Latest / Equine Assisted World with Rupert Isaacson / Ep 19: Kim Barthel - Relationship Matters

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Ep 19: Kim Barthel - Relationship Matters · Equine Assisted World with Rupert Isaacson

• 0:00
  Rupert Isaacson: Welcome to Equine Assisted World.
• 0:02
  I'm your host, Rupert Isaacson.
• 0:03
  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
• 0:47
  Welcome back to Equine Assisted World.
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  Today, I've got Kim Barthel.
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  Am I, I'm pronouncing that correct?
• 0:53
  Not Barthel, but Barthel?
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  Kim Barthel: You've got it, it's Barthel.
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  Rupert Isaacson: From Canada.
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  And the reason we've got Kim on today is because our great friend, who's
• 1:04
  also going to come on here, Lianna Tank, who's one of the most interesting
• 1:08
  human beings on the planet, basically.
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  And I'm going to get her on here for her own interview soon to do with her
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  work with the most intense populations of the criminally insane and how she
• 1:23
  is working neurobiology, neuroscience and horses and all of that into that.
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  She said, Rupert, there's this lady, Kim Barthel, and you've got
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  to bleeping, bleep, bleep, bleep, bleep, bleep, have her on the show.
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  And I looked at Kim Barthel, and I went, bleep!
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  She's kind of doing what we do, but she was kind of doing
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  it before we were doing it.
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  And I'm talking about the movement method end of what we do.
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  Because remember that I'm always encouraging all of us
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  horse obsessed nutters to get away from the horse sometimes.
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  Because remember that.
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  Not every person who comes or kid that comes is going
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  to be motivated by the horse.
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  Sometimes they are motivated on Monday, but not on Thursday.
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  And even if they are motivated, what are you doing with the rest
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  of the time that they're with you?
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  Because 90 percent of the time they're not on the horse.
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  And then also, what are you going to do when you send that client home, either
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  to their family, if it's a kid or home themselves, if they're an adult, what?
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  insights, what tools, what games, what brain building stuff are you going
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  to give them so that they can keep it going as a 24 seven culture of
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  movement and neuro plasticity at home?
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  Because if not, then yeah, sure.
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  Anytime they come to one of our centers, it's better than a kick in the face, but
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  we all know it won't get the job done.
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  The only thing that gets the job done is when there's a full participation.
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  So that's why we need people like Kim Barthel to come along and mentor us.
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  So Kim, can you tell us who you are, where you are, what you do, and why?
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  Kim Barthel: This is a podcast, so you can't see me smiling, but
• 3:00
  it's big from one ear to the other.
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  And thank you for inviting me to have this conversation with you.
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  Rupert Isaacson: I have
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  Kim Barthel: known, I have known about you a very long time.
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  Well,
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  Rupert Isaacson: that sounds ominous.
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  Kim Barthel: In a very positive way, of course, because of the famous horse
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  boy movie and my work in the field of special needs, neurodiversity, autism
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  for this is year number four zero.
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  That makes me feel a bit.
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  Nauseous, but that's when you
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  Rupert Isaacson: don't look a day over 12.
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  So you
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  Kim Barthel: bless you.
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  Bless you.
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  So I I'm an occupational therapist historically with many things that
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  came after a specialty in neuroscience, neurobiology sensory processing and
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  movement and ended up working in the field of trauma for most of my career.
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  Sort of with deep love, passion and unexpectedly.
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  Rupert Isaacson: So more trauma was a thing, right?
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  Kim Barthel: Yeah.
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  Before trauma was a thing, you know, before it was a thing.
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  And so, putting those pieces together is what I'm interested in.
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  The mind, body, spirit way of thinking of human experience.
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  The name of our company is called Relationship Matters.
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  And so, the tagline, the mission of our company is to support the conscious
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  evolution of the human spirit.
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  and how that fits into the realm of how people can become their best self.
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  Rupert Isaacson: Now, you, in our little preamble, said you are let's see if I
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  get this right, a neurodevelopmental
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  treatment instructor.
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  Kim Barthel: You got it.
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  What is that?
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  Good, good question.
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  Well, you know, in our, Rehab fields of physical therapy, occupational therapy.
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  There are lots of theories, frames of reference, for how to support people in
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  becoming better at moving their bodies.
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  And neurodevelopmental treatment was developed in the
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  fifties by a lady named Mrs.
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  Berta Bobath right after World War, well, World War II, after World War
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  II, because rehab in that era was not really very clued in yet to the brain.
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  Rupert Isaacson: Right.
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  Kim Barthel: And how to change motor system, stroke, cerebral
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  palsy kids with spina bifida.
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  This was very new, polio in that, in that era.
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  And Mrs.
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  Bobath.
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  She learned through her own intuition, as you know, most magical, amazing things
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  are often, I think, intuitively channeled.
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  This came from her, and she was a sculptor.
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  And through putting her hands on people's bodies, she helped them learn
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  to bring online The muscles that were unaccessible, inaccessible, and to quieten
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  the ones that were working too hard.
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  And this technique she called handling, putting your hands on the body to help.
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  And you really deeply have to understand anatomy, and how muscles work together.
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  And so this theory became the way.
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  That the popular mechanism of how therapists would treat, especially
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  children, with neuromotor challenges in the 60s, 70s, 80s, 90s, until today.
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  Rupert Isaacson: Okay.
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  What got you attracted to this?
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  Kim Barthel: Kind of serendipitously, really, because when I first
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  graduated from university, my love was the sensory systems.
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  And I went to study with Dr.
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  Jean Ayers.
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  Rupert Isaacson: Why?
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  Why was it the sensory system to your first love?
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  Kim Barthel: I don't know.
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  You know how sometimes You just know you know something.
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  Rupert Isaacson: And it's
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  Kim Barthel: like I've been doing this.
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  Rupert Isaacson: Did you have sensory issues yourself?
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  Kim Barthel: Not, not, well, not really.
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  Not, not in the way that you think about it.
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  Rupert Isaacson: Were you surrounded by people that did?
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  Kim Barthel: I, I really yes.
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  I was exposed to, to children with neurodiversity as a child.
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  And I wanted to.
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  And
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  Rupert Isaacson: how come?
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  How come?
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  Because a lot of people were not back then.
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  That there was a lot of separation.
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  Kim Barthel: I don't, I don't know that I can answer that question to you.
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  I think.
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  They were in your
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  Rupert Isaacson: school, they were in your family, they were in your groups.
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  No, just,
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  Kim Barthel: Sort of, an exposure.
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  And I guess a personality quality of mine is I want to do, I have
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  a deep desire to do something meaningful and also different.
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  So occupational therapy is a, and was in the 80s, something
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  that people didn't have a clue.
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  What it, what it was.
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  And when I started in my path of university, this theory of
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  sensory integration for kids with autism was so fascinating to me
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  because it was so mysterious.
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  And it made sense that if I was struggling with processing, it would
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  impact the way I engage in the world.
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  And, and that's why I started there.
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  Yeah.
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  Rupert Isaacson: What I find intriguing is that in the 80s.
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  Obviously through the 90s and early 2000s, the, the main way of looking at
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  autism treatments was through behavior, behavioral, you know, ABA and so on.
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  And we're still battling with that to some degree in the USA, even though in
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  other parts of the world, it's, thank God, you know, being consigned to history.
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  How come you weren't drawn to that?
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  Because that was the prevalent thing.
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  And why to the sensory integration?
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  And did you face opposition?
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  Kim Barthel: Big time.
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  I think that the behavioral approach never resonated with me.
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  And, and I guess that
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  Rupert Isaacson: Why was that?
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  Kim Barthel: Well, I guess that spiritual component that I'm talking about over and
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  over again here was just in my fabric.
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  And I don't talk about, I don't mean religious, I mean the
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  compassionate state of human behavior.
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  It just was.
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  Who I was, and none of that ever felt right.
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  And Dr.
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  Ayers was all about child, the child guides treatment.
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  Rupert Isaacson: Interesting.
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  Kim Barthel: Child centered practice.
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  Rupert Isaacson: And this is back in the In the
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  Kim Barthel: 80s.
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  Yeah,
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  Rupert Isaacson: because you know, you know, our ethos with movement
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  method is follow the child.
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  Right.
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  And I, but I was given that by Dr.
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  Temple Grandin, who was of course given that by her mother.
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  So you could argue that movement method is really a result of mentorship
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  from Temple Grandin's mother.
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  But even when I was trying to follow that advice in the early days.
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  In the.
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  You know, early 2000s.
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  My God, was the opposition vicious.
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  You must have felt, you must have faced a fair amount of
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  Kim Barthel: I'm
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  Rupert Isaacson: smiling
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  Kim Barthel: because Temple Grandin is a commonality between us.
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  Rupert Isaacson: Okay.
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  Kim Barthel: At my very first conference, I was 20, at the Ayers Clinic, I
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  was introduced to Temple Grandin.
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  So in a sense, Dr.
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  Ayers gave her to me as my practicum.
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  Rupert Isaacson: Interesting.
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  Kim Barthel: And Temple was developing her hug machine at the time.
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  And she gave me the inside experience of what it was like to live in a
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  body that processed differently.
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  And she could put words to it.
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  And so I have known her 40 years, and she was a profound influence on this
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  idea of being with people where they are.
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  Rupert Isaacson: What was, if you could say in one line, what she told you that
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  resonated in words, what did she say?
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  Kim Barthel: Well, it's really actually not what she said
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  specifically as in one thing, it's how she would give me feedback.
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  So for example, she may not remember this, and she might
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  hope she giggles if she does.
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  She said to me, Kim, why are you, I had a sweater on, why are you wearing a carpet?
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  And I, I, of course, had no knowledge about anything.
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  But that's not fair
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  Rupert Isaacson: because she wears sweaters.
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  She knows what a sweater
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  Kim Barthel: is.
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  But it was the nature of the quality of the fuzz, right?
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  And she said, I, that, that, and then she went on to describe
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  how that hurt to look at it.
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  Rupert Isaacson: Interesting.
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  Kim Barthel: And just the
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  Rupert Isaacson: texture of the
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  Kim Barthel: texture
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  Rupert Isaacson: of that sweater
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  Kim Barthel: sweater.
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  Yeah, like
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  Rupert Isaacson: note to self in September when I'm going to
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  be hanging out with no sweater.
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  Kim Barthel: Right.
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  Rupert Isaacson: Yes.
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  Kim Barthel: And then she said something to me like, stop moving
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  your lips I'm trying to listen to you.
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  And I was like, I don't know if I can do that.
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  Because she was working hard on processing my speech and my face at the same time.
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  Rupert Isaacson: Okay.
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  And those,
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  Kim Barthel: those are the things that had deep profound impact
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  for endlessly for the future.
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  Rupert Isaacson: Yeah, I can see that.
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  I could see that, you know, one of the things we never do is demand
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  any kind of eye contact, right?
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  We could, we say, you know, if they look at you, great.
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  If they don't be interesting, they might, but if they're not looking at you,
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  they're probably taking in what you're saying in the same way that if someone's
• 13:36
  listening to this podcast while driving a car, they don't need to look at us for
• 13:40
  sure, taking what you're saying, right?
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  Do you think if you had at that point turned your face away and said, okay,
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  fine, temple, you know, look at the wall or turn away from me, just listen.
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  Like on the radio, you know, might that have worked?
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  Kim Barthel: I mean, that's in fact what I did.
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  And so I think this idea, you know, we talked today about the
• 14:01
  neurodiverse affirming movement.
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  I think I've been living that for my whole career of not trying to
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  get people to be what I want them to be, but to how I can be with them.
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  And that's what I think she taught me in that conversation.
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  Rupert Isaacson: Brilliant.
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  I would love to get together over a bottle of wine with you two.
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  I will probably be the only one drinking the wine, but it'll certainly
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  help my, lubricate my understanding.
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  Kim Barthel: But you asked me also, how did I get to movement?
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  Yes.
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  Wine.
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  So, so Dr.
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  Ayers looked at me one day, who I, who to me was like, I couldn't think
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  of anyone that was more important.
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  Brilliant.
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  As a mentor,
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  Rupert Isaacson: she
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  Kim Barthel: said, Kim, you've got to go learn about the body.
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  And I was like, okay, I'm like 21 years old and I don't
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  know anything from anything.
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  And I said, okay, I'll go do that.
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  What does that mean?
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  And she said, well, I think that neurodevelopmental
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  treatment, go and study with Mrs.
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  Bobath in London, the UK, you got to go do that.
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  And I was like, okay.
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  So I tripped off to take what we call an eight week certification course.
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  With Mrs.
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  Bobath, and
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  Rupert Isaacson: That's such a great name, Bobath.
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  Kim Barthel: It is, isn't it?
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  And that was the beginning of that, that part of the collective thought process.
• 15:31
  And I think that, you know, one of the reasons that she asked me, Dr.
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  Ayers, reflectively, Dr.
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  Ayers passed away, so I never had a chance to ask her why.
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  Why me and why that?
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  But it, with reflection, I think it was about how sensation impacts and
• 15:50
  connects to the body in movement, which was not part yet of the fully developed,
• 15:57
  fully baked theory of SI at that time.
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  Rupert Isaacson: SI being?
• 16:02
  Sensory Intervention.
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  Sensory Intervention.
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  Okay.
• 16:04
  Kim Barthel: Yeah.
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  Rupert Isaacson: And were you yourself someone who who moved a lot?
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  Are you still now someone who moves a lot?
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  Kim Barthel: That's such a good question.
• 16:12
  Honestly, no.
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  Rupert Isaacson: Okay.
• 16:14
  Interesting.
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  And I
• 16:14
  Kim Barthel: think, I think that also, I mean, I was a dancer.
• 16:18
  Rupert Isaacson: Well, then yes.
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  Kim Barthel: And I never felt good enough.
• 16:25
  Rupert Isaacson: You're like a classical dancer, like ballet.
• 16:27
  Kim Barthel: Classical dancer, yeah.
• 16:28
  Rupert Isaacson: Ah, that's the problem.
• 16:29
  Perfectionism.
• 16:30
  It's just like dressage.
• 16:31
  Yeah.
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  It's it's ayanga yoga.
• 16:34
  You know, I mean, when we go for perfectionism, we just kill the joy.
• 16:37
  Yeah.
• 16:38
  Yeah.
• 16:38
  Kim Barthel: Yep.
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  There was.
• 16:39
  And so my love of movement was, yeah, dampened by the experience
• 16:48
  of not ever feeling good enough.
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  And I was shocked when Mrs.
• 16:55
  Bobath said, I think you need to teach this because never did I think that
• 17:02
  I would be skilled enough to do that.
• 17:05
  So, You'd
• 17:07
  Rupert Isaacson: given up on dance.
• 17:09
  Early, like in childhood or in your teen?
• 17:10
  Kim Barthel: Seventeen, seventeen.
• 17:12
  I don't think of that as so early, I did it, took, you know,
• 17:15
  classical dance for seventeen
• 17:17
  Rupert Isaacson: years.
• 17:18
  And was it, was it a great love, classical dance, or actually was it just
• 17:21
  something that you were made to do and you actually liked to move in every way?
• 17:25
  Kim Barthel: No one's ever asked me these questions before.
• 17:28
  Good for you.
• 17:29
  It's a combination, it was intermittent, you know, there was
• 17:33
  times of great love and then times of.
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  I can't stop this because I'm, I'm, I'm in, I'm in the flow of it feeling like
• 17:46
  there's some need to complete something.
• 17:49
  Rupert Isaacson: I am in blood steeped so far that to turn back
• 17:51
  was tedious as to go that's Macbeth.
• 17:55
  He said when he feels he can't stop because the momentum is taking him.
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  No, I, I know exactly what that feels.
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  And, and one was often made to feel that way, of course, by family.
• 18:04
  Yes.
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  Mentors, you know.
• 18:09
  Did it break your heart?
• 18:13
  Kim Barthel: Did it break my heart?
• 18:14
  I think I'm still working on it.
• 18:16
  Rupert Isaacson: Yeah.
• 18:17
  Kim Barthel: And I think that the lingering feeling of not good enough
• 18:22
  has been both a gift and a curse.
• 18:26
  Rupert Isaacson: Right.
• 18:27
  And because of course the cold hard fact is that even the ballet
• 18:30
  dancers that make it, make it, make it, never feel good enough.
• 18:34
  Yes.
• 18:34
  And
• 18:38
  the axe to the chest that you've just described.
• 18:42
  of course, allowed you to view the world compassionately.
• 18:46
  But it's a rough go.
• 18:49
  It would be nice if kids didn't have to go through that in order to.
• 18:52
  Kim Barthel: Exactly.
• 18:54
  And I think, you know, the gift of knowing Movement from the
• 18:58
  inside, and then also witnessing or experiencing people who struggle
• 19:06
  Rupert Isaacson: to
• 19:06
  Kim Barthel: move,
• 19:08
  It just gave me a sense of
• 19:14
  embodied understanding,
• 19:17
  meaning I can feel movement.
• 19:20
  As I watch movement.
• 19:24
  Rupert Isaacson: That's interesting.
• 19:26
  Kim Barthel: And without that experience, I don't think I would have that in me.
• 19:32
  Rupert Isaacson: It's a really interesting thing.
• 19:34
  If movement's ever been taken away, and I know a lot of people listening
• 19:36
  to this would've been in situations, so movement has been taken away
• 19:39
  either permanently or temporarily.
• 19:41
  But for example, I smashed up both legs once and you know, I was parked
• 19:45
  on the couch for a long time, and the appreciation of being able to
• 19:50
  like get up and go to have a pee.
• 19:52
  And what a privilege that is, and what a, what a pee village, in
• 19:56
  fact, that is, and you know, it's stuff that I've taken for granted.
• 20:02
  Gratitude versus entitlement
• 20:07
  really starts with movement.
• 20:09
  I mean, if you think about a slime mold.
• 20:13
  Put that slime mold into a Into a labyrinth, and they see it go,
• 20:19
  or they put the slime mold into a controlled thing where they put some
• 20:23
  toxin and it goes away from the toxin.
• 20:26
  If the slime mold couldn't find its way through the labyrinth, if
• 20:28
  the slime mold couldn't move away from the toxin, imagine, even at
• 20:33
  that level, cellular suffering.
• 20:35
  Kim Barthel: Totally.
• 20:36
  Rupert Isaacson: And I think that's something we can all relate to.
• 20:39
  So listen, you said that I actually thought that you were not a horse person.
• 20:42
  I was thinking, okay, I'm just going to be putting this one up there for the horse.
• 20:47
  crazies amongst us, which include me to remind us that we should, you know,
• 20:51
  learn our neuroscience and all of this.
• 20:53
  But it turns out you actually do have a background with equine therapy.
• 20:56
  Can you just go into that a little bit before we go on to the work
• 20:59
  that you actually do now and what we can learn from you just so
• 21:02
  we can understand your context?
• 21:04
  Kim Barthel: Sure.
• 21:05
  My connection to the horse world didn't come because of a love of horses.
• 21:11
  It actually came from a love of movement and seeing the horse.
• 21:17
  as an offering for enhancement of movement experience for kids that,
• 21:24
  especially children, who had quite limited mobility, cerebral palsy, and
• 21:32
  the whole opportunity for weight shift, movement through space experiencing
• 21:40
  connection with a being that allowed them to feel, felt, this was my draw.
• 21:50
  Rupert Isaacson: And to be moved, to be moved by something, giving
• 21:54
  you, lending you its power, right?
• 21:56
  Kim Barthel: Yes.
• 21:57
  And, and, and very quickly it was obvious to me that this
• 22:03
  was a relational experience.
• 22:06
  Rupert Isaacson: When did you get involved in therapy, therapeutic writing and how?
• 22:11
  Kim Barthel: So I lived in a place called Winnipeg.
• 22:15
  Canada, and we had a startup therapeutic riding process that
• 22:24
  was one woman who wanted to use her horses for the purpose of.
• 22:31
  Supporting kids with disability,
• 22:33
  Rupert Isaacson: and this is when
• 22:35
  Kim Barthel: it would have been in the early 90s.
• 22:39
  Rupert Isaacson: And up until then, there was nothing that
• 22:41
  Kim Barthel: there was nothing, especially where I was living.
• 22:43
  I mean, I'm, I know that it existed before that, but not in the area where I was.
• 22:51
  And given my appreciation and understanding of movement and sensation
• 22:55
  in this way, this organization sought me out and said, can you come and help us
• 23:02
  understand what we might do on the horse?
• 23:05
  I
• 23:05
  Rupert Isaacson: see.
• 23:07
  So they, they contacted you as a consultant?
• 23:10
  Kim Barthel: Yes.
• 23:11
  And what
• 23:11
  Rupert Isaacson: did you show them?
• 23:11
  What did you suggest?
• 23:13
  Kim Barthel: Well, I'll never forget the first time I went.
• 23:15
  And we did back riding, meaning I was actually sitting on
• 23:20
  the horse with the child.
• 23:22
  Rupert Isaacson: Okay.
• 23:23
  Even though you're a rider?
• 23:24
  Kim Barthel: Yes.
• 23:26
  Rupert Isaacson: So they'd obviously produce a nice safe
• 23:28
  horse underneath you, right?
• 23:30
  Kim Barthel: Definitely.
• 23:31
  Definitely.
• 23:33
  And this experience for me was necessary
• 23:38
  Rupert Isaacson: because
• 23:39
  Kim Barthel: not only was I feeling the movement of the child in front
• 23:43
  of me, but I was simultaneously experiencing the movement of the horse.
• 23:49
  Rupert Isaacson: Fantastic.
• 23:50
  Kim Barthel: And so there was this, I think, I know you know exactly what I'm
• 23:54
  talking about, you know, sitting there with your child and feeling them while
• 24:01
  feeling the movement through yourself.
• 24:04
  And this was what helped me figure out, so to speak, that word is too
• 24:10
  literal, how we might use saddles.
• 24:16
  in different ways.
• 24:17
  What could be done on a horse in a back riding situation, which I
• 24:22
  don't think is as common today.
• 24:24
  Rupert Isaacson: No, I'd say the horse boy, us, we're one
• 24:26
  of the only people that do it.
• 24:28
  Kim Barthel: Yeah.
• 24:29
  I don't know if it's good for the horse.
• 24:30
  I don't know.
• 24:31
  Rupert Isaacson: It is if you make the back very strong.
• 24:33
  Because the entire culture of Asia, Northern Asia, and most of the Americas
• 24:42
  would be all killing their horses if it wasn't, because that's how
• 24:45
  all their kids grow up, because they actually use horses for transport.
• 24:48
  So it's a interesting, rather racist viewpoint that a lot of
• 24:53
  Western horse people have, is that this must be bad for the horse.
• 24:56
  But where they're, where they're, It writes off all those cultures immediately.
• 24:59
  However, where they're being trying to be good is where it's coming from
• 25:03
  a good places they they're concerned for the health of the horses back and
• 25:06
  it is true that if you're going to ride with someone in front of you.
• 25:11
  You want to make sure that you put.
• 25:13
  inordinate amounts of muscle on the horse's back.
• 25:15
  So that's what we do.
• 25:17
  Kim Barthel: Very good.
• 25:19
  And so, you know, we also looked at changes in direction, reach into space,
• 25:27
  games, as you talked about earlier, what, what kind of stop, start, reach and throw.
• 25:35
  These were very early activities that we thought of to engage kids in moving
• 25:43
  their bodies in ways that they couldn't do sitting in a wheelchair or on the floor.
• 25:51
  Rupert Isaacson: Tell us those of us who Don't know in neuroscience.
• 25:54
  What do those activities do for the brain?
• 26:00
  Kim Barthel: Okay, deep breath, where do we start?
• 26:04
  What's so interesting about that question is what I know
• 26:07
  today versus what I knew then.
• 26:11
  Because our understanding of neuroscience today is so vastly different compared
• 26:19
  to the day of the 90s where we, you know, we're beginning to understand
• 26:25
  the concepts of neuroplasticity.
• 26:28
  Rupert Isaacson: It was a new word then.
• 26:30
  Kim Barthel: It was a big new word and, and really the foundation of change,
• 26:36
  the potential for the brain to heal itself.
• 26:41
  Because prior to that time, it was believed that was not possible.
• 26:44
  Rupert Isaacson: Right.
• 26:45
  I mean, it's not that long ago that even in mainstream neuroscience, the doctrine
• 26:51
  was the brain is hardwired at five.
• 26:54
  We now know that's so not true, but it was orthodox for a while.
• 26:58
  Yeah.
• 26:58
  Kim Barthel: Yes.
• 27:00
  And so the You know, the idea of neurodevelopmental treatment was even
• 27:07
  founded on this premise that there is learning happening all the time.
• 27:12
  And I don't just mean learning as in practical skills, but
• 27:17
  learning at a cellular level.
• 27:20
  And you know, it's funny you use the word, it's slime mold.
• 27:24
  I often give the description of, I was working in the neuroscience lab,
• 27:28
  looking at a paramecium in a Petri dish.
• 27:32
  Rupert Isaacson: What's a paramecium, for those of us that don't know?
• 27:34
  It's
• 27:34
  Kim Barthel: a single cell, and it has a brain in its membrane, and it knows
• 27:41
  where to swim and where not to swim, dependent on what's in the environment.
• 27:46
  And when you drop in a toxin into the petri dish, that, that cell will
• 27:51
  not move in that direction again.
• 27:54
  And this is the premise of rehab, is, or, or, never mind rehab, that sounds
• 28:03
  like, Because for many kids, it's not rehabilitation, it's habilitation.
• 28:08
  You know, their bodies never had those experiences.
• 28:13
  So we understand that the brain is an inter today, today, we
• 28:18
  understand that the brain is multi faceted, interconnected circuits.
• 28:25
  That's non hierarchical.
• 28:27
  That things are moving in loops.
• 28:30
  And impact in one area of the brain will have interface
• 28:36
  in other areas of the brain.
• 28:40
  And so when you are, for example moving through space side to side,
• 28:46
  forward and backward, we call this weight shift on the horse.
• 28:51
  This impacts the brainstem, the cerebellum, the basal ganglia.
• 28:57
  These are blah, blah, blah words in a neuroscience way.
• 29:01
  It impacts the frontal cortex.
• 29:04
  It, it has an impact on structures of knowing where my body is
• 29:09
  and who I am and who I'm not.
• 29:11
  Rupert Isaacson: Procreception.
• 29:12
  Kim Barthel: Yep.
• 29:13
  In, in pteroception.
• 29:15
  This is me, this is not me.
• 29:18
  That all of these experiences that the horse offers integrates the brain.
• 29:27
  In, in a way that allows circuits to wire together, that they
• 29:35
  may not have an opportunity to do in a different environment.
• 29:40
  Rupert Isaacson: And again, for those people for whom neuroscience is
• 29:43
  something new, why is that a good thing?
• 29:48
  Kim Barthel: Oh, why is it a good thing?
• 29:51
  First of all, one of the greatest challenges that is so poorly understood
• 29:58
  is that my sense of self, me or me in relationship to other, means that
• 30:09
  The sensory experiences that I'm taking in have to be felt by me as me.
• 30:16
  Gosh, that's abstract, isn't it?
• 30:19
  Rupert Isaacson: Yeah, but it makes sense.
• 30:21
  Kim Barthel: You know, I have to know I'm moving, that there's an I.
• 30:28
  And I think that so many people with differently wired
• 30:30
  brains struggle with this.
• 30:34
  Rupert Isaacson: Yeah.
• 30:34
  Kim Barthel: Struggle with knowing what's me and what's not me.
• 30:38
  Rupert Isaacson: Absolutely.
• 30:40
  Yeah.
• 30:40
  Yeah.
• 30:40
  Where are the boundaries between myself and the world?
• 30:45
  You know, it's interesting Rowan Scubb he's actually
• 30:47
  downstairs while I'm giving this.
• 30:49
  He's eating his dinner.
• 30:50
  He's just been helping.
• 30:52
  Today building the fence pasture and the 23 year old hulking six foot one dude who
• 30:58
  drives independently, who has his own car, who just sold in the process of selling
• 31:03
  his house so that he can have money in investment that he can then live on.
• 31:08
  This is a very, but he, as you know, he didn't start that.
• 31:12
  And he, he himself says the early years were a blur of feeling a confusion.
• 31:23
  of not knowing where he began and ended.
• 31:26
  And that while that might feel good in a certain moment in a sort of certain
• 31:31
  altered state of consciousness, if you go through life that way, it's
• 31:35
  really confusing and disorienting and alarming and upsetting.
• 31:40
  And there is a certain point With all this movement and with all
• 31:44
  this integration with nature and all this sensory integration,
• 31:48
  effectively, things began to clarify.
• 31:51
  He, and he talks about this with parents a lot, who are trying to understand
• 31:54
  what their kids are going through.
• 31:55
  It's very interesting that you were observing this you
• 31:58
  know, back in the early 90s.
• 32:00
  Kim Barthel: Well, this is why, this is why your work was so appealing to me.
• 32:06
  That when I first watched and read about Horseboy, I thought, of course!
• 32:13
  This and, and the idea of also the spiritual aspect of looking at person
• 32:20
  from a holistic perspective had a deep resonance of this is what's
• 32:25
  happening to the brain is you're putting together pieces that didn't
• 32:30
  necessarily connect well in isolated ways that through opportunity,
• 32:38
  you've allowed those freeways.
• 32:41
  that have an inherent design to connect, but just couldn't get there,
• 32:49
  now have the experience to do it.
• 32:51
  Rupert Isaacson: Right.
• 32:52
  I think that's a really good point that they have an inherent design, not which
• 32:56
  of course is therefore desire, right?
• 32:58
  So why, yeah, why would it feel distressing to feel
• 33:02
  those blurred boundaries?
• 33:03
  Because as you say, we're designed to feel not hard boundaries, but nonetheless,
• 33:09
  do we have an epidermis, you know, it stands between us and the world we have,
• 33:13
  you We have this sense of self, and this is our compass, this is our navigation,
• 33:18
  and so it's very interesting that you said design, because yes, to experience
• 33:25
  one's self not operating to one's innate design, how could that not feel alarming?
• 33:34
  Kim Barthel: Definitely.
• 33:35
  And you know, when we think about we are really designed for survival,
• 33:42
  not for comfort, darn it.
• 33:44
  Yeah.
• 33:46
  And so we are inherently That's why God
• 33:48
  Rupert Isaacson: invested, invented Scotch whisky.
• 33:50
  Yeah.
• 33:52
  Kim Barthel: Yes, and many other forms of adaptive behavior to
• 33:56
  help us cope with this, with this experience called human life.
• 34:02
  But I think that we are tracking for danger constantly.
• 34:05
  Rupert Isaacson: Yes, yes.
• 34:07
  Kim Barthel: And we regulate our sense of distress in the body.
• 34:16
  I have to feel me in order to regulate me.
• 34:23
  And that sounds, I know that when I say that, that sounds fluffy, but it's
• 34:29
  like, I have to, Understand what I'm experiencing at a very primitive level
• 34:34
  anyway, in order to feel safe in it.
• 34:38
  Rupert Isaacson: Yeah, if I'm walking, it's interesting, while I'm, while I'm
• 34:41
  having this talk, the, the screen saver thing is a photograph of that we took last
• 34:49
  year in Etosha Game Reserve in Namibia.
• 34:53
  With my family, as you know, I spent time with the Bushmen and we were on our way
• 34:58
  to meet them, the son, and the picture that I'm looking at is of two young lions
• 35:05
  playing and there's a herd of zebra behind them, and they're all grazing peacefully,
• 35:10
  but there's two zebra who are watching the lion, and then behind them, there's
• 35:15
  a herd of springbok who are not bothering to watch the lions because they know
• 35:17
  the zebra are watching the lions, and The zebra know very well that as long as
• 35:23
  the lions are in that behavior, they're okay, but it needs to be monitored.
• 35:28
  And they also know that If those three quarter grown lion cubs that they're
• 35:36
  playing, well, lion, big cats live with their parents for up to two years.
• 35:41
  So it means that the females must be, the fully grown females, the
• 35:45
  lionesses, must be somewhere around.
• 35:48
  And either they're going to sneak around the back or they're hanging out close to
• 35:55
  their three quarter grown cubs because they don't want the hyenas to come and go.
• 35:58
  So either way, the situation needs to be monitored, but they're not monitoring
• 36:02
  it in a way that is huge alarm.
• 36:05
  They're just keeping an eye while the rest of the great herd grazes.
• 36:11
  If they didn't have a sense of self, I'm a zebra and that's a lion.
• 36:17
  And it's over there at that distance.
• 36:19
  And this behavior means this in relation to, am I safe?
• 36:23
  Am I not safe?
• 36:25
  One could imagine that.
• 36:27
  It would certainly add to the already probably quite great stresses of hanging
• 36:31
  out close to lions if you're a zebra.
• 36:33
  Kim Barthel: You, you, you've described this such a, in such an elegant way.
• 36:37
  And you're reminding me of my neurobiology professor, Robert Sapolsky, who
• 36:43
  wrote, Why Zebras Don't Get Ulcers.
• 36:46
  Rupert Isaacson: Interesting.
• 36:48
  Kim Barthel: And he is a biologist, neurobiologist, and studied exactly what
• 36:54
  you're talking about and how our autonomic nervous system, I call it the automatic
• 37:00
  nervous system, is, it has a knowing.
• 37:05
  And the knowing doesn't necessarily require language.
• 37:08
  It's a knowing that is very sensory based intuitive based.
• 37:14
  That comes from this monitoring that you're talking about and allows me
• 37:20
  to shift into fight flight freeze.
• 37:26
  or a sense of centeredness that allows me to continue to monitor
• 37:34
  but not experience terror or fear.
• 37:38
  And if I didn't have an integrated sense of body, I wouldn't be able to do this.
• 37:44
  Rupert Isaacson: You know, this is really good.
• 37:45
  This is, you know, a lot of, I think for a lot of people, a word like
• 37:49
  A phrase like sensory integration.
• 37:51
  It's one of those things you hear, and the first time you hear it,
• 37:53
  you're like, oh, what's that then?
• 37:54
  And then you go, oh, well, I suppose I sort of know what that is because,
• 37:57
  so it's like people, when they hear autism, they're like, oh, what's that?
• 38:00
  And then, oh, I suppose I should, but no one actually says, well, It's these
• 38:03
  three letters, A U T, that should have an O on the end, auto, meaning
• 38:08
  the self, the Greek word for the self, you know, locked in the self.
• 38:11
  So, and then you go, Oh, right.
• 38:13
  Okay, now I understand why they call it autism.
• 38:16
  Sensory integration, it's really interesting the way you explain
• 38:18
  it there, because I remember in my early days of all this, people
• 38:22
  saying, Oh, sensory integration.
• 38:23
  I'd be like, Oh, shit.
• 38:23
  You know, I'm supposed to know what that means.
• 38:25
  I've got no idea at all what that means.
• 38:27
  But unfortunately, I think a lot of times these Phrases are thought up by academics.
• 38:36
  So for example, like you say, autonomic, you'd rather call it automatic.
• 38:40
  I agree with you there, because when you hear autonomic, you just think,
• 38:43
  unfamiliar word, don't hear that, getting onto the subway every day,
• 38:48
  don't hear that when I'm buying.
• 38:50
  You know, my newspaper or whatever, it seems to exist only in this context, and
• 38:56
  it makes me feel kind of a bit stupid if I don't automatically know what it is.
• 39:03
  Sensory integration, I think a lot of these terms, the language, the jargon
• 39:08
  gets in the way of the understanding.
• 39:11
  Couldn't
• 39:11
  Kim Barthel: agree with, couldn't agree with more.
• 39:14
  And it's to make it into understandable concepts that is useful to families
• 39:23
  and to people who themselves are looking to be their best self.
• 39:29
  Rupert Isaacson: So sensory integration then is if I know who
• 39:32
  I am and where I am and what I am, then I know how to keep myself safe.
• 39:35
  Basically,
• 39:37
  Kim Barthel: you did it.
• 39:38
  I don't know if anyone else has said it that simply great bottom line.
• 39:43
  You know, there's another thought I'm having as you're talking
• 39:46
  that autism is not one thing,
• 39:49
  Rupert Isaacson: right?
• 39:50
  Kim Barthel: That every person, you know, most of the children that I've
• 39:53
  treated with autism are now in their 30s.
• 39:57
  They all have a different story.
• 40:01
  How they experience.
• 40:05
  And it, you know, it's often very simply described academically as being
• 40:11
  overly sensitive or having difficulty in processing a piece of information.
• 40:18
  This is not my experience.
• 40:20
  My experience is that there is a difficulty in putting pieces together.
• 40:27
  That often the way one sense, works together with another sense, isn't
• 40:35
  easy to make the puzzle whole, and so people really oversimplify
• 40:45
  their attempt to understand what it is, I think, the persons who's
• 40:50
  differently wired is really living in.
• 40:54
  Rupert Isaacson: It's an interesting thing.
• 40:54
  I think anyone who's ever taken a psychotropic, a strong psychotropic
• 40:58
  and psychedelic drug has had that feeling of disintegration.
• 41:01
  Kim Barthel: Correct.
• 41:02
  Rupert Isaacson: And I think if one hasn't had that feeling of, oh shit,
• 41:07
  you know, I'm sort of disappearing, I'm fragmenting, I've, my cells are
• 41:11
  breaking up, I'm, I've lost, not just lost control, but I am no longer me.
• 41:18
  Kim Barthel: Right.
• 41:19
  Rupert Isaacson: Disembodied.
• 41:20
  Although there is a me that's experiencing this, you know, which is
• 41:22
  what anchors one in those experiences.
• 41:25
  Imagine going through that all the time.
• 41:30
  Kim Barthel: And, and, and trying to organize relationships and, and
• 41:36
  also mask so that people, so that you give people what they want.
• 41:42
  My heart breaks when I think about it.
• 41:45
  Rupert Isaacson: I'll tell you a funny story, but it's, it's a public story now.
• 41:48
  It's not me but something that describes that perfectly is, have you
• 41:52
  seen the Carlos Santana documentary?
• 41:55
  Kim Barthel: No.
• 41:56
  Rupert Isaacson: Okay.
• 41:56
  It's brilliant.
• 41:57
  Okay.
• 41:57
  It's brilliant.
• 41:58
  the plane and when he played at Woodstock.
• 42:02
  He was they're going through this and he was really young and he, he'd be
• 42:06
  the house band at the Fillmore in San Francisco only because he tried to
• 42:11
  break in to see the bands because he was this Hispanic boy from Tijuana, right?
• 42:16
  And that raised by Mariachi, good musician.
• 42:19
  And when they said, Hey, you're breaking in this of, yeah, but
• 42:20
  I just really want to see that.
• 42:22
  And they said, okay, can you play guitar?
• 42:23
  And they sort of challenged him and he did that.
• 42:25
  You're awesome.
• 42:25
  And it kind of, he became house band sort of age 20.
• 42:28
  And then he finds himself.
• 42:30
  at Woodstock.
• 42:31
  And apparently he says all those crazy facial contortions I'm doing at Woodstock.
• 42:38
  He said, what happened was I arrived on the helicopter and I got off
• 42:44
  the helicopter and there was Jerry Garcia of the Grateful Dead sitting.
• 42:47
  He said, here, take these.
• 42:51
  What are these?
• 42:51
  And they said, these are very, very, this is very, very strong LSD.
• 42:54
  However, you're on the bill to go up in about six hours.
• 42:58
  This is a long concert, so you've got time to go up and go down.
• 43:01
  And so he went, okay, I did the math.
• 43:03
  I think I could do that.
• 43:04
  And he took him apparently half an hour and said, okay, you're up.
• 43:08
  And he said, he went on stage.
• 43:11
  And his guitar neck became a snake that he couldn't control
• 43:16
  wobbly snake that was right.
• 43:18
  And he said, all of those facial expressions I'm doing on me saying,
• 43:23
  because I've got a rooted sense of self saying I know I am actually
• 43:25
  Carlos Santana I know I am here in front of 100, 000 people.
• 43:29
  And if this.
• 43:30
  goes to hell, that's the end of me.
• 43:33
  In this extreme distress saying to the gitanic, no, no, he says, I'm
• 43:40
  saying, no, you will be a gitanic.
• 43:43
  You will not floppy thing and try and get away from me.
• 43:46
  And he's of course playing the most extraordinary music as he's doing it, but
• 43:49
  he said it was very, very, very stressful.
• 43:51
  And I remember watching that on the plane and going, wow,
• 43:56
  that's such a good analogy for.
• 43:58
  What I think a lot of people with neurodivergence go through,
• 44:00
  particularly in early years.
• 44:03
  Kim Barthel: Amazing.
• 44:05
  I know you know a lot about compassion and I think that what's important
• 44:11
  in this conversation to me is that.
• 44:15
  And that's where it comes back to that question you asked me about the
• 44:18
  behavioral approach, which is such a different way of engaging with humans.
• 44:30
  And how important it is to try, try to put our mind in the mind of the other.
• 44:39
  Rupert Isaacson: Yeah, well, of course, if one's trying to train robots, then,
• 44:44
  of course, either to go into battle or stand in a factory line, that
• 44:48
  becomes of lesser importance, right?
• 44:50
  And that, you know, it's the inheritance, I think, of behaviorism.
• 44:53
  Because I certainly went through a school system that was a bit like that.
• 44:55
  They made us behave in certain ways that were designed to inure
• 44:59
  us to combat, basically, to be officers of the British Empire.
• 45:04
  You'd be first over the top into the machine gun fire.
• 45:08
  And I think it works for that
• 45:11
  Kim Barthel: Compliance is necessary under extreme danger.
• 45:14
  Rupert Isaacson: Under extreme danger.
• 45:15
  But
• 45:16
  Kim Barthel: not when you, not when you spill your milk.
• 45:18
  Rupert Isaacson: No, no.
• 45:19
  And I remember thinking, why do I want a compliant kid?
• 45:21
  Because if I get a compliant kid, that's a kid that will
• 45:23
  get into a car with an adult.
• 45:25
  Just because the adult, the adult says, I'm an adult, you must comply.
• 45:28
  Get in the car.
• 45:29
  I want a cooperative kid.
• 45:32
  Yeah, but I also want a challenging kid.
• 45:34
  I want a kid that says, no, I don't know you.
• 45:36
  Who are you?
• 45:37
  Right.
• 45:37
  I'm not getting in that car.
• 45:40
  Kim Barthel: And compliance actually diminishes curiosity.
• 45:44
  Rupert Isaacson: Indeed.
• 45:46
  So, okay, we've got a largely equestrian audience here.
• 45:52
  And as I often say, we equestrians are a bit autistic in terms
• 45:56
  of our obsession with ponies.
• 46:00
  And it can be a bit hard for us to think in other terms sometimes.
• 46:05
  What are your, give us your best advice.
• 46:09
  If we are trying to serve.
• 46:12
  A child's or a person's neuro system, nervous system and brain.
• 46:19
  What are the three or four main things that if we don't do, will
• 46:25
  not just not have us succeed, but will absolutely ensure failure?
• 46:30
  What are the things that we must be aware of and must do?
• 46:33
  Kim Barthel: Number one, in all contexts of learning, is safety.
• 46:39
  And this comes from attunement.
• 46:44
  My experience of horses is they are incredible at this, in the attunement
• 46:52
  to the person that they're with.
• 46:57
  But also for us as facilitators in this process, safety is part of our job.
• 47:04
  It's our responsibility as well.
• 47:07
  And when I use the word safety, I'm not just talking about physical safety.
• 47:11
  I'm talking about the speed that we move into situations the tone
• 47:18
  of voice that we use, the nonverbal communication that we use as the adults.
• 47:25
  Rupert Isaacson: You're talking about emotional safety.
• 47:27
  Kim Barthel: Yes.
• 47:29
  That is the backdrop for the nervous system to open the door.
• 47:34
  To the greatest degree of plasticity is safety.
• 47:39
  The second, whoops, the second variability is
• 47:43
  Rupert Isaacson: repetition.
• 47:44
  You froze and a little thumbs up came out of your brain.
• 47:47
  So I'm thumbs upping your brain for that one.
• 47:49
  I couldn't agree more.
• 47:50
  The emotional, the emotional safety.
• 47:54
  So hard for horsey people because we're so bossy without even knowing we're bossy.
• 48:00
  Kim Barthel: And it's important.
• 48:01
  That's an important variable.
• 48:02
  Rupert Isaacson: Yeah.
• 48:03
  Kim Barthel: Repetition.
• 48:04
  Number two is that the brain loves repetition from the perspective of wiring.
• 48:13
  So when you are looking to establish a pattern of relative permanent change, it
• 48:24
  means I need to do it again and again.
• 48:26
  And the third one, you asked me for three, is the brain is a predictive brain.
• 48:32
  So it is constantly, whether you're neurodiverse or not, the
• 48:38
  brain is constantly trying to fill in the story of what it expects.
• 48:43
  And so the more often there's clarity and predictability in how
• 48:49
  you present what you do, the greater the degree the brain can rest.
• 48:55
  In, again, safety, but also in its potential to expand a new pattern.
• 49:03
  So, emotional safety, repetition, and predictability.
• 49:09
  Rupert Isaacson: Now, play devil's advocate there.
• 49:12
  Emotional safety, no devil's advocate.
• 49:14
  But for repetition and predictability, of course, we want to begin to
• 49:21
  help people to acquire the skill of dealing with non predictability,
• 49:27
  because that's going to happen.
• 49:29
  And stuff that comes novel new.
• 49:33
  I need to learn it quickly without repetition.
• 49:37
  Can you talk us through how paying attention to repetition and
• 49:43
  Predictability helps us deal with non repetition and non predictability.
• 49:48
  Kim Barthel: Love it.
• 49:49
  And that's not a devil's advocate question.
• 49:51
  It's a very good question.
• 49:55
  I need to have a foundation, a platform first.
• 50:02
  And all that we've just spoken about around, The ambiguity of processing,
• 50:09
  the lack of security in my own reliable way of understanding the world,
• 50:16
  that once that predictability and repetition are foundationally there,
• 50:25
  I have a launchpad to then move from.
• 50:32
  So in, in my world, we call this the just the just right challenge,
• 50:37
  where me as the support person.
• 50:42
  is, again, through attunement, offering both security and risk in ways that are
• 50:52
  scaffolded so that the person knows that they can do it without moving outside
• 51:01
  their window of tolerance into fear, both physically, emotionally, cognitively.
• 51:09
  And so it's not black and white.
• 51:11
  Right, it's, it's an in the moment thing of I watch you, I see the tenuousness
• 51:19
  in you, and I may say, we can do this.
• 51:25
  It's okay.
• 51:27
  And the nervous system becomes available.
• 51:32
  Alternately, I might choose a task that is genuinely too hard and dysregulates or
• 51:39
  decomposes That doesn't mean I've lost, it means I have an opportunity for repair
• 51:49
  where the person then knows they can survive a challenge that they,
• 51:54
  all of this happens in the arena.
• 51:57
  I think
• 52:01
  Rupert Isaacson: When you say in the arena, you, you,
• 52:03
  you mean in the riding arena?
• 52:04
  Kim Barthel: Yeah.
• 52:05
  Yeah.
• 52:06
  Rupert Isaacson: I think that's one of the reasons why with what we do with horse
• 52:10
  boy, we actually try to get out of arenas,
• 52:12
  Kim Barthel: out of the arena
• 52:13
  Rupert Isaacson: because we want to encounter the world.
• 52:16
  Kim Barthel: Yes.
• 52:17
  Rupert Isaacson: I mean, obviously if the weather's terrible in the arena, but if
• 52:21
  we can, we want to encounter the world.
• 52:27
  As you say, I want to give a platform of
• 52:33
  trust.
• 52:33
  It'll be all rightness.
• 52:35
  If we go out there and we will encounter some things we don't know
• 52:42
  and will, but not too much.
• 52:46
  So I need a certain amount of control over the environment, at
• 52:49
  least in the early stages later on.
• 52:52
  So, so basically, do you feel it's about building resilience?
• 52:55
  Kim Barthel: Yes.
• 52:56
  Rupert Isaacson: Okay.
• 52:58
  Kim Barthel: And that resilience is, comes from trust, right?
• 53:04
  It begins with trust, trust of you, trust of the horse, trust of me.
• 53:08
  And then I can venture into the unknown.
• 53:12
  Rupert Isaacson: It's so interesting you bring this up.
• 53:14
  When I was spending a lot of time with Kalahari San Bushman, I didn't
• 53:19
  realize, but when I was being given a.
• 53:21
  mentorship in parenting.
• 53:24
  And the reason was that what I was observing, the first thing I observed
• 53:28
  was that they co slept with their kids and they didn't co sleep with their kids
• 53:33
  from some philosophical point of view.
• 53:36
  They said, hyenas come at night, right?
• 53:40
  And they will take your shoes off your feet and you won't even feel it.
• 53:44
  They will certainly take your baby or your infant or even your small child that
• 53:50
  is even 60 centimeters away from you.
• 53:53
  And you won't know So the only way you can keep them safe, let alone warm,
• 53:58
  because it also gets very cold at night there, is to put them between two adults.
• 54:02
  And the hyena's less likely to mess with that situation.
• 54:07
  That's why we do it, Rupert, that's what they say.
• 54:09
  And I was like, got it, got it.
• 54:10
  And I was like, oh gosh, right, so if a baby's crying, because you put it in
• 54:14
  a crib to cry it out, I was put that way, I'm sure you were put that way.
• 54:17
  It means that somewhere in our nervous system, in our, in our ancient DNA.
• 54:25
  It's saying, I've been left here for the hyenas.
• 54:27
  Better scream.
• 54:29
  No one's coming.
• 54:31
  Oh, hyenas will get me.
• 54:34
  And therefore a certain despair must kick in.
• 54:38
  I wonder how much of our You know, angst and neurosis comes from those sorts
• 54:48
  of experiences that we have when we're barely conscious, but we're experiencing
• 54:55
  it on a, you know, on that DNA level.
• 54:57
  And then
• 54:59
  what I noticed, so then of course I co slept, right?
• 55:03
  And I remember a couple of my friends saying, but Rupert, aren't
• 55:06
  you worried that Roan will end up really dependent if you do that.
• 55:10
  And what I'd observed with these kids is that at about 16, they get up, they
• 55:14
  take a spear, and they go into the bush, and they come back with a wildebeest,
• 55:17
  you know, and dodging the lions.
• 55:19
  It's like, no, they seem to, it seems that if you give them all this
• 55:24
  unconditional love at the beginning, weirdly, they are more secure.
• 55:29
  Kim Barthel: Exactly.
• 55:30
  Completely, completely agree.
• 55:36
  Rupert Isaacson: What do you think is the most,
• 55:40
  common error most of us that work in the field of neurodivergence routinely
• 55:48
  make, and what's the sort of easy fix that we often miss that we don't see?
• 55:52
  Kim Barthel: You are asking me all the hardest questions.
• 55:57
  I think the greatest error we make is trying to come to some sense of what
• 56:05
  we think normal is, the myth of normal,
• 56:11
  and that we are trying to be guided by goals that are constructed
• 56:20
  to help that person fit in.
• 56:25
  That's going to take us a long time to shift and change, but I think
• 56:30
  those of us who work with and support individuals who are different is to
• 56:39
  help them see their own value in who they are and allow them an increased
• 56:46
  opportunity to feel safe in themselves.
• 56:50
  So that they can become their best self.
• 56:53
  Rupert Isaacson: How do we do that?
• 56:55
  Kim Barthel: Journey, it's like a journey, really.
• 56:58
  It's, it's a ongoing standing alongside with curiosity about what's
• 57:08
  interesting to you and how do I join you and you just described it.
• 57:16
  In your Kalahari example, how do I join you, keep you safe, and build a bridge
• 57:24
  for you to explore at the same time?
• 57:26
  And we're talking about human attachment,
• 57:31
  which is a unfolding process.
• 57:37
  We could talk about this forever.
• 57:39
  Rupert Isaacson: Oh, we could.
• 57:40
  I fully intend to.
• 57:44
  Kim Barthel: I am, I'm not inviting myself, but I am coming
• 57:47
  to teach in Ireland in in October.
• 57:49
  So.
• 57:50
  Maybe there's an opportunity to meet in person.
• 57:53
  Rupert Isaacson: Indeed, we will be there.
• 57:55
  And you need to meet and everyone listening needs to
• 57:58
  meet a man called David Doyle.
• 58:01
  David will not come on this podcast, even though he is the man
• 58:04
  I probably work the closest with in my, you know, professionally.
• 58:09
  Because he hates to public speak, even though he's really good at it.
• 58:13
  And he is, in fact, I think the modern day incarnation of the Wizard Merlin.
• 58:18
  In a, in a bad pullover.
• 58:22
  He'll kill me for saying that.
• 58:24
  But he's, he's an extraordinary, extraordinary person.
• 58:26
  And yes, I would love I would love to work with you in the many horse boy
• 58:32
  movement method places that are growing in Ireland because Ireland is where the
• 58:36
  Minister of Health, Anne Rabbit, just got behind the latest horse boy place which is
• 58:43
  called Stuarts Care in Kilchloon outside of County Meath, outside of Dublin.
• 58:50
  It's a very ambitious, very large scale project and she
• 58:54
  has put the ministry behind it.
• 58:56
  So yes, I think there's, there's a natural a natural collaboration there
• 59:02
  and I would invite anyone listening to try and get your asses over to Ireland
• 59:07
  and come hang with us over there with what's going on because it is really good.
• 59:11
  You know what we don't have going on much, Kim, is, is stuff in Canada.
• 59:16
  But it sounds like you've got it covered, so we don't have to worry.
• 59:19
  Kim Barthel: Hardly.
• 59:20
  And lots of lots of topper opportunity for conversation.
• 59:25
  Rupert Isaacson: Yes.
• 59:25
  Kim Barthel: Good.
• 59:28
  Thank you.
• 59:28
  Rupert Isaacson: Do you need to run?
• 59:30
  Kim Barthel: I do.
• 59:31
  Rupert Isaacson: Okay.
• 59:32
  They're actually standing
• 59:33
  Kim Barthel: at the stop of the stairs.
• 59:35
  Rupert Isaacson: Okay.
• 59:35
  Kim Barthel: Waiting for me to stop.
• 59:36
  Waiting
• 59:36
  Rupert Isaacson: for the construction guys.
• 59:37
  All right.
• 59:38
  Well, I think what we're going to do, Kim, because this is too
• 59:41
  good of an opportunity To miss.
• 59:43
  I'm gonna have you come back on, if that's all right.
• 59:45
  I want to go a little deeper into the neuroscience.
• 59:48
  Okay.
• 59:49
  So with your permission, we'll do a round two.
• 59:52
  Kim Barthel: That's lovely.
• 59:53
  Rupert Isaacson: Okay, listeners, we actually had to take a break, in
• 59:55
  between the first part of this podcast and this one because, Kim's a busy
• 1:00:00
  lady, and she had to go on a massive world tour doing incredible work.
• 1:00:06
  And now she's back, and she's back from outer space, here to find her
• 1:00:12
  here without that look upon her face.
• 1:00:13
  Sorry, I couldn't, I couldn't resist that one.
• 1:00:15
  she's.
• 1:00:17
  Got some interesting stuff to report, and there's a lot that we need to know
• 1:00:21
  from her, and the people she works with about trauma, but any of us that are
• 1:00:26
  in this line of work, this is a rapidly developing field, and particularly
• 1:00:31
  when we're dealing with, people with neurodivergence, it gets complex.
• 1:00:37
  so welcome back, Kim, what have you been up to?
• 1:00:42
  Kim Barthel: First of all, let me say it's exciting to be back
• 1:00:46
  and have a conversation with you.
• 1:00:48
  one of the interesting things that happens to me in dialogue with you
• 1:00:54
  that is unique is that, you know, when you think about this concept of tuning
• 1:01:00
  forks and you hold one up and one is sitting beside, and if they're not quite
• 1:01:06
  at the right frequency, they don't.
• 1:01:08
  Resonate.
• 1:01:10
  And when, I hear your questions, listen to what you are thinking about,
• 1:01:17
  my frequency just dials up at such a high vibration that it it's exciting.
• 1:01:23
  And, I find myself having to work to contain it so that I can even.
• 1:01:30
  Slow down long enough to think just at the, at the enthusiasm that I have for
• 1:01:38
  what, comes out of these dialogues.
• 1:01:40
  It's quite an honor for me.
• 1:01:42
  So I wanted to start by saying that.
• 1:01:46
  Rupert Isaacson: Okay.
• 1:01:46
  So what have you been up to?
• 1:01:47
  Kim Barthel: So what have I been up to?
• 1:01:49
  Well, we have been, we, I say we, because, Bob Spensley, who is my husband and
• 1:01:55
  business partner, we have been on the road since the middle, beginning, middle
• 1:01:59
  of August and, sharing, but you know,
• 1:02:04
  Rupert Isaacson: it's, Where have you been on the road?
• 1:02:05
  You haven't just gone like down the road to the shop.
• 1:02:07
  No, no.
• 1:02:08
  Where, where have you, where have you been?
• 1:02:09
  Kim Barthel: Six, six continents.
• 1:02:13
  Rupert Isaacson: Why?
• 1:02:14
  What were you up to?
• 1:02:16
  Kim Barthel: I was thinking about saying sharing knowledge, but
• 1:02:19
  that is so inaccurate because it's a mutual experience.
• 1:02:26
  It's not just a sense of Kim and Bob going on the road, giving a workshop.
• 1:02:34
  It's a holistic gathering of experience that builds on itself.
• 1:02:42
  And what I, what we find is the world has more in common than you can imagine,
• 1:02:51
  you know, despite the context, the culture, the distance, the climate,
• 1:02:57
  all these variables that shape the differences from one place to another,
• 1:03:03
  there is more similarity than difference.
• 1:03:05
  What's
• 1:03:06
  Rupert Isaacson: the main theme that's come out of these workshops?
• 1:03:09
  And for those of us who are working in this equine assisted field, what do you
• 1:03:13
  feel Other resonances that are coming out now that we should all be aware of.
• 1:03:18
  Kim Barthel: It seems that there is a need, a desperate
• 1:03:23
  need, for a feeling and of hope
• 1:03:28
  Rupert Isaacson: that
• 1:03:29
  Kim Barthel: can lead to agency.
• 1:03:31
  Rupert Isaacson: Okay.
• 1:03:33
  Kim Barthel: And, and this theme is pervasive no matter where
• 1:03:36
  Rupert Isaacson: people feeling powerless, people feeling lost,
• 1:03:39
  Kim Barthel: people feeling powerless, people feeling victimized,
• 1:03:43
  people feeling hopeless in their capacity to have any ability to
• 1:03:52
  create a difference for themselves.
• 1:03:56
  And even though we have lived through a pandemic.
• 1:04:01
  And this may, in fact, be partly post pandemic.
• 1:04:05
  It was more obvious than last year.
• 1:04:10
  Rupert Isaacson: Okay.
• 1:04:12
  is that because of just combined world events?
• 1:04:16
  Russia, Gaza, climate?
• 1:04:19
  Kim Barthel: Definitely.
• 1:04:20
  Rupert Isaacson: Or is it, is it, is it not really event specific, do you think?
• 1:04:24
  What, what's going
• 1:04:25
  Kim Barthel: on?
• 1:04:25
  I think my perception is, is that people hook it.
• 1:04:29
  I don't know.
• 1:04:33
  But it's the event is a moving target of placement of underlying angst.
• 1:04:43
  Rupert Isaacson: Okay.
• 1:04:44
  And you feel this angst is getting greater.
• 1:04:46
  Kim Barthel: I do.
• 1:04:47
  And there's a sense of Need for increased compassion and connection, connection
• 1:05:00
  with each other as a way of in, in a way that is honoring of each other's
• 1:05:11
  beliefs, values, systems of engagement.
• 1:05:17
  So there, there is a need for honoring connection, but, and,
• 1:05:22
  and being heard and valued.
• 1:05:24
  More than I've ever seen.
• 1:05:29
  Rupert Isaacson: What are the tools?
• 1:05:30
  What's the main tools that you go in?
• 1:05:31
  And again, I'm putting, I'm imagining the listeners.
• 1:05:35
  Probably nodding as they're driving listening to this thinking.
• 1:05:39
  Yeah, actually gosh This is a lot of the people walking through my door right
• 1:05:42
  now This is a lot of my clients set even because I think for a lot of us who
• 1:05:47
  started with Working with say, you know quite severely autistic people and so on
• 1:05:53
  although We still do, but now we've kind of worked with everybody and it seems
• 1:05:59
  that everyone's amygdala is jangling.
• 1:06:02
  and now people are walking through our door who would not have walked
• 1:06:08
  through our door five years ago, I think, you know, pre pandemic.
• 1:06:11
  So when you begin your workshops, can you, can you tell us what's in your toolbox?
• 1:06:17
  What are, what are like the five, six main things that you walk in there
• 1:06:20
  and say, listen, lads, this will help.
• 1:06:23
  Kim Barthel: Well, the very first thing that happens.
• 1:06:28
  In a workshop, in any workshop, in every workshop is story storytelling.
• 1:06:35
  I mean, one of the things I think that I am known for is plugging
• 1:06:40
  into story, which is so different than sharing of information
• 1:06:48
  and through the.
• 1:06:52
  emotional vibration of story, it immediately creates a
• 1:06:57
  sense of I'm not alone.
• 1:07:01
  Rupert Isaacson: Common humanity.
• 1:07:02
  Yeah.
• 1:07:03
  Kim Barthel: Yeah.
• 1:07:03
  And I think that, you know, like, for example, one story I tell all the time is
• 1:07:09
  about a kid that sat in my office for two years, In the Arctic of Canada, who was
• 1:07:16
  an elective mute, he had witnessed his grandmother be mauled by a polar bear.
• 1:07:23
  And he had nine different labels attached to him.
• 1:07:27
  And he was so angry and so dangerous.
• 1:07:34
  And he sat with me in silence for two years.
• 1:07:41
  And I felt like such a failure.
• 1:07:44
  Because I wasn't doing anything.
• 1:07:47
  I wasn't doing psychotherapy.
• 1:07:50
  It felt empty, and I worried about him all the time.
• 1:07:57
  When we left the Arctic, I was concerned that he, in fact, may end
• 1:08:03
  his life or be dangerous to others.
• 1:08:09
  And so five years after leaving this location, I got to see him again.
• 1:08:16
  And he walked up to me in the Inuit Centre in Southern Canada and said, You, Blondie.
• 1:08:23
  I heard his voice for the first time.
• 1:08:27
  And he said to me, want you to know, you stopped me from killing
• 1:08:30
  myself every day for two years.
• 1:08:34
  And I carry you with me in my head and my heart every day.
• 1:08:41
  And the reason that story is so important is because it's not about doing, it's
• 1:08:47
  about being with people from a state of love, presence, connection, and all of us
• 1:08:58
  worry about what it is we're going to say.
• 1:09:00
  Okay.
• 1:09:01
  Hmm.
• 1:09:02
  And so.
• 1:09:04
  That story, for example, leaves people feeling, I can do that too.
• 1:09:12
  I can show up, be present, sit with people, listen, tap into
• 1:09:19
  love, and that has meaning.
• 1:09:25
  Rupert Isaacson: This is really interesting.
• 1:09:26
  you know, I have a couple of boys that come to me from a local international
• 1:09:30
  school, more or less weekly.
• 1:09:32
  And, They
• 1:09:36
  come with certain stories,
• 1:09:41
  and what I find
• 1:09:44
  their great need is, is for space and moving through nature.
• 1:09:50
  And of course I can provide that because I can take off into the forest with them
• 1:09:55
  with a couple of horses so that when they get, initially they actually often want
• 1:09:58
  to walk, but then when they get tired, their legs get tired, they can ride.
• 1:10:03
  And I can provide things like the creek, and groves of beech trees, or
• 1:10:15
  a particular oak, or a place we know where you're likely to see deer, or a
• 1:10:22
  little thing where, a place you have to scramble over some rocks, and it changes
• 1:10:26
  with the season, places we go to gather apples in the fall or in the winter.
• 1:10:32
  Cherries in the early summer or whatever.
• 1:10:37
  And what I find you're dead right is that the stories just come out.
• 1:10:40
  I don't need to ask much except once they get rolling, of course, oxytocin,
• 1:10:45
  rocking the hips, they tend to talk.
• 1:10:47
  once they're on that horse, you know, it's a communication hormone, but then I can
• 1:10:51
  then respond and then what often happens is there's just mutual storytelling.
• 1:10:58
  So the story can be, you know, Me talking about what's going on in the landscape,
• 1:11:03
  that's a story, or why the landscape looks the way it does, and that's a story.
• 1:11:08
  could be history, could be geology, could be, and then maybe
• 1:11:11
  an experience that I've had that matches an experience that they've
• 1:11:14
  had, and it becomes a conversation.
• 1:11:15
  And I think you're right that, that this type of connection
• 1:11:19
  and this type of conversation, funnily enough, can't be taken for
• 1:11:23
  granted anymore, but it used to be.
• 1:11:25
  What do you think about that?
• 1:11:27
  What, I mean, have we, are we, losing?
• 1:11:34
  The, the skill to converse and connect.
• 1:11:38
  Kim Barthel: There are a few, there are some,
• 1:11:39
  Rupert Isaacson: just to talk, yeah, talk to me about that.
• 1:11:41
  Kim Barthel: There are beautiful elements in what you said that are
• 1:11:46
  more than just the conversation.
• 1:11:49
  And it's the concept of holding space, which is bigger than dialogue that
• 1:12:00
  comes with intention, and a sense of willingness to be present to the other.
• 1:12:12
  And that is a skill set because it requires attunement.
• 1:12:17
  So as I listened to you tell the story of nature, which does so much
• 1:12:25
  of the work for us and the presence of the horse, which does so much of
• 1:12:32
  the work, it makes room for safety
• 1:12:38
  for relationship to perhaps be safe for the first time for some of the
• 1:12:47
  people that join us in these spaces.
• 1:12:51
  Safety cannot be taken for granted.
• 1:12:55
  So the elements of nature and the horse and you, what a combination of opportunity
• 1:13:06
  that is active in evoking a sense or a portal to the feeling of safety.
• 1:13:18
  Rupert Isaacson: Is it the feeling of, yeah, so it's, it's not so much perhaps
• 1:13:22
  then, Or is it not so much, perhaps, then, that we're losing the ability to converse,
• 1:13:27
  or we're losing the ability to connect?
• 1:13:30
  Because we seem to connect, you know, whenever we can, and
• 1:13:32
  we're a connective species.
• 1:13:34
  But, is it safety that we've lost?
• 1:13:37
  Is it, weirdly, although most of us live in very, very safe, physically very
• 1:13:43
  safe, environments, why have we lost?
• 1:13:46
  A sense of safety.
• 1:13:49
  Kim Barthel: Well, when you ask that question to me,
• 1:13:50
  I'm not sure I ever had it.
• 1:13:52
  Rupert Isaacson: Mm-hmm . Go on.
• 1:13:53
  Kim Barthel: Really?
• 1:13:54
  I mean, I'm right, but
• 1:13:56
  Rupert Isaacson: you're not, the, the bums are not dropping, you know?
• 1:13:58
  No.
• 1:13:58
  Right.
• 1:13:58
  Where you are.
• 1:13:59
  You know what I mean?
• 1:13:59
  It's, it's, so, there's a
• 1:14:01
  Kim Barthel: difference between physical safety
• 1:14:04
  Rupert Isaacson: mm-hmm
• 1:14:05
  . Kim Barthel: And emotional safety.
• 1:14:07
  You can grow up in the most safe home community and feel completely dismissed.
• 1:14:15
  Emotionally disconnected, not valued, not seen, not heard.
• 1:14:23
  You can grow up in affluence where everything is abundant in your
• 1:14:28
  environment and still not feel felt.
• 1:14:33
  By another person.
• 1:14:35
  So safety is relative and we have that dialogue all the
• 1:14:38
  time that what is safe to one.
• 1:14:41
  I mean, there are so many communities where there is danger and there
• 1:14:46
  is emotional relational safety.
• 1:14:48
  Rupert Isaacson: Absolutely.
• 1:14:49
  No, you're right.
• 1:14:50
  I mean, I observed that among the sun and the Bushmen, whether, you
• 1:14:53
  know, you go out into the bush and there's lots of dangerous animals
• 1:14:56
  out there, but of course people are very competent in that environment.
• 1:15:01
  So they know how to minimize those dangers, but what they're not
• 1:15:03
  afraid of is their fellow human.
• 1:15:05
  At least.
• 1:15:06
  Not their own fellow humans.
• 1:15:09
  maybe some of the ones that come in from the outside, but
• 1:15:16
  given that we have, I mean, okay, there are wars going on and so on,
• 1:15:19
  but given that most of us have more physical safety, I think, than ever,
• 1:15:27
  is that almost like an inverse correlation between that and a
• 1:15:33
  sort of deadening of community?
• 1:15:34
  And does community almost need a certain amount of mutually
• 1:15:38
  experienced risk in order to connect?
• 1:15:43
  Kim Barthel: I do believe that shared experience of danger creates an
• 1:15:50
  interesting sense of intimacy because of the collective collaboration required.
• 1:15:59
  Rupert Isaacson: Right.
• 1:16:00
  Yes, we cannot fragment or the hyenas will eat us sort of thing.
• 1:16:03
  Kim Barthel: Exactly.
• 1:16:04
  Rupert Isaacson: Yeah.
• 1:16:04
  Kim Barthel: I mean, I will never forget.
• 1:16:06
  I worked on the India Pakistani border during post earthquake.
• 1:16:13
  And these are people that generally day to day despise each other.
• 1:16:18
  And under the conditions of shared danger, they carried each other back and forth.
• 1:16:24
  Into safety the the shared experience at least temporarily brought them
• 1:16:31
  into a space of care for each other.
• 1:16:36
  Rupert Isaacson: Right.
• 1:16:37
  And presumably we don't want to create, you know, unnecessary dangers.
• 1:16:42
  Is it that we need to create joint senses of purpose?
• 1:16:47
  Kim Barthel: Correct.
• 1:16:50
  Completely.
• 1:16:51
  And is
• 1:16:51
  Rupert Isaacson: the hopelessness that you're talking about
• 1:16:53
  actually purposelessness?
• 1:16:54
  Kim Barthel: Exactly.
• 1:16:55
  And I think that that becomes revealed.
• 1:16:59
  As the dialogue unfolds, that there is a sense of emptiness, purposelessness,
• 1:17:08
  and a sense of disconnection.
• 1:17:12
  Rupert Isaacson: So, okay, you go into these workshops with story.
• 1:17:15
  Yeah, that's how it starts.
• 1:17:16
  That's your opening that toolbox.
• 1:17:18
  Kim Barthel: Yep.
• 1:17:19
  Rupert Isaacson: What else is in that toolbox?
• 1:17:20
  And then what happens
• 1:17:22
  Kim Barthel: is one story, I call it the sideways approach.
• 1:17:27
  I tell a story, and then the resonance of the tuning fork starts.
• 1:17:32
  And people's light bulbs go on.
• 1:17:35
  And.
• 1:17:36
  We weave back and forth between information.
• 1:17:41
  This is what's happening in the nervous system when, and what the
• 1:17:46
  information does is decrease shame
• 1:17:52
  that when people have a general understanding of their nervous
• 1:17:58
  system, they feel like, Oh my gosh.
• 1:18:02
  It's not that I'm fear, you know, that I don't have enough courage.
• 1:18:07
  It's not that I'm flawed.
• 1:18:09
  It's not that I don't have enough skills.
• 1:18:12
  It's that my nervous system is doing the best that it can with what it has.
• 1:18:18
  And that, that knowledge which creates a sense of self compassion and, and
• 1:18:25
  allows people self understanding.
• 1:18:30
  And I got a great example of that.
• 1:18:32
  I was supporting a veteran, in the Ukraine, doing work by Zoom.
• 1:18:39
  And he had just been in combat and was describing his experience of combat
• 1:18:47
  and all of the bombs around him.
• 1:18:51
  And he said, that's not what I'm having.
• 1:18:54
  flashbacks about.
• 1:18:56
  What I'm stuck on, he said, is the fact that I soiled myself during combat.
• 1:19:03
  Rupert Isaacson: And I
• 1:19:04
  Kim Barthel: feel so, you know, he pooped his pants.
• 1:19:07
  He said, I feel like I'm so, he used not capable.
• 1:19:14
  And then when he understood, this is exactly what your nervous system does.
• 1:19:20
  When you are in these states of self protection.
• 1:19:23
  Rupert Isaacson: Now that surprises me because I know
• 1:19:26
  a few people with that story.
• 1:19:29
  And in combat units, there's often just a sort of running dark humor that,
• 1:19:34
  yeah, the battlefield smells of shit.
• 1:19:37
  Because that's what's going on.
• 1:19:40
  was there no camaraderie with his unit in that regard?
• 1:19:45
  Kim Barthel: I would say definite camaraderie, but lack of knowledge.
• 1:19:51
  Rupert Isaacson: Okay.
• 1:19:52
  Kim Barthel: I mean, this is early on, the onset of the Ukraine conflict.
• 1:19:58
  Rupert Isaacson: Okay.
• 1:19:59
  Kim Barthel: And many of them are not even soldiers.
• 1:20:01
  Rupert Isaacson: Yeah, yeah.
• 1:20:02
  Kim Barthel: everyday citizens solicited into combat without any prep,
• 1:20:10
  without any knowledge and, and creating a so called platoon out
• 1:20:16
  of without training at that time.
• 1:20:21
  So I think that it speaks to the development.
• 1:20:26
  of connection, perhaps through those experiences
• 1:20:32
  and, and the, the chance to be together as a team.
• 1:20:38
  Rupert Isaacson: Right.
• 1:20:38
  Speaks to your earlier point.
• 1:20:40
  Go ahead, sorry.
• 1:20:41
  Kim Barthel: It speaks to your earlier point of shared danger and being
• 1:20:46
  able to work that through together.
• 1:20:49
  Rupert Isaacson: He must also have felt a great sense of pride
• 1:20:54
  at having stepped up to defend
• 1:20:57
  Kim Barthel: his
• 1:20:57
  Rupert Isaacson: country from a terrible aggressor.
• 1:21:01
  So would you say that
• 1:21:07
  his shame was still outweighed by his sense of worth for having fulfilled that
• 1:21:15
  role, or did it actually impact his sense of worth for having fulfilled that role?
• 1:21:21
  Kim Barthel: I love that question, and as I pause to contemplate that
• 1:21:25
  question, the speed with which the shame transformed, speaks to the lack of
• 1:21:36
  its grip on the overall sense of self.
• 1:21:42
  It was more, you know, there's shame in the core self, which is so deep
• 1:21:52
  and this was more shame around action at one time that shifted in its grip
• 1:22:02
  of his nervous system and day to day.
• 1:22:06
  Coping that didn't take long to transform.
• 1:22:11
  Rupert Isaacson: Okay,
• 1:22:12
  Kim Barthel: so your question makes me think that it really, when we think
• 1:22:17
  about the complexity, this is what you're asking is the complexity of trauma and
• 1:22:24
  all the variables in an individual psyche that make it complex, complex trauma.
• 1:22:33
  This person, I would say, did not have.
• 1:22:37
  A history of developmental trauma in his, in his persona that made the
• 1:22:47
  traumatic experience be tagged as more event based rather than holistically
• 1:22:56
  having a grip on his entire being.
• 1:23:00
  It was such a good question you asked.
• 1:23:03
  Rupert Isaacson: It makes me, it brings another question, which is,
• 1:23:08
  is that I think everyone, everyone who's listening to this works with
• 1:23:11
  trauma to some degree and also probably their own at the same time.
• 1:23:15
  It's so interesting.
• 1:23:16
  Is shame a paper tiger?
• 1:23:18
  Is shame a chimera?
• 1:23:20
  Is shame just our psyches and the conditioned colonized psyche,
• 1:23:31
  which for social control, you know, religion, whatever, make us feel
• 1:23:35
  ashamed of masturbating or whatever.
• 1:23:38
  And so therefore we'll go be depressed and fight your wars for you.
• 1:23:41
  Basically that sort of thing, just be, you know, repressed and unhappy and therefore
• 1:23:45
  very happy and willing to pick up a gun.
• 1:23:47
  Is shame actually just
• 1:23:53
  an illusion, almost like a hologram to scare us, and is it even real?
• 1:24:00
  Is it even necessary?
• 1:24:02
  Kim Barthel: Well, I think, you know, the urge in my response to your question is
• 1:24:07
  to think from my neurobiology perspective.
• 1:24:10
  Orientation.
• 1:24:11
  Go on.
• 1:24:12
  In that, we are, I believe, wired for connection.
• 1:24:20
  And any time there's a sniff of rejection, abandonment, separation, difference,
• 1:24:31
  the nervous system notices this and contributes to the box that we identify
• 1:24:41
  as the shame parts of ourselves, because shame doesn't live there alone.
• 1:24:46
  We are each made of many parts.
• 1:24:53
  You described in my vet, the pride, which stands beside the shame.
• 1:24:59
  Right?
• 1:25:00
  So we are not one or another, but our nervous system, for example, our
• 1:25:07
  amygdala, one third of it is designed to notice the non verbal cues of rejection.
• 1:25:17
  And that gets tagged alongside a sensory experience.
• 1:25:24
  So if I'm, for example, poop my pants, and the guy beside
• 1:25:30
  me looks at me with disgust,
• 1:25:36
  Then I'm going to code those simultaneous cues and they accumulate
• 1:25:43
  in my nervous system to contribute to those parts of myself that experience,
• 1:25:50
  I'm not good enough, I'm flawed.
• 1:25:54
  And they can stack up,
• 1:25:58
  which is I think what people talk about when they describe things like
• 1:26:02
  microaggressions or experiences of racism and ableism, things that make
• 1:26:14
  us feel different than others, which the nervous system can perceive as
• 1:26:22
  significant enough to feel traumatic.
• 1:26:28
  Rupert Isaacson: Right, because they carry the risk of ostracism and our
• 1:26:31
  nervous system says, if you're ostracized.
• 1:26:34
  The hyenas get you.
• 1:26:35
  Kim Barthel: You're not safe.
• 1:26:36
  And
• 1:26:37
  Rupert Isaacson: I,
• 1:26:39
  Kim Barthel: and I think, so the illusion that you're talking about,
• 1:26:42
  I think we will give up ourselves to sustain connection at all costs, really.
• 1:26:49
  With our people.
• 1:26:50
  Rupert Isaacson: Right.
• 1:26:50
  That's gang culture, isn't it?
• 1:26:52
  Yeah.
• 1:26:52
  Kim Barthel: Yeah.
• 1:26:55
  Rupert Isaacson: Now.
• 1:26:56
  Okay.
• 1:26:57
  There's jumping ahead of myself.
• 1:26:59
  So I'm just, the question that formed in my mind, I'm going to leave for a moment.
• 1:27:03
  So you open your toolbox.
• 1:27:05
  See.
• 1:27:06
  We've gone story.
• 1:27:08
  Kim Barthel: Sorry.
• 1:27:08
  Rupert Isaacson: Action.
• 1:27:09
  We've gone informing people about their nervous system, which can transform shame.
• 1:27:13
  Useful.
• 1:27:15
  What's next?
• 1:27:16
  Kim Barthel: Well, in the moment, it usually, what usually happens
• 1:27:19
  in front of our eyes is activation.
• 1:27:23
  Rupert Isaacson: Tell us, can you define what does activation mean?
• 1:27:26
  Kim Barthel: People in the audience typically have a response to
• 1:27:35
  the story or to the information and That looks like many things.
• 1:27:40
  Sometimes it looks like anger.
• 1:27:43
  Sometimes it looks like, changes in power in their face color.
• 1:27:50
  You can also see dissociation where people, their eyes become empty.
• 1:27:59
  And this is why it's so good to do this work as a team, because it's hard to
• 1:28:04
  see that in large numbers of people.
• 1:28:08
  You, you can also feel it, as I know you know what I mean.
• 1:28:12
  You feel it in you.
• 1:28:14
  Ooh, the energy in the room just changed.
• 1:28:18
  There was more silence.
• 1:28:21
  There was big space in time that seems to require more processing.
• 1:28:30
  So the actual process is in front of your nose of what it is can be helpful.
• 1:28:40
  And so stepping into that, for example, I have a person in the audience
• 1:28:46
  who puts up their hand and either engages in active defense, or someone.
• 1:28:56
  you know, over to my right checks out.
• 1:29:00
  I may then move closer to them in physical proximity in a very
• 1:29:08
  careful, cautious, kind way.
• 1:29:13
  And then I'm narrating what I'm doing.
• 1:29:16
  I see this is really hard, this conversation.
• 1:29:23
  I put sometimes my hand on my own chest.
• 1:29:27
  And validation is critical.
• 1:29:32
  When someone gets angry at something that you've said, which is just
• 1:29:37
  another indication of a stress response, it's a moment of, oh,
• 1:29:45
  I hear you, I feel you, I see you.
• 1:29:49
  And this is what we needed, wanted as children in the attachment,
• 1:29:56
  where the resilience came from or could come from in the first place.
• 1:30:01
  So in a sense, what we are doing is repeating the formula.
• 1:30:08
  Over and over and over again, of the very same thing we wanted as infants.
• 1:30:16
  And, so even though you're talking about the brain, it's
• 1:30:20
  like a portal into the soul.
• 1:30:23
  And the person in front of you, who says, you know, that's just
• 1:30:29
  bullshit, for excuse me, my language, but, and you say, ah, I feel ya,
• 1:30:36
  you know, that, that just hit something there.
• 1:30:41
  And there's no interpretation.
• 1:30:43
  No, my desire to want to fix it.
• 1:30:47
  Right.
• 1:30:48
  You just sit there in the presence of sadness, anger, fear,
• 1:30:54
  like a container for those feelings, which is what often didn't happen for
• 1:30:59
  many of us when we were little people told us, don't cry, don't be mad.
• 1:31:06
  Come on, big boys.
• 1:31:07
  Don't cry.
• 1:31:10
  Or it's more subtle than that.
• 1:31:12
  We get moved on quickly or someone shores us up, Hey, but look at
• 1:31:17
  all the great things you can do.
• 1:31:21
  So that capacity to sit in connection to one's own feelings
• 1:31:28
  is where the resilience comes from.
• 1:31:31
  And that emerges from having somebody do it with you.
• 1:31:38
  Rupert Isaacson: At what point do you explain to the people in the workshop that
• 1:31:40
  this is how they're building resilience?
• 1:31:44
  Because when the amygdala is activated, as you know, anger, dissociation, fear,
• 1:31:50
  the intellect has gone on vacation.
• 1:31:54
  So,
• 1:31:57
  One cannot in that moment appeal to an intellectual or logical process.
• 1:32:03
  So, can you talk us through, through that then?
• 1:32:07
  Amigdala is activated.
• 1:32:09
  You want, yes, you're validating.
• 1:32:13
  And at the same time, you would like to be able to show them.
• 1:32:16
  But look, you're building resilience here.
• 1:32:19
  by allowing yourself to have this emotion and then move through this emotion to
• 1:32:22
  the next emotion, talk us through the skill sets that you help people to
• 1:32:31
  garner.
• 1:32:33
  Kim Barthel: I think I wish the audience could see that I'm smiling because
• 1:32:37
  the answer is it depends, you know, it depends on a number of variables.
• 1:32:43
  The formula is always the same.
• 1:32:46
  Really?
• 1:32:48
  What changes?
• 1:32:49
  is the duration, the timing.
• 1:32:52
  This is attunement,
• 1:32:55
  Rupert Isaacson: right?
• 1:32:55
  The, you get better, better at it, it gets quicker, better
• 1:32:58
  Kim Barthel: at it.
• 1:32:59
  At attuning,
• 1:33:02
  when to move in, when to back out, when to just nod, when to move my body away.
• 1:33:12
  Sometimes it's too intrusive to be up close.
• 1:33:17
  When to actually change the subject sometimes, when to front load with
• 1:33:23
  information, when to step into emotion.
• 1:33:26
  This is 40 years of practice.
• 1:33:30
  Of skill of doing lots of messing up and continuing to
• 1:33:34
  mess up and continuing to repair.
• 1:33:38
  And at the same time, I often, often, not always, but often am narrating
• 1:33:45
  what I'm doing while I'm doing it.
• 1:33:47
  Rupert Isaacson: Okay.
• 1:33:49
  Kim Barthel: So that the audience is like a witness and
• 1:33:53
  an experiencer at the same time.
• 1:33:59
  Rupert Isaacson: So that, does that mean that when someone has had an
• 1:34:01
  amygdala reaction, Within the workshop or session client session or whatever is
• 1:34:12
  the validation followed by the is it the validation that
• 1:34:17
  allows the amygdala to relax?
• 1:34:21
  Kim Barthel: Yes.
• 1:34:22
  Rupert Isaacson: And opens the way to the intellect because is it the
• 1:34:24
  validation that says to the amygdala?
• 1:34:26
  Don't worry.
• 1:34:27
  You're actually not about to be rejected and left out for the hyenas.
• 1:34:32
  We remain connected despite the fact that.
• 1:34:35
  You're waving your arms around and shouting or whatever that
• 1:34:37
  would normally drive people away.
• 1:34:39
  I'm validating you here, so I'm staying with you.
• 1:34:42
  And then some seconds pass and the amygdala deactivates the cortisol.
• 1:34:50
  Kim Barthel: Sometimes it's not seconds.
• 1:34:52
  Sometimes it's hours.
• 1:34:53
  Rupert Isaacson: Yeah.
• 1:34:54
  Okay.
• 1:34:54
  So you have that time in a workshop?
• 1:34:56
  You have that time in a
• 1:34:57
  Kim Barthel: client session?
• 1:34:58
  Yeah.
• 1:34:58
  Yes.
• 1:34:59
  And no, here's how, here's how I'm just
• 1:35:02
  Rupert Isaacson: thinking about, you know, some say here I'm in
• 1:35:04
  the arena with my horse, with this person and they've kicked off.
• 1:35:06
  I don't have, you know, a week and you're
• 1:35:09
  Kim Barthel: going to also have another opportunity.
• 1:35:14
  Rupert Isaacson: Okay.
• 1:35:15
  Kim Barthel: Okay.
• 1:35:15
  But, but the validation is needs a little bit of clarity here.
• 1:35:19
  You're meeting people where they are.
• 1:35:23
  You're showing up.
• 1:35:24
  It's like I'm enraged and you stand there and.
• 1:35:29
  Meet me without joining me.
• 1:35:34
  The validation is not validation of the information.
• 1:35:38
  I'm not validating your story.
• 1:35:40
  I'm validating your, your, your, the truth of your experience.
• 1:35:45
  What it is that you are feeling, and that's the, the portal to safety.
• 1:35:52
  Right there.
• 1:35:53
  Right.
• 1:35:54
  And, but in that, I'm not all nicey nicey all the time.
• 1:35:58
  A lot of times, you know, someone is swearing at me, well, I work
• 1:36:02
  with youth, who, you know, swear words are as common for them as and.
• 1:36:08
  And they're in your face.
• 1:36:11
  If I was all nicey nicey and nurturing all the time, they would feel
• 1:36:15
  that that's not authentic, right?
• 1:36:19
  It's, it's meeting you in the vibration, finding it in me.
• 1:36:23
  Rupert Isaacson: So when you're not nicey nicey, then can you
• 1:36:25
  give us an example of that?
• 1:36:26
  Like, okay, I'm effing and blinding at you now, and wanting to get a rise out of you.
• 1:36:34
  so it's don't nicey nicey, but at the same time, You don't want to be too not nicey
• 1:36:38
  nicey, so, yeah, talk us through that.
• 1:36:41
  Kim Barthel: The not nicey nicey doesn't come out necessarily in words.
• 1:36:46
  It comes out in your body.
• 1:36:48
  When you think about nurturance, for example, the non verbals that we draw
• 1:36:54
  from in nurturance, typically, are how you use your voice, melodic, how you
• 1:37:02
  might use your eyes, how you lean your body in, what your gestural system does.
• 1:37:09
  It's A gestural, it's a non verbal approach system, whereas
• 1:37:17
  when there is anger or threat.
• 1:37:23
  It requires boundary for the other and me, that's containment.
• 1:37:31
  So that often demands from me standing up tall, pulling all my energy
• 1:37:36
  up, using my voice in a different tone and saying, this is not okay.
• 1:37:44
  I can.
• 1:37:46
  Be with you in your anger, but I do not need to accept your rudeness.
• 1:37:53
  That would be an example.
• 1:37:55
  Rupert Isaacson: You don't see, what's the reaction to that?
• 1:37:58
  Do they usually,
• 1:37:59
  Kim Barthel: it's usually, yeah.
• 1:38:01
  Rupert Isaacson: Okay.
• 1:38:02
  Kim Barthel: Because I'm not going to go.
• 1:38:07
  And, you know, I wrote, I wrote a book with a, a former
• 1:38:11
  national hockey league champion.
• 1:38:14
  Who survived by rage and you know that I use my greatest teacher
• 1:38:22
  because I would say that my greatest fear was rage and the feeling of
• 1:38:30
  violence and You it takes practice to step in Boundary and not own it
• 1:38:39
  as an example.
• 1:38:40
  Other people are completely activated by crying and tears.
• 1:38:45
  Yeah.
• 1:38:45
  Or they feel manipulated, right?
• 1:38:47
  Or out of control.
• 1:38:49
  We each have our own blind spots.
• 1:38:54
  And to meet the other person where they at means I have to do the
• 1:38:57
  work of being able to have a place for those emotions within myself.
• 1:39:07
  Rupert Isaacson: One of the things which, I try to cultivate, I don't,
• 1:39:09
  you know, Always managed to, but I do try is, I call it the happiness garden.
• 1:39:16
  where,
• 1:39:20
  when I'm in challenging situations or feeling disappointed or
• 1:39:27
  it doesn't have to involve another person, you know, but it can do.
• 1:39:30
  I, the last five years or so, I've tried to make a practice of feeling
• 1:39:41
  like there's a, a happiness garden in my chest and that I'm, when I'm feeling.
• 1:39:49
  Rocky, I'm, I'm st.
• 1:39:50
  I'm in that happiness garden.
• 1:39:51
  I'm still in that happiness garden.
• 1:39:53
  And I find this is helpful, and I find that the way to nurture that
• 1:39:59
  garden and have access to that garden more or quicker is gratitude.
• 1:40:07
  now trauma of course
• 1:40:13
  is the amygdala at, you know, it's, it's the amygdala at work.
• 1:40:18
  It's the, it is the memories of the amygdala.
• 1:40:20
  It's the amygdala, you know, it's all, it's all amygdala all the time.
• 1:40:24
  So.
• 1:40:27
  When a therapist, practitioner of some kind, is experiencing someone else's
• 1:40:36
  amygdala firing, their own amygdala, of course, fires in response, the
• 1:40:41
  therapist or practitioner has their own traumas and triggers, naturally.
• 1:40:48
  Then, let's say you've got a horse involved and you're actually trying
• 1:40:51
  to keep that person alive because horses are dangerous pieces of kit.
• 1:40:55
  and they need you, you talked about standing up tall and finding this
• 1:41:02
  inner resilience and this inner resource to be able to say, I meet
• 1:41:06
  you where you are and I see you and I do empathize with you, but I don't
• 1:41:09
  have to be, you don't have to be rude.
• 1:41:12
  That's taken you a while.
• 1:41:14
  I would imagine to get to that point.
• 1:41:15
  I'm sure you weren't always that
• 1:41:18
  Kim Barthel: good
• 1:41:18
  Rupert Isaacson: at it, right?
• 1:41:20
  A lot of people are coming into this field of work now in
• 1:41:25
  their twenties and thirties.
• 1:41:28
  When we first began with Horseboy, for example, you know, it was all the people
• 1:41:33
  we were training were people who were already being practitioners for a long
• 1:41:37
  period of time and they were just looking to add to their toolkit, you know, they
• 1:41:42
  were already good at what they did.
• 1:41:43
  Now, this has become something of an industry and this is a good thing
• 1:41:48
  because it means more people get served.
• 1:41:49
  But for example, some of the Horseboy centers, now that are opening, we
• 1:41:53
  need to staff them and we need to staff them with younger people.
• 1:41:57
  And, you know, you look at these people and go, wow, yes,
• 1:42:01
  it's amazing and beautiful that you're attracted to this work.
• 1:42:04
  And at the same time, you know, your life experience and your own
• 1:42:07
  traumas are going to, you know, sit very front and center in your mind,
• 1:42:12
  and you're going to get triggered.
• 1:42:13
  and you're not Kim Buffell, you know,
• 1:42:15
  Kim Barthel: with gray hair,
• 1:42:18
  Rupert Isaacson: what do you, what do you, you're going to get some gray hairs
• 1:42:20
  in the course of this work, but, what's your suggestion for people that are
• 1:42:25
  really coming into this line of work?
• 1:42:26
  Because I think a lot of times they get.
• 1:42:29
  caught on the back foot a little bit, by how demanding
• 1:42:32
  it can be this way emotionally.
• 1:42:35
  Kim Barthel: I love that.
• 1:42:36
  I love all your questions and your happiness garden, because
• 1:42:42
  what this work is really about.
• 1:42:45
  Remember, at the beginning when we talked about gallivanting around
• 1:42:47
  the world and You know, we are sharing information, but we're also
• 1:42:51
  gathering information and evolving.
• 1:42:56
  Every minute is a opportunity to evolve one's self.
• 1:43:00
  Rupert Isaacson: And
• 1:43:01
  Kim Barthel: the truth of the work is, calm and regulated is different.
• 1:43:11
  Regulation, and I think I said this last time, regulation is
• 1:43:16
  about being connected to yourself.
• 1:43:19
  And so the, it's not about being perfect.
• 1:43:23
  It's about being authentic.
• 1:43:26
  So for example, I've got a really great example.
• 1:43:30
  my daughter who I adore and love lives here with us recently, and
• 1:43:37
  we have been away for six months.
• 1:43:39
  And came home last night and I came into the studio this morning just to come in
• 1:43:45
  and be with you and it was a disaster
• 1:43:48
  Rupert Isaacson: of the tequila bottles and
• 1:43:50
  Kim Barthel: right.
• 1:43:51
  It was well, not quite like that, but not ready to be in a, in
• 1:43:55
  a, you know, in a useful state.
• 1:43:57
  Yeah, and there's enough security in the relationship and enough.
• 1:44:04
  Security within me now to say to her this is very frustrating.
• 1:44:10
  Rupert Isaacson: Yeah,
• 1:44:11
  Kim Barthel: without fear of damaging the relationship
• 1:44:13
  Rupert Isaacson: Yeah,
• 1:44:14
  Kim Barthel: so I had to connect in normally ten years ago I would have sucked
• 1:44:19
  it up cleaned it up been pissed off and it would have leaked out somewhere else
• 1:44:26
  Rupert Isaacson: Mm hmm
• 1:44:28
  Kim Barthel: in the relationship Whereas if I can pause and say to myself,
• 1:44:36
  I don't like this, this, this feels like a boundary violation or I don't
• 1:44:42
  feel valued in this situation or whatever words come, I'm actually
• 1:44:47
  taking care of myself in that moment.
• 1:44:50
  And what's fascinating about that self acknowledgement.
• 1:44:54
  Is it actually changes it?
• 1:44:57
  I found it quite funny in that it took me about two minutes and then it was like,
• 1:45:03
  Oh, this is such an irrelevant thing.
• 1:45:07
  Whereas historically I would have been mad for three, four hours.
• 1:45:11
  Rupert Isaacson: Yeah.
• 1:45:13
  Kim Barthel: So that that's the authentic connection where I can
• 1:45:17
  genuinely connect into whatever it is that is activated, whether it's little
• 1:45:25
  or big and not talk myself out of it.
• 1:45:30
  Then it moves on its own, rather than me having to have it leak out, as I say,
• 1:45:38
  in other things that I'm trying to do.
• 1:45:42
  And I've done that with clients.
• 1:45:43
  I've said things like, Oof, I'm sharing this with you right now.
• 1:45:49
  I'm so activated.
• 1:45:51
  Right now, I can't be with you until I'm with me a little bit longer.
• 1:45:58
  I'm very authentically, I don't tell them the story of why
• 1:46:03
  I'm activated, but I'm very
• 1:46:05
  Rupert Isaacson: So that doesn't trigger shame in them.
• 1:46:08
  For sure.
• 1:46:09
  Kim Barthel: And plus they're going to read it anyway.
• 1:46:12
  They're going to read it in my, especially a kindled
• 1:46:17
  Rupert Isaacson: amygdala
• 1:46:18
  Kim Barthel: is going to read the potential nonverbal of
• 1:46:23
  disconnection in a millisecond.
• 1:46:26
  And they're going to think it's about them.
• 1:46:30
  Rupert Isaacson: So what do you, what do you say to, to safeguard that they
• 1:46:33
  don't dissolve into a puddle of shame?
• 1:46:36
  When
• 1:46:36
  Kim Barthel: I will say, Ooh, this one's mine.
• 1:46:38
  Rupert Isaacson: Okay.
• 1:46:40
  So you, you, you say right up front, this is me, not you.
• 1:46:43
  Or I'm
• 1:46:44
  Kim Barthel: with you in this one.
• 1:46:46
  We're in this one together.
• 1:46:48
  I also use a lot of humor, Rupert.
• 1:46:50
  Rupert Isaacson: Yeah.
• 1:46:51
  Kim Barthel: A lot of humor.
• 1:46:52
  I've got a dry sense of humor.
• 1:46:54
  I make it very light.
• 1:46:58
  Rupert Isaacson: For those of you who can't see Kim on the Zoom, she is in
• 1:47:01
  fact sitting here in a pink gorilla suit.
• 1:47:02
  It is true.
• 1:47:03
  That's not true!
• 1:47:04
  But,
• 1:47:10
  Kim Barthel: you know, it's not all gloom and doom.
• 1:47:13
  Rupert Isaacson: Yeah, that's true.
• 1:47:14
  No, I think this is a really good point, lightheartedness.
• 1:47:18
  So I, one of the, one of the guidelines in Ospoi method, movement method, tacky in
• 1:47:30
  any of our programs is humor, particularly toilet humor, actually, because it's an
• 1:47:34
  act of rebellion, you know, for people who are over therapized and kids who've been
• 1:47:38
  told there's something wrong with them.
• 1:47:39
  And, you know, and you can teach all science through poo, you
• 1:47:42
  know, all the time, but because it appeals to that sense of rebellion.
• 1:47:48
  It restores self respect, you know, someone who's had their, been over
• 1:47:51
  therapized, told that there's something wrong with them every day of their
• 1:47:55
  childhood, you know, it's not good.
• 1:47:57
  and their spirits are often broken.
• 1:47:59
  And to restore self respect, you must rebel.
• 1:48:02
  You have to.
• 1:48:03
  and it can give a really good way to rebut, plus it's actually funny, you know.
• 1:48:07
  And that's connection, and that's oxytocin, and also it's funny, you know.
• 1:48:11
  it's, it's alright to do something because it's funny just
• 1:48:13
  for the fact that it's funny.
• 1:48:15
  Burp.
• 1:48:16
  I do absolutely see that there can be such an over emphasis on seriousness.
• 1:48:24
  Because we're trying to be sincere, we're trying to be authentic.
• 1:48:27
  And we forget that part of sincerity and authenticness is, of
• 1:48:30
  course, when one is light hearted.
• 1:48:33
  And then the diffusion of conflict, through a well timed crack, is
• 1:48:37
  like a gift from God, it's so true.
• 1:48:40
  One of the things I think is, What I find can be tricky is that the world of
• 1:48:46
  therapy can definitely attract controlling or fear based personality types who
• 1:48:53
  want to be therapists perhaps because it gives them a sense of self control of
• 1:48:57
  their own issues and so on and then that can end up being projected and so then
• 1:49:01
  humour goes completely out of the window.
• 1:49:03
  It's not, this is not appropriate, this is not the place for, you
• 1:49:06
  know, and that word appropriate can then be wielded like a weapon.
• 1:49:12
  how do you encourage humour?
• 1:49:13
  Humour.
• 1:49:16
  Because you, you must be dealing with some people taking themselves quite seriously.
• 1:49:22
  Kim Barthel: I, I, I can be quite sassy, I think, and then quite tender.
• 1:49:30
  So, you know, when one of the things is that it's a, it's a moving dial,
• 1:49:37
  and then there's a narration of intent.
• 1:49:41
  Rupert Isaacson: Okay, go on.
• 1:49:42
  What do you mean by that?
• 1:49:43
  Kim Barthel: I'll say, well, if I, if I get a perception, That my humor has
• 1:49:48
  landed flatly or somewhat inappropriately
• 1:49:53
  Rupert Isaacson: by the way Wasn't narration of intent the supporting
• 1:49:57
  band in the 1983 tour of the smiths?
• 1:50:00
  In canada,
• 1:50:02
  Kim Barthel: I have no idea
• 1:50:04
  Rupert Isaacson: Go on anyway, sorry
• 1:50:07
  Narration of intent.
• 1:50:07
  Okay.
• 1:50:08
  So when you find your your your your and let's
• 1:50:11
  Kim Barthel: say I've said something and it landed like, you know, like you just
• 1:50:16
  made me laugh Mm hmm But if I didn't, or if I had done that to you and it didn't
• 1:50:25
  laugh, I went, I would have said something like, well, that didn't go so well.
• 1:50:28
  Rupert Isaacson: Right, right, right.
• 1:50:30
  You take, you take, you take the joke on you.
• 1:50:32
  Kim Barthel: Yeah.
• 1:50:33
  Or, you know, my, my, my humor was not well timed there.
• 1:50:38
  Rupert Isaacson: Yeah.
• 1:50:39
  Right.
• 1:50:39
  Well that went down like a lead balloon.
• 1:50:41
  Yeah,
• 1:50:41
  Kim Barthel: exactly.
• 1:50:42
  I'm tracking myself
• 1:50:44
  Rupert Isaacson: as
• 1:50:45
  Kim Barthel: well as other.
• 1:50:46
  All the time.
• 1:50:48
  And so I'm noticing what's going on in here, in me, while I'm also
• 1:50:54
  watching what's going on in you.
• 1:50:58
  And you know, you've got, you've also got the information of the horse.
• 1:51:02
  Rupert Isaacson: Right.
• 1:51:02
  Well that, that, this, this all, yeah.
• 1:51:05
  Who's even
• 1:51:05
  Kim Barthel: better than both of us, right?
• 1:51:07
  Rupert Isaacson: It's like, I've been answering some of these questions myself
• 1:51:11
  in my head, actually, because each time I asked him, I was like, yeah, but if
• 1:51:13
  the horse is there, they kind of co regulate for you and bring you guys back
• 1:51:17
  to the present and diffuse a lot of the conflict just by the fact that they're
• 1:51:20
  so awesome and, you know, but of course, then let's say someone's coming to us
• 1:51:27
  for a session and they're with the horse and the horse actually is picking up
• 1:51:29
  a lot of, most of the slack this way.
• 1:51:31
  Let's face it.
• 1:51:32
  They're doing most of the work, of course, but then that person goes
• 1:51:36
  home and they have to have tools When there is no horse around.
• 1:51:45
  Talk to our practitioners and therapists who are listening now What are, for
• 1:51:52
  you, you think, the most important tools that they can give their
• 1:51:57
  clients, families, to take home to sort of keep that positive flow going?
• 1:52:08
  Kim Barthel: You know, you talked about the happiness garden
• 1:52:12
  as your tool.
• 1:52:13
  That's a cultivation of cognition,
• 1:52:16
  Rupert Isaacson: cultivation of cognition, cognition.
• 1:52:18
  They actually supported narration of intent.
• 1:52:20
  I think at the same Smith's concert.
• 1:52:23
  And yeah,
• 1:52:24
  Kim Barthel: there we go.
• 1:52:24
  You got it.
• 1:52:25
  Our bands are together.
• 1:52:27
  So the cultivation of cognition means.
• 1:52:30
  It's a very high order skill.
• 1:52:33
  Rupert Isaacson: Go on.
• 1:52:34
  Kim Barthel: You reflect to know when
• 1:52:39
  you shift out of the predictive brain back into the desire to cultivate happiness, to
• 1:52:49
  tap into gratitude, that's cognitive and
• 1:52:53
  Rupert Isaacson: predictive brain being like pessimism.
• 1:52:56
  Kim Barthel: Well, the predictive brain brain is definitely has a negativity bias.
• 1:53:00
  Absolutely.
• 1:53:02
  Rupert Isaacson: Well, that won't work because blah, blah, blah.
• 1:53:04
  Exactly.
• 1:53:05
  Kim Barthel: And it, it doesn't even come to consciousness sometimes.
• 1:53:07
  Rupert Isaacson: Yes.
• 1:53:09
  Kim Barthel: Just operating like Norton antivirus, running in the background,
• 1:53:13
  producing, reproducing old habits.
• 1:53:19
  Rupert Isaacson: Right.
• 1:53:19
  Kim Barthel: Neurons that fire together, wire together.
• 1:53:22
  And, and so consciousness Negative
• 1:53:24
  Rupert Isaacson: neuroplasticity, yeah.
• 1:53:25
  Correct.
• 1:53:27
  Kim Barthel: Consciousness is the last level
• 1:53:31
  of, of true capacity to shift.
• 1:53:35
  And sometimes that happens in a second and sometimes it takes years.
• 1:53:39
  And it's very difficult.
• 1:53:42
  So when, when you, when you ask me the question, what do you give someone
• 1:53:45
  or what does someone take home?
• 1:53:49
  Your, your, your, your gift of home is different for each client,
• 1:53:56
  dependent on their place of entry.
• 1:54:01
  The easiest place to create a shift is in the body, which I know you know.
• 1:54:07
  Rupert Isaacson: Go on though, talk about this.
• 1:54:09
  Kim Barthel: So even something as simple as I'm doing a, what we call
• 1:54:13
  a butterfly tap, which is a rhythmic,
• 1:54:17
  Tapping of the outline of my body with my hands.
• 1:54:21
  Even that?
• 1:54:22
  Rupert Isaacson: I'm just going to describe for listeners
• 1:54:24
  because they can't see it.
• 1:54:24
  So what, what Kim did, and it's funny, the moment you started doing it, I
• 1:54:28
  felt a little oxytocin of connection.
• 1:54:31
  So she, she crossed her arms.
• 1:54:33
  So their hands, let's say you cross your arms.
• 1:54:35
  So one hand would be on each shoulder.
• 1:54:38
  And then she started to tap, Those shoulders and then down her arms
• 1:54:41
  and down her forearms like that.
• 1:54:43
  And it did indeed look like a bit of a butterfly.
• 1:54:46
  That's a cool one.
• 1:54:48
  Kim Barthel: And what it does is, at a very primitive level in the nervous
• 1:54:53
  system, is increase the load of information of the body to the brain,
• 1:54:59
  which really gives you an outline of you.
• 1:55:02
  Like, this is me.
• 1:55:04
  I'm here.
• 1:55:06
  And it, it decreases the disconnection that comes with a flooded amygdala.
• 1:55:13
  And Yes, it gives oxytocin, it also gives dopamine and
• 1:55:17
  serotonin, that kind of activity.
• 1:55:21
  But what its goal is, is to, in a sense, I don't even know if I like
• 1:55:27
  this word, but ground you or bring you back to the present moment.
• 1:55:32
  Like a breath.
• 1:55:34
  So to me, the quick shift game changer, in a moment, can't involve much
• 1:55:40
  Rupert Isaacson: cognition.
• 1:55:43
  Yeah, because the amygdala doesn't allow it.
• 1:55:46
  Kim Barthel: So, if I have a client, or you have a child that you're working with,
• 1:55:50
  and you're giving support to a family, even when the parent does butterfly tap
• 1:55:57
  as an example, then they are modeling that for the child, but as the parent
• 1:56:03
  moves the energy of the child themself, it changes the energy of them both.
• 1:56:09
  Rupert Isaacson: It's so interesting when I, you know, when I was at the
• 1:56:12
  beginning of my autism journey with my own son and was sort of being kicked
• 1:56:16
  around by the behavioral therapists.
• 1:56:18
  You know, one of the things which, of course, they were all obsessed with
• 1:56:22
  was quiet hands and telling my son to stop stimming as if he could understand
• 1:56:27
  what they were on about anyway.
• 1:56:29
  And it seemed to me, That he was stimming to self regulate.
• 1:56:35
  Kim Barthel: Yes.
• 1:56:35
  Rupert Isaacson: And I, when I used to watch him rocking and flapping and doing
• 1:56:40
  that stuff, I would, I would kind of often think, yeah, I do that actually.
• 1:56:43
  When I'm, when I'm.
• 1:56:46
  Anxious I rock because that I'm later on I realized oh, that's about the body
• 1:56:49
  trying to produce oxytocin to get you out of the amygdala So that you can actually
• 1:56:53
  think your way out of a situation.
• 1:56:55
  That's why we rock I didn't know that at the time obviously, but you know,
• 1:56:58
  I would observe my own stims and Okay, they were dialed at maybe four 11.
• 1:57:08
  I remember thinking Why would you
• 1:57:10
  Kim Barthel: stop
• 1:57:12
  Rupert Isaacson: that because that's the clue to a nonverbal person's
• 1:57:16
  emotional state because sometimes the stims are happy stims and sometimes
• 1:57:20
  the stims were and it's often the same movement, but it could be expressed.
• 1:57:25
  Like a flat can be yay and a flat could be you know, but it's the
• 1:57:29
  same movement of the wrists, right?
• 1:57:31
  Kim Barthel: Well, you and I are on the same tuning fork again, because I've been
• 1:57:35
  running around this planet for 25 years, pleading people to see the body as a use
• 1:57:44
  of how we can come back into our, State of ease and please stop making people
• 1:57:52
  stop whatever strategy or need that they have to feel at ease in their own being.
• 1:58:01
  Could we please just honor that,
• 1:58:03
  Rupert Isaacson: you know, back to your point about the veteran pooping
• 1:58:05
  his pants and it's interesting.
• 1:58:07
  I was thinking about a similar experience.
• 1:58:08
  I had myself.
• 1:58:09
  I was once mugged by five guys in a crowd in Africa and I've as the fists
• 1:58:16
  were coming down on me and I was thinking, are they going to kill me?
• 1:58:18
  What are they going to do?
• 1:58:19
  Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
• 1:58:21
  I just felt myself pissing my pants and I says, but it's still
• 1:58:24
  a voice in my head just went.
• 1:58:25
  Yeah.
• 1:58:26
  Well, of course I'm pissing my pants, you know, it's just a terrifying
• 1:58:29
  situation you know, how, how normal.
• 1:58:32
  It was interesting, there wasn't a sense of shame with it, but there might have
• 1:58:35
  been in another context, who knows.
• 1:58:38
  The, this idea of physicality in the body and giving people the nervous system
• 1:58:44
  and the body to work with so that they can get out of the intellect which they
• 1:58:47
  can get out of shame and then ironically reactivate the intellect but in a in a
• 1:58:52
  more positive way the body to the mind the thing where we're all brutalized i think
• 1:59:00
  and some early traumas what do you think about this is some really standard things
• 1:59:05
  like when you're first at school you're not allowed to go to the toilet you've
• 1:59:11
  got to sit there and override your bodily need And be sort of shamed if you need it.
• 1:59:20
  Then again, you can then use the trip to the toilet.
• 1:59:22
  Can I go to the toilet, please?
• 1:59:23
  Mr.
• 1:59:23
  Get out of that room.
• 1:59:25
  A lot of kids do.
• 1:59:26
  To flee.
• 1:59:27
  But you're basically being told to override your nervous system.
• 1:59:32
  And Some people might say, well, that's good because that, you know,
• 1:59:36
  means that in those situations where you have to, in life, you can.
• 1:59:41
  But I suspect one would learn that anyway.
• 1:59:46
  These early cumulative unsafetinesses, you're going to be
• 1:59:55
  unsafe if you react to your body.
• 2:00:02
  then becomes, right, a habit of not reacting to the body and Then
• 2:00:07
  constantly living in the amygdala which makes us suggestible and easily
• 2:00:10
  manipulated and easily controlled.
• 2:00:11
  Okay before we began this Recorded part of the conversation you told me that
• 2:00:16
  you had been working with a school in northern Canada So it is trying to do the
• 2:00:21
  opposite of this in an indigenous setting, and we know the indigenous settings
• 2:00:27
  in North America are far from perfect.
• 2:00:30
  And they are trying to actively decolonize education.
• 2:00:34
  So how are they working with the nervous system?
• 2:00:37
  Talk to us about that project.
• 2:00:40
  Kim Barthel: How are they working with the nervous system?
• 2:00:42
  They are trying to begin to move from the perception of
• 2:00:50
  seeing themselves as victims.
• 2:00:54
  So the concept that you just spoke of, Abandonment of self is what I call it.
• 2:01:04
  So any, and this can begin at infant, I mean, first hours after birth.
• 2:01:10
  If I have a caregiver who is doing the best they can with what they have, who
• 2:01:15
  cannot read my cues or is preoccupied with their own suffering, then I,
• 2:01:23
  as an infant at the very primitive circuitry of my brain, will abandon my
• 2:01:28
  own body to sustain the relationship.
• 2:01:32
  Okay.
• 2:01:34
  So I'll dismiss my own hunger.
• 2:01:36
  I'll dismiss my own fatigue.
• 2:01:38
  I'll dismiss my own pain to sustain.
• 2:01:42
  Unconsciously, I mean this is not the baby thinking, I'm gonna do this.
• 2:01:47
  This is happening to ensure that we stay connected.
• 2:01:51
  This is attachment.
• 2:01:54
  And, and so you know, colonization disrupted a lot of what wisdom lived
• 2:02:02
  in many of our indigenous people.
• 2:02:05
  Communities around the process of attunement and attachment.
• 2:02:09
  And so, many of the principles that I know that you subscribe to.
• 2:02:15
  The use of the land, the use of nature, the connect, and
• 2:02:19
  the use is not the right word.
• 2:02:23
  Tapping back into what we know is becoming part of their, they, they have
• 2:02:30
  a process called land and language.
• 2:02:34
  Into the class, like the classroom is on the land.
• 2:02:37
  And in the language, reconnecting to the meaning of what we knew and staying
• 2:02:45
  connected to the presence of attuned learning as opposed to fed learning
• 2:02:53
  in a traditional, that's what they would call colonized way, sitting in
• 2:02:57
  a desk, having someone talk at you.
• 2:03:01
  learning through imparting of information and remembering that
• 2:03:06
  there are other ways of expanding knowing, ways of knowing and being.
• 2:03:16
  Rupert Isaacson: How far in is this project?
• 2:03:18
  Kim Barthel: Brand new.
• 2:03:21
  Rupert Isaacson: Is it all grades?
• 2:03:23
  Kim Barthel: No, it's very difficult.
• 2:03:26
  Rupert Isaacson: Meaning, no, is it all grades?
• 2:03:28
  Is it, is it like K through 12 or is it?
• 2:03:31
  Kim Barthel: Oh, I thought you said, is it all great?
• 2:03:33
  Rupert Isaacson: No.
• 2:03:35
  Kim Barthel: I heard great.
• 2:03:36
  Is it all grades?
• 2:03:37
  Yes, all grades.
• 2:03:38
  Rupert Isaacson: Okay.
• 2:03:39
  Kim Barthel: From preschool till grade 12.
• 2:03:45
  Rupert Isaacson: Any
• 2:03:48
  way that the listeners can find out more about this project?
• 2:03:52
  Kim Barthel: Well, there is if you look up First Nations School Board in the Yukon.
• 2:03:57
  Rupert Isaacson: First Nations School Board in the Yukon?
• 2:03:59
  First Nations School
• 2:03:59
  Kim Barthel: Board in the Yukon of Canada.
• 2:04:01
  Rupert Isaacson: Okay.
• 2:04:02
  Kim Barthel: You would?
• 2:04:03
  See their mission page, their, their endeavors, the
• 2:04:08
  things that they, I can feel
• 2:04:09
  Rupert Isaacson: a podcast coming up.
• 2:04:10
  Yeah.
• 2:04:11
  Kim Barthel: I feel so proud of them.
• 2:04:12
  Yeah.
• 2:04:13
  Rupert Isaacson: First nations
• 2:04:14
  Kim Barthel: school board, F and S B
• 2:04:18
  Rupert Isaacson: school
• 2:04:21
  board.
• 2:04:21
  Kim Barthel: And I can send you the link to their website at the dialogue.
• 2:04:26
  Yeah.
• 2:04:26
  Rupert Isaacson: Do you, do you happen to have
• 2:04:30
  URL even on your phone is your phone handy that just so that listeners
• 2:04:34
  could pull over and Write it down because I think for for all of us
• 2:04:39
  who are working We don't just work in therapy work in education, right?
• 2:04:42
  We're teaching stuff
• 2:04:43
  Kim Barthel: correct
• 2:04:44
  Rupert Isaacson: while we're doing these things and You know, we're
• 2:04:46
  actually, we're actually delivering curriculum quite a lot of the time.
• 2:04:49
  And I would love to find out more about land and language, and
• 2:04:55
  Kim Barthel: yes, I do.
• 2:04:56
  Rupert Isaacson: Yeah.
• 2:04:57
  So
• 2:04:57
  Kim Barthel: www dot
• 2:04:59
  Rupert Isaacson: www dot
• 2:05:01
  Kim Barthel: f nsb.
• 2:05:02
  Do CF
• 2:05:04
  Rupert Isaacson: nsb.
• 2:05:06
  F N S B dot C A.
• 2:05:09
  Fantastic.
• 2:05:10
  I'm going to contact them.
• 2:05:11
  Brilliant.
• 2:05:11
  Awesome.
• 2:05:12
  Kim Barthel: Good.
• 2:05:12
  Whoo!
• 2:05:14
  Rupert Isaacson: Mmm.
• 2:05:15
  Kim Barthel: We stuck our toe in lots of different places.
• 2:05:19
  Rupert Isaacson: Well, so many, in fact, that we're going to have to return.
• 2:05:24
  I haven't even asked you what's about the work you've been doing with
• 2:05:27
  Porges and Levine, who of course are, you know, like you, among the sit
• 2:05:31
  sitteth in the firmament of polyvagal neuroscientific stuff up there on
• 2:05:36
  Olympus where you guys have been.
• 2:05:38
  And I'd like to delve into that more.
• 2:05:42
  I'd like to talk much more about how you view attunement and what that
• 2:05:48
  actually is because it's, it's so multi faceted, but people use that word a lot.
• 2:05:52
  I'd like to delve more into the nervous system stuff, but we're,
• 2:05:58
  we're, with the previous part of the podcast, we're probably at
• 2:06:02
  about the two and a half hour thing.
• 2:06:05
  So I want people to know that I'm going to cheekily ask Kim to come back.
• 2:06:12
  And I'm just going to prepare a list of more questions.
• 2:06:15
  Kim, would you be prepared to do that?
• 2:06:16
  Because I just feel there's a ton more here.
• 2:06:18
  I have
• 2:06:18
  Kim Barthel: another, I have another wish on my wish list.
• 2:06:21
  I'm just going to put it out there.
• 2:06:22
  We we'll be back in Europe in the spring of 2025.
• 2:06:27
  What would be really awesome is an opportunity to actually
• 2:06:30
  do some work together.
• 2:06:33
  Rupert Isaacson: Yes, please.
• 2:06:33
  Let's do that.
• 2:06:34
  Do you know when you're coming?
• 2:06:36
  Kim Barthel: Yes, May.
• 2:06:38
  Rupert Isaacson: May.
• 2:06:38
  All right.
• 2:06:39
  I
• 2:06:39
  Kim Barthel: can't tell you the exact date at this moment, but we'll
• 2:06:42
  be in Ireland, Bulgaria, Italy.
• 2:06:47
  Germany's not that far away.
• 2:06:48
  Rupert Isaacson: Well, also I work in all those countries too.
• 2:06:51
  We have many projects in Ireland.
• 2:06:52
  Bulgaria, I've never been to, so that's a great excuse.
• 2:06:56
  , but Italy too, we, we actually run retreats in Italy.
• 2:06:59
  , we run retreats in Ireland.
• 2:07:01
  All right.
• 2:07:04
  Tell what would that look like?
• 2:07:07
  Would that be like a two day thing?
• 2:07:08
  A five day thing?
• 2:07:09
  A one day thing?
• 2:07:11
  What, what, what do you think?
• 2:07:12
  What does a Kim Barthel thing normally look like?
• 2:07:15
  Kim Barthel: Well, what I was thinking is how could I be of service to you?
• 2:07:18
  Not.
• 2:07:19
  anything else.
• 2:07:20
  Like my, my thought was, I need to learn about what you do.
• 2:07:26
  , and how could I benefit from the, just like everything else, what
• 2:07:32
  more is there to collaborate in and learn from in your presence as well.
• 2:07:38
  So it's not so much, what am I bringing, but what can we
• 2:07:42
  create together was my thought.
• 2:07:45
  Rupert Isaacson: Well, absolutely.
• 2:07:47
  I'm just trying to think.
• 2:07:48
  What instinctively do you feel?
• 2:07:51
  Do you feel it's a two day thing?
• 2:07:53
  A three day thing?
• 2:07:54
  I mean, in terms of what people can probably, we
• 2:07:59
  Kim Barthel: could probably have fun in two days.
• 2:08:00
  Rupert Isaacson: Okay.
• 2:08:02
  All right.
• 2:08:02
  Let's, you heard it.
• 2:08:05
  Kim and I going to do it two days in the pub.
• 2:08:09
  And
• 2:08:11
  you can join me.
• 2:08:12
  Kim Barthel: Because unlike you, I don't have the extensive experience, extensive
• 2:08:17
  experience of hanging out with the horse.
• 2:08:21
  And so that variable to me would be something that
• 2:08:27
  would really deepen the work.
• 2:08:29
  Rupert Isaacson: Well ponies are us.
• 2:08:31
  And what you'll find is you'll bust me immediately.
• 2:08:34
  It'd be like, Oh, I see.
• 2:08:36
  Rupert's just full of it because the horse just does all the work.
• 2:08:39
  Rupert, yes.
• 2:08:41
  Hangs out next to him.
• 2:08:42
  Which is basically true.
• 2:08:44
  But going into the neurosensory stuff of why that is, how that
• 2:08:48
  is, is interesting for sure.
• 2:08:50
  And okay, well, I'm going to put that out there to our people that you and I will,
• 2:08:55
  we'll, we'll do a collaboratory thing.
• 2:08:58
  But I, I want to, I want to learn from you.
• 2:08:59
  So, and I know many of our listeners do too.
• 2:09:04
  Okay.
• 2:09:04
  So we'll announce that.
• 2:09:05
  Kim and I will, we'll get.
• 2:09:09
  Kim Barthel: I'll send you when the calendar unfolds, which should be by
• 2:09:13
  the end of the Christmas holidays.
• 2:09:15
  Rupert Isaacson: Okay,
• 2:09:16
  Kim Barthel: then we will have a clearer idea of our schedule.
• 2:09:19
  Rupert Isaacson: And then just in case you're listening to this, in
• 2:09:21
  fact, in 2027 or something, because these things tend to hang around.
• 2:09:26
  Hopefully, when you get to this part of the thing, then
• 2:09:30
  there'll be more information.
• 2:09:31
  In 2027, more of these things.
• 2:09:33
  So, look us up.
• 2:09:35
  All right.
• 2:09:36
  So Kim, people will want to know how to find your work and contact you.
• 2:09:40
  How can they contact you?
• 2:09:41
  Can people contact you personally?
• 2:09:43
  Can they engage with you as a mentor?
• 2:09:45
  Can you just talk us through all the options, please?
• 2:09:49
  Kim Barthel: So our website, well, the name of our company
• 2:09:52
  is Relationship Matters.
• 2:09:53
  Rupert Isaacson: Relationship Matters.
• 2:09:54
  Kim Barthel: Relationship Matters.
• 2:09:56
  And the website is www.
• 2:09:59
  kimbarthel.
• 2:10:00
  ca.
• 2:10:02
  We live on all the social media platforms under Kim Barthel.
• 2:10:06
  I am tricky to connect with personally.
• 2:10:10
  It's, it's really a nonstop, well, nonstop schedule.
• 2:10:14
  We do do mentorships.
• 2:10:17
  And they are not the most common thing that happens.
• 2:10:22
  Right in our work and really it's about coming and joining us when we
• 2:10:26
  are on the road in a workshop venue.
• 2:10:29
  And
• 2:10:30
  Rupert Isaacson: brilliant.
• 2:10:31
  Kim Barthel: Thank you.
• 2:10:32
  Rupert Isaacson: Okay.
• 2:10:33
  So will you, will you come back on?
• 2:10:36
  Kim Barthel: Yes.
• 2:10:37
  Rupert Isaacson: And we can keep this conversation going.
• 2:10:40
  Yes.
• 2:10:41
  It's fun.
• 2:10:42
  Kim Barthel: As I said, the tuning fork is resonant.
• 2:10:44
  So let's, let's do it.
• 2:10:47
  Rupert Isaacson: And I'm going to throw this one open to listeners.
• 2:10:50
  Lads, if you've got questions Send them into me admin at N T L S N T
• 2:10:57
  L S dot C O and we will make sure that we hold Kim's feet to the fire
• 2:11:03
  to get answers for those things.
• 2:11:05
  Because I know so many people do have questions for you.
• 2:11:09
  And our mutual friend, Leanna tank, who is an amazing occupational therapist.
• 2:11:16
  He works with the most.
• 2:11:19
  dangerous criminals in lockdown in psych units in, in the Midwest is also I feel
• 2:11:27
  a mentor and she brought us together.
• 2:11:30
  So
• 2:11:30
  Kim Barthel: what
• 2:11:31
  Rupert Isaacson: I might do if it's all right is bring her in actually
• 2:11:34
  on the next podcast and then we could include, make it a three way thing.
• 2:11:40
  Amazing.
• 2:11:41
  Amazing.
• 2:11:41
  That'd be good.
• 2:11:42
  Okay, brilliant.
• 2:11:43
  I'm going to wax her.
• 2:11:44
  All right.
• 2:11:45
  Kim Barthel: All right,
• 2:11:46
  Rupert Isaacson: Kim.
• 2:11:47
  Amazing.
• 2:11:48
  Thank you.
• 2:11:49
  Kim Barthel: Happy holidays
• 2:11:50
  Rupert Isaacson: to you too.
• 2:11:51
  Speak soon.
• 2:11:52
  Okay.
• 2:11:52
  You bet.
• 2:11:53
  Take care.
• 2:11:53
  Kim Barthel: Thanks.
• 2:11:54
  Rupert Isaacson: thank you for joining us.
• 2:11:55
  We hope you enjoyed today's podcast.
• 2:11:57
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• 2:12:02
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• 2:12:08
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• 2:12:13
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• 2:12:35
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