Latest / Equine Assisted World with Rupert Isaacson / Softness, Safety, and the Horse-Human Connection with Mark Rashid & Crissi McDonald | Ep 31

Transcript

Softness, Safety, and the Horse-Human Connection with Mark Rashid & Crissi McDonald | Ep 31 · Equine Assisted World with Rupert Isaacson

• 0:00
  Rupert Isaacson: Welcome to Equine Assisted World.
• 0:02
  I'm your host, Rupert Isaacson, New York Times best selling
• 0:05
  author of The Horse Boy, The Long Ride Home, and The Healing Land.
• 0:08
  Before I jump in with today's guest, I just want to say a huge
• 0:12
  thank you to you, our audience, for helping to make this happen.
• 0:15
  I have a request.
• 0:16
  If you like what we do, please like, subscribe, tell a friend.
• 0:22
  It really helps us get this work done.
• 0:24
  As you might know from my books, I'm an autism dad.
• 0:27
  And over the last 20 years, we've developed several
• 0:31
  equine assisted, neuroscience backed certification programs.
• 0:35
  If you'd like to find out more about them, go to newtrailslearning.
• 0:40
  com.
• 0:41
  So without further ado, let's meet today's guest.
• 0:44
  Welcome back to Equine Assisted World.
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  I've got a power duo with me today.
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  I dunno where to go with Mark first or Chrissy first.
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  So I've got Mark Rashid, 'cause he's that to that side of me.
• 0:58
  And I've got Chrissy McDonald, who they're actually in the same
• 1:00
  house, but in separate rooms.
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  And they do extremely interesting things with both equine and human wellbeing
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  that it's handy to be aware of if you're going to be in these fields.
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  So they're coming to us from Estes Park in Colorado, which is just north of Boulder,
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  near Rocky Mountain National Park.
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  Lucky people.
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  And they, like I say, do extraordinary things, but I think they need to
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  tell us these extraordinary things.
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  So Mark and Chrissy, thank you so very much for coming on.
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  Would you please Yeah.
• 1:31
  Thank you.
• 1:31
  Introduce yourselves.
• 1:32
  Mark Rashid: This is awesome.
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  Rupert Isaacson: Tell us what you do.
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  Chrissy, ladies first, do you wanna kick off first?
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  Crissi McDonald: Sure.
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  The short version is, is I'm a author, a photographer, and a clinician.
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  So I spend the majority of my time teaching helping horses and people.
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  Communicate more clearly.
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  And mark and I teach primarily about softness and softness
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  as a internal attribute.
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  Rather than thinking about soft hands or soft whatever in your body, instead
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  of it being external, we like to explore what does it mean to be internally soft?
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  So that's the majority of our work and that is something we practice,
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  whether we're teaching or not.
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  And I will let Mark talk Now.
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  Excuse the dog.
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  Rupert Isaacson: That's no waste to talk about.
• 2:28
  Your husband
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  couldn't help it.
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  Sorry.
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  Mark Rashid: He wasn't talking yet, so you, you get used to it after a while.
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  It's okay.
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  Yeah.
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  You know, fatalism.
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  Yeah, I mean I've been working with horses cleaning up after 'em
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  for sure since I was about 10.
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  And I got really lucky in that the person who I started learning from at
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  a very early age was very focused on the wellbeing of the horse regardless
• 2:58
  of what you were doing with it.
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  And so that was my kind of jumping off point from there.
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  And I was I was pretty shocked the first time.
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  I saw somebody hitting a horse, and because I had never seen that before.
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  And so I, I had this foundation of kindness if you will, when it came to
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  horses, but also being effective in your work with horses and being able to do,
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  being able to be kind and, and effective.
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  And and kindness isn't always just, you know, kinda letting the horse do whatever,
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  you know, there, there are boundaries that need to be set and parameters but
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  they can be done in such a way that what to where the horse can understand
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  what it is that you're, you're doing.
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  And so that was my, that was my jumping off point.
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  And as I started going out and working with horses on my own, I was I have to
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  backtrack just a little bit and say that Walter was the person's name who I, I
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  worked with when I was a kid, and his place, not just, not just the work that
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  he did with horses, but his place in general, when you walked onto his place,
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  it was basically just him and I working together and it had a certain feel to it.
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  He had a certain feel to him, him and and his place had a certain feel, and
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  it was and so when I went out on my own, there was a, I, I know now that what
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  I was feeling was there was a kindness and a humanity to what he was doing
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  and who he was and how he did things.
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  And, but I didn't know that then.
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  And when I started to work on my own, I tried to find a way to develop that
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  feel and the work that I was doing and the, with the horses and with
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  the people that I was working with.
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  And primarily I emulated what I saw with him initially.
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  And I couldn't actually develop the feel that he, that I was, that permeated his,
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  you know, working with him because I didn't really know what I was looking for.
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  So I was, I was sort of mechanically going through the motions and and I,
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  and I tried to when I, back in the eighties, 1980s of the last century we,
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  you know, there were a lot of clinicians coming out in the early to mid 1980s.
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  And not a lot, but, and, but some, and, and, they were saying things that, that
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  sounded a lot like what Walter would say.
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  And so I would go see these people and what they were saying sounded
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  like what he was saying, but what they were doing was not what he was doing.
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  And it was very difficult for me for a long time.
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  But eventually it, it led me into the world of martial
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  arts Aikido in particular.
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  And that's where I started to see and feel what I had seen and
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  felt with Walter back in the day.
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  The internal aspect of what was going on is funny because I, I found it,
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  I didn't find it in the horse world.
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  I found it in the martial arts world, and then I was able to then cross over and,
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  and bring it into my work with horses.
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  And that's, and the work
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  Rupert Isaacson: with horses that you were doing was the This is Western.
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  I'm, you know, presuming in
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  Mark Rashid: no, it's all, it's all where was
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  Rupert Isaacson: this?
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  Here in Colorado.
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  Okay.
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  And, but was it primarily starting young horses or was it helping
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  people across disciplines?
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  Like were you a jumping coach specifically?
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  What were most pe what was your work at that stage mostly predicated around?
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  Mark Rashid: It was all disciplines.
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  Rupert Isaacson: Okay.
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  Mark Rashid: Yeah.
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  I mean, from driving, i've, I've been a, a teamster for
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  back since I was a, a young kid.
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  We actually raised draft horses for, for quite a while four or five years.
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  We raised draft horses, started them.
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  My great-great grandfather actually brought the first Clydesdales
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  into America from Scotland.
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  So, yeah, so, so it's pretty much any discipline.
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  We work off of principles and so rather than technique, technique
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  is important, but we, if you work with principles, then the principles
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  can cross over into any discipline.
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  Sure.
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  Mark Rashid: And horses are horses, so, you know, they're,
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  it's not a mystery
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  Rupert Isaacson: and yet it's a great mystery, like people
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  Mark Rashid: indeed.
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  Right.
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  Rupert Isaacson: I guess, I guess the question though is, is usually depending
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  on people's geo geographic location and the culture that they come out of,
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  they tend to gravitate more to one area of the equine world than the other.
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  I know that Colorado stands at the crossroads, so you
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  kind of get everything there.
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  But you do have a, you know, a very strong working ranch tradition
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  there at the same time, up and down the front ranges of the Rockies.
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  You've got all of the equestrian, FEI disciplines you expect to find
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  and many other things as well.
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  And it's very interesting that you have the driving background.
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  I want to, to, to return to that in a minute.
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  When your mentor Walter was working, what was he primarily doing with horses?
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  What, what were people mostly coming to him for?
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  And then when you went out on your own, were you kind of
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  setting out to do the same thing?
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  Mark Rashid: People didn't actually come to him.
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  What he did was he went out and bought horses whether
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  from private sellers or sales.
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  He bought, he would buy these horses.
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  And then we basically worked with him.
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  He actually had a stock contractor buddy for rodeo.
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  And so early on he would put me on these horses and to see if they
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  would buck good and if they buck
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  Crissi McDonald: days before helmets and release forms
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  Mark Rashid: and, he, and if they buck good, then he would sell 'em to this
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  buddy of his who was a stock contractor.
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  And then if they didn't buck good, then we worked with them.
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  And and basically that's what it was.
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  It was just him and I most of the time.
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  And we, you know, so if, if he was talking, I figured he was talking to me.
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  And if I was talking, I guess he figured I was talking to him.
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  But but that's basically what it was.
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  And he would buy and sell.
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  You know, some folks might say these days that he was, that he rescued horses, but
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  I don't believe that's how he saw it.
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  You know, it was just a way for him to make a living.
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  He'd, he was an old hard scrabble rancher and, you know, making a living
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  with horses, and that's what he did.
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  Rupert Isaacson: And was he, when he was effectively rehabbing these horses
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  as they came in, were they going out to all disciplines or were they primarily
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  going out to the ranching world?
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  What, what were they in general, being prepared to do?
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  I don't
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  Mark Rashid: know.
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  Remember, I, I was, I was pretty young at the time.
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  Rupert Isaacson: Mm-hmm.
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  Mark Rashid: So people, but it wasn't, for
• 10:38
  Rupert Isaacson: example, having you work over poles and cavalletti
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  to turn them into jumping horses,
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  Mark Rashid: or It would be, it would be branches and down trees and, you
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  know, it wasn't, it wasn't anything.
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  Official, if you wanna call that, and you'd be using
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  Rupert Isaacson: Western and English tack for this, you'd be
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  Mark Rashid: mostly Western.
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  Rupert Isaacson: Okay.
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  Mark Rashid: In fact, all, all, it was either Western or bareback.
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  Rupert Isaacson: Okay.
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  Yep.
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  But then from there, the horse could go out to any type of Yeah.
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  Home.
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  Got it.
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  Mm-hmm.
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  Mm-hmm.
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  Rupert Isaacson: And if you would say, apart from his internal softness
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  and kindness, if he had a system that you could, in retrospect look
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  back on, could you outline it?
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  Mark Rashid: I don't, I couldn't tell you that there was a system.
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  Mm-hmm.
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  Because everything was different.
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  You know, he never, I don't recall him doing the same thing with
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  a whole bunch of horses ever.
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  He, he took the horse and whatever it was that the horse needed, that's what he did.
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  So there wasn't any sort of program, if you wanna call it that, or a system.
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  Mm-hmm.
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  He worked, he truly worked with the horse as an individual.
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  And that was one of the things that really stuck with me when I would start
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  seeing some of these other trainers later on in life where everything was so
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  regimented and if the horse didn't fit or didn't respond, then the trainer just
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  did more of it, or did it bigger, or I.
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  Harder or whatever.
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  And that just wasn't I, that was again, so foreign to me that mm-hmm.
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  That it, it kind of didn't make sense to me.
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  And it, to be honest, it doesn't make that much sense to me even today.
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  So, so there, I if you wanna say it's ay, if you wanna call it a system,
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  his system was to not have a system.
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  Rupert Isaacson: Right.
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  Or or at least to, to recognize the individuality of each horse Exactly.
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  And, and follow it.
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  Mark Rashid: Exactly.
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  Rupert Isaacson: I'd like to return to this in a minute.
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  I just wanna go to Chrisy with a couple of questions here.
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  But we all know that systems also can be very useful.
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  So for example, if I'm wanting to play guitar, I don't play it as well as you
• 12:58
  do mark, but you know that I can do a certain amount with self-teaching,
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  but I do know that it's very, very helpful to sit down with somebody
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  and, and have them show me scales and arpeggios because it will help me to
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  order and then go off on my own again.
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  And then they show me something else that I can order.
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  And so this, this interplay of this say healthy tension between systems and
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  individuality, autonomy and connectedness, I mean, I think is a reality.
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  But as you say, sometimes it's so overdone that one can dominate the
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  other to the detriment of the whole.
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  And so I'd like to go into that because I think it's important for people to have.
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  Maps to get around with.
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  They are helpful.
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  And at the same time, you don't want to stifle your cre creativity of
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  finding your own way over the mountain, you know, but it does help to know
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  there's a mountain there sort of thing.
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  Mm-hmm.
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  So perhaps, and martial arts obviously do have systems.
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  So let, if we could just go into that paradox a little bit later.
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  I'd, I'd love to, because I think this is a question that's in a lot of
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  people's minds of how does one strike that balance, if you know what I
• 14:09
  mean?
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  Mm-hmm.
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  Rupert Isaacson: So Chrissy, can, how did you begin with all of this?
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  That and again, you're not just with horses.
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  You are, you're an artist, you're a photographer, you're an
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  author you're in the humanities.
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  Mm-hmm.
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  Right?
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  So give us how you started and what, more or less, where you're at now.
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  What, what, what the mission is.
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  Crissi McDonald: Well I was born into a family who lived in town.
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  No, no one in my family likes horses.
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  Where what
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  tell was that mean?
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  Crissi McDonald: This is in Arizona.
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  It's called Flagstaff.
• 14:43
  Okay.
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  And they don't dislike horses, but it was like, when I was young, it
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  was like, well, of course she likes horses because every kid likes horses.
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  And so I would.
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  Clean stalls in exchange for lessons.
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  I would groom horses.
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  I would clean out horse trailers, I would babysit.
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  I did all these different things to get time with horses
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  because I didn't have one.
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  I lived in town.
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  And then when I was in my early twenties, I was the director of the
• 15:15
  riding program at a Girl Scout camp.
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  And then shortly after that, up until that time, I'd been riding
• 15:21
  other people's horses and basically exercising and grooming it.
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  It was, I wouldn't call what I was doing training so much as, oh,
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  just keeping the horse engaged.
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  And I really, I've always loved horses and I fell into, I didn't fall into, but I had
• 15:38
  a friend who had horses and she came from the background of German martingales and
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  tie downs and spurs and crops and whips.
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  And if you tell the horse to do something, they better by God do it.
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  And here I come from the background of grooming horses and hopping on
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  bareback and riding in the cinder hills and, you know, just doing
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  whatever, falling off and climbing back up on a log to get on the horse.
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  And I rode standard breads and quarter horses and Arabs, and I just, it
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  didn't matter if it was a horse.
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  I was happy.
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  And so I got into this world of very, you know, it was very strict
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  and very hard, but I didn't know.
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  I thought this was what horses, I thought once you started getting serious with
• 16:21
  horses that you had to be this way.
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  But I never liked it.
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  And so I got my own horses.
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  I started teaching lessons started out with kids.
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  So anywhere from five years to 14 years, did a lot of kid lessons
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  and then moved into training.
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  I was very dissatisfied with, with what I knew because it seemed very
• 16:46
  mechanical and unforgiving and, you know, the horses always did
• 16:50
  it, but I didn't like how it felt.
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  I didn't like how it felt to me, and I didn't like how it looked.
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  And so I started looking for alternative ways.
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  This was in the late nineties, so this is when a bunch of clinicians came out
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  and I ended up studying with John Lyons a little bit, which was very educational
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  at that time, going from the world I was in to what he was doing which is
• 17:13
  more like conditioned response stuff.
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  It was revolutionary.
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  But even that, when I started applying some of those techniques
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  to my own horsemanship inside of me, I was like, that this isn't enough.
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  That there, there must be someone or something out there who knows
• 17:33
  something that I don't even know.
• 17:34
  I don't know.
• 17:36
  And so I asked a friend of mine who, because she'd ridden with, at that
• 17:42
  time, she'd probably ridden with 50 different clinicians, everyone
• 17:45
  from really well known to local.
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  And, and she said she mentioned Mark's name and I, and she said
• 17:53
  he has a clinic in two months.
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  I said, great, sign me up.
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  I didn't know who Mark was at that time.
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  He had three or four books out.
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  She said, here's a book.
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  It was considering the horse.
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  So I took the book home and I read it and I'm like, oh, this guy sounds pretty cool.
• 18:05
  And so I went to do a clinic and it was a four day clinic and I didn't
• 18:10
  have a saddle that fit my horse.
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  So I rode in bareback and you know, I'm a trainer at that point
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  and I'm thinking, oh, this'll, you know, we won't need to do much.
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  'cause I'm a trainer and I've trained my horse.
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  I think I was still in my twenties up and after four days, I remember
• 18:28
  having the distinct feeling that I knew nothing and that wasn't a bad thing.
• 18:35
  I was really excited by the fact that even though I didn't know what was going on,
• 18:40
  I knew how I felt and how my voice felt doing this work that centered on softness.
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  I knew that that was the direction I wanted to go.
• 18:50
  Rupert Isaacson: I could quip that.
• 18:51
  Oh, and then he was so expensive that you figured, well,
• 18:53
  actually I better marry him.
• 18:54
  And then I couldn't afford to like, keep, keep the, keep the learning going, right?
• 18:58
  Yeah.
• 18:58
  Crissi McDonald: Yeah.
• 18:59
  Keep cuts down on my cost.
• 19:00
  Definitely.
• 19:01
  Rupert Isaacson: You know, I mean, one has to be practical about these things.
• 19:04
  Crissi McDonald: That's right.
• 19:04
  That's right.
• 19:04
  Rupert Isaacson: So Mark, consider the horse.
• 19:07
  So Chrissy comes along, she's searching and she's finding
• 19:14
  things that are effective, but yeah, it's not sitting with her.
• 19:18
  Talk to us about Consider the Horse, what's in that book?
• 19:22
  What motivated you to write that book?
• 19:24
  What did you hope, what do you hope people get from that book?
• 19:27
  Mark Rashid: the, the question is, it's a really interesting
• 19:30
  question because I didn't, it wasn't my choice to write that book.
• 19:36
  I was asked to write it and No,
• 19:39
  Rupert Isaacson: by who?
• 19:41
  Mark Rashid: By the, the guy who actually turned out to be my editor.
• 19:45
  So I was teaching horse training at the time.
• 19:47
  We were using Mustangs for that.
• 19:49
  And I had a little school this is before I started doing clinics,
• 19:54
  and I was doing a little school and we used Mustangs to teach people
• 20:00
  how to train and work with horses.
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  And there was a, a woman in the class and she said, you know, my, my husband
• 20:07
  has a horse and he's not getting along with it, and we would like to sell him,
• 20:11
  and could you come by and just kind of tell us what this horse might be worth?
• 20:16
  So I went over and you couldn't catch the horse.
• 20:19
  So we worked on that for a little while.
• 20:21
  Once you got him caught, you couldn't saddle him, you
• 20:25
  know, you couldn't brush him.
• 20:26
  So we worked on that for a little while.
• 20:28
  Once you got him saddled you couldn't get on.
• 20:31
  Once you got on, you couldn't go.
• 20:35
  Once you got him to go, you couldn't stop.
• 20:37
  So we worked on all of that stuff for, I don't know, maybe 45 minutes.
• 20:42
  And by the time he was, he was, he wasn't a, a troubled horse or bad horse.
• 20:49
  He had just been getting releases for things that they didn't want him to do.
• 20:56
  And so it was just a complete misunderstanding and he didn't
• 20:59
  like the way he felt and the owners didn't like the way they felt.
• 21:02
  And it didn't take hardly any time just by showing the horse that, you know, if he.
• 21:06
  Here's the right, here's the thing that we're looking for you to do.
• 21:10
  And he would go, oh, okay, well then I'll just do that.
• 21:13
  So anyway I had actually written some articles for Western Horseman Magazine
• 21:19
  and by that time, and so the, her husband, his name was Scott, and he,
• 21:26
  he said, have you ever thought about writing a book about what you do?
• 21:30
  And I, and I said, no, I haven't given it any thought to, to do that.
• 21:36
  And he said, well, if you ever want, if you ever want to write a write a
• 21:39
  book, let me know 'cause I can help.
• 21:41
  And I was thinking, well, you know, what do you got a typewriter or what?
• 21:44
  You know, so, but but it turns out that he was an editor for this
• 21:48
  publishing company, Johnson Books.
• 21:51
  And he, a couple weeks later, he called me up and he said, have you
• 21:56
  given any more thought to that book?
• 21:58
  And I said, I haven't given any thought to it, you know, and so we, we sat
• 22:02
  down and worked it out that night.
• 22:05
  We, we were on, we were on the phone for a couple hours.
• 22:08
  He went down the next day and pitched it to the publishing
• 22:11
  company and they bought it.
• 22:13
  So, I just wanted to write a book that, the idea was I wanted it to read
• 22:19
  like a James Harriet book and I wanted it to look like a Will James book.
• 22:25
  James was a cowboy back in the 1930s who was also a, an author and illustrator.
• 22:32
  And so that's how I, that's how it came to be.
• 22:36
  And it was about, basically it was just about working with troubled horses and,
• 22:42
  which was basically what I had been doing up to that point primarily is just lots
• 22:47
  and lots and lots of troubled horses.
• 22:50
  So that's what the book was about.
• 22:52
  And, and I and
• 22:53
  Rupert Isaacson: Christy, sorry, you go ahead.
• 22:54
  I didn't mean to interrupt you.
• 22:56
  Mark Rashid: Oh, no, I was just gonna say that I didn't, I didn't
• 22:58
  think it was, I didn't, I didn't think it was gonna be a big deal.
• 23:03
  And they actually didn't want it.
• 23:05
  The, the marketing guy after I'd started writing the book, he went and looked
• 23:10
  at the bestselling horse books on the market and they were all how to books.
• 23:15
  And mine wasn't that, you know, even close.
• 23:18
  He didn't think he'd be able to sell it.
• 23:20
  And so long story short, they, they published it and they, I think they
• 23:28
  only did like 3000 copies and they sent it out to a few to get some reviews.
• 23:34
  And the first review was from a big time magazine here in the States.
• 23:38
  And it was the, the, the thing that they said in the review is that I was
• 23:42
  a Colorado clone of James Harriet.
• 23:46
  The book took off.
• 23:47
  Rupert Isaacson: So you'd hit the spot there,
• 23:49
  Mark Rashid: I guess.
• 23:50
  And it's, right now it's sold over a million and a half copies worldwide.
• 23:56
  Good Lord.
• 23:57
  So, yeah.
• 23:57
  It's, who knew.
• 24:01
  Rupert Isaacson: Well, well done.
• 24:01
  Hats off Chrissy.
• 24:03
  When you read that book what, what made you think, yeah, I need to
• 24:10
  go and learn from this person?
• 24:13
  Crissi McDonald: Well, I was already signed up for the clinic,
• 24:15
  so I'd already paid my money.
• 24:16
  That
• 24:17
  Rupert Isaacson: helped.
• 24:18
  Crissi McDonald: Yeah.
• 24:18
  When I read the book, it struck me because I had been reading horse
• 24:22
  books and they were all how to books.
• 24:25
  You know, if you want the horse to do a, you have to do B and C.
• 24:28
  If the horse does D you do f.
• 24:31
  You know, and they had great illustrations and it was mostly, you know, how to
• 24:36
  get the horses to do stuff, which,
• 24:37
  yeah,
• 24:38
  Crissi McDonald: it, that's not, it's not a bad thing, but it was very engaging for
• 24:42
  the part of my brain that likes systems.
• 24:44
  So we were talking about systems earlier.
• 24:46
  Mm-hmm.
• 24:47
  Crissi McDonald: When I read Mark's book, it was all stories.
• 24:49
  And so the feeling I got from those had nothing to do with my brain.
• 24:55
  It was all, it was in my body.
• 24:57
  I was thinking, you know, I've never thought of that.
• 25:01
  That seems so much kinder or that seems so much more easy to understand
• 25:05
  than A, B, C, DEFG, you know?
• 25:08
  Rupert Isaacson: Give us a couple of examples.
• 25:10
  Are there a couple of things that, stories that really leapt out at you?
• 25:13
  If you could just summarize them that probably stick in
• 25:15
  your head like that you thought?
• 25:16
  Oh yeah.
• 25:17
  Gosh, yes.
• 25:21
  Crissi McDonald: One of 'em that I remember is Mark has a
• 25:25
  story about catching a horse.
• 25:28
  And I'm not gonna, I'm not gonna try and quote it, but it was at that time,
• 25:34
  catching horses was basically about if the horse wants to run, you make 'em
• 25:38
  run until they don't wanna run anymore.
• 25:41
  And so that's what I had learned is you get in a round pen if the
• 25:44
  horse doesn't wanna be caught, we go around and then the horse will
• 25:48
  get tired and then you can catch up.
• 25:49
  Rupert Isaacson: That's assuming you couldn't even get the horse into
• 25:50
  the round pen in the first place.
• 25:52
  Yes,
• 25:52
  Crissi McDonald: yes, yes.
• 25:53
  Thank, thankfully I was, I was blessed to have horses that actually
• 25:58
  went with me into the round pen.
• 26:00
  Or it had, there was a large corral or something, but it, when I was doing
• 26:04
  that, it was so disconnected, you know, I would do it and I, and I could
• 26:11
  get the job done except for a couple horses, which is why I went searching.
• 26:15
  Yeah.
• 26:16
  Crissi McDonald: But Mark talked about just moving instead of driving
• 26:20
  the horse, you know, run, run, run.
• 26:22
  Oh, if you wanna run by God, we're gonna run.
• 26:25
  Instead of doing that is going with the horse as they move.
• 26:30
  So that, so that you're more doing something in connection.
• 26:34
  And that, you know, that really struck me is because up until this
• 26:41
  time I had been immersed in kind of a dominance version of horsemanship.
• 26:45
  Right?
• 26:45
  I say, you do.
• 26:47
  And that was the story that cracked open the door to, oh, this could
• 26:54
  actually be something we do together.
• 26:57
  That both of us end up feeling better by the end, instead of one of us is out
• 27:01
  of breath and the other feels crummy.
• 27:03
  You know?
• 27:03
  Yeah.
• 27:03
  Like, oh, I made another being do what I wanted, which it, it's not me,
• 27:10
  you know, I'm not gonna say whether it's good or bad, it's just not me.
• 27:13
  And so that was the first story I remember thinking, oh, there's a way
• 27:18
  to do something with a horse, you know, and have them feel good about being in
• 27:24
  your company as opposed to, you know?
• 27:27
  Yes, sir.
• 27:29
  So I think that was the first one
• 27:33
  Rupert Isaacson: when you then began to work together.
• 27:38
  I imagine that the volume of horses that were suddenly and people that
• 27:42
  were suddenly coming in front of you probably accelerated a bit.
• 27:46
  You've, you've got the success of the book now, you're a team.
• 27:50
  You can do, more people have heard of you.
• 27:52
  So now stuff starts to happen and you learn a lot more, right?
• 27:56
  Because of all these different contexts, human and equine, what would you say
• 28:02
  in those early years where you began to work together, were the
• 28:06
  things that most leapt out at you as a, as a team, as a pair go, oh
• 28:11
  we see this over and over again.
• 28:14
  And then also what patterns did you begin to
• 28:21
  evolve together that you could now look back on and say, ah, right, yes.
• 28:27
  That was sort of the time we've actually kind of evolved this approach or this
• 28:32
  framework in response to these things.
• 28:35
  Just talk us through that a little bit.
• 28:37
  'cause it's going to inform, I think, the later questions, which is about things
• 28:42
  that are, people are facing now, you know, who are listening particularly in
• 28:46
  the equine assisted programs and, and, and how we can open up more options.
• 28:51
  So, yeah.
• 28:51
  Mm-hmm.
• 28:52
  Just, just what were the patterns that you saw that people seemed to consistently
• 28:58
  need over and over again, and what did you see were the patterns of the
• 29:03
  responses that you guys ended up evolving?
• 29:07
  Crissi McDonald: Got it.
• 29:08
  If you don't mind, I'll start.
• 29:11
  Mark's got himself muted.
• 29:12
  So I'll just start anyway.
• 29:14
  Rupert Isaacson: Maybe on purpose.
• 29:15
  I dunno, he's wise.
• 29:17
  Crissi McDonald: So when I, when I started working with Mark, I had gone
• 29:24
  from a trainer who saw, I'm gonna say 30 to 40 horses and clients a year.
• 29:32
  And that included cult starting riding, trailer loading it was everything from,
• 29:40
  so from maybe 30 or 40 people a year to I'm gonna say between four and 500.
• 29:49
  And then if we went to equine, if we went to a trade show or,
• 29:54
  you know, like Equant or Equine Affair, that jumped into thousands.
• 29:59
  Yeah.
• 29:59
  And so me personally, the first year that I started working,
• 30:02
  we started doing clinics.
• 30:04
  We were on the road two hundred and fifty, two hundred sixty days a year.
• 30:07
  We were doing 42 clinics a year.
• 30:09
  Me personally, I was in overwhelm because of the amount of horses
• 30:17
  and people we were seeing.
• 30:19
  And my own learning curve went straight up just, just like a rocket.
• 30:25
  So for me personally, you know, what I relied on a lot was, was teaching.
• 30:31
  But then at the end of the day, being able to go to Mark and say,
• 30:34
  okay, I saw this thing and it felt like this needed to happen.
• 30:38
  So I showed them this and it mostly worked, but I feel like I'm missing
• 30:43
  something and Mark will have already worked with that person.
• 30:47
  What we used to do is he would work with the person, they would come to
• 30:50
  me and they would have an extra hour to kind of solidify their learning.
• 30:54
  We only saw eight people a day, and that was a four day clinic in the beginning.
• 31:00
  So, you know, at first I was reliant on the fact that he had
• 31:03
  been ing a lot longer than I had.
• 31:06
  I, I had gone from mostly backyard horse people to you know, to all disciplines.
• 31:14
  And I was familiar with all disciplines and like Mark said, the principles,
• 31:18
  it doesn't matter what saddle they're working in, the principles are the same.
• 31:22
  So yeah, for me, I would say initially it was, it was the ability to take what
• 31:28
  I saw and run it by Mark, who had had, at that point, thousands more horses
• 31:34
  and people under his belt than I had.
• 31:36
  And and also just really enjoy being able to go back and forth across the
• 31:42
  country and see so many horses and people.
• 31:46
  It was just a crash course in how to recognize certain things, you know?
• 31:53
  And, and if you're in long enough and you see enough.
• 31:56
  Patterns do start to emerge, right?
• 31:58
  And it's not that you're, it's not you're that you're designing your teaching
• 32:04
  to the pattern, but you go, oh, okay, here's the pattern I've seen before.
• 32:08
  Here's what worked in the past.
• 32:09
  Let's try this.
• 32:10
  And if it doesn't work, you try something else.
• 32:12
  But that's, that was my impression.
• 32:16
  So I think, you know, I, and then as we've started the clinics, especially the
• 32:20
  10 day clinics, I think we rely on each other a lot for impressions of, you know,
• 32:25
  how to help a horse and a person best.
• 32:28
  It's different every time.
• 32:29
  As you know, Rupert as well, you, you can teach the same thing every time, but
• 32:34
  the person in the horse are different.
• 32:35
  And it makes that teaching just a little bit different every time.
• 32:38
  Absolutely.
• 32:39
  So that's been very valuable, is to develop a flexibility in my own teaching
• 32:47
  instead of just, you know, do a, B, C.
• 32:51
  Right.
• 32:51
  There's a part of me
• 32:52
  Crissi McDonald: that really likes those kind of systems because then I
• 32:54
  don't have to think, but it's, it's not creative and it's not personalized.
• 33:01
  Rupert Isaacson: But those patterns that were showing up, were there
• 33:04
  consistent issues, dilemmas that people, and were showing up to get them?
• 33:10
  And what would you say the ones that just leap into your mind straight away?
• 33:14
  Yeah.
• 33:15
  We had a bunch of people and it was this.
• 33:18
  Crissi McDonald: For a while we had a bunch of people with Premarin horses,
• 33:21
  and for people who aren't familiar with Premarin horses, those are the
• 33:24
  offspring of mares that they use.
• 33:27
  They use mares urine to make hormone replacement therapy for women.
• 33:31
  It's called Premarin.
• 33:32
  I don't know how it is now.
• 33:35
  Yeah.
• 33:36
  So we were seeing at the time, and then there was this mo Yeah.
• 33:39
  There was this movement to adopt the babies out.
• 33:42
  Mm-hmm.
• 33:43
  Mm-hmm.
• 33:43
  So,
• 33:44
  Crissi McDonald: because the babies were just like an after
• 33:47
  effect, they just needed the urine.
• 33:50
  So we saw a lot of Premarin horses for a number of years, and it was really
• 33:55
  interesting because for a while we'd see horses who had been diagnosed with EPM,
• 34:00
  and then for a while we saw horses who had been barefoot, but maybe needed to choose.
• 34:06
  And then we saw primer and horses, and then now we seem to be in a stretch where
• 34:10
  we're seeing a fair amount of mustangs.
• 34:12
  So it, things go in waves.
• 34:16
  Rupert Isaacson: Right.
• 34:16
  But what were the, what were the dilemmas that these Premarin
• 34:19
  horses were, were bringing?
• 34:22
  And I'm gonna ask you about the, the, I'll let Yeah.
• 34:25
  Crissi McDonald: Ask Mark about that too.
• 34:26
  A lot of them were, because they don't have papers, you can't
• 34:30
  verify, but a lot of them seem to be inbred and unable to learn.
• 34:34
  So the most common thing was, is people saying, you know,
• 34:38
  I show my horse this thing.
• 34:39
  We do it for a week.
• 34:41
  And I think I'm doing it in a way that he's learning, and then I'll go back the
• 34:46
  next day and it's like he's never done it.
• 34:49
  Rupert Isaacson: Almost like autism in horses.
• 34:52
  Crissi McDonald: Yeah.
• 34:52
  Mm-hmm.
• 34:54
  Rupert Isaacson: Interesting.
• 34:55
  Crissi McDonald: Yeah.
• 34:55
  I'll let Mark pick it up from there.
• 34:56
  Rupert Isaacson: Yeah, please do.
• 34:57
  Mark.
• 34:58
  Talk to us about this.
• 35:00
  Mark Rashid: Well, back in the eighties I had read a book on dogs
• 35:05
  with that had been inbred and they carried certain behaviors with them
• 35:12
  and also physical traits as well.
• 35:15
  And I had seen some horses with similar behaviors and physical traits, balance
• 35:23
  issues and and a variety of things.
• 35:27
  And so I just, I just started asking people about if the horse was registered
• 35:32
  and if it was, we would look at the papers and sure enough we would see
• 35:37
  either inbreeding or line breeding.
• 35:40
  And the most common is kind of the textbook is is horses that
• 35:45
  are unable to retain information.
• 35:49
  So that's one of the, one of the big ones.
• 35:51
  Interesting.
• 35:52
  Rupert Isaacson: Okay.
• 35:53
  Mark Rashid: From behavioral issues, you know, really horses
• 35:56
  that seem really, really frustrated, defensive horses that are defensive.
• 36:01
  Some horses are very aggressive.
• 36:03
  Not to other horses necessarily, but to people.
• 36:06
  Hmm.
• 36:07
  So there, there's a whole list of things that, and behaviors that
• 36:11
  we, that we that they will exhibit.
• 36:14
  And, you know, we are working with Dr.
• 36:18
  Steve Peters a lot here in the last seven years.
• 36:20
  And, and I talked with him at length about this and, and there's
• 36:25
  a ton of research on it now.
• 36:28
  And one of the interesting things about inbred horses is that depending
• 36:32
  on how they are managed early on, will determine whether or not
• 36:37
  those genes get turned on or off.
• 36:40
  And so there are, there are some inbred horses out there that are world
• 36:44
  champion reers or jumpers or whatever.
• 36:48
  And then there's others that you can't lead out of the pen.
• 36:52
  You know, that literally will spook at their own shadow.
• 36:56
  And we have an inbred horse here who's a great horse, great trail
• 37:02
  horse, and but he's pretty quirky.
• 37:05
  And our granddaughter rides him.
• 37:09
  And he's a great, you know, really super nice horse, but he's a little quirky,
• 37:15
  you know, but the way he was handled early on didn't, those genes didn't turn
• 37:21
  on that caused all the major issues.
• 37:25
  Now he does have some balance issues and he can't canner.
• 37:29
  And that's, as these guys get older, those are some of the things that
• 37:33
  start happening with, you start seeing balance issues, you start
• 37:36
  seeing lack of wanting to go past a, a gate that they're comfortable in.
• 37:43
  And Chrissy worked on seeing if she couldn't get him to
• 37:45
  canner for a couple of years.
• 37:47
  He did initially, and then eventually he just couldn't do it anymore.
• 37:51
  So we almost like a kind of
• 37:53
  Rupert Isaacson: dementia.
• 37:54
  Mark Rashid: Yeah.
• 37:55
  Yeah.
• 37:57
  Rupert Isaacson: So when a horse presents to you with this kind of almost
• 38:02
  like autism-like symptoms associated with the inbreeding what do you do?
• 38:09
  Mark Rashid: Depends on the severity,
• 38:10
  Rupert Isaacson: no doubt.
• 38:11
  But in general,
• 38:13
  Mark Rashid: If, if the horse is unable to retain information, then
• 38:20
  we usually recommend that they just become a pasture ornament.
• 38:25
  You know, just turn 'em out and pasture if they can, or find a rescue that
• 38:29
  can take 'em, because as long as you allow them to be a horse, they're fine.
• 38:35
  When we start to interact with them, when humans start to ask them to
• 38:39
  do things other than just being a horse, when you add monkey stuff,
• 38:43
  right?
• 38:43
  Yeah.
• 38:44
  Mark Rashid: Yeah.
• 38:44
  That's when they really start to struggle.
• 38:46
  Interesting.
• 38:47
  And as far as being a, a riding horse they can potentially be, be dangerous.
• 38:53
  Yeah, sure.
• 38:53
  Not because, not because they, not because they're gonna be
• 38:57
  dangerous as, as an animal.
• 38:58
  It is just that their behavior is gonna be unpredictable.
• 39:02
  And so it's really important.
• 39:04
  Rupert Isaacson: Let's say it's not that extreme though.
• 39:06
  And someone's just, you know, the horse is clearly struggling, but
• 39:09
  they, it seems that there's some possibilities for some potential.
• 39:14
  How do you go about helping the horse to retain information?
• 39:20
  Mark Rashid: If they can't retain it?
• 39:21
  They can't retain it.
• 39:22
  So it's not like you can fix that.
• 39:25
  Rupert Isaacson: You, you can't build neuroplasticity in the horse.
• 39:28
  Mm-hmm.
• 39:30
  Mark Rashid: No, no.
• 39:32
  So it's, it is just the way it is.
• 39:35
  But you
• 39:35
  Rupert Isaacson: can in people.
• 39:36
  So, so why not in horses?
• 39:39
  Mark Rashid: I don't know.
• 39:39
  You'd have to ask a neurologist about that.
• 39:43
  I,
• 39:43
  Rupert Isaacson: I think we need to go back to Dr.
• 39:44
  Steven Peters.
• 39:45
  It's an interesting, that's interesting.
• 39:47
  It's intriguing to me because, you know, I, I'm, I, can
• 39:50
  Crissi McDonald: I throw something in real quick?
• 39:50
  Rupert Isaacson: Yeah, please do.
• 39:52
  Crissi McDonald: So, the source that we have, his name is Banjo, and for.
• 40:00
  I don't, I wrote him in clinics for five or six summers and when we got
• 40:04
  him, he didn't know his lateral work.
• 40:05
  So turn on the haunches, turn on the forehand back up.
• 40:09
  He didn't know any of that.
• 40:11
  I worked on that consistently for four years and every summer
• 40:17
  I had to start at the beginning.
• 40:20
  So when this compares to our other horses, who I've spent just as much time with,
• 40:28
  one of them I hadn't ridden in two years.
• 40:30
  I got on her and she had all her moves.
• 40:34
  Turn on the forehand, turn on the haunches side, pass back up, very soft, no trouble,
• 40:40
  but banjo every summer I had to say, okay, this means turn on the forehand.
• 40:45
  This means turn on the haunches.
• 40:47
  And he could retain it as long as we were doing it.
• 40:51
  Okay.
• 40:51
  Crissi McDonald: But it was always, there was never any graduation in skill level.
• 40:57
  Okay.
• 40:58
  So it was always as though it was the first time he was ever doing it.
• 41:04
  And then the next summer would come around and I'd have to do it again.
• 41:07
  And knowing that he's in bread, it didn't, you know, I just thought,
• 41:11
  well, that this, we're meeting now his capacity to do this skill.
• 41:18
  If you wanna go down a trail, he's great.
• 41:20
  Go over a log.
• 41:22
  He stops.
• 41:22
  Great.
• 41:23
  He's like a goat.
• 41:25
  He'll go anywhere.
• 41:26
  But if you want refined work, that's his ceiling.
• 41:31
  So I just, I just expect that
• 41:33
  Rupert Isaacson: do.
• 41:34
  Yeah.
• 41:34
  And you work within his parameters.
• 41:36
  Yeah.
• 41:36
  Yes.
• 41:37
  This is interesting to me.
• 41:38
  Do you think there's a lot of people out there working with inbred
• 41:40
  horses who dunno that they are?
• 41:43
  Mark Rashid: We see, yes.
• 41:44
  I wouldn't say we see one a clinic, but we, but they, we see a bunch of 'em.
• 41:49
  We see a bunch of them.
• 41:50
  Rupert Isaacson: If you're in the equine assisted field, or if you're
• 41:53
  considering a career in the equine assisted field, you might want to consider
• 41:57
  taking one of our three neuroscience backed equine assisted programs.
• 42:01
  Horseboy method, now established for 20 years, is the original
• 42:08
  Equine assisted program specifically designed for autism, mentored by and
• 42:14
  developed in conjunction with Dr.
• 42:17
  Temple Grandin and many other neuroscientists.
• 42:20
  We work in the saddle with younger children.
• 42:24
  Helping them create oxytocin in their bodies and neuroplasticity in the brain.
• 42:29
  It works incredibly well.
• 42:31
  It's now in about 40 countries.
• 42:33
  Check it out.
• 42:34
  If you're working without horses, you might want to look at movement
• 42:39
  method, which gets a very, very similar effect, but can also be
• 42:42
  applied in schools, in homes.
• 42:44
  If you're working with families, you can give them really tangible exercises to do
• 42:49
  at home that will create neuroplasticity.
• 42:52
  when they're not with you.
• 42:54
  Finally, we have taquine equine integration.
• 42:57
  If you know anything about our programs, you know that we need a
• 43:00
  really high standard of horsemanship in order to create the oxytocin
• 43:04
  in the body of the person that we're working with, child or adult.
• 43:09
  So, this means we need to train a horse in collection, but this
• 43:12
  also has a really beneficial effect on the horse's well being.
• 43:17
  And it also ends your time conflict, where you're wondering, oh my gosh, how
• 43:21
  am I going to condition my horses and maintain them and give them what they
• 43:24
  need, as well as Serving my clients.
• 43:27
  Takine equine integration aimed at a more adult client base
• 43:32
  absolutely gives you this.
• 43:34
  Do you think it's on the increase or decrease or stable?
• 43:41
  Mark Rashid: I've, I've, that's a good question.
• 43:43
  I, I would say that I've seen
• 43:47
  probably more.
• 43:49
  Rupert Isaacson: Okay.
• 43:50
  Mark Rashid: In the last five, six years.
• 43:53
  Rupert Isaacson: What do you attribute that to?
• 43:56
  Mark Rashid: Backyard breeding.
• 43:58
  Rupert Isaacson: But people have always backyard bred, so Yeah.
• 44:00
  Why now?
• 44:03
  Or do you think there's just more of it or about the backyard breeding?
• 44:07
  I, you know,
• 44:07
  Mark Rashid: I don't know.
• 44:08
  I just don't know.
• 44:09
  I mean, it could be a lot of pasture breeding.
• 44:11
  We've seen a lot of rescue horses that were brought in and they, you know,
• 44:17
  they were turned out, you know, early on with, you know, brothers and sisters
• 44:23
  and mothers and and sons and so you get a lot of that kind of thing, right.
• 44:30
  Because there's no new
• 44:30
  Rupert Isaacson: stallion coming in and.
• 44:32
  Mark Rashid: Right.
• 44:33
  And we're seeing a lot of it Right.
• 44:34
  In the in the Mustang world as well.
• 44:37
  Rupert Isaacson: Well, that was gonna be my next question.
• 44:40
  Okay.
• 44:41
  This is intriguing to me, and I've actually got a horse that
• 44:44
  I'm working with right now who I'm being suspecting this of.
• 44:48
  I'm working actually at a distance.
• 44:49
  But the horse seems
• 44:53
  impossibly spooky.
• 44:55
  Mm-hmm.
• 44:55
  Rupert Isaacson: Given
• 44:58
  all the good training and conditioning he gets, and I know he does.
• 45:01
  I don't actually train him on hands on myself.
• 45:04
  It's just a long distance thing I'm doing.
• 45:06
  But I, I know the person and I know everything that they're doing is great,
• 45:09
  and the horse spooks and bolts out of the blue consistently, and then you can
• 45:16
  recondition him, say, okay, oh, it's this thing that you were afraid of.
• 45:20
  Let's go and look at this.
• 45:20
  And then he, oh, yeah, that's great.
• 45:22
  Okay.
• 45:22
  And then three, four months go by and he'll do it again as if he
• 45:31
  hadn't ever seen that thing.
• 45:35
  And in a way that is so sort of genuine that you know it,
• 45:40
  he's not just messing with you.
• 45:41
  Mm-hmm.
• 45:42
  Rupert Isaacson: And I was, you know, in my mind I was going, mm.
• 45:45
  And then I, I found out that he's from a very particular herd which
• 45:50
  has a, a very particular gene pool.
• 45:54
  But then I was thinking, but could it be in breeding?
• 45:56
  Because you've, you've still always got some stallions gonna
• 45:58
  wander over the hill, right.
• 45:59
  And, you know, introduce something new.
• 46:02
  So it doesn't take, do you think this shows up in stallions given
• 46:05
  that in, in, in Mustangs, given that they have access to outside genetics?
• 46:09
  Mark Rashid: Oh, that's the way they're gathered.
• 46:12
  Ah, go on.
• 46:13
  Yeah, so what ends up happening is they pull in all of these families and
• 46:20
  then they pull out the, what you might call the most desirable, and then they
• 46:24
  kick the rest out and they, you, they may be turning brothers and sisters
• 46:27
  out, they fathers and daughters out.
• 46:31
  And but we, in fact, we just worked with one last summer that, here
• 46:38
  here's a really good example.
• 46:40
  So this horse they got this Mustang when he was when he was I think a
• 46:46
  year old, a year and a half old.
• 46:48
  They got him and the woman started him herself.
• 46:53
  And they actually, she didn't, she had never started a horse
• 46:57
  before and they worked together.
• 47:01
  She brought him when he was three, I believe, to, to one of our clinics.
• 47:08
  And they were struggling with some basic stuff, but it wasn't anything major.
• 47:14
  We kind of got things lined out.
• 47:17
  She started riding him and doing some pretty cool stuff with
• 47:20
  him, going out, camping with him and doing that kind of thing.
• 47:23
  And then she all of a sudden outta the blue last year I think, or the year
• 47:29
  before he started bolting, when she would get on and or she'd be riding
• 47:37
  along and he would start to go a little faster on the trail and pretty soon
• 47:40
  he would bolt just out of the blue.
• 47:43
  No, no rhyme or reason to it.
• 47:46
  Rupert Isaacson: This pretty much describes the horse Yeah.
• 47:48
  That I'm, yeah.
• 47:48
  Talking about.
• 47:49
  Yeah.
• 47:50
  Mark Rashid: So then what happened was she brought the horse to
• 47:54
  one of our instructors and, and they started working together.
• 47:59
  And it took a long time, a year to get him to where he wasn't bolting
• 48:05
  anymore off the mounting block.
• 48:08
  And, and he was still pretty quirky and, you know, just handling him and,
• 48:14
  you know, he would bite at people and just out of the blue, just interesting.
• 48:20
  Which, you know, his, his owners said they, he had never done that
• 48:23
  before, but all of a sudden now he's exhibiting that kind of behavior and
• 48:29
  anyway, so it, it looked like they had the mounting thing taken care of.
• 48:35
  And last summer, the, the owners came.
• 48:40
  And they were gonna work with him.
• 48:43
  And the, her, the husband got on this horse and he walked around.
• 48:48
  He was pretty okay.
• 48:50
  The very next day he went to put his foot in a stir up and the horse bolted.
• 48:54
  And I had pretty much suspected before that, that this was an inbred situation.
• 49:04
  And so I, you know, that was, and there were some other things,
• 49:09
  some other indicators as well.
• 49:12
  But the interesting thing was they had their dentist came in and did
• 49:17
  some work with on his teeth, and she said this is independently that
• 49:23
  that his mouth was indicative of a horse that was inbred because of
• 49:30
  the way the, the jaw was formed.
• 49:32
  Rupert Isaacson: Okay.
• 49:33
  Mark Rashid: So what was the signs
• 49:35
  Rupert Isaacson: out of interest?
• 49:35
  What did, did, do you remember what she pointed out?
• 49:37
  That
• 49:38
  Mark Rashid: narrow, a narrow jaw and deformation of some of the molars and
• 49:43
  some of the other teeth that aren't at the, at the correct angle, you
• 49:48
  know, that you really have to work to get them at a, at the correct angle.
• 49:51
  But it's how the, how the teeth are growing, not that somebody
• 49:54
  did, did bad dental work.
• 49:56
  Mm-hmm.
• 49:57
  Mm-hmm.
• 49:57
  Mark Rashid: So
• 49:59
  Rupert Isaacson: this is really revealing.
• 50:01
  And I guess this, this is why.
• 50:03
  You know, going back to my question about what, why can't
• 50:07
  we get some neuroplasticity?
• 50:08
  But I think you sort of answered that one, Chrissy, by saying,
• 50:12
  well, some of them actually yes.
• 50:14
  Within certain parameters.
• 50:16
  Like, okay, I might always have to start from scratch when it's the lateral
• 50:18
  work, but as a trail horse, okay.
• 50:21
  Or a more extreme version as you are describing, and this horse that
• 50:27
  I have been dealing with lately where it's now just dangerous.
• 50:31
  And if there's neuroplasticity, it seems to be fleeting, and then mm-hmm.
• 50:36
  It might be good for a while, but you can never tell when it might reappear.
• 50:40
  The question that comes up in my mind, I had no idea the podcast is gonna go this
• 50:43
  way, but I think anyone who's running equine programs really needs to be
• 50:47
  aware of this, particularly in the USA because the horses come in from exactly
• 50:52
  these kinds of donation points, right?
• 50:56
  People often find horses that they can't quite work with or whatever.
• 51:00
  Or it was the, you know, horses from the urine thing that were
• 51:04
  often coming on the market.
• 51:05
  And I had a few of those when I was in the States, and some of them were
• 51:07
  grand, some of them were fantastic.
• 51:09
  Mm-hmm.
• 51:09
  Mark Rashid: Yeah.
• 51:09
  Rupert Isaacson: Yeah.
• 51:09
  Made great horses and, you know, but I guess they, it
• 51:13
  was a, a bit of a crapshoot.
• 51:14
  But I, I was just thinking in my mind, well, in England we don't have that
• 51:18
  problem and we have a lot of Mustangs.
• 51:19
  People always forget that.
• 51:20
  What are the English Mustangs?
• 51:21
  Every wild pony breed in the uk, and there's mm-hmm.
• 51:25
  12 or or more of them has a wild population that lives completely
• 51:29
  wild on the hill, including there's a certain amount of winter kill that,
• 51:34
  you know, the Welsh ponies, the foul ponies, the ex mos, the Dartmore, the
• 51:38
  Highlands, the Dales, the, you name it, there's a wild population to these,
• 51:43
  the new forests, and they do roundups.
• 51:46
  Mm-hmm.
• 51:48
  Rupert Isaacson: And of course they select what they want and send the rest back.
• 51:51
  But the way they muster them, you're right, is very different.
• 51:55
  They tend to pre-select more or less what they'd like to muster.
• 52:01
  And then they're not gonna be turned out or held in pens where
• 52:05
  those family groups are gonna end up somehow mating with each other.
• 52:11
  It's
• 52:13
  only a certain amount of them are brought in from the open hill that
• 52:17
  have been to some degree preselected.
• 52:19
  And it's an ancient practice.
• 52:20
  It goes back, you know.
• 52:21
  Mm-hmm.
• 52:22
  Well over, over 2000 years or whatever.
• 52:23
  So people have certain commoners rights to go and do that and blah, blah, blah.
• 52:27
  So the whole thing is quite selective.
• 52:29
  And it sounds like what you're saying with the Mustangs is it's, and that,
• 52:33
  and perhaps with the Mustangs, it was at a certain point like that, but
• 52:36
  it's become somewhat industrialized.
• 52:37
  Mark Rashid: Mm-hmm.
• 52:38
  Rupert Isaacson: And.
• 52:41
  Mark Rashid: I don't think it's intentional.
• 52:42
  Yeah.
• 52:42
  Interesting.
• 52:42
  It's not, what they're doing isn't, I don't think intentional.
• 52:46
  Yeah.
• 52:46
  Rupert Isaacson: Yeah.
• 52:46
  The
• 52:46
  Mark Rashid: way, the way that that happens, I know a lot of folks in
• 52:51
  that, that in that program and the, and the people who actually gather
• 52:55
  and contrary to popular belief, these people are really conscientious
• 53:00
  mm-hmm.
• 53:00
  Mark Rashid: About trying not to hurt the horses.
• 53:02
  Now there's people who would argue against that, but the people that I know that are,
• 53:08
  that are involved in that program really do have the horse's best interest in mind.
• 53:14
  It just, the way that the program is set up, especially now it's
• 53:19
  just so indiscriminate that that's kind of what happens.
• 53:23
  Rupert Isaacson: Do you, have you noticed the pro the, this problem coming
• 53:26
  from any particular mustang herds?
• 53:29
  Do any spring to mind
• 53:32
  Mark Rashid: it?
• 53:32
  No, it really is, it's pretty hit and miss.
• 53:35
  It really is.
• 53:36
  Okay.
• 53:37
  We've seen them from all over the west that
• 53:40
  Yeah.
• 53:41
  Mark Rashid: You know, you get some from this herd and they're great
• 53:44
  and, and then, you know, the next year you get some from the same herd
• 53:49
  and it's, it's such a crapshoot.
• 53:52
  Rupert Isaacson: Okay.
• 53:53
  Yeah.
• 53:53
  Yeah.
• 53:53
  You know, one of my best horses was a Mustang, but he, he started
• 53:57
  life exactly as you'd had described Uncatchable and this on that, but then.
• 54:04
  Turn out fantastic.
• 54:05
  Mark Rashid: You know, pretty quick when they start making connections
• 54:10
  about what it is that we're asking and how they can do the thing.
• 54:14
  Whether or not you're gonna have a long term problem or you're
• 54:18
  gonna have a long term horse yes.
• 54:20
  That you can, that you can do some really nice work with.
• 54:28
  Rupert Isaacson: The work that I do, obviously with neuroplasticity
• 54:35
  in humans, with horses started with autism, but now it, you know mm-hmm.
• 54:40
  It's more ubiquitous.
• 54:42
  I'm very much with you on this idea that you must follow the individual.
• 54:45
  So every, every program we have, we have three main programs.
• 54:49
  It's predicated on follow the child and so therefore follow the horse in
• 54:53
  the preparation of that has to happen.
• 54:56
  However, at the same time, we do need to be able to produce horses that
• 55:04
  have enough muscle on the top line to take an adult with a child together.
• 55:09
  If the child is young, that can collect because with collection, the hip rocking
• 55:16
  for the human on top produces oxytocin.
• 55:20
  Oxytocin is communication.
• 55:22
  Mm.
• 55:22
  Communication is what we're after.
• 55:24
  And that was how my son, you know, became verbal on the horse.
• 55:27
  And then we realized that was going on.
• 55:28
  So, oh gosh, okay.
• 55:29
  We could replicate that.
• 55:31
  And then the neuroplasticity came on top of that, the BDNF, the
• 55:35
  brain derived neurotrophic factor.
• 55:37
  So we do have to actually work to a system.
• 55:40
  We work to an, a very, very old, old masters classical system of in hand work
• 55:47
  to get the horse to really understand before you ever get on his back, how
• 55:52
  to place those hind legs underneath.
• 55:53
  So it's just easy for them so that by the time you do get up there,
• 55:57
  the horse kind of already knows.
• 55:58
  And then you have a person on the ground and a person on top.
• 56:02
  So the person on the ground does the thing the horse already knows, and then the
• 56:05
  person on top does the new thing, the, the rider's aid and the horse kinda goes,
• 56:09
  oh, these two things mean the same thing.
• 56:10
  Okay, that's cool.
• 56:11
  I accept, and you get this smoother learning curve.
• 56:14
  So we absolutely use a, a system that's very old and at the same
• 56:19
  time, we are not ever going to not tweak that system depending on the
• 56:25
  individual horse in front of us.
• 56:27
  Similarly, with the way we are working with kids, we're going to set up the
• 56:32
  right environment with no hopefully bad sensory triggers, hopefully.
• 56:37
  An asshole free environment, so the kid isn't feeling threatened by humans.
• 56:41
  So we're not triggering the amygdala if possible, you know, and then from their
• 56:45
  work on the sensory issues, and then from that to the back riding for the oxytocin.
• 56:48
  And then from there we just follow them wherever it goes.
• 56:52
  So we are always treading this line between SOS system and anarchy.
• 57:01
  And that what we've realized is you absolutely need both.
• 57:06
  What I see a lot of in both the horse training and in the
• 57:11
  therapy world is extremism.
• 57:16
  So either rigidity in a system, whether it's with horses or humans, like
• 57:21
  behavioralism with humans, could come under that as well, which involves
• 57:25
  quite a lot of coercion and fear, frankly, and nothing at all, which in
• 57:34
  some cases could work, but also won't with in many cases because people, the
• 57:40
  brains like the brain like structure.
• 57:43
  And the same with, with, with, with horse people that sometimes it's, you know,
• 57:47
  as you said, Chrissy, you know, very, very rigid, somewhat fear based, you
• 57:51
  know, training things that kind of get results, but not in a way that brings joy.
• 57:57
  And people then say, well, I'm gonna throw all of that out the window.
• 58:02
  And then you get a horse that's kind of bored, unemployed.
• 58:05
  And one of the things that I found is, is often the biggest problem with
• 58:09
  horses that come to me when I'm wearing my horse training hat, or kids when
• 58:13
  I'm wearing my kid hat, is boredom.
• 58:15
  Often there's this kind of chronic, just lack of purpose.
• 58:20
  And then you go see a good cow horse who absolutely knows what they're
• 58:23
  doing and they're like, they're happy.
• 58:24
  Or a good hunting horse that really knows what it's in, they're kind of
• 58:26
  happy or a very good therapy horse that really knows what it's in.
• 58:29
  They're kind of happy.
• 58:30
  But the ones that are kind of, why, why am I here?
• 58:32
  What am I doing?
• 58:33
  You know?
• 58:34
  And of course, within herds there are structures.
• 58:36
  They're fluid, they're not rigid, but there are structures within human herds.
• 58:41
  There are structures.
• 58:41
  I've been lucky enough to live with hunters and gatherers.
• 58:44
  So how do you, but they're fluid.
• 58:47
  Talk to us about this.
• 58:48
  'cause it's so easy in these conversations to sound like one is coming down in
• 58:53
  one extreme or the other extreme as if one is reacting to negative things.
• 58:57
  Does that make sense?
• 58:58
  Rather than looking for the center, the eye of that paradox, how do you
• 59:03
  guys find the eye of that paradox between structure and anarchy?
• 59:09
  Do you wanna lead with that one, Chrissy, and then we'll go to Mark?
• 59:13
  Crissi McDonald: Sure.
• 59:14
  The first thing that comes to mind is we see a lot of horses and a lot of people
• 59:19
  who are carrying, carrying muscle tension.
• 59:23
  So when we're taught to ride, especially if we're taught to ride
• 59:26
  traditionally, it's shoulders back.
• 59:28
  Heels down, open your chest, you know, stiffen your spine.
• 59:33
  Right.
• 59:33
  That I had equitation lessons for years.
• 59:36
  Rupert Isaacson: Yeah.
• 59:37
  Equitation.
• 59:37
  And we do this, we'll do that funny bump thing with your butt.
• 59:39
  Yeah, yeah,
• 59:39
  Crissi McDonald: yeah, yeah.
• 59:40
  Stick out your butt, stick out your chest, right?
• 59:42
  Yeah.
• 59:42
  All these things.
• 59:43
  Right.
• 59:43
  Well, what, what we're doing is we're asking the person to be stiff.
• 59:47
  Mm-hmm.
• 59:47
  And
• 59:47
  Crissi McDonald: then if you add in a little fear, now you have
• 59:50
  internal tension, external tension.
• 59:53
  Same thing with the horse in our search to maybe create some structure for the
• 59:58
  horse, we actually build in tension.
• 1:00:01
  So inadvertently we're telling the horse, in order to do this skill, let's say
• 1:00:06
  lower the head or go in collection, we have interpreted that, not in all cases,
• 1:00:12
  because I know people such as yourself are looking at something different.
• 1:00:16
  But in some cases, whether it's Western or English or whatever we say, when
• 1:00:21
  you put your head down, I want you to tense all the muscles in your neck.
• 1:00:25
  Yeah.
• 1:00:25
  Okay.
• 1:00:25
  Crissi McDonald: We inadvertently say that we don't mean to make the horse tense.
• 1:00:31
  So when, so I would say out of 10 people who come to a clinic, probably
• 1:00:37
  eight of them, them and their horses are carrying too much tension,
• 1:00:40
  muscle tension, and internal tension.
• 1:00:44
  Okay.
• 1:00:44
  So there's a pattern
• 1:00:45
  Rupert Isaacson: tension.
• 1:00:45
  Yeah.
• 1:00:45
  Yeah.
• 1:00:46
  And you can't separate two, right?
• 1:00:47
  Yeah, it's true.
• 1:00:47
  Crissi McDonald: Right.
• 1:00:48
  So there's, okay.
• 1:00:49
  I've seen that pattern before.
• 1:00:51
  So with one person.
• 1:00:53
  Horse, we might talk a lot about breathing because neither of them are breathing.
• 1:00:59
  Mm.
• 1:00:59
  Crissi McDonald: With another person in horse, we might have to
• 1:01:02
  say, all right, let's just show you guys how to let go of tension.
• 1:01:08
  Which means one of us will take the reins and hold the reins and the rider
• 1:01:12
  will show us the tension they have on the reins, and then we can help the
• 1:01:15
  rider by saying, that's actually a lot.
• 1:01:17
  Can you cut that in half?
• 1:01:19
  Okay.
• 1:01:19
  Now try relaxing your shoulders.
• 1:01:21
  You know, we can walk them through.
• 1:01:23
  So there's the pattern, muscle tension, horse and rider,
• 1:01:27
  internal tension, horse and rider.
• 1:01:30
  But the way that we talk to each horse and rider is always different.
• 1:01:35
  We're not always gonna say to every, well, we do say breathe to a lot of
• 1:01:40
  riders, but some horses may not need to be shown how to let go of tension.
• 1:01:48
  Right.
• 1:01:48
  Crissi McDonald: The same way every other horse has meaning.
• 1:01:52
  We put that our hands on the reins and we hold pressure until they give.
• 1:01:55
  Right?
• 1:01:55
  That's the watered down super simple version.
• 1:02:00
  It may be that the horse is carrying more internal tension than muscle tension.
• 1:02:04
  So how do we help that horse feel safe?
• 1:02:07
  Mm-hmm.
• 1:02:07
  That's
• 1:02:07
  Crissi McDonald: different than helping a horse understand the skill
• 1:02:10
  of when I feel pressure I give to it.
• 1:02:13
  It's, they're two different things, but they have the same presentation.
• 1:02:18
  Is that.
• 1:02:19
  Rupert Isaacson: Yeah, it makes perfect sense.
• 1:02:20
  It's a,
• 1:02:20
  Crissi McDonald: yeah.
• 1:02:21
  Yeah.
• 1:02:22
  I'll let Mark chime in.
• 1:02:26
  Mark Rashid: I think a big part of what we do, and this, this also comes from
• 1:02:31
  my martial arts background, is that
• 1:02:35
  for me, the idea is to only use the amount of muscle you need to use in order to do
• 1:02:40
  the job you're asking your body to do.
• 1:02:43
  Same thing with a horse.
• 1:02:45
  Can we, can we just use the muscle we need to use in order to do the
• 1:02:50
  job we're asking the horse to do.
• 1:02:52
  More times than not, I mean, we, going through our day, we often
• 1:02:57
  are using way more muscle than we need to use to do simple things.
• 1:03:00
  Picking up the, you know, the teacup off the, off the table, or putting the cup
• 1:03:07
  back down on the table where you hear a kabang, you know, or closing the door.
• 1:03:11
  Opening the door,
• 1:03:12
  Rupert Isaacson: you know, we use, and that could be informed
• 1:03:13
  by emotion as well, right?
• 1:03:15
  Mark Rashid: Absolutely.
• 1:03:16
  Yeah.
• 1:03:17
  And because we aren't aware that that's, we're going through our life like that,
• 1:03:24
  you know, we're we, and when it comes to working with horses, you know, we,
• 1:03:28
  we go through our daily activities like a lumberjack, and then, and then we
• 1:03:33
  wanna be soft when we get to our horse.
• 1:03:35
  And it doesn't work that way, you know, we, it's about, for me, it's about how do
• 1:03:40
  we help the individual become aware of.
• 1:03:47
  Maybe any physical or emotional tension that they're carrying,
• 1:03:51
  and then take that into their day.
• 1:03:55
  Take that softness or internal softness or internal awareness, take it into
• 1:04:02
  their day where they could be practicing at 24 or 23 hours of the day, and
• 1:04:06
  then they can take it to their horse.
• 1:04:09
  You know?
• 1:04:10
  Then then riding with softness is easy when you, when you're practicing it all
• 1:04:16
  day long and everything that you do.
• 1:04:19
  We had a, a, an instructor, one of our instructors actually was at Chrissy's
• 1:04:24
  Dojo and he was retiring and I think he was, I, I think he was, he had
• 1:04:32
  been training for 40 years and he was gonna retire as a, as an instructor.
• 1:04:37
  And we were at his last class and he said, you know, been training for 40 years.
• 1:04:43
  I spent the, the first 10 years learning all the technique I needed
• 1:04:48
  that I would need to know in order to do this, be an instructor.
• 1:04:53
  And I spent the last 30 years trying to figure out how not to use it.
• 1:04:58
  And that really stuck with me.
• 1:05:00
  And that's, which is one of the reasons we focus so much on, on principles,
• 1:05:06
  technique is really important.
• 1:05:08
  You gotta have it, you know, but at some point.
• 1:05:13
  The goal, at least for me, is how can I transcend that technique and do it
• 1:05:18
  in a more thoughtful feel-based way to get the job done, whether it's with a
• 1:05:26
  person or whether it's with a horse.
• 1:05:30
  Rupert Isaacson: Let's bring it to people.
• 1:05:31
  So when I'm let's say we're doing horse boy method session, right?
• 1:05:35
  And a person shows up, kid shows up, can be an adult, and we think we're gonna
• 1:05:43
  work this way, perhaps with a horse.
• 1:05:45
  And the person very quickly shows they're not interested in the horse at all.
• 1:05:50
  So we immediately would then switch from horse point method
• 1:05:55
  to what we call movement method.
• 1:05:56
  No problem.
• 1:05:57
  We've just got a bazillion other things to do.
• 1:05:59
  So we have to be really, really obsessive about our horse preparation and willing
• 1:06:02
  to abandon the horse in two seconds if that's not where the person's at.
• 1:06:06
  And therefore I need to know what that person's actually interested in.
• 1:06:09
  So I can prepare a little bit.
• 1:06:11
  It's Mark Rashid coming.
• 1:06:13
  I know he likes Akido.
• 1:06:14
  I know, don't know from Akido.
• 1:06:16
  So I've got to get on Wikipedia and, and to have accommodation about Akido
• 1:06:23
  and then be talking the language to some degree of Martin Rashid
• 1:06:27
  when he comes in so that we could then maybe go somewhere from that.
• 1:06:31
  But what I'm really after is communication and neuroplasticity,
• 1:06:34
  whether it's coming with a horse or not.
• 1:06:36
  You guys are also working with many other things.
• 1:06:40
  So you are working with martial arts in particular, particularly Aikido.
• 1:06:44
  And it was intriguing to me back earlier in the podcast you said, mark
• 1:06:47
  to find that softness you had to go to the world, world of martial arts.
• 1:06:50
  So I haven't been in the world of martial arts site.
• 1:06:51
  You've been in the worship world of martial arts, but I've been a bit in
• 1:06:54
  the world of martial arts myself and I didn't always encounter softness there.
• 1:06:59
  So
• 1:07:00
  Mark Rashid: not all, not all martial arts are soft.
• 1:07:02
  Rupert Isaacson: Right, exactly.
• 1:07:03
  And
• 1:07:03
  Mark Rashid: aikido doesn't have to be soft.
• 1:07:04
  Rupert Isaacson: Well, exactly.
• 1:07:05
  Not all Aikido people I've met have been soft.
• 1:07:07
  Right.
• 1:07:08
  So, although more than others, I would say.
• 1:07:13
  But how was it that you, a thought to go to martial arts to look for softness?
• 1:07:19
  That's interesting.
• 1:07:20
  Perhaps counterintuitive.
• 1:07:22
  And then b, how did you find that?
• 1:07:28
  Softness Being able to be translated across to the horse thing because
• 1:07:35
  when you do, people are doing the horse thing, as you were saying,
• 1:07:37
  Chrissy, people are a bit scared.
• 1:07:38
  You know, you're up there, you're often being judged too 'cause
• 1:07:40
  you're, you know, in a clinic or you are in a training situation.
• 1:07:43
  So there's a bit of fear in that, let alone the fear of
• 1:07:45
  falling off and getting killed.
• 1:07:47
  So, you know, how did you, why did you think to go to the world of martial arts.
• 1:07:53
  For softness.
• 1:07:54
  And then once having found that softness, how did you feel confident that you
• 1:07:59
  could bring that softness across to this slightly fearful situation with horses?
• 1:08:04
  Mark Rashid: I didn't actually think about going to martial arts.
• 1:08:07
  One of my students suggested it.
• 1:08:10
  Rupert Isaacson: Ah, okay.
• 1:08:12
  He and why, why did they suggest it?
• 1:08:14
  Mark Rashid: Well, I was working with a guy, so we get mostly women in our
• 1:08:18
  clinics, and I was working, I was doing a clinic in Tennessee, and we had one
• 1:08:25
  guy there who, he was writing a, a Pasadena or Peruvian, one or the other,
• 1:08:32
  and he was just having a heck of a time.
• 1:08:34
  He just, this horse was trying as hard as he could to get along with, with
• 1:08:40
  what this guy was asking him to do.
• 1:08:42
  But there was so much conflict going on between the two of 'em.
• 1:08:47
  And finally I just stopped him and I said, listen, everything that you want is here.
• 1:08:51
  It's right here.
• 1:08:52
  You've got all the energy, everything that you need, everything
• 1:08:55
  that you want is in this horse.
• 1:08:57
  All you have to do is blend with the energy and then give it some direction.
• 1:09:03
  And I said, I, I know it sounds like Zen horseback riding, but it's not, you
• 1:09:08
  know, it's just, it's just about getting together with him so that the two of you
• 1:09:12
  are doing the same thing at the same time.
• 1:09:14
  Right now your horse is doing one thing and you're doing something else.
• 1:09:18
  How can we bring those two things together?
• 1:09:20
  Well, he, he was looking at me like, you know, like I was an
• 1:09:25
  idiot or something, you know?
• 1:09:27
  And because we don't get you both look at me that
• 1:09:29
  Rupert Isaacson: way.
• 1:09:29
  Yeah, I
• 1:09:30
  Mark Rashid: know.
• 1:09:30
  I, I, I'm used to it.
• 1:09:31
  And that's how I, that's how I noticed it to begin with.
• 1:09:34
  Right.
• 1:09:35
  So, but I, because we don't get, and very many men, I thought,
• 1:09:40
  man, I got, I'm losing this guy.
• 1:09:42
  Mm-hmm.
• 1:09:43
  Mark Rashid: So I just kept talking, you know, and finally I just said everything
• 1:09:46
  I thought to say and I said, do you, do you understand what I'm saying?
• 1:09:49
  And he said, yeah, I understand perfectly what you're saying.
• 1:09:51
  And he went out and did it.
• 1:09:52
  I mean, it was like somebody flipped a switch and the two
• 1:09:54
  of 'em were on the same page.
• 1:09:57
  And after the ride he came up to me and he said do you, do you train in I keto?
• 1:10:03
  And I said, no, I don't, I don't, I didn't really even know what it was.
• 1:10:07
  And he said, well, I'm an I keto instructor, and what you're teaching
• 1:10:11
  in your horsemanship is I keto.
• 1:10:14
  And it just so happens that one of the top Aikido masters in the world
• 1:10:18
  lives about 45 minutes away from us.
• 1:10:21
  And he kept saying, you need to go see him.
• 1:10:23
  You need to go work with him.
• 1:10:26
  And anyway, that's how and it turns out that here in town, we, we live
• 1:10:30
  in a town of about 7,000 people.
• 1:10:32
  There was a really good, and still is, in fact, I just trained
• 1:10:35
  with him last Thursday night.
• 1:10:38
  Amazing Aikido instructor.
• 1:10:40
  And so I went to him and I've been training with him ever since.
• 1:10:45
  And so, and then how we bridged that gap was I, I could see the, I could see the,
• 1:10:54
  the implications from the internal aspects of the art and the softness part of it.
• 1:11:04
  I mean, it just crossed over perfectly into horsemanship.
• 1:11:09
  And so I started showing people during clinics some of those concepts and
• 1:11:16
  people got more and more interested.
• 1:11:18
  And finally about 16 years ago, we developed ito, which is basically
• 1:11:25
  Aikido for horsemen, so that you don't have to have any, any
• 1:11:30
  martial arts experience at all.
• 1:11:32
  And you can come in and, and experience what we're talking about.
• 1:11:37
  Rupert Isaacson: How do I spell that?
• 1:11:39
  Ito
• 1:11:41
  Mark Rashid: A-I-B-A-D-O-E-A.
• 1:11:49
  B-O-A-A-I.
• 1:11:54
  Rupert Isaacson: Yeah.
• 1:11:54
  Mark Rashid: BA,
• 1:11:55
  Rupert Isaacson: BA.
• 1:11:56
  Yeah.
• 1:11:57
  Mark Rashid: DOI.
• 1:12:00
  Rupert Isaacson: Babe, I iaba.
• 1:12:01
  Mark Rashid: I
• 1:12:04
  Rupert Isaacson: do.
• 1:12:05
  The D ibo.
• 1:12:06
  Interesting.
• 1:12:07
  Yeah.
• 1:12:07
  Okay.
• 1:12:08
  And the what, what's the B and the A standing for,
• 1:12:16
  Mark Rashid: IBO is basically what it, what it means depending
• 1:12:20
  on the kanji that you use.
• 1:12:23
  It either means a way of being with horses Okay.
• 1:12:26
  Or for the love of the horse.
• 1:12:29
  Rupert Isaacson: Interesting.
• 1:12:30
  Mark Rashid: And so the kgi that we use is for the love of the horse.
• 1:12:34
  Rupert Isaacson: Why do you think despite that man's background in Aikido, that
• 1:12:41
  he, it hadn't occurred to him to blend with the horse's energy in that way
• 1:12:49
  Mark Rashid: because he had been taught something else
• 1:12:50
  when it came to horsemanship.
• 1:12:52
  Okay.
• 1:12:53
  He had been following some instructors, some big name instructors, who were
• 1:12:59
  basically saying that, you know, that this is how you do it when it comes to horses.
• 1:13:05
  And so he just, he never made the connection between the two.
• 1:13:09
  Okay.
• 1:13:09
  Because he had been taught that, you know, it's kinda like with what Chrissy was
• 1:13:13
  saying earlier, where the work that she was doing, you know, it didn't feel right
• 1:13:18
  and it, and it didn't feel right to this guy, but he's not, he doesn't know as much
• 1:13:26
  about horses as these other people did.
• 1:13:29
  So he was.
• 1:13:31
  He didn't rely on his instincts, he just went the other direction.
• 1:13:34
  Rupert Isaacson: It's so interesting, the human brain, isn't it?
• 1:13:36
  Isn't it?
• 1:13:36
  Yeah.
• 1:13:37
  I mean we've, we've all done this, but it's always intriguing, you know, how
• 1:13:40
  people find their, navigate these things.
• 1:13:42
  You know, Chrissy, you, you, you do a lot with photography and how do you use that?
• 1:13:48
  It's, it's an intriguing thing to me at the moment because I use it sometimes
• 1:13:52
  with tracking with getting people to notice stuff about nature, right?
• 1:13:58
  Just literally take a picture and let's look at how many species
• 1:14:04
  are on there or what's it of, or what is that leaf or whatever.
• 1:14:09
  I thought I was very original.
• 1:14:12
  And then just was doing a podcast about a week ago with an amazing
• 1:14:16
  woman called Emma Hutchinson who runs something called Horseback UK up in the
• 1:14:19
  highlands of Scotland, mostly working with trauma, and they do a ton with
• 1:14:25
  photography and nature photography for getting people into the present moment.
• 1:14:29
  And she's taken it, of course, much, much further than I have.
• 1:14:34
  But it's now, it's intriguing to me.
• 1:14:36
  And I I wonder how you are using visual arts to help people with themselves.
• 1:14:47
  Their horses and their horse, human
• 1:14:53
  organism.
• 1:14:54
  Crissi McDonald: Well, that's, that's very interesting because I had not
• 1:14:58
  contemplated sharing it in a clinic situation because we're focused
• 1:15:04
  on the horsemanship part of it.
• 1:15:08
  And also the internal part of it for people.
• 1:15:10
  But the way that, you know, I've been taking photographs since I
• 1:15:15
  was, I won a camera, one of the very few lotteries I've ever won.
• 1:15:20
  I won a little 35 milli camera.
• 1:15:22
  This is when film was still being used.
• 1:15:25
  And I, so I've been taking pictures since I was 12.
• 1:15:28
  And I personally use it as a way to keep a connection with
• 1:15:33
  the creative part of myself.
• 1:15:35
  So I don't get into the, you know, the analytical system part of the
• 1:15:40
  brain, which is also very useful, but it's, it's not the whole picture.
• 1:15:47
  So I tend to be high anxiety and my photography practice is to help
• 1:15:53
  me reconnect with my creativity in order to lower the anxious response.
• 1:15:59
  So as an instructor, I want to live what I'm teaching.
• 1:16:04
  That's very important to me, that I don't just tell someone.
• 1:16:09
  You know, I don't say to someone, well, if you did this and this, your
• 1:16:12
  anxiety might be a little lower.
• 1:16:15
  It's really important to me that if I have something in me that is
• 1:16:18
  challenging me, that I find ways to work with it and understand it.
• 1:16:25
  And so that's what photography has been for me, is, is walking my talk.
• 1:16:30
  Basically.
• 1:16:30
  I love the idea of connecting it to how people see the world, because when
• 1:16:37
  you look through a lens, when you're, when you have an actual camera, where
• 1:16:40
  you're looking through a lens, not just a phone, it's a much different
• 1:16:44
  way of looking at the world, and you have to make adjustments in order to
• 1:16:47
  get what you're seeing in your head to match what comes out on the picture.
• 1:16:53
  And I think that's, that's really intriguing.
• 1:16:55
  I'm glad people, I'm thrilled that you're doing that and other people are
• 1:17:00
  doing that because visual arts are very, they're engaging in differently ways.
• 1:17:05
  Perspective taking.
• 1:17:05
  Right.
• 1:17:05
  Rupert Isaacson: Perspective taking is brain building.
• 1:17:07
  Yes.
• 1:17:07
  Right.
• 1:17:07
  Yeah.
• 1:17:08
  Yes,
• 1:17:09
  Crissi McDonald: yes.
• 1:17:09
  So I use it personally.
• 1:17:10
  I don't, I haven't thought about extrapolating it out.
• 1:17:14
  Rupert Isaacson: I'd be intrigued to see what you did with it
• 1:17:17
  if you do extrapolate it out.
• 1:17:19
  I, I, mm-hmm.
• 1:17:20
  If you were to take a, a test case of a clinic and just experiment,
• 1:17:26
  I'd be very, with the pe, with yourself and with others.
• 1:17:30
  Mm-hmm.
• 1:17:30
  Rupert Isaacson: In whatever way.
• 1:17:31
  It's, you know, I'd be very, very.
• 1:17:33
  Interested to see what comes out of what you guys do with that.
• 1:17:35
  Crissi McDonald: That might be a whole different type of clinic
• 1:17:38
  format that might be like a three day clinic exploring this aspect of it.
• 1:17:44
  Mm.
• 1:17:44
  That's a really good idea.
• 1:17:45
  Thank you.
• 1:17:46
  Rupert?
• 1:17:46
  Rupert Isaacson: I want 30%, I mean 50.
• 1:17:48
  Sorry.
• 1:17:48
  Crissi McDonald: Oh, okay.
• 1:17:49
  Okay.
• 1:17:50
  Yeah.
• 1:17:50
  Four, well, 45.
• 1:17:51
  Rupert Isaacson: Okay.
• 1:17:51
  Talk to my boss.
• 1:17:52
  That's alright.
• 1:17:53
  Okay.
• 1:17:55
  if you're a horse nerd, and if you're on this podcast, I'm guessing you are, then
• 1:18:00
  you've probably also always wondered a little bit about the old master system.
• 1:18:06
  of dressage training.
• 1:18:07
  If you go and check out our Helios Harmony program, we outline there step by step
• 1:18:16
  exactly how to train your horse from the ground to become the dressage horse
• 1:18:22
  of your dreams in a way that absolutely serves the physical, mental and emotional
• 1:18:28
  well being of the horse and the rider.
• 1:18:31
  Intrigued?
• 1:18:32
  Like to know more?
• 1:18:34
  Go to our website, Helios Harmony.
• 1:18:39
  Check out the free introduction course.
• 1:18:41
  Take it from there.
• 1:18:42
  The, the, the other thing that I know is a really big part of your lives is music.
• 1:18:46
  And again this is so interesting 'cause music, as we know, to get coherence out of
• 1:18:51
  an instrument, there has to be structure.
• 1:18:53
  I mean, not always, but it sure helps.
• 1:18:57
  It's very difficult to shred on a guitar if you're not having got
• 1:19:01
  a base, a basis to shred from.
• 1:19:03
  And at the same time, you can also completely channel the
• 1:19:06
  collective unconscious as well.
• 1:19:09
  How do you a, find music informs better horse and human ship
• 1:19:19
  in yourselves?
• 1:19:20
  And how do you bring that, if you do bring that into your interactions with
• 1:19:25
  the people and horses that come to you?
• 1:19:27
  Do you wanna kick off with that one Mark?
• 1:19:31
  Mark Rashid: Well for me everything is connected.
• 1:19:34
  So, when I'm building guitars, for instance,
• 1:19:39
  I will.
• 1:19:41
  The finished product begins with just a slab of wood, basically, and the
• 1:19:50
  way that you shape the wood and the thickness that you have, and the type of
• 1:19:56
  bracing you put in the guitar, and how you shape the braces and all of that.
• 1:20:01
  And you're, you're constantly checking every step of the way.
• 1:20:06
  And you never know how this guitar is gonna sound until you
• 1:20:10
  string it up for the first time.
• 1:20:14
  But everything that you do from the beginning of, of, you know, getting
• 1:20:19
  a slab of wood to stringing the guitar, everything is about what is
• 1:20:26
  this gonna sound like when it's done?
• 1:20:29
  And every part that you shape has to fit into another part, and it has to
• 1:20:35
  fit pretty exactly in order for it to be the instrument that you want.
• 1:20:42
  And so, I, I look at my horsemanship in the same way
• 1:20:47
  that we're building a foundation.
• 1:20:51
  And if we skip any part of this, this thing isn't gonna play very well.
• 1:20:56
  Or it may not sound very good
• 1:21:00
  and every step along the way, the guitar maybe doesn't look
• 1:21:04
  good when you're building.
• 1:21:07
  Right.
• 1:21:08
  And because, you know, it hasn't been sanded yet, or, you know, we haven't
• 1:21:13
  shaped this part, or we didn't get the binding on just right, and we're gonna
• 1:21:17
  have to maybe take it off and do it again.
• 1:21:19
  But the whole point is that in order for this guitar to play
• 1:21:24
  well and sound good every step of the way, we have to be mindful.
• 1:21:32
  And so by the time we actually play the guitar, and for me, I'm self-taught
• 1:21:38
  and I actually had a head, head injury back in the early 1990s, and I en
• 1:21:44
  and I ended up having to learn how to play the guitar all over again.
• 1:21:48
  And that among other things that caused some problems for me.
• 1:21:51
  But but again, it's about
• 1:21:57
  when you're learning how to play.
• 1:22:00
  I think the mistake that a lot of people make, and the same thing with horsemanship
• 1:22:04
  is that when you're learning how to play, if you don't hit the right note
• 1:22:09
  and you keep going, that wrong note is gonna still be in that, that's what
• 1:22:15
  you, you just created that pathway.
• 1:22:18
  You put the wrong note in the pathway.
• 1:22:21
  If you get to that note and it's not the right one and you stop.
• 1:22:27
  You put the right note in and then you go back and play all the way to that
• 1:22:31
  note and it's the right note, and then you keep going, then that will go in.
• 1:22:35
  So the whole, it's, it's exactly the same thing that we want
• 1:22:40
  to do with our horsemanship.
• 1:22:42
  We wanna get it as, as correct as we can.
• 1:22:47
  So that that's what's going.
• 1:22:48
  So when we're teaching a horse something, we don't necessarily want it to be
• 1:22:52
  perfect, but we want it to be pretty close so that the horse knows that
• 1:22:56
  that search that they were doing for, to get to the answer is in the right
• 1:23:01
  direction and then we can build on it.
• 1:23:05
  So, you know, horsemanship so often is about looking for the
• 1:23:08
  bad that the horse is doing so we can fix it instead of looking for
• 1:23:12
  the good so we can build on it.
• 1:23:15
  And so what we are trying to do is find the good in the people and in the
• 1:23:20
  horses so that we can build on it and then you can make your music right.
• 1:23:25
  Rupert Isaacson: Yeah.
• 1:23:26
  It's funny, there's, there's two things that leap to mind.
• 1:23:28
  The first thing what you're saying, looking for what's right someone gave
• 1:23:31
  me a really great piece of advice about leadership and they said,
• 1:23:35
  catch people doing something right.
• 1:23:37
  Mm-hmm.
• 1:23:39
  Rupert Isaacson: I was like, oh my god.
• 1:23:40
  Yeah, of course.
• 1:23:40
  You know, the other thing is when you're talking about leading up to that note,
• 1:23:45
  I'm also self-taught on the guitar.
• 1:23:47
  And so I've.
• 1:23:49
  Definitely put those wrong note pathways in.
• 1:23:52
  And what I find is that, as you say, but you just, you just explained it very
• 1:24:00
  well, if you allow yourself to pause,
• 1:24:05
  put in that note as an isolated note, regroup, come back to there.
• 1:24:11
  You might have to pause again.
• 1:24:12
  You might have to pause again several times.
• 1:24:13
  So you will be dealing with the frustration of, I can't play the melody
• 1:24:18
  as long as that is one's desire,
• 1:24:23
  I can't do the exercise on the horse or whatever.
• 1:24:26
  Mark Rashid: Mm-hmm.
• 1:24:27
  Rupert Isaacson: Rather than saying, I'm playing around with the concepts
• 1:24:31
  of this exercise on the horse, and up until this point I'm fairly comfortable,
• 1:24:37
  then it will help, it helps me if I can pause and I might have to pause
• 1:24:41
  quite a few times, but this idea of allowing yourself and the horse to stop,
• 1:24:45
  I I've realized more and more and more the absolute necessity of this, but
• 1:24:52
  it wasn't what I was brought up with.
• 1:24:54
  And, and it can be so difficult when you're working with instructors because
• 1:24:58
  the instructor, of course, actually in good faith feels that they have to give
• 1:25:03
  you your money's worth and help you get through and achieve that exercise.
• 1:25:09
  So maybe it's a clunky shoulders in or a, as you say, with a lot
• 1:25:12
  of tension, whatever it is, it's just got a lot of tension in it.
• 1:25:16
  And so, or it breaks down completely, neither of which is
• 1:25:22
  what we're actually looking for.
• 1:25:24
  But the rider feels, well, I can't pause, I can't advocate
• 1:25:27
  for myself to ask for this pause.
• 1:25:29
  Maybe I don't even know in my mind that I need, that the horse is just going,
• 1:25:33
  well, horses might be nice, but that's not an option that's ever been on my table.
• 1:25:38
  And there's this idea that we must ride through it.
• 1:25:40
  We must keep going.
• 1:25:41
  And so talk to me a little bit about the value of stopping and regrouping
• 1:25:50
  and pausing, because I do think this is something that bears a little
• 1:25:54
  bit of conversation and this idea of sort of letting yourself and the
• 1:25:58
  horse off the hook and perhaps the person you're working with rather
• 1:26:02
  than constantly being on the hook.
• 1:26:04
  But that, again, it's not a, it's not an extreme thing that being off the hook
• 1:26:08
  means you abandoned the whole thing.
• 1:26:10
  No, no.
• 1:26:11
  But we, we realize that sometimes we have to stop and
• 1:26:14
  rest on the way up the mountain.
• 1:26:15
  So, Chrissy, talk, talk to us about this.
• 1:26:19
  You must, you, you must encounter this a lot.
• 1:26:21
  With yourself and with people you're working, particularly as you, you're
• 1:26:24
  self described as you know, with anxiety.
• 1:26:26
  Mm-hmm.
• 1:26:26
  And as we know with anxiety, often comes a certain adrenaline and then
• 1:26:30
  a desire to kind of rush through, like a horse that's intimidated by
• 1:26:33
  jumping will rush the fence to kind of get it over with to some degree.
• 1:26:36
  And we, we have this human response as well in us.
• 1:26:39
  Mm-hmm.
• 1:26:39
  So talk to me about the other slow down, the pauses, the regroup.
• 1:26:46
  Crissi McDonald: As an instructor, if someone asks me a question, I say, let's
• 1:26:50
  say my horse isn't backing up very well.
• 1:26:54
  Okay.
• 1:26:55
  So we take a look at that and everything is tight and the horse isn't backing up.
• 1:27:02
  The person in their mind has a picture of the horse going backwards, right?
• 1:27:07
  Until they're asked to stop, just back, back, back, back,
• 1:27:10
  back, back, back, back, back.
• 1:27:11
  But that's the goal.
• 1:27:13
  And what I see a lot is as, as people, we are so goal oriented that we wanna
• 1:27:18
  start with the goal instead of, like you were talking about, there's this
• 1:27:23
  piece right here that needs to be in place before I can get to that goal.
• 1:27:28
  Matter of fact, there's about 15 or 20 pieces, and the value of the pause is, is
• 1:27:34
  that in teaching the backup, we can look at that worsen rider and say, okay, the
• 1:27:39
  very first piece we need is relaxation.
• 1:27:43
  It doesn't matter if the feet move, it doesn't matter.
• 1:27:47
  But what we're seeing is the person has an idea, let's back up, and
• 1:27:51
  then everything in the person tenses and then the horse tenses behind.
• 1:27:55
  Okay.
• 1:27:55
  So for that horse and rider, it might be, can we relax as our very first step?
• 1:28:02
  The pause comes as a way to tell the horse, yes, I'm looking
• 1:28:06
  for relaxation in the movement.
• 1:28:09
  Right?
• 1:28:10
  So that's the value of the pause when it comes to people, the value of the pause.
• 1:28:14
  As, as an instructor, what I see is if we offer information and let people work
• 1:28:20
  through it at their own pace, they're likely to retain it rather than forget it.
• 1:28:27
  And as it is in an hour long lesson, we may only remember 20% on a good day.
• 1:28:32
  Yeah.
• 1:28:33
  So there's no, there's, mark has this saying, which I love he said, people
• 1:28:37
  don't care how much, you know, they just want to know if you can help them.
• 1:28:43
  And I, I told him, I'm always so grateful that they, that he doesn't say, they just
• 1:28:46
  wanna know how much you care, because that's, it's a little too hallmark for me.
• 1:28:51
  But I really like that, that, you know, it doesn't matter how much we know, how
• 1:28:54
  much experience we have, what matters when people come to us for help is that
• 1:28:59
  we have something that can help them.
• 1:29:01
  And so this person doesn't need to know about the hours I spent studying
• 1:29:06
  brain science in order to offer them the one piece of information
• 1:29:10
  that will help them make a change.
• 1:29:11
  I.
• 1:29:12
  They don't need to know that.
• 1:29:13
  They don't need to know the books I've read.
• 1:29:14
  They all they need is, let's try this.
• 1:29:18
  And then I shut up so they can do it.
• 1:29:21
  So I'm not constantly bombarding them with information.
• 1:29:24
  And when you said that as instructors, we wanna give them their money's
• 1:29:28
  worth, there's absolutely that part.
• 1:29:31
  And if we teach a certain way, they will naturally get what they're coming for.
• 1:29:38
  You know, it's, it's, they're not paying for everything.
• 1:29:40
  I know they're paying for help for their own challenge.
• 1:29:47
  So I always, I always think of pause as a is, you know, it's a gift really,
• 1:29:51
  because we have no pauses in our culture.
• 1:29:54
  Everything is 24 7 full on fast.
• 1:29:58
  We have to create the pauses ourself.
• 1:30:01
  And so pausing as an instructor is a practice.
• 1:30:05
  And then being able to also offer myself that is another practice.
• 1:30:11
  Same principle, different, different uses
• 1:30:15
  Rupert Isaacson: in all of our programs, we have a series of guidelines and one
• 1:30:18
  of them is eight and one of them is time for innovation, which is really pausing.
• 1:30:24
  And you, we really should call it time for myelination.
• 1:30:27
  Yeah.
• 1:30:28
  To pause and allow the brain to, you know, as Dr.
• 1:30:31
  Peters would say, by the way, listeners, if you haven't
• 1:30:34
  listened to the podcast with Dr.
• 1:30:36
  Stephen Peters, get your ears asses onto that because he's
• 1:30:40
  just the most fascinating man.
• 1:30:42
  Neuroscientist, neurologist.
• 1:30:43
  Yeah.
• 1:30:43
  Neurosurgeon and horseman and autistic.
• 1:30:46
  You, you cannot not listen to this man.
• 1:30:48
  He's amazing.
• 1:30:49
  But, you know, as he would say, those pauses give you your brain a chance,
• 1:30:53
  those new neurons to myelinate to get the fatty tissue, a chance to
• 1:30:59
  grow around the, the new connection to make it stable, not fragile.
• 1:31:03
  And this requires, yeah.
• 1:31:06
  A pause.
• 1:31:06
  Yeah.
• 1:31:07
  Crissi McDonald: Sorry,
• 1:31:07
  Rupert Isaacson: go ahead.
• 1:31:08
  The,
• 1:31:09
  Crissi McDonald: the thing that also, when you said that, that I
• 1:31:13
  kind of pinged off of too, is that a pause, I think subconsciously
• 1:31:19
  a pause allows us to feel safe.
• 1:31:21
  Mm-hmm.
• 1:31:22
  Crissi McDonald: Because we're not, it's the mm-hmm.
• 1:31:25
  It's not the absence of presence, but it's the absence of pressure.
• 1:31:29
  So I don't have the pressure of listening to someone tell me
• 1:31:32
  the next piece of information.
• 1:31:34
  Right.
• 1:31:34
  So our nervous system, I think with pauses, this is
• 1:31:37
  what I've noticed for myself.
• 1:31:38
  I have no scientific basis to, to base this on.
• 1:31:42
  But what I've noticed in myself and with students and horses is that putting
• 1:31:47
  a pause in allows for us all to come down, to settle, to get grounded.
• 1:31:55
  Speed.
• 1:31:56
  Unless you're skilled at speed, speed builds in tension and anxiety
• 1:32:01
  unless you practice that way.
• 1:32:02
  That's not always the case.
• 1:32:04
  But a lot of times we, we go fast without knowing what we're doing.
• 1:32:07
  And I think that drives up anxiety.
• 1:32:11
  So if you have someone, or if you make it a practice in your life
• 1:32:14
  to find the pauses, it's a, it's an internal practice as well.
• 1:32:20
  It, it's not just for the brain, right?
• 1:32:21
  It's also for the how we feel inside.
• 1:32:24
  Right?
• 1:32:25
  Rupert Isaacson: Because stress actually drains your tank.
• 1:32:27
  Right?
• 1:32:27
  I mean it's, it's, it's a neurotoxin with a cortisol grate, but also it takes a vast
• 1:32:33
  amount of energy to be both on the gas pedal and on the brake at the same time.
• 1:32:37
  And we can't not have that in life, but we probably only have a certain
• 1:32:44
  amount of those moments in us.
• 1:32:45
  And do you think it's perhaps true that our subconscious knows this,
• 1:32:50
  maybe the horse subconscious knows this and knows that a depletion of
• 1:32:53
  energy, therefore beyond a certain point means actual lack of survival?
• 1:33:00
  So your point about feeling safe means I will survive Feeling unsafe
• 1:33:09
  means this exercise might kill me because it's now the equation of
• 1:33:15
  the energy that it's taking versus.
• 1:33:18
  What it might give me back has, has, has gone upside down.
• 1:33:22
  And perhaps in our site, in our subconscious, we know this
• 1:33:25
  because we're hunter gatherers.
• 1:33:27
  We know we can only expend a certain amount of energy on the
• 1:33:30
  hunt for food before it kills us.
• 1:33:34
  Similarly, horses must know this.
• 1:33:36
  Deep down there's, if you are, if you are expending energy to get to
• 1:33:40
  water or grazing or whatever, only a, a certain amount of energy is
• 1:33:44
  going to be good in that equation.
• 1:33:45
  And beyond that, not good.
• 1:33:47
  And then you might be in that risk zone at the end of the winter or something, and
• 1:33:52
  you, you do realize perhaps you might die.
• 1:33:55
  So we don't want to tap into that.
• 1:33:56
  It's very interesting.
• 1:33:57
  Do, do you feel, mark, do you feel that this, this softness that you're talking
• 1:34:03
  about and the the, does it and the foundation, does it really come down
• 1:34:14
  to instilling a sense of safety?
• 1:34:18
  Mark Rashid: Definitely.
• 1:34:20
  That's, that's the whole point of all of it is you know, with, it's like,
• 1:34:26
  Chrissy was talking about with, you know, the PO putting the pauses in.
• 1:34:32
  One of the things that I've gotten in the habit of doing almost
• 1:34:37
  unconsciously with students.
• 1:34:40
  I will, I will offer some information, and then I'll let them go do it.
• 1:34:46
  And if I need to offer more information, I'll ask them to
• 1:34:49
  stop so that we can talk about it.
• 1:34:54
  And then they can go do their thing.
• 1:34:57
  And I might talk to people in the, you know, the auditors and almost
• 1:35:03
  completely ignore, you know, I'm watching the writer, but I may, I'm,
• 1:35:07
  they know I'm talking to the auditors.
• 1:35:09
  So that takes the pressure off of them to be able to just focus on what they
• 1:35:15
  want to do or how they want to do it.
• 1:35:17
  And when I, if I feel like I need to offer more information,
• 1:35:21
  I'll ask 'em to stop again.
• 1:35:25
  And, you know, and there's, for me, I, I, I've, I don't know
• 1:35:30
  that I've ever told anybody that they've done it something wrong.
• 1:35:35
  And even when somebody will say, I've, I've been doing this wrong all
• 1:35:38
  these years, I will say, actually what you've done has gotten you to here.
• 1:35:43
  I mean, you've got a lot of skill.
• 1:35:45
  This is awesome.
• 1:35:47
  You know, it isn't what you wanna do right now, but what you've done has
• 1:35:52
  gotten you to here to where you can take the next step and do the next thing.
• 1:35:57
  So I, I, I tried really to help folks think about that, that
• 1:36:05
  there, there's no judgment about.
• 1:36:07
  What you've done in the past or you know, any of that stuff, none of that matters
• 1:36:12
  really, you know, so the softness part of it, I think is all about safety.
• 1:36:21
  It's about that, you know, if you don't feel like you're being judged, you can
• 1:36:25
  feel pretty safe about what's going on.
• 1:36:28
  And I think that's, I think that's really important.
• 1:36:32
  We had a gal last year at one of our clinics, one of our 10 day
• 1:36:36
  clinics, and super nice, super nice gal and, and, and very talented.
• 1:36:42
  But she had gotten stuck in a, in a system and was kind of putting a
• 1:36:50
  lot of stuff, internal stuff onto the horse that she was riding.
• 1:36:55
  And for about six, six days at least, I was trying to explain to
• 1:37:06
  her that, you know, I don't know that that's what we got going on here.
• 1:37:11
  And I think it was maybe on the eighth day it finally dawned on
• 1:37:17
  me that I needed to be quiet.
• 1:37:20
  I'm not hearing what she was saying.
• 1:37:22
  She, and so she couldn't hear what I was saying and I needed to stop talking.
• 1:37:28
  And we sat down together and I just said, okay, can you
• 1:37:31
  just tell me what's going on?
• 1:37:33
  And I mean, let's start at the beginning.
• 1:37:35
  So what's, what's going on?
• 1:37:37
  You know, not the beginning of here when you got here, but the
• 1:37:40
  beginning of your horsemanship.
• 1:37:42
  You know, when you first started riding, can we just, and she told
• 1:37:46
  me the whole story and I just listened to what she had to say.
• 1:37:53
  And by the time we were done, she felt better and things went well
• 1:37:58
  with her horse and her, and that's how the clinic ended for her.
• 1:38:03
  And it had nothing to do with me expounding on things that
• 1:38:09
  I knew it had to do with just listening to what she had to say.
• 1:38:14
  And she explained to me that nobody has ever taken the time to do that with her.
• 1:38:20
  And so she has always thought that she was just a bad student and people had
• 1:38:25
  actually told her she was a bad student.
• 1:38:29
  So it's that kind of thing, how you help that person or that
• 1:38:33
  horse feel safe, doesn't matter.
• 1:38:36
  It just matters that they feel better.
• 1:38:40
  And you know, and that's really, for me, that's the most important thing.
• 1:38:45
  And then, then we can do, then whatever you wanna do, then we can do it.
• 1:38:54
  Rupert Isaacson: The, the, the pressure we sometimes feel that we're under, whether
• 1:38:57
  we're instructors or facilitators or the person providing the service, let's say
• 1:39:06
  because there's a contract to this and we all have that little voice imposter
• 1:39:11
  syndrome and that little voice in our head saying, yeah, but you suck.
• 1:39:14
  Really, you know?
• 1:39:15
  And no matter how much you know, that actually, well, by now, actually, I sort
• 1:39:19
  of do kind of know how to help people with horses with this kind of thing.
• 1:39:23
  It's okay.
• 1:39:24
  I don't need to feel this, but there it is.
• 1:39:26
  We are human.
• 1:39:27
  There's that little voice.
• 1:39:29
  It's a
• 1:39:29
  Mark Rashid: good thing though.
• 1:39:30
  Rupert Isaacson: Go on.
• 1:39:31
  Mark Rashid: It's a good thing because it keeps you honest,
• 1:39:34
  Rupert Isaacson: keeps you honest, keeps you humble.
• 1:39:36
  Sure.
• 1:39:36
  But it can also dominate and overwhelm and
• 1:39:40
  Mark Rashid: Yeah, if we let it, it's
• 1:39:41
  Rupert Isaacson: heroin and things.
• 1:39:42
  But yeah, it's, it's, it's treading that line, obviously.
• 1:39:46
  But you, you're right, it serves a purpose for sure.
• 1:39:49
  That inner critic, I guess it's just that it's often pathological.
• 1:39:55
  The safety has to happen, of course, for the person who is
• 1:40:00
  there to receive the thing that.
• 1:40:06
  You guys have agreed to try to transmit, whether that's an equine
• 1:40:10
  assisted thing, whether that's a horse training thing, whether that's a
• 1:40:14
  photography thing or a writing thing, or Aikido thing or a music thing.
• 1:40:18
  And then there's you, the person who is standing there with that
• 1:40:24
  little inner voice as somebody who suffers from anxiety and therefore
• 1:40:30
  can really empathize with that a lot.
• 1:40:32
  Chrissy, what do you do to make yourself feel safe?
• 1:40:38
  You go out into the judgemental environment of the equine world
• 1:40:43
  and it can be a pretty judgy place.
• 1:40:46
  And you can be so good.
• 1:40:48
  I mean, I know people who are so good at what they do and they still get judged,
• 1:40:52
  you know, it can feel very unsafe.
• 1:40:54
  And in fact, I just want to add to that before you answer that was I think the
• 1:40:58
  thing about the Warwick Schiller journey on summit in San Antonio that I met you
• 1:41:02
  guys at, I think it was the only time I've gone into an equine environment
• 1:41:12
  that was, you know, sort of a
• 1:41:16
  bringing a whole bunch of people together, you know, to talk about
• 1:41:17
  stuff where I did not observe the judging and the factionalism and the.
• 1:41:25
  Negativity.
• 1:41:26
  And I was like, fuck, you know, sorry, excuse my French.
• 1:41:29
  But like, that was a first.
• 1:41:31
  It's like, I was like, what's, what's different about this?
• 1:41:33
  It's like, no one's being a dick.
• 1:41:37
  This is in fact the opposite.
• 1:41:38
  In fact, people are actually trying to see each other's points of
• 1:41:45
  view and they're trying to just sort of be kind to each other.
• 1:41:48
  This is like unprecedented.
• 1:41:50
  And I was a bit worried 'cause I was bringing Rowan into that.
• 1:41:52
  And I, you always worry a little bit when I bring my son in is, is
• 1:41:55
  it a safe place for him emotionally?
• 1:41:57
  And it was, and you guys were obviously a big part of that.
• 1:41:59
  How do you make yourself feel safe?
• 1:42:01
  Chrissy?
• 1:42:01
  See,
• 1:42:04
  Crissi McDonald: Put me on the spot.
• 1:42:05
  I don't feel safe.
• 1:42:06
  Rupert Isaacson: Okay.
• 1:42:06
  Feel safe now.
• 1:42:08
  Crissi McDonald: Feel safe now.
• 1:42:09
  Indeed.
• 1:42:11
  Yeah, that's an ongoing process.
• 1:42:15
  Rupert Isaacson: Do you have some go-to things?
• 1:42:18
  Crissi McDonald: Gratitude.
• 1:42:20
  Rupert Isaacson: Oh, good one is
• 1:42:20
  Crissi McDonald: a is is a big one.
• 1:42:22
  The other thing that I really, really keep in mind is that I think Maya Angelou said
• 1:42:29
  when you know better, you'll do better.
• 1:42:32
  Okay.
• 1:42:32
  Crissi McDonald: And so my whole journey through horses and life
• 1:42:37
  has been, as I have known more and understood more, I can.
• 1:42:43
  I'm not really sure about the word better 'cause I'm not sure what
• 1:42:46
  we're trying to be better than, but, but we can improve, you know?
• 1:42:50
  Yeah, sure.
• 1:42:50
  I like the idea of becoming a, a fully integrated self.
• 1:42:54
  Right.
• 1:42:55
  We have all the, all the emotions.
• 1:42:57
  There's no good or bad.
• 1:42:58
  We have responses and we have all this stuff coming in.
• 1:43:02
  We have all this stuff coming out, but we're fully human,
• 1:43:05
  meaning we make mistakes.
• 1:43:06
  Mm.
• 1:43:06
  We say the wrong thing.
• 1:43:08
  We sometimes, despite our best intentions, we, we mess up.
• 1:43:14
  And so the thing that is my lifeboat, when I have days when I have helped a horse
• 1:43:21
  and a person, and then I go back and I'm like, I don't think I made a dent, is to
• 1:43:29
  remember that it, and I don't mean this in a trite way, but I am doing my best.
• 1:43:33
  Yeah.
• 1:43:34
  I am doing what I know to do, and that's all I can do.
• 1:43:38
  And, and it's, it, you have to, excuse me, that's my dog.
• 1:43:43
  The other thing is, is I, you know, we really have to cut ourselves some slack.
• 1:43:50
  Hmm.
• 1:43:50
  I don't
• 1:43:50
  Crissi McDonald: know whose standard we're trying to reach.
• 1:43:53
  Hmm.
• 1:43:54
  But I go, you know, I have to live with myself as we all
• 1:44:00
  have to live with ourselves.
• 1:44:02
  And I want the rooms in here to be pleasant.
• 1:44:06
  I mean, even if there's a room where there's anger or
• 1:44:08
  if there's room where there's.
• 1:44:11
  Sorrow or if they're, you know, all the rooms are what they are.
• 1:44:16
  And in order to do that, I have to cut myself some slack.
• 1:44:22
  You know, I have to look at a horse and rider and go, I don't
• 1:44:25
  have the skillset to help yet.
• 1:44:29
  Maybe in five years I will, because I'm doing things now that I
• 1:44:33
  couldn't have done five years ago.
• 1:44:35
  So I have to trust that I will improve, and I have to really focus
• 1:44:42
  on the fact that I'm doing my best.
• 1:44:46
  Rupert Isaacson: I like your gratitude thing.
• 1:44:48
  Crissi McDonald: Yeah.
• 1:44:49
  Rupert Isaacson: When I remember to I'm not foolproof in this, but when
• 1:44:51
  I remember to, I do thank the people that come in front of me for trusting
• 1:44:57
  me and just bringing this to me.
• 1:45:00
  And I'm grateful.
• 1:45:02
  I am, I am grateful.
• 1:45:04
  I am actually grateful.
• 1:45:06
  And then sometimes we'll do a gratitude warmup together.
• 1:45:11
  Yeah.
• 1:45:11
  Rupert Isaacson: Before the thing where I'll just say, let's think of what, what,
• 1:45:14
  what are you grateful for right now?
• 1:45:15
  And then they'll say something and I'll say, okay, what I'm grateful
• 1:45:17
  for, blah, blah, blah right now.
• 1:45:19
  And it, it can be something related or unrelated.
• 1:45:21
  And I always find that that brings me into a sense of just purely selfishly
• 1:45:26
  into a sense of relaxation as you were, you were saying about relaxation Sure.
• 1:45:30
  Earlier.
• 1:45:30
  Sure.
• 1:45:30
  And I also am high anxiety.
• 1:45:32
  I, I confront very well.
• 1:45:34
  Because I grew up in that particular school system in the uk, which
• 1:45:37
  trains you to do it, but I'm a quivering little bunny, you know,
• 1:45:42
  inside, and I'm always dying of fear in just about every situation.
• 1:45:48
  I think it's part of my genetic, you know, lit back Jews, you know,
• 1:45:51
  always wondering where the next pogroms gonna come from, you know?
• 1:45:54
  Yeah.
• 1:45:54
  Keep an eye on the exit.
• 1:45:55
  Yeah.
• 1:45:56
  Crissi McDonald: Yeah, I think the gratitude is, you know, if I'm
• 1:45:59
  having a stretch, whether it's at work or in my life I had a wreck in
• 1:46:04
  2014 and I had to use a cane and I had to kind of relearn how to walk.
• 1:46:08
  And so my go-to gratitude is, is I'm so thankful I can walk.
• 1:46:11
  Rupert Isaacson: Yes.
• 1:46:12
  No kidding.
• 1:46:12
  Crissi McDonald: You know, it's, it's, I, I get, if I get wound up
• 1:46:16
  on what I perceive as I'm doing or not doing, that's a story.
• 1:46:24
  And stories are awesome.
• 1:46:26
  Unless they keep us wounded, unless they keep us down, unless they keep us fearful.
• 1:46:33
  Yeah.
• 1:46:33
  I love stories, but they have a place and so, you know, it's always
• 1:46:37
  about just checking what story am I telling myself right now?
• 1:46:42
  Okay.
• 1:46:42
  The story I'm telling myself is I'm not a good enough horse person to help
• 1:46:45
  this horse and rider with this issue.
• 1:46:49
  Okay, well, doesn't sound very true.
• 1:46:52
  You know, how do you know that you helped or not?
• 1:46:55
  They didn't tell you, they didn't look at you and say, you suck.
• 1:46:59
  They, they, you're, you're, I mean, our brains are so interesting
• 1:47:04
  because we are story making machines and I, I think it can both.
• 1:47:07
  Yeah.
• 1:47:07
  So the nature
• 1:47:08
  Rupert Isaacson: of our species, we are the storytelling, eh?
• 1:47:09
  Crissi McDonald: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 1:47:10
  And so we can, I think it's really wonderful to employ that in a way,
• 1:47:15
  finding ways that are healthy to do it.
• 1:47:17
  Yeah.
• 1:47:18
  Crissi McDonald: And, and gratitude seems to be a, I I bring that back
• 1:47:22
  in because if I can re, if I can pause and bring in the gratitude.
• 1:47:26
  Well, I was just thinking
• 1:47:27
  Rupert Isaacson: that gratitude brings you the pause.
• 1:47:28
  Yeah, yeah, yeah,
• 1:47:29
  Crissi McDonald: yeah.
• 1:47:30
  Then that it, it, the story washes away because with, when you're grateful for
• 1:47:37
  something, there is no story about that.
• 1:47:39
  I'm grateful.
• 1:47:39
  I can walk and I can walk.
• 1:47:42
  Right.
• 1:47:42
  I'm grateful for the blue sky today.
• 1:47:44
  I'm for whatever it is.
• 1:47:46
  It's a reset,
• 1:47:46
  Rupert Isaacson: isn't it?
• 1:47:46
  It's a constant.
• 1:47:47
  Every time you, it's a reset.
• 1:47:48
  Yeah.
• 1:47:49
  Crissi McDonald: Yeah.
• 1:47:50
  Rupert Isaacson: Interesting.
• 1:47:52
  Crissi McDonald: Yeah.
• 1:47:54
  Rupert Isaacson: And I think in all these jobs,
• 1:47:58
  one has to give out a lot of energy.
• 1:48:02
  One can get depleted.
• 1:48:04
  I have a, a kid that comes out to me, I struggle.
• 1:48:09
  I don't want him to know that, but I do.
• 1:48:12
  And so I try to design the play date so that it's in a place
• 1:48:19
  where I feel as good as possible.
• 1:48:22
  So we always meet by a particular creek where, yeah.
• 1:48:26
  I am kind of into the bird life and I'm into the sound of the water,
• 1:48:32
  and, and I know he'll he will be.
• 1:48:33
  He's a perfectly nice kid.
• 1:48:35
  It's nothing to do with him at all.
• 1:48:37
  What triggers in me, it's down to me.
• 1:48:41
  Certainly not his problem.
• 1:48:43
  And it's a very interesting exercise in, okay, well then what are the tools that
• 1:48:47
  I can use here to make myself feel safe?
• 1:48:49
  And I, I guess you're right, because what happens is with each of those gratitude
• 1:48:56
  things, I get a chance to pause and have a breather in something which I find
• 1:49:01
  internally, emotionally quite difficult, which doesn't just get me through.
• 1:49:06
  It allows me to deliver energy, which is necessary and not have that,
• 1:49:11
  oh my God, the energy's depleting.
• 1:49:13
  You know, I'm gonna end up on the wrong side of that, even
• 1:49:15
  if that's complete fantasy.
• 1:49:16
  Your brain doesn't know the difference between fantasy and
• 1:49:18
  reality, you know, as we know.
• 1:49:21
  It's in, it's fascinating to me the number of tools that you guys use without
• 1:49:25
  necessarily being explicit about the fact that you're using these tools to look at
• 1:49:32
  you guys from the outside and see what you bring in from the martial arts, what
• 1:49:35
  you bring in from the arts, what you bring in from the humanities, what you
• 1:49:38
  bring in from neuroscience and so on.
• 1:49:42
  One last thing because we're sort of hitting the.
• 1:49:44
  Just passing the two hour mark here.
• 1:49:46
  And I do want people to also know how to get in contact with you.
• 1:49:49
  Your books come and study with you and all that good stuff to get to.
• 1:49:54
  But you did mention story and you guys are both writers.
• 1:49:58
  Do you bring story into what you do?
• 1:50:00
  Do you encourage people to journal, for example, through
• 1:50:03
  the courses of, of what you do?
• 1:50:05
  Do you consciously bring story in, in, in certain ways?
• 1:50:11
  And if so, how do you wanna kick off with that one mark?
• 1:50:16
  Mark Rashid: Yeah, I mean, I'm I've been a storyteller all my life.
• 1:50:19
  My, my family, you know, I grew up in amongst a, a whole bunch of storytellers,
• 1:50:27
  my whole family, my aunts and my uncles, and my grandfather and my dad.
• 1:50:32
  And, you know, it's, it's all, it was always about stories and which
• 1:50:38
  is why when I wrote the first book, I wanted it to be a storybook.
• 1:50:42
  I didn't want it to be a how to book.
• 1:50:46
  And you can learn from stories and you can learn from listening to stories.
• 1:50:49
  And so oftentimes in, whether it's in the dojo or whether we're in the arena
• 1:50:56
  talking with somebody or we, I will often say, yeah, that happened to me.
• 1:51:02
  That thing that's going on with you.
• 1:51:04
  You know, I can remember I had a time when, and I'll tell them, you know, a
• 1:51:09
  relatable story about something that happened to me or when I was working
• 1:51:15
  with a horse, or, you know, something that just went horribly wrong when, you
• 1:51:20
  know, I thought I was thinking that I had it going on and then everything went
• 1:51:26
  sideways and, you know, but you recover from it and then you don't do it again.
• 1:51:31
  You know?
• 1:51:32
  Or you'd
• 1:51:32
  Rupert Isaacson: be like me and endlessly repeat the same mistake.
• 1:51:34
  Yeah.
• 1:51:34
  Or
• 1:51:34
  Mark Rashid: you could do that too.
• 1:51:37
  I mean, I think it's whatever you're comfortable with.
• 1:51:39
  Right.
• 1:51:41
  But it's, but yeah, I, and I think oftentimes when you least, it's been
• 1:51:48
  my experience when, when somebody can, will tell me something that
• 1:51:55
  happened to them and something similar had happened to me, or vice versa.
• 1:52:01
  You just don't feel quite as alone.
• 1:52:03
  Yeah.
• 1:52:04
  Like, I'm the only person who ever made that mistake.
• 1:52:08
  Yeah.
• 1:52:08
  You know, or did that thing.
• 1:52:10
  And man, I just, you know, and here we are 10 years later and I still feel,
• 1:52:14
  feel horrible about it, you know?
• 1:52:16
  Yeah.
• 1:52:16
  I did that too.
• 1:52:17
  And I know just how you feel.
• 1:52:19
  And so
• 1:52:24
  for me, you know, especially being an instructor.
• 1:52:30
  I think sometimes we as instructors, we, and you kind of, you kind
• 1:52:34
  of hinted at it too, is that we inadvertently might put ourselves at
• 1:52:41
  one level in a hierarchy and have the student at another, another level.
• 1:52:44
  And for me it's always been, I, I don't want, I don't need the
• 1:52:49
  person to know how much I know.
• 1:52:53
  I just need them to know that I might know the one piece that they don't know
• 1:53:01
  that will help them move past this spot.
• 1:53:05
  I might have that one piece of the puzzle.
• 1:53:07
  And that's all really, they need to know that.
• 1:53:11
  And it goes back to what Chrissy was talking about, where for me,
• 1:53:15
  it's, it's not about how much I know it's, can I help this person?
• 1:53:20
  I, most of the time you just need one piece, but it needs to be the
• 1:53:24
  right piece at the right time.
• 1:53:25
  Hmm.
• 1:53:26
  Mark Rashid: And if you're throwing out a ton of information
• 1:53:29
  in everything that you know, it's gonna get lost in there, you know?
• 1:53:35
  Yeah.
• 1:53:35
  So, so for me, that's, that's what this is all about.
• 1:53:41
  You know, how do we keep folks safe and how do we keep the horses safe and
• 1:53:45
  can we develop some softness and can we feel better than we did when we came in?
• 1:53:50
  Rupert Isaacson: Can we feel better than we did when we came in?
• 1:53:52
  Yeah.
• 1:53:52
  I love that
• 1:53:56
  Chrissy's story.
• 1:53:59
  Crissi McDonald: I love stories.
• 1:54:01
  Yeah, I, I much the same as Mark.
• 1:54:05
  You know, I have 30 years worth of stories with horses and there are some
• 1:54:12
  stories that are illustrate a point, you know, you can tell a story and you're
• 1:54:21
  telling it from your point of view.
• 1:54:22
  So the, the beautiful thing about stories is we get to see through
• 1:54:26
  the eyes of whoever we read, right?
• 1:54:29
  Or whoever we're listening to.
• 1:54:32
  And so if, if most people we see have experience with a handful
• 1:54:40
  of horses, they have many years with a small amount of horses.
• 1:54:44
  And Mark and I are very lucky because we have a lot of years and a lot of
• 1:54:47
  horses, which means a lot of stories because we have a lot of experiences.
• 1:54:52
  So yeah, I, I prefer to relate something to a story rather than,
• 1:55:02
  rather than giving the impression that I'm here, that I know all this
• 1:55:06
  stuff and you've come to me and that you know, those, again, it's not me.
• 1:55:14
  It's not me to, to think that because I've had these experiences, I'm better than or.
• 1:55:21
  No more, we're just farther down the trail, right?
• 1:55:24
  We're all on the same trail.
• 1:55:26
  It's just, I've maybe reached mile marker 20 and they're at 18.
• 1:55:30
  So I can say, oh, to get from 18 to 20, you have to, you know, here's
• 1:55:33
  some things that are helpful.
• 1:55:36
  So when I think it comes to story, it kind of takes the, the pressure
• 1:55:40
  off of here's what I know, right?
• 1:55:44
  And instead says, here's what I experienced.
• 1:55:48
  This is what happened.
• 1:55:50
  And then the other person go, oh, I've had that happen too.
• 1:55:53
  And now you have a connection.
• 1:55:55
  Hmm.
• 1:55:56
  Safety
• 1:55:56
  Rupert Isaacson: again.
• 1:55:57
  Yeah,
• 1:55:57
  Crissi McDonald: safety.
• 1:55:58
  Yeah.
• 1:55:59
  Safety in numbers.
• 1:55:59
  I mean, we're herd animals.
• 1:56:01
  Rupert Isaacson: Absolutely.
• 1:56:02
  Yeah.
• 1:56:02
  Yeah, yeah.
• 1:56:03
  And if you feel we're on, on, on our own with this, that's the
• 1:56:07
  highness might eat me feeling.
• 1:56:10
  Yeah.
• 1:56:10
  I, what I, I just really liked what you said.
• 1:56:13
  You, you've said three times now experiences rather than experience,
• 1:56:22
  and it's so interesting the
• 1:56:26
  emotional difference between those two things.
• 1:56:29
  You say, I've got 30 years of experience says it means, yeah.
• 1:56:33
  30 years of stuff happening to me, if you say I have 30
• 1:56:36
  years of experience, it's like.
• 1:56:38
  I have 30 years of experience.
• 1:56:40
  You know, it's a very different vibe, isn't it?
• 1:56:44
  And
• 1:56:44
  Crissi McDonald: yeah.
• 1:56:44
  Thank you for pointing that out.
• 1:56:46
  I didn't,
• 1:56:46
  Rupert Isaacson: you did that very spontaneously connection.
• 1:56:48
  It, it, I thought, oh gosh.
• 1:56:50
  I need to make sure I'm putting it in those terms too, because one made me
• 1:56:53
  feel safe and the other would not have.
• 1:56:57
  Mm-hmm.
• 1:56:58
  Rupert Isaacson: Yeah.
• 1:56:58
  But 30 years though, I wanna know you've, that experie 30
• 1:57:00
  Crissi McDonald: years.
• 1:57:01
  Yeah.
• 1:57:01
  I have 30 years of experience.
• 1:57:03
  That's so, like, it's not connecting.
• 1:57:07
  It's instant Hierarchy isnt, it's
• 1:57:08
  not, yeah.
• 1:57:08
  Crissi McDonald: It, it's not, yeah.
• 1:57:09
  It's not connecting.
• 1:57:10
  No, it's not.
• 1:57:11
  It's,
• 1:57:11
  Crissi McDonald: but 30 years of experiences.
• 1:57:13
  Other people can just say, well, I have 30 years of experiences too.
• 1:57:18
  Yeah.
• 1:57:18
  You know, and that there's the connection that, thank you Rupert.
• 1:57:21
  That's, that was
• 1:57:22
  Rupert Isaacson: Well, thank you.
• 1:57:23
  Thank you for pointing that out, for using that and bringing that to my attention
• 1:57:26
  because that, that's definitely actually a tool, which I think, I don't know if
• 1:57:30
  I'm using that tool well enough, but now you've brought my attention to it.
• 1:57:33
  I, I, I'm certainly gonna try to.
• 1:57:37
  So story heals, as you say, unless they're sort of triggering amygdala,
• 1:57:45
  social media, you know, the wrong kinds of stories, but stories do heal.
• 1:57:50
  They seem to be medicine.
• 1:57:52
  You guys are medicine people.
• 1:57:56
  I think when it.
• 1:57:58
  Comes to the work you do.
• 1:58:00
  I, I genuinely think you are.
• 1:58:01
  If people want to come and connect with you, what do they do?
• 1:58:04
  How do they find you?
• 1:58:05
  What are the courses you offer?
• 1:58:07
  And then please tell them about your books.
• 1:58:09
  So start with how they find you and what are the courses you offer.
• 1:58:12
  Either of you, just jump in, please.
• 1:58:16
  Crissi McDonald: I will jump in with some of the logistics stuff
• 1:58:19
  and then Mark can add on to it.
• 1:58:21
  Okay?
• 1:58:21
  So you can go to mark asha.com.
• 1:58:24
  We have once you're there, you can sign up for a newsletter.
• 1:58:27
  We have a little newsletter goes out once a month.
• 1:58:30
  We have an online classroom.
• 1:58:32
  You can also find out how to register by going to Mark's website.
• 1:58:36
  And again, that's mark rashid.com.
• 1:58:39
  Mark with a K we
• 1:58:40
  Crissi McDonald: have Mark with a K.
• 1:58:42
  Yes.
• 1:58:42
  And then I have a website as well.
• 1:58:44
  It's chrissy mcdonald.com.
• 1:58:46
  And then both of us have books.
• 1:58:47
  Rupert Isaacson: It's McDonald, not McDonald.
• 1:58:49
  Crissi McDonald: Well, it was McDonald in 1660 and somehow
• 1:58:52
  it became McDonald in 1690.
• 1:58:55
  But that's Scottish history.
• 1:58:56
  You probably don't wanna that, that's not the, oh, I might
• 1:58:58
  Rupert Isaacson: know because my, my clan is Clan Mac first and
• 1:59:01
  so Yeah, we could go to Oh yeah.
• 1:59:02
  Rabbit Hole.
• 1:59:03
  Oh yes.
• 1:59:03
  Yeah, yeah,
• 1:59:04
  Crissi McDonald: yeah.
• 1:59:04
  That's a whole different rabbit hole.
• 1:59:06
  Yeah.
• 1:59:06
  But yes, it's Chrissy, C-R-I-S-S-I, McDonald mc D-O-N-A-L-D
• 1:59:12
  Okay.
• 1:59:12
  Crissi McDonald: Dot com.
• 1:59:12
  Okay.
• 1:59:13
  And all my books are there.
• 1:59:15
  You can look at them.
• 1:59:16
  And then both Mark and I's books are at whatever retailers you.
• 1:59:21
  Like to buy from?
• 1:59:23
  I always like to promote bookshop.org.
• 1:59:25
  Okay.
• 1:59:25
  Because it supports local bookstores.
• 1:59:27
  Rupert Isaacson: That's cool.
• 1:59:28
  Yeah, we've talked about one of Mark's titles Consider The Horse.
• 1:59:31
  There are others.
• 1:59:33
  Is there a particular title you would draw people's attention
• 1:59:35
  to that from your books?
• 1:59:36
  Chrissy?
• 1:59:37
  Crissi McDonald: I have two horse books.
• 1:59:40
  They're different focuses, so I'm just going to point out both of them.
• 1:59:45
  The first one I wrote is called Continuing the Ride, rebuilding
• 1:59:48
  Confidence from the Ground Up.
• 1:59:49
  Okay.
• 1:59:49
  And that has to do with what I did to get back in the saddle in a
• 1:59:54
  healthy way after my wreck in 2014.
• 1:59:57
  Got it.
• 1:59:57
  Crissi McDonald: So, because we hear from a lot of people how
• 2:00:00
  they're anxious and they don't have the confidence they used to.
• 2:00:03
  Sure.
• 2:00:04
  And then the other one is called Getting Along With Horses and
• 2:00:07
  Evolution in Horsemanship.
• 2:00:10
  And that explores some of the ideas that we've been talking about here.
• 2:00:15
  Rupert Isaacson: Wonderful.
• 2:00:17
  Mark, I
• 2:00:17
  Crissi McDonald: think it's Mark's Turn Now
• 2:00:19
  Rupert Isaacson: Books, please.
• 2:00:22
  Mark Rashid: I don't know how many books I have out actually.
• 2:00:25
  16.
• 2:00:27
  I've got 16 books out and so, and you can find those on the website.
• 2:00:33
  One thing I, I do wanna mention just because it's a thing, so the first
• 2:00:38
  book is called Considering the Horse.
• 2:00:41
  So it's not consider
• 2:00:42
  Rupert Isaacson: considering.
• 2:00:44
  Mark Rashid: It's considering, and here's why.
• 2:00:46
  So when we were getting ready to put the title on the book, I wanted to call it,
• 2:00:53
  considering the Horse and the publisher wanted to call it Consider the Horse.
• 2:00:58
  Ah, and I felt really strongly that Consider the horse was
• 2:01:06
  telling people what to do,
• 2:01:10
  whereas considering is an active, it's an active thing that's, it's a
• 2:01:17
  Rupert Isaacson: conversation rather than a telling.
• 2:01:18
  Yeah.
• 2:01:19
  Mark Rashid: And indeed.
• 2:01:20
  Yeah.
• 2:01:21
  So, but there is actually, again, there's a story behind why that title
• 2:01:25
  is considering instead of consider.
• 2:01:29
  So, I mean, we went round and round for about a month.
• 2:01:33
  Yeah.
• 2:01:33
  On that, the difference between consider and considering with the publisher.
• 2:01:39
  And I just, I couldn't let it go.
• 2:01:42
  I was, I, I just, I was fanatical about it and so that's why
• 2:01:47
  it's considering the horse
• 2:01:50
  Rupert Isaacson: so well done.
• 2:01:50
  Holding your ground.
• 2:01:51
  Mark Rashid: Yeah.
• 2:01:52
  And that was my first book too, that they didn't even want to publish.
• 2:01:55
  So I felt like, you know, we did okay with it.
• 2:01:59
  But yeah, all the books are on the website.
• 2:02:01
  Our music is on the website.
• 2:02:03
  And we've got three or four CDs out which people don't buy
• 2:02:07
  anymore, but, but they're there.
• 2:02:10
  And yeah, all of our courses are on there.
• 2:02:13
  We do five day clinics.
• 2:02:16
  We do all these at Happy Dog Ranch and, and Sedalia, Colorado is south
• 2:02:21
  of Denver, so, we do five day clinics.
• 2:02:25
  We do a three day IBO and riding in the afternoon.
• 2:02:31
  And then IBO is in the morning, riding is in the afternoon.
• 2:02:36
  And then we do 10 day clinics.
• 2:02:38
  There are intensives.
• 2:02:39
  We do those June, August, September.
• 2:02:45
  Our five days are in May and October.
• 2:02:49
  And then we do some courses with Jim Masterson and Steve Peters in July.
• 2:02:57
  Fantastic.
• 2:02:57
  And they're all at all at the same place.
• 2:03:00
  Amazing place.
• 2:03:03
  Rupert Isaacson: Happy Dog Ranch.
• 2:03:04
  Mark Rashid: Happy Dog Ranch.
• 2:03:05
  Yeah.
• 2:03:06
  Rupert Isaacson: Happy.
• 2:03:06
  We need to get, we
• 2:03:07
  Mark Rashid: need to get you there.
• 2:03:08
  Have you ever done there?
• 2:03:08
  I'd love to
• 2:03:09
  Rupert Isaacson: get there.
• 2:03:09
  I'd love to.
• 2:03:10
  I'm often in Denver.
• 2:03:11
  Yeah.
• 2:03:11
  Yeah.
• 2:03:11
  Yeah.
• 2:03:11
  And not Colorado Springs too, so.
• 2:03:14
  Mark Rashid: Well, it's right between, it's in between.
• 2:03:16
  Okay.
• 2:03:16
  Rupert Isaacson: Yeah.
• 2:03:17
  I, I know it, I know, I know.
• 2:03:18
  At least I, I know the sign on the highway when you driving.
• 2:03:21
  Yes.
• 2:03:21
  Yeah.
• 2:03:22
  Love to, love to, love to.
• 2:03:24
  Can people come?
• 2:03:25
  Do, do you have to bring your horse?
• 2:03:26
  Can you come without a horse?
• 2:03:28
  You can come without a horse.
• 2:03:29
  Okay.
• 2:03:30
  Mark Rashid: Yep.
• 2:03:31
  You have to do everything on foot.
• 2:03:32
  But no, we got plenty of horses there.
• 2:03:37
  Rupert Isaacson: Very cool.
• 2:03:38
  All right.
• 2:03:39
  Well, happy Dog Ranch.
• 2:03:41
  Five day and 10 day intensive.
• 2:03:43
  Brilliant.
• 2:03:43
  Mark rashid.com.
• 2:03:46
  Chrissy McDonald, mook donald.com.
• 2:03:48
  Crissi McDonald: McDonald?
• 2:03:49
  Yes.
• 2:03:49
  Rupert Isaacson: McDonald.
• 2:03:51
  I would like to do this again.
• 2:03:53
  There are some things I'd like to go further into.
• 2:03:55
  Also the work you do with Masters and Method and the
• 2:03:58
  things that you've alluded to.
• 2:04:00
  There's, I feel we sort of barely scratched the surface.
• 2:04:03
  So would you, would you come, would you guys come on again?
• 2:04:06
  I'd love to.
• 2:04:07
  Crissi McDonald: Absolutely.
• 2:04:07
  Yeah.
• 2:04:08
  I'd love to.
• 2:04:08
  Yeah.
• 2:04:08
  Thank you.
• 2:04:09
  Rupert Isaacson: My, it's been my absolute pleasure.
• 2:04:11
  I learned a lot.
• 2:04:12
  I'm going to say experiences.
• 2:04:14
  I'm not going to say experience.
• 2:04:17
  I feel safer when I say it too.
• 2:04:19
  Yeah.
• 2:04:19
  Because isn't that something I, if I say experience, I'm like
• 2:04:21
  putting myself, I'm making myself vulner one eyes, like mm-hmm.
• 2:04:25
  What if my experiences not good, not, but my experiences?
• 2:04:28
  Well, they are what they are.
• 2:04:29
  Mm-hmm.
• 2:04:30
  Crissi McDonald: Yeah.
• 2:04:31
  You have lots of years of experiences too.
• 2:04:34
  Rupert Isaacson: One or two.
• 2:04:35
  Mm-hmm.
• 2:04:36
  Yeah.
• 2:04:36
  Or two.
• 2:04:36
  Yeah.
• 2:04:37
  Mm-hmm.
• 2:04:37
  Crissi McDonald: Yeah.
• 2:04:38
  That's who you are.
• 2:04:40
  Rupert Isaacson: Indeed, indeed.
• 2:04:42
  Alright, my friends, I'm gonna hit that dreaded button stop record.
• 2:04:46
  But thank you so much and we will see you on the next one.
• 2:04:51
  Thank you.
• 2:04:51
  Thank you, Rupert.
• 2:04:52
  Rupert Isaacson: I hope you enjoyed today's conversation as much as I did.
• 2:04:55
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• 2:05:00
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• 2:05:07
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• 2:06:00
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• 2:06:03
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• 2:06:06
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