Latest / Equine Assisted World with Rupert Isaacson / Ep4: Dr. Rebecca Bailey - Equine Polyvagal Institute - CA, USA

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Ep4: Dr. Rebecca Bailey - Equine Polyvagal Institute - CA, USA · Equine Assisted World with Rupert Isaacson

• 0:05
  Rupert Isaacson: Welcome to Equine Assisted World.
• 0:07
  I'm your host, Rupert Isaacson.
• 0:08
  New York Times bestselling author of the Horse Boy.
• 0:12
  Founder of New Trails Learning Systems and long ride home.com.
• 0:16
  You can find details of all our programs and shows on Rupert isaacson.com.
• 0:21
  Here on Equine Assisted World.
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  We look at the cutting edge and the best practices currently being developed and,
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  established in the equine assisted field.
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  This can be psychological, this can be neuropsych, this can be
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  physical, this can be all of the conditions that human beings have.
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  These lovely equines, these beautiful horses that we work with, help us with.
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  Thank you for being part of the adventure and we hope you enjoy today's show
• 0:52
  Welcome.
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  , back to, , equine Assisted World.
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  , today we've got someone amazing.
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  , of course everyone on here is always amazing.
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  , we've got Dr.
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  Rebecca Bailey, , the Polyvagal Equine Institute.
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  , it's something new, it's something cutting edge.
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  , Dr.
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  Bailey is at the helm.
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  , and there's a lot of questions we want to ask her.
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  What, what is polyvagal?
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  What's this poly word?
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  What's this vagal word?
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  How can it help us?
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  What do we need to learn from this?
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  What, you know, how can this help us in our practice?
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  , I think a lot of us are familiar with the idea of a sympathetic and
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  a parasympathetic nervous system, an autonomic nervous system, and these are
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  words that have been creeping in over the years, and now suddenly there's this
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  polyvagal thing and what does this mean?
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  And oh my gosh, is this another thing that I have to get right or
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  wrong or, , you know, et cetera.
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  So, so, so, Dr.
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  Bailey's gonna help us to understand this and, , to bring in how this
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  can help us in our practices.
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  , I don't want to take away from, , Dr.
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  Bailey's.
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  , Knowledge of herself.
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  So I'm not going to do too much of a bio.
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  However, , Dr.
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  Betty comes from a long, , tradition, , with horses and
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  of course with mental health.
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  , she is a east coast transplant that moved to the west coast about 35 years
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  ago and has been working in the field of trauma and recovery from trauma
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  and resilience for a number of years.
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  Has published books, , has been on multiple, , media shows.
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  You can find her all over the place.
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  You can find her on, , Diane Sawyer.
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  You can find her on all these things, but it's quite rare that we can engage her
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  one-to-one and get her to really clear up for us what is this polyvagal thing?
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  How does it help us?
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  and what do we need to know?
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  so Dr.
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  Bailey, thanks for coming on.
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  Welcome.
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  Who are you,
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  Rebecca Bailey: first of all, Rupert.
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  I am so, stoked to meet you.
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  Finally, after I think you and I have been, Plotting, you were certainly
• 2:53
  ahead of the herd, but but been plotting in the same pastures for many years.
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  And, I've heard over the years that you and I would either meet and endure each
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  other or combust, in our connection.
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  So, I don't know.
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  Let's see what happens.
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  I am a psychologist who I like to say was raised by a horse.
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  I think my first experience in co-regulation was a
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  little horse named Locket.
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  I grew up back east, as you said, and had two sisters that were
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  very accomplished equestrians.
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  And I was the rollie pulley pudding P pie popping around
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  on the horse in the backyard.
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  And here I am all these years later.
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  So in 19, about 1989, I got very into animal assisted therapy and
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  doing it as something, and not just the dogs and horses in my life at
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  the time in my graduate school.
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  I was told after I did a master's thesis, don't tell anybody,
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  you'll discredit yourself.
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  And really cool fact.
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  What I found back then, I didn't even realize what I'd found was a
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  variable with women that had horses.
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  It was an N of 70.
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  which means a group of 70 versus 70 women that didn't have animals at all.
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  And what I found was a very, very high, leadership criteria, meaning
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  that they had the ability to do what we call military leadership.
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  And this isn't the bang, bang, shoot 'em up leadership.
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  This is the ability to lead from within and next to now.
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  Ironically, Linda Kahani wrote about this many years later
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  in her power of the Herd book.
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  So what I had discovered with this particular, master thesis I did, that
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  we who have horses who are dedicated to understanding and listening to
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  horses have this ability to lead and connect with them, which is really
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  at the core of regulation and co regulation and polyvagal theory.
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  So take me back, guide me back.
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  Focus me back in, sir, as I go off into
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  Rupert Isaacson: the, I got, I got like five questions that I
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  just wrote down for myself there.
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  I'm gonna come back to them in a minute.
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  quick and easy one, what do you do?
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  Rebecca Bailey: That's a very good question.
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  I am a psychologist who has been doing, extreme.
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  I don't like to use the word trauma because everybody says that.
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  So I like to say extreme, complex cases for about the last 30 years.
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  now I am the co-director of the Polyvagal Equine Institute with my colleagues
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  Margie McDonald and JC Dugard, who was a young woman abducted health
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  captive of which the horses brought back into life, into regular life.
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  So I'm a psychologist, I am an educator, I'm a trainer, and I'm a goofball.
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  Rupert Isaacson: Me too.
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  the goofball bit, not the other bits.
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  okay, so what is the Polyvagal Equine Institute?
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  Rebecca Bailey: So the Polyvagal Equine Institute is our attempts
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  and desire to, we maybe put a different lens on equine treatment.
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  And I know we're supposed to say equine something, something, and I
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  always get it wrong being a dyslexic.
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  So I just call it.
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  Equine interventions, equine, whatever.
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  I've never figured this out for many years.
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  But what we're, we're trying to do, and what we are doing is training people for
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  professional awareness and understanding of not only themselves, their clients, but
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  the incredible colleagues that are these incredible horses that they work with.
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  So for many years I've been doing interventions with the equine work.
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  I've morphed like everybody else.
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  But what was really missing to me was, was the understanding of the
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  dance between nervous systems.
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  People understand this, that as we were discussing earlier, that do classical
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  dressage, they understand that piece.
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  But what was missing in equine therapy was when you're on the ground, this
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  connection between the nervous systems, what you bring in, what the horse brings
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  in, and what the client brings in.
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  So this was part of what we said.
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  We really want to push the field a little bit forward in using, in, in teaching
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  other people about this modality, and then also enhancing other treatment modalities.
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  For example, and I can say it to you because you're, you.
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  I've had a few people that have gone through psychedelic treatment
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  and have come here after they've had months, after they've had
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  their journeys and surprise it.
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  There are people that would laugh who've known me all these years, particularly
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  with my old Grateful Dead experience.
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  We ground them, post those experiences and help them maybe process and
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  understand that experience in a different way, if that makes sense.
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  So our program, our trainings also enhance other treatment modalities.
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  Rupert Isaacson: What was your Grateful Dead experience?
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  Rebecca Bailey: Well, I was the maid of honor to the, bass player and his wife,
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  my ex-husband worked for them and the bass player named two children after,
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  my ex-husband and my brother-in-law.
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  And then my horse, Dr.
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  Velcro, who many people know, black and White horse was given to me by
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  Billy Kitzman, the drummer's, wife.
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  And so I had long, the eighties were one big blur of Grateful Dead concerts.
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  And then I got my act together at the end of the eighties and went to grad school.
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  Rupert Isaacson: Alright, so there, there's something I'd
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  like to, to, to go there.
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  I, I didn't have this in my notes, but this is interesting to me
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  because, not every listener will be familiar with the Grateful Dead.
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  So, we have, you know, listeners all over the world, so I'll just
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  quickly fill in the Grateful Dead.
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  Were some would even say are, The sort of seminal 1960s counterculture.
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  But of course they went over decades.
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  but you could argue that they were really the f the, the, the,
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  the, the, the spokespeople of the counterculture, certainly within the usa.
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  And they came out of the West coast with a type of psychedelic music and exploration
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  and people associated them with drugs, people associated them with hippie stuff
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  correctly and of course incorrectly.
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  And that they were also purveys of a sudden kind of Americana.
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  if you really break the music down it, a lot of it is actually
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  Celtic with sort of African roots, which one could say is Americana.
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  But they took it to a, a level of sort of consciousness that
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  attracted bazillions of people.
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  And so the Grateful Dead concerts were like a mo, a festival that
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  was sort of constantly going around America over, over many, many decades.
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  And it's interesting how many people, one meets who have gone on to all sorts
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  of interesting things, who had a sort of seminal shamanic one could say, experience
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  or number of experiences through this particular part of the counterculture.
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  And those who know me know that, you know, I've, I've had a lot of experiences
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  in the Shamanic, and I would say that a Grateful Dead concert, what people
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  called a dead show, was a very viable shamanic experience, healing experience,
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  formative experience within the confines of our post World War ii, post witch
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  burning, post Auschwitz, post, you know, colonialism and everything else, culture.
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  so it's, it's very interesting to me that you, you bring up the fact
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  that you had a, a grounding in this.
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  How do you feel, what do you feel, before we go back to polyvagal, what, what do
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  you feel that your, participation in this aspect of the Western counterculture
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  did for you within the horse and equine assisted world to sort of open
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  your mind and heart to the greater possibilities of what we could do?
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  What, what, what detail?
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  So
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  Rebecca Bailey: cool.
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  No wonder people were saying we can bust because Absolutely.
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  I, when I met and kind of fell into the connection with all those guys,
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  it was, it went about 16 or 17 and very repressed Boston society and came
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  into this place where was asked to see the whole world from a different
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  perception, getting to know Jerry Garcia.
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  Well, being part of that connection.
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  Learned a lot about, again, again, how leadership is about
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  leading within and about and part of the collective conscience.
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  And people like, you know, like you say, it's funny, somebody yesterday
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  was saying, oh, but we're using psychedelia now in a different way.
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  It's not a social thing like that.
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  And I'm like, you don't get it.
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  You don't get it.
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  These people there, there was, Joseph Campbell used to come to the concerts.
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  I mean, there was this understanding of the collective consciousness and
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  our responsibility to each other.
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  So, God, there's so many things where we could go to, I mean, for example,
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  my great great great, great great grandmother was hung as a witch in Salem.
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  And so I even in all of this sort of shamanic releasing of intergenerational
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  trauma, I think what all of this that all connected me to was an embracement
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  of the passion and all it's me.
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  Mm-hmm.
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  And I know if it wasn't for my connection with those guys and the band and all those
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  people, I would never have felt that.
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  I would never, you
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  Rupert Isaacson: conjured some names there for people.
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  Again, Jerry Garcia was the band leader of the Grateful Dead.
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  if you dunno who he was, you, you just do a quick wiki because you
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  could, you could argue that many of the more progressive, aspects of our
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  culture emanated through that man.
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  Joseph Campbell.
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  Just talk to us a little bit about who Joseph Campbell was.
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  Rebecca Bailey: Well, Jo Joseph Campbell, was an amazing, amazing,
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  I think, what would we call him?
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  A Jungian, theorist and wrote, what the heck?
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  I'm gonna block on the name nephrologist.
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  Really?
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  Right here?
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  Yes.
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  Yes, yes.
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  And he really talked about bringing sort of shamanic concepts back, talking
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  about the journeys that we all go on in our life and, and in things.
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  He, he broke into a society that weren't counterculture people.
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  Right.
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  He broke into dining rooms and living rooms and cocktail parties of
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  Rupert Isaacson: academics and academics and
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  Rebecca Bailey: establishment people like that who were saying, you
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  know, who were able to say sorry.
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  Were able to say, oh my gosh, this makes sense.
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  This isn't dancing in the, in the hallways.
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  and it's sort of all melted together into this great big understanding.
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  I keep saying the collective consciousness.
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  And so here we go to polyvagal theory.
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  We were learning about the mix of nervous systems and how we all impact each other,
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  and how the collective consciousness is the responsibility of all of us.
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  Mm-hmm.
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  and not going off into any political realm.
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  Just saying these, this understanding that my hand affects
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  your hand affects this hand.
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  And so that became the core of the polyvagal work we did.
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  With trauma, understanding that it's not the central victim
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  or survivor in front of you.
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  It's this system.
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  The parents, the friends, the, you know, law enforcement, the judge,
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  all of this that are impacting the individual system in front of us.
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  All the stuff that herds of horses show us if we sit down and watch.
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  Rupert Isaacson: It's really interesting.
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  I, I've had, quite a lot of experience with, one could say wild people.
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  I lived with, bushman hunter gatherers, on and off for quite a while, and one
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  of their central tenants, is that if there's any suffering, any sickness, any
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  dilemma within the community, it's always actually a joint responsibility, what
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  you would call collective consciousness.
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  That, and that's why everybody must come together at the transfer.
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  And it could be, gosh, it could be anything from someone's actually got some
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  major health problem to someone's got a psychosis to, there's just a, a couple
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  who are arguing a lot and it's disrupting a little bit the harmony of the village.
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  Or it could just be a sort of general washing of the psychic
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  dirty laundry of the whole community just to keep everybody cool.
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  but at its fundamental level, there's this, this, acceptance that there is a,
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  joint responsibility for the whole thing.
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  And you don't hear this spoken about very often in the west because we have, you
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  know, this myth of the rugged individual and so on and so forth, and that we're
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  all just sort of out there, a dog eat dog.
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  But we, we know that's not really how life is.
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  So, Talk to me a little bit about how polyvagal theory helps inform us if
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  we're coming out of a Western tradition.
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  Okay.
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  And we're not just yeah, familiar with this Ultraman thing.
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  How does this help us understand and get to grips with all of this?
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  So,
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  Rebecca Bailey: just to go back, just because, just so for example, 25 years
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  divorce kind of separated myself from this core of herd of people that had
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  connected, built a different life.
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  My house in barn burns down and the whole community burns.
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  And the leader of the BA Jerry Garcia's daughter contacts me out
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  of the blue, offers me her house for a month where my, and I hadn't
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  seen her, I haven't seen her since.
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  I didn't see her after she just said, Hey, I heard you were in trouble.
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  So I, the reason I'm saying that is that that just underscores what you're
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  talking about, like the responsibility.
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  It doesn't mean that I live next to you and check in on you all the time.
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  It doesn't mean anything.
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  It just means that even from afar, I hear you're sorrow and I help and I'm
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  there in some way, whatever way I can be.
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  So how does this commit with the whole polyvagal?
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  So the polyvagal studies of Dr.
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  Steven Porges, who is the, sort of the creator inventor researcher of polyvagal
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  theory, really looks about how it kind of, the way I boil it down really boils
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  down to this very simple aspect that.
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  Human beings have the strive, have the drive to survive.
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  And everything we do is around the service of survival.
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  And as the vagal pathways evolved over millions and millions of years, this
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  social engagement pathway in what we call the ventral vagal developed, and this
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  social engagement pathway is the core of compassion and curiosity and connection.
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  So how this all fits is to really understand that in our western view,
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  we've toppled a little bit in my mind over in therapeutic interventions
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  into, you know, brain stuff.
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  We do bottom down, meaning from the brain down to the body.
• 17:54
  Well, what polyvagal theory says, and at least from my interpretation, and I really
• 17:59
  do believe it's a growing fields where, you know, we've gotta be very careful
• 18:03
  to not say you're wrong and I'm right.
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  But from our perception with the horses, when I say polyvagal, it's the top down,
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  the top, the bottom up learning is at the core of the essence of the work we do.
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  Meaning that it's in how we get into our body to feel it in the
• 18:19
  body and then respond in, in a.
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  Slow manner or fast, depending on whether we're in a survival state,
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  but in order to then process it.
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  And often we process based on old narratives that have nothing
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  to do with the present moment.
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  So it's
• 18:38
  Rupert Isaacson: a big Mel.
• 18:39
  Okay.
• 18:39
  So, so, so you talk about the body informing the brain, which, you know,
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  let's, we could, we could talk, you know, gut, heart, brain and so on.
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  There is this thing called the vagus nerve, the wandering nerve.
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  it's the largest nerve in our body.
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  Okay.
• 18:58
  Can you explain to us what the function of this nerve is?
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  And then from that, I'm gonna ask you why the word poly?
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  Do we have more than one vagal nerve or is it that we have
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  multiple effects from this nerve?
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  Or is it Yes, somewhat.
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  Both.
• 19:16
  Okay.
• 19:16
  So what is the vagal nerve and what does it
• 19:17
  Rebecca Bailey: do?
• 19:18
  Okay, so if you're a cardiologist listening to me, you're gonna be rolling
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  your eyes and saying, lady, come on.
• 19:25
  I'm not having you do heart surgery with me.
• 19:27
  So I want you to understand that one of the, the areas about the vagal
• 19:32
  nerve visit, it is very multifaceted.
• 19:34
  It has really important roles in our body.
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  I am not a neurosurgeon, so I'm gonna come at it from my simplistic psychologist
• 19:43
  perspective for me, the vagal pathways.
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  And yes, there are two vagal nerves, which for dyslexic, this drives me crazy.
• 19:51
  Why not call it two nerves?
• 19:53
  But there's one on the left and one on the right.
• 19:55
  Okay?
• 19:55
  That intervene, go through all major organs in our many
• 19:59
  major organs through our body.
• 20:02
  Also go up into the rated nerves in the face, meaning up above those eyes, those
• 20:09
  nerves right there, I, you can't see it because you're listening, but around the
• 20:13
  eyes, and above on the forehead, and then also they innervate into that inner ear.
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  For me, the most important role of the vagal nerves is assessing
• 20:25
  what gorgeous calls neuroception.
• 20:28
  Am I safe?
• 20:29
  Am I not safe?
• 20:31
  Now what that, that that means is in response to a sense of safety or
• 20:38
  survival, you're gonna have different aspects of the body that respond.
• 20:44
  So for example, in very, very, very old, old evolutionary days, the only
• 20:49
  way we could respond to threat, not we, but our great, our, you know, reptile
• 20:55
  ancestors, was to shut down and, save our resources as much as possible.
• 21:01
  Breathe really slow, feign death, whatever that was.
• 21:04
  Same possible.
• 21:04
  Basically.
• 21:05
  Yes.
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  And hope that the predator would go away or whatever that was.
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  So that was the only, only survival stance that we had.
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  Then through evolution, the sympathetic pathways developed.
• 21:19
  Fight or flight, get out of there, right.
• 21:21
  Move, move, whatever that is.
• 21:23
  And then from there, the ventral vagal pathways and the ventral
• 21:28
  vagal pathways are the pathways.
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  It's much more complicated than what I say, so please, I know that.
• 21:34
  But the ventral vagal pathways are what allows us to socially connect.
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  Now, to be in a regulated stage, regulated state, to be able to sit, have
• 21:45
  this conversation, to be able to hug each other, mobilize without fear, we
• 21:50
  have to have ventral vagal oversight.
• 21:52
  So that's something by the word
• 21:53
  Rupert Isaacson: oversight,
• 21:54
  Rebecca Bailey: what does that mean?
• 21:55
  Pathway needs to be engaged as well.
• 21:58
  Okay.
• 21:58
  So that's one of the mis misunderstandings.
• 22:01
  I do believe it's pretty black and white, although, you know,
• 22:03
  next week I could be wrong, but I, this is how I operationalize this.
• 22:07
  So I look at it when that horse, you're going along and the horse sees a rock and
• 22:12
  stop, you know, startles and if you are in the position to calm yourself down,
• 22:18
  be with the horse, then the horse kind of engages and gets signs of safety from you.
• 22:24
  And then you go forward or the horse tells you it's safe and you go forward.
• 22:28
  I have a horse that's terrified of turkeys and I cannot ride her on a, a trip.
• 22:33
  Yeah.
• 22:34
  Cause if a Turkey goes by, she rears up and pause and I jump off
• 22:39
  and it's just, you know, and I, some rearing horses I can take.
• 22:42
  She, she just scares the crap outta me.
• 22:44
  But one of my friends who's 20 years younger, she goes out bareback with
• 22:49
  me and a Turkey goes and up goes freia and up goes hope and they trot off.
• 22:54
  You know what I mean?
• 22:54
  So that's a really good exempt like example of the dance
• 22:59
  between two nervous systems.
• 23:02
  Rupert Isaacson: what is what you're saying then that, that
• 23:04
  it's, it's individualized.
• 23:05
  So, it's so individualized how you respond to that apparent threat and that horse
• 23:13
  response to that apparent threat Yep.
• 23:15
  Creates one equation.
• 23:17
  Yep.
• 23:17
  And then with your friend, hope that creates another equation
• 23:21
  because of differences in.
• 23:23
  Her vagal expression,
• 23:25
  Rebecca Bailey: her v well, her ability to, maybe you could say her ability to
• 23:29
  access a, a, a dorsal state of calm for a minute to go to immobility without fear.
• 23:35
  So that's that thing that I'm beginning to understand even more.
• 23:37
  And, and one of the, the things today, there was something written,
• 23:41
  I don't wanna say where, but it was by the pros on neuroception
• 23:45
  calling it faulty versus Not faulty.
• 23:49
  And I was like, I don't believe it's faulty versus not faulty.
• 23:52
  I don't think hopes is better than mine.
• 23:54
  I just think it's different in combination to that horse.
• 23:57
  And so I think our neuroception should be embraced.
• 24:00
  And I think that's where the Neurodiverse community has rightfully had some
• 24:05
  criticism to polyvagal theory, because it's saying like, the way it's been
• 24:10
  perceived, at least from some of the parents I work with of Neurodiverse kids,
• 24:15
  is like, you're like saying everybody's ventral vagal, but that's not comfortable.
• 24:20
  You know, for me, my home state is sympathetic, period.
• 24:23
  Surprise, surprise.
• 24:24
  I'm, I'm a really big social engager.
• 24:27
  I'm really big on ventral activity, but I personally am the happiest when
• 24:31
  I've got a little juice, you know?
• 24:34
  but in concert with somebody that I can overwhelm, I have to be careful.
• 24:40
  Rupert Isaacson: There's a couple things I want to, to, to return to.
• 24:43
  and you, you've, okay, so just for clarity's sake, there are two.
• 24:49
  Vagal nerves or There are two main branches of the same nerve,
• 24:52
  Rebecca Bailey: two vagal nerves.
• 24:53
  There is a left and right vagal nerve.
• 24:55
  Do not ask me why they only call it one, but there is.
• 24:58
  Okay.
• 24:58
  And it comes, starts at the bottom of the brainstem.
• 25:01
  Rupert Isaacson: So it goes from your upstairs to your downstairs and
• 25:03
  your downstairs to your upstairs.
• 25:04
  Rebecca Bailey: Yeah.
• 25:04
  The back, the back of the neck, bottom of the brainstem.
• 25:07
  But it innervates these important facial nerves and the inner ear.
• 25:11
  That's my next
• 25:12
  Rupert Isaacson: question.
• 25:12
  What does enervate
• 25:13
  Rebecca Bailey: mean?
• 25:14
  Means it connects in with, connects in with the, the heart connects in,
• 25:19
  actually, interestingly enough, it connects it to the nerves that turn your
• 25:22
  shoulder too, which is, you know, when you're feeling a whole lot of stress.
• 25:26
  Mm-hmm.
• 25:26
  And you're like, what is that?
• 25:28
  Well, that's also the vagal pathways.
• 25:30
  Are you
• 25:30
  Rupert Isaacson: saying that innovation means that the, that
• 25:32
  nerve, the vagal nerve or both the vagal nerves are, receive, innovate
• 25:37
  means it receives information
• 25:39
  Rebecca Bailey: from other, or it it connects into and remember to just
• 25:45
  that neurons and neurotransmitter, all this stuff is at play too.
• 25:49
  It's not just this, you know, not just the nerve itself, it's the
• 25:53
  neurotransmitters and the vagal.
• 25:55
  The ventral vagal are myelinated.
• 25:58
  And what we know about myelination, and please, I'll stumble over my words.
• 26:02
  We know that the messages in myelin and the myelin pathways
• 26:05
  are quicker, are received quicker than in other parts of the body.
• 26:09
  Is
• 26:10
  Rupert Isaacson: myelin actually the sheaths of the nerves?
• 26:12
  Yeah.
• 26:12
  Exactly.
• 26:13
  Exactly.
• 26:14
  Okay.
• 26:14
  So, so the plexi covering over the wires, how good that is, or how not good that is,
• 26:19
  Rebecca Bailey: and how quickly it moves.
• 26:20
  But in the dorsal area, it's not myelinated.
• 26:25
  Rupert Isaacson: Okay.
• 26:26
  So you are saying that the ven ventral, vagal nerve is myelinated, meaning
• 26:34
  it has, it has some insulation.
• 26:36
  Rebecca Bailey: Call it the ventral vagal pathways instead of nerve.
• 26:39
  Just remember it's one, because the wander, as you said, it's the
• 26:42
  longest of the cranial nerves.
• 26:43
  It wanders through all.
• 26:45
  So I call it pathways that may not be right, but it helps my little brain.
• 26:49
  Okay.
• 26:50
  Rupert Isaacson: Just, just, but I'm, I'm helping my little brain here to, ok.
• 26:53
  Ok.
• 26:53
  We, we've got one, the ventral one, i e, the, the, the safe
• 26:57
  place one that's myelinated, meaning it's got a sheet on it.
• 27:00
  It's got, it's, it's got some insulation.
• 27:01
  Yes.
• 27:02
  But the dorsal one, which is connected to our collapsed state, play possum
• 27:07
  state are, let's just, appease or go with whatever we need to go
• 27:11
  through to get out of the situation.
• 27:13
  If we can't fight or flee is raw, it doesn't have an
• 27:18
  insulation thing around it.
• 27:20
  Would that be correct?
• 27:21
  Rebecca Bailey: At least that's my understanding.
• 27:22
  Yes.
• 27:22
  And that's that rest and digest.
• 27:24
  And then the sympathetic doesn't either.
• 27:26
  At least that is my understanding at this point in time.
• 27:29
  Now, what's fascinating is a conversation I had with Porges couple weeks ago
• 27:35
  on one of our barn chats through p v I, we talked to him about how.
• 27:40
  Some early research shows, and I don't, I, I gotta clarify this for
• 27:46
  you, that predators have less ventral pathways than prey, I believe.
• 27:52
  And now don't quote me yet, cause I gotta get that clear and I'll send you
• 27:55
  the answer, but it's just interesting.
• 27:57
  There is a difference between the ventral pathways between predator
• 28:01
  and prey, which makes sense, right?
• 28:03
  Because herds have to connect together for safety, which would
• 28:07
  make sense that they would need a little bit more of the ventral.
• 28:11
  But I'm gonna please, I don't, I
• 28:13
  Rupert Isaacson: always do.
• 28:13
  Well, this, this raises interesting questions because for example, humans,
• 28:18
  we know we're not apex predators.
• 28:20
  We're somewhere in the middle.
• 28:21
  We're, we're, we're not armored.
• 28:22
  We don't have big teeth.
• 28:23
  We're not strong like the chimpanzees.
• 28:26
  We don't have, some of us have a lot of hair, but yeah, mostly not.
• 28:30
  and we're slow, we're bipedal.
• 28:31
  So, but we have this big brain, so we get our thing through strategy, which might
• 28:37
  make us like half what a herd would need of herb of was, and half what an apex
• 28:44
  predator, like a lion or a, or, or, or a tiger, which are, but, but then you
• 28:50
  also get these predators that are super social, like wolves, lions versus tigers.
• 28:56
  So presumably there must be some sort of a spectrum or continuum.
• 29:00
  and I, I presume in evolution, maybe you can, I, I, I, for example, I've
• 29:06
  read that humans, this is a really interesting, theory that humans when
• 29:11
  they came down from the trees, emulated other midlevel predators that were just
• 29:17
  a little bit above them, which is hyenas.
• 29:19
  Mm-hmm.
• 29:20
  And we began to behave a little bit like them.
• 29:23
  And we found that that actually served us quite well because we
• 29:27
  couldn't really behave like lions.
• 29:28
  We couldn't really behave like tigers cause we didn't have that
• 29:30
  kind maximum superpower thing.
• 29:33
  I dunno if that's true or not, but what I do know is that wolfs hyenas, and to
• 29:37
  some degree lions have a very, have a mammalian caregiving system that's based
• 29:43
  an awful lot on affection and interaction.
• 29:46
  And that evolves into strategies when they hunt a bit like us.
• 29:52
  Yep.
• 29:52
  But things like tigers, for example, don't seem to, or polar bears or,
• 29:56
  you know, things that are more sort of, so I guess the question then is
• 30:02
  if you're dealing to prey, us to a horse, we're the predator of the horse.
• 30:07
  The horse is always a little bit skeptical of us, quite rightly.
• 30:10
  or if you are a therapist to, or, or person dealing with someone
• 30:17
  who's gone through an awful lot of trauma, they have, you know, quite
• 30:20
  rightfully a little bit skeptical.
• 30:23
  Are we then this is a question, are we then.
• 30:28
  Caught in a interesting movable equation constantly between
• 30:34
  this dorsal, vagal effect, this parasympathetic nervous system.
• 30:40
  Am I safe?
• 30:41
  I I not say this, ventral, d vagal thing, saying, if I am safe, can I strategize
• 30:48
  with you and make a plan with you and team up with you and align with you?
• 30:52
  Or do I need to protect myself and this is an ever-changing landscape?
• 30:56
  Is that sort of what we're dealing with?
• 30:58
  Really
• 30:59
  Rebecca Bailey: cool.
• 30:59
  I love the way you are articulated.
• 31:01
  I've actually get almost goosebumps cuz I've never really, that's why
• 31:05
  the combustion, I've never really heard anyone kind of articulated in
• 31:10
  the way that when I stand back, I look at the world and maybe it's that
• 31:14
  shamo stuff we did, but Absolutely.
• 31:16
  So you're talking about the animals that you're talking, the
• 31:19
  mammals that you're talking about that have this social connection.
• 31:23
  you're talking about the ability to co-regulate, the ability to
• 31:26
  be co-regulate by another, and we get it all screwed up in this.
• 31:30
  I think often where we think regulation comes before co-regulation, uhuh
• 31:34
  co-regulation comes first, the ability to be soothed by another.
• 31:39
  And we absolutely have this bizarre dance with, humans and horses, which is
• 31:45
  one of the things with polyvagal equine.
• 31:48
  Not to toot our own horn, but really to pay attention to the choice of
• 31:52
  the horse within the equation and the protection of the horse as well.
• 31:57
  The safety of the horse, the safety of the human and paying attention to this
• 32:01
  no matter what we think and how much we think we understand everything that
• 32:06
  they're thinking and blah blah blah and all these new theories of what's going on.
• 32:11
  The real thing we can do is get in touch with our own nurse Neuroception of am I
• 32:16
  being co-regulate and am I co-regulate?
• 32:20
  Okay,
• 32:21
  Rupert Isaacson: i's need to ask you, let's define these terms.
• 32:22
  Cuz again, for a lot of people who are listening, they won't know this.
• 32:25
  What is co-regulation?
• 32:27
  Just what's the black and white?
• 32:29
  So the
• 32:29
  Rebecca Bailey: best thing I can say with co-regulation is you think about
• 32:32
  the baby that's crying that comes into the world, whether what other
• 32:36
  type of animal mammal it is and they need something to take care of them.
• 32:40
  They cannot possibly survive in this earth without it.
• 32:43
  I always use this story and I hope my son never hears it, but
• 32:46
  my son was incredibly colicky and I could not co-regulate that guy.
• 32:51
  Like there was no ability to co-regulate.
• 32:53
  Rupert Isaacson: The only thing couldn't see him.
• 32:54
  Is that what you mean?
• 32:55
  You couldn't make him feel better?
• 32:56
  Rebecca Bailey: Basically.
• 32:56
  I couldn't make him feel better.
• 32:58
  Okay.
• 32:58
  And the only thing to make him feel better was passing out of of tire because
• 33:02
  he had a real serious stomach problem.
• 33:04
  And so he didn't necessarily perceive me as this, this.
• 33:11
  This, you know, thing to make him feel better where my daughter instantly,
• 33:16
  which made me feel like a better parent.
• 33:18
  But so what I'm trying to say is that co co-regulation is this ability to
• 33:23
  kind of help someone feel better.
• 33:25
  And then there's the other side or connect with somebody else where
• 33:30
  regulation is, this is insulated piece
• 33:34
  Rupert Isaacson: regulations when you're doing it for
• 33:35
  Rebecca Bailey: yourself.
• 33:37
  Yes, yes.
• 33:38
  And that's important and that's what's important about some of
• 33:40
  the yoga and all of these things.
• 33:42
  But unless we learn to co-regulate, we're not doing what you and I were doing
• 33:48
  earlier, which is understanding the social consciousness of, of being aware of each
• 33:54
  other's nervous system in the world.
• 33:55
  And once you start using that languaging and acting that way in your
• 34:01
  life, there's this huge ability to access compassion and curiosity for
• 34:06
  other people, including the horses.
• 34:09
  Whenever we lose that capacity and curiosity for other people and the
• 34:13
  horses, we lose our ability to have them find their own ability to co-regulate.
• 34:20
  Right.
• 34:20
  And to me it's at the core of therapy for severely traumatized people
• 34:25
  is being curious and authentic.
• 34:29
  So
• 34:32
  Rupert Isaacson: if we have a, an ability to co-regulate Yes.
• 34:36
  And we develop.
• 34:38
  Is it like a muscle?
• 34:39
  We can exercise, can we, can we develop that to a point where our capacity for
• 34:48
  empathy, let's say, to put ourselves in the shoes of, without assuming we're in
• 34:54
  the shoes of, but at least to try to meet that person or that animal halfway, can
• 35:00
  get more and more developed because we're putting more and more attention there.
• 35:04
  Would you say that
• 35:05
  Rebecca Bailey: that's Well, I, I believe so.
• 35:06
  I mean, to me that's what horses taught me.
• 35:09
  And, and I think that, as long as we don't automatically assume or leave
• 35:16
  them with the responsibility of having to take care of dysregulated people,
• 35:21
  I think sometimes that's the thing.
• 35:23
  Some of the equine orientations drive me a little bit crazy cuz it's like the poor
• 35:28
  horses, like, what am I supposed to do?
• 35:30
  Not the, you know, that's amortizing or however you pronounce that word.
• 35:34
  But, but I think I, I do believe that you can learn to be co-regulate
• 35:40
  and co-regulate and regulate.
• 35:42
  And some of us maybe had to take different journeys than other people to get there.
• 35:47
  But all of our co-regulation and all of our reg, I I, it's different.
• 35:53
  It's individualized.
• 35:55
  That's the thing that's so important.
• 35:56
  So, You know, in, in the US there's so much on evidence-based protocols,
• 36:01
  which is really important, but the fact is it thwarts authenticity.
• 36:06
  And so yes, the, it's really important that everybody isn't running around saying
• 36:10
  it is because I say, so, it's important that we have some data and understand
• 36:14
  it, but at the same time, we gotta understand that our horses, and many of
• 36:20
  the people at least that I work with, smell inauthenticity and run to the hills
• 36:25
  if they, because it's dangerous to them.
• 36:28
  It's not safe.
• 36:29
  Rupert Isaacson: Can you define what you would say is authenticity?
• 36:34
  Rebecca Bailey: I think authenticity is being really true to who you are.
• 36:37
  For example, I'm a big playful person and I use a sense of humor
• 36:41
  and it's very natural to me.
• 36:43
  And if I had to sit here like this and say, well, Rupert, let's
• 36:47
  talk about, you'd be like, what?
• 36:49
  Like you might think you, you, part of your cerebral mind might
• 36:52
  think, wow, she sounds smart.
• 36:53
  Probably not you, but, but it wouldn't be authentic and
• 36:57
  Rupert Isaacson: wouldn't you don't mean pu joke.
• 36:58
  Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 36:59
  You might be like, please make me feel safe.
• 37:02
  Rebecca Bailey: We wouldn't be communicating through our
• 37:04
  nervous systems together.
• 37:05
  So even over Zoom, it kind of blows my mind.
• 37:08
  I get a really sense of who you are, and hopefully you get a sense of who I am.
• 37:13
  Mm-hmm.
• 37:13
  And so if you come into my office or my arena or whatever, and I'm trying
• 37:17
  to act according to the protocol for blah, blah, blah, unless it's
• 37:23
  really, really authentic to me.
• 37:25
  It's not, it's, it's gonna fall.
• 37:27
  That's like horseback riding.
• 37:29
  Unless you authentically are riding with your feel and body, you're
• 37:33
  always gonna look like you're, you're, you know, I don't know
• 37:36
  what a plastic person on a horse,
• 37:40
  Rupert Isaacson: this, this, this, this raises a question for me.
• 37:43
  Do brains and bo brain and body mapping?
• 37:46
  There's so, and again, for, for, for, listeners that might not know what
• 37:50
  that means, let's say for example, I'm holding a pen right now because
• 37:53
  I'm writing down some questions.
• 37:55
  My brain makes this, pen part of my body so that when I put the, tip of
• 38:02
  the ballpoint on the, on the paper, I feel it as if it was part of my body.
• 38:06
  So therefore I can do it, in, in, in a way that's effective.
• 38:11
  Do you feel that authenticity is a sort of way of the brain body mapping
• 38:20
  emotion so that the way in which one communicates with another being
• 38:32
  could be animal, could be human?
• 38:34
  You obviously where animals be, you know what I mean?
• 38:38
  Is therefore at its most strategically effective, so would still come
• 38:44
  back to survival, but thriving rather than surviving maybe.
• 38:49
  Is it something along those lines?
• 38:52
  In a way,
• 38:52
  Rebecca Bailey: but I, I, I think that your body, your, your
• 38:57
  neuroception in your body has, oh,
• 38:59
  Rupert Isaacson: what's neuroception?
• 39:00
  That's what I meant to ask.
• 39:01
  Rebecca Bailey: So neuroception is porges word for, the detection of safety.
• 39:06
  He calls it like the TSA agent, are you safe or you not safe?
• 39:11
  Rupert Isaacson: Um, so, so not just what are my nerves telling me?
• 39:13
  It's specifically, am I safe?
• 39:15
  Am I not?
• 39:16
  Rebecca Bailey: Am I safe?
• 39:16
  Am I not safe?
• 39:17
  And to me that I do feel like horses embody that piece,
• 39:23
  and present us that a lot.
• 39:25
  Like, you know, people talk sometimes.
• 39:27
  I've had people send me stuff about the horse's cerebral cortex
• 39:30
  being blah, blah, blah size, and therefore they're not as smart.
• 39:34
  And I'm like, you're not defining intelligence in
• 39:36
  the way you're defining it.
• 39:38
  Yeah, I that one crap.
• 39:41
  But, so the neuroception, I think the thing is when we're able to match our
• 39:46
  neuroception, our internal body response in a way with present moment narratives
• 39:55
  in our brain, we're congruent, right?
• 39:59
  But so many people are not congruent.
• 40:01
  So many people have
• 40:03
  Rupert Isaacson: response.
• 40:03
  Explain to me what you mean by
• 40:04
  Rebecca Bailey: congruent.
• 40:05
  And I may be using it wrong for the, the, the, you know, whatever.
• 40:09
  I may be using it wrong.
• 40:11
  But from my perception, it means they match.
• 40:13
  They're together, they meet together so that, you know, I
• 40:17
  have, you know, my little chocolate Labrador dog is laying over here.
• 40:21
  And let's say someone walked in the room who was, I don't
• 40:26
  know, it's a terrible example.
• 40:27
  I don't know this thing, but they come in and they see a dog and they're like, dog.
• 40:31
  And it's like, okay, there's an incongruence because the dog is
• 40:35
  sleeping over here and it's very quiet.
• 40:38
  So you're basing on an old narrative that's making you respond in a way
• 40:42
  that's based on a past experience,
• 40:45
  Rupert Isaacson: not appropriate to the current situation.
• 40:47
  Rebecca Bailey: Yes.
• 40:48
  Now that's where this whole thing that's tweaking my brain, where
• 40:51
  I've started really teaching that neuroception is neither good nor bad.
• 40:55
  And now there's this new hearing that I'm hearing, well, it's faulty versus not.
• 41:00
  I actually think that's problematic because I think that the thing that
• 41:04
  I've found in a lot of the trauma work that I've done with people to let them
• 41:08
  know that their body was just right.
• 41:10
  They're here in my office or in my arena with the horses and they survived.
• 41:15
  Let's celebrate that instead of looking at the faulty verses, not faulty.
• 41:19
  And that's at the basis of the article that I wrote with Steven
• 41:23
  Porges and JC Dugard and Dr.
• 41:25
  Smith on appeasement.
• 41:27
  This thing that when you're in a relationship, With an aggressor.
• 41:32
  We were trying to get rid of the word Stockholm.
• 41:34
  Stockholm syndrome was the word that the media put forth as to how people
• 41:39
  fall in love with the perpetrator.
• 41:40
  It actually had seven variables, but the one that most people object
• 41:44
  to in my mind, that have been in this situation is the love.
• 41:48
  It's not love, it's survival.
• 41:50
  For most of these people, every once in a while somebody will say, no,
• 41:53
  no, no, I actually did, but whatever.
• 41:55
  So, so we're not gonna dismiss it.
• 41:57
  There's no absolutes.
• 41:58
  But, understanding that the appeasement, which is this ability
• 42:02
  to be in dorsal absolute fear and then activate the ventral vagal to
• 42:07
  stay alive, is really a superpower.
• 42:11
  So, for example, Elizabeth Smart, who's another young woman, I didn't work with
• 42:16
  her, but she's a good friend who was held captive for 18 months by a crazy person
• 42:20
  up in the hills and raped repeatedly.
• 42:22
  She said, in talking about this, about this subject that she understood, what
• 42:28
  she did was she thought, if I'm super kind, this person might be kind to me.
• 42:33
  This person and his sick wife might be kind to me.
• 42:37
  And she said it was unconscious.
• 42:39
  But now when I look back at it, I realize that I was from deep terror
• 42:43
  into this place of I'm gonna be kind.
• 42:46
  In the hopes you're kind too.
• 42:48
  Did it change the course of her life?
• 42:51
  No.
• 42:52
  No.
• 42:52
  Did they stop raping her?
• 42:54
  No.
• 42:54
  But she was able to survive and, and actually now is thriving
• 42:58
  a beautiful life years later.
• 43:00
  Rupert Isaacson: Did it help her to strategize her way out of that
• 43:03
  situation in some way or other?
• 43:04
  No,
• 43:05
  Rebecca Bailey: because for many of the people that I know who've been in those
• 43:09
  extreme, there is seriously no way out.
• 43:11
  Okay.
• 43:11
  There's no way out.
• 43:13
  You ha you, you know, you're living so much in the home and
• 43:16
  people talk a lot about hope.
• 43:17
  That's a whole nother podcast.
• 43:19
  But, but, it is more like surviving in the second in, in the moment.
• 43:24
  In the minute.
• 43:25
  And so that appeasement word I just love because it is this capacity to have
• 43:33
  terrible fear in your body and then go up into an engagement and then not get
• 43:38
  your, not be wrong about it in treatment.
• 43:41
  Not 10 years later be sitting in an office saying, oh my God, I
• 43:45
  disassociated and why didn't I fight back?
• 43:48
  Right.
• 43:48
  That's not the point.
• 43:50
  Right.
• 43:50
  So I mean, maybe for some people it is, it could be,
• 43:53
  Rupert Isaacson: well there's only any point fighting back if there's a chance
• 43:57
  that that's going to be successful.
• 43:58
  Right?
• 43:58
  I mean, anyone I think who's ever been in a, in a situation
• 44:04
  where their life is in danger.
• 44:07
  I think this happens in all sorts of situations.
• 44:09
  And, for example, in the world of young men, growing up in the type of school
• 44:14
  that I grew up with in, in England, it, it was violent and it was constantly,
• 44:18
  constantly, constantly violent.
• 44:20
  It wasn't just violent a little bit.
• 44:21
  It was you, you were beaten by your teachers, you were
• 44:24
  beaten by the older boys.
• 44:25
  You were, everything was endorsed that way.
• 44:27
  And it was a military school and dah, dah, dah da.
• 44:29
  And that was not just my experience, that was the experience of many generations.
• 44:33
  So this appeasement thing was something that, one, I think you, you touched
• 44:37
  on, one really learned to use, which was that you knew what your
• 44:42
  chances were if you could fight back.
• 44:45
  Well, sure.
• 44:46
  But that, and so sometimes you did, but you were made to
• 44:51
  feel shame when you didn't.
• 44:54
  However, there was a wiser part of you that knew that sometimes you had to
• 44:58
  appease cuz this bloke was just 28 times bigger than you and there was no way up.
• 45:04
  And then you were either gonna go to hospital and they did, or you
• 45:09
  were going to appease in some way.
• 45:11
  And then you might then be shamed for that later.
• 45:16
  However you survived, went on and could strategize.
• 45:20
  And what I'm wondering with that, with, with appeasement and therefore
• 45:23
  that this is really interesting that you talk about dorsal i e.
• 45:28
  Effectively a bit of a, almost what a collapsed state.
• 45:32
  But then that somehow being able to be parlayed into a ventricle state
• 45:37
  almost like you can correct me.
• 45:39
  So I'm asking this, I'm not stating this.
• 45:42
  Would it be a really interesting, clever way of biology to say, okay, we've evolved
• 45:50
  from simply reptilian brain amygdala.
• 45:54
  Fight, flight, freeze tells the body to create cortisol act.
• 45:58
  Don't think, okay, fine.
• 46:00
  If, if, if, if the elephant's exploding out of the bush, that's good.
• 46:04
  But if you now see that this is something that's gonna go on for a while and,
• 46:07
  and, and this is going to be your life for a bit, this is your situation that
• 46:13
  you can maybe bypass that amygdala in that cortisol, which is gonna stop you
• 46:17
  from thinking that's its job and somehow get back to your prefrontal cortex
• 46:21
  where you can now begin to strategize without the benefit of oxytocin.
• 46:27
  So, you know, oxy, with, with Horse boy method, for example, we, we rely
• 46:31
  on oxytocin, rhythmic rocking motion of the hips to sort of bypass the amygdala.
• 46:36
  But what's inter intriguing to me with what you are saying there, is that
• 46:39
  maybe there's a way, is it true that one could find a way to bypass the amygdala
• 46:44
  that's not dependent on oxytocin?
• 46:47
  Because ob obviously, if you're in under extreme threat,
• 46:49
  what oxytocin can you find?
• 46:51
  There's gonna be no feel good hormone available to you.
• 46:55
  Yet somehow your nervous system can sort of override that default and give
• 47:01
  you access to your prefrontal cortex.
• 47:02
  So you can make some plan, some reason, some logic and, and, and
• 47:06
  emotionally regulate, you know, not overreact, not underreact, feel
• 47:10
  your way through the situation.
• 47:13
  Is that polyvagal survival sort of at its most functionally extreme?
• 47:22
  Or it's
• 47:24
  Rebecca Bailey: another way to look at it though.
• 47:25
  Another way to look at it, and again, this is the simplistic view, is
• 47:29
  that your nervous system takes over because if the brain really clicked
• 47:33
  in, it would go into panic state.
• 47:35
  Right.
• 47:36
  So you're, you're, I mean this is, again, is this, I mean, Sue Carter, Dr.
• 47:42
  Porter's wife is the one that, isolated oxytocin and vasopressin
• 47:46
  and she'd be really interesting to talk to cuz she could, she'll
• 47:49
  take us into the real biology.
• 47:53
  But from my perspective, when, and I know this is part of polyvagal theory,
• 47:57
  is that when you're in a sort of dorsal activated state, dysregulated
• 48:02
  with dorsal or sympathetic, you cannot access the cerebral cortex.
• 48:06
  Right.
• 48:06
  You can't think of it.
• 48:07
  Yeah.
• 48:07
  At all.
• 48:08
  So I would contend that, and I say this to some of my clients,
• 48:13
  that your body and brain.
• 48:18
  You know, you're, you're, it is time to tell your brain, I got this in my body.
• 48:22
  Or tell your body I got this when the brain's hijacking.
• 48:26
  Cuz I don't think the cerebral cortex comes into play.
• 48:29
  I think that the horror of the situation where there no is no
• 48:34
  escape is obvious and, and your body kind of has to handle it.
• 48:38
  I don't know if that makes sense, but is it
• 48:41
  Rupert Isaacson: something like, on the most extreme level, let's say people
• 48:46
  have watched wildlife documentaries or you might have, you know, been on safari
• 48:49
  or you might have seen wolves pulling down a, a deer or something like that.
• 48:53
  Yep.
• 48:54
  and but the, the obvious one would be like lions pulling down a wallaby
• 48:58
  store while dog pulling down a wallaby.
• 49:00
  And I've certainly seen that.
• 49:01
  And one of the things that one sees is when the animal goes, okay, shit,
• 49:08
  actually it's, I'm just fucked now.
• 49:10
  Yep.
• 49:10
  It's like they enter Ohio State and they go, alright fine.
• 49:14
  Fair enough.
• 49:15
  And it's almost, and it seems that their, their pain and their panic and all of
• 49:19
  that is overridden and they're in complete detachment and they're sort of looking
• 49:23
  at what's going on, going, alright.
• 49:24
  Right.
• 49:24
  Well I guess that's my body, but do what you want.
• 49:27
  I'm on my way out.
• 49:29
  It's vaguely sort of, and, and you, you, you can see this happening
• 49:32
  and certainly people report this.
• 49:35
  Is that what's going on in the.
• 49:38
  Rebecca Bailey: It is.
• 49:39
  And what we talk about is, and this is the vagal break going on,
• 49:42
  your heart rate gets really slow.
• 49:44
  But what you also does, the vagal break, sorry, the vagal, I hate always
• 49:49
  explaining that one because I'm so, like, I'm so, I have a hard time
• 49:53
  explaining it with the exception of it's like going down a hill and you
• 49:58
  put on the brake to slow your heart rate, slow down or slow the bike down.
• 50:04
  That's what, that's what happens in your body.
• 50:07
  You can slow it down.
• 50:08
  And we talk about a thing called voodoo death where people can
• 50:10
  get so scared they can die.
• 50:12
  And there's been research, we know now that when cats, one of the reasons
• 50:16
  people get so concerned about bringing cats into the veterinarians is some
• 50:19
  of them can actually die of fear.
• 50:21
  And so now, at least in the US, they give gabapentin.
• 50:24
  So your body can react very, very dramatically, into this shutdown stage.
• 50:29
  And there's all sorts of other things going on, but that's the right, but,
• 50:33
  but what I was gonna say is that years ago, about five years ago, I went and I
• 50:37
  saw this guy who'd been held captive by Somalian Pirates and for like many years,
• 50:43
  and I wish I had his name or 985 days.
• 50:47
  And it was so cool because at the time everybody was talking about hope, hope,
• 50:50
  hope and how hope saves you and all this.
• 50:53
  And he said, every morning I woke up.
• 50:55
  If I started thinking about hope, I got so depressed.
• 51:00
  By my circumstance that I would shut down.
• 51:03
  So I began to wake up every single morning and just try to
• 51:08
  stay focused in that moment.
• 51:10
  And I really like, that's, see, that's what I heard from these other people.
• 51:15
  See, I think there's a huge difference between being held captive, being
• 51:19
  restricted, your body restricted.
• 51:23
  I think there's a difference in the trauma, the way your
• 51:25
  body interprets trauma.
• 51:26
  And I think it's also different with horses.
• 51:28
  The horses that are, are, are broke through the old styles.
• 51:33
  They're, I mean, my horses, we have a heard of like 14.
• 51:37
  They're not all mine, but they're a little feisty, little boogers.
• 51:41
  You know, they got their own personalities and you can see it.
• 51:43
  Even people that don't know horses can see it with them.
• 51:47
  And they have been from very early on, been gentle in the, you know,
• 51:52
  it's been, and you know, I, they've just, it's, they're different
• 51:55
  and you see them differently.
• 51:57
  And I do think there's this huge difference between being like you in
• 52:00
  that boarding school, if you had sat there and if your brain had been allowed
• 52:06
  to say, Rupert, this is messed up.
• 52:10
  You could get killed at any point.
• 52:12
  You know, you could go in that hospital if you'd really embrace that.
• 52:15
  You could have been really scared and gone into a clo close disassociative shutdown.
• 52:21
  But instead, your body said, I got you, dude.
• 52:24
  We got this.
• 52:25
  Right.
• 52:25
  Rupert Isaacson: There was a point where I went into a shutdown and I couldn't
• 52:28
  get outta bed for about six months.
• 52:29
  And Yeah.
• 52:30
  But what I think happened with that was that that was my body saying
• 52:34
  this is a way to opt out if I, yeah.
• 52:37
  I I think it knew that, and so it opted me out for a bit where I could gain
• 52:42
  some resilience and then come back.
• 52:44
  Makes sense.
• 52:45
  Yeah.
• 52:45
  And to other people who, who sort of went through that, we, we were a
• 52:48
  bit confused at the time of why we all had this experience, but, yeah.
• 52:53
  And
• 52:53
  Rebecca Bailey: you know, it's funny, when I work with, and I've kind of
• 52:56
  over the years worked with, we've all in the field, we all work with very
• 53:00
  challenging situations, but I have worked with a bunch of unfortunate
• 53:05
  situations where children have been tied to beds and things like that.
• 53:08
  And maybe it's the people that come to me, but when I begin to work with them
• 53:13
  here, what I see is the celebration of who they are and how they got through that.
• 53:19
  Hmm.
• 53:19
  And I do believe, not that I am this incredible therapist, I think
• 53:25
  what I do right with them is I help them celebrate the resiliency rather
• 53:31
  than focus on what wasn't there.
• 53:33
  And the horses do that.
• 53:35
  The horses are like, Hey, you know, let me, let me nibble at your hair right now.
• 53:40
  I don't care what happened to you last week.
• 53:43
  Rupert Isaacson: Do, do, do you feel, do you feel that horses
• 53:45
  that were broke in the old style are effectively held captive?
• 53:49
  It's sort of like they're psychically held captive, and is that where the in the eye.
• 53:54
  Rebecca Bailey: Yeah, I do.
• 53:55
  And, and I was, you know, I even when I first started writing on this subject,
• 53:58
  I had some people from the marine world write to me about whales and all this
• 54:03
  stuff, and you know how they're being.
• 54:05
  And really it starts messing with your brain.
• 54:08
  I mean, it's really hard.
• 54:09
  It is really hard.
• 54:10
  And yes, I do believe that the horses whose quote unquote will
• 54:16
  has been broken, that they go into sort of this dorsal shutdown.
• 54:20
  Now, what's interesting, I'm also working with a friend of mine from, Australia.
• 54:25
  We're looking at a sound protocol for horses to see if we can help.
• 54:29
  That is Porges SSP protocol to see if we can help maybe the horses
• 54:34
  shift out of that total shutdown.
• 54:36
  But I, I believe the best healing in the entire world is heart to heart.
• 54:41
  I really do.
• 54:43
  Or maybe it's vagal to vagal, but, you know, I really, really believe that.
• 54:47
  And I believe, I have a horse here whose head was tied to her leg and she was
• 54:53
  actually one of the horses that came from one of the guys in the Grateful Dead.
• 54:57
  And it was, did not happen with them.
• 54:58
  It happened before they got her.
• 55:00
  And she is the most reactive.
• 55:02
  Like you come near her ears go back, and she snaps.
• 55:06
  You have to wait and approach her in her space.
• 55:09
  And then she's like, She'll do anything for you, but she will
• 55:13
  always, she's 36 and looks dynamite.
• 55:16
  And her thing is like, do you respect me as you come near me?
• 55:20
  That's all she asks.
• 55:21
  It's really wild.
• 55:22
  And she's taught so many people about boundaries.
• 55:26
  I want
• 55:26
  Rupert Isaacson: to ask you, I want to go to boundaries actually in a minute.
• 55:30
  I want to return to the idea of sympathetic and
• 55:33
  parasympathetic nervous system.
• 55:35
  there's a lot of confusion here.
• 55:37
  I was very confused for quite a long time, like, why would they call it
• 55:40
  sympathetic when it doesn't seem very sympathetic and parasympathetic?
• 55:44
  Why?
• 55:45
  Okay.
• 55:47
  Are those two things, let's say sympathetic fear response,
• 55:52
  parasympathetic, happy going about my business, serotonin, e oxytocin,
• 55:58
  e functional, are they part of the vagus nerve or are they something
• 56:04
  separate that interacts with the vagus?
• 56:09
  Rebecca Bailey: So to make you feel better when anyone asks these questions,
• 56:12
  I go to horror in my, in my system.
• 56:15
  I'm like, oh my God, I can't get this right.
• 56:17
  I get confused cuz the two words drive me crazy.
• 56:19
  What I do know about the parasympathetic, yes, they are part and parasympathetic
• 56:25
  is the, rest digest, the shutdown piece.
• 56:29
  Sympathetic.
• 56:30
  I look at more of the fight flight, the sort of conscious pieces that we have.
• 56:34
  But yes, they are part of the vagal.
• 56:36
  the vagal pathways are part of that.
• 56:39
  I actually prefer to talk about the autonomic nervous system as
• 56:43
  a whole because then I don't get stuck in the parasympathetic.
• 56:48
  But honestly, when anybody in the audience or something says, Dr.
• 56:52
  Bi, could you please explain parasympathetic?
• 56:55
  I go, oh my God, I'm back in my boarding school.
• 56:58
  Right know, and I'm gonna get yelled at and have to write parasympathetic 15
• 57:02
  times on the chalkboard, you know, until
• 57:06
  Rupert Isaacson: I get the sensory issue of the chalkboard as well.
• 57:08
  Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 57:09
  Rebecca Bailey: Totally.
• 57:09
  The cur and the cursive.
• 57:10
  And I can't do cursive cause I'm dyslexic.
• 57:12
  So the os go on and on and on, and then they slap your little
• 57:16
  hands and like, forget it.
• 57:18
  But yes, so it's, it's all part of the autonomic.
• 57:21
  Am I giving you a flashback, Rupert?
• 57:22
  Are
• 57:23
  Rupert Isaacson: you, did you see me holding my head?
• 57:25
  Yeah.
• 57:25
  Yeah.
• 57:26
  the, the, the question though really for me is, It seems that okay.
• 57:31
  Yes.
• 57:31
  What I'm liking about what you say is that it's not simplistic.
• 57:34
  and it's nuanced because we know that that's human life.
• 57:37
  So say for example, I've got a thing which I like to do.
• 57:39
  I really like to cross country ride.
• 57:40
  I always have, and I like to, I grew up fox hunting and it's always been my
• 57:44
  greatest love and I've smashed myself up a few times, so I know what can happen.
• 57:50
  And when I'm going in at a fence, I'm definitely in fear.
• 57:53
  However, overriding that fear is an excitement and a pleasure.
• 57:59
  So I'm getting sort of a dopamine with cortisol, with a little bit of oxytocin if
• 58:06
  the rhythm is nice of the horse coming in.
• 58:09
  And then, oh my God, thank God I survived.
• 58:11
  You know, as I hit a, why am I even doing this to myself?
• 58:14
  And then I look up a shit and there's the next one coming.
• 58:17
  And then of course, at the end of the day, I'm like, I don't
• 58:19
  really want to do that again.
• 58:20
  Are
• 58:20
  Rebecca Bailey: you drag hunting or live hunting
• 58:22
  Rupert Isaacson: these days?
• 58:23
  I'm drag hunting.
• 58:24
  And, and that happened because, oh gosh.
• 58:27
  back in 2005 or six, I was bringing a group of Kalahari, Bushman Coan to the
• 58:35
  United Nations and the US State Department as part of the work we were doing to help
• 58:40
  them gain legal access to their, legal title, to their ancestral land, which
• 58:45
  they've been illegally evicted from.
• 58:47
  And I.
• 58:48
  Had a whole background with this and we found ourselves going,
• 58:52
  coast to coast, in America.
• 58:55
  we started in Hollywood with artists for amnesty.
• 58:57
  Basically just trying to make as much noise as we could.
• 59:00
  And then I wanted to stop in the Navajo reservation, the Hopi reservation,
• 59:03
  because I wanted them to meet indigenous people who had gotten their land
• 59:09
  back and basically could talk about, okay, well here are the problems
• 59:11
  that come when you're successful.
• 59:13
  And we were camped in Canyon DeChea.
• 59:16
  I, you know, dunno if you know where that is, but it's the second
• 59:18
  largest natural canyon in, in the US after obviously the Grand Canyon.
• 59:23
  But it's, it's, it's in a similar area.
• 59:24
  It's on the Navajo reservation in Arizona and it's really, really deep.
• 59:28
  And if you go down there, you can only access it in most of the, of
• 59:32
  the canyon by foot or horseback.
• 59:34
  there's a little bit you can access at the end on by vehicle, but you can't
• 59:37
  really get in and there's a very, very traditional life on that valley floor.
• 59:43
  and we were down there camping and a and a and a medicine man showed up and
• 59:46
  said, oh, I've heard that you guys are here, to help sort of get the land back.
• 59:50
  Would you guys like to do a sweat lodge?
• 59:53
  And we went, yeah, absolutely.
• 59:54
  And we did the sweat lodge praying for the return of the land.
• 59:58
  And at the end of that, it's actually 2004.
• 1:00:01
  That's right.
• 1:00:01
  the, the med, Samantha, does anyone else have anything that they want to pray for?
• 1:00:05
  And I said, yes, my son just got diagnosed with autism.
• 1:00:08
  So we did a round of prayers for that.
• 1:00:11
  When we came outta the sweat lodge, he said to me, do you hunt?
• 1:00:15
  And I said, I do, but maybe not in a way that you understand.
• 1:00:19
  He said, that's not important.
• 1:00:20
  He said, I'm just getting it loud and clear from the spirit world that
• 1:00:23
  you have to stop and it's somehow tied up with your son's autism.
• 1:00:27
  And that's all I can tell you.
• 1:00:28
  And I went, oh shit.
• 1:00:30
  Of course, of course.
• 1:00:32
  The thing that I love the most is the thing that I have to give up.
• 1:00:34
  Of course, of course.
• 1:00:35
  That makes perfect sense.
• 1:00:36
  Okay, fuck it.
• 1:00:37
  Right.
• 1:00:37
  Okay, I'll do it.
• 1:00:38
  and at the time I was actually, it was part of my job.
• 1:00:41
  I was, I was paid, it's a great gig to go round for the
• 1:00:46
  equestrian magazines and hunt with different hunts and write them up.
• 1:00:49
  I loved it.
• 1:00:50
  And I used to work with the American Masters of Fox
• 1:00:53
  House Association to do this.
• 1:00:54
  And my great friend Dennis Foi might be listening to this, Hey Dennis.
• 1:00:58
  he was always suspicious of me cause I'm such a hippie.
• 1:01:00
  you know, said, I called him and I told him what had happened.
• 1:01:04
  He said, I always knew you would always become an anti ruper.
• 1:01:06
  I knew you were deep down, you know, just an anti, you'd just
• 1:01:09
  turn on us and you'd betray us.
• 1:01:10
  I'm like, Dennis, it's not that, you know, it's, it's, it's a completely personal
• 1:01:15
  decision, but I can't argue with this.
• 1:01:17
  My gut tells me it's absolutely true.
• 1:01:19
  As I was having this conversation with him, this is in Texas where I used to
• 1:01:23
  live, and it, it's not like England where there's a lot of foxes around.
• 1:01:27
  there's a lot of coyotes.
• 1:01:28
  And coyotes don't tolerate foxes much.
• 1:01:30
  So when you see foxes in Texas, you actually notice, you see
• 1:01:32
  maybe like one a year, two a year.
• 1:01:36
  I'm sitting on my front porch at night and the light is off the front and
• 1:01:41
  this fox just comes walking straight out of the dark, stands in the
• 1:01:45
  porch, flight, looks at me and goes, and I just hold the phone forward.
• 1:01:53
  I said, Dennis, this is what's going on right now while we're having this
• 1:01:56
  conversation, so if you think that this is some kind of hippie bullshit, and he
• 1:02:01
  goes, well, right Ruth, maybe you know.
• 1:02:03
  And anyway, so I love that, that all I do these days is drag hunt.
• 1:02:07
  Yes.
• 1:02:08
  Which is, I I do the simulated type of fox hunt where Yeah.
• 1:02:11
  Yeah.
• 1:02:11
  We're hunting a few.
• 1:02:12
  We don't hunt a live animal anymore.
• 1:02:14
  No.
• 1:02:14
  Rebecca Bailey: Yeah.
• 1:02:15
  We used to, there was a big thing where I grew up in Lincoln, Massachusetts
• 1:02:18
  and the only, I, I went on a few, and the last one I did, this is awful.
• 1:02:24
  And all your listeners are probably like, get half of them have hung up or whatever.
• 1:02:29
  they, it got a farmer's cat.
• 1:02:31
  Ooh, dogs not good.
• 1:02:33
  And that was really, that was sort of like tough.
• 1:02:35
  But I had a mayor, my mayor Locke, who used to the hunt master Quincy
• 1:02:40
  Adams, old, old Boston guy, would actually borrow cuz she loved to
• 1:02:43
  go out so much in the front, man.
• 1:02:45
  She was like, she was so that horse was a wonder horse.
• 1:02:48
  But that is an amazing story.
• 1:02:51
  And we, you and I should swap some stories cuz I got a couple that I'm
• 1:02:54
  not gonna go into now that are like, like where does that come from?
• 1:02:58
  You know, that whole thing of whatever it is.
• 1:03:01
  I pretend that I'm not woowoo all the time and I like, but there's a part
• 1:03:05
  of me that's like, please the fox came
• 1:03:07
  Rupert Isaacson: out and barked.
• 1:03:08
  Yeah, no.
• 1:03:09
  As, as my friend, you know, Warwick Shilla, Warwick.
• 1:03:12
  And for those who listeners who, dunno, Warwick Shilla, go now to Warwick.
• 1:03:15
  Switch off my silly old pocket.
• 1:03:17
  No, don't switch off Rebecca.
• 1:03:18
  But afterwards go to, the Journey on podcast and listen to Warwick Sheller.
• 1:03:23
  Yet he has a, a really good expression.
• 1:03:26
  He says, you can't fight the woo.
• 1:03:28
  Rebecca Bailey: It's, it's, you know, it's, it's actually really, I mean, I was
• 1:03:33
  at a Grateful Dead show years ago, and I was walking down and I grabbed a friend of
• 1:03:37
  mine and I said, watch out was backstage.
• 1:03:39
  I said, oh my gosh, watch out.
• 1:03:40
  It's a turtle.
• 1:03:41
  And she leans down, she goes, what are you talking about?
• 1:03:43
  It's a piece of, it's a piece of tissue.
• 1:03:45
  Like it was a, a paper towel.
• 1:03:47
  So we walk a few more st steps, and I'll be damned there, it was a
• 1:03:52
  turtle that people had stepped on in the, I mean like, like, kinda
• 1:03:58
  like, where did that come from?
• 1:03:59
  So you can't fight the woo, but you also have to understand that there's
• 1:04:04
  a lot of people I need to ground myself because if I get too much
• 1:04:09
  in the woo, I go flying off in my spaceship and nobody would understand
• 1:04:12
  Rupert Isaacson: me.
• 1:04:12
  Right.
• 1:04:13
  But life has a habit of grounding us in the woo, doesn't it?
• 1:04:15
  Yes.
• 1:04:15
  I mean, it's out of the woo rather, you know, from the woo to the poo.
• 1:04:19
  Yeah.
• 1:04:20
  Yeah.
• 1:04:20
  Right.
• 1:04:21
  True.
• 1:04:21
  And that actually brings us back to, to, to what I want was in the middle of asking
• 1:04:25
  you that, this nuanced dance between these different aspects of the vagal and
• 1:04:33
  sympathetic, the autonomic nervous system, as you'd say, but with all these different
• 1:04:37
  bits, hence the word poly, seems, you know, I, I've heard people say, oh, if, if
• 1:04:41
  you're in sympathetic, it's bad if you're in, you know, parasympathetic, it's good.
• 1:04:46
  And I'm thinking, well, when I'm going into that fence, I'm, I'm
• 1:04:49
  dancing in between those things.
• 1:04:52
  In a way that allows me to respond appropriately to the fence.
• 1:04:57
  I have to jump where I'm Yes.
• 1:05:00
  And you do you see, you see what I'm saying?
• 1:05:02
  It, it seems that it's neither bad nor good in that moment.
• 1:05:05
  It's bits of both that allow, give me some tools to get the job done
• 1:05:09
  right in a way that with some vent
• 1:05:12
  Rebecca Bailey: oversight.
• 1:05:12
  And, and it's funny you say, sometimes what I show when I'm trying to explain
• 1:05:16
  vagal v I'll show a really high level jumper, go going into a fence on a
• 1:05:21
  horse and you know, they're together.
• 1:05:24
  They're just really together.
• 1:05:26
  They get to the base and they release.
• 1:05:28
  And then there's this beautiful moment, where they reconnect on the other side.
• 1:05:32
  And that's what I, it is funny you would say the jump, cuz I always think of
• 1:05:35
  that, of how, at least to me, that really explains the dance of the nervous system
• 1:05:41
  and the dance of two nervous systems.
• 1:05:42
  How does that rider give the message to the horse?
• 1:05:45
  It's not about dominance, it's about I'm up here, I'm with you,
• 1:05:48
  I'm connected, and vice versa.
• 1:05:51
  And, and I think that's the nuance.
• 1:05:54
  Rupert Isaacson: So yeah.
• 1:05:55
  So, so, so we don't have to feel, we're getting it right or we're
• 1:05:58
  getting it wrong with which bit of the, of autonomic nervous system
• 1:06:04
  are we in this particular moment.
• 1:06:08
  Rebecca Bailey: I, I don't think so.
• 1:06:09
  I think what it is, is it's what it means to you in your body.
• 1:06:12
  Like what you said, Rupert, you know, you go off to the hunt and you're scared,
• 1:06:16
  but you're excited, but you're not.
• 1:06:18
  So when I used to do horse shows, if I showed up and I was scared to death, I
• 1:06:22
  would do terribly If I showed up and I was excited, I would do really beautifully.
• 1:06:26
  And I, you know, there was like this disconnect between understanding that
• 1:06:30
  my body was feeling the same thing.
• 1:06:32
  I, I go back, look back at it and I'm like, oh, that's, you know, the day that I
• 1:06:36
  crashed over all the Oxfords or whatever.
• 1:06:39
  So I think that, , it's what it means to you and in my dear friend Deb
• 1:06:44
  Dana's words, who is someone that's written a lot on Steven Porges in a
• 1:06:49
  way that people understand is really, befriending your nervous system.
• 1:06:54
  Like making friends with your individual nervous system.
• 1:06:58
  And this good, bad, I mean, yes, it is a lot to be in a dorsal overload all
• 1:07:04
  the time can lead to immune problems, sleep problems, digestion problems.
• 1:07:09
  So, you know, we gotta understand that.
• 1:07:11
  But dorsal activity can also be responsible for, as I said
• 1:07:15
  earlier, a mobility without fear.
• 1:07:18
  To be present without fear, you gotta have some dorsal rest and digest going on.
• 1:07:23
  So that said, we, we have a polyvagal, a carousel.
• 1:07:27
  It shows the horses going round and round and when you're regulated,
• 1:07:30
  they're going around and nobody notices.
• 1:07:33
  When it's dysregulated, it's all like jumpy.
• 1:07:37
  I always say at this in my old age, I would like to be in that cart.
• 1:07:42
  That doesn't go up and down, that just goes smoothly.
• 1:07:44
  But none of us can do that.
• 1:07:46
  That's impossible.
• 1:07:47
  We are all gotta, you know, you gotta have all these different pieces happening else.
• 1:07:52
  You're not alive.
• 1:07:53
  Rupert Isaacson: And I guess that also makes sense if you think of
• 1:07:55
  the hunter-gatherer human context.
• 1:07:56
  If you are, if you're walking in the bush, chances are there's
• 1:08:00
  always something hunting you.
• 1:08:02
  Yeah.
• 1:08:03
  Chances are you are probably hunting something.
• 1:08:05
  Chances are you are also looking for wild foods.
• 1:08:09
  Chances are if you make the wrong decision about those wild foods, you get
• 1:08:13
  the toxic doppelganger and poison your family and that, so you, you are cons
• 1:08:18
  and there's elephants around and you're a bit worried about drought, but, oh
• 1:08:23
  look, the Mong Gogo nuts are doing well.
• 1:08:25
  You know, it, it seems that whatever you're doing in life that, that the
• 1:08:29
  human condition, probably the condition of being alive, no matter what species
• 1:08:34
  you are, is always seems to be about this dance, this constant dance between
• 1:08:39
  fear and respite and happiness and.
• 1:08:44
  Moments of terror, and then that feeling of, oh, I survived it, and that's cool.
• 1:08:49
  And I used my skills and Oh, I wonder what the next thing is gonna be.
• 1:08:51
  And oh, here's a philosophical question and one is it's always a flux, right?
• 1:08:56
  Yeah.
• 1:08:57
  Rebecca Bailey: It is always a flux.
• 1:08:58
  And the thing is, I do believe we have to get way out of our head
• 1:09:02
  way more, because as we know, there's a, a really international
• 1:09:06
  crisis of loneliness in this world.
• 1:09:08
  People feel lonely and isolated.
• 1:09:10
  We've got our faces in our cell phones.
• 1:09:12
  I happen to like my cell phone, but I've gotta remind myself to
• 1:09:16
  leave it behind when I go out for a day sometimes, just because.
• 1:09:20
  But we live in this world where we're so lonely, so in so many areas
• 1:09:26
  because people have lost this ability to connect with each other and to
• 1:09:30
  honor each other's nervous system.
• 1:09:33
  So, you know, you're in the store and the person behind you is being
• 1:09:35
  a complete jerk to the teller or whatever that is, to the cashier.
• 1:09:41
  And you know, your job is to really regulate yourself enough that
• 1:09:45
  maybe you might just co-regulate that guy or girl or woman or they
• 1:09:49
  in front of you, whatever it is.
• 1:09:51
  But, but you also, You have to remember that that can also
• 1:09:55
  impact you as well, right?
• 1:09:56
  You can walk outta the store and get in the car and shout at the dog, right?
• 1:10:00
  And then you're like, wait a second.
• 1:10:02
  It wasn't the dog.
• 1:10:03
  I just, this person was screaming at the teller.
• 1:10:06
  So just understanding the importance, it's in the body.
• 1:10:09
  See, I think that's the thing.
• 1:10:10
  It's in the body first, and then the brain fills in the blanks.
• 1:10:15
  That's what I think.
• 1:10:18
  It's like what?
• 1:10:19
  You know, so they talk, you know, Bessel talks about that trauma lives in the body.
• 1:10:24
  And it took me a really long time I used to say to all, and I still do say this,
• 1:10:29
  sometimes trauma's not what, it's not who you are, it's what happened to you.
• 1:10:33
  Okay?
• 1:10:34
  But then actually, Dr.
• 1:10:35
  Porges and Deb had a conversation one time with me, said, no, no, no.
• 1:10:39
  It lives in your body.
• 1:10:40
  It's living in there.
• 1:10:43
  And I still bel, I understand that and I believe it and I accept it.
• 1:10:48
  But I do think until we reduce shame from people and the sense of some sort
• 1:10:53
  of a self responsibility, which is different than what I just said, but
• 1:10:56
  until we help people move outta shame, people get stuck in a dorsal place
• 1:11:01
  and they get immersed in their story.
• 1:11:03
  Because shame is what holds us down.
• 1:11:06
  We know that.
• 1:11:08
  We absolutely know that.
• 1:11:09
  And I actually don't think horses experience shame.
• 1:11:13
  I know my dog sort of does in a funny way, but I don't think horses do that.
• 1:11:18
  I think they're in the moment so much that they just go, oh, and,
• 1:11:21
  and they're nervous system is so flexible they go onto the next piece.
• 1:11:26
  Do you think,
• 1:11:26
  Rupert Isaacson: do you think that shame is a predator thing?
• 1:11:29
  Rebecca Bailey: You know, it's interesting, it's so cool in some ways.
• 1:11:33
  Is it, or is it a predator's tool to, and but how would that happen
• 1:11:39
  in the, in the animal kingdom?
• 1:11:42
  , well I dunno.
• 1:11:42
  Rupert Isaacson: Might it be, let's say you're a wolf pack.
• 1:11:45
  Yeah.
• 1:11:45
  And one wolf isn't pulling their weight or something like that.
• 1:11:49
  And we know that a wolf pack can actually turn on a pack member and annihilate
• 1:11:54
  them in that sort of a, a situation.
• 1:11:57
  Do you think that shame is a tool that predators you?
• 1:12:02
  And this is just coming to my mind hearing you say, maybe, maybe some
• 1:12:06
  listeners might want to chime in on this.
• 1:12:08
  There might be some zoologists out there.
• 1:12:11
  Yeah.
• 1:12:11
  Do, do we think Yeah.
• 1:12:12
  Is that where it comes from?
• 1:12:13
  Cause as you said, you only said the dog and then it, it went.
• 1:12:16
  Oh yeah.
• 1:12:17
  But you're right.
• 1:12:17
  I think I've never, I don't think horses do feel shame.
• 1:12:19
  I think you're right.
• 1:12:20
  I, I don't think they do.
• 1:12:21
  So why feel shame?
• 1:12:23
  Yeah.
• 1:12:23
  Rebecca Bailey: So if we look from the herd, and I would love if you get feedback
• 1:12:26
  on this, but if you look at it from a herd connection, shame is an isolating thing.
• 1:12:32
  You get cast off from the pack, and as a result, you don't have the
• 1:12:37
  safety that the pack would give you.
• 1:12:39
  They're not gonna survive.
• 1:12:40
  So there may be this, you know, I don't know that the, that the dog is like,
• 1:12:44
  oh my God, I feel so bad this happened.
• 1:12:46
  The dog's nervous system may be saying, oh shit, something's about to happen here.
• 1:12:51
  Right.
• 1:12:52
  You know, I, I don't know.
• 1:12:53
  You know, my grandmother grew up in Hawaii and she used to talk about
• 1:12:56
  the minor birds, how they would be on opposite branches, and she would
• 1:13:00
  watch them, like one bird would be all alone, and the other birds would squash
• 1:13:05
  and squawk and squawk, and sometimes they'd all fly off, and other times
• 1:13:08
  they'd all go and attack this one bird.
• 1:13:10
  Mm-hmm.
• 1:13:10
  And she used to tell me about this thing that she would watch out of her window.
• 1:13:14
  And I always thought about that, like, was this bird being shamed?
• 1:13:18
  You know, what was going on?
• 1:13:20
  It's just, I don't know, you're pulling out all these old, like, thoughts of
• 1:13:23
  mine, Rupert, that I, I have no one to talk to about half this stuff.
• 1:13:27
  So thank you for giving me the opportunity.
• 1:13:30
  Rupert Isaacson: Well, let's explore this line.
• 1:13:32
  So if we, so we are predators, we can, we can accept that.
• 1:13:37
  Yeah.
• 1:13:37
  If, if we are predators and if we use shame as a tool to sort of make
• 1:13:42
  people pull together as a team.
• 1:13:44
  If, if that's, if that's possibly its basic function, yet it can, of course.
• 1:13:51
  Un man, it, it, it can do us in as shame so that if we are shamed, we can also
• 1:13:58
  be made dysfunctional within the team.
• 1:14:02
  What do we do about shame?
• 1:14:04
  How, how, how do we, how, how do we, how do we dance out of dysfunction with that?
• 1:14:11
  what are your thoughts?
• 1:14:12
  Rebecca Bailey: Problem is, is it's been used to, shame has been used to disempower
• 1:14:18
  marginalized populations, right?
• 1:14:20
  And so there's a certain investment in using shame in certain cultures
• 1:14:27
  and certain, certain, groups.
• 1:14:29
  Absolutely.
• 1:14:30
  But what we can do clinically, what we can do with the horses is
• 1:14:35
  really try to talk about the innate brilliance of the nervous system, the
• 1:14:42
  innate, absolute innate brilliance.
• 1:14:44
  And by understanding that, and that's why I was so concerned about the word
• 1:14:50
  faulty neuroception, because to me, helping people completely understand that
• 1:14:55
  this is the response in all its glory.
• 1:14:58
  Maybe it could be different in another context, but in that moment it's
• 1:15:02
  what you, it was the best you got.
• 1:15:04
  And that's okay.
• 1:15:06
  And then how do you maybe let yourself learn to receive
• 1:15:09
  cues of safety going forward?
• 1:15:12
  But it's so interesting because shame has been written about forever
• 1:15:16
  going back to psychoanalytic work.
• 1:15:19
  It's, it's so much more toxic than, than blame, I and guilt.
• 1:15:24
  And I really believe that it is at the core of many of our mass shooters,
• 1:15:29
  that there's this shame in casting out of the herd that propels them
• 1:15:34
  to want to act in such a way that says, don't you ever forget me.
• 1:15:39
  Don't you ever, you know, don't you forget who I am?
• 1:15:42
  And it's really sad.
• 1:15:44
  I mean, God, that's a whole nother tangent, but it's just so sad to me.
• 1:15:48
  When you look at, I've had the, occasion of reading some of the profiles
• 1:15:51
  of mass shooters, and frequently they're marginalized people that have
• 1:15:55
  been pushed outta their community.
• 1:15:58
  I am not in any way justifying the action, but is there's this shame piece that
• 1:16:03
  you belong over here and we're here.
• 1:16:06
  And the acting out is like, don't you forget me.
• 1:16:09
  Don't you not know that I'm here.
• 1:16:11
  Don't you forget that I was here.
• 1:16:14
  Sorry about another tangent there.
• 1:16:16
  Rupert Isaacson: Right?
• 1:16:16
  Or, or, yes.
• 1:16:16
  Or, or if you're gonna throw me out to the greater predators, then I
• 1:16:22
  will become that greater predator.
• 1:16:24
  Yes.
• 1:16:24
  Yep.
• 1:16:24
  Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 1:16:26
  Is that, is that, is that what vengeance is?
• 1:16:28
  Is that what Avengers, that's interesting.
• 1:16:30
  Rebecca Bailey: So this is what you and I need to get together and write
• 1:16:33
  a book on and talk about is the power of shame and the predatory practice.
• 1:16:37
  Because if we can attack that darn s word again, if people can hear about
• 1:16:44
  it and really understand it from a body-based response, maybe we can get
• 1:16:50
  it out of this cerebral value judgment.
• 1:16:53
  You know it, because it isn't a moralistic thing.
• 1:16:57
  It's, it's a survival thing to want to feel connected and it is so powerful.
• 1:17:03
  You never put a horse alone.
• 1:17:04
  Right.
• 1:17:06
  Rupert Isaacson: Hopefully, do it all the time.
• 1:17:08
  But I'm just, I'm just thinking about back to my time, for example, with the Bushman.
• 1:17:13
  I never heard of anybody being or encountered this, whether re real, you
• 1:17:22
  know, in real time or hearing about it.
• 1:17:26
  I never heard of anybody being shamed, ostracized.
• 1:17:32
  I, I, I never, no one to my knowledge has, was ever cast out.
• 1:17:40
  And if, if these people again feel collective responsibility and, and,
• 1:17:45
  and if these people are the oldest people on the planet, therefore the
• 1:17:49
  blueprint for what humans actually are, That's actually very functional.
• 1:17:54
  That always used to give me a lot of hope.
• 1:17:55
  And I think being, oh, actually maybe we're actually really
• 1:17:58
  quite good as a species because these people seem so functional.
• 1:18:02
  yet we know for sure other cultures do.
• 1:18:07
  I wonder if do, do you think that in the wild context of
• 1:18:12
  humanity, blame might be used?
• 1:18:16
  And I, I'm asking myself this question, like, let's say, I don't know, you didn't
• 1:18:20
  pull your weight somehow in the thing and it compromised the other people
• 1:18:23
  and they're a bit mad at and da da da.
• 1:18:26
  You know, because you jeopardize everybody's safety in that moment.
• 1:18:30
  So you got a chance to kind of then go to the shaman and you go, okay,
• 1:18:34
  what do I need to do to access my mojo to, you know, but other cultures for
• 1:18:40
  sure later, cultures, agricultural cultures, that sort of thing, we
• 1:18:44
  know absolutely have cast people out.
• 1:18:47
  you hear about, you know, the accounts of the a hundred years war and, you
• 1:18:51
  know, people caught between two armies trying to get into the city with the
• 1:18:56
  attacking army behind them and the army behind the war and just being
• 1:18:59
  allowed to let die, you know, in between and starve to death in between.
• 1:19:04
  And, and what would make you not open the gates?
• 1:19:07
  What would make you make that decision?
• 1:19:10
  And that seems to be a.
• 1:19:15
  A, perhaps a non-authentic way of being a human is that the difference between blame
• 1:19:19
  and shame is shame a later construct.
• 1:19:24
  Rebecca Bailey: I think it probably is a later construct, and probably if
• 1:19:28
  we're really going deep, brought in through paternalistic governmental,
• 1:19:36
  I, I don't know that any of the maternalistic, if that's the right word,
• 1:19:39
  societies would use shame like that.
• 1:19:43
  And so it's, for lack of a better word, it's, it's, it's, I don't know.
• 1:19:49
  It's really interesting.
• 1:19:50
  It's really interesting.
• 1:19:52
  It serves to disempower people, period.
• 1:19:56
  And wherever.
• 1:19:57
  Yeah, go ahead.
• 1:19:58
  Well,
• 1:19:59
  Rupert Isaacson: the question is shame a recent thing.
• 1:20:01
  I mean, in terms of human history, let's think about it.
• 1:20:05
  Ev, evolution, history rather than like, history, you
• 1:20:09
  Rebecca Bailey: know, since I would think so, wouldn't you?
• 1:20:11
  I mean, I would be, it would be so interesting to, again, if you have any
• 1:20:14
  listener who's like a sociologist that can say, actually we can see guilt as
• 1:20:18
  being, you know, brought in X, Y, Z.
• 1:20:21
  But I bet, I bet that is a more function.
• 1:20:24
  I bet it's a function.
• 1:20:26
  I don't know.
• 1:20:28
  That's very interesting.
• 1:20:29
  I I still blame it on the men.
• 1:20:31
  Sorry.
• 1:20:32
  Rupert Isaacson: No, I mean, it may well be because I mean, with, with, with,
• 1:20:35
  agriculture, I mean, agriculture can be.
• 1:20:39
  That's when we see war coming in and that sort of thing.
• 1:20:41
  it can be maternal, it can be paternal.
• 1:20:44
  We see both, but usually it's the blokes, usually it's,
• 1:20:48
  Rebecca Bailey: and, and of course without offending people, and maybe I
• 1:20:50
  do, but I don't mean to that they, you know, very much Christian values are
• 1:20:54
  embedded in, in, in guilt and shame.
• 1:20:56
  Rupert Isaacson: I mean, well, is guilt the same thing?
• 1:20:58
  This is another, is guilt the same
• 1:20:59
  Rebecca Bailey: thing as Sean?
• 1:21:00
  No, I don't think guilt is, see, in my humble opinion, guilt is
• 1:21:05
  a motivator for some people.
• 1:21:07
  And, and, as long as it doesn't go into probably the dorsal, if we're
• 1:21:12
  using polyvagal terms, which I love to use because who knows if this is really
• 1:21:16
  true, but it sounds so smart that maybe, maybe shame is a dorsal response, a
• 1:21:21
  fear response, a deep fear of being cast out where guilt has maybe, let's
• 1:21:26
  think, possibly some sympathetic juice into it that there's something I can do
• 1:21:30
  about this, to, to make it different.
• 1:21:33
  Where shame, I don't think there's the, the structure, the construct is not, I
• 1:21:37
  can do something to make it different.
• 1:21:39
  It's like I've done something terrible and there's no rectifying Right.
• 1:21:42
  There's
• 1:21:43
  Rupert Isaacson: no redemption.
• 1:21:44
  Rebecca Bailey: Right, right.
• 1:21:45
  Whereas the, the, the guilt one I do, I really, I do sometimes have people
• 1:21:49
  come in and say, I feel so guilty.
• 1:21:51
  And it's like, okay, well you feel really guilty.
• 1:21:53
  what do we do with that now?
• 1:21:54
  Where do you want that to go?
• 1:21:55
  I mean, yeah, it's okay to be feel guilty that, you know, You yelled at your kid
• 1:22:00
  or your husband, or your wife, or your spouse or whoever, that's, that's fine.
• 1:22:04
  But what are you gonna do with it?
• 1:22:05
  Can you move it into a ventral, into a place where there's compassion and
• 1:22:09
  curiosity for yourself and for them?
• 1:22:12
  Or are you gonna let it go down into an embedded place of, you
• 1:22:15
  know, shame that I am a terrible person, is ventral forgiveness?
• 1:22:21
  I think so, for sure.
• 1:22:23
  I have found my life to be so much richer when I look at, see, I look at compassion
• 1:22:29
  and curiosity as, so when I'm dealing with someone, whether in the horse arena or
• 1:22:35
  wherever, clinically or not, who are so politically different than I am, initially
• 1:22:42
  my sympathetic gets bubbling and I, you know, like, and then I just have to really
• 1:22:47
  go to curiosity and I can literally feel the shift in my body and I can feel the
• 1:22:53
  shift of like, for a second, you know, it doesn't mean that I walk away saying, oh,
• 1:22:59
  isn't that wonderful I, I'm there, right?
• 1:23:00
  It's just I go to more compassion for myself, for my response and for them.
• 1:23:05
  And so that sort of goes to forgiveness.
• 1:23:07
  I have a funny relationship with forgiveness.
• 1:23:09
  I.
• 1:23:11
  I go back, I, I am a teeter-totter on forgiveness.
• 1:23:14
  Sometimes I, I, I don't choose to be in sympathetic with forgiveness, and I don't
• 1:23:20
  choose to be in dorsal, but I choose to be okay that there are some people I just,
• 1:23:26
  you know, I, I don't want to forgive.
• 1:23:28
  And that's a conscious choice.
• 1:23:29
  That's a cerebral choice, right?
• 1:23:32
  Right.
• 1:23:33
  And it's not very choice.
• 1:23:34
  But there's only two or three people in my life that I'm like that with.
• 1:23:38
  Rupert Isaacson: And I suppose in one's perfect world, one would,
• 1:23:40
  one would get to that point.
• 1:23:41
  And who knows, maybe one will.
• 1:23:43
  But I think yes, everyone can say that.
• 1:23:48
  may, maybe not today, but hopefully tomorrow.
• 1:23:51
  Yeah.
• 1:23:52
  I was, this is one of the questions I had written down here actually, which is how
• 1:23:56
  can we access kindness and compassion?
• 1:23:59
  Well, you know, even when, just let me just, but even when our sympathetic
• 1:24:03
  nervous system is active, meaning, righteous anger, let's say you're
• 1:24:09
  having trouble forgiving some somebody because they actually did do you wrong.
• 1:24:14
  And, so therefore you have every, every reason, every right to not forgive
• 1:24:19
  them, to be, to be angry with them.
• 1:24:22
  yet one knows deep down that if I better a grudge, It doesn't do oneself
• 1:24:32
  any good really at the end of the day, but it can be very, very difficult
• 1:24:35
  to not act upon that, et cetera.
• 1:24:37
  How so?
• 1:24:37
  How do we access kindness and compassion even when our sympathetic
• 1:24:42
  nervous system is active like that?
• 1:24:44
  What, what, what, what?
• 1:24:45
  when we survive trauma, what, what, what, what are your thoughts on that?
• 1:24:49
  Rebecca Bailey: So, two pieces.
• 1:24:51
  I think that the, an, the simple answer is to get back into a regulated
• 1:24:55
  state, and that's where like being with the horse and grooming the horse or
• 1:24:59
  watching the horses or just being in the presence of, you know, peaceful horses
• 1:25:04
  and some ways can help you regulate.
• 1:25:06
  But what I was.
• 1:25:08
  Interrupting you about, sort of dovetails to what you also just said,
• 1:25:11
  which the people, I don't forgive.
• 1:25:13
  I want them to be shamed.
• 1:25:15
  So, you know, miss, miss, Dr.
• 1:25:19
  Lio over here saying that, you know, when I, when I look at the people in my
• 1:25:22
  life that, and there's two that I really believe, I don't wanna ever forgive.
• 1:25:28
  I, I don't walk around with a lot of hatred for them, but they have never
• 1:25:32
  showed any shame for their action.
• 1:25:33
  And it pisses me off.
• 1:25:35
  So I think the one way that we get at, into compassion is to stay curious and
• 1:25:41
  to say regulated and get outta judgment.
• 1:25:43
  Because when we judge, we cannot be compassionate.
• 1:25:47
  We just can't be.
• 1:25:48
  So, I can't be compassionate for these people because I'm judging their action,
• 1:25:51
  which is not fair to them really.
• 1:25:53
  But so what?
• 1:25:54
  Sorry.
• 1:25:54
  But, but so I, I think the real answer is to just really stay at a
• 1:26:00
  judgment and do everything we can.
• 1:26:03
  And I think, you know, there's certain, so social morays that I will always
• 1:26:07
  judge and have issues about, like, people that hurt little children, period.
• 1:26:11
  Sorry, you know, don't work with them, don't wanna work with them.
• 1:26:14
  Doesn't mean they don't deserve compassion from some, it's just not, I don't
• 1:26:18
  have an in me to do it, but I think it's staying curious and compassion in
• 1:26:23
  accessing these ventral, vagal pathways.
• 1:26:26
  Rupert Isaacson: And so can, so let's go back to horses.
• 1:26:30
  we talk about co-regulation.
• 1:26:31
  So if we can be in the, If we can cohere with a nervous system that
• 1:26:38
  is regulated so we can be around a horse that's calm, for example.
• 1:26:42
  can something as simple as that in a, in an environment with no bad
• 1:26:47
  sensory triggers or nothing where we feel a threat, can those two
• 1:26:52
  things help us just simply to get into that curiosity, compassion,
• 1:26:59
  ventral strategizing, social thing.
• 1:27:04
  Something as simple as I'm, I'm going out into a nice environment.
• 1:27:08
  The people around me are, okay, this horse is cool and it's now regulating me.
• 1:27:14
  Rebecca Bailey: I, I really believe that.
• 1:27:15
  I also think practicing breathing in a way that's, you know, not complex, sort of a
• 1:27:20
  shorter breath in, longer out, being aware of being really present in the moment.
• 1:27:25
  Smell, especially horses, although some people say they don't like the smell, but
• 1:27:29
  smelling the barn and feeling like the tactile just feeling, I, I don't believe
• 1:27:34
  it's just horses that help the shift.
• 1:27:37
  I think it's all of it.
• 1:27:39
  Having somebody there with you who makes you feel safe or, you know,
• 1:27:45
  or if they're your horses, you know, and you feel comfortable.
• 1:27:49
  But yes, I believe that that shift can help your body.
• 1:27:53
  Recognize it as a healthy homeostasis, but you have to remember to carry
• 1:27:58
  it with you out of the situation.
• 1:28:01
  You know, you're driving down the road and somebody cuts you off and
• 1:28:04
  you're like, get the blank out of the way and you're, you nerve up.
• 1:28:09
  Well, I'll even tell you a better example.
• 1:28:11
  So I would had to get two crowns the other day and it really hurt in my
• 1:28:15
  mouth and I was like, really hurting.
• 1:28:18
  The Novocaine wasn't working or whatever they give you now.
• 1:28:21
  And I suddenly really started riding my horse on my head, not on my head,
• 1:28:27
  riding my horse on top of a hill that I loved to let him walk up to at
• 1:28:31
  his own accord with the loose rain.
• 1:28:33
  And he stands there and we look out over the valley and then when
• 1:28:36
  he is ready to move, he moves.
• 1:28:37
  And so I put myself in that place and I just completely enveloped and tried
• 1:28:43
  to remember the smell and just being on his back and it felt so much better.
• 1:28:49
  It felt, and I shifted.
• 1:28:51
  I shifted internally.
• 1:28:53
  Rupert Isaacson: Were you in your ventral vagal or were you in your dorsal.
• 1:29:01
  Well used
• 1:29:01
  Rebecca Bailey: to, I was sympathetic.
• 1:29:03
  I wanted to get the heck out of there.
• 1:29:04
  I wanted to run like hell.
• 1:29:06
  And then I started getting a little bit like in my head, like, this
• 1:29:09
  dentist doesn't know what he's doing.
• 1:29:11
  Why is it not going out?
• 1:29:12
  Later he explained to me about this particular tooth and why the nerve is hard
• 1:29:16
  to, to innerate to put the medicine in.
• 1:29:19
  But so I went into this cerebral thing, like, this guy
• 1:29:22
  doesn't know what he's doing.
• 1:29:22
  I gotta get outta here.
• 1:29:23
  And then I went to, oh my God, just, just sit here and be in it.
• 1:29:27
  It hurts.
• 1:29:27
  It hurts, it hurts.
• 1:29:28
  And just sort of a dal.
• 1:29:29
  And then I went, wait a second.
• 1:29:31
  What is the grounding piece in me?
• 1:29:33
  So that goes back to your question.
• 1:29:36
  If you allow yourself to look for like what Deb called, Deb Dana calls the
• 1:29:41
  glimmers, the beautiful things, the things that bring us back into our
• 1:29:44
  body, this oxytocin and vasopressin and somehow is released in our
• 1:29:49
  body, we can help our body restore.
• 1:29:52
  Now the problem is there are people that live in situations
• 1:29:54
  that are so dire, right?
• 1:29:56
  So dire.
• 1:29:57
  How do they do that?
• 1:29:59
  But the thing is they do, they find those moments of grounding.
• 1:30:05
  And you know, I talked to somebody who just came out of Ukraine who was
• 1:30:10
  talking the experience about being in the middle of this village or this
• 1:30:13
  town that was being bombed and just this thing that they held onto was the
• 1:30:18
  vision of it was the also a hillside.
• 1:30:22
  And that was the thing that brought them back in their body
• 1:30:25
  when they were out of the fear.
• 1:30:27
  So I think we can.
• 1:30:29
  Rupert Isaacson: But, so talk us through when you're doing that, whether it's in
• 1:30:32
  the dentist or they're in Ukraine, what's going on in the vagal pathways and system?
• 1:30:40
  What's the dance between sympathetic, parasympathetic, and so forth?
• 1:30:44
  Rebecca Bailey: So what I think, what I think and what, you know, I guess the
• 1:30:48
  research shows is that what would many things are happening, neurotransmitters,
• 1:30:53
  all of these pieces are happening.
• 1:30:55
  But if we go to the simple nervous system piece, the ventral vagal
• 1:31:00
  again, is overseeing everything going on up here, kind of helping
• 1:31:04
  you be present in some level.
• 1:31:08
  You're, you know, whatever, that's taking you the wrong way.
• 1:31:11
  But you're either going into the deep fear where the digestion
• 1:31:16
  rest and digest is going offline.
• 1:31:18
  Your stomach starts hurting, it doesn't feel good to sit still.
• 1:31:21
  You start no noticing stomach problems or you're sympathetic anxiety.
• 1:31:26
  You feel anxious, you wanna get out of there, you wanna fight.
• 1:31:29
  So that's also even something to think about when you're in an
• 1:31:32
  argument with a partner or a friend.
• 1:31:36
  Like if you can look at it like, my sympathetic is being activated right
• 1:31:39
  now, and by the way, I use activated not triggered because there's been
• 1:31:44
  so many mass shootings that the word triggered activates people in itself.
• 1:31:49
  So you're activated, you're in an argument instead of getting into.
• 1:31:53
  Up into your brain about it.
• 1:31:55
  You go to a part that says, I am just feeling fight or flight right now.
• 1:31:59
  I can't problem solve until I walk away and come back.
• 1:32:03
  Or the same thing, your stomach hurts so much or you can't
• 1:32:06
  sleep in all of these things.
• 1:32:07
  When we notice our stomach problems, when we notice digestion, when we notice all
• 1:32:12
  these things, it means that something is very much outta balance in our system.
• 1:32:17
  Our system needs good ventral, vagal oversight, but also all these
• 1:32:22
  other pieces to function well.
• 1:32:25
  Rupert Isaacson: Is there a shamanic ability within the vagal system?
• 1:32:33
  Rebecca Bailey: Tell me, tell me more what you mean.
• 1:32:36
  Rupert Isaacson: what I mean is almost like a metaphysical above, above the
• 1:32:39
  physical, ability within the relationship between these different parts of the
• 1:32:48
  vagal response to say, okay, things are really, really shit right now,
• 1:32:55
  or whatever is going on right now.
• 1:33:00
  I'm thinking about alter sets of consciousness too.
• 1:33:02
  I need now an alter set of consciousness and therefore there's a, is is there
• 1:33:09
  a wisdom in the bo Is that what shape shifting is basically, is there
• 1:33:12
  Rebecca Bailey: is that, go ahead.
• 1:33:15
  No, I'm jo, I'm nodding my head cuz yes, I really believe so when people.
• 1:33:20
  Yes, I really think so.
• 1:33:22
  I think that there is this, like, whether it's magical, mystical, woo,
• 1:33:27
  whatever it is, there's this way that your body, your nerve autonomic nervous
• 1:33:31
  system says, I gotta take over here.
• 1:33:35
  I gotta do this right now.
• 1:33:36
  And if your brain is arguing with it, it is just, it's so,
• 1:33:39
  such a simple way to look at it.
• 1:33:41
  But I just, you have, you give into whatever this thing and this mystical
• 1:33:45
  part of your body is and kind of let it guide you in the moment for survival.
• 1:33:52
  So when I have, you know, I was working with somebody the other
• 1:33:55
  day who had God years of sexual and abuse and trafficked as a child.
• 1:34:01
  And they've given, been given this message that they never fought back
• 1:34:07
  and they, this happened to them because they were the most likely to
• 1:34:13
  have, they just had this narrative that was really kind of sad to shame.
• 1:34:17
  And what I'm trying to help them see is that you survived your nervous system,
• 1:34:22
  knew that there was nothing you could do, like the boarding school with these crazy
• 1:34:26
  people that were trafficking them to your parents and your parents' best friends.
• 1:34:30
  Nothing you could do.
• 1:34:32
  And it was very interesting because then they were talking about some of the,
• 1:34:35
  restrictions that they went through.
• 1:34:37
  And I've heard this from so many.
• 1:34:40
  Right now, mostly women, some men where, you know, they'd have bags put over
• 1:34:44
  their heads, and this is an activator or alert, you know, situations happen
• 1:34:48
  where their breath was restricted while they were being sexually assaulted.
• 1:34:53
  And what their body did was just go into this fear shutdown.
• 1:34:57
  Their brain said, I can't deal with this.
• 1:34:59
  That's what I think.
• 1:35:00
  I, I can't, if I sit here, I'm gonna die of fear.
• 1:35:03
  I've just gotta check out.
• 1:35:05
  And to me, I think that's like a superpower.
• 1:35:08
  I don't know.
• 1:35:08
  I have always said to people, and I've been told before I worked with these
• 1:35:13
  people, I probably would've fought like a cat and gotten myself killed.
• 1:35:18
  But what, anytime I've said that, everybody says, you don't
• 1:35:21
  know until it happens to you.
• 1:35:22
  You just don't know.
• 1:35:23
  And may it never happen to me like that.
• 1:35:27
  Rupert Isaacson: Yeah.
• 1:35:27
  It might be, it might be context specific.
• 1:35:30
  So maybe the same person, let's say for example, you're a warrior,
• 1:35:36
  male or female, and you access an altered set of consciousness
• 1:35:41
  where you, you can preserve, yep.
• 1:35:44
  Rip off all your clothes, run into the blades, they'll bounce off you because
• 1:35:48
  you are in that metaphysical state.
• 1:35:50
  At that point, then perhaps you get failed because it wears off.
• 1:35:57
  That super adrenaline thing, you get taken prisoner and then a whole
• 1:36:02
  other set of responses kick in.
• 1:36:05
  But are they actually the same response?
• 1:36:08
  Is it.
• 1:36:09
  The one is, is, is, is, appropriate to fight.
• 1:36:13
  So that's what you use at that particular one, and the other one
• 1:36:16
  is appropriate to appeasement.
• 1:36:18
  So you use that one at that time.
• 1:36:20
  And if you could dance between those two, presumably you
• 1:36:24
  might survive that campaign.
• 1:36:27
  Yep.
• 1:36:27
  Take that wisdom home with you and use it for the general, wisdom of the community.
• 1:36:36
  Say, well, yes, I, I, I was both a fighter and an appa.
• 1:36:40
  It's all about the context.
• 1:36:43
  One could imagine surely that it's not just purely personality driven,
• 1:36:48
  it must also be context driven, right?
• 1:36:50
  Rebecca Bailey: Context driven and maybe temperament in some levels, or,
• 1:36:54
  you know, the, the, if you are highly prone to being super reactive, maybe
• 1:37:01
  it's harder or highly prone to, high sensei to sounds and all of that.
• 1:37:07
  Your ability to regulate under that term, under those conditions might be harder.
• 1:37:11
  You know, I, I think it, it's, it's all it is.
• 1:37:14
  It's dependent on context, dependent on temperament,
• 1:37:18
  maybe dependent on opportunity.
• 1:37:20
  When I first started this crazy, like thinking about all this stuff, I was
• 1:37:24
  really into the learned helplessness model, and that was in their early
• 1:37:28
  nineties, that Martin Seligman, who discredited himself by being part of the,
• 1:37:33
  Committee that helped with Guantanamo Bay for, which was like amazing and really sad
• 1:37:38
  because he's also the daddy of optimism.
• 1:37:40
  Very interesting.
• 1:37:42
  So early on I was into his theory of learned helplessness where
• 1:37:46
  dogs give up when in a maze and they just lay down and give up.
• 1:37:51
  And that was how I would explain many of these people that I was working with.
• 1:37:55
  This would be like 80, early nineties until I started really talking to
• 1:38:01
  them and I'd be like, wait a second.
• 1:38:03
  You were no, no way.
• 1:38:04
  You were helpless, right?
• 1:38:06
  This, you were as far from helpless as anybody I've ever heard.
• 1:38:09
  You were in a helpless situation, but you prevailed through your
• 1:38:13
  ability to manage it in your body.
• 1:38:16
  And so that's kind of sort of really shifting things for me.
• 1:38:19
  And I think horses, I mean, I think horses are, I do think horses, and this
• 1:38:23
  is another hole, but I just, I think horses in some ways are appeasers too
• 1:38:28
  because, you know, and I do, I actually, I love to ride and I love my horses.
• 1:38:33
  I love being around them on the ground next to them, watching them, whatever.
• 1:38:37
  I actually have a couple that really do like to be ridden.
• 1:38:39
  They really do.
• 1:38:40
  I mean, it's no question.
• 1:38:41
  They're, you know, they, but I still think there's an appeasement
• 1:38:44
  piece that happens with them.
• 1:38:46
  You know, that they're in a situation that there's really no,
• 1:38:50
  there's really no escape from it.
• 1:38:52
  But if you ride beautifully, incorrectly and try not to yank on their mouth and
• 1:38:57
  hit them in the sides and all these things that we humans sometimes will do,
• 1:39:01
  then there can be a mutual connection.
• 1:39:04
  But it takes a lot of work.
• 1:39:06
  Rupert Isaacson: But isn't that the same as every, every relationship?
• 1:39:08
  I mean, I'm just thinking about, you know, one's relationships in
• 1:39:11
  a marriage or one's relationships as child to parent or whatever.
• 1:39:14
  Appeasement is part of the puzzle every, every day.
• 1:39:20
  It's like there's, there's always compromises being
• 1:39:23
  made and you let that one go.
• 1:39:26
  And the more you let go, actually the smoother things go.
• 1:39:30
  Even if you're, it's not fair, but okay.
• 1:39:32
  Right, right.
• 1:39:33
  It's not that important, but one could argue that that's appeasement.
• 1:39:36
  Right?
• 1:39:36
  I mean, I, I remember hearing people talking about masking as if it's a
• 1:39:40
  bad thing and thinking, well, hold on.
• 1:39:41
  That's a survival skill, right?
• 1:39:43
  I mean, if you, if you were hunting a deer and you put on the garb of the deer
• 1:39:47
  with the atlas that's masking so that you can mask yourself as the deer or a
• 1:39:51
  masked ball where you take on it or, or, or role play or that's, that's, again,
• 1:39:57
  shamanic or, you know, shape shifting.
• 1:39:59
  Surely these things aren't all positive or all negative.
• 1:40:01
  Aren't aren't, aren't they, aren't they simply the dance that we do?
• 1:40:08
  Yeah.
• 1:40:09
  Through human relationship to and, and inter species relationship,
• 1:40:14
  I guess, to try to get the best outcome in a given moment.
• 1:40:23
  I mean,
• 1:40:24
  Rebecca Bailey: yeah, I think so.
• 1:40:25
  I don't, the one that I have issue with is fawning because in the
• 1:40:30
  animal kingdom when an animal fawns at a predator, they get killed.
• 1:40:35
  And so fawning has sort of taken legs as a word that I really, I, I bristle at.
• 1:40:41
  It's come outta my mouth.
• 1:40:43
  I know it has, but I bristled because it really is a, it's also number one,
• 1:40:48
  it's a conscious thought where I don't think appeasement is a conscious thought.
• 1:40:52
  And number two, it can.
• 1:40:55
  Serve to agitate an aggressor.
• 1:40:57
  And number three, if we start using it too much, I hate to think in our
• 1:41:02
  courtrooms when the defense attorney says, but didn't you fawn, if we start
• 1:41:07
  giving it air, it really, it concerns me cuz I think, I think right now it's
• 1:41:12
  a very hip word to use and I'm always getting myself in trouble by saying,
• 1:41:16
  look, can we come up with a better word?
• 1:41:18
  Because, veterans in, you know, prisoner of wars didn't fawn over
• 1:41:24
  their aggressors and we would never say that, but it's interesting.
• 1:41:28
  Anyways, Rupert, I, it,
• 1:41:30
  Rupert Isaacson: it's, well, it's interesting the word fawn because, we
• 1:41:32
  talk, you know, foreign, what is it?
• 1:41:34
  A baby deer, right?
• 1:41:36
  Right.
• 1:41:36
  And, a baby deer.
• 1:41:37
  What does a baby deer do?
• 1:41:38
  It lies down.
• 1:41:40
  Yep.
• 1:41:41
  And it hopes that, finds it right.
• 1:41:43
  That's all it does.
• 1:41:45
  It doesn't approach a predator and go, Hey, do you want a beer?
• 1:41:49
  You know?
• 1:41:49
  Right.
• 1:41:51
  So why do we use that word?
• 1:41:53
  Rebecca Bailey: Well, it's become, it became recently in sort of the
• 1:41:57
  trauma community, and I've had some legitimate, discussions where some
• 1:42:01
  people have said, look, in my society as a woman, that's the only power
• 1:42:05
  I'm allowed is toan over the man.
• 1:42:08
  And, and there's some credence.
• 1:42:10
  But how it's different than appeasement is, it's a conscious play I see.
• 1:42:15
  And where appeasement is unconscious, it's this unconscious process
• 1:42:18
  you can't conc consciously.
• 1:42:21
  And I think about that and I think, is that really true?
• 1:42:23
  Will, is it all black and white?
• 1:42:24
  No.
• 1:42:25
  my gosh.
• 1:42:26
  I, I, I, I just, the word is so offensive to my nervous system.
• 1:42:30
  My new thing is how does that feel on my nervous system when I say a word?
• 1:42:35
  And just because I feel it doesn't mean you're not gonna have a hundred people
• 1:42:39
  sending you notes saying, you know, I love that word, blah, blah, blah.
• 1:42:42
  Okay.
• 1:42:43
  You know, that's, that's okay too.
• 1:42:44
  It's just a word that I have.
• 1:42:46
  As much as Stockholm Syndrome really disturbed me, I get
• 1:42:51
  afraid that that's gonna be memorialized in the literature and.
• 1:42:55
  I just, I don't wanna go backwards in the way we help people understand
• 1:43:00
  their systems and the way that we, you know, I wanna go forward, which
• 1:43:04
  I think we have an opportunity too.
• 1:43:07
  People like you out there, people like all these other great people talking
• 1:43:10
  about horses is having their own nervous system and all these things, like,
• 1:43:15
  we're moving in the right direction.
• 1:43:16
  Let's just not fall back with words like fawning.
• 1:43:19
  Rupert Isaacson: Okay.
• 1:43:19
  And in my diet.
• 1:43:21
  Well, right.
• 1:43:21
  No, that, and that brings me to the next, the question, which is the future.
• 1:43:27
  what's your vision for the Equine Polyvagal Institute?
• 1:43:31
  What, what do you want to achieve with this?
• 1:43:34
  In a perfect world,
• 1:43:35
  Rebecca Bailey: we are really looking for and hoping to have people taking
• 1:43:41
  the courses and understanding it and taking it into their community
• 1:43:46
  and creating their programs.
• 1:43:48
  So we have things like polyvagal ponies that we work with where it's an eight
• 1:43:53
  session, I hate to say about protocol designed to help people work with their
• 1:43:58
  nervous system before they have to testify in court or things like that.
• 1:44:02
  Oh.
• 1:44:03
  So it's not a therapeutic.
• 1:44:04
  So there's all these different things, programs that we're developing
• 1:44:07
  in the hopes that people bring 'em into their community to help
• 1:44:10
  people with their nervous system and regulate their nervous system.
• 1:44:13
  We're also developing videos that people can use in their offices, in areas
• 1:44:20
  where they can't have access to a horse.
• 1:44:22
  To sort of help them learn some of the lessons we all
• 1:44:26
  have by being with the horses.
• 1:44:28
  So we're just hoping we grow, we're hoping we teach people to play and have fun.
• 1:44:33
  what doesn't maybe come through for me today is I am a big goof, and
• 1:44:37
  maybe it did, but I like to laugh.
• 1:44:39
  I like to play.
• 1:44:40
  I love humor.
• 1:44:41
  And, just hoping to maybe shine a different perspective on self-awareness
• 1:44:48
  and therapeutic interventions.
• 1:44:50
  So it's, it's a very love.
• 1:44:51
  If someone, if someone
• 1:44:52
  Rupert Isaacson: was, working in the field of equine assisted interventions,
• 1:44:55
  and obviously many of the people listening are, what do you feel is
• 1:44:59
  the best value that they could get from interaction with the Equine
• 1:45:08
  Polyvagal Institute in whatever way?
• 1:45:10
  What, what, what, what's, I think we
• 1:45:12
  Rebecca Bailey: go on our website and check it out and, you know,
• 1:45:14
  there's so many new people out there.
• 1:45:16
  I got involved with this stuff, as I said in the early nineties.
• 1:45:20
  Polyvagal didn't come to fruition until about 2012.
• 1:45:24
  just the concept.
• 1:45:26
  Check into, go to the Polyvagal Equine Institute, see what we're
• 1:45:29
  doing, see if it resonates.
• 1:45:30
  Find your herd with, within this wonderful field of equine therapy or whatever
• 1:45:37
  we're gonna call it, it's building.
• 1:45:39
  Find your people.
• 1:45:40
  And within that, so if you come to us and you're like, I really like this.
• 1:45:43
  I wanna take the fundamentals class, this is really cool.
• 1:45:46
  I wanna go do one of the trainings.
• 1:45:48
  Do it.
• 1:45:49
  I'm doing a training over in, somewhere in Belgium and in France doing Arizona,
• 1:45:56
  hopefully Costa Rica, California.
• 1:45:58
  So we're taking it to different places.
• 1:46:01
  Check it out, see what you think.
• 1:46:02
  Maybe you don't like it.
• 1:46:03
  Maybe you're, you know, into arches or somebody else.
• 1:46:06
  we're only interested in people coming that really wanna learn, learn, just
• 1:46:13
  learn from our perspective right now and bring their perspective.
• 1:46:17
  You know, sometimes you have people that wander in and they're just in
• 1:46:20
  a different mindset and don't come.
• 1:46:22
  If it doesn't resonate, that sounds really terrible.
• 1:46:26
  But, you know, I, I am who I am.
• 1:46:29
  I'm 62 years old and I'm only more me than I've ever been.
• 1:46:33
  And I continue to be more me than ever before.
• 1:46:35
  And so, yeah,
• 1:46:37
  Rupert Isaacson: but let's, that's me.
• 1:46:37
  Okay.
• 1:46:38
  I'm doing horse boy stuff, so I'm, I'm working with the vagal nerve,
• 1:46:41
  you know, so I'm trying to induce oxytocin, stradling up the vagal nerve.
• 1:46:45
  It's touching every organ we're getting, hopefully we're, you know,
• 1:46:48
  telling the amygdala, Hey, you don't need to create that cortisol.
• 1:46:53
  Let's get that prefrontal cortex, go and get it.
• 1:46:55
  So I'm saying, well, hey, look, I'm, I'm working here with the
• 1:46:58
  vagal nerve, but, but what can I, how can I improve my practice?
• 1:47:02
  How can I, what can I learn?
• 1:47:04
  What can I,
• 1:47:05
  Rebecca Bailey: I want you to come to our five day in August when you come to
• 1:47:08
  Sonoma, California and you come visit your dear friend over at Square Pegs.
• 1:47:12
  We have a five day that you're
• 1:47:15
  Rupert Isaacson: Joel Dunlap.
• 1:47:15
  By the way, that is everybody.
• 1:47:17
  If you haven't listened to her podcast, she's amazing.
• 1:47:20
  Gotta listen to Joel Dun that he's the best people on the planet.
• 1:47:23
  Well, yes.
• 1:47:24
  What would I, what would me and Joel do if we came to you to, you would,
• 1:47:28
  Rebecca Bailey: you would come to our, our five day, the three days at
• 1:47:33
  level one and then level two, and you would learn about how we work with the
• 1:47:39
  polyvagal, principles with the horses.
• 1:47:42
  And it's on the ground.
• 1:47:44
  You join a group of people that are somewhat like-minded, who really wanna
• 1:47:47
  understand how to incorporate another level of their own self-awareness
• 1:47:52
  and connection to the work.
• 1:47:54
  You could also go online and watch our fundamentals class, and understand a
• 1:48:00
  little bit more of the fundamentals.
• 1:48:01
  But honestly, the best thing to do is come and participate in the class.
• 1:48:05
  And what we really wanna do, if you're really asking, is have some
• 1:48:09
  satellite programs that are doing it.
• 1:48:11
  And very much kind of like what you've done with your horse boy
• 1:48:13
  is people that really understand.
• 1:48:15
  It's very interesting though, Rupert, that you and I.
• 1:48:18
  Again, have run in the same herds without meeting people.
• 1:48:21
  And people that mean the most in my life, like joy from Red Barn and new
• 1:48:27
  friend of mine, Joelle, are very dear friends of yours and very dear friends
• 1:48:30
  of mine, which tells me we're all in the same sphere in a lot of ways.
• 1:48:35
  So I challenge you come for five days with us.
• 1:48:37
  We
• 1:48:38
  Rupert Isaacson: invite, I, I'd love to, I guess what I'm driving at, and I,
• 1:48:41
  I'm sure I'll actually is, is what do you think, I or someone else in my shoes
• 1:48:48
  could take away to their practice that okay, we get to your five days we go away.
• 1:48:55
  Right?
• 1:48:55
  Right.
• 1:48:55
  What, what, what, what?
• 1:48:57
  How do we improve our practice
• 1:48:58
  Rebecca Bailey: with this?
• 1:48:59
  You get outta your head, you get outta your head, you get
• 1:49:02
  outta the amygdala stuff.
• 1:49:03
  You get out of all of that.
• 1:49:04
  And even you have done that a little bit because that's your orientation, right?
• 1:49:07
  Just like if I come to one of your things, I'm going to get something different.
• 1:49:11
  Mm-hmm.
• 1:49:11
  But you're gonna really get outta your head back into your body in a way that
• 1:49:15
  you probably have naturally been doing all these years anyways, and beginning to
• 1:49:19
  understand that piece and the nuance of the interaction of the nervous systems.
• 1:49:24
  And you're gonna be stopped from going back up into the
• 1:49:27
  medella and all of that piece.
• 1:49:28
  You're gonna be encouraged to go back into this piece and sort of re.
• 1:49:34
  Reposition your perspective, and you may walk away saying, I got it, I got it.
• 1:49:40
  I already knew all this.
• 1:49:41
  That Then we have a home run because we want you to be
• 1:49:44
  imperative of who you already are.
• 1:49:47
  Rupert Isaacson: I think, I think you, you answered my question with that,
• 1:49:49
  phrase, understand the nuances, the interactions of the nervous systems.
• 1:49:57
  Yeah.
• 1:49:57
  Yeah.
• 1:49:57
  That, that, that's for me, that piece of the puzzle.
• 1:50:00
  So when, when I'm going around, for example, like you, I'm, I'm,
• 1:50:04
  I'm doing trainings and workshops in different places, and people
• 1:50:08
  come and we say, look, we're not telling you to do anything different.
• 1:50:13
  In fact, we know that you're doing an amazing job wherever you are.
• 1:50:17
  Here are simply a series of a set of tools.
• 1:50:20
  which if you add them to your already awesome thing,
• 1:50:25
  simply, develops it further.
• 1:50:27
  That's all.
• 1:50:27
  But we, we know that if you never interacted with us at
• 1:50:30
  all, you'd go on being awesome.
• 1:50:31
  It's just Right.
• 1:50:32
  I love that.
• 1:50:32
  Real curious.
• 1:50:33
  But what I, what I love about what you just said, that is, and that
• 1:50:36
  would be the tempting thing for me, is like, Ooh, actually, yeah.
• 1:50:39
  Cuz I, I do work with the nervous system.
• 1:50:42
  I'm deeply interested in the nervous system, so anyone who can shine some
• 1:50:45
  light for me on further nuances.
• 1:50:48
  I mean, because that for me is a, is a series of tools that I know I'm
• 1:50:54
  gonna be able to use effectively.
• 1:50:56
  Not just with the, the clients that I'm working with, but also
• 1:50:59
  with myself, like as a user manual.
• 1:51:01
  Also my, my interactions with my own horses in my sport horse and dressage
• 1:51:06
  life, not just in my equine assisted life, nuances of the interaction
• 1:51:12
  to the different nervous systems.
• 1:51:13
  I can't imagine that any of us could not benefit from that.
• 1:51:17
  Right.
• 1:51:19
  Rebecca Bailey: I, and I love when people come and we learn too, and we
• 1:51:22
  get a lot of feedback, which I'm very proud of where people say, this is
• 1:51:26
  one of the very few places that I feel like I can bring my expertise too.
• 1:51:30
  And, and you know what I, I mean, to me that's like so important.
• 1:51:34
  Yeah.
• 1:51:34
  And yes, we do have a personal and professional awareness,
• 1:51:37
  one that we're also doing a two days, which is really fun.
• 1:51:40
  People that maybe don't ever wanna do equine work, they just
• 1:51:43
  wanna learn more about themselves.
• 1:51:45
  So, the most exciting thing though is that I'm connecting with amazing,
• 1:51:49
  incredible people that I've always meant to connect with, but never did before.
• 1:51:53
  And I'm so honored you had me on this
• 1:51:56
  Rupert Isaacson: podcast.
• 1:51:57
  It's a no-brainer.
• 1:51:58
  It's a no-brainer.
• 1:51:59
  I mean, I, I heard about what you're doing.
• 1:52:00
  It's like, well, obviously everyone needs to know about this.
• 1:52:02
  I mean, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's advancing the field.
• 1:52:07
  , some questions, you mentioned a couple of people that I think
• 1:52:09
  people will be curious about.
• 1:52:12
  You mentioned Deb Dana.
• 1:52:14
  Can you tell us a little bit about Deb Dana and where people could
• 1:52:17
  find out about her and what insights
• 1:52:22
  she
• 1:52:22
  Rebecca Bailey: can give?
• 1:52:24
  So Deb Dana is amazing in that she is a very close friend of Dr.
• 1:52:29
  Porges and she sort of takes Porges work and makes it more, understanding to lots
• 1:52:37
  of people and all you have to do, yeah, all you have to do is put in Deb Day and
• 1:52:42
  Ann, you'll see all, all over the place.
• 1:52:44
  I do notice, do know that they are going to be in, London at some master
• 1:52:51
  series in, the end of August and Porges will be there with Deb and they're
• 1:52:58
  just really wonderful to listen to.
• 1:53:00
  I think Bessel will be there, Steven Levine.
• 1:53:02
  So they're all, some of these guys are part of the old school that
• 1:53:07
  have brought so much to the field and Deb is very refreshing in that
• 1:53:11
  she has just a different style.
• 1:53:14
  She does very office-based work, but very similar to something we do is like,
• 1:53:19
  do you want me to stand here or here?
• 1:53:21
  Where is it the most comfortable in your nervous system?
• 1:53:23
  She does that work in her office.
• 1:53:26
  So she has a book called Anchored.
• 1:53:27
  She has a, she just has amazing resources, so just put her in and
• 1:53:31
  you'll get more information than.
• 1:53:34
  Rupert Isaacson: So anchored some someone's driving around and
• 1:53:37
  they might want to listen to an audiobook anchored by Deb Dana, you
• 1:53:40
  Rebecca Bailey: mentioned it's good if her voice is so soothing though.
• 1:53:43
  She can also put you to, I mean, I, I've listened to her on planes and
• 1:53:46
  her voice is very much like this and so I'm not sure I drive around.
• 1:53:51
  I might sit and listen,
• 1:53:52
  Rupert Isaacson: so, so don't operate heavy machinery.
• 1:53:54
  Okay.
• 1:53:55
  you mentioned another but Power of the Herd,
• 1:53:58
  Rebecca Bailey: that's Linda Kahani and Linda Kahan is a good friend of mine
• 1:54:01
  and Des opponent Quest International.
• 1:54:04
  She and I met and worked together many years ago.
• 1:54:08
  We started something called Connection Focus Therapy, which is has grains
• 1:54:13
  of polyvagal very much in it.
• 1:54:14
  And she wrote a really neat book called The Power of the Herd.
• 1:54:18
  She's written, she also wrote the Dow of Equus and all sorts
• 1:54:20
  of books that people know.
• 1:54:22
  the power of the herd.
• 1:54:23
  I actually happen to like, because we use it with a polyvagal twist of like
• 1:54:29
  looking at leadership characteristics.
• 1:54:31
  So it's another one Power of the Herd's.
• 1:54:33
  Really good.
• 1:54:34
  five roles of the master herd.
• 1:54:35
  She's written a lot of great stuff and she's, she's really interesting.
• 1:54:40
  Rupert Isaacson: This, this brings me to another thing which you said right at the
• 1:54:42
  beginning of of, of this conversation, you talked about, study that had been
• 1:54:47
  done, with women who were used to working with horses and other animals and it
• 1:54:54
  gave them that somehow measurably.
• 1:54:57
  This, leadership quality.
• 1:55:00
  Yep.
• 1:55:01
  Would you say that what you guys are doing at Equine Polyvagal
• 1:55:07
  Institute might help people access that kind of leadership quality?
• 1:55:12
  I
• 1:55:13
  Rebecca Bailey: think so.
• 1:55:13
  You know, I think about, I have a horse now and I've ridden my whole life.
• 1:55:17
  I'm not, I'm an accomplished rider, but not a horse.
• 1:55:21
  Professional horses kind of spit tobacco at me and say,
• 1:55:24
  prove it before they listen.
• 1:55:26
  But I've had all sorts of wonderful dressage horses, et cetera.
• 1:55:29
  And I recently got a horse about two years ago who was a recovered
• 1:55:34
  bucking horse, believe it or not.
• 1:55:36
  Okay.
• 1:55:36
  And I fell in love with his look and just fell in love with him.
• 1:55:40
  And if you ask him for the first year, Rupert, we could only go forward
• 1:55:46
  two or three steps before he'd buck.
• 1:55:48
  Okay.
• 1:55:48
  And everybody was like, he's got, you know, health problems.
• 1:55:51
  And the vet would say no in NF health problems, it's taken me two years.
• 1:55:57
  He's the horse that I now think of when I ride up on the hill.
• 1:56:00
  I had to learn to completely shift my mindset to the power of connection.
• 1:56:06
  And so when I ride him, the only thing I'm allowed to do is think 1, 2, 1, 2, 1, 2.
• 1:56:13
  I have to be a hundred percent with him, a hundred percent with him.
• 1:56:17
  And he would take me to the moon if he could.
• 1:56:20
  Period
• 1:56:21
  Rupert Isaacson: is the power of connection, courage.
• 1:56:24
  Rebecca Bailey: I think it's, no, I think it's, curiosity.
• 1:56:29
  I had to spend, I had to spend a whole year trying to be curious
• 1:56:33
  about what would help this guy get out of his activated state.
• 1:56:39
  How
• 1:56:39
  Rupert Isaacson: did you, how did you override your parasympathetic
• 1:56:43
  fear of being bucked off?
• 1:56:44
  Rebecca Bailey: Oh, I just had to keep reminding myself that I
• 1:56:47
  wasn't about to go on a horse show.
• 1:56:49
  I had to just keep, I had to keep reminding myself that I
• 1:56:52
  was there for the connection.
• 1:56:53
  And I over and over and over, and my dear friend Margie, who helped start the
• 1:56:59
  Polyvagal Institute with me, one of the other founders, she said, you know, I,
• 1:57:03
  I've ridden for, with her for 43 years.
• 1:57:05
  I used to show with her and she said, oh my God, I've waited for 40 years for
• 1:57:09
  you to find this horse, you know, and he is put together with tobacco, you know,
• 1:57:14
  with gum, and, you know, and I've had like Hannah variance and for caterers
• 1:57:19
  and, you know, third level dressage.
• 1:57:22
  And, but she's like, he got, he, you got it.
• 1:57:25
  And it's, it's not courage, because courage implies
• 1:57:29
  for me, dominance with him.
• 1:57:31
  It's just, listen, listen,
• 1:57:33
  Rupert Isaacson: be curious.
• 1:57:33
  What I mean by courage though, is the courage to get on the back of
• 1:57:36
  a horse that, you know is likely to buck and access that curiosity.
• 1:57:42
  But you know, what's,
• 1:57:43
  Rebecca Bailey: how is that not courage?
• 1:57:45
  Well, it's the, it's the match of nervous system because think
• 1:57:48
  of Freia, the one that bucks.
• 1:57:50
  Mm-hmm.
• 1:57:51
  Two with the turkeys.
• 1:57:52
  I got no courage with that one.
• 1:57:53
  But my nervous system gets too activated by her for whatever reason where summit
• 1:57:59
  can do the same thing, not quite as big.
• 1:58:02
  And my nervous system knows for some reason how to calm down.
• 1:58:07
  So it's a match of nervous system.
• 1:58:08
  Maybe it's courage.
• 1:58:09
  I don't know.
• 1:58:10
  I, I is
• 1:58:11
  Rupert Isaacson: a match of nervous systems, what we call chemistry,
• 1:58:14
  Rebecca Bailey: maybe.
• 1:58:15
  Yeah, maybe.
• 1:58:17
  Or maybe attunement.
• 1:58:18
  How about that?
• 1:58:18
  That's a better word.
• 1:58:20
  Attunement being really attuned each
• 1:58:21
  Rupert Isaacson: other.
• 1:58:22
  Explain, explain what you mean by attunement.
• 1:58:24
  That's
• 1:58:24
  Rebecca Bailey: interesting.
• 1:58:24
  So attunement goes way back to psychodynamic psychoanalytical stuff
• 1:58:28
  where, you know, your ability to really sense the other person and the
• 1:58:31
  other, it's co-regulation at its best.
• 1:58:33
  Okay.
• 1:58:33
  attunement is what we used to try to teach people.
• 1:58:37
  In the th in graduate schools.
• 1:58:39
  And yet it was often a one-way attunement.
• 1:58:41
  Like you never expected your client to be in tuned with you.
• 1:58:44
  And I always was like, wait a second, I'm in the room too.
• 1:58:47
  How come I'm not allowed to care?
• 1:58:50
  You know?
• 1:58:50
  And so I gave, some of my, and that was the time I was hanging
• 1:58:54
  around with the Grateful Dead.
• 1:58:55
  I was doing my grad school work.
• 1:58:57
  And so I gave them a run for their money.
• 1:58:59
  I'd be like, that makes no sense.
• 1:59:02
  And honestly, Rupert, when I graduated True story, the dean of student pulled
• 1:59:06
  me aside and said, you're one of the few students we haven't ruined.
• 1:59:10
  And you know what I said?
• 1:59:11
  I said, cuz I didn't understand a damn thing.
• 1:59:13
  You people were talking about it.
• 1:59:14
  And it's true.
• 1:59:15
  I didn't understand what they meant with this thing of like, blank screen.
• 1:59:20
  It's like, what?
• 1:59:21
  What is that?
• 1:59:22
  Yeah.
• 1:59:22
  You know, I don't know what that means.
• 1:59:24
  What do you mean blank screen with the client?
• 1:59:26
  I'm in there too.
• 1:59:27
  We're in a relationship.
• 1:59:28
  Rupert Isaacson: Yeah.
• 1:59:29
  Yeah.
• 1:59:29
  Really it it dealing with the world as it is, as it comes to you, I guess.
• 1:59:32
  Yes.
• 1:59:34
  Yes.
• 1:59:35
  We talked about other people's books.
• 1:59:37
  you have books.
• 1:59:38
  Tell us about your books.
• 1:59:39
  I,
• 1:59:40
  Rebecca Bailey: you know, I have one book and I say it's sort of apologetic.
• 1:59:43
  I, I self co, I self-publish Equine Connection and polyvagal principles
• 1:59:47
  that I wrote during, COVID.
• 1:59:50
  It's basically just the beginning of a throw down of the story of this work.
• 1:59:54
  It's not, it's not it yet.
• 1:59:56
  And I'm working on the it.
• 1:59:57
  I also have one Save Kids Smart Parents.
• 2:00:00
  It was as Simon and Schuster published book.
• 2:00:03
  it, it's, it was actually quite good, but it's a little bit hard to find.
• 2:00:06
  And then I also have, the thing I'm really proud of is a
• 2:00:09
  paper with Deb Dana and a Dr.
• 2:00:11
  Davis on Polyvagal in the courtroom looking at about how polyvagal
• 2:00:15
  principles and high conflict divorce, how important it is that everybody,
• 2:00:19
  attorneys and judges all understand the importance of regulation.
• 2:00:23
  And then I have this one I wrote with Porges on Appeasement,
• 2:00:26
  which is, sub published in the British Journal of Traumatology.
• 2:00:30
  So as a dyslexic who rambles a lot, I'm very proud of the academic papers,
• 2:00:36
  although I would rather go get two more crowns without Novocaine than
• 2:00:41
  continue to write the academic papers.
• 2:00:43
  But right now I'm working on another polyvagal paper.
• 2:00:46
  I'm in another polyvagal book.
• 2:00:48
  and I also have a crazy book that I'm thinking that, I won't tell you
• 2:00:51
  what it is until it's done, but I'll give you a hint when we're not on the
• 2:00:55
  Rupert Isaacson: podcast.
• 2:00:56
  I've got one of those too.
• 2:00:57
  do you?
• 2:00:58
  Yeah, yeah.
• 2:00:58
  Which I've been saying.
• 2:00:59
  I'm, I'm gonna finish next year for about the last 15 years.
• 2:01:03
  probably more like 20, but I will finish it.
• 2:01:05
  Rebecca Bailey: But, alright, well, we'll trade and then we'll check in with
• 2:01:08
  each other about it because Okay, good.
• 2:01:11
  I like it.
• 2:01:12
  Rupert Isaacson: Okay.
• 2:01:12
  And then, so finally, how do people contact you
• 2:01:16
  Rebecca Bailey: through the, polyvagal Equine Institute?
• 2:01:19
  Ww polyvagal equine institute.com, office at Polyvagal Equine Institute?
• 2:01:24
  I think it's also important to know that JC Dugard, who was
• 2:01:29
  abducted at 11 and returned after, gosh, 18 years with two children.
• 2:01:35
  I originally met her when she was deposited literally in my program.
• 2:01:39
  She also wrote a really interesting and yet very activating
• 2:01:44
  book called The Stolen Life.
• 2:01:46
  And the second half of the book is very much about the type of equine
• 2:01:51
  work that we were doing at the time.
• 2:01:53
  she was, you know, people say, oh my gosh, this was your
• 2:01:56
  client and now you're working.
• 2:01:57
  What happened after three years?
• 2:01:59
  She said, I do not want to go forward being known as the
• 2:02:02
  little girl that was abducted.
• 2:02:03
  Can you help me make my story mean something?
• 2:02:07
  So we went into consult for three months and worked it out and, have gone
• 2:02:11
  forward to help create the Polyvagal Equine Institute so that people can
• 2:02:14
  have some of the same experience.
• 2:02:16
  So her book A Stolen Life, is also wonderful.
• 2:02:20
  Margie also has a book called, notes from the Barn, which is really sweet.
• 2:02:23
  You'd really like it.
• 2:02:24
  Rupert too.
• 2:02:25
  So,
• 2:02:26
  Rupert Isaacson: so Jason, A Stolen Life.
• 2:02:29
  Margie McDonald.
• 2:02:30
  Notes.
• 2:02:30
  Notes for the phone.
• 2:02:32
  Rebecca Bailey: Okay.
• 2:02:32
  Yeah.
• 2:02:33
  And Polyvagal Equ Polyvagal Principles.
• 2:02:35
  Equine Connections or Safe Kids.
• 2:02:37
  Smart Parents.
• 2:02:38
  Rupert Isaacson: Polyvagal Principles.
• 2:02:40
  Equine connections.
• 2:02:41
  And safe kids.
• 2:02:42
  Smart parents.
• 2:02:44
  Okay.
• 2:02:44
  They can go on Amazon and find these.
• 2:02:46
  Yep.
• 2:02:47
  Okay.
• 2:02:47
  Yep.
• 2:02:48
  Okay.
• 2:02:49
  Listeners, you have your reading list.
• 2:02:51
  and one more time, give people the URL they might have been driving.
• 2:02:55
  They might need to pull off and write it.
• 2:02:56
  Give us the url, give us your email.
• 2:02:59
  Rebecca Bailey: How can they contact you?
• 2:02:59
  It's ww polyvagal equine institute.com and it's office at Polyvagal Equine Institute.
• 2:03:07
  And if you want something to get directly to me, just say Rebecca or aka a Dr.
• 2:03:12
  B and I will get it.
• 2:03:14
  Super.
• 2:03:16
  Rupert Isaacson: Alright.
• 2:03:17
  All right.
• 2:03:17
  I can't wait to come check it out.
• 2:03:19
  Yeah.
• 2:03:20
  Good.
• 2:03:20
  Yay.
• 2:03:20
  I will be in California.
• 2:03:22
  I'm, I'm, you know, I'm there every, at least once a year, sometimes twice.
• 2:03:27
  so Can I swing
• 2:03:29
  Rebecca Bailey: by you better?
• 2:03:31
  You guys spoke better and, maybe we can get joy back
• 2:03:34
  Rupert Isaacson: out here.
• 2:03:35
  Would love that.
• 2:03:36
  Yeah.
• 2:03:36
  Joy.
• 2:03:36
  Joy.
• 2:03:37
  Yeah.
• 2:03:37
  For those of you who might have missed Joy O'Neill's, podcast that she did
• 2:03:41
  with us, that she runs Red Barn in Alabama, one of the great unsung
• 2:03:44
  heroes of the equine assisted world.
• 2:03:47
  Check her
• 2:03:48
  Rebecca Bailey: out.
• 2:03:49
  She really is.
• 2:03:50
  You know, Rupert, after my house burned down, my grandmother
• 2:03:53
  was a children's author and I'd only mentioned it once to Joy.
• 2:03:58
  She went on and found every one of my grandmother's books and sent them to me.
• 2:04:02
  Yeah.
• 2:04:02
  Within six weeks of my house burning down, she, we call, we all call her mama Joy.
• 2:04:07
  And when you meet her, you understand.
• 2:04:09
  And she is absolutely, she and her daughter are crazy and crazy amazing.
• 2:04:13
  So they're,
• 2:04:14
  Rupert Isaacson: they're, they're, they're, and you know, as, as Jo Joy
• 2:04:18
  shows up, she's from Alabama, she's very much a southern, but blah, blah, blah.
• 2:04:23
  Oh, I didn't realize she had this whole punk rock background.
• 2:04:26
  And I was like, I love you forever, joy.
• 2:04:29
  You know, it's just like, yeah.
• 2:04:32
  Rebecca Bailey: Oh, a ask her to tell you about who her boyfriends
• 2:04:35
  were in high school too.
• 2:04:36
  It's, it's, there's so many things about her that you'll be driving
• 2:04:40
  down the road and she'll say something and you'll go, what?
• 2:04:43
  So anyways.
• 2:04:46
  All right.
• 2:04:47
  Rupert Isaacson: All right.
• 2:04:47
  Well listen, thank you so, so much.
• 2:04:49
  Rebecca, this has been amazing.
• 2:04:50
  It's been in informative, it's been educational, it's been inspirational.
• 2:04:55
  I look forward to more, if people have, questions, would you come
• 2:04:58
  back on and maybe we could answer?
• 2:04:59
  Rebecca Bailey: Absolutely.
• 2:05:00
  I would love to.
• 2:05:01
  I would absolutely love to.
• 2:05:03
  Rupert Isaacson: So that's my sneaky way of getting you for around two.
• 2:05:06
  I know.
• 2:05:06
  I'd love to.
• 2:05:07
  thank you for joining us.
• 2:05:08
  We hope you enjoyed today's podcast.
• 2:05:10
  Join our website, new trails learning.com, to check out our online
• 2:05:15
  courses and live workshops in Horse Boy Method, movement Method, and Athena.
• 2:05:21
  These evidence-based programs have helped children, veterans, and people
• 2:05:26
  dealing with trauma around the world.
• 2:05:28
  We also offer a horse training program and self-care program
• 2:05:32
  for riders on long ride home.com.
• 2:05:35
  These include easy to do online courses and tutorials that
• 2:05:39
  bring you and your horse joy.
• 2:05:42
  For an overview of all shows and programs, go to rupert isaacson.com.
• 2:05:47
  See you on the next show.
• 2:05:48
  And please remember to press, subscribe and share.