
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  And you have to learn that tact and diplomacy at a at
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  a wholly nonverbal level.
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  So it's not just about what you're saying.
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  It's your Whole body that's radiating and then also responding
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  thoughtfully from moment to moment to what's going on with the horse.
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  And so In the nineteen nineties, psychologists determined that
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  only about ten percent of human communication is verbal.
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  Ninety percent of the messages that we send back and forth to each
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  other are in that nonverbal range.
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  And a lot of times, people now just rely on words, and a lot of times,
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  they're conveying Something completely the opposite with their body language.
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  When you're with a horse, you have to learn how to have an
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  intention and a focus And have your entire body be in sync with that.
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  So if you're conflicted, the horse is just not gonna respond as well.
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  So Bringing all of that into play is essential.
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  And, really, there you know, the average rider Can engage serious forms of
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  maybe even disturbing levels of tack.
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  And I mean by this, you know, saddles and bridles and spurs and webs to
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  motivate a horse just out of the horse just trying to get along in the world.
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  But if you're gonna have a real partnership with the horse, you're
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  actually gonna be transformed from the inside out, and it's
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  going to affect Your entire life.
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  Rupert Isaacson: Do you think that this happens Because in order to really achieve
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  that union with a horse, The horse sort of forces us to engage with our higher self.
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  Linda Kohanov: Absolutely.
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  And it it it is an interesting combination with horses too because it's dual.
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  So you have to engage your higher self, Ultimately.
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  But it has to be fully grounded in this world.
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  So they they actually teach us a grounded spirituality.
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  Duality.
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  And the fact that they lure us into other states of consciousness or other
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  worlds Doesn't mean that we are not supposed to be here now completely
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  embodied and focused on the moment when we're interacting with them physically.
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  You could sit over a fence with a horse and have the horse essentially take you
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  into an altered state of consciousness where you can kind of Lose track of
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  your body and where you're at and really go off into these other worlds.
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  But if you're gonna interact with a horse And if you're gonna go inside the
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  fence and ride that horse or lead that horse somewhere, you have to be able to
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  engage some level of embodied presence.
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  So They're constantly making us exercise both sides in in ways that I think
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  other people and animals rarely do As a way of interacting with you yeah.
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  Embodied spirituality is what they're bringing
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  to
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  Rupert Isaacson: us.
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  This this brings me to another thought, which is that Many people, I think, are
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  unaware that the horse was, I think, the the last riding animal to be domesticated
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  or, as you say, maybe domesticated us.
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  I know that we started with the reindeer, which is a relatively easy
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  horse as long as you weigh sort of under a hundred animal as long as
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  you weigh under a hundred pounds.
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  Then I think it goes to the camel.
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  Then I think it's the I think the ass and the elephant are roughly Concurrent.
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  And then it's the horse.
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  And I've often wondered about that, why the horse was so late.
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  And then, of course well, yeah.
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  The horse works, of course, in three dimensions, and the horse
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  is this really complicated animal.
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  mIght some might say, well, an elephant's really complicated, but I
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  think an elephant's Brain is a way of looking at the world is perhaps closer
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  to ours and more intuitively ours.
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  So what is it about the horse that we Why why do we create this mythology around
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  the horse and the spirituality of the horse in regard with us And not these
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  other riding animals that we've also had these long relationships with because One
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  does not find quite the same mythological engagement and quite the same spiritual
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  engagement with these other animals As with the horse, why do you think that is?
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  Linda Kohanov: Well, I think they were working on us creative and
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  Creatively and spiritually long before we were capable of riding them.
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  They're just so athletic and so fast, and you have to really know what you're doing
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  if you're gonna try to ride one of them.
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  But the interesting thing is that our relationship with the horse
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  goes back thousands of years before we were able to ride them.
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  And There is significant evidence now that they were drawing us out years
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  before we had the technology to get on their backs and and ride them.
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  And the reason I say this is because When we began to understand the the
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  cave art in France and the Lascaux cave and the another older cave
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  that That escapes me at the moment.
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  There's Lascaux, and I can't remember at this moment.
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  The Chauvet.
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  The Lascaux and Chauvet caves.
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  In these caves, you see this strange evolution where You have an obsession
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  with cave art related to horses.
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  And they thought at first that people were hunting horses.
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  But as it as it turns out, as they really started to look at bones left around the
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  caves, they found out that the correlation between animals eaten and the animals
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  Painted wasn't wasn't really related.
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  So there's a lot of deer meat and deer bone not deer meat anymore, obviously,
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  but deer bones around those Caves.
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  They were eating deer, but they weren't eating so many horses, but
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  they were obsessed with horses.
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  And even to the point where they were By the time you go from the Chauvet cave
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  which is much older, it's like thirty thousand years old, to the Lascaux cave,
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  which is about, I guess, twenty thousand years old, You see that that they're
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  painting even more horses later on.
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  And in the Chauvet cave in particular, which is the older one, They have
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  two alcoves, separate alcoves with horses in them set apart from all
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  the other animals, lions, rhinos.
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  They they don't really have wolves painted in these caves,
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  by the way, interestingly enough.
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  And so In these alcoves, horses are coming out and looking at you as if they are
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  stepping Forward and engaging eye contact with you and really looking at you.
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  And this looks to me like the the initial somebody was really Trying to convey
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  that initial moment where a horse reached out to us and didn't run off and then
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  began to invite us into a relationship On the ground for thousands of years
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  before we were able to ride them.
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  And there's a lot
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  Rupert Isaacson: of Go ahead.
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  Sorry.
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  I didn't mean to interrupt
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  Linda Kohanov: you.
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  No.
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  It's okay.
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  I was just blown away when I when I began to realize that.
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  And I I recently revised the DAO of Equis.
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  It's gonna come out in a revised form in June.
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  And so I went ahead and added this right in the introduction To talk about how
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  we have this perception of the horse as being an evolution that happened later,
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  much later, But it seems like it was working on us for thousands of years
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  and probably changed certain members of the culture who were lured Out of
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  early agricultural settlements where horses might have been attracted to
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  people learning how to plant grain and things like that And luring some people
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  out into this nomadic lifestyle Mhmm.
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  That eventually caused people to Form these interspecies societies.
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  And I find the reindeer people I talked about the reindeer people in
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  the Dow of Equals because I found them very interesting In that some of
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  the reports anthropological reports state that these people consider
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  themselves half human, half reindeer.
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  Yeah.
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  And there are certain horse cultures where they consider
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  themselves half human, half horse.
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  So a lot of these cultures you find, They're they truly were
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  engaged in an equal partnership that was mutually transformational.
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  Rupert Isaacson: It's interesting.
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  There's a couple of things which spring to mind here.
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  You talk about an animal species domesticating the human.
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  And I'm I'm as I'm sure you're aware of and some of our listeners may be
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  aware of, there is a Fairly well founded theory that civilization as we know
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  it, I e agriculture and industry that comes out of agriculture, Is based
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  upon us being domesticated by a certain type of grass that we call wheat.
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  And that this happened, Oh, between twenty and fifteen thousand years ago,
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  somewhere in what's now Kurdistan, you know, in those upper plateaus at
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  the the source of the the Euphrates.
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  And that this particular type of hardy grass developed a relationship with us
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  as much as a relationship with them.
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  What I haven't considered until now, and this is intriguing to me, Is of
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  course, what would have been eating that grass if not herds of wild horses?
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  And we know that those areas of Eastern Anatolia and the Southern
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  Caucasus Going up around to the north of the Black Sea and so on.
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  This is sort of the cradle of where we find the earliest horse civilizations.
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  Makes sense.
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  So Did the did the grass domesticate us and then the main species
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  subsisting upon that grass, then take that domestication further.
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  And then another question comes to mind from that, Which is it's often assumed
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  that herding herding of herbivores predates Farming as a sort of interim
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  period between straight up hunting and gathering and, Planting of crops.
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  But what you're suggesting there is a potential other way around, which is
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  that perhaps we began to be domesticated Seasonally by some of these plants.
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  Then some of the animals coming in and being attracted to those made us
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  think, perhaps we could herd these.
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  wHat do you think about that as a as a motif, really?
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  We don't have to say it's a belief because don't have to believe one way or the
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  other, but these things are interesting concepts to motifs for the brain.
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  What what what do you feel feel and think about that?
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  Linda Kohanov: There are people who say that outright.
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  There are scientists who say that outright.
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  So it's it's what I call the OASIS theory is that humans learned how to plant these
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  grasses On purpose and take care of them.
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  They had to guard them, you know, because there are other
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  animals coming in to eat them.
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  And and they have to be more settled in order to stick around to guard these
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  Plants as they're starting to grow.
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  And as they're sitting there guarding the grasses that are growing the
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  wheat, Then animals are coming up and they're chasing them off, but they're
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  starting to observe their behavior.
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  And sometimes they're chasing them down and eating them.
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  And then you have some people just sitting out guarding these
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  these these wheat fields, and they start to notice the horses and
• 24:27
  and become more intrigued by them.
• 24:30
  And having less of a a hunter mentality and more of a naturalist mentality if
• 24:36
  you're guarding the weed like that.
• 24:38
  And so they're observing the horse behavior.
• 24:40
  They're they're seeing young horses.
• 24:43
  They're starting to reach out to them.
• 24:44
  They the horses are Getting used to their presence.
• 24:48
  And, eventually, maybe somebody actually holds out a hand of grain
• 24:53
  to feed one of the Younger horses that they've they're enamored with.
• 24:57
  And then through that interaction, eventually, the horses would have
• 25:02
  lured Some of those people, some of those more adventurous people
• 25:06
  into this nomadic lifestyle.
• 25:09
  So there are actually Scientific theories that suggest that we had
• 25:15
  early agriculture, and we started to move towards Settled lifestyles,
• 25:19
  at least semi settled, to take care of these agricultural situations.
• 25:25
  And then Some people were lured into a nomadic lifestyle with the animals
• 25:30
  that were attracted to those settings.
• 25:32
  So that there's agriculture and then there's two branches.
• 25:35
  There's a There's a kind of agriculture that headed toward city
• 25:39
  based lifestyles, and then there's a kind of agriculture that headed
• 25:43
  toward nomadic pastoral lifestyles, And they branched off from there.
• 25:47
  Rupert Isaacson: Yeah.
• 25:47
  Interesting.
• 25:48
  And your your point about Animals domesticating us.
• 25:56
  I have actually I have actually witnessed and experienced this twice.
• 26:02
  Those listeners who know my pre Autism background.
• 26:07
  I I was a human rights activist and journalist in the Kalahari area of
• 26:12
  Southern Africa for a long time.
• 26:13
  My family is all Southern African.
• 26:15
  So I lived with Khoi San hunter gatherers because we were working on their land
• 26:20
  claim issues to get them legal title To their ancestral lands in South
• 26:24
  Africa and Botswana for many years.
• 26:27
  And so I had a couple of experiences there Where, for example, we were
• 26:36
  making camp in an area that Had almost no human footprint at all.
• 26:42
  And within about ten days, the jackals of that era, the black backed jackals,
• 26:49
  which would be quite quickly beginning to circle our camp because they could
• 26:53
  smell the goodies, Were at the point where they would come and accept meat
• 26:58
  from the hand, I'd say, within ten days.
• 27:01
  And but all of the initial overtures in terms of The charming, almost puppy
• 27:06
  like behavior and invitations, the sort of getting down with the front legs
• 27:11
  and then looking up and cocking the ears and cocking the head To the side.
• 27:15
  They're sort of what we think of as invitation puppy like
• 27:18
  invitations to play from a dog.
• 27:19
  They were exhibiting that towards us.
• 27:22
  And, So did did we domesticate them, or did they domesticate us?
• 27:27
  Then I had a similar experience with birds of prey, Also in Africa, Zimbabwe
• 27:32
  where my father's from where we were canoeing down the banks of the Zambezi
• 27:38
  for And it's sort of extended time.
• 27:41
  I did it once, and then I sort of went back and did it again a couple of times.
• 27:45
  And What happened was that the guides had learned that or rather the
• 27:51
  kites, Bode Praetis called a kite.
• 27:53
  Had learned that where the camps generally were along the river,
• 27:58
  if they circled there'd be stuff.
• 28:00
  And the guide soon learned that they could throw bits of meat up into the air, and
• 28:05
  the kites would swoop in and grab it.
• 28:07
  And then the kites began to swoop in this playful way to, if you like, to
• 28:12
  instigate the very, very intelligent birds, The guides into doing this.
• 28:16
  Who domesticated who?
• 28:19
  I would have said until recently, well, we domesticated them.
• 28:23
  We we were in this place, we as humans, And then we did this.
• 28:26
  They they were lured by our, you know, goodies, and then we did
• 28:29
  behaviors that domesticated them, but perhaps that's not the case.
• 28:34
  If that's not the case, what do you think would have motivated and prompted the
• 28:40
  horse To come and engage with an upright ape with the eyes in front, which clearly
• 28:46
  is a predator as well as an omnivore.
• 28:49
  We absolutely do hunt.
• 28:50
  I've, you know, hunted with the bushmen.
• 28:52
  And they for example, they will hunt zebra.
• 28:55
  So, they would've we would've hunted equines, you know, up
• 28:57
  here in the Northern Hemisphere.
• 29:00
  So given that we did probably hunt them, what do you feel
• 29:07
  Made them reach out to us.
• 29:09
  Why would they reach out to us given that we're a dangerous lot?
• 29:15
  Linda Kohanov: Well, I think they were reaching out to people who were
• 29:17
  less dangerous in the beginning.
• 29:19
  So you have people who have more of a hunter mentality.
• 29:21
  But, you know, as you know, in But, you know, as you know, in a lot of
• 29:26
  these cultures, they have hunters have tremendous respect Yeah.
• 29:29
  For the prey.
• 29:30
  They're not they're not torturing them.
• 29:33
  They're not Hunting them to virtual extinction.
• 29:36
  There is a there is a symbiotic relationship, and that's that is
• 29:40
  even related to the prayers that they say before they hunt, after they've
• 29:45
  killed an animal, before they eat an animal, they're thanking this animal.
• 29:49
  There is this feeling of a mutual support system.
• 29:52
  And and horses are being used are used to being hunted by all kinds of animals.
• 29:57
  And when you see Pictures now on YouTube or videos on YouTube in
• 30:03
  Africa, you see that a lot of times, these large herbivores, Whether
• 30:08
  they're zebras or wildebeest, will live in the midst of predators.
• 30:13
  And there will be predators milling around in the vicinity,
• 30:16
  and they don't automatically Right.
• 30:19
  So they have some herd members acting as sentinels, and they can read the
• 30:23
  behavior of a predator when it's on the prowl and a predator when it's just
• 30:27
  Relaxing or wandering through the field on their way to a good nap somewhere else.
• 30:33
  And so Horses and other animals that are herbivores have thousands of years
• 30:38
  of living among predators and being able to tell when they're in that
• 30:43
  hunting mode and when they're not.
• 30:44
  That's Also Yeah.
• 30:47
  Yeah.
• 30:47
  And so when people say, oh, you know, the the horse thinks you're a predator
• 30:52
  when you get on his back To ride.
• 30:53
  No.
• 30:53
  He doesn't because he can tell that you're not acting like a predator at that moment.
• 30:57
  Mhmm.
• 30:58
  And if you are acting in a hyperdominant predatory manner, That horse is less
• 31:03
  likely to let you on their back.
• 31:05
  So that's one aspect of it.
• 31:08
  The other thing I think is that, They called us out, you know, that that there
• 31:15
  is a horse consciousness that reached out to us Just like those jackals reached
• 31:21
  out to you or those they sensing also because we're we're planting grain
• 31:27
  That's that's getting better and better.
• 31:29
  We're taking them to pastures and we're guarding them.
• 31:32
  We're acting as guardians of them From other predators.
• 31:36
  And so there's this way in which you you create this mutual support System with
• 31:42
  another species that appreciates that.
• 31:44
  I mean, there's the horse has now proliferated around the world because
• 31:50
  Their association with humans.
• 31:53
  Mhmm.
• 31:53
  They you know?
• 31:54
  So there were there were advantages to the relationship from the beginning.
• 31:58
  And
• 31:59
  Rupert Isaacson: Yeah.
• 32:00
  These are these are these are valid points.
• 32:02
  Yeah.
• 32:02
  I was I'm just minded, I was in Namibia earlier this year, and you're dead right.
• 32:07
  We were watching a Pride of lion, who were deciding whether or not
• 32:12
  to engage with a very large herd of zebra, who were deciding whether or
• 32:17
  not They should be worried about this.
• 32:19
  And what was interesting was it was the the pride was actually three grown
• 32:23
  lionesses who were the hunters and Some half grown cubs who obviously
• 32:30
  needed, you know, to learn the trade.
• 32:32
  And so they would stalk a bit And try a little rush here and there.
• 32:37
  And you could see that the the you could see the zebra sort of looking and go, meh.
• 32:42
  Yep.
• 32:42
  Yep.
• 32:43
  Nah.
• 32:43
  We'll move off a little bit, but we can tell you're not really a threat.
• 32:46
  And but they were keeping an eye on where the three lionesses were.
• 32:51
  And When they moved, the herd would shift accordingly.
• 32:57
  But for sure, no rush was made in the In the time that we were watching them.
• 33:07
  aNd if that is most of the time, I guess, if you're a human predator or Or a or
• 33:12
  a feline predator or a canine predator.
• 33:15
  Every time you try to make a kill, you're expending energy.
• 33:19
  Most Hunts will not be successful.
• 33:22
  How many times do you want to expend that energy before you run out of energy?
• 33:27
  The Animal.
• 33:28
  Your hunting is always faster than you wildier than you.
• 33:31
  So I can see, yes, from what you say that Why would they engage with
• 33:37
  us when we're tricky predators?
• 33:38
  Because, well, we don't always behave that way.
• 33:40
  Absolutely.
• 33:41
  And do you but do you feel because a lot of people would contend that horses
• 33:49
  do not really think rationally, that they represent the more Irrational,
• 33:54
  emotionally based intelligence that they're not the strategic communicators
• 34:00
  that Perhaps we or wolves or hyenas or other pack based predatory things are.
• 34:06
  You know, we have language.
• 34:07
  We use that To to strategize.
• 34:11
  Do you feel that consciously Horses in this early phase of contact with humans
• 34:22
  were Able to take it beyond the okay.
• 34:27
  They're not behaving too aggressively, and they've got some grass that we like.
• 34:31
  Do you think that there was something else going on?
• 34:33
  A curiosity?
• 34:36
  Linda Kohanov: Absolutely.
• 34:37
  Horses are incredibly curious, and they're very powerful and fast.
• 34:41
  And so they can afford to entertain curiosity in a different way
• 34:46
  than you might see a rabbit be curious about something.
• 34:48
  Because, You know, the rabbit's not powerful and capable of, you know,
• 34:54
  really I mean, you see, rabbits are constantly looking around.
• 34:57
  It's like, is it safe to be out here in the open?
• 35:00
  Because they and they have to run off immediately, whereas a
• 35:03
  horse has more of a presence.
• 35:04
  And if they're in a group of empowered horses together, They know they
• 35:09
  can run off a lot of predators, especially the less experienced ones
• 35:13
  and especially when they Draw on that power of a fully empowered herd.
• 35:18
  So their curiosity is something that was Captured in those early cave paintings.
• 35:25
  When you see the horse coming out of the alcove looking very curiously
• 35:31
  And, invitingly the painter, the way he's portraying that.
• 35:35
  So, yeah, because they're powerful and fast, they can afford to be curious.
• 35:39
  And they are.
• 35:41
  They we don't know how their consciousness works exactly, but we see
• 35:46
  through their behavior how they are.
• 35:49
  And how easily they will override their basic survival instincts when they are
• 35:56
  when they feel connected To others.
• 36:00
  And so, I mean, if if a horse was purely an instinctual animal,
• 36:05
  there's no way You would get such an animal to go onto a trailer.
• 36:10
  Mhmm.
• 36:10
  They don't go into small enclosed spaces.
• 36:13
  If If a horse were a purely instinctual animal, there's no way they would ride
• 36:19
  into war, into the smell of blood, Into the screams of horses and humans.
• 36:25
  You know?
• 36:25
  So they when they have a connection to Certain humans, they will go into war.
• 36:32
  And one of the things that I also illustrated in the power of the herd, for
• 36:37
  instance, is that George Washington Had this ability to pick exceptional horses
• 36:42
  who were exceptionally brave, so he didn't see them as bundles of instincts.
• 36:47
  He saw them as individuals, and he would choose horses to go into war who
• 36:51
  had a natural presence and bravery.
• 36:54
  And there's one description of A bunch of soldiers stuck on a bridge with
• 37:02
  the with the enemy coming toward them.
• 37:05
  And one of the guys describe who was one of the soldiers describes
• 37:09
  how they were, like, Really, really scared at that moment as you would be.
• 37:16
  And he actually looked up and saw that George Washington and his horse were
• 37:20
  right next to him And that the horse was just had this presence of being really
• 37:26
  centered in the midst of this threat, And that he actually leaned against the
• 37:31
  horse and borrowed the horse's courage.
• 37:34
  So We have to stop thinking of horses as bundles of instincts and
• 37:39
  realize there are individuals, yes, who are going to be shy and run off.
• 37:42
  There are individuals who don't want to accept a rider.
• 37:45
  We know that.
• 37:46
  There are individuals who love to be ridden.
• 37:48
  There are individuals who love to go out on trail rides.
• 37:53
  You know?
• 37:53
  There are there are individuals who will reach out to children Who were
• 37:59
  in states of distress that normally would cause a horse's nervous system
• 38:04
  to go into a flight or fight mode.
• 38:05
  That was so clear with Rowan and Betsy, The horse that reached out to him when
• 38:11
  he was in a state of real turmoil.
• 38:15
  With horses, they're they're highly empathic.
• 38:17
  So if if Somebody's in a state of turmoil at that level.
• 38:22
  A lot of horses would simply spook and run off, but some horses
• 38:25
  have the capacity to step in and help to coregulate that person.
• 38:30
  So these are natural healing horses.
• 38:33
  Not all horses are gonna be that way.
• 38:35
  So I think when we look at them as individuals, we get to see certain
• 38:38
  talents and orientations, and we don't know how conscious they are of this.
• 38:42
  But a lot I A lot of people act in different kinds of ways, brave or
• 38:46
  caring, who are not conscious of what they're doing at that moment.
• 38:49
  There's a kind of stream of Of an orientation or a talent that lures
• 38:54
  you into places where you gain more and more confidence, and you're not
• 38:58
  even conscious of how you got there.
• 39:01
  Yes.
• 39:02
  No.
• 39:02
  Rupert Isaacson: I I I I would agree.
• 39:03
  I think that, you know, there's this there's this cliche, Then
• 39:06
  like all cliches, of course, it's based in a truth, which is that,
• 39:09
  you know, the horse is your mirror.
• 39:11
  If you go Grumpy to the horse.
• 39:13
  You might get a bit of a grumpy response.
• 39:15
  If you're afraid, he might be afraid, and so on.
• 39:18
  But but, of course, I feel it goes beyond that.
• 39:23
  I and and this idea with the higher self and curiosity, I think What one
• 39:30
  sees often with horses is is that really defines this their species as
• 39:35
  herbivores, maybe even more than others when you observe them together It's
• 39:39
  it's it's playfulness this this seeking out of of play and entertainment.
• 39:45
  And when I'm Got my horse trainer hat on.
• 39:50
  What I'm often saying to people is don't be a horse trainer.
• 39:53
  Be a horse entertainer.
• 39:56
  Be interesting to the horse.
• 39:57
  Be be worth interacting with, you know, so that when the horse sees you
• 40:02
  coming, they think, oh, you know, This might be good crack, you know, today.
• 40:05
  What's he got you know, what's shaking?
• 40:07
  Rather than, oh, shit.
• 40:08
  Here comes that, you know, person that makes me Just endlessly do the
• 40:11
  same thing and is always a bit, you know, frustrated with me for not quite
• 40:17
  understanding what's in their brain.
• 40:20
  I wonder if it's this aspect, this playful aspect of the horse that has
• 40:28
  the potential to bring out, if you like, this higher self because in us.
• 40:32
  Because when horses are playful together, as we know, they're quite
• 40:35
  rough, and they're you know, When horses are really playing together,
• 40:38
  a weak little monkey like us is it's not great to be in the way of that.
• 40:42
  There's a reason why we call Rough play horseplay.
• 40:46
  Yet you can engage with them.
• 40:48
  And as you say, that that they will modify their behavior Like Betsy did
• 40:53
  with my son, for example you know, in in a way which I thought I knew horses
• 40:57
  quite well until I observed that.
• 40:59
  And then I realized, oh gosh.
• 41:00
  I Really don't know horses as well as I thought I did.
• 41:03
  In fact, I need to revise everything I know.
• 41:07
  This is really interesting.
• 41:08
  This is a good thing, Which brings me to my next question.
• 41:12
  And I think
• 41:13
  Linda Kohanov: also I mean, I just one little point here Yeah.
• 41:16
  Is that, you know, when they when They'll say they're not conscious
• 41:20
  or they don't have logical capacity or strategic thinking or whatever.
• 41:24
  I mean, I have several horses that know how to open gates.
• 41:28
  Yeah.
• 41:28
  So, I mean, I have to put one out there.
• 41:30
  They'll get out, and they'll let everybody else loose.
• 41:33
  And I never taught them how to open these gates.
• 41:36
  And I even have a horse that,
• 41:38
  Rupert Isaacson: You just provided them with rather rather interesting
• 41:40
  puzzles for them, which is very nice of
• 41:42
  Linda Kohanov: you.
• 41:43
  Right.
• 41:43
  Right.
• 41:44
  Well, I mean, I I I have some temporary corral panels that I set up, and I've, you
• 41:51
  know, sort of put a chain around the gate.
• 41:54
  And then I've had horses figure out how to loosen the pins, pull up
• 41:57
  and loosen the pins, and get out.
• 42:00
  You know?
• 42:00
  So You have to just you have to realize they're strategizing.
• 42:04
  They can totally run mazes on my property because I have all kinds of
• 42:10
  different sections of corrals that are if I open them up, they know
• 42:14
  how to get from one to the other.
• 42:16
  They know exactly what to do.
• 42:18
  So these are things they learned on their own.
• 42:20
  They figured it out for themselves.
• 42:21
  So there is logical strategic thinking in horses.
• 42:25
  We're It's just that when they're out in the, you know, like, zebras
• 42:30
  in the Kalahari or something like that, They they don't have a need for
• 42:36
  that kind of strategic intelligence.
• 42:37
  They're paying attention to other things.
• 42:41
  Is
• 42:42
  Rupert Isaacson: it this This is the question I'm I'm is it this playfulness
• 42:46
  and this curiosity bring that we something in us responds to that.
• 42:52
  Right?
• 42:53
  The what to us is play and curiosity, if not joy?
• 42:59
  Right?
• 43:00
  And so It seems to me is is it do you think that that's perhaps the difference
• 43:06
  between Symbolic relationship with horses and the other animals which we
• 43:15
  ride, like Reyders, donkeys, camels, elephants, water buffalo, and others.
• 43:22
  Do you think it's this aspect of playfulness And inquisitive curiosity.
• 43:29
  That brings up this Special sort of meta love that we seem to have
• 43:39
  for this animal across cultures.
• 43:41
  You know, one finds horse cultures in every continent except Antarctica.
• 43:47
  Is is that what it is?
• 43:49
  And is that why horses have this ability to sort of heal the human heart?
• 43:55
  What what what To bring us back to joy.
• 43:57
  What what what are your thoughts about that?
• 44:02
  Linda Kohanov: Horses experience a full range of emotions, And they
• 44:05
  move through them very quickly.
• 44:06
  They're very emotionally agile animals.
• 44:08
  So if they're angry at a stallion that's Coming in too close, you know,
• 44:14
  the mayor will sort of, you know, pin her ears and then crescendo if
• 44:18
  the stallion isn't paying attention.
• 44:20
  She'll then, You know, squeal and turn around and bite.
• 44:23
  And then if he doesn't back off, then she'll turn around and mule kick the guy.
• 44:26
  And then, you know, maybe ten minutes later, you see them hanging out
• 44:29
  together under their favorite Free.
• 44:31
  So that's emotional agility to move from anger, which is about setting
• 44:36
  boundaries, and then move to a sense of peacefulness and connection.
• 44:40
  And they experience they definitely experience sadness and grief.
• 44:45
  I've seen it a lot.
• 44:46
  A lot of people don't realize that, but I I have talked about
• 44:49
  it quite a bit in my books.
• 44:51
  They experience incredible joy and peacefulness and contentment, and
• 44:56
  yet they move through all of those emotions very efficiently and go
• 45:00
  back to grazing as I like to say.
• 45:02
  Whereas humans hang on to certain emotional states and retell the
• 45:06
  story over and over and over again.
• 45:08
  So this is one of the things that we learn from horses when we begin to
• 45:12
  see them as teachers is how to be more emotionally agile and how to Feel an
• 45:16
  emotion in its purest form and get the message behind it, change something
• 45:21
  in response to that message, and then let it go and go back to grazing.
• 45:25
  So there's an emotional intelligence in horses that we can learn from
• 45:30
  that we've lost sight of in our city based cultures, in our Focus
• 45:33
  on language and telling stories over and over and over again rather than
• 45:37
  being in the present in the present.
• 45:39
  It's not that we don't Want to tell stories or shouldn't
• 45:42
  tell stories, we should.
• 45:44
  But to fixate on them at the expense of being present in life is part of our Sort
• 45:50
  of human psychology that's gotten out of control over time with our focus on words.
• 45:56
  But Horses engage in incredible moments of joy and contentment and peacefulness.
• 46:04
  I talk about Standing among a group of horses huddled together
• 46:09
  on pasture about how I'm often privy to a secret bliss, Really?
• 46:16
  Rupert Isaacson: Privy to a secret place.
• 46:17
  They're dosing.
• 46:17
  Write that down.
• 46:19
  Please go ahead.
• 46:20
  Privy to a secret place.
• 46:22
  I love
• 46:22
  Linda Kohanov: that.
• 46:24
  I mean, sometimes they are dozing, but sometimes they're not.
• 46:27
  Yeah.
• 46:28
  They only seem to be dozing.
• 46:29
  They're actually engaged in this Collective, subsonic reverie so deep
• 46:35
  that I feel like it vibrates through the bones and And expands the heart,
• 46:40
  leaving the ears untouched so that you're you're when you're with horses
• 46:44
  and you really Slow down and stop being so fixated on your human agenda
• 46:51
  and just enter into their world.
• 46:53
  You begin to Expand into areas of peace and joy and connection that
• 46:58
  sometimes people have never experienced with a member of their own species.
• 47:03
  So it's it's very profound, and I think this is part of the reason why
• 47:06
  horses being with horses is so healing.
• 47:10
  Well
• 47:10
  Rupert Isaacson: put.
• 47:12
  It's interesting that almost all of the metaphors that we use around horses are
• 47:17
  always Superlatives or positive things.
• 47:20
  If you compare a situation or somebody or something to something equine,
• 47:25
  That person's a real stallion.
• 47:27
  That person's a real stud.
• 47:28
  That you know, that person has got a, you know, I suppose suppose you say kick like
• 47:33
  a mule, but it's really a type of horse.
• 47:35
  That person gosh.
• 47:38
  There are so many, I think, equine references in our culture.
• 47:44
  We know that Shakespeare was a great horseman and Falconer.
• 47:48
  And he he's peppered his plays with it all the, you know,
• 47:51
  hold your horses, hold hard.
• 47:53
  You know?
• 47:53
  But that, generally, You don't use a metaphor of a horse
• 47:59
  to say someone is rubbish.
• 48:01
  You you usually use a metaphor of a horse As a as a as an emotional
• 48:06
  strengthener that's positive.
• 48:07
  Right?
• 48:08
  One of the things which you pointed out about this emotional agility.
• 48:13
  I wrote that down too.
• 48:14
  I like that.
• 48:15
  Are you familiar with Gulliver's Travels, you know, the the the eighteenth century
• 48:19
  English novel that was made into a Disney made a famous film about you know, you've
• 48:24
  got Gulliver who's The Lilliputians, the little people, they tie him down.
• 48:28
  So that's that's one of the he goes to the island of Lilliput.
• 48:31
  He goes to the island of Brobdiagnag where he encounters giants.
• 48:34
  But he also goes This was not in the film.
• 48:36
  He goes to the island of the Hui Hinnoms.
• 48:39
  And the Hui Hinnoms are horses, but they're horses that speak English and
• 48:44
  live And a sort of a a a a a life that reflects eighteenth century England.
• 48:50
  And there's this he has Great admiration for them because they seem to have
• 48:55
  exactly, as you just pointed out, a sort of emotional agility and perspective
• 49:00
  where He's taking tea with a very elegant mare, a very elegant sorrel
• 49:05
  mare who's serving him tea in her house.
• 49:08
  And it comes up in the course of the conversation that her
• 49:11
  husband has recently died.
• 49:13
  And Gulliver's, oh, I'm terribly sorry to hear that, my lady,
• 49:17
  and, you know, my condolences.
• 49:19
  And and she says, oh, no.
• 49:20
  Why why would you say that?
• 49:21
  He he led a very, very good life.
• 49:23
  We had a An absolutely lovely time together.
• 49:25
  He's been dead about a day and a half, and I remember him
• 49:28
  well, and my present is good.
• 49:31
  Do horses bring us into the present moment?
• 49:36
  Linda Kohanov: They do.
• 49:37
  Absolutely.
• 49:38
  But I've also seen horses Engage in extensive grief so that I mean, we
• 49:46
  we would say that that's incredibly emotionally agile of this, You
• 49:49
  know, Lady Mare in that book.
• 49:51
  I need to go and read that because I've never I never knew that part of the book.
• 49:54
  I need to find that.
• 49:56
  So she's showing extreme emotional agility.
• 49:58
  Yes.
• 49:59
  He lived a good life, you know, all of that.
• 50:01
  And and it doesn't seem like she's grieving.
• 50:03
  But in reality, horses do grieve Because part of it is because our
• 50:08
  nervous systems sync up, and we know that from the polyvagal theory,
• 50:14
  For instance, of Steven Porges.
• 50:17
  We know that we are, as mammals, and that includes sources, designed to connect
• 50:22
  with each other, To experience safety through connection and that that it's
• 50:27
  really impossible or difficult for us to heal or, Even evolve as a lone wolf.
• 50:36
  I mean, even wolves don't really engage in lone wolf behavior.
• 50:40
  So mammals are are designed to socially engage and to use their nervous systems
• 50:45
  to coregulate each other so that one one is distressed, Others will reach
• 50:49
  out and calm that horse and vice versa.
• 50:52
  And a lot of people didn't understand that this is actually a Feature of
• 50:58
  the nervous system of mammals until recently when doctor Porges came out
• 51:02
  with his theory, and it explains a lot.
• 51:05
  So one of the things that happens with horses when they are allowed to form close
• 51:09
  lifelong partnerships is their nervous systems sync up and affect each other.
• 51:15
  And so when one of these horses dies, the other horse really
• 51:18
  feels like their nervous system is missing something huge if you just
• 51:22
  wanna put it in scientific terms.
• 51:24
  So I've had horses, and I don't I have several horses who I've raised.
• 51:29
  I've had multiple generations of a certain Herd of horses that they were
• 51:35
  never separated from their parents.
• 51:37
  They were weaned, and then they were put back in with their parents and brothers
• 51:40
  and sisters and cousins And uncles.
• 51:43
  And when one of those parents dies, the horse that's closest to that parent
• 51:49
  will actually Shut down and become incredibly depressed because there was I
• 51:54
  can see in certain instances where they were in such See, co regulating each
• 51:59
  other for years and years and years.
• 52:01
  But then when that physical presence is no longer there,
• 52:04
  there's something huge missing.
• 52:05
  There's like a part of them dies with the other being that dies.
• 52:09
  And that's the same for spouses or parents and human children.
• 52:13
  So
• 52:15
  Rupert Isaacson: Why is it though that why is it that horses bring
• 52:18
  us into the present moment?
• 52:19
  There's a really good quote from the Tower of Equus where you you talk about
• 52:22
  when you're when you mount a horse, you must Put the past where it belongs.
• 52:27
  You must be in the present, and you must have your mind on the
• 52:31
  immediate sort of optimistic future.
• 52:35
  Why is it that horses put us into the pre why do we need to be in
• 52:38
  the present moment with horses?
• 52:39
  And why is it that we do seem to go into that State of unawareness of
• 52:45
  anything else when we're with a horse.
• 52:47
  What what what what what's doing that in us?
• 52:53
  Linda Kohanov: Part of it is because they're so big.
• 52:57
  You have to pay attention.
• 52:58
  You have to be present if you're gonna be around them or you're
• 53:00
  getting knocked around and stepped on.
• 53:02
  And If if you're really present, and I know you know this, Rupert, because
• 53:06
  you are a fine rider, you can feel a worse I don't I don't know whether I
• 53:13
  should say thinking of spooking, or you can feel a horse's intention to
• 53:17
  spook in your body before they can get their thousand pound body to do that.
• 53:21
  And if so if you're really present, you can move with a sudden sideways
• 53:26
  leap because you're you're there's a part of you that's already sensed
• 53:29
  it's about to happen, And you can't do that if you're not fully present.
• 53:34
  You know?
• 53:34
  That's how you topple off and and get dragged or left in the dust.
• 53:38
  So I think When you're with horses and you're really doing serious things
• 53:43
  with them, like riding or training young horses or rehabilitating abused
• 53:48
  horses, The more present you are, the more you can actually feel what's
• 53:53
  about to happen and do something to shift it before it gets out of control.
• 53:59
  Yeah.
• 54:00
  That's the advantage of being present.
• 54:02
  Rupert Isaacson: Yeah.
• 54:02
  I could see yeah.
• 54:03
  I I I think that the presence of imminent danger It's exactly as
• 54:08
  you describe, which one is whether one's next to or on top of a horse.
• 54:12
  It's just there.
• 54:13
  As you said, it's a thousand pound animal that can respond
• 54:17
  Violently to small things.
• 54:20
  And when one's on it you know, one of the things I often think is so interesting
• 54:24
  about riding is How one has to go completely against nature and intuition.
• 54:28
  You know?
• 54:28
  The the horse was not designed really to carry monkeys yet.
• 54:32
  There we are sitting on one.
• 54:33
  And with our top heavy you know, heavy head and shoulders, we're not really
• 54:38
  designed to sit on a moving barrel yet.
• 54:40
  We sort of Evolved to be able to do that if we put enough work into it.
• 54:44
  And then we want to, as, you know, sight apes, Solve our problems
• 54:49
  with our eyes and our hands, which, of course, might work against us
• 54:53
  with horses if we grab on tight.
• 54:56
  And then, of course, we we want to go into a bit of a of a crouch if we
• 55:00
  feel afraid, which naturally we're going to on the back of a horse.
• 55:05
  But because if we do that, we're gonna tilt forward and go out
• 55:07
  the front door let alone transmit our fear to to the to the animal.
• 55:12
  Yet and and, of course, it doesn't really make an awful lot of sense
• 55:15
  for a horse to let us come near.
• 55:16
  You know?
• 55:17
  Every herb of all has to be, if you like, trained from the wild as a baby
• 55:22
  To accept the presence of humans.
• 55:24
  And yet, miraculously, if we put enough work into it together, it seems to happen.
• 55:33
  What I'm wondering is is thing.
• 55:36
  Go you go go ahead with this.
• 55:37
  Yeah.
• 55:37
  What what what do you think about
• 55:38
  Linda Kohanov: about that?
• 55:42
  Well, here's the thing.
• 55:43
  We have to stop thinking of ourselves as apes that just showed up out
• 55:48
  of the blue among herds of horses.
• 55:50
  This is not true.
• 55:51
  We're talking about at least I I think it's about six thousand years of evidence
• 55:56
  of actually riding horses, But longer evidence, as I say, with the cave
• 56:00
  paintings of people being inspired by them and intrigued by them and engaged.
• 56:04
  And through those interactions, we have evolved.
• 56:08
  So we're not purely Oh, I would agree with
• 56:10
  Rupert Isaacson: you there.
• 56:11
  But but nonetheless, one has the the horse, when it's a very young horse
• 56:15
  even ones that one has bred oneself, their first reaction to a human
• 56:19
  is, you know, and they might come across for a bit of a sniff, But they
• 56:26
  kinda wanna get behind their mom.
• 56:27
  You know?
• 56:28
  And even the mom who is used to us is like, okay.
• 56:32
  But this is my baby.
• 56:33
  You know?
• 56:33
  Be cool.
• 56:34
  And then, of course, when we climb up on horses, when we're learning to ride,
• 56:39
  we're entering a completely unknown Three-dimensional space where we have to
• 56:45
  basically create a body map with an animal that we may or may not really understand.
• 56:49
  He has to create a body map with And we have to sync our nervous
• 56:53
  systems up, and then we have to learn all this technical stuff.
• 56:55
  And it's jolly difficult, which is why relatively few people do it.
• 56:59
  Otherwise, everyone would be doing it.
• 57:00
  Right?
• 57:00
  But, nonetheless, it happens.
• 57:05
  I always feel that there's some aspect of the miraculous with that.
• 57:09
  I I agree with you that we've had thousands of years of interaction
• 57:12
  with these animals, But it it seems that every single time,
• 57:14
  we're still starting from scratch.
• 57:16
  I mean, every time I start with a new horse that comes to me for
• 57:19
  train, I'm starting from scratch.
• 57:21
  Every time I'm writing a new book, I'm starting from scratch just because
• 57:23
  I wrote a a book, you know, before.
• 57:26
  It doesn't mean that when I sit in front of that blank page I know that one.
• 57:29
  You know that one?
• 57:30
  Yeah.
• 57:30
  You know that And I'm sure a lot of
• 57:31
  Linda Kohanov: people god.
• 57:32
  Every time I think it's gonna be easy and it's absolutely not, it never gets
• 57:35
  Rupert Isaacson: easier.
• 57:36
  No.
• 57:36
  No.
• 57:36
  You you sort of kid yourself it's gonna be so that you begin,
• 57:39
  and then you're like, oh, shit.
• 57:40
  Why did I Why did I let myself in for this again?
• 57:43
  Absolutely.
• 57:45
  Oh, here we go.
• 57:46
  Another five years.
• 57:49
  But the the yeah.
• 57:51
  There's this miraculous thing where you, yeah, you look up and then
• 57:54
  then, boom, there's this book.
• 57:55
  And, Oh, I've just added another one by the in to the cohen
• 57:59
  of, you know, Uh, library.
• 58:04
  And then you have called immediate amnesia because you're beginning the new one.
• 58:09
  Writing Sometimes brings us into the present moment, but I don't think it
• 58:12
  brings you know, one sometimes has to find one's way into the present moment
• 58:17
  with the pursuit of the human arts because it's one is contending with
• 58:21
  one's own nervous system and brain only.
• 58:25
  I think there's this thing, do you not agree of contending I'm finding
• 58:28
  relationship with a whole other nervous system and brain that is not our own.
• 58:33
  It's not a dance partner that's human.
• 58:35
  It's not a lover that's human.
• 58:36
  It's not Someone that we can stop and say, hold on.
• 58:38
  Hold on.
• 58:39
  Can we just rewind there?
• 58:40
  What did you mean by that?
• 58:40
  Or could you touch me differently?
• 58:42
  Or you stepped on my toe or or whatever.
• 58:45
  We have to evolve this other language, don't we?
• 58:48
  Um, uh, what do you feel about the miraculous In the human horse
• 58:56
  relationship, which, for me, is that Immediate boom straight into the present
• 59:02
  moment whether you want to or not.
• 59:03
  You're just there.
• 59:04
  You don't even have to try.
• 59:05
  To me, that is miraculous.
• 59:07
  And it it seems that mythologically, You know, we we're always equate
• 59:12
  equating horses to the miraculous.
• 59:13
  You mentioned Pegasus in the Tao of Equus, you know, very eloquently.
• 59:19
  What is the winged horse if not an expression of miracle?
• 59:22
  You know?
• 59:23
  What is your feeling about the miraculous with horses and humans?
• 59:30
  Linda Kohanov: Horses have a connection with this world here and now where I
• 59:36
  also believe horses have a connection to a much wider view of consciousness,
• 59:41
  whether that's spirit, whether that's god whether it's the great
• 59:45
  mystery, whatever you wanna call it.
• 59:48
  And, you know, a lot of a lot of people Who do trans transpossession,
• 59:56
  let's say, in certain cultures.
• 59:58
  They call themselves horses when they do that.
• 1:00:02
  And the idea is that the spirit's coming in and actually riding you.
• 1:00:06
  Mhmm.
• 1:00:06
  And horses just seem to have a capacity for that with Human
• 1:00:10
  riders as well as actual spirit.
• 1:00:13
  So I've seen horses act in ways that are not related to how their
• 1:00:17
  personality is in normal life.
• 1:00:19
  And it seems like they're being they're being ridden or possessed for a moment,
• 1:00:24
  you might say, or opening themselves up to An influence of a larger spiritual nature.
• 1:00:29
  I've seen them take on the personality traits of people people who have
• 1:00:34
  passed In the presence of certain people who are grieving, let's say.
• 1:00:39
  Now that's miraculous for sure.
• 1:00:42
  And So I think this ability to to be very powerful and present, but also
• 1:00:49
  being This may be why horses are agreed to be ridden, actually, is that they are
• 1:00:54
  capable of also expanding Into allowing another form of intelligence to come
• 1:01:01
  in and actually run things for a while.
• 1:01:05
  So that by eventually having a human being able to ride, maybe that was
• 1:01:09
  just a small physical Manifestation in their minds of the idea of being
• 1:01:15
  ridden by larger spiritual forces.
• 1:01:18
  There's also a group intelligence with horses that I encountered in
• 1:01:22
  the Tao of Equis where I talk about accessing the horse ancestors.
• 1:01:28
  aNd, You know, there's just ways in which they are open to what's happening
• 1:01:34
  in the moment in this physical world, but they're also equally open, it seems,
• 1:01:39
  in the moment to spiritual forces.
• 1:01:41
  And it's hard to be around them For years and years and years
• 1:01:45
  where you see the miraculous things that they do with people at times.
• 1:01:49
  It's out of character For the individual horse at the time without
• 1:01:53
  actually realizing, oh my god.
• 1:01:54
  There's something else going on here.
• 1:01:56
  There are other forms of intelligence.
• 1:01:59
  There are there are things that we can allow in too.
• 1:02:01
  Because when you're writing a book, you're you're accessing
• 1:02:03
  another form of intelligence.
• 1:02:05
  It's it's, In this case, when you're writing, it's a it's it's a slightly
• 1:02:10
  dissociative Presence because actually, I had a person study this and talk
• 1:02:18
  about discordant dissociation where it's survival dissociation where you associate
• 1:02:23
  because you're going into flight or fight mode, and you're trying to just survive.
• 1:02:27
  Whereas there's also concordant dissociation, which is a form of
• 1:02:30
  dissociation that artists engage and writers so that you know, how you
• 1:02:36
  when you get into the State, you lose all contact with what's going on.
• 1:02:40
  And four or five hours later, you realize you're starving, and you didn't even
• 1:02:44
  realize it was five hours that went by.
• 1:02:46
  And during that time, you almost feel like you're downloading something.
• 1:02:49
  You know, sometimes you're staring at the blank page, and you're like, when when
• 1:02:53
  can I get this thing to to Take over here?
• 1:02:55
  Right?
• 1:02:56
  Yeah.
• 1:02:56
  And then when it takes over, it's there's also a feeling
• 1:02:59
  of ecstasy associated with it.
• 1:03:02
  And studies of of people who go into creative states, and they show that,
• 1:03:07
  yes, certain endorphins are released in states of creativity that reward
• 1:03:10
  you for going into those states.
• 1:03:13
  So there's an interesting interesting aspects of horses that let us in on
• 1:03:19
  certain Mysteries of the universe that we wouldn't be noticing otherwise.
• 1:03:23
  And like you were saying earlier, just to ride a horse, you have to do all kinds
• 1:03:28
  of things that are counter Dingshul.
• 1:03:31
  So that when a horse spooks, rather than roll over into a fetal
• 1:03:34
  position and grab on, because that causes the horse to go faster.
• 1:03:39
  You have to sit up, and you have to start breathing, and you have to
• 1:03:43
  sink into the saddle In order to have any hope of staying on the horse.
• 1:03:47
  So horses are teaching people, and people are teaching horses all the time to
• 1:03:51
  do things that are counterinstinctual So that we can begin to use our
• 1:03:55
  nervous systems for higher purposes.
• 1:03:59
  Rupert Isaacson: Beautifully put.
• 1:04:01
  To be able to do things that are counter instinctual, well, those are
• 1:04:06
  jolly useful skills if one's going to Be alive and thrive on planet
• 1:04:10
  Earth in whatever sphere, I guess.
• 1:04:12
  I feel that there's some aspect of dream In our relationship with horses.
• 1:04:19
  You know, as you say in the shamanic, for example, when I was
• 1:04:21
  in Mongolia with the shamans There.
• 1:04:23
  They talk as to the shamans in Tibet of the wind horse.
• 1:04:26
  You know, everybody has a wind horse, which is sort of your luck, your mojo,
• 1:04:30
  your but you can also ride the wind horse.
• 1:04:32
  It can be an Cool thing.
• 1:04:33
  To an altered state of consciousness if you're a trained shaman to
• 1:04:37
  get, Instructions from the spirit world or the ancestral world.
• 1:04:43
  The word in Mongolian for the wild horse, what we would call the Provalski sources,
• 1:04:47
  the takin, which means, Revered one.
• 1:04:50
  The venerable one.
• 1:04:52
  Honored one.
• 1:04:54
  This idea of of of this repository of power.
• 1:04:58
  And these are not the horses they ride.
• 1:04:59
  These are the horses that exist outside of of their domestication.
• 1:05:04
  We Have this idea of horses carrying us.
• 1:05:07
  You know, you've talked about this essentially between worlds
• 1:05:10
  as well as two new worlds.
• 1:05:12
  You know?
• 1:05:12
  We the conquistadors went on the back of the horse through the Yes.
• 1:05:16
  But the idea also of riding the wind horse, the dream horse.
• 1:05:20
  At some point, you were dreaming about horses.
• 1:05:23
  I realized that We're you know, about an hour in.
• 1:05:26
  I have been so into nerding out on all this that I've forgotten to ask
• 1:05:30
  you anything about How you got here?
• 1:05:32
  To live free and ride free.
• 1:05:33
  When was there a little girl version of yourself Dreaming about
• 1:05:39
  this relationship with horses.
• 1:05:41
  And how did you come to this point now where this is your
• 1:05:45
  life, this is your work?
• 1:05:46
  Talk us through the biography,
• 1:05:47
  Linda Kohanov: please.
• 1:05:51
  I was always enamored with horses, And I was one of these kids that
• 1:05:55
  would just beg for a horse every year, and my parents were afraid of them.
• 1:05:59
  We actually had enough land to have horses, but they were afraid of horses.
• 1:06:03
  And So they you know, I would have to sneak off, actually, because they
• 1:06:09
  wouldn't even let me take lessons.
• 1:06:10
  I would have to sneak off and go through the woods, and I found
• 1:06:13
  this old horse traders farm.
• 1:06:14
  And I could come up to the back of his property, and He would have this transient
• 1:06:20
  herd because he was a horse trainer.
• 1:06:22
  And some of them were ex race horses.
• 1:06:23
  Some of them were ex riding horses.
• 1:06:25
  Some of them were really old that you knew that this was their last stop
• 1:06:29
  on the way to the, you know, the the slaughterhouse or something like that.
• 1:06:33
  And some of them were very dangerous, and some of them were very calm and Suite.
• 1:06:38
  And I didn't have bridles or halters or a riding instructor.
• 1:06:43
  I would just go back there and spend hours and hours and hours.
• 1:06:46
  I even built a little fort right next to the the pasture where the horses were,
• 1:06:51
  and I would just sit out there for hours.
• 1:06:53
  And I would lure certain horses over to the fence if they were
• 1:06:57
  amenable, and I would get on them.
• 1:06:59
  And I would just kinda ride around bareback.
• 1:07:01
  And I, Of course, I had no real control.
• 1:07:03
  I was just a little kid, but the horse would let me on its back
• 1:07:06
  and carry me around, certain ones.
• 1:07:08
  And you could tell the difference between the ones who were and engaged and the
• 1:07:12
  ones who were frantic and dangerous.
• 1:07:15
  And so I would just learn over time how to assess.
• 1:07:20
  And if I hadn't have learned to assess, I probably would just
• 1:07:23
  be, you know, I would be dead.
• 1:07:26
  I would have died with one of these racehorses running over me or something.
• 1:07:30
  So, um, so that was a a way of developing this expanded
• 1:07:35
  nonverbal awareness of horses.
• 1:07:38
  And then I would hire myself out at the fair to people just to groom horses.
• 1:07:42
  And so and it was, I mean, it was such an extreme interest, but at the same
• 1:07:48
  time, I was I was also a musician.
• 1:07:52
  aNd What sorts of music?
• 1:07:55
  The the viola.
• 1:07:56
  You play the violin?
• 1:07:57
  The violin, viola.
• 1:07:58
  I I play the viola.
• 1:07:59
  I I was actually a music major.
• 1:08:01
  I got a full Scholarship to be a viola major in college.
• 1:08:04
  And so I played in a lot of symphonies and chamber music groups.
• 1:08:07
  But as you're growing up and you're learning to play an instrument like this
• 1:08:11
  And you're playing in lots of chamber groups since I was ten years old.
• 1:08:15
  And then in in high school, we had orchestra Five days a week, and I
• 1:08:19
  was in chamber music groups as well.
• 1:08:21
  So I'm spending hours and hours in in this place with the horses that I was
• 1:08:25
  sneaking off to see and with the music in this Place of nonverbal awareness expanded
• 1:08:30
  nonverbal awareness and engagement with others in a nonverbal setting.
• 1:08:36
  anD you have to be really present also as a musician.
• 1:08:41
  You learn how to To actually be in symphonies where you're
• 1:08:44
  portraying strong emotions at times.
• 1:08:47
  And, you know, when you have a brass section behind you And you're they're
• 1:08:51
  projecting out to a full audience.
• 1:08:55
  That is moving that that sound of those brass instruments behind you is Actually,
• 1:09:00
  rattling your entire nervous system.
• 1:09:02
  And in the middle of that, you have to stay present with what you're supposed to
• 1:09:05
  play, But you have to be emotive enough.
• 1:09:08
  So if you're, like, riding the wings of the angels into ecstasy and you're not
• 1:09:12
  present with what's happening at the same time, you know, the both Lies out
• 1:09:16
  of your hand, and it hits the conductor.
• 1:09:17
  And he falls off, and the whole thing comes to a crashing halt.
• 1:09:20
  So with music also, you learn how to be present in the midst of wild,
• 1:09:25
  Strong nervous system invigorating things that are happening.
• 1:09:30
  So I think those two things together.
• 1:09:32
  And then when I started to to write, I was also a music journalist.
• 1:09:36
  So I was learning how to I was learning how to write about things
• 1:09:39
  that were hard to put into words.
• 1:09:41
  So by the time I was got my first horse when I was in Tucson working as a
• 1:09:48
  classical radio announcer and a jazz radio announcer sir, and a music journalist.
• 1:09:54
  I I I noticed how easy it was For people in Tucson to have horses.
• 1:09:59
  You don't have to have barns.
• 1:10:00
  You don't have to worry about ice and snow and mud here.
• 1:10:04
  You can just have a nice Shade cover for the horses in your backyard
• 1:10:07
  and have a couple of horses.
• 1:10:09
  It's not a big deal.
• 1:10:10
  So I and finally in my thirties, I said, you know what?
• 1:10:13
  I'm getting a horse.
• 1:10:14
  Because, actually, I wanted to get a horse to get as far away from
• 1:10:18
  people on a regular basis because people were driving me insane.
• 1:10:23
  Because I had You know, most people suppress emotion.
• 1:10:27
  The average person's taught to suppress emotion and wear a mask
• 1:10:30
  of whatever's socially acceptable.
• 1:10:32
  Musicians are taught to express emotion, and they're rewarded
• 1:10:37
  handsomely for it in some cases.
• 1:10:40
  But both of these Suppression and expression exploits are two sides
• 1:10:46
  of the same dysfunctional coin.
• 1:10:48
  And so when I got my first horse, I was just Like, these
• 1:10:51
  musicians are driving me crazy.
• 1:10:53
  These regular people are driving me crazy.
• 1:10:55
  I just have to get out of here.
• 1:10:56
  And you know what?
• 1:10:57
  I have enough money finally.
• 1:10:58
  I'm getting a horse.
• 1:11:00
  And so I got my first horse to get away from people, but what I noticed
• 1:11:05
  was that the horse Was showing me a different form of emotional intelligence.
• 1:11:11
  So people who express emotion never get The message behind it and change something
• 1:11:17
  response and go back to grace, and they just express and express and express.
• 1:11:20
  And people who suppress emotion Never get past that first step either.
• 1:11:25
  You know?
• 1:11:25
  So when I noticed horses having this four point method of emotional
• 1:11:30
  agility it was like they brought me back into the capacity to engage
• 1:11:34
  with people in a more productive way.
• 1:11:36
  So the four step method was I could see it.
• 1:11:38
  It took me about five years to put this into words, but horses feel
• 1:11:42
  the emotion in its purest form.
• 1:11:45
  Then they get the message behind the emotion.
• 1:11:47
  Then something in response to the message, and then they let it
• 1:11:51
  go, and they go back to grazing.
• 1:11:53
  Whereas most people don't get past step one.
• 1:11:56
  Expressors Feel the emotion, but they never get the message and
• 1:12:00
  change something in response.
• 1:12:01
  There's all kinds of musicians we see who get rewarded For engaging in ill
• 1:12:06
  fated relationships so they can write the next hit song about, you know, she
• 1:12:10
  done me wrong or something like that.
• 1:12:12
  Or in rap music, They'll put themselves especially in the early rap music, they
• 1:12:18
  would put themselves into situations that would drum up large amounts of rage.
• 1:12:22
  And And so then they wouldn't really get the message behind that either.
• 1:12:26
  They're just rage, rage, rage, or sadness, sadness, or crying
• 1:12:29
  in your beer country music.
• 1:12:31
  And Putting Putting a tear in your
• 1:12:33
  Rupert Isaacson: beer.
• 1:12:33
  To live a life.
• 1:12:35
  Yeah.
• 1:12:36
  Pardon?
• 1:12:36
  Putting a tear in your beer.
• 1:12:38
  Yeah.
• 1:12:39
  Linda Kohanov: Right.
• 1:12:39
  Exactly.
• 1:12:40
  Yes.
• 1:12:40
  Putting a tear in your beer.
• 1:12:42
  So, um, so when I was with horses, I'm like, oh, they have the answer.
• 1:12:47
  You know?
• 1:12:47
  The suppressors don't even get to step one.
• 1:12:49
  They do everything they can To not feel an emotion.
• 1:12:52
  The expressors feel an emotion, but they never get to the other steps.
• 1:12:56
  And then I noticed horses were doing this very intelligent
• 1:12:59
  thing, And it changed my life.
• 1:13:01
  Rupert Isaacson: So talk talk us through it step by step.
• 1:13:05
  Exactly.
• 1:13:06
  Step one, step two, step three, step four, and at what point you
• 1:13:09
  You really first observed this.
• 1:13:14
  Linda Kohanov: One of the things I first observed, and this seemed magical,
• 1:13:17
  it seemed miraculous, Was that when I would go out to the barn, people
• 1:13:23
  would say they were fine, You know?
• 1:13:26
  Or or act like everything was okay or act really macho about something or another.
• 1:13:31
  But I could actually Tell what emotional state they were in by
• 1:13:34
  the way their horse was acting.
• 1:13:36
  It didn't didn't take me very long to start noticing that pattern.
• 1:13:39
  So, You know, horses will act, consent, and then act out sometimes
• 1:13:45
  the exact emotions somebody's hiding.
• 1:13:47
  So
• 1:13:48
  Rupert Isaacson: you were keeping your horse, Your first horse at a barn where
• 1:13:51
  other people were keeping their horses, and you got to observe this interaction.
• 1:13:56
  Linda Kohanov: Yes.
• 1:13:56
  And for a while, I was like, wow.
• 1:13:58
  That is fascinating.
• 1:13:59
  How is that even possible?
• 1:14:00
  And, I mean, now there are ways that I can explain it and which That's
• 1:14:03
  why I've written a number of books, and I do explain it more in my video
• 1:14:07
  courses where I really go through what it what is, How are horses doing
• 1:14:12
  this, and what are they teaching us?
• 1:14:13
  And how are humans doing it too?
• 1:14:15
  We're just not conscious of it.
• 1:14:17
  Is that emotions are contagious, basically.
• 1:14:20
  And when you suppress an emotion, actually, it causes your blood
• 1:14:24
  pressure to rise, and it causes the blood pressure of everyone
• 1:14:27
  interacting with you to rise also.
• 1:14:29
  That's a study in social intelligence by Daniel Goleman.
• 1:14:32
  And so horses just as empaths And being more fully present than we
• 1:14:39
  are, have the capacity to sense the emotion underneath the mask or facade.
• 1:14:44
  And they will Act it out or just walk away from it.
• 1:14:48
  And when a person becomes congruent, when the person actually acknowledges the
• 1:14:52
  hidden emotion, The horse will often come back over and engage even if you haven't
• 1:14:57
  done anything to solve the emotion.
• 1:15:00
  Because, Like, one of one of the most powerful things I ever saw was a woman
• 1:15:07
  who had been raped who was coming out to do some work to be feel more
• 1:15:11
  empowered and step back into life.
• 1:15:13
  And she went in with this horse named Sam, and she, She started crying,
• 1:15:20
  and the horse just went and flipped his mane and walked away from her.
• 1:15:26
  And she was like you could imagine what she felt.
• 1:15:29
  You know?
• 1:15:30
  She's being rejected by the horse now.
• 1:15:32
  And she's like, well, everybody's just telling me I should just get over
• 1:15:35
  this and everybody's, you know, um, they're just tired of all of my tears.
• 1:15:40
  And and I said, no.
• 1:15:41
  No.
• 1:15:41
  I don't think that's what's going on.
• 1:15:42
  I think There's an emotion underneath the tears that you're not acknowledging
• 1:15:45
  or because this horse act what do you think that horse was was conveying?
• 1:15:51
  What emotion do you think that horse was conveying as he, like, tossed his
• 1:15:55
  head and sputtered sort of marched off?
• 1:15:58
  And she goes, well, you look kind of angry.
• 1:16:01
  I said, yeah.
• 1:16:02
  And I said, so is there any anger underneath the tears?
• 1:16:08
  And she realized that, yes.
• 1:16:10
  I mean, anger really is an emotion that's about that rises when somebody's
• 1:16:14
  overstepped a boundary with you.
• 1:16:16
  And it's the emotion.
• 1:16:18
  The intensity of anger is is supposed to let you set a
• 1:16:21
  boundary if you use it properly.
• 1:16:23
  And so that's One of the ultimate boundary violations is to be raped.
• 1:16:28
  So, yeah, she had sadness, and her life had been turned upside down.
• 1:16:32
  But underneath was this Absolute outrage at her entire life
• 1:16:37
  being turned upside down.
• 1:16:39
  So she started to access this anger, and she started pounding on the fence
• 1:16:42
  post and talking about this, You know?
• 1:16:45
  I'm really starting to to show the true body language associated with anger.
• 1:16:51
  And that horse turned around and came back over And wrapped his head around
• 1:16:55
  her as she pounded on the fence post.
• 1:16:58
  So it was like the horse Didn't was less upset about whatever she was feeling than
• 1:17:06
  the horse was more aggravated by the fact that she was hiding a strong emotion.
• 1:17:11
  And once she accessed the strong emotion, as long as she wasn't directing
• 1:17:14
  it at the horse, the horse was like, I can be here with you in that.
• 1:17:19
  You know?
• 1:17:19
  And so when people are crying sincere tears of sadness or grief, horses
• 1:17:25
  will often come over and comfort them.
• 1:17:27
  But also, if there's sincere anger that's legitimate that's being accessed,
• 1:17:31
  I've seen horses walk over and be present with a person during that too.
• 1:17:35
  So, You know, when we're when we're afraid or we're feeling vulnerable, the
• 1:17:41
  worst as long as you acknowledge that, One of these more therapeutic oriented,
• 1:17:46
  healing oriented horses will come back over and actually do what Steven
• 1:17:51
  Porches would call coregulating you.
• 1:17:54
  The horse will reach out and be present with you and connect with you in
• 1:17:58
  the midst of this authentic emotion.
• 1:18:01
  So there's so many brilliant things that horses do emotionally.
• 1:18:05
  And, you know, that four point method and then You know, I I did some research
• 1:18:10
  into various emotional intelligence authors and found some useful definitions
• 1:18:16
  of the various emotions that I put into an emotional message chart.
• 1:18:20
  And so I teach that as well.
• 1:18:22
  And the horses generally respond to those emotional definitions So that, you
• 1:18:27
  know, negative emotions aren't mistakes.
• 1:18:31
  They're not designed to torture us.
• 1:18:32
  They are course correcting emotions, And they're uncomfortable because
• 1:18:35
  they're asking us to change something.
• 1:18:37
  If we were comfortable, we wouldn't bother to change something.
• 1:18:40
  So when horses teach us how to use emotions as Course correcting
• 1:18:43
  signals, and then we learn how to move through them and then go back
• 1:18:47
  to grazing, your whole life changes.
• 1:18:50
  It Truly changed my life.
• 1:18:52
  Just that one piece, let alone all the other wild things I've
• 1:18:55
  learned over time with them.
• 1:18:57
  Rupert Isaacson: Let's go back to these four points.
• 1:19:00
  Can you what what are the four points of that constellation, and can you
• 1:19:04
  walk us through how they progress?
• 1:19:07
  Linda Kohanov: Sure.
• 1:19:08
  So the first step is you feel the emotion in its purest form.
• 1:19:12
  Rather than suppressing it, you actually notice that it's there.
• 1:19:16
  Yeah.
• 1:19:17
  The next thing you do is you get the message behind the emotion,
• 1:19:22
  then you change something in response to the emotion.
• 1:19:25
  You take its advice on some level, and then you let it go
• 1:19:27
  and you go back to grazing.
• 1:19:28
  So in the case of fear, a horse would say, I feel fear.
• 1:19:34
  And horses can transmit fear at a distance to each other.
• 1:19:37
  I've been in that position where I've felt it.
• 1:19:39
  Yeah.
• 1:19:40
  So I you know, horse says, okay.
• 1:19:42
  I'm feeling fear.
• 1:19:43
  And then what is the message behind fear?
• 1:19:45
  Well, there's a threat in the environment.
• 1:19:47
  So you go, what's the threat?
• 1:19:48
  What do I do to move to safety?
• 1:19:50
  And then so you get the message.
• 1:19:52
  What is the threat?
• 1:19:53
  And then you move to safety is the third step.
• 1:19:57
  So the first step is feel the emotion.
• 1:19:59
  The second step is Get the message behind the emotion.
• 1:20:02
  The third step is change something in response to the emotion.
• 1:20:05
  So, yeah, I see there's a lion walking up.
• 1:20:08
  I get the message, yes.
• 1:20:09
  This lion is on the prowl.
• 1:20:11
  Now I'm gonna run.
• 1:20:13
  And then when I get to a position of safety, I'm gonna let it go,
• 1:20:15
  and I'm gonna go back to Grace.
• 1:20:17
  Horses, as far as I can tell, don't stay up all night
• 1:20:20
  debating why God invented lions.
• 1:20:23
  They just like, oh, The lion's on the prowl.
• 1:20:25
  He's a threat.
• 1:20:27
  Let's run.
• 1:20:27
  They get far enough away, and they get their sentinels up Who are
• 1:20:31
  ready to, you know, protect against the lion, and then they just all
• 1:20:35
  lean down and start grazing again.
• 1:20:36
  It's brilliant.
• 1:20:37
  Yeah.
• 1:20:38
  It
• 1:20:38
  Rupert Isaacson: is.
• 1:20:38
  I've I've I've observed the same behavior in, Hunted deer getting away from
• 1:20:44
  wolves or or or other other predators predator prey things where, Let's
• 1:20:48
  say an animal was pursued quite hard, sometimes was even grabbed but got away.
• 1:20:56
  Sometimes what one will see is a sort of shuddering off of the or the
• 1:21:01
  cortisol, all of the stress hormone.
• 1:21:04
  But then as you say, they don't then go for ten years of therapy.
• 1:21:07
  They return to their previous behavior Pretty quickly.
• 1:21:11
  Right.
• 1:21:11
  So it it it is is the great lesson that we're learning
• 1:21:15
  from horses here resilience?
• 1:21:18
  Linda Kohanov: Yes.
• 1:21:19
  Absolutely.
• 1:21:20
  Resilience.
• 1:21:21
  And they are they are they can also be in states Put in states of learned
• 1:21:26
  helplessness or appeasement or, you know, certain kinds of post traumatic
• 1:21:32
  Stress reactions you'll see in horses.
• 1:21:34
  Right.
• 1:21:35
  But when there's when there's there's a shift in the environment
• 1:21:39
  and a real connection with somebody who truly understands dance, how
• 1:21:42
  to help them move through this.
• 1:21:44
  They generally move through these things much quicker than the average human does.
• 1:21:48
  Yeah.
• 1:21:49
  So they are more
• 1:21:50
  Rupert Isaacson: result.
• 1:21:50
  I would agree.
• 1:21:51
  And and, interestingly, having spent so much time with hunting
• 1:21:58
  and gathering people, I have seen them undergo great trauma.
• 1:22:04
  You can imagine some of the unpleasant things that happen To people in those
• 1:22:08
  situations when other people are trying to come in and get their land and so on.
• 1:22:12
  And what I've observed every time is is is an extraordinary resilience where
• 1:22:16
  they don't lose their quality of life.
• 1:22:18
  They don't use their lose their playfulness.
• 1:22:20
  They don't lose their ability to be happy.
• 1:22:24
  anD you said, well, why not?
• 1:22:24
  You know, this this terrible thing happened to you again.
• 1:22:27
  It's not the first time.
• 1:22:28
  And they're like, well, yes.
• 1:22:30
  But we grew up, you know, dodging elephants and lions, and we do
• 1:22:35
  accept that, yeah, If it reaches a certain point, it becomes
• 1:22:39
  untenable, and we will shut down.
• 1:22:41
  But until that point arrives we will Be resilient.
• 1:22:46
  And I learned much from them because they had at their core of their culture,
• 1:22:50
  if they're lucky, you know, a shaman, A healer who's trained to go into an
• 1:22:55
  altered state of consciousness and, you know, help with this process.
• 1:23:00
  I wonder if in Our society where, of course, you know, we went
• 1:23:04
  through the witch burning centuries.
• 1:23:06
  We sort of put to death anybody who male or female who knew anything about herbs,
• 1:23:11
  let alone could access the spirit world.
• 1:23:16
  And so we broke that tradition.
• 1:23:18
  But having been around, say, not just the Kalahari sun bushmen, but also, you know,
• 1:23:23
  for example, You know, horse and reindeer, shamans in Mongolia, they have this, and
• 1:23:31
  they're using the power of the horse.
• 1:23:33
  Do we have with horses a shaman in our midst?
• 1:23:36
  Do we have a healer in our midst when we're lucky enough to be Part
• 1:23:43
  of a horse culture, even if it's, you know, a sport horse culture in a barn.
• 1:23:47
  And then here's a question.
• 1:23:49
  If we do have this shaman in our midst, if the horses Heal us in this
• 1:23:54
  way, showing us this resilience, walking us between these walls.
• 1:23:59
  How do we not be parasitic on them?
• 1:24:02
  How do we make sure it's symbiotic with all our intense monkey stuff
• 1:24:07
  that we tend to bring to things?
• 1:24:11
  Linda Kohanov: Well, I think you know, horses lure you back Into a deeper
• 1:24:17
  connection with nature and being present.
• 1:24:20
  They're they're transforming us Just from that action alone and causing us
• 1:24:27
  if we if we will sit in the presence of horses and allow them to influence
• 1:24:31
  us, We begin to feel and hear and see things that we're disconnected from,
• 1:24:36
  and so we feel connected to a much larger Vision of the universe that's
• 1:24:41
  fully aware and conscious and, in some sense, benevolent in so many ways.
• 1:24:46
  And We begin to notice things.
• 1:24:48
  And, you know, you just reminded me, and I I was looking this up as you were talking
• 1:24:52
  about You know, because I'm a I was a music major, and I I also bring music
• 1:24:59
  into a lot of the workshops too because it's a form of nonverbal communication.
• 1:25:02
  It opens creativity and Mind body awareness.
• 1:25:05
  But there's all kinds of musical mysticism associated with the fact that
• 1:25:11
  the ancient Greeks were more obsessed With what they called the music of the
• 1:25:15
  spheres, the music of the stars and the planets that's actually you can't really
• 1:25:20
  hear it or Feel it unless you really slow down and become really present.
• 1:25:25
  And they were they were really obsessed with this more than actual music that we
• 1:25:29
  make out of instruments Or with our voice.
• 1:25:32
  And I just saw in this Facebook post recently A reference to the lost
• 1:25:38
  world of the Kalahari, and Lawrence Vander Post was was living amid
• 1:25:44
  the bushmen in the Kalahari Desert.
• 1:25:46
  And He describes how shocked they were that he couldn't hear the stars.
• 1:25:52
  They actually felt really bad for him, like he had some major disability.
• 1:25:56
  And so, I mean, horses lead us back into that deep connection with nature
• 1:26:03
  Where we can begin to feel things we've never noticed before, and then
• 1:26:07
  maybe maybe eventually going into these deeper states where you can actually
• 1:26:11
  hear the music of the stars in the planets and and the first om that
• 1:26:16
  sort of sang the universe into being.
• 1:26:18
  So there's one of these mystical connections the horses are making
• 1:26:21
  for us At any time that we're willing to sit quietly with them.
• 1:26:27
  You know?
• 1:26:28
  We can do things with them, but I think sitting quietly with them is an
• 1:26:31
  important part of Accepting the healing potential they have for us and the
• 1:26:35
  wholeness that they're offering us.
• 1:26:38
  But also I had and I talk about this in my second book, Riding Between the
• 1:26:42
  Worlds, and in my book, Way of the Horse, which is a set of horse wisdom cards.
• 1:26:47
  My one horse, Rasa, who was really my my shamanic horse who led me Into
• 1:26:53
  multiple states of consciousness.
• 1:26:56
  She had twins.
• 1:26:57
  She had twin foals, and we we tried to prevent this.
• 1:27:00
  You're you try to prevent Horses having twins.
• 1:27:03
  But somehow, the whole thing slipped through the cracks, and she ended
• 1:27:07
  up having twins born prematurely.
• 1:27:10
  And one of them was stillborn, And the other one was born so premature
• 1:27:14
  that we had to he needed twenty four hour care for ten weeks.
• 1:27:18
  We had to, like, put him in a sling so So that he wouldn't damage
• 1:27:22
  his legs because he shouldn't have been out of the womb yet.
• 1:27:24
  We had to have him lean up against our body, or he would have seizures because
• 1:27:28
  he wasn't supposed To be out of the womb regulating his own nervous system yet.
• 1:27:33
  We had to milk Rasa and feed this bull who we named Spirit.
• 1:27:38
  And so while I was spending lots of time with this bull I would I would
• 1:27:42
  pretty much spend the night with them, and I would Have this full up against
• 1:27:46
  my body so that my nervous system would would stabilize his, and then
• 1:27:50
  Rasa would literally stand over me in the Oh, and and I would fall asleep.
• 1:27:55
  And then then when I would wake up I would wake up, she would be, you
• 1:27:59
  know, sort of hitting me with her hoof like a mare Sorta hits their full to
• 1:28:04
  get that full to stand up and nurse.
• 1:28:06
  Well, she figured out that it was me who was gonna do it, So then I
• 1:28:09
  would have to get up and milk her and then feed this horse and spirit.
• 1:28:13
  And I started to reflect on the symbology of twins.
• 1:28:19
  And I looked up because I'm you know, us writers, we're
• 1:28:23
  always doing stuff like that.
• 1:28:24
  Right?
• 1:28:24
  So you have a thought, then you have to go research it because
• 1:28:27
  it feels like it's It would be an interesting way to to handle something.
• 1:28:30
  And what I found was twins, particularly male twins, are associated
• 1:28:35
  with horses In multiple cultures.
• 1:28:38
  I mean, it's insane.
• 1:28:40
  Mhmm.
• 1:28:40
  And one of the one of the aspects of twin mythology associated Deed with horses,
• 1:28:47
  is that one one twin dies and connects the living twin to the other world.
• 1:28:52
  And so that it really is It it really is about having the ability to
• 1:28:59
  access twin forms of consciousness.
• 1:29:02
  And, So now when I teach people to go into what we might call
• 1:29:07
  shamanic states, we don't associate it with a particular religion.
• 1:29:11
  I use this horse mythology to talk about accessing the twin forms of
• 1:29:15
  consciousness, the logical earthly twin with a set location in time and space
• 1:29:20
  And that otherworldly twin that can move through walls and move back and forth
• 1:29:24
  through time and space and change form.
• 1:29:26
  And, like, One of the one of the first journeys we do in workshops
• 1:29:31
  where we exercise this ability is we have the person become the horse.
• 1:29:35
  We have their Then connect with this twin form of consciousness and with drumming
• 1:29:40
  and some evocative music, actually have that twin Human form morphed into a horse,
• 1:29:45
  and then you have an adventure as a horse.
• 1:29:48
  And there's a lot of Shamanic traditions in horse based cultures where the shaman
• 1:29:53
  becomes a horse during the trans states.
• 1:29:56
  So, I you know, I've even read where some of the shamans have, like, you know, sort
• 1:30:02
  of rings in their shamanic robe where Somebody holds a pair of reins as they
• 1:30:06
  go into this shamanic state and expand outward into that place where they might
• 1:30:12
  also be ridden by form of spiritual, you know, spiritual presence of some kind.
• 1:30:18
  So, what I think the horses are doing is offering at Every moment
• 1:30:22
  for anybody to learn how to exercise this twin form of consciousness
• 1:30:28
  to go into these shamanic states.
• 1:30:30
  They're not They're not just saying I'm gonna do this for you.
• 1:30:33
  They're saying, let's do this.
• 1:30:35
  Let me show you what you can do.
• 1:30:37
  Let me show you where you can go.
• 1:30:39
  Let me show you how to access this information you're in yourself.
• 1:30:43
  So I think when we when we have the horse not just take the journey for
• 1:30:48
  us, but Teach us how to journey in this way ourselves, then everyone has
• 1:30:53
  the potential to Engage what we would call a shamanic form of consciousness
• 1:30:59
  for all kinds of reasons without necessarily feeling like you you're
• 1:31:03
  gonna over identify as a shaman.
• 1:31:05
  But it just seems like the horses are saying this is a birthright of everybody.
• 1:31:09
  Rupert Isaacson: Yeah.
• 1:31:09
  I So What the Bushmen would better than you What the Bushmen have always
• 1:31:13
  said to me is, well, Rue about fifty percent of people or more can heal I.
• 1:31:18
  E.
• 1:31:18
  Access that shamanic state for healing or for hunting and magic or for
• 1:31:23
  Other things that you might need to use it for, plant magic and so on.
• 1:31:26
  However, only a a small minority of people feel a kind of vocational calling
• 1:31:32
  Towards that, and therefore, we'll go on and go through the, you know, many
• 1:31:36
  decades of rigorous training that are required in actually doing it, know,
• 1:31:40
  becoming the shaman for the community.
• 1:31:41
  But I think you're right.
• 1:31:42
  And and something which is interesting from what you say there is you know,
• 1:31:46
  if someone's listening to this I'm thinking, well, I'm not a horse person.
• 1:31:50
  And I think the point that you're making is, yeah, but you don't need to be.
• 1:31:54
  yOu don't need to be a dog person to, Get a benefit from being around dogs.
• 1:32:00
  You do not need to be a musician to access an altered state
• 1:32:04
  of consciousness with music.
• 1:32:05
  Any of us would know that.
• 1:32:06
  You do not need to be a horse person to be able to access this through horses.
• 1:32:11
  However, what one does need because horses are so big and
• 1:32:15
  sometimes, you know, unpredictable, is that one does need a guide.
• 1:32:19
  One does need a a a guardian, a safe keeper To help one interact
• 1:32:25
  with a horse if one doesn't have, quote, unquote, horse knowledge.
• 1:32:28
  Sure.
• 1:32:29
  Another another Of those metaphors in our culture.
• 1:32:32
  Horse sense.
• 1:32:32
  If someone has good horse sense, meaning an ability to to navigate through life
• 1:32:36
  that we we we call it that, don't we?
• 1:32:38
  Horse sense.
• 1:32:39
  And I I I think that there's a real benefit for that.
• 1:32:45
  If you're listening And you've come this far.
• 1:32:48
  You're not a horse person.
• 1:32:49
  You think, well, I wasn't gonna listen to this one, but, well, I've kind of
• 1:32:52
  well, this is all kind of interesting.
• 1:32:53
  Don't think that you need to necessarily be part of the subculture of people that
• 1:32:57
  actually ride horses in order to do this.
• 1:32:59
  But what you do need to do is is reach out to somebody like Linda who knows how
• 1:33:03
  to intercede Between you and the horse.
• 1:33:06
  So that, obviously, you're kept physically safe, but you can then access this.
• 1:33:13
  The word that comes up from his paradoxical.
• 1:33:15
  We talked about miraculous, but also the fact that you have to go against
• 1:33:19
  your own instincts and the horse has to somehow I'll go against their instincts.
• 1:33:22
  And then there's this paradoxical miracle that happens where we can
• 1:33:26
  meet in the middle and actually do things together as awesome human.
• 1:33:31
  In your in the Dalvik quiz, you talk about Pegasus, which is the sort of
• 1:33:36
  ultimate miracle horse, the winged horse, Which is if if that's not a
• 1:33:40
  metaphor for the ultimate of what is possible, you know, what isn't.
• 1:33:45
  You know, Pegasus kinda gets everything right, Even when Zeus
• 1:33:50
  sends the GAD flight to sting him and he dumps Bellerophon who's riding
• 1:33:54
  him, he it's it's it's Perseus Goes to the gods and gets a nice home.
• 1:33:58
  It's Bellerophon who falls into the ocean.
• 1:34:00
  But you talk about Pegasus being born from Medusa's head, which is something
• 1:34:08
  I've noticed before in mythology.
• 1:34:10
  Again, a rather paradoxical thing that Medusa, who is a Gorgon, who is
• 1:34:16
  regarded as the or presented as the sort of destructive element of the
• 1:34:21
  feminine, gives birth upon her death from the hero Perseus, if I'm remembering
• 1:34:29
  it correct, to The miracle horse.
• 1:34:35
  Paradoxically, she gives birth to this miracle male horse.
• 1:34:40
  Pegasus, what's going on in that motif, do you think?
• 1:34:44
  What?
• 1:34:44
  Linda Kohanov: Well, there's a lot of stuff going on there because, also,
• 1:34:49
  The reason the reason she was sort of, quote, unquote, pregnant to begin with
• 1:34:54
  is She was a really beautiful woman.
• 1:34:56
  And Poseidon, who who in Greek mythology created the horse, he he created the
• 1:35:01
  horse to impress another goddess, Demeter, but that's a whole other story.
• 1:35:05
  So Poseidon seduces Medusa And when she's beautiful and then Medusa,
• 1:35:11
  at a certain point, tells everybody that she declares that she's the most
• 1:35:15
  beautiful woman even among goddesses.
• 1:35:16
  And then I think it's Venus that gets pissed off and turns her into the Gorgon.
• 1:35:20
  So that's part of what happened there.
• 1:35:22
  Yeah.
• 1:35:22
  The unfair basically.
• 1:35:24
  Yeah.
• 1:35:25
  Right.
• 1:35:26
  Right.
• 1:35:26
  And so, so what you have is a manifestation of of feminine wisdom
• 1:35:30
  in its darkest, most disturbing form, but already being, In some sense,
• 1:35:35
  impregnated by the god of the sea, which is associated with the collective
• 1:35:40
  unconscious and emotion and all of that.
• 1:35:43
  And so then when she when her head is sliced off by Perseus, her
• 1:35:48
  blood drips down to the sea, and I I guess I think it's where it
• 1:35:51
  touches the See that Pegasus arises.
• 1:35:54
  And so, um, there's all these themes that are about integration of of Elements,
• 1:36:01
  you know, the collective unconscious, emotion feminine wisdom, and and Feminine
• 1:36:07
  wisdom in its darkest, most disturbing form, and all of these things coming
• 1:36:11
  together at a certain point to give rise to To this kind of redemptive
• 1:36:16
  transformational figure of pen Pegasus.
• 1:36:19
  And Pegasus is the white winged horse but he's also a companion to the muses.
• 1:36:24
  And the muses are those demigoddesses who, are in control
• 1:36:29
  of different aspects of the arts.
• 1:36:31
  There's a there's a muse for music and a muse for poetry and a muse for novel
• 1:36:36
  writing, probably, and a muse for dance.
• 1:36:38
  And so Pegasus often flies up to Mount Helicon, which
• 1:36:42
  is the mountain of the Muses.
• 1:36:44
  And he hangs out with the Muses a lot When he's not carrying heroes
• 1:36:47
  around for various purposes.
• 1:36:49
  And there's this fascinating myth that's lesser known about Pegasus Is
• 1:36:54
  that up on Mount Helicon, he actually stomps his hoof really hard on the
• 1:37:00
  ground, and this earthquake ensues.
• 1:37:03
  And as the earth opens up, there's this spring of water that comes out of the
• 1:37:08
  center of the mountain of the Muses, And that thereafter is known as the
• 1:37:12
  Hippocrene, which means horse spring.
• 1:37:15
  And that water, as it flows down the mountain, actually becomes nourishing to
• 1:37:20
  Poets and musicians so that people would would climb up supposedly mythologically
• 1:37:25
  to the mountain of the muses.
• 1:37:26
  And if they were having trouble with staring at the blank page, You
• 1:37:30
  would go up and you would sit next to the Hippocrene and drink this
• 1:37:32
  water, and then you would be filled with this incredible inspiration.
• 1:37:36
  So Pegasus is Associated with a lot of paradoxes and bringing them together, but
• 1:37:41
  also associated with Making creativity and inspiration available to humans.
• 1:37:50
  And I've noticed that that is what happens a lot when people
• 1:37:53
  start interacting with horses.
• 1:37:55
  It's like something in that hard, logical, earthly life with that
• 1:38:00
  we've been living that's, like, You know, sort of closed over.
• 1:38:04
  Horses will, like, kinda shake that loose, sometimes in a very gentle way.
• 1:38:08
  And you feel all of a lot of times, people end up Just accessing
• 1:38:11
  this and and and having tears, crying and going, I'm not sad.
• 1:38:15
  And I'm like, no.
• 1:38:16
  It's like the hypocrine rising up, creating an oasis For
• 1:38:19
  creativity and new growth.
• 1:38:21
  And so horses literally have that capacity.
• 1:38:25
  Living horses have the capacity To open up creativity and authenticity in
• 1:38:31
  people and truly change their lives.
• 1:38:34
  Rupert Isaacson: I would agree that, You know, I think any of us who are
• 1:38:36
  equestrians have had more we're lucky people because we've we've we've had
• 1:38:42
  access to more ecstasy, Moments of ecstasy, whether it's oxytocin moving
• 1:38:46
  through our bodies because our hips are rocking, whether it's because
• 1:38:49
  it's you know, that is mixed with adrenaline, you know, and a certain
• 1:38:53
  amount of Low level cortisol as we go into a fence, and then we have this
• 1:38:57
  explosion of energy underneath us.
• 1:38:58
  And one of the things I I I feel is that the horses lend us power.
• 1:39:04
  And I think a lot of people quite rightly outside of the equestrian world
• 1:39:08
  and a bit within, Quite accurately regard a lot of people who are
• 1:39:14
  equestrians as kinda assholes because, unfortunately, Horses make us superhuman.
• 1:39:20
  Right?
• 1:39:20
  They lend us their power.
• 1:39:22
  We're bigger, faster, stronger, more beautiful, all of these
• 1:39:25
  things until we get off.
• 1:39:26
  And then, of course, we're just little monkeys again.
• 1:39:28
  But what we can forget is that the horse has lent us this power.
• 1:39:32
  It's not power that we own.
• 1:39:34
  It's it's we might be able to steward it.
• 1:39:36
  We might be Gifted it, but it's not ours.
• 1:39:39
  But we can behave like it is.
• 1:39:41
  And, of course, with the arrival of interesting with, you know,
• 1:39:46
  equestrianism in its classical form into Europe, which happened, you know,
• 1:39:51
  somewhere in the bronze age came in Through, you know, Anatolia and the
• 1:39:54
  Fertile Crescent in Mesopotamia.
• 1:39:56
  It had come down from the areas to the north of that.
• 1:39:59
  It the Mediterranean at that time was not really a horse culture, So, you
• 1:40:03
  know, in terms of like, it had been up in in those early horse areas.
• 1:40:07
  So, we weren't horse tribes Growing up in yurts, you know, with a lot of horses
• 1:40:11
  around us, so it had to be imported.
• 1:40:14
  And the Greeks were the first people to really import it.
• 1:40:16
  When you import something, of course, it becomes, you know, expensive,
• 1:40:20
  And that means it's for the elite.
• 1:40:22
  And we immediately have this association of the mounted man in particular As
• 1:40:28
  warrior elite because, of course, that came in with these Greek city
• 1:40:31
  states, you know, around that time.
• 1:40:32
  It's deep in our consciousness, but it goes back before.
• 1:40:34
  But there's this interesting thing about what it can bring
• 1:40:37
  out in us transformationally, paradox between the worlds, as you
• 1:40:42
  said, riding between the worlds.
• 1:40:44
  As you you're probably aware of the Norse myth where the gods of Asgard
• 1:40:49
  decide they need a wall around Asgard.
• 1:40:52
  And they're deciding, you know, it's gonna cost too much and and who can do this.
• 1:40:56
  Well, I don't know if you can do this with giants, but the giants are our enemies.
• 1:40:59
  How are we gonna do this?
• 1:41:01
  So, anyway, word goes out and someone shows up.
• 1:41:05
  He's a giant in disguise with a this big stallion saying, I can
• 1:41:09
  build you this wall In just one summer with the help of my horse.
• 1:41:13
  And the gods agree, and then they get a bit worried that he looks
• 1:41:18
  like he's Close to finishing because then we're gonna have to pay him.
• 1:41:21
  And Loki says, well, let's make sure we the, you know, the shapeshifter God.
• 1:41:26
  Let's make sure that we mess him up a bit.
• 1:41:29
  So he comes up with the idea of turning himself into a mare.
• 1:41:35
  And so he he changes across the sexes, and he lures the stallion away into
• 1:41:40
  the woods and Makes a stallion mate with him, which, of course, makes the
• 1:41:45
  giant in disguise miss the deadline.
• 1:41:47
  So the giants the the the gods get their war mostly built for
• 1:41:51
  free, Can finish it themselves.
• 1:41:53
  They've outwitted the the the the the giant.
• 1:41:57
  But, of course, Loki goes off and gives birth to an eight legged horse
• 1:42:01
  which becomes Odin's Mount Sleipnir.
• 1:42:04
  And, of course, Thor realizes what Loki's done.
• 1:42:07
  You had sex with the horse, And teases him and taunts him and that and Loki
• 1:42:11
  sort of never forgives him for that.
• 1:42:14
  What I that's an interesting historic, Mythological paradox for me there.
• 1:42:20
  Do you see a relation between that and the this integration of Female
• 1:42:25
  to male energy that's going on with Poseidon and Medusa with Pegasus.
• 1:42:31
  Do horses allow those of us who are feminine to access the masculine,
• 1:42:37
  and they do allow those of us who are masculine To access the feminine.
• 1:42:42
  Do they do this for us, do you think?
• 1:42:46
  Linda Kohanov: They absolutely do that.
• 1:42:48
  And so I I think that's why I called my first book The Tao of Equis because
• 1:42:53
  because They seem to be natural Taoists, and they seem to teach us
• 1:43:00
  things that if you if you go to read the Sound paradoxical, but when you're
• 1:43:05
  with horses, a lot of the things that sound paradoxical in the are actually
• 1:43:09
  things that you engage simultaneously in your interactions with horses.
• 1:43:13
  But another thing that Laozi, whether he was an actual sage or a group
• 1:43:17
  of sages, they're not really sure.
• 1:43:19
  Laozi Ask us to know the yang, but keep to the yin.
• 1:43:23
  Know the masculine, but keep to the feminine.
• 1:43:26
  And whether you're a man or a woman, you have to be able
• 1:43:29
  to do that to be with horses.
• 1:43:30
  You have to know the yang, the masculine active principle, the power principle.
• 1:43:35
  You have to know how to be powerful to be in their presence.
• 1:43:38
  But for the most part, you need to keep to the yin, the feminine,
• 1:43:42
  feeling, connection, mutual support.
• 1:43:46
  And So when you're with horses, you actually learn how to do that.
• 1:43:51
  Men learn how to access the yin, and women learn how to access the
• 1:43:54
  yang and to keep those two In a kind of dynamic balance, of course you
• 1:43:59
  know, according to what's needed.
• 1:44:00
  So that's that's really why I called my book The Tao of Equals.
• 1:44:06
  Rupert Isaacson: We've talked about a horse that is born from a female
• 1:44:13
  male union, I e Perseus, albeit a bit unfair for poor old Medusa
• 1:44:20
  who, you know, as you say, Was, you know, simply targeted by Poseidon.
• 1:44:27
  And then we have some a horse that comes, Ode becomes Odin's horse that
• 1:44:33
  comes from someone changing their gender at least, you know, for enough
• 1:44:39
  time That they can affect that change.
• 1:44:43
  Let's talk about horses that come completely from the feminine.
• 1:44:46
  Epona, The Celtic goddess of the horse.
• 1:44:50
  The Romans arrive in Gaul, we which is now France.
• 1:44:55
  We know that the Romans in the republican era before they were Christianized,
• 1:45:00
  had a policy Rather like the Ottomans did, rather like the Persians did,
• 1:45:04
  of when they conquered people, they would honor the local gods.
• 1:45:07
  They would never force people to, Adhere to their religions with the
• 1:45:13
  occasional exception of you have to honor the emperors of god from time
• 1:45:16
  to time as a way of honoring Rome.
• 1:45:17
  But But as long as you did that and paid your taxes, you know, you can go on.
• 1:45:22
  But the the the Romans, of course, were famous for bringing cults From from their
• 1:45:26
  conquered countries into their into their own culture very successfully, like the
• 1:45:31
  culture of Mithras Among officers in the military which came from Persia.
• 1:45:36
  We we had you know, the cult of Isis was all over the Roman Empire.
• 1:45:41
  The cult of Epona.
• 1:45:42
  They arrive in Gaul.
• 1:45:44
  They smash it to pieces.
• 1:45:46
  They don't behave well in Gaul at all, And yet they absolutely embrace
• 1:45:53
  this Celtic goddess of the horse.
• 1:45:55
  What's going on with Epona?
• 1:45:59
  Well, there's
• 1:46:00
  Linda Kohanov: a whole book now written about the goddess Epona
• 1:46:03
  by a man from The UK, I guess.
• 1:46:06
  Mhmm.
• 1:46:06
  I I just got it in.
• 1:46:08
  But from the research that I had done previously the goddess Epona Well, a
• 1:46:13
  lot of these goddesses or gods that are associated with horses have the
• 1:46:16
  capacity to change from horse form to human form back and forth at will.
• 1:46:21
  So sometimes you see the goddess Epona as a woman, and she's sitting
• 1:46:25
  usually side sideways on a mare.
• 1:46:29
  And there's usually a foal and some of the dog with her.
• 1:46:32
  And so I'm seeing this As, you know, the capacity this is the the ultimate natural
• 1:46:39
  horsemanship idea that this goddess is sitting On this mare that has a foal
• 1:46:45
  at her side in this really vulnerable position, this very peaceful position,
• 1:46:49
  sometimes with a small dog near them.
• 1:46:52
  And for me, it it really is about integrating the predatory and non
• 1:46:55
  predatory power through a feminine archetype, a feminine form of wisdom.
• 1:47:00
  Because The horse is, you know, not a predator.
• 1:47:05
  So being an herbivore and And even though it's very powerful, it has a
• 1:47:11
  lot in common with feminine wisdom.
• 1:47:13
  More sensitive, more feeling oriented, very much Relationship oriented.
• 1:47:19
  I mean, horses are nomadic.
• 1:47:20
  They don't fight over territory.
• 1:47:21
  Relationship is more important than territory.
• 1:47:25
  So There's a lot of feminine wisdom expressed in the horse itself.
• 1:47:30
  And then sometimes The goddess Epona turns into a horse, and
• 1:47:35
  she can turn into a white mare.
• 1:47:37
  And a lot of these, Cults associated with Epona talk about how they would
• 1:47:42
  actually get take a white mare and ask this mare questions, questions,
• 1:47:46
  and the horse would answer yes or no to all kinds of questions.
• 1:47:50
  And I have a theory about why that's possible.
• 1:47:53
  But in any case the you know, as a white mare, she's a benevolent force,
• 1:47:59
  But if you ignore your true feelings and motivations too long she will
• 1:48:05
  sometimes show up in your dreams as This black mare named Melanipe.
• 1:48:11
  And in that form, she's, like, torturing you to sort of give up your, You know,
• 1:48:17
  stubborn adherence to things that that are not true or that are overly egotistical.
• 1:48:24
  So in some sense, she can turn into what would be known as a nightmare to come
• 1:48:27
  and torture you and make you make you out of your Complacency in your egotism.
• 1:48:32
  So there's all kinds of interesting aspects to opponent.
• 1:48:35
  But I think if somebody's really interested in this to look for for
• 1:48:39
  the book, and I don't have it handy.
• 1:48:40
  It's downstairs.
• 1:48:41
  I just got it.
• 1:48:42
  And wildly enough the reason why I ended up Coming to my attention is that somebody
• 1:48:47
  read the book and told me that I was cited in there as a modern priestess of Epona.
• 1:48:52
  And I'm like, Wow.
• 1:48:55
  That's a that's a wild thing to say, particularly since
• 1:48:58
  this author never contacted me.
• 1:49:00
  So, Is this,
• 1:49:01
  Rupert Isaacson: By Mackenzie Cook, Epona, Hidden Goddess of
• 1:49:04
  the Celts by Mackenzie Cook?
• 1:49:06
  That's
• 1:49:06
  Linda Kohanov: it.
• 1:49:06
  That's it.
• 1:49:06
  Okay.
• 1:49:07
  Right.
• 1:49:07
  That's it.
• 1:49:09
  And so, you know, I I do feel at times like I have been possessed
• 1:49:13
  by these glowing archetypes.
• 1:49:16
  There's also the mare headed goddess Demeter.
• 1:49:18
  There's a whole story about her turning into the mare headed goddess.
• 1:49:22
  And I I talk about the mare headed goddess as also an a myth associated
• 1:49:28
  with transformation, particularly from trauma, Particularly from rape.
• 1:49:33
  And you can access this essay about the mare headed goddess in
• 1:49:37
  my book, Way of the Horse, Equine Archetypes for Self Discovery.
• 1:49:41
  It's a book of wisdom cards.
• 1:49:42
  It's a deck of wisdom cards with significant essays.
• 1:49:45
  So if you look in that book, I think it's essay number thirty five or
• 1:49:49
  something on The Marehead a Goddess.
• 1:49:51
  And she's a transformational figure for how transform trauma into strength.
• 1:49:56
  And she gives birth to twins as a result of this rape situation she had.
• 1:50:01
  So there's this twin element there again.
• 1:50:03
  But there were times where I felt like the goddess Epona or the mare
• 1:50:07
  headed goddess, like, ride me hard and possess me and make me give up
• 1:50:11
  things and do things and write Things.
• 1:50:13
  And they ride me hard and put me away wet.
• 1:50:15
  You know?
• 1:50:16
  It's like, you know, please just may I now have a chance to live my life?
• 1:50:20
  You know?
• 1:50:21
  So, I thought cathartic.
• 1:50:25
  Yeah.
• 1:50:25
  Actually, like, cathartic Like, these forces coming in, I I I really feel
• 1:50:32
  like these goddesses are as archetypes, they're like nonmaterial Forms matrixes
• 1:50:43
  of wisdom that in that can engage us Through their stories and myths about
• 1:50:48
  them, but, also, you can really feel sometimes, like, that matrix of wisdom
• 1:50:52
  is coming in and act you can have a direct feeling of being engaged by it.
• 1:50:56
  And even I don't ever feel, like, possessed in the sense of losing my
• 1:51:00
  own personal memories, But I have felt in the sense of feeling ridden by them
• 1:51:05
  in a certain direction that I didn't really feel like going in right now,
• 1:51:08
  that I didn't consider to be practical.
• 1:51:10
  And they wouldn't leave me alone until I actually went in that direction.
• 1:51:13
  And then after I do whatever it is they want then they kinda
• 1:51:17
  leave me alone for for a while.
• 1:51:19
  And I wanna I didn't think I was qualified to write a book, Whatever
• 1:51:23
  it was going to be about horses.
• 1:51:25
  But I just kept being, like, possessed and having this feeling
• 1:51:30
  of write the Write the book.
• 1:51:31
  Write the story.
• 1:51:32
  Write the story.
• 1:51:33
  And I think maybe these matrixes of wisdom, these mythic Matrix of wisdom
• 1:51:39
  from the other world are looking for people all the time who might be receptive
• 1:51:45
  Just to a piece of wisdom they want to bring into the modern world again.
• 1:51:49
  And they some people are receptive but they don't have the skills to
• 1:51:53
  pull it off, And some people aren't receptive and and turn it down.
• 1:51:58
  And for me, I think the thing that happened that made it possible to be
• 1:52:02
  possessed by these Equine archetypes of wisdom is that I had the ability
• 1:52:08
  to write about things that are not normally talked about because I had
• 1:52:12
  been a music critic Where I had to write about things that are beyond words.
• 1:52:15
  And so, um, and I was also completely overtaken by the
• 1:52:21
  magic and the mystery of horses.
• 1:52:23
  And so I think there was a confluence of a calling that a lot of people received
• 1:52:28
  and just my capacity to be able to pull off A certain level of getting this wisdom
• 1:52:33
  Rupert Isaacson: out.
• 1:52:33
  What when did you first become aware of a certain feeling of possession in this way?
• 1:52:40
  Linda Kohanov: I did talk about it in the Dow of Aguas.
• 1:52:42
  I was spending a lot of time with the horses and I was still a music critic
• 1:52:47
  at the time, and I would just I would just come to life when I went out with
• 1:52:55
  the horses, and I was going into this depressive state writing about music.
• 1:52:59
  Okay.
• 1:52:59
  And, I mean, it was a great career to be a music critic and a Music journalist.
• 1:53:03
  I got flown all over the world.
• 1:53:04
  I met all kinds of famous people.
• 1:53:07
  They were sending me their CDs.
• 1:53:08
  They were sucking it up to me because they wanted good reviews.
• 1:53:11
  It's how I met my Steve Roach, who's very well known in the ambient music field.
• 1:53:16
  And but at a certain point, I I would have to drink an entire pot of
• 1:53:21
  coffee just to write a music review.
• 1:53:24
  And yet when I went to the barn, I would have endless energy to ride horses
• 1:53:30
  in hundred degree heat, and I would be filled with all these ideas, and I
• 1:53:33
  would be writing these endless journals.
• 1:53:35
  And so at a certain point, I was, like, following that energy more
• 1:53:39
  and more because it made no sense.
• 1:53:41
  I got my first horse in my thirties.
• 1:53:42
  It didn't make sense for me to become Professional rider or think about going
• 1:53:46
  to the Olympics or something like that.
• 1:53:49
  And so I just started having all these adventures.
• 1:53:52
  And then I started having these where I felt like I was haunted.
• 1:53:56
  And it would just be it would not only be a feeling of Something else
• 1:54:01
  surrounding me, some other kind of energy surrounding me and even
• 1:54:06
  disrupting my coordination at times.
• 1:54:09
  But I would even have horses that would suddenly spook when I
• 1:54:13
  would feel this energy and there would be nothing Happening in the
• 1:54:16
  environment, and I could just be on the ground hanging out with them.
• 1:54:19
  So I ended up going to this intuitive counselor, and I and I
• 1:54:23
  do talk about this in the book.
• 1:54:25
  Her name is Patricia Hirsch, and she had a PhD in psychology, but
• 1:54:30
  she had also studied shamanism, particularly with Hawaiian Shamans,
• 1:54:35
  Hawaiian medicine women in particular.
• 1:54:38
  And so I just thought, you know, Either either she's gonna put me on
• 1:54:44
  medication or check me into a mental ward or whatever, but I'm just gonna
• 1:54:48
  go in and see what's going on, you because it was driving me crazy.
• 1:54:51
  It was keeping me up at night.
• 1:54:52
  I was I was becoming a nervous wreck.
• 1:54:55
  And, So I was just gonna be coy about this for a few sessions, but just
• 1:55:02
  something about the way she was.
• 1:55:04
  I just blurted out, You know, I'm here because I seem to be haunted.
• 1:55:08
  And she goes, oh, okay.
• 1:55:10
  Well, let's take a look at that.
• 1:55:11
  You know?
• 1:55:12
  And I said, I'm not really sure whether this thing is a Product of my imagination.
• 1:55:17
  Am I going crazy, or is it an external force?
• 1:55:20
  Am I really being haunted?
• 1:55:21
  And if I am, is it Is it benevolent or mannevolent?
• 1:55:25
  I just really don't know.
• 1:55:26
  And she said, yes.
• 1:55:27
  You know, these are very serious concerns.
• 1:55:30
  You know, I once let a troubling entity in my life, And and it's more
• 1:55:33
  trouble than you'd ever wanna have.
• 1:55:35
  I mean, she just talked so normally about this experience.
• 1:55:39
  And so Going through this experience, she helped me access my own intuition
• 1:55:45
  and connection to this force.
• 1:55:46
  And at first, we were like, Is this a human?
• 1:55:51
  Is this it seemed to be awakened by and oriented toward the horses.
• 1:55:55
  So I'm like, is this You know?
• 1:55:57
  And I I have a background from Ukraine, and I have, you know, probably even
• 1:56:02
  some Mongolian blood in me too.
• 1:56:04
  So maybe I have, You know, ancestors that were in the early horse
• 1:56:08
  cultures in that region, possibly.
• 1:56:10
  Likely.
• 1:56:10
  I'm like, is this an ancestor?
• 1:56:12
  You know?
• 1:56:13
  But what what we as we kept going deeper and deeper and deeper into it, we realized
• 1:56:18
  that it was that complex of Horse wisdom that I now call the horse ancestors.
• 1:56:24
  And so it was it was like the collective wisdom of the horses.
• 1:56:30
  And and I learned how to access it, and I learned how to use it in different
• 1:56:34
  ways and to teach it to others.
• 1:56:36
  And I also learned how to use it even for problem solving.
• 1:56:39
  So it can even act as, like, a translation program between the
• 1:56:43
  horse mind and the human mind if you access the horse ancestors.
• 1:56:46
  So These are some things that I teach in workshops and some things I talk about in
• 1:56:51
  my books, but I always put it in in the perspective of the fact that it's It's
• 1:57:00
  exemplary of how horses are so that that's It's an embodied spirituality so that
• 1:57:06
  you must be fully present and capable of being in this world and, at the same I'm
• 1:57:12
  accessing these other forms of wisdom.
• 1:57:15
  Over time, I've seen that horses I can't tell whether they're really
• 1:57:19
  good at moving back and Fourth between these twin forms of consciousness,
• 1:57:23
  the fully present in this world and spiritual sources, let's say, Or if
• 1:57:28
  they are in both simultaneous tell.
• 1:57:32
  But either way, they are helping us to learn how to do that too.
• 1:57:37
  Yeah.
• 1:57:37
  I would
• 1:57:38
  Rupert Isaacson: I would I I agree.
• 1:57:39
  I think I find that when one is around horses in any way,
• 1:57:44
  Riding with them, doing it.
• 1:57:46
  What is one doing but solving problems?
• 1:57:48
  You know, when you're going across when you're simply balancing yourself on
• 1:57:51
  on the horse is pro solving a problem.
• 1:57:54
  Getting across country on a horse is solving a problem.
• 1:57:56
  Figuring out how to get the poo through the mud onto the wheelbarrow so that
• 1:58:01
  the Wilburra doesn't tip and tip all the poo into the mud and get it up onto
• 1:58:04
  the top of the muck keep and do that.
• 1:58:06
  That's a problem.
• 1:58:07
  And and one is constantly Faced with these interesting but entirely absorbing
• 1:58:18
  Because if you don't solve this problem, you can't get to the next thing of where
• 1:58:22
  you're trying to get to with the horse.
• 1:58:23
  As you say, horses carry us.
• 1:58:26
  I want to bring you back to something you said.
• 1:58:28
  You you said when when people were consulting these white mayors in
• 1:58:33
  in the Gaulish Celtic shrines.
• 1:58:39
  And the they would ask the mare almost like an oracle.
• 1:58:42
  You said you had some theories about how they might have interpreted What the horse
• 1:58:47
  did or didn't do for getting their answer.
• 1:58:50
  What tell tell tell me your theory there.
• 1:58:53
  What what do you feel was going on?
• 1:58:56
  Well,
• 1:58:57
  Linda Kohanov: it actually doesn't take that long to explain.
• 1:59:00
  So here's the thing.
• 1:59:02
  As I mentioned earlier That there's been studies that you can read about in the
• 1:59:07
  book Social Intelligence by Daniel Goleman that show that when you're Suppressing an
• 1:59:12
  emotion, and I would say also a thought or a perspective or a desire or whatever.
• 1:59:17
  When you suppress something like that, it Takes extra energy to hold it down, and
• 1:59:23
  it causes your blood pressure to rise.
• 1:59:25
  And it all causes the blood pressure of others interacting with you to rise also.
• 1:59:29
  That's been proven.
• 1:59:30
  This happens to people unconsciously all day long.
• 1:59:33
  When you make something that's unconscious conscious, Whether it's an
• 1:59:37
  emotion that you're finally saying, yes.
• 1:59:38
  I actually am afraid, or if you're saying, I actually don't
• 1:59:43
  want to become an attorney.
• 1:59:44
  I'd rather be an artist.
• 1:59:45
  Whatever it is, Whenever you bring up the thing that's been suppressed,
• 1:59:49
  it causes your blood pressure to drop even before you've Even
• 1:59:53
  before you solved it in any way.
• 1:59:56
  You know?
• 1:59:56
  That's why when the young lady who was crying, the horse walked away.
• 2:00:00
  And when she was Accessing the anger underneath it, the horse came back to
• 2:00:05
  her and surrounded her and comforted her.
• 2:00:08
  How did the horse tell the difference between those two?
• 2:00:10
  And I think it has to do with this nervous System activation.
• 2:00:13
  When you're suppressing something causes your blood pressure to rise.
• 2:00:16
  When you access it consciously, your blood pressure drops, And it's
• 2:00:20
  gonna drop in the horse too, and the horse will often show that.
• 2:00:23
  I see this.
• 2:00:24
  You've seen it, where when a person accesses an authentic feeling or
• 2:00:28
  thought Or calling, the horse will lower their head and lick and chew and sigh.
• 2:00:33
  Mhmm.
• 2:00:34
  I see it all the time.
• 2:00:35
  So I think that's what was going on Okay.
• 2:00:37
  Is that people would come and ask The worst questions about and it
• 2:00:41
  was always yes or no questions.
• 2:00:43
  And they would say the horse would indicate through their behavior
• 2:00:45
  whether it was a yes or a no.
• 2:00:47
  So I think a no would just be a horse standing there looking stoically,
• 2:00:51
  you know, or maybe walking away.
• 2:00:53
  And a yes would be the worst lowering their head and licking and chewing.
• 2:00:57
  Rupert Isaacson: Yeah.
• 2:00:57
  Maybe yawning.
• 2:00:58
  Yeah.
• 2:00:58
  Yeah.
• 2:00:59
  I I could see that.
• 2:01:01
  Here's another question back to the idea of paradox.
• 2:01:03
  So goddess Epona as you say, depicted usually in a peaceful Manna.
• 2:01:11
  Why would then the goddess Epona get co opted by the Roman military To the
• 2:01:19
  point that pretty much every cavalry unit where they found Archaeological
• 2:01:26
  evidence that there was a cavalry barracks in a certain place.
• 2:01:29
  They always had after after the conquest of Gaul, they always had
• 2:01:33
  an altar to Epona, And they also would have an altar to the spirits
• 2:01:40
  of the Of the training ground.
• 2:01:45
  If you like the we we have this even in American high schools, like school spirit.
• 2:01:50
  Like, the but they they regard them as actual spirits.
• 2:01:54
  And right near where I live in Germany, they're actually and up
• 2:01:57
  on Hadrian's Wall in England too.
• 2:01:59
  They found round pens From Roman cavalry units where they were, you
• 2:02:04
  know, training the horses almost always with altars to Epona close by.
• 2:02:08
  So they've now taken this feminine Thing.
• 2:02:11
  I guess you're right.
• 2:02:12
  There's also the the darker feminine, the the black man who might come psychically.
• 2:02:18
  But then male, and we know that the Roman military was hyper male.
• 2:02:26
  Energy takes this and co opts it for the use of cavalry.
• 2:02:30
  And in their universe, they they do it successfully To the point
• 2:02:35
  that they promote it as a motif, you know, through the regiments.
• 2:02:42
  What do you think is going on there?
• 2:02:45
  Again, we're we're talking about paradoxical natures and forming a yin
• 2:02:49
  and yang, but that's really quite almost quite violent, quite a violent co opting.
• 2:02:55
  And why would the horse ancestors or the The eponymous spirit, if
• 2:03:01
  you like, allow that to happen if we believe that there's a certain
• 2:03:05
  animus In these motifs within yeah.
• 2:03:08
  What what what's your theory there?
• 2:03:10
  I'd be interested to know.
• 2:03:14
  Well,
• 2:03:15
  Linda Kohanov: The Romans believed in gods and goddesses and would often reach
• 2:03:21
  out to a certain goddess for protection.
• 2:03:25
  I think that's pretty much all they were doing.
• 2:03:29
  You know, protection for not just themselves, but
• 2:03:31
  protection for their horses.
• 2:03:33
  She would certainly be protecting the horses.
• 2:03:35
  Mhmm.
• 2:03:35
  Mhmm.
• 2:03:35
  So they would be invoking the goddess for protection for For
• 2:03:41
  themselves and their horses.
• 2:03:43
  And the reason why Agadus I from my perspective, I mean, I can't I
• 2:03:49
  can't really speak for something that complex and spiritually
• 2:03:54
  oriented and ancient beyond belief.
• 2:03:57
  But the feeling is is that, you know, you guys are running through your
• 2:04:03
  adolescent fantasies of of power.
• 2:04:06
  And If you invoke me and you start to listen to me and you start
• 2:04:10
  to open up to me, I'm going to help shift that and balance that.
• 2:04:15
  So, you know, um, I would say that that would that might be her motivation.
• 2:04:21
  It would be, first of all, to truly protect the horses.
• 2:04:25
  You know?
• 2:04:25
  So if they're invoking her and putting up you know, tributes
• 2:04:29
  to her and statues to her.
• 2:04:32
  She's, at the very least, gonna protect the horses.
• 2:04:34
  There's no question.
• 2:04:35
  But I think also this feminine archetype of Transformation.
• 2:04:39
  She's a she's a an archetype of transformation.
• 2:04:43
  And so what she would be doing is seeing how what an in she can get to to help to
• 2:04:48
  Rupert Isaacson: ship things.
• 2:04:50
  Yes.
• 2:04:51
  I I could when you were saying that war goddess mounted war
• 2:04:56
  goddess came into my mind.
• 2:04:58
  She was the Valkyries.
• 2:04:59
  You know, the Valkyries come down To choose the slain
• 2:05:05
  from the Norse battlefields.
• 2:05:06
  If you died with your sword in hand, they'll take you up on their
• 2:05:09
  horses to Valhalla, to Odin's hall.
• 2:05:12
  I sometimes think that, actually, my wife, Ileana, moonlights for Odin on
• 2:05:16
  Sundays sometimes and goes around the same battlefields and Takes them up
• 2:05:20
  to it, but she's a bit dark on the subject, but I suspect she does do it.
• 2:05:24
  And There is a warrior goddess who you're not invoking the
• 2:05:31
  Valkyries for success in battle.
• 2:05:35
  You're invoking the Valkyries for transformation from the
• 2:05:39
  battlefield to the next stage.
• 2:05:42
  I wonder if and, of course, as you I think you're dead right that if you're
• 2:05:46
  a cavalry unit, you would absolutely want protection for your horses.
• 2:05:49
  Otherwise, you can't operate.
• 2:05:50
  Right?
• 2:05:50
  If your horses are Not doing well.
• 2:05:52
  You your your your military kit is not working.
• 2:05:56
  But beyond that, if you're a cavalryman, You have a connection to your horses.
• 2:06:02
  So there's always going to be an aspect of the feminine there
• 2:06:05
  whether you like it or not.
• 2:06:06
  There's going to be.
• 2:06:08
  Is what Epona is doing in in that regard a sort of sneaky way
• 2:06:11
  in to say to these guys, look.
• 2:06:14
  You may or may not have even chosen to be here because God knows every soldier
• 2:06:19
  that shows up on a battlefield is not elected to be there by any means at all.
• 2:06:23
  But, yeah, here you are.
• 2:06:26
  Let's make the best of the situation, and at the very least, Convey you to
• 2:06:32
  the to the next world to the or to the next stage in a way that brings peace.
• 2:06:42
  Is it, again, is it paradox?
• 2:06:43
  Is it the peacemaker within the war machine?
• 2:06:46
  Is that what Epona's doing?
• 2:06:50
  Linda Kohanov: I would say the latter.
• 2:06:52
  That's that's what resonates inside of me, and that's what causes my
• 2:06:57
  hard to expand when you say that.
• 2:06:59
  Yeah.
• 2:07:02
  Yeah.
• 2:07:02
  And, you know, they're the horses themselves appear to be, you
• 2:07:06
  know, They it's like they've been waiting for centuries for
• 2:07:12
  us to work out our adolescent fantasies of power and conquest.
• 2:07:15
  Mhmm.
• 2:07:16
  And and, You know, I happen to say that now that they're no longer obliged to work
• 2:07:21
  in our fields and carry us to war, they're finally free To do something arguably
• 2:07:27
  more important, and I believe it was their mission from the beginning, work on us.
• 2:07:32
  And So and I think part of that involves rebalancing, helping us know the yang,
• 2:07:40
  but keep to the yin, as Laozi would say.
• 2:07:43
  Bring the feminine wisdom back in.
• 2:07:45
  Understand how to be powerful, but also be nonpredatory at the same time.
• 2:07:50
  That's a huge piece of horse wisdom.
• 2:07:53
  And you know, that physical, mental, spiritual, and emotional balance that you
• 2:07:58
  learn when you become a really fine rider, This is like them working on you for sure.
• 2:08:03
  You know, you you you transform from the inside out if you
• 2:08:07
  become a truly great rider.
• 2:08:09
  And it's just it it it is almost like you know, when they talk
• 2:08:14
  about the horse in multiple myths as being a gift from the gods.
• 2:08:18
  It's like they they were a gift from the gods, and we didn't
• 2:08:21
  really know what to do with it.
• 2:08:23
  And and yet they've been accompanying us for for centuries And enduring
• 2:08:28
  our ridiculous exploits, but always there, always there, always there
• 2:08:33
  just waiting For us to be open to this new form of consciousness that
• 2:08:38
  they would love for us to step into.
• 2:08:42
  Rupert Isaacson: It's it's very interesting, you know, with the the
• 2:08:45
  method that we've evolved working with autistic children, which we call horse
• 2:08:50
  boy method, which evolved Simply out of me observing that when I had my son in
• 2:08:56
  front of me when he was very young and he was nonverbal, the more collected,
• 2:09:00
  Softly collected the rhythm of the horse, the more communication I got.
• 2:09:04
  And I didn't know why until I went to talk to, Neuroscientists about it and
• 2:09:09
  have them explain that what was going on was hip rocking, creating oxytocin,
• 2:09:15
  oxytocin being The feel good hormone calming down the nervous system, but
• 2:09:19
  also the hormone of communication.
• 2:09:20
  And he was just being flooded with this and, oh my gosh.
• 2:09:23
  Okay.
• 2:09:24
  That's wonderful.
• 2:09:25
  But what's intriguing to me, again, paradoxically, is that the training system
• 2:09:31
  that we use to bring this, Collection, this movement of the center of gravity
• 2:09:39
  under where the rider sits with the hind legs coming forward To create this hip
• 2:09:43
  rocking, blissful feeling is, of course, training the horse for the light calorie.
• 2:09:48
  And and it occurred to me that we were using a system that was
• 2:09:51
  designed to harm your fellow man.
• 2:09:54
  Now because of this oxytocin byproduct to heal your fellow man, But the
• 2:10:00
  horse was an innocent either way.
• 2:10:01
  The horse could lend its power to one whichever way one decided to go with that.
• 2:10:10
  And this humbled me massively because it made me realize how Generous horses.
• 2:10:20
  Ah.
• 2:10:21
  And I I wonder what do you feel about this?
• 2:10:24
  We we we talked about higher self earlier.
• 2:10:28
  I feel that this generosity that horses have with humans Allowing
• 2:10:33
  us to, as you say, our silly monkey adolescent fantasies, you know,
• 2:10:39
  projected through Millennia of conquest, not just a few years of our
• 2:10:44
  human history, and yet they've been patient with us, you know, and given
• 2:10:48
  us all this bliss and all this joy.
• 2:10:50
  Do you feel that they bring out generosity in the human heart?
• 2:10:55
  Linda Kohanov: I do.
• 2:10:58
  And, also, equanimity.
• 2:11:00
  You know, this this ability to be present with what's happening
• 2:11:06
  And to move through it with some level of agility I mean, horses are
• 2:11:11
  very much like Jay Krishnamurti.
• 2:11:13
  He was a famous sage who was discovered in India.
• 2:11:18
  And, Later in life, he went around the world doing lectures on mindfulness and
• 2:11:23
  various forms of spirituality and was very revered as almost Supernatural teacher.
• 2:11:31
  And he was at a lecture one time in Europe, I think it was.
• 2:11:35
  And People were asking questions.
• 2:11:37
  And finally, he said, you know, do you wanna know my secret?
• 2:11:42
  And everybody was like, oh, good.
• 2:11:43
  We signed up for the right lecture because he's gonna tell us his Secret.
• 2:11:47
  And he said, I don't mind what happens.
• 2:11:51
  That's an extreme state of equanimity.
• 2:11:54
  No matter what's It's happening.
• 2:11:55
  I'm present with it.
• 2:11:56
  I can but, also, I I feel like it's it can also be seen as a plan words.
• 2:12:01
  I don't mind what's happening Would be I'm not exclusively in the thinking
• 2:12:07
  brain about it either because his his a lot of his teachings was about going
• 2:12:12
  beyond words, going into the Power of what you can learn by being silent
• 2:12:18
  and how you can listen in silence.
• 2:12:20
  And so when you see horses, They have more of that attitude.
• 2:12:26
  I don't mind what happens.
• 2:12:28
  I don't mind if you're angry.
• 2:12:30
  I just want you to know that you are.
• 2:12:32
  I don't mind that you're, you know, that you're traumatized.
• 2:12:38
  I let me let me help you Calm your nervous system.
• 2:12:42
  You know?
• 2:12:42
  I don't mind that Rowan is autistic.
• 2:12:45
  I don't mind that Rowan is throwing these tantrums.
• 2:12:48
  Let me come over.
• 2:12:49
  I'm with you.
• 2:12:49
  I'm with you.
• 2:12:50
  I don't mind it.
• 2:12:51
  You're okay, Rowan.
• 2:12:52
  You know?
• 2:12:53
  And I just feel like they do that all the time.
• 2:12:57
  And so they show how The the supreme generosity of horses
• 2:13:04
  is is godlike in a way in which there's nourishment for everybody.
• 2:13:10
  Everybody's welcome on the Earth.
• 2:13:12
  Everybody's welcome.
• 2:13:13
  We're we're working with you.
• 2:13:14
  We're trying to help you out here, But we're not taking sides here.
• 2:13:18
  And a lot of people recently are constantly making the case that God is
• 2:13:25
  on their side and not the other side.
• 2:13:27
  But, you know, maybe God is more horse like in the sense that yeah.
• 2:13:32
  So I'm I'm Leading Romans on my back here, and I'm, you know, with the Buddha,
• 2:13:40
  and I'm, You know, helping somebody who's very poor plow their fields.
• 2:13:45
  And and the whole time, just waiting for people to wake up and notice And not
• 2:13:50
  using them as tools, but to say, hey.
• 2:13:53
  Can I learn some of that equanimity?
• 2:13:55
  Can I learn how to be authentic And not mind what happens in the
• 2:14:02
  paradoxical sense of that word?
• 2:14:04
  Beautifully
• 2:14:05
  Rupert Isaacson: put.
• 2:14:07
  Alright.
• 2:14:07
  As we approach the end of this conversation, because
• 2:14:11
  I'd like to have you back on.
• 2:14:12
  I've got a lot of questions that are coming To mine.
• 2:14:15
  So if you'd be I could love to come
• 2:14:17
  Linda Kohanov: back on.
• 2:14:17
  I'd love talking with you.
• 2:14:19
  Rupert Isaacson: I'd love to have a round two.
• 2:14:20
  And and there's gonna be a ton of questions from people.
• 2:14:23
  And I've got plenty of my own, which I I just wanna keep going with it.
• 2:14:27
  Here here's a question, though, back to the Live Free, Ride Free idea.
• 2:14:30
  You when you were a little girl Dreaming about horses.
• 2:14:33
  By the way, what state was that?
• 2:14:35
  What state were you brought up in where you would Ohio.
• 2:14:38
  You're in Ohio, and Then you would you would sneak off to where this
• 2:14:42
  trainer had a yard but you didn't find your way to horse ownership
• 2:14:46
  until you were in your thirties.
• 2:14:47
  But you found your way there because you gave yourself a certain economic stability
• 2:14:51
  through music, which a lot of people would say is Itself you know, not an easy way
• 2:14:57
  to find your way to economic stability.
• 2:14:59
  What allowed you To imagine life and a career with the
• 2:15:06
  arts And then with the horse.
• 2:15:09
  And bring that to reality.
• 2:15:12
  This started before horses were reaching out through you or
• 2:15:15
  perhaps they were the whole time.
• 2:15:18
  But, yeah, there's there'll be listeners out there going,
• 2:15:21
  how do I become Linda Konov?
• 2:15:23
  Or how do I become my own version of Linda Konov?
• 2:15:28
  What would you say to them?
• 2:15:30
  What what what what's the most important stages of the journey that bring you
• 2:15:34
  from the little girl Dreaming to the lady sitting being interviewed today.
• 2:15:44
  Linda Kohanov: I think part of it was a trajectory that feels designed for
• 2:15:51
  me to develop some Skills even though it didn't seem to have my own it it was
• 2:15:55
  like things happen that were beyond my wildest dreams when I sort of submitted
• 2:16:00
  to Certain directions that didn't feel like the right direction at times.
• 2:16:04
  Mhmm.
• 2:16:04
  And one of those was that Yeah.
• 2:16:08
  And just feeling like you're you're being guided in some sense even though it
• 2:16:11
  seems like you're being taken off track.
• 2:16:13
  And I realized that those times that I got taken off Track.
• 2:16:15
  I had to go off track and learn something that I needed later for my true purpose.
• 2:16:20
  And one thing I mean, the reason why I ended up being a music major is It's
• 2:16:25
  because my parents thought it was more reasonable to to be a music major than
• 2:16:29
  it was to do anything with horses.
• 2:16:31
  So they were, like, picking the lesser of two evils.
• 2:16:33
  It's like, You know?
• 2:16:34
  Yeah.
• 2:16:34
  Get get her interested in music.
• 2:16:37
  And also, I got a full scholarship in college to be a music major.
• 2:16:41
  And they were like, please take the scholarship.
• 2:16:43
  You know?
• 2:16:44
  And and then I became a music critic and then met my husband through through music.
• 2:16:50
  And, And then what happened was, interestingly enough, music and
• 2:16:55
  horses have always been tied together.
• 2:16:57
  So to buy my first Arabian mare, Rasa, who became my greatest teacher and
• 2:17:02
  the one who really started this work I had to sell my viola and most of
• 2:17:07
  my CD collection to By that horse.
• 2:17:10
  And so then I had all these adventures with her, and then I got
• 2:17:13
  an advance to write the Dao of Equis.
• 2:17:15
  And so when I got that advance, I used it to buy another viola.
• 2:17:19
  And then through all of these years, learning how to be with the horses
• 2:17:23
  and interact with the horses and dance with the horses and breathe
• 2:17:27
  with the horses and learn all of these stress reducing techniques.
• 2:17:31
  It actually brought me back into being able to play and
• 2:17:34
  compose at a whole new level.
• 2:17:36
  So the horses and the music have always been interacting in this very odd way,
• 2:17:41
  and it's fun now to To be in a field where I'm bringing the two together.
• 2:17:46
  We just did a workshop last week, a four day workshop called Not a Brahma, the
• 2:17:51
  universe's sound, And it brings in some of the mystical aspects of music, the
• 2:17:56
  self development and healing aspects of music along with work with the horses.
• 2:18:00
  And there were mostly people there who didn't know anything about horses,
• 2:18:04
  and they were amazed at how the horses opened them up and shifted things So
• 2:18:09
  that they could actually step forward and play at a much more beautiful level.
• 2:18:14
  Even if they weren't musicians themselves, Somehow the work with
• 2:18:17
  the horses gave them even the courage to begin to to make music together.
• 2:18:23
  So somehow the two are truly Interacting all the time for me.
• 2:18:29
  Well,
• 2:18:29
  Rupert Isaacson: I guess I guess what lies at the at the core of
• 2:18:35
  Riding and training horses' rhythm.
• 2:18:37
  Right?
• 2:18:37
  We have to be able to match the horse's rhythm.
• 2:18:40
  We have to be able to it's an emotional rhythm, but there also
• 2:18:43
  has to be a physical rhythm.
• 2:18:44
  Yeah.
• 2:18:45
  One two three four for the walk, one two one two for the trot, one two
• 2:18:48
  three one two three for the cancer.
• 2:18:50
  And these have to be predictable enough to our training system that
• 2:18:53
  we can then do things with them and not be surprised by arrhythmic things
• 2:18:57
  that might, as you say, leave us in the dust or, at the very least, Break
• 2:19:01
  the activity we're trying to do.
• 2:19:03
  And if one thinks of all these musical motifs around horses the the shaman's
• 2:19:07
  drum, you know, the round drum, the in Celtic traditions, which is A galloping
• 2:19:14
  horse Baroque music, which was designed to be Done to these equestrian shows
• 2:19:23
  with the horses, you know, performing in this way in front of Versailles and
• 2:19:27
  these other, you know, palaces of Europe.
• 2:19:30
  The music and horses, it's it's been a concurrent theme and rhythm forever.
• 2:19:36
  Yet at the same time, What comes in what comes into my head is this
• 2:19:43
  also this relationship with horses and dream And the imagination.
• 2:19:48
  And it resonates with me very much that there was this little
• 2:19:50
  girl in Ohio . Who was dreaming.
• 2:19:54
  Although I can absolutely see the Connection between music and rhythm
• 2:19:59
  with the human horse connection and the adventure that we've gone
• 2:20:03
  on over the centuries with that.
• 2:20:05
  It seems to me that this vehicle horses lending themselves to
• 2:20:09
  our dreams, our aspirations, our fantasies, our Well, for good or ill.
• 2:20:17
  But, yeah, this thing of dream.
• 2:20:19
  And there there was this little girl in Ohio Who was dreaming.
• 2:20:25
  And she was dreaming of these animals that seemed to have this ability to Bring
• 2:20:32
  one into dream and then bring one out of dream with dreams somewhat manifest.
• 2:20:41
  Is this something which if someone was to come on your courses,
• 2:20:45
  for example, they could learn how to tap into it and, Harness.
• 2:20:50
  There's another horse motif.
• 2:20:52
  Linda Kohanov: Yes.
• 2:20:53
  Exactly.
• 2:20:54
  Absolutely.
• 2:20:54
  That's that's that's The purpose of what I teach I mean, I don't really I mean, I
• 2:21:00
  I teach emotional and social intelligence and leadership skills to equestrians that
• 2:21:05
  help their Riding and training at times.
• 2:21:08
  But most of what I do is we work with horses to teach advanced human development
• 2:21:13
  skills to people whether or not they've ever thought about horses before.
• 2:21:18
  And and we also bring in, you know, creativity, and we bring in emotional
• 2:21:24
  intelligence skills and And leadership skills because, you know, here's the
• 2:21:28
  thing, is that once you access your true calling and Your authentic goal in life.
• 2:21:38
  A lot of times to manifest that, you need to be able to step into
• 2:21:42
  a leadership role If you're gonna manifest it in any meaningful way.
• 2:21:46
  And so a lot of times, we teach also some some leadership skills through
• 2:21:51
  working with horses so that people who dream big dreams and access those dreams
• 2:21:56
  learn how to then and and be a leader in maybe a new field they're creating
• 2:22:01
  or a new company they're creating.
• 2:22:05
  So and that was one of the things that, you know, was kind of disturbing
• 2:22:09
  to me when when I wrote these books, About what horses have to teach people
• 2:22:15
  is that now all of a sudden, I I'm in I'm in a leadership role if I'm
• 2:22:18
  gonna take it to any certain level.
• 2:22:20
  I need staff people.
• 2:22:21
  I need, you know, Promotional people, I need when people come to
• 2:22:25
  see me, I need to be able to manage whatever they're going through.
• 2:22:29
  And but the horse has taught me how to be a leader in a completely different
• 2:22:33
  way than the way you normally see it in a conquest oriented mentality.
• 2:22:38
  So so there's so much to learn from them, and I'm just so excited to be in this
• 2:22:43
  field that I actually Helped to bring into form just like you with your horse
• 2:22:50
  boy programs, and, certainly, Rowan was was there to help that Happened as well.
• 2:22:57
  And and I feel that way about my horse, Rasa, who actually She was wounded.
• 2:23:03
  She had a condition in her right back stifle that made it hard to ride her.
• 2:23:07
  And because I was knocked off my high horse and had to relate
• 2:23:10
  to her on the ground, That's what created this whole field.
• 2:23:14
  So a lot of times, it's someone who appears to be wounded that is actually
• 2:23:19
  the one who's leading us into a Whole new area of experience and innovation.
• 2:23:26
  I would
• 2:23:26
  Rupert Isaacson: agree.
• 2:23:26
  The wounded weather light shines in.
• 2:23:28
  Absolutely.
• 2:23:30
  Yeah.
• 2:23:31
  Absolutely.
• 2:23:31
  I and I I've had a couple of horses that could no longer be ridden who
• 2:23:35
  taught me how to work in entirely different ways And allowed me to see
• 2:23:42
  that as metaphors for other areas of my life where perhaps I was stuck,
• 2:23:45
  only seeing things in a certain way.
• 2:23:47
  So listen, Linda.
• 2:23:49
  People are gonna want to know the books, and they're gonna want to know
• 2:23:52
  how to come on one of your courses.
• 2:23:54
  And I presume they're gonna have to travel to Arizona to come on one of your courses.
• 2:23:57
  Is that right?
• 2:23:58
  Or can they do them they can also do them online, I think.
• 2:24:02
  So talk us Yes.
• 2:24:03
  Yes.
• 2:24:03
  What what people need to know, what should they read, in what order, and then how
• 2:24:09
  do they Come on one of your courses.
• 2:24:10
  How do they contact you?
• 2:24:12
  How do they do it online?
• 2:24:13
  How do they do it in person?
• 2:24:16
  Linda Kohanov: Well, luckily, I I have trained instructors all over the world,
• 2:24:21
  and there are Honequest instructors, or We also have a leadership model called
• 2:24:26
  the five roles of a master herder.
• 2:24:28
  So some of them are master herder instructors or Power of the
• 2:24:31
  herd instructors that have more of a leadership orientation.
• 2:24:34
  Eponaquest instructors are really more of a personal development orientation.
• 2:24:40
  And, also, I was able to create these online courses so that, you
• 2:24:45
  know, if you can't travel anywhere right now or you you're just
• 2:24:48
  not ready to go out with Horses.
• 2:24:49
  You can learn these skills with inspirational stories and videos from
• 2:24:54
  the horses, but it's really about taking it directly to the human world.
• 2:24:58
  So my online courses are available on a website called linda kohanov dot com.
• 2:25:04
  And The other courses that are about doing workshops would mostly be on
• 2:25:12
  my Website, eponaquest dot com, named after the quest I've been on with the
• 2:25:18
  goddess Epona, eponaquest dot com.
• 2:25:21
  And you'll see not only workshops that I'm doing on there, but you'll see a
• 2:25:25
  list of instructors throughout the world.
• 2:25:28
  And you can con you can find somebody in your region and call that, Contact that
• 2:25:31
  person and see if they're doing private or group work or workshops anytime soon.
• 2:25:38
  sO If, you know, if you're if you're really curious about which way you
• 2:25:42
  should go I would say just I can I can give you my direct Email?
• 2:25:50
  And you can always just write a note and just say, hey.
• 2:25:53
  This is my interest.
• 2:25:54
  What do you think I should do?
• 2:25:56
  I'm located here.
• 2:25:57
  How do I you know, what do you what would you recommend for me to sign up for?
• 2:26:02
  So I email?
• 2:26:02
  Yeah.
• 2:26:03
  Direct email.
• 2:26:04
  It's it's named after my horse, Rasa.
• 2:26:06
  So that's r as in Ralph, a as in apple, s as in Sam, a as in apple.
• 2:26:11
  Rasa At eponaquest dot com.
• 2:26:14
  So that's e, p as in Paul, o, n as in Nick, a q u e s t dot com.
• 2:26:19
  Rasa at eponaquest dot com.
• 2:26:21
  And you can go to epona quest dot com and just kinda, like, look at
• 2:26:25
  the workshops that are coming up.
• 2:26:27
  And then the online courses are at linda kohanev dot com.
• 2:26:30
  But if you go to upon request dot com, there is a link there that will take
• 2:26:34
  you to that online course page too.
• 2:26:36
  So
• 2:26:37
  Rupert Isaacson: Super.
• 2:26:37
  Now I'm gonna I'm gonna read those off again in a moment so people who didn't
• 2:26:43
  have a pen handy can hear them again.
• 2:26:45
  So don't worry.
• 2:26:45
  People don't panic.
• 2:26:47
  The books in order, Tower of Equest.
• 2:26:54
  Then
• 2:26:54
  Linda Kohanov: riding
• 2:26:54
  Rupert Isaacson: between the worlds.
• 2:26:56
  Riding Then between the worlds.
• 2:27:00
  Yes.
• 2:27:01
  Then?
• 2:27:01
  Linda Kohanov: Then Way of the horse way of the horse.
• 2:27:04
  It's a deck of horse wisdom cards with a significant book that goes with it.
• 2:27:09
  Right.
• 2:27:10
  Then the power of the herd, and then finally, the five
• 2:27:15
  roles of a master herder.
• 2:27:17
  The five roles.
• 2:27:20
  Yes.
• 2:27:21
  Of a master herder.
• 2:27:22
  And this is actually something you and I might wanna have fun talking about
• 2:27:25
  because I would love to hear your experiences with these nomadic tribes,
• 2:27:30
  the horse tribes, and the reindeer tribes.
• 2:27:34
  I took this leadership model from studying those nomadic pastoral cultures
• 2:27:38
  throughout the world in different ways, and I saw that they Actually use five
• 2:27:42
  roles of power and social influence to to deal with these animals that many of
• 2:27:47
  whom are loose quite a bit of the time.
• 2:27:49
  Yes.
• 2:27:49
  Absolutely.
• 2:27:50
  And so Leader leader is just one of five roles of power and social influence.
• 2:27:55
  And so I learned that if we're going to influence It's groups of free empowered
• 2:28:00
  people as all the old fences of social controls are falling down, that we could
• 2:28:03
  actually learn a lot from this model based on those nomadic pastoralists.
• 2:28:07
  I mean, We could have such a conversation on that, and I would be asking
• 2:28:11
  you a bunch of questions for sure.
• 2:28:12
  I'd
• 2:28:13
  Rupert Isaacson: love it.
• 2:28:13
  There's there's someone else I'm thinking of that I I would Involve in it.
• 2:28:17
  Here's my friend, Jumanda Haklebone, who is from Botswana.
• 2:28:21
  He's he's Bushman.
• 2:28:24
  And that particular clan in the Central Kalahari Game Reserve are known for
• 2:28:28
  their horsemanship, and they're known for having sort of adopted and co opted
• 2:28:32
  horses in the same way that, say, the Comanche did and really created a sun
• 2:28:37
  bushman horse culture To the point that I took in fox hunting in Virginia.
• 2:28:42
  And he could ride anything, and he could bring you know, I had a lot of, you
• 2:28:46
  know, White blue blooded fox hunters.
• 2:28:50
  They're going, really?
• 2:28:51
  We're gonna give the horse to this guy?
• 2:28:52
  Like, believe me, he's gonna bring this horse in better than it went out.
• 2:28:56
  And they absolutely didn't how they access the shamanic and how they how they Co
• 2:29:03
  opted all their wild herbs that they use for all their other medicinal purposes
• 2:29:07
  for the horse before they really knew that even without really knowing the horse
• 2:29:11
  and how they created this horse culture.
• 2:29:13
  It's it's it's interesting stuff.
• 2:29:15
  But, look, there's so many questions just generally.
• 2:29:17
  I I think we gotta have a a round two.
• 2:29:20
  Linda Kohanov: Absolutely.
• 2:29:21
  And if you wanna bring your friend in on this too, I mean, that would be thrilling.
• 2:29:24
  It would.
• 2:29:25
  I mean,
• 2:29:25
  Rupert Isaacson: we might not be able to get him on live, but maybe what we can do
• 2:29:28
  is post some questions to And and and get him get him there because who knows where
• 2:29:32
  he is in the Kalahari at any given time.
• 2:29:34
  I see.
• 2:29:35
  Okay.
• 2:29:35
  He'll usually he'll usually answer a WhatsApp at a certain point
• 2:29:38
  when he's At a place where he has it's it's it's it's it's an
• 2:29:42
  extraordinary world we live in now.
• 2:29:43
  You have, you know, people living effectively hunter gatherer
• 2:29:47
  lifestyles with cell phones.
• 2:29:48
  You know?
• 2:29:48
  It's it's We're at an interesting crossroads of our culture.
• 2:29:52
  Okay.
• 2:29:53
  So for everybody listening, start with the Tower of Equus, Then it's riding
• 2:29:58
  between the worlds, then way of the horse, then the power of the herd, And
• 2:30:07
  then the five roles of a master herder.
• 2:30:11
  If you want the online courses, linda kohanov dot com.
• 2:30:16
  L I n d a k o h a n o v dot com.
• 2:30:24
  If you're looking for the live courses, whether in your area or
• 2:30:30
  in Arizona where she is, Hopefully.
• 2:30:32
  I'm sure there's a big waiting list.
• 2:30:34
  Eponaquest dot com, e p o n a q u e s t dot com.
• 2:30:43
  And if you wanna send her your questions r a s a, rasa, At epona quest dot com.
• 2:30:53
  Is there anything that you'd like to add before we close out round one?
• 2:31:02
  Linda Kohanov: No.
• 2:31:02
  I'm just so grateful to be able to connect with you.
• 2:31:05
  And your your story has been so moving to me over the years, and I had an
• 2:31:11
  opportunity just to meet up with you at At Warwick Schiller's conference.
• 2:31:16
  And I got to meet Rowan, and I think you might have seen how in shock I
• 2:31:20
  was at what An outstanding young man he's turned out to be in so many ways.
• 2:31:26
  So I found that so moving, and I'm just so happy to to meet up with you
• 2:31:31
  and have these great discussions.
• 2:31:33
  So thank you so
• 2:31:33
  Rupert Isaacson: much.
• 2:31:34
  Well, thank you.
• 2:31:35
  You know, that that makes me think, actually, you know, for
• 2:31:37
  round two, we should absolutely ask Rowan Some questions.
• 2:31:42
  That would be fun.
• 2:31:43
  Because he has he does have a really interesting connection to horses.
• 2:31:46
  While by no means being The obsessive horseman that I am at
• 2:31:52
  all, and yet he has this connection.
• 2:31:54
  It's it's to and not just a horse.
• 2:31:56
  It's all animals.
• 2:31:57
  It's it's really extraordinary.
• 2:31:58
  So, yeah, maybe we should think up some questions, and and he might
• 2:32:01
  even come on live, see how he feels.
• 2:32:03
  He'll actually be yeah, he'll be he'll be here in a couple of days.
• 2:32:08
  Listen.
• 2:32:08
  Linda, I'm so grateful.
• 2:32:11
  I I know that I'm gonna be emailing you to Come out to Arizona.
• 2:32:17
  I can't I would love that.
• 2:32:19
  So please let's talk about that.
• 2:32:20
  And, Obviously, if you come want to come to Germany and play with our ponies here
• 2:32:25
  in the forests of Hessen, please do.
• 2:32:28
  Linda Kohanov: mAybe in a Maybe in a year or two, I might come back to Europe.
• 2:32:31
  So Please.
• 2:32:32
  Rupert Isaacson: Door is wide open anytime.
• 2:32:35
  buT listen.
• 2:32:35
  We I'm very grateful.
• 2:32:37
  This has been extremely informative inspirational.
• 2:32:40
  I know that All of the listeners, whether they're horse people or not, will have
• 2:32:46
  walked away from hearing you with The Doorways Between the Worlds opened.
• 2:32:54
  So I thank you for that.
• 2:32:57
  Thank you.
• 2:32:59
  And I look forward to the next time.
• 2:33:01
  Me too.
• 2:33:03
  This is the hardest thing.
• 2:33:04
  I'm gonna hit that red button, but let's let's talk further and
• 2:33:09
  try to arrange the round too.
• 2:33:11
  And everybody who's listening, By all means, send your questions to me.
• 2:33:15
  By all means, send your questions to Linda, and we will endeavor
• 2:33:19
  to answer them on round two.
• 2:33:23
  Linda, thank you.
• 2:33:24
  Excellent.
• 2:33:25
  Alright.
• 2:33:25
  Thank you.
• 2:33:26
  thank you for joining us.
• 2:33:27
  We hope you enjoyed today's podcast.
• 2:33:29
  Join our website, new trails learning.com, to check out our online
• 2:33:34
  courses and live workshops in Horse Boy Method, movement Method, and Athena.
• 2:33:40
  These evidence-based programs have helped children, veterans, and people
• 2:33:45
  dealing with trauma around the world.
• 2:33:47
  We also offer a horse training program and self-care program
• 2:33:51
  for riders on long ride home.com.
• 2:33:54
  These include easy to do online courses and tutorials that
• 2:33:58
  bring you and your horse joy.
• 2:34:01
  For an overview of all shows and programs, go to rupert isaacson.com.
• 2:34:06
  See you on the next show.
• 2:34:07
  And please remember to press, subscribe and share.