Latest / The Horsehuman Connection Matrix / Equine Wisdom Applied / Amanda Held
Transcript
- 0:00Hi.
- 0:00And is she Abel with the Horse Human Connection Matrix.
- 0:03And today I have with me Amanda, held from Hooves and she also has a book that is about to be released.
- 0:11Healing in harmony.
- 0:12Healing in harmony.
- 0:14And she's gonna weigh in on Charlie Bucks and she brings a very unique perspective because of the work that she does, and I just, I can't wait to hear how she helps to unpack some of this and all of the nuances that affect.
- 0:28Human relationships and how we come together with horses as well.
- 0:31Welcome, Amanda.
- 0:33Yes.
- 0:33Thank you so much for having me.
- 0:35And it's an an honor to be a part of this unpacking.
- 0:39And so I did listen to your original story where you share what happened, and then I listened to Kimberly and Asha and their perspectives as well.
- 0:49I just wanna say, you know, everything that Kimberly and Asha said, I think I wholeheartedly support.
- 0:56I agree with, and I feel like what we're really doing here is we're painting this holistic picture.
- 1:04Mm-hmm.
- 1:04And if you've ever worked with me or if you know anything about the work that I do.
- 1:09I believe that it is paramount to never consider anything from one perspective.
- 1:15If we really wanna be holistic in our viewpoint and our ability to influence and change our life, I think it's important to lay all the information out on the table and then make a decision based on all the information on how you wanna move forward.
- 1:30I'm coming from quite a different perspective.
- 1:33It's not a horse training per perspective, but it's more of an energetic perspective.
- 1:40And if you've ever done any energy research, Rupert Sheldrake, I recommend his work to everybody.
- 1:48He does a lot of work in the Morphic field, but the research and work that I've built, the Equine Wisdom Institute around is largely based off of the laws of nature and quantum entanglement.
- 2:02So that's the approach that I'm gonna be taking today in unpacking what is going on.
- 2:09And so I have tried to, I, I guess I wanna start by saying I believe that when we generalize, we polarize.
- 2:22Mm-hmm.
- 2:22And I think one of the biggest challenges, and especially listening to the conversation with Kimberly in the horse training realm is that the answer is always, it depends.
- 2:37You had me at always.
- 2:38I was like, wait a minute.
- 2:39We're not supposed to say always and never.
- 2:41But in that sentence, it works.
- 2:44Yes.
- 2:44Right.
- 2:44And so I also believe we can't say always and never except when we're working in the con context of universal laws and principles.
- 2:53Okay.
- 2:54Because the laws are always absolute.
- 2:57So in the work I've been doing over the past 15 years, I've really learned how to see the laws of nature at play.
- 3:04Mm-hmm.
- 3:05In every.
- 3:07Situation that is brought in front of me.
- 3:09And just to give people a little bit of background on me, I started working with wild horses and becoming a horse trainer in 2003.
- 3:17So my work has largely been in WildHorse, gentling.
- 3:21I am also a little bit neuros spicy, so I don't have autism, but I have pretty escalated hd, which is you know, really become a superpower to me.
- 3:32But my brain works a little bit different and it works very much in patterning and I'm always like, I see patterns in everything, which I think has helped me be really effective in working with horses, getting last chance, horses being able to get horses to places that no one else can get them, because horses.
- 3:51Also really love patterns, patterns to horses actually bring them safety and security.
- 3:57So that totally makes sense.
- 3:59Yeah.
- 3:59Yes.
- 4:00As pre animals it totally makes sense.
- 4:02Absolutely.
- 4:03So clarity and patterns, that's really how I work with my horses.
- 4:08And I would love to meet Kimberly one day because man, I resonated with everything that she was saying, so she's awesome.
- 4:15I really enjoyed what she had to say about the situation.
- 4:19Yes, she's so before we dig in, there's some fundamentals that I just wanna kind touch on.
- 4:26And one of the things I put in my notes about.
- 4:30Horse training and I, I am no longer a horse trainer and I no longer give lessons unless something crazy comes outta the blue.
- 4:39My life has now turned to the equine assisted healing space.
- 4:43So I run five day healing intensives primarily for veterans, but sometimes for other groups of people as well.
- 4:50And we learn about the laws of nature.
- 4:53We learn about what I call the human blueprint, so our own special intrinsic driving forces.
- 5:01And then we also work with how does the horse work with who we are at an intrinsic level.
- 5:09Mm-hmm.
- 5:10And.
- 5:11In doing this.
- 5:12'cause you know, I came from the old school horse training, then into the natural horsemanship and then into the realizing that horse horses are incredibly intelligent, sentient beings.
- 5:24Then I didn't want to like do anything to reprimand them or confront them, and then I created a whole mess there.
- 5:31And so I like to feel like I've, I've landed somewhere in this space of neutrality saying always, it depends, but looking at each case individually, because it is in the minutia that we get the information.
- 5:50But one of the things I've seen over and over and over and over again in the equine assisted healing space,'cause most of my clients are not horse people, they're just coming to heal, is that horses will reflect the life inside of the human.
- 6:06That is why they're so powerful in the therapeutic space.
- 6:11But at the same time, this innate ability that they possess, you know, because they're attuned to our nervous system, because they're prey animals, because they have a social hierarchy similar to humans, whatever all these reasons are that make horses, horses, this isn't something they can turn off ever.
- 6:31So every session that any human being ever has with a horse is always a therapy session in some form.
- 6:42Now, most people choose not to see that, and many, many people compensate for that by shutting the horse down and putting it in to learned helplessness and calling it a good broke horse.
- 6:57But somewhere in there, at some point, that horse has seen you.
- 7:04It's a type of avoid, it's a type of avoidance is what you're describing.
- 7:07Oh, well, absolutely.
- 7:08Because, because people who are hurt and don't understand, and this is not from a place of judgment.
- 7:13'cause I used to be one of those people.
- 7:14It's a, it's a place of observation.
- 7:17But the reason that horses can trigger us so deeply is because they see us.
- 7:24And if we're not used to being seen or if we don't like what's being seen, it's triggering.
- 7:30It's confronting.
- 7:31Right.
- 7:31And so when you don't know what to do with that information, a lot of times you, you feel like you have to overpower it.
- 7:39Right.
- 7:39And we, we try to control situations in order to feel safe.
- 7:43And if we don't wanna be seen or, or things are being uncovered, we may not feel safe.
- 7:49Absolutely.
- 7:50So this is a systemic issue in the entire society of horses because a lot of people, myself included.
- 8:01Get into horses because horses give us a level of empowerment mm-hmm.
- 8:06That maybe we can't find anywhere else.
- 8:09And if you are seeking external empowerment, then that typically means that internally you're disempowered.
- 8:17Right.
- 8:17I noticed the demographic of women with horses and you know, like 10, 15 years ago and started, you know, like mentally noting that a lot of women that I'd met who had horses were kind of in broken relationships looking for that empowerment.
- 8:34Exactly as you're saying.
- 8:35I mean, the demographics show that clearly, but we've made a lot of progress I think in the last decade.
- 8:42Oh yeah, absolutely.
- 8:43And so I'm gonna say something potentially confronting here, but this is a pattern in doing all of the work that I've done over the past 20 years many people look to their horses to provide them with something they didn't get from their parents.
- 9:01Mm-hmm.
- 9:03It's just and you know, and I'm, I did it too came into the horse world, very broken.
- 9:10But our voids in our childhood mm-hmm.
- 9:14Create our values as an adult.
- 9:17And instead of being taught,'cause we're just not taught how to fill our own voids at, at this stage in humanity we start to look at outside things to do that for us.
- 9:29Right.
- 9:29And so some, sometimes people become overachievers and maybe they do like dirt bike racing or, you know, something that involves inanimate objects.
- 9:38You know, which tends to go better for people, but the horses they see right through, they see all of it, you know, and I know the, the whole nervous system thing is, is a huge buzz right now.
- 9:51I mean, it's very true, but I like to say like, when we're being inauthentic or when, when we're not fully owning what is inside of us and, and what's inside of us can, can feel really ugly and still be okay to the horse if it's being expressed truthfully.
- 10:11But we've been told, and we've been conditioned, you know, if you show up and you're sad or if you show up and you're angry, people aren't gonna like you.
- 10:20Right?
- 10:20We're talking about congruence and how horses expose our incongruence and, and that in our culture.
- 10:28We're taught to be incongruent and we have to be incongruent to function the way our culture is set up, the way workplaces are set up.
- 10:35But when we're with our horses, they would much prefer, in fact, insist that we be congruent and they teach us that.
- 10:43Absolutely.
- 10:43You said that beautifully.
- 10:45And so that is really, I guess in essence, they're constantly tuned into and picking up on anything that we are repressing and they can't turn that off.
- 11:02And I think the new wave of teaching.
- 11:06Is really waking people up and kind of busting some of these myths.
- 11:10Like, you can't be, if you're afraid the horse is gonna be afraid.
- 11:14Here's how I perceive this scenario, and again, I, I wholeheartedly agree with the other perspectives.
- 11:22This is just gonna.
- 11:24Go deep, and I hope you're ready to go deep because that's, that's where my space is at.
- 11:30That's where I live in the minutia.
- 11:32So there's obviously your component in here, and one of the things that I have seen over the years often is when we get horses that have a past.
- 11:46Mm-hmm.
- 11:46And maybe we don't know exactly what the past is, but there's this whole narrative about who this horse is.
- 11:52Mm-hmm.
- 11:53And you know, you have that in you, and then the horse can see that in you.
- 11:58And so it's like, oh, well this horse is a bolted, this horse is a bucker, this horse is a biter.
- 12:04Okay.
- 12:05But those are all symptoms and those are all results of something deeper, but.
- 12:14When we have a narrative and we think, oh, this horse is that, that horse reads that on our face.
- 12:22Horses respond to our beliefs.
- 12:24That is, is a breakthrough thing that I have discovered in my research over the past 15 years.
- 12:31They wholeheartedly, yes, they tune into our nervous system.
- 12:35That is a whole, very valid thing.
- 12:38But horses respond to our beliefs.
- 12:42Our perspective is made up of a few things.
- 12:44Right.
- 12:44And kind of like what you said, our past experiences, if you were a kid and you played with snakes and you had a pet snake and you loved them and you would catch them in the garden and you see a snake, you're gonna, your brain's gonna produce dopamine.
- 12:58Mm-hmm.
- 12:59And maybe some serotonin, right?
- 13:01Mm-hmm.
- 13:01But if you were a kid and you were bit by a snake, or your dog was bit by a poisonous snake and it died, you're gonna see a, a snake and you're gonna release cortisol and adrenaline and epinephrine, right?
- 13:14So.
- 13:15We are so biological in, in you know, my friend Steven Gardner, he always says, are we, are we sentient and intelligent spiritual beings, or are we slightly intelligent monkeys?
- 13:27And I'd like to believe that we're somewhere in the middle of that, right?
- 13:31So we have this spirituality and this divine connection, but we also are driven by our hormones.
- 13:38And no matter what happens in our life, our hormones are always gonna come in and override us no matter what.
- 13:45So, if we are challenged, if our core values are challenged to a high enough degree, and this pro, I promise this will relate later, but if our intrinsic drivers and values are challenged to a high enough degree, I don't care how spiritual you are, I don't care how connected you are, I don't care how full love you are, your biology is gonna override you, and those hormones are gonna start driving your bus.
- 14:13And so we have to look at the support of and challenge to our perspective.
- 14:21That is literally what governs every action or inaction or response or proactive thing that we do in our life.
- 14:29What, what do you mean by challenge to our perspective?
- 14:32Can you break that apart a little bit?
- 14:34Absolutely.
- 14:35Mm-hmm.
- 14:36So we all have and I, I teach a course called discovering Your Human Blueprint, right?
- 14:41Mm-hmm.
- 14:41So, but we all have a blueprint.
- 14:43It's unique to us.
- 14:44Mm-hmm.
- 14:45And so we have our intrinsic selves and we show up in the environment.
- 14:51And, you know, at the end of the day, we're all waves and particles connected in oneness in the quantum field, right?
- 14:56Mm-hmm.
- 14:56But our body allows us to come here and have some separation so that we can have our own human experience.
- 15:03If you walk into the arena and Charlie comes up to you and he puts his head in your chest and takes a big breath and just, you're gonna, that's supportive in that moment, you're gonna be flood, dopamine, oxytocin, serotonin.
- 15:21Right.
- 15:22And your body is gonna have a physical response, and that physical response is also gonna send a vibration or signal to Charlie He's gonna be having the same kind of response if we're having that experience.
- 15:35Correct.
- 15:37If Charlie comes up and puts his teeth on you and pinches you, that's not gonna release dopamine.
- 15:44That's gonna release adrenaline.
- 15:45Actually, I'm gonna, I'm gonna disagree there.
- 15:49My experience has been different when he pinches with his teeth.
- 15:54I'm seeing it through a therapeutic lens, and my experiences have been really positive with being pinched and it definitely releases a bunch of stuff and creates this shift.
- 16:05And I don't even know how to necessarily describe the physical sensations and the energetic sensations that happen, but it started with that horse at Lis MIT and Ryan's place that racked its teeth on my scalp and opened up my chakra.
- 16:21It's part of my experience.
- 16:23It's part of my perspective.
- 16:24It's part of my response.
- 16:26So now when he does it to you, you don't see it as a threat, but what about the first time it happened and it caught you off guard and you didn't understand it yet and you hadn't processed it?
- 16:36So the first time it happened, I, it, it didn't, I was warned.
- 16:40I was, she said, she stood there and said, he's gonna bite you.
- 16:43This pony's gonna bite you and if you trust him, he won't bite you hard.
- 16:47But if you can't let go and trust him, he'll bite you harder.
- 16:50And I was like, of course it's gonna bite me.
- 16:52Like, what?
- 16:53But he bit me.
- 16:55And something happened and it was, it was delicious in a way, not in a weird, I like pain kind of way, but in an energetic release kind of way.
- 17:06And so I never had, had an experience with a horse biting me in a bad way ever.
- 17:12Okay.
- 17:13So that.
- 17:15So you were primed by another person, Hey, he's gonna do this to you.
- 17:19What about when you fell off and got hurt?
- 17:21Did you see that as supportive in that moment when you were hurt at times?
- 17:26I've, I've come off a horse.
- 17:27No.
- 17:28It was not supportive at all.
- 17:29So in that moment it was challenging, right.
- 17:31And you've carried that challenge with you.
- 17:33Mm-hmm.
- 17:34Mm-hmm.
- 17:35And now it's governing the way that you're moving forward in your relationship with Charlie and your decision to ride or not ride or whatever.
- 17:43Right.
- 17:43And it's escalating, which, you know, has led us to, to this situation.
- 17:49But in essence, every interaction that you have is either gonna be supportive or it's gonna be challenging.
- 17:55That's going to influence the way that your brain releases its chemistry.
- 17:59It's critical.
- 18:00It's a piece that I haven't heard talked about a lot.
- 18:05I don't know if I've ever heard it talked about in the context of horses.
- 18:09Lot of my training is in human behavior.
- 18:11That's where that comes from the human behavior work that I do., At the core level, it's either support of or challenge to our perspective.
- 18:22Mm-hmm.
- 18:23And we respond to every single thing in our environment that way.
- 18:26Now, when we're aware of that and we have the tools to process through things that happen to us, and we shift our perspective, we can shift what brings us pleasure and what brings us pain by shifting our perspective.
- 18:43And that is really at, at the essence, the work that I do is helping people gain a holistic perspective.
- 18:51Mm-hmm.
- 18:51And then.
- 18:52Like, I believe that we all should, if it's our life, we should be deciding, right?
- 18:57And so if you're not deciding, somebody's deciding for you.
- 19:00And so what I want to do in the time that we have today, is kind of look at just another perspective.
- 19:07So you have a lot of different facts and opinions and thoughts and perspectives.
- 19:13And hopefully by the end of interviewing all the people that are gonna weigh in on this, you can make a decision for you that's gonna best help you and best help Charlie.
- 19:25And I, you know, so that's, I believe, and I, I have in my notes here training, horse training doesn't work unless the horse trainer is teaching you to be a trainer.
- 19:38Absolutely.
- 19:38And so the, the episode that you didn't watch with or have a chance to listen to yet with Carissa, we deal with some of that.
- 19:45And I've already, from listening to you and Kimberly and Asha and Carissa, I always, I already feel like a softening, where in the beginning I'm like, I don't know if I ever wanna even ride again.
- 19:56And now I am, I'm at a different place and it, it, I notice how it continues to change as my awareness of different things is growing.
- 20:07Absolutely.
- 20:08So I wrote here too, this is another thing that I see so often and the, the question I always used to ask when I would get a horse horse training client in is what do you want from your horse?
- 20:22What do you want from your horse?
- 20:24Because that's going to really largely depend on what we do and the whole basis of the training.
- 20:30And guess how many times somebody was able to answer that question immediately with clarity?
- 20:38Never, no, never, never.
- 20:40No, no.
- 20:41Mm-hmm.
- 20:43People will say, I don't know, or, you know, we want a show.
- 20:48Okay.
- 20:48But that's broad.
- 20:50Like, what are your expectations of your horse?
- 20:52What do you want from them?
- 20:54And so a a lot of times people would say like, you know, they would come up with something.
- 21:00Okay.
- 21:01Okay.
- 21:01I wanna show.
- 21:02Okay.
- 21:02And what, okay.
- 21:03What do you believe that showing is gonna give you?
- 21:06Well, it's gonna gimme the opportunity to go out and have fun, and be social, and have goals to work towards, da, da, da, da.
- 21:11Okay.
- 21:13And what will that give you?
- 21:16Oh I don't know.
- 21:18Okay.
- 21:18Well, think about it like, what do you, what do you really want?
- 21:21Because at the end of the day, everything that we do is to gain a feeling, right?
- 21:26So how do you want your horse to help you feel, or how is accomplishing all of this?
- 21:33Gonna help you feel.
- 21:35And so because they tune into our beliefs, all of our beliefs generate feelings.
- 21:43Mm-hmm.
- 21:44And courses are so emotional, they're tuning into our feelings because our feelings are what carry a vibration.
- 21:52Absolutely.
- 21:53So if we're not looking at feelings and we're not looking at beliefs in our relationship with our horse and to our horse, we're gonna have gaps.
- 22:05And those horses.
- 22:07Great at putting our gaps right in front of our face with a little bow on it.
- 22:11Which is amazing if you know how to work through those scenarios and situations.
- 22:16And frustrating if you don't, because you know, so many times it feels like, well, this pattern, it just keeps happening over and over again.
- 22:23And, you know, I call it like running with a rubber band around your waist.
- 22:27You'll make progress.
- 22:28You're running, you're running, you think you've got it, and then boom, something will trigger and you just snap back and you're back at ground zero.
- 22:36And so if we don't deal with our beliefs, then we're gonna keep living Groundhogs Day through a different scenario.
- 22:50And that's, so back to beliefs.
- 22:53Our beliefs generate feelings.
- 22:56Feelings generate vibration.
- 22:58Horses tune into the vibration.
- 23:00So, yes, it's our nervous system, but it's actually more complex than that.
- 23:04It's actually the vibrations of our emotions that the horses are tuning into and horses.
- 23:14A lot of people, and a lot of people are not aware how they function at that level.
- 23:20Like many people are not.
- 23:21Like, I can bring if, if, if you'd like.
- 23:23I can bring an example to that.
- 23:26Sure.
- 23:27From, from all of this, it's like, I know what I want with Charlie.
- 23:30I want that that chocolate truffle that Kimberly talks about, which is described in the episode of co-created rides.
- 23:38It's that I wanna explore with my horse in partnership co-creating, you know, I want that sense of adventure and that sense of connection, and those are the rides that matter to me.
- 23:50Those are really the rides that matter to me.
- 23:52And yeah, there's this other like, oh, let's go trail riding with friends that is about belonging and inclusion.
- 24:00And I, I, like this week, had this, all of this sadness come up with the idea that, that, that might be gone for me.
- 24:07Like I saw a Facebook thing of a couple of friends, you know, trailering and riding from Eugene, which is like an hour away, to a place that's really much closer to me that I, I have a trailer, I have horses, but because of where I am, things that a lot of horse people take for granted because they do it with habituation, they do it with dominance of putting your horse in the trailer and going for a ride because of some of the things I've been through and some of my experiences that isn't even on the table for me right now.
- 24:38And all of this, like, loss of that, you know, what is the emotion there?
- 24:44It's that not belonging that goes so deep.
- 24:50Got uncovered because I don't experience a lot of that anymore, but I certainly did as a child.
- 24:56Sure.
- 24:57And, and so that's the kind of thing you're talking about.
- 25:00And when I'm with Charlie and we're, we're connecting on the ground, it's this wonderful thing like you described, including all of the, the hormones and neurochemicals.
- 25:09And I've experienced that chocolate truffle of a ride lots of times, but not recently.
- 25:18And so yeah, that's, that's what I want.
- 25:22Yeah.
- 25:23And what I don't, and what I don't want and what I need to work through.
- 25:26And that's only a piece of the fear.
- 25:28Like as you described all these different experiences, like seeing that trainer come off was horrible.
- 25:33The three times I've been thrown from a horse, I.
- 25:37Or you know, in my memory somewhere, although when you were talking about that, it's really interesting because as I've worked the memory chains of EMDR, not once has a, a trauma on a horse been part of that chain.
- 25:51Like, it's kind of amazing to me.
- 25:53Like what?
- 25:55And I'm, I've got some curiosity about what's happening from a neurochemical perspective, that those experiences like childbirth is incredibly painful.
- 26:03But that's not part of trauma on my memory chain and neither is being thrown from a horse.
- 26:08I can explain specifically why that happens.
- 26:11Right.
- 26:11Okay.
- 26:12And so it has to do with two different types of stress.
- 26:16There's distress and there is eustress.
- 26:21And so everything that I teach goes back to our human blueprint.
- 26:27Again, the support of or challenge to your blueprint.
- 26:31Mm-hmm.
- 26:31And so we enter situations that are stressful, that could be seen as traumatic, right.
- 26:39But if we can see that the situation that we've entered is somehow connected to our highest values.
- 26:50Then when we experience it or we think about it, because whether you're remembering it, you're living it or you're imagining it, your body responds exactly the same.
- 26:58Mm-hmm.
- 26:59We enter into a state of eustress, which is a positive stress that actually does release positive chemicals in our body.
- 27:08If we enter into a scenario that is seen as traumatic and we cannot connect it to our values, we cannot connect it to our blueprint, then we will enter into a state of distress, and that's where we start to release negative chemicals.
- 27:23So when things are high in your values, like family, like horses, when you are challenged in those areas that are in your top three to five, you don't, your body does not respond the same because you're releasing different chemicals into your body.
- 27:40That's why a lot of times people do get bucked off and they get right back on.
- 27:43You know, if you got attacked in a parking lot.
- 27:47You've got away, you aren't going back into the parking lot to get attacked again.
- 27:51But if you get bucked off a horse, you wanna get right back on.
- 27:55And again, that goes back to your perspective.
- 27:58These things are of high value to you.
- 28:02And so you do process those things differently when you think about them.
- 28:06They release a different chemical into your body and that creates different types of neuropathways in your brain.
- 28:13Does that make sense?
- 28:15It does.
- 28:17Okay.
- 28:17But there's another part of this as well, and I'm, I'm trying to take this this is just so deep, and I'm trying to take it full circle in the allotted amount of time that we have, but there is also a universal law called the law of correspondence as above, so below as within, so without.
- 28:37Mm-hmm.
- 28:37And so our primary program happens to us.
- 28:45Through the experiences we have before the age of 12.
- 28:48Mm-hmm.
- 28:49So your brain was very neuroplastic and your beliefs about yourself were getting programmed into you.
- 28:58And this is all happening up until the age of 12.
- 29:01At the age of 12 are brainwaves shift into a beta brainwave state, which is where the gates to our subconscious are locked.
- 29:09Whatever's in there is in there, and our brain actually changes.
- 29:12And then we live the rest of our life in these feedback loops of our core programming.
- 29:19And our core programming is done in the forms of beliefs.
- 29:22So whatever you were taught about yourself by your environment before the age of 12, I'm not worthy.
- 29:27I'm not good enough.
- 29:29I am stupid.
- 29:30Nobody likes me.
- 29:32You know, I can't do anything, right.
- 29:33I'm clumsy.
- 29:35Whatever negative beliefs are in there have to be reprogrammed.
- 29:41In order for you to change.
- 29:44And so then because as within, so without our environment is constantly responding to all of this that's in here and horses are a part of that.
- 29:58I mean, I believe, you know, when your car breaks down, I believe that that's feedback for you.
- 30:03When you walk through a doorway and you bang your shoulder, that's feedback.
- 30:07Every single thing in our environment mm-hmm.
- 30:10Is talking to us all the time, trying to wake us up to where we are out of alignment with our authentic self.
- 30:18And horses just seem to do this at a really amplified level because of who and what they are.
- 30:24And so, you know, when we talk about.
- 30:28I, I know you had mentioned that you have guilt about this horse trainer as well, you know, and I certainly don't wanna bring somebody into this that's not here to, to participate or reveal anything about that person.
- 30:41But what I can tell you, just from the hundreds of people I've worked to have had horse accidents and my own personal horse accident it is feedback trying to wake you up to the fact that somewhere in your life you are selling yourself out.
- 30:58You are not being authentic, you are not being in alignment.
- 31:00And I had a really bad ac accident on my heart horse.
- 31:04I was, you know, dating a guy who'd just come back from rack.
- 31:07He was being awful.
- 31:09He wasn't integrating well.
- 31:11You know, I had this hor hor heart horse I had I had him so well trained.
- 31:16We rode bridal list like, you know, and we had, I'd gotten in a, in an argument with this guy and I got on my horse and he was very different in that moment.
- 31:27And we were trying to teach the baby Mustangs to pony.
- 31:30And my lariat kind of grazed his flank, which wasn't new.
- 31:35And he sent me end over end and I smashed my collarbone.
- 31:40But when I learned all of this stuff and I learned that everything has a spiritual message for you that happens in your life, I realized that going through that experience.
- 31:54Woke me up to where I was allowing things in my life that I shouldn't have been allowing.
- 32:00What it, what is the collarbone?
- 32:01I've broken mine twice.
- 32:03You've broken yours and she broke hers.
- 32:04Now I gotta know.
- 32:07Oh, did her, her clavicle end up being that's shattered.
- 32:11All great changes proceeded by chaos.
- 32:13I believe that the amount of chaos that ensues, it will be in direct proportion to the amount of impact that whatever's gonna happen happens.
- 32:22Right.
- 32:22The collarbone symbolizes the transmission of heartfelt truth into authentic expression.
- 32:29And so if there's injury in the collarbone, it's a difficulty speaking from your heart or you're holding back your truth due to fear of judgment or rejection.
- 32:41So the clavicle also carries burdens and emotional weight and a sense of over responsibility.
- 32:47Hmm.
- 32:48So if I look back to when I broke my collarbone, I was having to carry all the burdens.
- 32:53You know, I was, I had two kids, I was running a, a boarding and training facility if it happens on the left side of your body, that's the feminine side.
- 33:02So that's like family or physical or social.
- 33:06And the right side is more mental, vocational, and financial.
- 33:10And I know at that time you know, I mean boarding a, running a boarding business is.
- 33:15I just felt like I can't keep going like this.
- 33:17I have so much responsibility.
- 33:19I have so many people's horses to take care of.
- 33:21I have so much financial burden, you know, the cost of hay is, you know, so, so I always tell people when you get into an accident, a horse accident, look at what was going on in your life three days prior to that accident happening, because there's information in there.
- 33:41And so we call it feedback.
- 33:43Everything is feedback.
- 33:45And there's four different types of feedback.
- 33:49So the first type of feedback is psychological feedback.
- 33:52That's when something comes into your experience and you see it as a support or challenge, right?
- 33:57So when we're living outside of our blueprint, something happens in our environment, we're like, Ooh, this is outside of of my scope.
- 34:05This is not fueling me.
- 34:06This is gonna deplete me.
- 34:08But if I don't say yes, people won't like me.
- 34:11If I don't say yes, I'm going to get kicked out of the tribe, and then I won't have safety and resources and so on and so forth.
- 34:18So we're like, okay, yeah, I'll do that thing that I don't want to do.
- 34:22And then it's like, ugh, like a gut punch.
- 34:25Like you, you commit to something you don't want to do and you feel sick, right?
- 34:29That turns into physical feedback.
- 34:33But again, we don't wanna get kicked out of the tribe because that's our safety and security.
- 34:36So then we, we continue to sell ourselves out and we get this physical feedback and we don't care.
- 34:42We just put our heads down and press on.
- 34:46Then it comes into our environment.
- 34:48We get environmental feedback and that typically shows up in our relationships.
- 34:52Maybe it's an argument with a spouse or a child, maybe it's a coworker or dealing with a, a boss at work, but something happens, starts to happen in our relationships, or it can happen with our horses.
- 35:03Even, you know, the horse doesn't wanna come up to you where the horse is stuck in its feet.
- 35:07It doesn't wanna move forward.
- 35:08It doesn't wanna cooperate.
- 35:09That's also environmental feedback.
- 35:12And then the fourth level of feedback, I call the pattern disrupt.
- 35:17It is the thing that happens to you that is so painful that it has to invoke some type of change in your life.
- 35:25Right?
- 35:26So yeah, I had some of those, yeah.
- 35:28When I broke my clavicle, I could no longer muck stalls for, you know, a month.
- 35:33I had to have surgery.
- 35:36Oh, I went from taking care of everybody to having to be taken care of.
- 35:40You know, I was in this relationship with a person I thought cared about me, and when he was so mad at me that I did this, you know, and all he was doing was like ridiculing me.
- 35:49So it was an eyeopener that, you know, I'm selfish because I have horses and I shouldn't be getting hurt.
- 35:54And it was like, wow.
- 35:56I think the universe was trying to tell me for like eight years prior that this person shouldn't be in my life anymore, but I wouldn't listen.
- 36:03Right?
- 36:03And so when we don't listen, things in our life escalate, especially things with our horses.
- 36:11And that's what leads us to the injury.
- 36:15And I can say this now because I have worked with literally thousands of people.
- 36:20And when I take them to that moment of the pattern disrupt, and we unpack that and we integrate it, they can always see, they can always see where they were selling themselves at.
- 36:32Sure.
- 36:33And so we had chatted a little bit before you hit record, you know, about the EMDR therapy.
- 36:40And so, you know, and I'm of the opinion if it works for you, keep doing it.
- 36:46I, you know, different strokes for different folks EMDR, I've met some people that have said it has been super helpful.
- 36:53Before I learned any of the healing work that I do now, EMDR was the only thing that had remotely moved the needle forward for me.
- 37:03So I'm glad that I experienced it and it got me to a point where I could do other work on my traumas that really needed to be done.
- 37:10I also know some people that have had horrific experiences where it's really set them back.
- 37:14So, you know, I don't have any judgment or opinions on any type of treatment.
- 37:21If it's working, do it.
- 37:23However, the thing that I observed with the, the EMDR, for myself personally and for a lot of the veterans that I've.
- 37:30Worked with is that you know, with EMDR you create like a box, right?
- 37:35And you put, you put stuff in a box, or at least I did.
- 37:38I, you know, I had to create like a safe box and then I could put anything in the box and then it couldn't get to me.
- 37:43And you know, I had this memory of my mom and this abusive situation, and when I went and did the EMDR on it, it was like in my mind, my mind built a brick wall and my mom couldn't get through the wall to get to me.
- 37:58And so I made something up about the experience that wasn't true, but I.
- 38:05It detached me from the emotion of it, because then when I would go to the memory, instead of her actually getting to me and hurting me, she never got to me.
- 38:13She was stopped by this brick wall.
- 38:16Okay.
- 38:16So that's great.
- 38:17Like it got me to a point where I could do other things.
- 38:21But in all of the trauma work that I do now, in conjunction with integration and the laws of the universe what I do now is if we're working on a trauma with somebody, we go back into the actual memory and we pull in, we balance and pull in things from the other side.
- 38:42Not to change reality.
- 38:44If you can't deal with something in a moment, you put it in the box and there may be different applications of the box.
- 38:50I mean, every therapist is different, every person is different.
- 38:53So the other thing I wanted to comment on is it did occur to me at some point that doing this EMDR is effective, is being so effective for me because.
- 39:04The way I, I term it is so many different things and so many different modalities over the years, starting from my very early twenties, did I pull everything out up to that point and look at it and do very gestalt things and work with Jungian type of psychology.
- 39:20And then at different points in my life, again, have pulled all of this stuff out and applied different modalities to it.
- 39:26So by the time I've arrived at EMDR it's like the reverse of what you've done or experienced maybe with the veterans and yourself is that you've done, you've done the EMDR and now you're finding that we still need to unpack this stuff and that's what you're speaking to now.
- 39:42So I guess the question is, does the order seem important?
- 39:48Well, my answer's gonna be, it depends.
- 39:53I don't think that's really a, I think that's a generalized question that would have to be.
- 39:59You know, there's very many nuances to that, but I think, you know what I, what I realized, and again, I'm not, I, I'm so grateful that I had it when I did.
- 40:10It certainly helped me get to this point, but, but what I have learned since then, and I feel like what I currently do works so well with any other application that you're doing, is that when we work with the things that happen, what we're actually doing is we're extracting really important information out of those challenging times, and we're not just seeing it as something that shouldn't have happened to me.
- 40:42Right.
- 40:43Right.
- 40:44Because if I have a trauma and then I'm told, or I believe that shouldn't have happened to me.
- 40:51Then I'm gonna wake up every day and go, oh my gosh, something happened to me that shouldn't have happened to me.
- 40:58And so I'm not saying that anything should or shouldn't happen to people, but I see what the belief this shouldn't have happened to me does to people.
- 41:08It deteriorates them from the inside out.
- 41:10So a lot of the work that we do isn't necessarily in, we call it the right, wrong, good, bad perspective or the should shouldn't perspective.
- 41:20Mm-hmm.
- 41:20But the cause and effect perspective, right.
- 41:23And so I still think that work needs done in the cause and effect perspective, or we keep reliving the pattern.
- 41:32Like it keeps showing up in our environment.
- 41:33It shows up and shows up and, and so I listened to your initial and I say all of that and it's relevant because you, you said, I feel like every time I do an EMDR session, something chaotic comes in and it happens.
- 41:49And so I'm just curious.
- 41:52Mm-hmm.
- 41:53And I'm not saying I certainly have the answer, but it, it sparked a question in me of is that, does that have something to do with the law of correspondence and Yes.
- 42:07And are we getting the lesson, or I guess I would say are, it seems like we're not, you know, we can, we can dull the emotional impact that the memory has on us.
- 42:22Mm-hmm.
- 42:22I mean, that is, can be super, super beneficial.
- 42:27But to me, if we're not getting the wisdom of the feedback of the experience, so the, let me clarify a little bit of that.
- 42:40It's an incomplete, it's an incomplete.
- 42:43When the issue of wherever I am in the memory chain.
- 42:46And what happens, lemme explain a little bit, is, you know, we set up a memory from the memory chain working chronologically, and as we set up that memory, then the next session we do, you know, a dot on the computer screen or some kind of bilateral stimulation that, that reduces the intensity of the experience.
- 43:06And then we come in and.
- 43:09Say, what did you, what was the negative belief you had about yourself then?
- 43:12And then say she'll say, and what would you rather believe?
- 43:16So then we create a new belief system that gets imposed on that experience as it's been desensitized.
- 43:22I think, and I guess it has to do with moving this around in the brain, but during the time between the two sessions is where I'm talking about.
- 43:30And that's where I have noticed repeatedly that whatever is open in the memory chain where we've brought it up, we've set it up, but we haven't processed it yet.
- 43:41I'm experiencing, I.
- 43:42A similar thing in real time, which does allow me to work on it at a less intense, allows my subconscious mind to explore it, examine it, re-experience it at a much lesser intensity level because it's a different situation and it's in real time.
- 44:00So somehow, I don't know that everybody experiences that, but that's been my experience and that's what happened this day.
- 44:07And it may be very interestingly and a coincidence of whatever the message was for the trainer with the collarbone, like we all bring something to the experience energetically.
- 44:19Charlie brings something, I bring something, I bring my beliefs, I bring where I am in the EMDR.
- 44:24He brings his experiences, she brings hers, and you know, it's it's a coalescence of how we all come together.
- 44:35Absolutely, because everybody's a vector and everybody's playing a role in everybody else's experience.
- 44:42But what stood out to me most, you know, and I I certainly agree just from the horse training and the mechanics of the situation it, it too much, too fast was, was dead on, right?
- 44:55Mm-hmm.
- 44:55So if, if you are not riding Charlie comfortably in the arena at several gates and working with him, you know, in, you know, we start at the round pen, you know, can you do transitions at the round pen?
- 45:11Can you do short 10 minute sessions?
- 45:13You know, if you aren't able to communicate with him fully and have his trust and have a good relationship in the round, if he didn't have any of that, he didn't have any of those skills yeah.
- 45:22Then he shouldn't even be in the arena.
- 45:24Right.
- 45:25And, and if you can't do it in the arena, you know, so it it, it was just.
- 45:31From a, from a baseline logical perspective, it was too much, too fast.
- 45:36He didn't have the appropriate levels, channels of communication on him that he needed to be able to regulate himself in the mountains, you know, so that's just common sense, right?
- 45:51The obvious.
- 45:53But what stood out to me the most, and I would really love to touch on, and I know we're, we're kind of at our time almost, but to me the most important thing was what, what you had said is, I don't have control.
- 46:04I, there's, I can't do anything.
- 46:05I'm, I'm helpless, I'm out of control, or, you know, whatever you were saying in that situation.
- 46:11And so typically when I work with somebody that's been through a horse accident or has ex experienced any type of challenge or trauma, is I ask them to go to that, go to that moment.
- 46:25How do you see yourself in that moment?
- 46:28What are the beliefs that you believe about yourself in that moment?
- 46:34I am what it is about responsibility.
- 46:40What?
- 46:41How far does my influence and responsibility go?
- 46:50And if I don't push control, exert everything.
- 46:56That in both these cases would be a really big response to control the environment of other people for a better outcome for everybody if I roll it back.
- 47:12Okay.
- 47:13So everything that you just said to me was about other people.
- 47:17Yeah.
- 47:17So what's the belief?
- 47:19I what I, what I wanna say, like the positive belief is that I am not responsible ultimately for what happens to other people.
- 47:31Okay.
- 47:33But what's the negative belief in there before you came to that conclusion?
- 47:38I'm not sure.
- 47:39It's like I could have prevented this.
- 47:41I could have prevented that, but I couldn't like it.
- 47:44Well, it's in that, it's in that, it's in that space of I should have done more.
- 47:51So how about, so just again, taking from your words and the things that I've heard you say as you speak about this, it's like, you know, I wanted to do more, but I didn't.
- 48:04I wanted to tell her to get off more from me or I, or I couldn't in, in, in the case with her.
- 48:11I, I could have been more forceful.
- 48:14But would that have been appropriate in the case from the E-M-D-R-I, I didn't know what else to do.
- 48:21Like I had tried and tried and tried and I didn't know what else to do.
- 48:26So is there like a, I can't trust myself and I'm not capable or like, what?
- 48:32We gotta go deeper.
- 48:34I what?
- 48:36I'm not, I'm not in control and I have, so I don't have it pulled up here, but I, it's kind of like I should, I should have known more things to do.
- 48:47I should have had more knowledge.
- 48:50I should have acted differently.
- 48:54Okay.
- 48:54So what we gotta turn that into a belief.
- 48:59I, so I'm not, I.
- 49:01Capable.
- 49:03I'm not enough.
- 49:05I have blind, I have blind spots that I don't understand.
- 49:09Okay.
- 49:10I don't understand.
- 49:12I, I, and I do, like, as an autistic person, I'm just learning that I have these blind spots that I do not fully understand.
- 49:22Okay.
- 49:24And then some of it is like, I mean, the incident from the EMDR is my son's suicide.
- 49:30Right.
- 49:33So if you go to that moment mm-hmm.
- 49:35How do you see yourself in that moment?
- 49:39I, what I did the best I could.
- 49:42I mean, we're through, I, I've come through that section and I've got it down to like a one.
- 49:49Mm-hmm.
- 49:49I did the, I did the best I could.
- 49:52Yes, absolutely.
- 49:54You did.
- 49:55I.
- 49:55And you are not responsible for other people.
- 49:59Right.
- 49:59And so there's, you've done a lot of work on that.
- 50:01Mm-hmm.
- 50:02But what I'm seeing is that there's still a core belief and we've gotta get to the root of it.
- 50:10We've gotta identify specifically what is that belief, because that keeps repeating itself.
- 50:17And we've gotta balance and integrate that belief in order to get it to stop repeating itself.
- 50:26And I'm curious, and we'll get it, but I'm curious how Charlie will respond differently to you once we can identify this belief and integrate it.
- 50:38Mm-hmm.
- 50:38So let's go back to the scene, because again, both of these scenes have to do with stuff that you can't do anything about, right?
- 50:52Mm-hmm.
- 50:52It's happening.
- 50:53You can't do anything about it.
- 50:55Mm-hmm.
- 50:56So how do you see yourself in that moment?
- 50:58I am what?
- 51:00I am not in control.
- 51:01Like, I'm like a witness.
- 51:02I'm not in control and I'm a witness.
- 51:05Yeah.
- 51:05Is there any helplessness in there?
- 51:07Yeah, definitely helplessness.
- 51:08Like it's really hard to watch things just happen and try to interact with them and have it not make a difference.
- 51:18Okay.
- 51:19So would you say that would be helplessness?
- 51:21Yes.
- 51:22Okay, good.
- 51:23When you said that, I got chills in my body, so have you done any work on being helpless?
- 51:33You mean sat with it, moved through it?
- 51:37Any gimme more information?
- 51:38Yeah, I mean, I've done some, I mean.
- 51:43Okay.
- 51:44Probably not enough.
- 51:45Probably not enough because you know what?
- 51:46I just realized it's happening again right now with another situation.
- 51:50Real time today.
- 51:51So see, so there it is.
- 51:53So that's what we've gotta get out.
- 51:56That's the root, right?
- 51:57And so everything else that we're working on are symptoms, which is fine, but if we don't pull the root, we're just managing the symptoms, we're running with that rubber band.
- 52:10So are you open to just trying a, a, a short experiment?
- 52:15Sure, sure.
- 52:16Okay.
- 52:17All right.
- 52:17So if you go back and we'll just do it on char, this Charlie memory specifically, but you can do this with any memory.
- 52:26So if you go back to that moment.
- 52:29You see yourself and Charlie's bucking the trainer and you're just standing there and you're like, I am totally helpless.
- 52:37Well, the moment, the moment would be when she was turning circles and I said, why don't you get off?
- 52:44It would be that moment, I think, because that's, that's the moment that I go to that moment.
- 52:50I could have, I could have done something differently.
- 52:53Do you see yourself as being helpless in that moment?
- 52:56Yes.
- 52:58Okay.
- 52:58Yes and no.
- 53:00I mean, both moments, I'm helpless in both moments.
- 53:03Go to the moment that you see yourself as most helpless.
- 53:07Yeah, I think you're right.
- 53:08It's when he was bucking, when they were coming at me and he was buck.
- 53:11It's, it's the moment in between when he is coming down the hill at a cantor and then buck.
- 53:17Yeah.
- 53:17That moment.
- 53:19Good.
- 53:20Okay.
- 53:20So in that moment you see yourself as helpless.
- 53:25Mm-hmm.
- 53:26When you think about that, what, what do you notice in your body?
- 53:29There's like a hollow feeling around my heart and my chest.
- 53:33Okay.
- 53:34All right.
- 53:35So I just want you to close your eyes.
- 53:38So in that moment, you were physically helpless, right?
- 53:44Because there was nothing you could do to stop anyone at that moment, right?
- 53:48Right.
- 53:49Okay.
- 53:50So that is one area of life, but we have several other areas of life.
- 53:57There's spiritual, there's mental, there's social, there's family, there's vocational.
- 54:03Okay.
- 54:04So in that very moment where you see yourself as being helpless physically to the situation that is happening.
- 54:11What would you say in that scene?
- 54:14The opposite of helpless would've been integrated, connected, present.
- 54:23Okay, great.
- 54:24So go back into that moment.
- 54:26Mm-hmm.
- 54:28So physically you were disconnected, but where were you, where were you actually connected in that moment to what was happening and why it was happening?
- 54:41So what, what's the connection there?
- 54:45Spiritual good.
- 54:48So I just want you to go back into that scene and I want you to see where you actually were connected spiritually.
- 54:55Yeah.
- 54:55And yeah, I've got goosebumps in the series of events that I am here as a player playing my part.
- 55:01Okay, good.
- 55:02So those goosebumps that you get, you have right now.
- 55:05Mm-hmm.
- 55:05That's your neuropathways in your brain starting to light back up.
- 55:09Mm-hmm.
- 55:10And that's your BA brain chemistry balancing.
- 55:13So I want you to close your eyes again.
- 55:15Where else were you connected in that moment?
- 55:19I was connected with my hor, with my horse Csy, who was in the hand.
- 55:24Good.
- 55:24So just go back in there and see yourself being connected to Csy in that moment.
- 55:29Yeah.
- 55:30I can actually feel her grounding with me in that moment.
- 55:33Mm-hmm.
- 55:34Good.
- 55:36Were you using your voice at all?
- 55:38No.
- 55:39Okay.
- 55:40If you go back into that memory, can you see anywhere else that you were actually connected?
- 55:44I.
- 55:46I can, as I go into the memory, I can feel my feet and I can feel an expansiveness from my head upward, like a, like a earth sky connection.
- 55:58Great.
- 55:59Great.
- 55:59Okay.
- 56:00So whe when you go back to that moment mm-hmm.
- 56:07How does it help you feel to know that you actually were connected in that moment?
- 56:12It feels like things are dissipating.
- 56:14Like I can almost, as I close my eyes, feel an energy leaving my body from the sides of it's not so personal.
- 56:23Great.
- 56:23And so now that you know that it's not so personal, how does that help you feel?
- 56:28What's the specific emotion?
- 56:30I feel much more present and integrated.
- 56:33Good.
- 56:34And so if you close your eyes, where do you feel present in your body?
- 56:39In my entire torso radiating into my limbs.
- 56:42Okay.
- 56:42And I want you to give that a color purple.
- 56:46Great.
- 56:47And now I want you to grow that, that purple color feeling of integration.
- 56:53And I want you to just fill up your body.
- 56:56Okay?
- 56:57And I want you to see that purple color actually radiating, dissipating out of your body.
- 57:03It's gonna fill up your house, it's gonna fill up your land, it's gonna go up and it's gonna fill up Charlie and Sipsy.
- 57:14And you're just gonna fill your whole little property there with that beautiful purple presence and integration.
- 57:20And it had exactly knew exactly where to go because I do the like, energy bubble of light over my property.
- 57:28Perfect.
- 57:28As a practice.
- 57:29Yeah.
- 57:30Wow.
- 57:30That was, are we done?
- 57:33Yeah.
- 57:33So I, that, that was amazing.
- 57:35People, you know, so, so this is just I mean, it's, it's the most powerful thing.
- 57:41And obviously a, a full session is far more nuanced and, and long than that.
- 57:45But that's just a little taste of something that we can do.
- 57:50And now if you just take some time you know, I like to do it before I go to bed.
- 57:57When I wake up in the morning, just continue to bring up that color.
- 58:01Mm-hmm.
- 58:02And so.
- 58:04Just to kind of bring it full circle.
- 58:06Right.
- 58:07You had said originally when we started talking about what you were wanting from your horse mm-hmm.
- 58:14It, it kind of got paired down to being connected.
- 58:19Yeah.
- 58:19Right?
- 58:20Mm-hmm.
- 58:20And so what happened in this incident, because you weren't seeing the connection led to the polarity happening.
- 58:34Right.
- 58:34And so now we've expanded your perspective to see that.
- 58:38Yeah.
- 58:38It doesn't take away from anything that was there or anything that did happen.
- 58:41We're not trying to take away the negative.
- 58:43Mm-hmm.
- 58:44But everything has two sides and everything has two sides to the same degree in every container.
- 58:50And so all we've we're doing is bringing up the other side to show that.
- 58:54There was actually balance in that moment.
- 58:57Right.
- 58:57So this is, this is taking that little nugget of wisdom that says like, anytime we are having an opinion, it it, it's a brain instead of a heart thing.
- 59:06Anytime we're having an opinion, we as humans automatically lock onto the arguments to support our opinion.
- 59:12And what we really need to be doing is looking for all the information, not just what already supports our opinion.
- 59:19Because that's how we find balance.
- 59:20And that happens in our head.
- 59:22And what you're doing is happening in our heart and our soul.
- 59:26Absolutely.
- 59:26And it's connecting the heart and the brain because they can heal each other.
- 59:32Yeah.
- 59:34So this is amazing, Amanda.
- 59:35Thank you for that demonstration and Wow, absolutely.
- 59:38Thank you for, for being willing to share and be vulnerable and for all of the work that you're doing to try to help everybody get this important work out to horses and humans.
- 59:49Yeah.
- 59:51So good.
- 59:52I'm gonna pause the recording now.