Latest / Equine Assisted World with Rupert Isaacson / Grief, Horses & the Sacred Present: Love, Loss and Resilience with Karla Brahms | Equine Assisted World 49

Transcript

Grief, Horses & the Sacred Present: Love, Loss and Resilience with Karla Brahms | Equine Assisted World 49 · Equine Assisted World with Rupert Isaacson

• 0:00
  Rupert Isaacson: Welcome to Equine Assisted World.
• 0:02
  I'm your host, Rupert Isaacson, New York Times best selling
• 0:05
  author of The Horse Boy, The Long Ride Home, and The Healing Land.
• 0:08
  Before I jump in with today's guest, I just want to say a huge
• 0:12
  thank you to you, our audience, for helping to make this happen.
• 0:15
  I have a request.
• 0:16
  If you like what we do, please like, subscribe, tell a friend.
• 0:22
  It really helps us get this work done.
• 0:24
  As you might know from my books, I'm an autism dad.
• 0:27
  And over the last 20 years, we've developed several
• 0:31
  equine assisted, neuroscience backed certification programs.
• 0:35
  If you'd like to find out more about them, go to newtrailslearning.
• 0:40
  com.
• 0:41
  So without further ado, let's meet today's guest.
• 0:44
  Welcome back to Equine Assisted World.
• 0:46
  I have an old friend here, Carla Brams.
• 0:50
  She runs Veon Rider, which means wave rider in a very magical part
• 0:56
  of Germany called the Udin Vault, which literally means odin's forest.
• 1:01
  And when you go in there, it really does actually look like odin's forest.
• 1:05
  It's an area that is a little bit occult.
• 1:09
  It, it's, it's one of those places where you feel the, the veil between the world
• 1:15
  is a little bit thin, and in fact, the original Frankenstein's castle is in
• 1:19
  there which a lot of people don't know.
• 1:22
  And behind that castle, there's a, an area of forest that's been recorded
• 1:27
  with all sorts of strange activity by various scientists and people record
• 1:31
  all sorts of strange phenomena there.
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  And it's also, of course, stunningly beautiful.
• 1:37
  And it's these mountains that overlook the Valley of the Rhine.
• 1:41
  And I met Carla when I first started working in Germany.
• 1:45
  And together we did a project with German television with the autistic
• 1:52
  son of a, of a, of a friend of Carla's.
• 1:54
  Carla already had a very good and established equine
• 1:58
  assisted practice going.
• 2:01
  And in the course of this, we.
• 2:04
  Have been sort of working together on and off ever since.
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  And she really has her own way of going.
• 2:11
  Which I think a lot of us can learn from, and not just confined to the
• 2:17
  work with special needs children or so on, but very much looking at other
• 2:21
  areas, including the area of grief.
• 2:26
  So I think this is something which we can all learn from.
• 2:31
  Carla, thank you so much for coming on the show.
• 2:35
  Please tell us a bit about who you are and what your practice
• 2:39
  is and how you got there.
• 2:41
  Karla Brahms: Mm-hmm.
• 2:42
  Thanks Rupert for the introduction.
• 2:45
  You know, I always think meeting people is no no sofa.
• 2:51
  What is the English word?
• 2:52
  No
• 2:52
  Rupert Isaacson: coincidence.
• 2:52
  Karla Brahms: No coincidence.
• 2:53
  Yeah.
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  And it was just magic to meet you in 2019 making the, the film
• 2:59
  about Emil and changing the life of so many people with our work.
• 3:06
  Well, I got here.
• 3:07
  I, I was raised here in the den world and I never thought that I would come back.
• 3:11
  But obviously life had other plans.
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  I'm working with horses.
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  For more than 30 years now.
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  And I built a little paradise for my horses, my family and me here in Lumpen.
• 3:28
  He in the val near Heidelberg and Mannheim.
• 3:31
  And I always are outside with the horses with the kids.
• 3:35
  For 25 years.
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  I was walking every day with a group of four kids out in
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  the forest with the horses.
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  And what you said, this this powerful spiritual vibration in
• 3:50
  the al I can feel it every day.
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  So we have a massive stone arrangements in the forest.
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  They are often the, that I often visit with the horses and the kids.
• 4:01
  And it's just not only the healing of the horses and the healing of our
• 4:07
  presence, but also the healing of the nature that I use for my work.
• 4:12
  Rupert Isaacson: Yeah, it's, it's so refreshing.
• 4:14
  I, I remember when I went and did my first training for the tower, you
• 4:19
  know, the for tower in, in Germany, which is the, for those listeners who
• 4:25
  don't speak Germany, you, they're, they're, they're the government.
• 4:28
  Wing of therapeutic riding there.
• 4:31
  And it's great of course that the Germans really support
• 4:34
  it at the governmental level.
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  You know, many of us, for example, when we're working in say the USA
• 4:40
  dream of that, however, it also comes with a sort of bureaucratic cost.
• 4:45
  And I remember when we were doing that first training, it was in
• 4:49
  another rather beautiful area in the hills near Disseldorf.
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  It was so regimented and it was really kind of very arena based.
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  And now we're going to do this, and now the child should do that.
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  And, and I remember, you know, in horse boy, we have obviously
• 5:06
  this ethic of follow the child.
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  And so if the kid wants to get down off the horse 10 seconds after they've got
• 5:12
  up, well of course that's what you do.
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  And you know, because we don't want this to be stressful and we have, we have
• 5:18
  faith that the child will eventually, you
• 5:20
  Karla Brahms: know,
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  Rupert Isaacson: find their way with the horse.
• 5:22
  Karla Brahms: That was one, one moment when, when we met and we talked about.
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  My work and your work, it was like, ah, yeah, that's it.
• 5:30
  Exactly.
• 5:31
  Exactly.
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  And I was so, I was so glad because I always thought, oh, I'm such
• 5:36
  an individual with my work in the ator because no one does it my way.
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  And I always thought I'm the, the exotic teacher therapeutic riding teacher to
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  hear that you were doing it the same way.
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  That was so, ah, I was
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  Rupert Isaacson: right.
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  Because I mean, it's just Did you ever meet a kid who didn't want
• 5:57
  to just go straight in the forest?
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  I mean, you know, I mean, that's what the human brain and nervous
• 6:03
  system is designed for to go into the natural habitat of the human.
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  And so if one is trying to restore a nervous system Yeah.
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  Which is effectively what we are doing, surely it makes just perfect sense even
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  if you didn't understand the neuroscience to go where the organism wants to be.
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  Right?
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  Yep.
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  If you, if you put a big cat in a zoo with concrete and bars like
• 6:30
  they used to, what will it do?
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  It will pace around.
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  If you build a beautiful habitat and you put enrichment in there, okay,
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  the animal probably would rather be in the wild, but it's a whole lot better.
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  But we haven't really gotten there enough with educational therapy.
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  And I remember in that, in that.
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  Training I did this one lady.
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  She said, ah, but if I have spent half an hour getting no, she said 30 minutes,
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  getting the horse ready for this child on this child wants to get down immediately.
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  This is a disrespect.
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  I'm like, lady, given the wrong job.
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  You, you, you should be teaching adults who are motivated to ride, learn
• 7:14
  to ride horses, how to ride horses.
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  What are you doing working with nonverbal autistic children who, who
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  can't follow instruction and don't understand what you're even talking about?
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  Like, why are you in this job?
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  Because it must be so frustrating for you and for them.
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  So yeah, when I, when I discovered you there, and of course our wonderful
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  friends, GI and Henrik Bergoff, who've been on this show as well up
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  there in Munster Land in Germany, who understand completely the need
• 7:43
  of the child, the need of the human, the need of the horse to be in nature
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  Karla Brahms: and the need of humor.
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  Rupert Isaacson: Say that again?
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  Karla Brahms: The need of humor.
• 7:51
  Rupert Isaacson: The need of humor.
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  Absolutely.
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  Toilet humor constantly because the horse is pooing and farting the entire time.
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  Right.
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  And what are you gonna do?
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  Ignore it.
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  It's.
• 8:04
  Ah, so yeah, I remember the first time we came to you and
• 8:08
  falling in love with that forest.
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  And I just want to paint a little bit of a picture for viewers.
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  So where Carla lives in a village that is on the side of a mountain that's
• 8:16
  forested with pastures dotted around.
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  And the, the paths out from her stable, which of course is an open,
• 8:27
  stable with a cover so the horses can come in and come out and they
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  can be in the forest, they can be in the field, they can be in the meadow.
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  And then there are these tracks that just sort of go off into wonderful land.
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  And then the, the village itself looks like something
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  out of a, of a grims fairytale.
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  You know, it's what they call fuck work, you know, the, the
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  old black and white houses with the timber and all of this stuff.
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  But of course, one of the things we know about fairytales is
• 8:56
  what do fairytales teach us?
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  They teach us that there, there is also a dark side to life and we
• 9:03
  need to learn how to navigate that.
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  Right?
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  And that of course, I really do think is the nature of your work.
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  Can you talk us through how you go about things?
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  People are quite familiar with horse boy and the way you and Horse Boy and
• 9:20
  ll invited work are, are not dissimilar.
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  They're, they're pretty close, but you very much have your own
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  way and your own philosophy.
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  Can you just talk us through.
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  How you help people deal with, some would say the dark side.
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  Others would say the realities of life in this fairy tale environment.
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  Karla Brahms: Well, after I worked for more than 25 years with the kids, my
• 9:41
  horses and me, we got older and I was looking for a method that I can use
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  these absolute amazing abilities from the horses to read us, to read our
• 9:53
  emotions and to reflect them to us.
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  I always thought horses are so much more than animals we can use to ride on.
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  They, they read us and they, they connect with us in a way
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  that is, is hard to describe.
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  And a colleague of mine, she was doing like systematic constellations
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  with the horses where she used the horses for parts of your inner is
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  it, it's called unti in German.
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  I don't know the English word for it right now.
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  So one horse represented the sadness.
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  One horse represented the the critic, the the c criticism.
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  And, and she placed the horses, or the, the client placed the horses in
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  the arena the way it was suitable.
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  And then there were.
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  They got get loose and they interact with one another, another.
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  And I was so amazed how they reacted in a way that that was not normal for them.
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  I, I knew my horses, or I know my horses.
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  I live with them for 24 hours, seven days a week.
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  And, and they reacted in a way that was really the connection of the client.
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  And I was so amazed.
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  I said, I want to make this, I want to take this ability from the horses
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  and, and connect it with my work with the kids, with the, with the families.
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  And then I was looking for a method that that that did this,
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  this connection with the horses.
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  And then I found a consolation work.
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  It's called NIG, neural Imaginative.
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  K is creating, and this method uses spontaneously drawn pictures that
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  you draw with your non-dominant hand.
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  So to connect the other part of the brain that,
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  Rupert Isaacson: so I would draw with my left hand.
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  You would give me a pencil
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  Karla Brahms: if I, yes.
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  If, if, if I would work for you with you.
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  I would say we take two pieces of paper, for example.
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  And I often use these these crayons, these Jackson crayons.
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  Course, they, they have a powerful color and you can easily draw with them.
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  And, and the thing is, if you draw with your non-dominant
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  hand, nobody can draw nicely.
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  And, and it takes this, this pressure to make a nice picture of what you think.
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  And then you, you get the, the the order first.
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  We, we clear what, what is the problem, what is the, the
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  thing you want, you work with.
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  It's called RAs clear room.
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  And even that clears a lot of things for the client to see what, what
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  is happening with the, why am I here, why am I talking with you?
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  What, what is the thing that's confusing me?
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  And then they get the, the the order to draw maybe a picture of
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  the problem really spontaneously.
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  They can use the colors, they can use everything.
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  They are not, they don't have a an order how to draw it.
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  They, they just, it
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  Rupert Isaacson: could be abstract.
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  Karla Brahms: It could be abstract, it could be only colors.
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  It could be only a sign, it could be only a word and they have to do,
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  draw it with a non-dominant hand.
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  And then they get the, the order to draw maybe a picture
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  of how it is when it is better.
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  Not even the goal were to go to.
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  How does it look like?
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  When it feels better?
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  When it is better?
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  And then they draw this picture.
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  And with these pictures, you go in connection with your whole body.
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  So you lay them on the ground and you stand on these
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  pictures with your whole body.
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  And then I ask questions, how do you stand?
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  How is your body feeling?
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  Do you feel a part of the body really?
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  Is there a stiffness or a pain?
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  Is it getting cold?
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  How are your feet standing?
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  How is your breath?
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  How is it going?
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  How deep is it going?
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  Is it rather thin or deep?
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  And then the, the people are, are getting connected with their body.
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  I ask, where do you look at?
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  Do you look inside?
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  Do you look to a certain point?
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  And are there feelings that coming up when you stand on this picture?
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  And then we talk about all these body emotions, body experiences.
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  And when they step off the picture, they often have to shake a little bit.
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  And then I, I invite them to go to the next picture and stand on that picture.
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  And how does it feel here?
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  How does it feel standing on the picture when it is better?
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  And the thing is, the solution of our problems always lies within us.
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  We, we are always so much head.
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  Our head is so important.
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  Our thinking is so important that we often forget to, to listen to our body.
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  And our body always knows the, the, the answer.
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  And with these questions, I try to get the people into feeling what their body
• 15:11
  is feeling, what their body tells them.
• 15:14
  And it always is the thing that they feel a difference between the two pictures.
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  And then comes the most important part.
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  My, my my favorite part because we introduce a so-called Mear position.
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  Mear is when I work with children and always tell them, if you have a
• 15:36
  superhero, a superhero that knows you, that can help you, that can talk about
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  you in a good way, who could that be?
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  And when I work with, with grownups, I ask them they should think about a, a
• 15:52
  person that is not really living, but like the, the wise man in the forest
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  or the, the, the old woman in the sea.
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  Something like that.
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  Rupert Isaacson: The mental figure.
• 16:04
  Yeah.
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  Karla Brahms: Right, right.
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  And then we choose a position.
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  We take a a white.
• 16:09
  Piece of paper, and this is the meta position, and we, we place it
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  far away from the other pictures.
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  And then the clients step on that meta position.
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  And when they are on the meta position, we talk in the third person about the client.
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  So for example, one kid to the, to the, the Smart Fox for his meta position.
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  And when he stood on the meta position, I said, well, hello Smart Fox.
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  Did you see he was let's call him Tom.
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  Tom was painting the pictures and he was stepping on then
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  and had these body sensations.
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  What did you see?
• 16:51
  Did you see that Tom had a special feeling or did you see similarities?
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  Did you see un
• 17:01
  Rupert Isaacson: differences?
• 17:02
  Karla Brahms: Differences?
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  Right?
• 17:04
  And then we talk about the client in the third person and, and he, the, the
• 17:11
  smart fox is telling what Tom should do.
• 17:15
  Maybe take another position for the, from the pictures, maybe get
• 17:22
  on them in a, in a, in a second way.
• 17:24
  And so we, we start a process with the dialogue between.
• 17:29
  The, the meta position and the connect connected positions, the
• 17:32
  pictures on the, on the, on the floor.
• 17:36
  And by stepping on these pictures for a second time, it always feels different.
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  Different.
• 17:43
  And now I use the horses as a company in this process.
• 17:48
  So they're just with them, with us in the arena.
• 17:52
  And I'm always sure they know exactly what is happening because the way
• 17:58
  they interact with a client with a meta position that's so amazing.
• 18:05
  I tell you one story.
• 18:07
  I had a friend when I was, when I was trying to, to to get used to this
• 18:12
  method and, and, and try to figure out how can you use the horses.
• 18:16
  I asked friends and I asked mothers of of my riding kids if they are,
• 18:21
  if they want to, to help me figure out how that works, how I can
• 18:25
  interact with the horses and so on.
• 18:28
  And it was with a friend.
• 18:29
  She was standing on her, on her problem and the horse was standing
• 18:33
  next to her and yawning, and yawning and yawning all the time.
• 18:39
  And I asked her, do you have an idea why your horse is yawning all the time?
• 18:43
  And she said, no.
• 18:44
  And when I asked her the, the body sensations, it was all quite normal.
• 18:50
  Not very, very extraordinary.
• 18:54
  When this horse was yawning all that time, I asked her I have an idea.
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  Do you want to hear it?
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  And she said, yes.
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  And I said, could it be that it connects with exhaustion?
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  Are you exhausted?
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  And then she started crying because the horse showed her how
• 19:12
  exhausted she was in this problem.
• 19:15
  Right?
• 19:15
  It was a problem in her job.
• 19:18
  And that was so amazing.
• 19:20
  And things like that happen all the time that the horses interact or show
• 19:26
  a more deeper way of looking at these pictures, of looking at the process.
• 19:31
  And sometimes they even get, take the, the the solution.
• 19:38
  So one time a client was like standing on the, on the meta position and the
• 19:45
  horse moved one of the pictures away and he said, now, now it makes sense.
• 19:52
  That was the, the distance that was missing.
• 19:56
  Things like that.
• 19:57
  Or one client stood on the, on the pictures and she said, oh,
• 20:02
  I feel I can go right away.
• 20:04
  I can start right away.
• 20:05
  And the horse was standing in front of her like this.
• 20:08
  Really, really, really close.
• 20:11
  And I said, oh, what does that test to mean?
• 20:13
  Do you have an idea?
• 20:14
  And she was laughing and said, oh, maybe I shouldn't get the,
• 20:17
  the goal out of my vision.
• 20:21
  And then the horse stepped two, two steps backward and made the, the,
• 20:24
  the path free so that she could go.
• 20:27
  And that was like, like always, they always remind us to think a little
• 20:33
  deeper, to feel a little deeper.
• 20:36
  And that's so amazing.
• 20:38
  Rupert Isaacson: I agree with you.
• 20:39
  One of the things that's so interesting about horses and all animals, of
• 20:42
  course but horses, I think because of their relationship with us in terms
• 20:46
  of that they carry us and that they have to get over this predator prey
• 20:52
  problem in order to interact with us.
• 20:56
  They can read our bodies.
• 20:58
  Karla Brahms: Yeah.
• 20:58
  Rupert Isaacson: Incredibly well.
• 21:00
  Karla Brahms: Yes.
• 21:00
  Rupert Isaacson: And therefore they can read our emotions because our
• 21:02
  emotions express in our bodies.
• 21:06
  So the way we hold our shoulders, will, the horse is reading that, am I safe?
• 21:11
  Am I not safe?
• 21:12
  Is this person going to attack me?
• 21:13
  Is this person going to be kind to me?
• 21:16
  Simple stuff like that.
• 21:18
  But when it, you, you talk about makes us feel or think deeper.
• 21:21
  It, what's so interesting about that is in our culture that is usually taken
• 21:27
  to mean or traditionally taken to mean.
• 21:31
  An intellectual process.
• 21:33
  Mm-hmm.
• 21:34
  And of course, within psychotherapy and, you know, Freud and so forth,
• 21:41
  not so much Jung, but certainly Freud, the idea that it's intellectual.
• 21:46
  It might go back to something visceral and emotional, but we've
• 21:50
  got to make an intellectual journey.
• 21:53
  And I have never been
• 21:56
  persuaded by that.
• 21:58
  And I was listening to a neuroscientist the other day, I will try to remember
• 22:03
  the name, who pointed out that the first piece of any organism that is a mammal, I
• 22:12
  guess, that that develops in the mother.
• 22:16
  The first thing that develops is not the brain.
• 22:19
  The first thing that develops is the gut
• 22:23
  Karla Brahms: and the heart
• 22:23
  Rupert Isaacson: and the, well, the gut first.
• 22:25
  Karla Brahms: Yeah.
• 22:26
  Rupert Isaacson: The heart, the brain comes quite a bit later.
• 22:30
  All composed of the same types of cells.
• 22:32
  All composed of neurons.
• 22:33
  Karla Brahms: Yeah.
• 22:34
  Rupert Isaacson: So, but when people say, well, it's in your
• 22:35
  gut, think deep into your gut.
• 22:37
  You know, that's not some metaphor.
• 22:41
  That is the absolute source of everything that we biologically are.
• 22:52
  The brain is an offshoot of that later.
• 22:54
  So when you talk about.
• 22:56
  Thinking deeper or exploring deeper, or feeling deeper going into the body.
• 23:03
  It makes so much sense now that we understand this in neuroscience terms.
• 23:09
  Karla Brahms: Mm.
• 23:09
  Rupert Isaacson: I think that perhaps makes it safer for more traditionally
• 23:13
  minded people to accept because they feel that, you know, if a man or a
• 23:19
  woman with a professor in front of her name, you know, says This must be
• 23:23
  true, then okay, we can trust this.
• 23:24
  But if Rupert or Carla
• 23:27
  Karla Brahms: Yeah,
• 23:27
  Rupert Isaacson: say it, then it's probably bullshit.
• 23:29
  'cause we're just silly old hippies.
• 23:31
  But everybody knows this.
• 23:32
  Steeped down, everybody knows this.
• 23:34
  Everybody,
• 23:35
  Karla Brahms: you know, I always, I always try to imagine the, in the humanistic
• 23:41
  way of looking at humans, they have this, this inner the can, the, the,
• 23:49
  Rupert Isaacson: yeah.
• 23:50
  Seed
• 23:50
  Karla Brahms: the, the inner seed that is, is good in human.
• 23:54
  Rupert Isaacson: Yeah.
• 23:54
  Karla Brahms: In the human there, there is everything in harmony
• 23:57
  and everything is working fine.
• 23:59
  Yeah.
• 24:00
  And all that distraction, all that misbehavior or illness that is on
• 24:06
  the outside is only to protect that good seed in the, in the middle.
• 24:12
  And we as, as PowerPoints, we always try to get to that good seed.
• 24:18
  With questions and the horses, they go directly into it because they feel
• 24:24
  it, they feel that inner good seed of the human body of the human person.
• 24:32
  And, and that is their quality, that they take us for what we are.
• 24:37
  We can't play in front of a horse.
• 24:41
  They feel what we feel.
• 24:45
  Rupert Isaacson: Yes, I agree.
• 24:46
  I I, I'm just thinking, just, you know what I mean, from feeding
• 24:49
  the horses before we sat down to have this podcast and it's, we're
• 24:53
  having, and this is the spring, well, late winter of 2026 February.
• 25:00
  And we are experiencing quite biblical flooding and rain . And the, it's coming
• 25:06
  down in sheets and it has been forever.
• 25:08
  So I'm looking after my horses who live, are living wild on the mountain.
• 25:12
  Karla Brahms: Mm-hmm.
• 25:13
  Rupert Isaacson: And
• 25:13
  Karla Brahms: Wow.
• 25:15
  Rupert Isaacson: Watching how they take care of themselves and each other
• 25:18
  using the forest, using the trees.
• 25:22
  And today they didn't come to be fed.
• 25:28
  Karla Brahms: Okay.
• 25:28
  Rupert Isaacson: So I had to go looking for them for the first, first
• 25:31
  time I had to go looking for them.
• 25:33
  Normally they'd be at the gate.
• 25:34
  Because it's, it is a very, very big area, but they can come to
• 25:37
  a gate where, you know mm-hmm.
• 25:38
  Be like, Hey, where's my food?
• 25:39
  You know, the normal type of horse thing.
• 25:42
  And, but not today.
• 25:44
  And I was okay.
• 25:44
  The temperature got warmer.
• 25:46
  Yeah.
• 25:47
  There's been a little bit of an outgrowth of more spring grass overnight.
• 25:51
  I could see it.
• 25:52
  They're feeling okay.
• 25:54
  Yeah.
• 25:54
  I now have to walk the food over to them across the mountain.
• 25:58
  And this feeling of
• 26:02
  being in service to them and saying, yeah, it's my pleasure.
• 26:06
  It's my pleasure to walk this food to you in the same way that it would be
• 26:10
  my pleasure to cook you dinner, Carla, if you came, you know, to stay with me.
• 26:15
  And getting the sense of, you guys have looked after me so much, you
• 26:21
  know, and you've looked after everyone.
• 26:24
  I love so much.
• 26:25
  And yes, absolutely.
• 26:27
  I will happily, happily walk through the, the rain and the
• 26:32
  mud to give you this food.
• 26:34
  And then there are things which they make you see when you do this.
• 26:43
  So we are relatively new here.
• 26:46
  We've been clearing a lot of hazards off the area.
• 26:50
  You know, there's stuff from 30 years ago lying around.
• 26:53
  You can't find everything.
• 26:54
  So sometimes you're finding the dangerous things.
• 26:57
  That people have left on the land, you know, a little bit like, and so
• 27:01
  because I had to walk this particular way, I found two very large bundles of
• 27:07
  barbed wire that had clearly been lying there for probably 20 years, you know?
• 27:14
  Karla Brahms: Wow.
• 27:14
  Rupert Isaacson: And if the horses hadn't wanted me to go walk that particular
• 27:19
  way, I would not have found it.
• 27:21
  Karla Brahms: Yeah, yeah.
• 27:22
  Rupert Isaacson: You know, and, you know, then I'm looking at them
• 27:26
  going, did you want me to walk this way so that I could, you know?
• 27:30
  Karla Brahms: Yeah.
• 27:32
  Rupert Isaacson: I think what,
• 27:32
  Karla Brahms: you know what I think, go ahead.
• 27:34
  I think they're not only carrying our bodies, but they're carrying our souls.
• 27:39
  Rupert Isaacson: Go ahead.
• 27:40
  Yeah.
• 27:40
  Karla Brahms: Carrying our souls too.
• 27:42
  And, and that is even the, the, the bigger quality of being together
• 27:47
  with horses because they connect with us in a way we can't even describe.
• 27:54
  I, I read about a study that the magnetic heart field from a horse is one and a half
• 28:01
  times bigger than that from a human body.
• 28:04
  Absolutely.
• 28:04
  Rupert Isaacson: And
• 28:04
  Karla Brahms: if you step into their, into their presence, you can just heal.
• 28:11
  Alone from that big, big heart from the horse.
• 28:16
  Rupert Isaacson: That's right.
• 28:17
  I mean, if one brings it down to science, that, I guess it's
• 28:20
  the Heart Math Institute in
• 28:22
  Karla Brahms: Yeah.
• 28:22
  Rupert Isaacson: California who put a lot of this research out.
• 28:25
  And it seems that, but no, this was actually university.
• 28:29
  This is German.
• 28:30
  This was Castle, castle University.
• 28:33
  Karla Brahms: Okay.
• 28:34
  Rupert Isaacson: Way back in 1990.
• 28:36
  And it, but it was someone at the HeartMath Institute
• 28:39
  who turned me onto this.
• 28:40
  And I say, why?
• 28:41
  Why isn't this common knowledge apparently what?
• 28:43
  I think it was in 1990 or 90 91 there was a study which showed
• 28:49
  where they measured photons.
• 28:51
  Okay.
• 28:51
  Like particles.
• 28:53
  Karla Brahms: Yeah.
• 28:53
  Rupert Isaacson: Being emitted by hearts and that apparently hearts
• 28:59
  emit light and that the emission of love seems to actually be a physical
• 29:06
  thing that you can measure in photons.
• 29:09
  And
• 29:10
  Karla Brahms: you think everything our body is working from energy.
• 29:14
  The first thing that happens when our heart begins to, to to
• 29:18
  pulse is an electric impulse.
• 29:22
  Rupert Isaacson: Right.
• 29:23
  Karla Brahms: And that stays as, as long as we live.
• 29:27
  It only stops when we die.
• 29:30
  And, and this magnetic field that is.
• 29:33
  And that is, is is common, common knowledge that when you have an electric
• 29:38
  impulse, that there's a magnetic field?
• 29:41
  Yes.
• 29:42
  And, and I think that horses connect to that energy, to that magnetic
• 29:46
  field that they can read us in a way and see where things are going good
• 29:51
  or things are going not so good.
• 29:53
  Mm-hmm.
• 29:53
  They, they sense our emotions and, and, and, and it's like
• 29:58
  they, they, they translate them into movement or into reactions.
• 30:05
  I can remember when I was in my first marriage and was
• 30:08
  unhappy, but didn't recognize it.
• 30:11
  I couldn't ride my horse.
• 30:13
  As soon as I stepped on the horse, he ran and I couldn't stop him.
• 30:18
  He ran and ran and ran.
• 30:20
  And as more, the more I started to, to hold him, the, the faster
• 30:24
  he got until I put the reins on his neck and said, okay, then take me.
• 30:32
  And that was the thing.
• 30:33
  He was trying to escape with me because I was unhappy in that marriage.
• 30:38
  And when I was divorced and was together with my second husband,
• 30:42
  he was never ever doing that again.
• 30:46
  That was only in the time when he tried to show me, you have to get away,
• 30:53
  you have to run as fast as you can.
• 30:56
  But I only recognized it or realized it afterwards.
• 31:02
  Rupert Isaacson: You know, it's so interesting because having spent
• 31:05
  time in Mongolia and obviously having experienced the life changing healings
• 31:13
  from horse and reindeer people there,
• 31:19
  the shamanic practices around our relationship with horses go
• 31:24
  back, of course, to the beginning of our relationship with horses.
• 31:28
  So these tribes out on the step
• 31:35
  with their concept of the wind horse, which is a, a horse energy, which reflects
• 31:42
  our luck, our mojo, our wellbeing.
• 31:46
  Your windhorse can be off you, your wind horse can need restoration.
• 31:52
  Equally, you can ride your wind horse to a better place.
• 31:57
  And this concept for the people who are in no way new agey or woo woo,
• 32:05
  they are survival oriented people who live in one of the most harsh and
• 32:12
  extreme climates in the world, they haven't got time to waste with ideas
• 32:19
  just because they're whimsical or sound nice, it works or it doesn't work.
• 32:24
  You know, it's life or death out there on the step, especially in winter and.
• 32:30
  This, of course goes back to at least probably the Cinta bow tie and
• 32:37
  Yamaya Peoples living there 4,000 years ago, 6,000 years ago, you
• 32:42
  know, domesticating the horse and bringing their, probably their hunting
• 32:46
  shamanic practices into their herding.
• 32:48
  And, and we think of this as something new.
• 32:51
  We think of this as something revolutionary.
• 32:52
  We, because of course we are so broken from it because one, one
• 32:56
  of the, but of course it's, it's, it's older than Christianity.
• 33:00
  It's older than science.
• 33:02
  And we horse people have a, a direct line to this.
• 33:06
  And the horse of course is the same today as they were back then.
• 33:11
  Karla Brahms: Mm-hmm.
• 33:12
  Rupert Isaacson: And, and so are we, we think we're different, but we
• 33:14
  are not, we are the same organism.
• 33:17
  We've got cell phones, but we're the same organism.
• 33:21
  But of course there you sit in the Odin Vault named for Odin.
• 33:27
  But we all know what happened in Europe and we, particularly in
• 33:31
  Germany, in the centuries preceding the Enlightenment, every single
• 33:44
  shamanic human would have been put to death and Germany was the worst.
• 33:52
  And your area of Germany.
• 33:55
  Was one of the worst.
• 33:56
  Including, and, and mine too where we, we have our house in Eden House and
• 34:01
  Stein, which is one of the towns there.
• 34:03
  Mm-hmm.
• 34:03
  One of the big witch burning towns, but Bamberg Nuremberg, all all but
• 34:09
  all those towns down through the Rhine Valley, they were burning people in
• 34:13
  their thousands, I think in Bamberg.
• 34:15
  They had to actually create a special furnace.
• 34:18
  Karla Brahms: Oh,
• 34:19
  Rupert Isaacson: okay.
• 34:19
  More economically burn whole families together.
• 34:22
  Karla Brahms: Oh wow.
• 34:23
  Without
• 34:23
  Rupert Isaacson: having to use so much wood.
• 34:25
  'cause they're German and they're very practical.
• 34:26
  And now they're cutting down too many trees to kill all these witch,
• 34:30
  you know, absolutely bananas.
• 34:32
  And this is of course happening in the 17th century, right.
• 34:35
  When science and enlightenment is beginning to come into focus.
• 34:41
  So of course, what did we do?
• 34:44
  We modern humans, we just took the same fanaticism that we were using with
• 34:51
  religion and we turned it to science.
• 34:53
  And now we're fanatics about materialist science and saying, well, you know, and,
• 34:59
  but increasingly the real scientists, the physicists are saying, no, no, no, no, no.
• 35:05
  It is all interconnected fields.
• 35:08
  It is all you're called veon.
• 35:10
  Right.
• 35:11
  It is all one big ocean of which we are all waves.
• 35:14
  And sometimes the energy of that, those fields can coalesce into something that.
• 35:20
  Is material, but then and dense matter, you, me, whatever, a horse.
• 35:28
  But then it of course like a wave.
• 35:32
  Karla Brahms: You know, the thing is our brain always tries to find explanations
• 35:37
  for things that can't be explained.
• 35:40
  And
• 35:41
  Rupert Isaacson: at
• 35:41
  Karla Brahms: least, at least not, if you can't explain anything, yes.
• 35:44
  You have to find someone who is guilty.
• 35:47
  So, so that's my explanation why they burned all these wise women
• 35:53
  in the, in the mid east century.
• 35:56
  Because they, they were still connected to the nature, to
• 36:02
  Rupert Isaacson: absolutely
• 36:03
  Karla Brahms: to the, the spirit of other creatures in a way that can't be explained
• 36:10
  Rupert Isaacson: well and took power away from the church.
• 36:12
  You know, that, that, that should say you, you cannot have
• 36:16
  Karla Brahms: another field that
• 36:17
  Rupert Isaacson: your own relationship with the divine, it must come through the
• 36:19
  church and you must pay us money for this.
• 36:21
  Yes.
• 36:22
  Karla Brahms: And the thing is that with this work with the NIGI try to, to
• 36:27
  connect the feeling with the thinking.
• 36:33
  So the, the standing on the pictures that you draw, you get into the feeling
• 36:40
  and standing on the meta position, you can, you can come into the, into the
• 36:45
  thinking, into the cognitively, reflecting over what you have felt on the pictures.
• 36:54
  And that's what amazes me always in this work, in the process,
• 36:58
  because the animals help us reflect what happened to our feelings.
• 37:07
  And they often give through their reactions a funny
• 37:13
  kind of, of, of solution.
• 37:18
  I know one time the client sat stood on the, on the, on the meta position,
• 37:22
  and I asked what would be the next step for the client to get further?
• 37:30
  And the horse stood there and just pooped.
• 37:33
  And meta said then, oh, she should shit on it.
• 37:38
  And, and you know, that, that thing is so, so, so it comes from deep inside
• 37:46
  and, and it's, it's a solution literally.
• 37:48
  That's not hard.
• 37:49
  It's, it's only feeling and it's only, and you feel directly.
• 37:53
  That's it.
• 37:54
  That's it.
• 37:55
  Rupert Isaacson: Yeah.
• 37:55
  Karla Brahms: Because the energy is in the right place and the, the, the
• 37:58
  explaining is exactly what you feel.
• 38:04
  Rupert Isaacson: It, it just occurred to me as you were describing that
• 38:06
  process that, you are beha, basically behaving like a horse chairman of the
• 38:17
  step who there's a dilemma.
• 38:21
  You know, we're a horse culture.
• 38:23
  We're going to use a shamanic practice to look at metaphor and
• 38:29
  tie in with these fields of energy.
• 38:34
  One could call that the divine and love.
• 38:38
  And then the horses, because we're a horse culture, are going to help us with this.
• 38:42
  And I had this lovely sense of a full circle of their
• 38:45
  Karla Brahms: Yeah.
• 38:45
  Rupert Isaacson: And despite these attempts by institutions, whether it's
• 38:51
  the church, whether it's the military industrial thing, to which is basically
• 38:58
  the same as the church to sell us an illusion that life is purely material,
• 39:08
  purely mechanical that our relationships with the horses are purely biomechanical.
• 39:13
  Okay.
• 39:13
  We love them, we like them, but it's all about technique.
• 39:16
  It's all about this.
• 39:17
  It's, you know, and of course we, we know it never is about these things.
• 39:23
  Those things are the techniques that you use here and there for training a horse
• 39:29
  or training yourself to do something.
• 39:31
  Okay?
• 39:31
  Yes.
• 39:32
  But this is.
• 39:33
  1000000th really of the picture.
• 39:36
  It's just something that makes the mechanism go more easily.
• 39:40
  Yes.
• 39:41
  But
• 39:41
  Karla Brahms: yes.
• 39:41
  Yes.
• 39:41
  Rupert Isaacson: You could be driving a car, you need to know how to drive a
• 39:44
  car, but the reason why you're driving the car could be completely spiritual.
• 39:47
  You're driving to a spiritual experience.
• 39:49
  You're driving, or you're just driving to go shopping, or
• 39:52
  you're driving to go into nature.
• 39:53
  Or you are, you could be driving for any number of reasons.
• 39:55
  You need to learn how to drive.
• 39:57
  You need to learn how to ride a horse.
• 39:58
  Yes.
• 39:59
  But probably the reason why you're doing it comes down to some interconnection
• 40:04
  between the material and the divine.
• 40:07
  And we've been sold this illusion.
• 40:11
  I feel that the work that you're doing brings us back to what we're sort
• 40:18
  of supposed to be doing with horses.
• 40:19
  Karla Brahms: Mm-hmm.
• 40:20
  Rupert Isaacson: And that doesn't mean we shouldn't be riding them.
• 40:21
  Karla Brahms: Sorry, when I interrupt you ahead.
• 40:23
  The thing is, I don't have to do it with my horses.
• 40:26
  I can do it with any horse.
• 40:29
  I could come to you and we could work, work with one of your horses
• 40:33
  and do the same thing and it, and it would have the same effect.
• 40:37
  Rupert Isaacson: Let's do it.
• 40:38
  Karla Brahms: Yeah,
• 40:39
  Rupert Isaacson: let's do it.
• 40:41
  Would
• 40:41
  Karla Brahms: you come down here and leave the retreat?
• 40:43
  And that, that's the wonderful thing about this, this method.
• 40:45
  I'm trying to get this method into the world because it helps so much to,
• 40:50
  to get a new idea, a new perspective on, on what your problem is.
• 40:59
  You know what I mean?
• 41:00
  Rupert Isaacson: Mm-hmm.
• 41:00
  I do.
• 41:00
  I'm just thinking, I'm thinking too.
• 41:04
  One of the other things though that really impressed me about
• 41:07
  you when I first met you in 2019 and we came down to your place is
• 41:15
  while yes, we do need to look at and relate to horses in this way as well.
• 41:23
  You, we also do need really, really solid horsemanship.
• 41:27
  And the, one of the things which I think listeners and viewers you need to know
• 41:33
  about Carla is she really does actually know how to train a horse really well.
• 41:38
  And I when Yeah, and she's, they train me.
• 41:41
  She actually gone through, like my wife has all of those German
• 41:46
  exams that you go through to become what they, you know, a trainer.
• 41:50
  And you know, it's Germany, so they make you jump through
• 41:53
  the hoops properly, literally.
• 41:55
  And okay, it's a bit mechanical and it's a bit militaristic, but they
• 41:59
  know horses in Germany, there's no one can say they don't know horses.
• 42:02
  It's one of the great horse cultures of the world.
• 42:05
  When I was down at Carla I'm gonna paint this picture.
• 42:08
  We went into the forest and you had my children.
• 42:13
  You didn't know me.
• 42:15
  You didn't know them.
• 42:16
  You had my children on your ponies just riding with us completely.
• 42:23
  Free.
• 42:23
  The children didn't really need to know how to ride because you had trained
• 42:29
  your horses so well, that despite the fact that you live in an area with
• 42:33
  almost no fences and the horses could just bugger off wherever they want
• 42:37
  to, anytime and certainly just turn around and go home if they wanted to.
• 42:43
  You gave my kids who at that point couldn't ride this feeling that they could
• 42:49
  ride that, that they were independently on horseback going out into, I know about
• 42:55
  three or four people in my life who can do that, who can train a horse to that
• 42:59
  degree, that it makes it seem like the complete novice rider is riding that
• 43:07
  horse independently because that horse is just going to go where you Carla go.
• 43:13
  Karla Brahms: You know, one
• 43:14
  Rupert Isaacson: funny thing, this is extraordinary horsemanship.
• 43:17
  I'd like you to tell us a little bit about the actual training that you put into your
• 43:24
  horses to achieve this, because this is
• 43:27
  Karla Brahms: quite, you know, one, one funny thing in the, in the film that
• 43:31
  we were making together, there was one scene when I, when I watched it in the,
• 43:36
  in the final version when it was on tv.
• 43:40
  I realized I didn't, I didn't remember that this scene was taken.
• 43:46
  That was when we stood here on the, on the plots and you were talking
• 43:50
  about the little Emil fo that was behaving normally, in my opinion.
• 43:57
  And you said that's not normal.
• 43:59
  That's not normal.
• 44:00
  Usually horse fos are known for being quite dangerous and kicking and playing.
• 44:05
  Yeah.
• 44:05
  'cause
• 44:05
  Rupert Isaacson: we had all those kids around
• 44:06
  Karla Brahms: the spot.
• 44:07
  Yeah.
• 44:07
  And, and with Amy around him.
• 44:08
  And
• 44:09
  Rupert Isaacson: who
• 44:09
  Karla Brahms: were they?
• 44:09
  When I, when I watched that scene, I thought, oh, well
• 44:13
  Rupert, you don't know my fos.
• 44:15
  They always do it like this because they're, they grow
• 44:19
  into the work from day one.
• 44:23
  And, and I always have the feeling that, that what you expect the horse
• 44:30
  to do, the horse will do because they're so keen on pleasing us.
• 44:35
  And when you expect, oh, now it's getting dangerous, the horses
• 44:40
  will, will run into the field.
• 44:42
  They probably will do it.
• 44:44
  But if you feel, feel, oh, we are walking here and everything's fine and I trust
• 44:51
  you, you, you trust you, you are carrying the, the kids for me, and I trust you.
• 44:57
  And, and then nothing happens.
• 45:00
  You know what I mean?
• 45:01
  Really when I feel unsafe.
• 45:02
  But
• 45:03
  Rupert Isaacson: I'm gonna challenge you on this.
• 45:04
  Karla Brahms: When I feel unsafe, I get another.
• 45:09
  Leash on the horse and say I don't feel safe here.
• 45:14
  I take, well,
• 45:14
  Rupert Isaacson: I think that, I think that's the thing.
• 45:16
  Karla Brahms: I
• 45:16
  Rupert Isaacson: get you
• 45:16
  Karla Brahms: screw this,
• 45:17
  Rupert Isaacson: you're not operating under an illusion.
• 45:19
  Like, you know, the difference between safe and not safe.
• 45:22
  So, and you know how to make a horse safe.
• 45:24
  So when you say because it's quite dangerous, I think for
• 45:27
  some people to think, oh, I could just expect this from my horse.
• 45:30
  Karla Brahms: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 45:31
  I know what you mean.
• 45:32
  Rupert Isaacson: We know it's a much more layered thing.
• 45:34
  Karla Brahms: I could, I can only work like this because I know my horses, right.
• 45:38
  They live with me 24 7 and I'm very, very looking after being, working safe.
• 45:46
  Like in this 25 years I was working with kids.
• 45:49
  I only got one kid in the hospital because she banged her hand
• 45:53
  on a tree, on the tree branch.
• 45:57
  And the other thing was that it was slippery and the horses the horse
• 46:01
  fell on the side and, and bruised the, the, the ankle of the kid.
• 46:07
  So there were the two accidents that really happened.
• 46:10
  And I'm outside with the kids every day.
• 46:13
  Rupert Isaacson: Yeah.
• 46:14
  If you're in the equine assisted field, or if you're considering
• 46:17
  a career in the equine assisted field, you might want to consider
• 46:21
  taking one of our three neuroscience backed equine assisted programs.
• 46:25
  Horseboy method, now established for 20 years, is the original
• 46:31
  Equine assisted program specifically designed for autism, mentored by and
• 46:38
  developed in conjunction with Dr.
• 46:40
  Temple Grandin and many other neuroscientists.
• 46:44
  We work in the saddle with younger children.
• 46:47
  Helping them create oxytocin in their bodies and neuroplasticity in the brain.
• 46:53
  It works incredibly well.
• 46:54
  It's now in about 40 countries.
• 46:57
  Check it out.
• 46:58
  If you're working without horses, you might want to look at movement
• 47:02
  method, which gets a very, very similar effect, but can also be
• 47:06
  applied in schools, in homes.
• 47:08
  If you're working with families, you can give them really tangible exercises to do
• 47:13
  at home that will create neuroplasticity.
• 47:16
  when they're not with you.
• 47:17
  Finally, we have taquine equine integration.
• 47:21
  If you know anything about our programs, you know that we need a
• 47:24
  really high standard of horsemanship in order to create the oxytocin
• 47:28
  in the body of the person that we're working with, child or adult.
• 47:33
  So, this means we need to train a horse in collection, but this
• 47:36
  also has a really beneficial effect on the horse's well being.
• 47:40
  And it also ends your time conflict, where you're wondering, oh my gosh, how
• 47:45
  am I going to condition my horses and maintain them and give them what they
• 47:48
  need, as well as Serving my clients.
• 47:51
  Takine equine integration aimed at a more adult client base
• 47:56
  absolutely gives you this.
• 47:58
  So you talk about your horses come into that behavior, but of course they
• 48:02
  come into this functionality because they are around horses that have
• 48:08
  also been trained into functionality.
• 48:10
  That's it.
• 48:11
  Yeah.
• 48:11
  So that the mother horse displays this functionality to the.
• 48:15
  The junior horse.
• 48:16
  And of course we know that this is how it works in a good horse tribe.
• 48:21
  However, somebody has to train that initial functionality
• 48:25
  Karla Brahms: Yes.
• 48:25
  Rupert Isaacson: Into the horse.
• 48:26
  Yes, they do.
• 48:27
  Karla Brahms: Yes.
• 48:27
  Yes.
• 48:27
  Yeah.
• 48:28
  Rupert Isaacson: Could you just talk to us a little bit from a, just a
• 48:30
  complete horsemanship point of view about when you put the first of
• 48:35
  those horses together, I dunno if that was Flocky or one before her.
• 48:42
  But if you go on, if you go on Carla's website, you'll see a lovely spotted
• 48:45
  horse doing lots of cool stuff.
• 48:47
  That's flocky.
• 48:47
  Karla Brahms: That could be lunch dogs.
• 48:49
  Rupert Isaacson: Yes, exactly.
• 48:50
  Yeah.
• 48:50
  P longstocking.
• 48:51
  Karla Brahms: Yeah.
• 48:52
  Rupert Isaacson: Talk to us about how you created that original Yeah.
• 48:56
  Functional couple of horses that then the rest of them took their cue from.
• 49:01
  I think it's really useful for people in this field to Yeah.
• 49:04
  To know this
• 49:06
  Karla Brahms: well, I actually, I just train them to learn
• 49:11
  a lot different things.
• 49:14
  Not only carrying a rider, but standing still is the first
• 49:19
  thing they learn, standing still.
• 49:22
  And and they, they know that when they communicate with
• 49:27
  us that they are respected.
• 49:30
  I always say to the children, don't pet a horse when it doesn't want to be petted.
• 49:36
  And, and the, the head is private sphere.
• 49:40
  And I always tell the kids what you are happy or the things that feel safe for
• 49:48
  you and that, that you feel good for you.
• 49:52
  You can be sure that the horses do that.
• 49:54
  The same thing.
• 49:55
  So if you don't want to be touched in your face, don't touch the horse
• 50:00
  on the, in the face and always try to ask the horse what you want from it.
• 50:06
  And the horse will always respond to it.
• 50:09
  And if it doesn't respond in the right way, maybe you ask
• 50:12
  the, the, the wrong question.
• 50:15
  And, and what I try to, to to teach is that they get into communication that
• 50:22
  they see the horse not as a a sportive thing that you can ride on that, that
• 50:28
  you can direct through the forest.
• 50:31
  But it's a partner who is carrying you and you are the, the, the meat eater who's be
• 50:38
  sitting in the back of the horse's neck.
• 50:41
  And so I try to teach them teamwork.
• 50:44
  I try to teach them interaction on a, on a certain level where
• 50:50
  the horse is on the same spot.
• 50:53
  We call it in German.
• 50:55
  And when I train my horses, I always look that they feel safe, that they can trust
• 51:02
  me, and that that things that they see that the things that I do won't harm them.
• 51:09
  So I always ask them to give me the hoof.
• 51:12
  I always ask them, can I put on the halter?
• 51:17
  And, and they, they are allowed to say no.
• 51:21
  And then I ask again, but in a friendly way.
• 51:25
  And that, that is the thing that the horses learn.
• 51:31
  Hey, when Carla is coming, it's fun.
• 51:34
  We do things that are nice.
• 51:37
  And in all those years, I didn't have the problem that the horses
• 51:43
  didn't want to come with us.
• 51:45
  When they see the ki see me with the kids going to the meadows in
• 51:49
  the summer, they're outside all day.
• 51:52
  They come because they say, Hey, it's fun.
• 51:55
  We go outside, we go on a nice ride, we go, we get, we get brushed in a
• 52:00
  way that's, that's feeling comfortable for us and we are treated in a
• 52:04
  way that feels comfortable for us.
• 52:09
  Rupert Isaacson: Yeah, I feel that we, we have, I mean I've, I've
• 52:11
  observed this with your horses and it's, it's, it's remarkable.
• 52:14
  And questions come up in my mind.
• 52:17
  So one is, if you didn't have the base level of horsemanship that you
• 52:23
  have, I wonder if it would go as well.
• 52:31
  But the second thing is, part of that horsemanship isn't just the
• 52:34
  classical training that I know that you know how to do, but it's
• 52:39
  also you meet your horses' needs.
• 52:41
  Right.
• 52:42
  So your horses, do you think, I guess, let me pose this as a question.
• 52:45
  Do you think that if your horses were living, for example, in
• 52:49
  stables, you could have the same level of cooperation from them
• 52:57
  Karla Brahms: No.
• 52:57
  Rupert Isaacson: That you have out there in the forest with them?
• 53:00
  Karla Brahms: No.
• 53:01
  It's my responsibility to look after them, that they can live in
• 53:05
  a kind of way that suits them, that is for, for their, their needs.
• 53:12
  I always have their needs more in I than my own.
• 53:15
  Rupert Isaacson: Mm-hmm.
• 53:16
  Karla Brahms: So the hoofs from my horses are always nicer than
• 53:18
  my fingernails, for example.
• 53:21
  And that's
• 53:22
  Rupert Isaacson: a better
• 53:22
  Karla Brahms: every
• 53:24
  Rupert Isaacson: horse.
• 53:24
  Yeah.
• 53:24
  Yeah.
• 53:24
  Karla Brahms: And the thing is, I, I learned from my horses and my work
• 53:29
  changed because of the needs of my horses.
• 53:33
  Mm
• 53:33
  mm
• 53:34
  Like last summer, no, two summers ago.
• 53:38
  In 2024 when my husband was so ill, I had to give away three of my horses.
• 53:46
  And I knew with that change I couldn't do the, the groups anymore.
• 53:53
  So now my work is changing again with the horses.
• 53:56
  I have my, my flocker, my, my horse that is absolutely reliable on everything.
• 54:03
  She's ev doing everything for the persons that are around with her.
• 54:09
  She's now 25 years old and I can't put grownups on their
• 54:14
  back, on her back anymore.
• 54:16
  And the other two horses I have, they are darlings, but I couldn't work with
• 54:22
  kids with them and they're not mature.
• 54:25
  So my work is changing again.
• 54:27
  Rupert Isaacson: Yeah, I hear you.
• 54:28
  I hear you.
• 54:29
  This is, this is so sane.
• 54:30
  And I, I think that, so for example, in Horse Boy, when we are back riding,
• 54:34
  meaning when we ride with a child, the horse must be over 10 years old.
• 54:39
  Karla Brahms: Yeah.
• 54:39
  ' Rupert Isaacson: cause we know that they're just not mature
• 54:41
  enough in the brain and the emotional, you know, to be safe.
• 54:46
  But we also need to know that they have enough muscle that their back is strong.
• 54:51
  That they, you know, that they have the body with enough
• 54:57
  wellbeing to give wellbeing.
• 55:00
  Karla Brahms: Yeah.
• 55:01
  Yeah.
• 55:01
  Rupert Isaacson: And if they don't have this, we, we can't do it.
• 55:03
  And so as you say, as horses change, get older, we have to find
• 55:09
  a different role for that horse.
• 55:11
  Or if a horse is too young for that role, yeah.
• 55:14
  We need a different role for that horse.
• 55:16
  Yeah.
• 55:16
  And so we have to be flexible like this.
• 55:19
  And, you know, you keep your horses in this, in this very
• 55:22
  ideal, naturalistic way.
• 55:25
  I'm lucky I can do the same thing.
• 55:27
  But when we first moved to Germany from Texas, where we had had
• 55:31
  our own ranch, we didn't have that option because we were new.
• 55:34
  So we needed to keep the horses at a boarding stable, which is where
• 55:38
  we met you, you met first, where the horses were living in stables.
• 55:42
  And this was the first time I had ever kept my horses this way.
• 55:45
  Mm-hmm.
• 55:45
  And I remember thinking, ah, this is going to be an interesting challenge because
• 55:50
  this will allow me to help people who have to keep their horses in this situation.
• 55:57
  Mm-hmm.
• 55:57
  Mm-hmm.
• 55:57
  Because I won't, I can't, you can't say to somebody who's living on
• 56:01
  the edges of a city, for example.
• 56:03
  Yeah.
• 56:03
  You know, you must keep your horses like Carla because
• 56:06
  Karla Brahms: that's not possible.
• 56:07
  It's not
• 56:07
  Rupert Isaacson: possible.
• 56:08
  Karla Brahms: Yeah.
• 56:08
  Yeah.
• 56:09
  Rupert Isaacson: But you also can't say you should not keep horses.
• 56:11
  Karla Brahms: That's the thing.
• 56:12
  Rupert Isaacson: So how do we make the whole.
• 56:16
  It as ideal as possible given the limitations.
• 56:20
  So of course I had to answer this and I had to observe my horses and say,
• 56:24
  will they be as safe and will they be as reliable as they were in Texas?
• 56:29
  Because now they are not having as much access to nature.
• 56:33
  And I very quickly came to the conclusion that no, I could
• 56:36
  not expect the same from them.
• 56:39
  Karla Brahms: Mm-hmm.
• 56:40
  Rupert Isaacson: So then I thought, well, okay then how do I do this?
• 56:42
  Particularly in winter, where in Germany, you know, the farmers don't
• 56:46
  want the horses on the fields because they don't want the fields muddy.
• 56:49
  This was interesting for me coming from England where we just accept mud.
• 56:52
  You know, mud is just the culture, you know?
• 56:55
  Oh, a nice bit of mud for you, you know?
• 56:57
  Oh, thank you very much.
• 56:58
  I have a last bit of mud.
• 56:59
  Would you rock some mud?
• 57:01
  Would you rock some mud with your mud?
• 57:01
  You know, so, you know, it's like what?
• 57:03
  You don't want muddy fields?
• 57:04
  Okay, fine.
• 57:06
  Karla Brahms: You we have, we have a certain saying it's
• 57:07
  the so-called often much,
• 57:11
  but the often hai,
• 57:13
  Rupert Isaacson: the keeping your horse in the open mud.
• 57:16
  Yeah,
• 57:16
  Karla Brahms: right.
• 57:18
  Rupert Isaacson: Which of course horses seemed fine with, but
• 57:20
  so, you know, because that's was the culture of the barn.
• 57:24
  So that's where we really came up with the concept of crazy time.
• 57:27
  And luckily we had a barn owner who would allow us.
• 57:33
  To use the big indoor arena to free jump the horses.
• 57:37
  'cause our horses are very energetic and the horses loved this.
• 57:42
  Karla Brahms: Mm-hmm.
• 57:42
  Rupert Isaacson: And we could do it in herds, we could do it in teams.
• 57:45
  Summertime was no problem.
• 57:46
  Summertime, the horses could go out.
• 57:48
  But winter it was a real, and we found that when we answered the horses' needs
• 57:52
  with this crazy time, then they went absolutely back to being as reliable
• 57:57
  Karla Brahms: Yes.
• 57:57
  Rupert Isaacson: As they had been.
• 57:57
  That's the
• 57:58
  Karla Brahms: thing.
• 57:58
  Yeah.
• 57:58
  Rupert Isaacson: Because they had endorphins in their system.
• 58:00
  Karla Brahms: I also have a small indoor arena, which I use for free
• 58:04
  work, for free fire, abide we call it.
• 58:07
  And the horses, they, they show me always what they want to do.
• 58:12
  So I have like
• 58:15
  yeah.
• 58:15
  Poles.
• 58:15
  Poles,
• 58:16
  yeah.
• 58:17
  And I have a est and I have a a whipper, A
• 58:20
  pedestal.
• 58:21
  Yeah.
• 58:21
  A Cecil.
• 58:22
  Yeah.
• 58:23
  And they always show me what they want to do.
• 58:26
  Absolutely.
• 58:26
  And it's so amazing to see how they, how they try to, to find
• 58:32
  out what can we do with these things or how they play with me.
• 58:37
  Exactly.
• 58:38
  They actually want to play with you can, I can jump on it with my
• 58:41
  front whos and things like that.
• 58:43
  That's so amazing.
• 58:45
  So if you give them crazy time, like you say and, and they feel that
• 58:49
  their, their needs are respected.
• 58:51
  They, they are reliable.
• 58:55
  Rupert Isaacson: Absolutely.
• 58:55
  It's one of the things which, you know, because you also know
• 58:58
  that we teach a lot of dressage.
• 59:00
  Yeah.
• 59:00
  And so of course when I'm wearing my dressage hat, one of the
• 59:03
  things I'm often talking about is allowing your horse to say no.
• 59:08
  Karla Brahms: Yeah.
• 59:09
  Rupert Isaacson: How is this compatible with dressage?
• 59:11
  And people have asked me this.
• 59:12
  I said, well, because it's pointless if your horse does not want to do it.
• 59:18
  Karla Brahms: Yeah.
• 59:18
  Rupert Isaacson: If your horse doesn't want to do anything jumping,
• 59:21
  going in the forest dressage.
• 59:23
  Yeah.
• 59:23
  Why?
• 59:24
  Okay.
• 59:24
  Well maybe we need to go get the doctor in town.
• 59:30
  A hundred years ago, the horse has to say, yes, your wife is sick.
• 59:34
  You must get on your horse.
• 59:35
  You must ride to town.
• 59:36
  You must make sure that the horse is absolutely with
• 59:39
  you, or your wife will die.
• 59:40
  Yes, sure.
• 59:41
  Karla Brahms: Yeah.
• 59:41
  Rupert Isaacson: And then the doctor must come with his horse.
• 59:43
  His horse has to say, yes, absolutely.
• 59:45
  So how do you get a horse that says yes like that by allowing them to say no?
• 59:50
  Sometimes that, just like you, if I, if I, so this is of course easier when one
• 59:55
  has a herd, but if I say, oh, Carla's coming and we want to do this thing
• 1:00:00
  with Carla, so I think it's this horse.
• 1:00:03
  So I go out to the field to get this horse, and I arrive with
• 1:00:06
  the Holter or the bridle, and the horse says pretty clearly to me.
• 1:00:09
  No,
• 1:00:10
  Karla Brahms: no.
• 1:00:11
  Usually
• 1:00:12
  Rupert Isaacson: another horse will walk straight up to me
• 1:00:14
  and go, actually it's me today.
• 1:00:16
  Karla Brahms: Yes.
• 1:00:16
  Rupert Isaacson: And I'll go, oh, okay.
• 1:00:18
  Karla Brahms: Yeah.
• 1:00:19
  Rupert Isaacson: This
• 1:00:19
  Karla Brahms: can see that is one thing that I also use with my work.
• 1:00:23
  The, the clients, we, the first thing we do is go into the
• 1:00:27
  stable or into the meadow and see which horse connects with you.
• 1:00:32
  Rupert Isaacson: Yes.
• 1:00:33
  Karla Brahms: Which horse do you feel is a good company?
• 1:00:37
  And often that horse is coming.
• 1:00:40
  Rupert Isaacson: Exactly.
• 1:00:41
  And it can change from day to day.
• 1:00:42
  Karla Brahms: Yes.
• 1:00:44
  Rupert Isaacson: Just like with people.
• 1:00:45
  Yeah.
• 1:00:45
  But then if yes, if I really need that horse to ride over the mountain
• 1:00:49
  in the thunderstorm, he's more likely
• 1:00:53
  Karla Brahms: the horse then the horse will, will feel that.
• 1:00:55
  Rupert Isaacson: Exactly.
• 1:00:56
  Karla Brahms: Yeah.
• 1:00:57
  Rupert Isaacson: And then you, you
• 1:00:57
  Karla Brahms: can, you know, you know, one thing the, the little Emil
• 1:01:00
  pony, I raised him because I wanted to have a second horse for the carriage.
• 1:01:06
  I want, my, my desperate wish was to go with two ponies with spots on
• 1:01:12
  their bottom in front of the carriage.
• 1:01:16
  And, and he exactly fulfilled that wish.
• 1:01:22
  Rupert Isaacson: Yeah.
• 1:01:23
  Karla Brahms: It was so easy to train him to go in front of
• 1:01:26
  the carriage with his mother.
• 1:01:27
  Mother.
• 1:01:28
  Rupert Isaacson: Yeah.
• 1:01:29
  Karla Brahms: And that was for two years.
• 1:01:31
  The, the hobby that my, my husband and I were, were happy with and, and.
• 1:01:39
  I, I, I know one of my, my mentors, one of my teachers way, way back when I started
• 1:01:45
  with the therapeutic riding, he said, if you buy a horse for a special reason,
• 1:01:51
  it will fulfill exactly that reason.
• 1:01:54
  But no other.
• 1:01:57
  And the thing is that, that really, that hit me, and with this experience now from
• 1:02:03
  almost 30 years, I can say he was right.
• 1:02:09
  Rupert Isaacson: It's very interesting.
• 1:02:11
  I, I remember you telling me another story about the fulfillment of
• 1:02:14
  dreams because you, like me, did not come from a horsey background.
• 1:02:19
  I think you should tell us, you, you were a child, a girl
• 1:02:23
  who wanted horses very badly.
• 1:02:25
  Your father, who was a riverboat captain, did not care from horses.
• 1:02:33
  Tell us what he said to you.
• 1:02:35
  You can have a horse when,
• 1:02:37
  Karla Brahms: yeah.
• 1:02:38
  Do you remember?
• 1:02:39
  We were always sitting in the boat and the river always goes one direction, right?
• 1:02:44
  It always flows river down.
• 1:02:47
  And he said, you can have a horse when the waves are going river up.
• 1:02:53
  And sometimes when the wind was coming from down the, the, the valley, the
• 1:02:57
  waves looked like they were going.
• 1:03:00
  And I said, oh, daddy, daddy, look now I get a pony.
• 1:03:04
  And he said, ah, ha ha ha.
• 1:03:07
  That was only just a joke.
• 1:03:09
  And I was so upset and I realized, and I said, I will never, never, ever promise
• 1:03:15
  my children anything that I can't fulfill.
• 1:03:19
  Rupert Isaacson: Yeah, yeah.
• 1:03:21
  Karla Brahms: And I was 30 I had to get 30 to get my own first horse.
• 1:03:26
  Not because of my father, but because of me.
• 1:03:30
  But you know, the funny thing is, before my dad died, he always
• 1:03:33
  brought me a big sack of carrots.
• 1:03:37
  And that was his way of showing it's okay, what you're doing.
• 1:03:41
  I respect what you're doing.
• 1:03:44
  Rupert Isaacson: It's very interesting.
• 1:03:45
  I, I've never quite understood this resistance that parents have to
• 1:03:51
  fulfilling the dreams of their children.
• 1:03:53
  Particularly,
• 1:03:54
  Karla Brahms: but you know, when you, when you were raised in a, in a family
• 1:04:00
  that has their destination and the destination of my family was the boats
• 1:04:04
  and the river, and I was an alien.
• 1:04:08
  I was, I was infected with a horse virus and nobody could understand
• 1:04:11
  it, but I was so sure that I want to have horses one time.
• 1:04:17
  And the same thing is with that with that certificate of being
• 1:04:22
  a horse therapeutic teacher.
• 1:04:25
  When I first.
• 1:04:27
  Realized how many, how much work that is to get all the qualifications,
• 1:04:33
  to get through that process of getting that certificate.
• 1:04:37
  It took me eight years, but I was so sure that I want to do that, that
• 1:04:43
  nothing could get me off the path.
• 1:04:46
  Yeah.
• 1:04:47
  And I mean, today that certificate is hanging on the horse rider Lou,
• 1:04:52
  because none of my clients ever asked me what my qualification is.
• 1:04:58
  You need your qualifications for the bank when you want some money.
• 1:05:01
  You need the qualification for the insurance when something happens.
• 1:05:05
  Rupert Isaacson: Yeah.
• 1:05:05
  Karla Brahms: And you need the qualification for when you want to
• 1:05:08
  go for, to a thought building, to a
• 1:05:10
  Rupert Isaacson: a development, professional
• 1:05:11
  Karla Brahms: development, development practice.
• 1:05:13
  And that's right.
• 1:05:14
  But what you, you offer for your clients is always a question
• 1:05:22
  of, of relation Relationship.
• 1:05:25
  Rupert Isaacson: Yeah.
• 1:05:26
  Karla Brahms: Of relationship.
• 1:05:27
  And if that is good, then it doesn't matter what qualification you have.
• 1:05:33
  Absolutely.
• 1:05:34
  Because you are a teacher or you are a person that can create memories with
• 1:05:40
  the kids and the horses, or you're not,
• 1:05:43
  Rupert Isaacson: well, what, what they say.
• 1:05:45
  I think it's so true.
• 1:05:46
  Is there in fact only two emotions in the world?
• 1:05:49
  There's love and there's fear and all of the other, and
• 1:05:53
  Karla Brahms: there's grief.
• 1:05:54
  Rupert Isaacson: Sorry,
• 1:05:55
  Karla Brahms: don't forget the grief.
• 1:05:57
  Rupert Isaacson: Well, let's go into that because, because grief is, is,
• 1:06:01
  is a strange hybrid of the those two.
• 1:06:05
  It's almost as if they have a baby.
• 1:06:09
  And, but if one is coming from, so one could be coming from fear with that
• 1:06:15
  qualification, fear of doing it wrong, fear of an accident, fear of I don't know
• 1:06:22
  all the things one could be afraid of or one could come at it from a point of love.
• 1:06:27
  Which one is gonna work better for the client.
• 1:06:30
  You know, I think we can answer that question, but you've brought up grief.
• 1:06:34
  Okay.
• 1:06:35
  So I just want to do a small trigger alert.
• 1:06:39
  For those listeners, we are going to go into a slightly different realm here.
• 1:06:44
  So if you are someone who is in a particularly raw stage around
• 1:06:51
  grief right now, you might, or you might not want to listen onto the
• 1:06:55
  next part of this conversation.
• 1:06:57
  If it's, if you feel it's too raw to discuss grief at this point, perhaps.
• 1:07:02
  Switch off and come back to it later.
• 1:07:04
  If you feel that this is for you, please go on.
• 1:07:07
  Okay, so I'm gonna just hit it straight.
• 1:07:10
  Carla's husband y who was also a friend of mine, and this is
• 1:07:17
  actually a bit hard for me.
• 1:07:21
  Okay, so here's the story.
• 1:07:23
  I grew up not just with horses, but also in a part of North London, which in the
• 1:07:28
  late eighties was a hotbed of music.
• 1:07:32
  And it was, there were two main forms of music that came out of my neighborhood.
• 1:07:36
  One was reggae and Scar.
• 1:07:38
  It was a, a re finding of scar with sort of white boy bands, taking
• 1:07:43
  the old Jamaican music bands like Madness, bands like The Specials.
• 1:07:48
  Karla Brahms: Bad Manners.
• 1:07:49
  Rupert Isaacson: Bad Manners.
• 1:07:50
  They came out of my area of London and then also what was called the
• 1:07:54
  New Wave of British Heavy Metal.
• 1:07:56
  So bands like Iron Maiden, those bands, they were in my neighborhood as well.
• 1:08:00
  So there, and it was really a similar energy.
• 1:08:02
  One went more rock, one meant went more scar, but it was a sort of real outpouring
• 1:08:09
  of it came out of punk and it was sort of the next stage on from punk and.
• 1:08:16
  There was a band called Bad Manners.
• 1:08:18
  And if you don't know bad manners you need to go on YouTube right now
• 1:08:22
  and type in Nini, Nana, Nana Nunu,
• 1:08:26
  Karla Brahms: Nunu
• 1:08:27
  Rupert Isaacson: Nini, Nana, Nana nnu.
• 1:08:29
  And there was this huge male lead singer.
• 1:08:34
  There were skinheads called Buster Blood Vessel
• 1:08:37
  Karla Brahms: with an enormous tongue,
• 1:08:39
  Rupert Isaacson: with an enormous tongue who he always looked like he
• 1:08:43
  was about to have a heart attack on stage and is still alive to this day.
• 1:08:46
  Karla Brahms: He's still alive.
• 1:08:47
  He is,
• 1:08:48
  Rupert Isaacson: Douglas, I think his name is living in Bulgaria.
• 1:08:50
  Douglas, your husband told me I think he's
• 1:08:52
  Karla Brahms: called Douglas,
• 1:08:52
  Rupert Isaacson: who perhaps never learned to read or write, I think, and then had
• 1:08:55
  managed to somehow carve himself out.
• 1:08:58
  Anyway,
• 1:09:01
  y my friend Y and Carla's
• 1:09:08
  life and soul partner, second husband y when I first met you and
• 1:09:17
  I was chatting to Y and he said, oh, oh, she still live in that part
• 1:09:20
  of London and that you come from.
• 1:09:22
  And I said, why are you talking with that accent in English?
• 1:09:24
  It's like, well, I lived there for a long time.
• 1:09:26
  And I was like, oh, I see you really actually do talk English with that accent.
• 1:09:30
  You really did like learn your English there.
• 1:09:33
  And it turns out he had played for bad manners in their horn section.
• 1:09:39
  He was their trombonist.
• 1:09:40
  And any of you who know about Scar know that.
• 1:09:45
  It's very much centered around the horn section.
• 1:09:48
  And you, you've got to be a really good player.
• 1:09:51
  And he'd gone, this boy from Heidelberg, Heidelberg University, taken his chances
• 1:09:56
  in London as German boy and had made it.
• 1:10:00
  But at the end of it, he'd come back to the Odin Vault
• 1:10:04
  and had connected with Carla.
• 1:10:06
  And one of the most amazing things, and this still goes on to this day, is Carla
• 1:10:12
  and Y run a scar, reggae one day festival at re in its the most amazing and magical
• 1:10:22
  evening that you can possibly spend.
• 1:10:26
  It was Y's band would play and you dance all night and you'd
• 1:10:31
  fall asleep on cushions in the forest or in hammocks, wake up and
• 1:10:35
  have breakfast and it's amazing.
• 1:10:36
  Anyway,
• 1:10:40
  not so long ago young contracted cancer and he fought it off.
• 1:10:48
  Big, big bloke.
• 1:10:49
  Young, big young.
• 1:10:50
  One of those guys.
• 1:10:52
  Big, solid guy that you always think of as big like a building.
• 1:10:57
  Building's gonna be there anyway.
• 1:10:59
  And then the cancer came back
• 1:11:03
  and and he died.
• 1:11:05
  And I remember feeling this sense of.
• 1:11:08
  Outrage about it.
• 1:11:11
  I remember coming down to visit you bef shortly before he died,
• 1:11:17
  and he was at peace with it, but he still looked so good.
• 1:11:19
  He was still big yarn.
• 1:11:21
  Karla Brahms: Mm-hmm.
• 1:11:23
  Rupert Isaacson: And then I came down after he died and I saw him and you'd
• 1:11:26
  laid him out and you'd laid him out so beautifully in his leather pants
• 1:11:30
  and his leopard skin coat and his hat.
• 1:11:33
  Karla Brahms: That was his wish.
• 1:11:34
  Rupert Isaacson: And a, and a joint in his hand.
• 1:11:36
  And, you know, perfect.
• 1:11:37
  And he looked so good, he looked so handsome and he looked so young.
• 1:11:42
  And I was like, what the fuck are you doing lying there young.
• 1:11:45
  Get the fuck up, fuck off with this
• 1:11:51
  lying there thing.
• 1:11:54
  You look so good.
• 1:11:56
  This is bullshit.
• 1:11:56
  You're, you're, you're bullshitting us here.
• 1:12:01
  And of course, in the inter intervening months, year, more than
• 1:12:09
  a year since this has happened, you've of course begun, begun to
• 1:12:14
  turn your work towards grief, Carla.
• 1:12:18
  Yes.
• 1:12:19
  Please talk to us about this.
• 1:12:21
  I know a lot of, a lot of listeners, a lot of viewers right now will
• 1:12:24
  be facing very similar situations.
• 1:12:29
  Karla Brahms: Well, actually tomorrow it's exactly 14 months ago.
• 1:12:34
  And
• 1:12:35
  the thing is that a lot of things changed, but I was absolutely sure that I want
• 1:12:42
  to stay here and I, I have the feeling he's still around helping where he can.
• 1:12:53
  Rupert Isaacson: Yeah, I, I get that
• 1:12:54
  Karla Brahms: very strongly, not physically, but somehow.
• 1:12:58
  And, you know, riding that grief wave is one of the biggest
• 1:13:08
  what's the English word for
• 1:13:09
  Rupert Isaacson: challenges?
• 1:13:10
  Karla Brahms: Challenges, yeah.
• 1:13:11
  Is one of the big challenges that I ever did.
• 1:13:15
  But
• 1:13:18
  I also feel that with persons like you and a few others,
• 1:13:29
  if you're opening yourself and not turning the grief only into your system,
• 1:13:40
  if you open up, then it gets better.
• 1:13:45
  It'll never go away, but you can handle it better.
• 1:13:50
  And, the thing is that I, I realized that what helped me most are my animals.
• 1:14:00
  The place here, and actually a picture I, I drew in my training when I, when
• 1:14:09
  I got the NIG practitioner, we, one had one time had a a training that
• 1:14:16
  was called the, the, the life path.
• 1:14:19
  And there you draw a picture of yourself as an old woman
• 1:14:23
  or as an elder, elder person.
• 1:14:27
  And the picture I drew that time was this.
• 1:14:30
  Can you see it?
• 1:14:32
  Yes, I do.
• 1:14:34
  Beautiful.
• 1:14:34
  That's me as an old woman.
• 1:14:37
  Okay.
• 1:14:38
  So, and that I drew that picture before Yum took his first chemotherapy.
• 1:14:44
  We didn't even know if he could handle it, if it would work,
• 1:14:51
  if we didn't know anything.
• 1:14:53
  We, we were just in the beginning of all that cancer stuff that awaits you.
• 1:15:01
  And I drew that picture.
• 1:15:03
  And when I stood on my meet up position and my therapist asked me oh, I think
• 1:15:09
  my meta position was the snail Gary.
• 1:15:12
  She said, oh, Gary how did Carla get that elder woman on the picture?
• 1:15:19
  And Gary said, yes, that funny widow.
• 1:15:22
  And everybody was like, and I was like, oh.
• 1:15:28
  And then I realized, well, that is a possibility with that diagnosis
• 1:15:34
  and with that cancer, it's really possible that I will survive young.
• 1:15:41
  And that picture of that funny, happy widow is carrying me through
• 1:15:47
  all these things because I now, that's me, that's inside me.
• 1:15:52
  That's my picture of me as an old person.
• 1:15:55
  Rupert Isaacson: What's interesting is that you're in
• 1:15:56
  a dress, in a pair of heels.
• 1:15:57
  I don't think I've ever seen you in a dress, a pair of heels.
• 1:16:04
  You have to get that dress in those shoes.
• 1:16:07
  Karla Brahms: Yeah.
• 1:16:10
  And, and so what I, what I really try to do is now give persons in
• 1:16:16
  grief the possibility to also find out what is their way in the future.
• 1:16:26
  Because when you lose someone, you not only losing the person,
• 1:16:31
  but you lose your self identity.
• 1:16:34
  I'm a widow now.
• 1:16:36
  I'm not the husband the, the wife of Jan anymore.
• 1:16:40
  I'm not the, the we.
• 1:16:42
  Yeah.
• 1:16:43
  I'm now an I and I have to find out what is my identity in the future.
• 1:16:51
  And that is one of the most hardest points in grieving that you have
• 1:16:57
  to find out who are you and what are your dreams in the future.
• 1:17:02
  Mm-hmm.
• 1:17:03
  Is there a future?
• 1:17:06
  The thing is, when you live in a partnership, there's the, the
• 1:17:09
  present and there's a lot of future.
• 1:17:12
  And as soon as your partner dies, there's the present, which is not very
• 1:17:16
  important, but there's a lot of farenheit.
• 1:17:20
  Rupert Isaacson: A lot of past,
• 1:17:22
  Karla Brahms: a lot of past.
• 1:17:23
  And right now I'm at the point where past and future are equal.
• 1:17:31
  Again, I'm in the present.
• 1:17:34
  The past is important, but the future is saying, hi, I'm here.
• 1:17:41
  What are we gonna do?
• 1:17:44
  And what helped me to get into that state, that the, the future is present
• 1:17:51
  is, is important again, is that I have.
• 1:17:56
  Had all these experiences with my horses, with my cat and dog, with my friends with
• 1:18:02
  you, and with the, with the inner pictures I was drawing when young was sick.
• 1:18:13
  So I want to help other people in grief to benefit from that experience I made
• 1:18:21
  and offer that to them so they can come to my house for a kind of grief retreat.
• 1:18:27
  Yeah.
• 1:18:28
  For a weekend.
• 1:18:30
  And we can do whatever they want or we can do nothing and they can just
• 1:18:35
  go into the forest, which helps alone.
• 1:18:39
  They can just snuggle up on the couch, on the sofa with a dog, which helps a lot.
• 1:18:44
  They can lie in bed with a cat on top, which helps a lot.
• 1:18:48
  And my animals are always finding the right way to help people.
• 1:18:56
  Not only my horses, but also my cat and my dog.
• 1:19:00
  Rupert Isaacson: Yeah.
• 1:19:00
  Karla Brahms: And I realized that being together with people who
• 1:19:04
  are also in grief helps because they speak the same language.
• 1:19:10
  And, and having like meals together, cooking meals together
• 1:19:18
  is also a part of self caring.
• 1:19:21
  And that is what people in grief have to learn.
• 1:19:25
  To, to be good to themselves to help their inner identity to heal.
• 1:19:34
  And that's what I wanna do.
• 1:19:37
  Rupert Isaacson: You know, we talked about this before we
• 1:19:40
  switched the record button on.
• 1:19:42
  Death and grief in our culture is taboo.
• 1:19:45
  Karla Brahms: Yeah.
• 1:19:46
  Rupert Isaacson: It's not allowed.
• 1:19:47
  So we don't see the dead.
• 1:19:50
  You know, I'd really appreciated that you had young lay out and grim joke,
• 1:19:56
  but it was handy that it was January because he lay there for, for some days,
• 1:20:01
  so that many of us who wanted to say goodbye could drive down and say goodbye.
• 1:20:07
  If it had been high summer, we wouldn't have been able to do it so long.
• 1:20:10
  All right.
• 1:20:11
  And
• 1:20:12
  Karla Brahms: there are cool packs that you can put under the packet.
• 1:20:14
  Rupert Isaacson: Right.
• 1:20:15
  And one has to think about these things.
• 1:20:17
  But you provided a ritual and you provided a ceremony
• 1:20:27
  that allowed us to remember that death and life are the same thing.
• 1:20:31
  Karla Brahms: Yeah.
• 1:20:32
  Rupert Isaacson: And that the fields of consciousness are not dependent upon.
• 1:20:40
  Karla Brahms: Yeah.
• 1:20:41
  Rupert Isaacson: The material density of the fields.
• 1:20:47
  Producing matter, but at the same time, because the density of the
• 1:20:56
  fields producing matter is part of the beauty of reality and creation.
• 1:21:01
  We, of course, form emotional attachments to living beings who are these
• 1:21:11
  dense moments of the wave before it becomes part of the ocean again.
• 1:21:19
  And we need to ride those waves.
• 1:21:25
  And, and I really appre, you're one of the only people I know
• 1:21:29
  outside of perhaps Ireland, where they still lay out the dead.
• 1:21:33
  Who
• 1:21:36
  did that?
• 1:21:42
  The, I think most people who go through grief and everyone's
• 1:21:46
  going to go through grief.
• 1:21:47
  You can't be alive without going through grief.
• 1:21:51
  Everyone who goes through grief in our culture has to go
• 1:21:56
  through it alone, pretty much.
• 1:21:59
  Karla Brahms: And that is the thing we, we have a lack of information
• 1:22:03
  in our culture about handling dead people and handling the death.
• 1:22:09
  I knew that you are allowed to keep the body for at least three days,
• 1:22:15
  and I knew that it is important to do what feels right for you.
• 1:22:22
  For example there was a time, I think five years ago I saw a movie.
• 1:22:29
  And in this movie there was a scene where a young lady died and her friend
• 1:22:34
  washed her body and put on the clothes.
• 1:22:37
  And immediately I thought, oh, I want to do the, to the persons I love, because
• 1:22:44
  that's the last step of respect, and I don't want any other to do that.
• 1:22:53
  And so when Jan's father died in 2020, in the part, in the time of Corona,
• 1:22:59
  well, he was 88 and it was, it was okay.
• 1:23:02
  And his dad was also at home and, and all together with his family.
• 1:23:06
  And I said, am I allowed to wash him and clothe him?
• 1:23:11
  And y said, I will help you.
• 1:23:14
  And his, his son, his younger son that he had from the first
• 1:23:18
  marriage said, I help you too.
• 1:23:20
  So we three, we washed Y's dad, and we closed him.
• 1:23:24
  We, we shaved him.
• 1:23:26
  He, we cut his fingernails and everything and we laid him out
• 1:23:31
  in, in his home, in his home bed.
• 1:23:35
  And when Yu died, it was exactly clear that I will do that for him too.
• 1:23:40
  And my friend, or our friend and his son helped us.
• 1:23:46
  So we three were washing and, and clothing yu.
• 1:23:51
  And I'm so glad because shortly before he died, he said, I want to be burned.
• 1:23:56
  I want to wear that Leo parts echo that jacket, the leather pants, the creepers
• 1:24:03
  and the black shirt and everything.
• 1:24:06
  Afterwards you do as, as it pleases you, I'm dead.
• 1:24:11
  I don't care if I lie in the forest or
• 1:24:15
  if I lie on the, on the graveyard.
• 1:24:17
  Please do that for yourself.
• 1:24:20
  You have to have a place where to go and to remember me.
• 1:24:24
  And I was so glad about that because we could do whatever felt good for us.
• 1:24:29
  And I never had the feeling that everything I did with a, the, the,
• 1:24:35
  the ceremony or with a, where he, where he, his, his ashes is buried.
• 1:24:42
  It, it, it never had, I never had the feeling I'm doing it wrong
• 1:24:46
  because he said, do it as you please.
• 1:24:50
  And, and I think that that is something that helped me too to get through all
• 1:24:58
  that hard times because I knew he was.
• 1:25:02
  He was right with everything I did.
• 1:25:06
  Rupert Isaacson: We don't really have, again, we talked about
• 1:25:08
  this before we hit record.
• 1:25:09
  We don't have a language around grief, do we?
• 1:25:12
  Karla Brahms: That is it.
• 1:25:12
  Rupert Isaacson: So, so one of the difficulties I think is that people feel,
• 1:25:16
  because it's a taboo, that although they want to give comfort or offer comfort,
• 1:25:25
  they feel one of two things usually.
• 1:25:29
  One is avoidance.
• 1:25:30
  I don't want to be near death because death is a contagion.
• 1:25:35
  What if I catch it?
• 1:25:36
  I think that isn't, but the other one is, which is comes
• 1:25:40
  from a, a slightly better places.
• 1:25:44
  I don't want to intrude, I dunno what to say.
• 1:25:47
  I don't want to say the wrong thing.
• 1:25:49
  Hmm.
• 1:25:50
  So what people then do is they say nothing or they, as you said, they
• 1:25:54
  come and say to you, platitudes about how you have to let it go or
• 1:25:59
  something like that, which meaningless.
• 1:26:03
  Karla Brahms: Yeah.
• 1:26:03
  And sometimes it weird
• 1:26:05
  Rupert Isaacson: and frankly hurtful, you know?
• 1:26:06
  Yeah.
• 1:26:06
  Because no, the whole point is one is not supposed to let it go.
• 1:26:10
  One is supposed to experience it.
• 1:26:14
  It's a little bit like somebody saying you should not experience birth.
• 1:26:21
  Karla Brahms: Yeah.
• 1:26:21
  Rupert Isaacson: You know,
• 1:26:22
  Karla Brahms: and, and you can't tell anybody how it feels to
• 1:26:24
  give birth, but because you have to, to have to go through it.
• 1:26:30
  Rupert Isaacson: And it's gonna both suck and be ecstatic.
• 1:26:33
  And I think there is an ecstatic side to death because what in fact
• 1:26:39
  there really is, if you, if you think about what the word ecstasy means,
• 1:26:43
  it means to be outside of oneself.
• 1:26:45
  X static.
• 1:26:47
  The static is the state X is outside in Latin, we are out.
• 1:26:51
  So when we are in ecstasy, we are outside of ourselves.
• 1:26:55
  And that can be a positive or a negative feeling.
• 1:26:58
  We tend to assume it's a positive thing feeling, but it can be both.
• 1:27:02
  It can be an ecstasy of pain, an ecstasy of torment, an ecstasy of joy.
• 1:27:08
  We'd rather have the ecstasy of joy.
• 1:27:10
  But with something like birth or death, it's going to be both.
• 1:27:15
  Karla Brahms: And you know the energy, sorry when I interrupt.
• 1:27:17
  Yeah.
• 1:27:18
  But the energy that is released when a child is born is the
• 1:27:23
  same when somebody dies.
• 1:27:26
  You know, the day before young died, I was standing under the shower and I had
• 1:27:31
  the feeling, oh, I have to go quickly.
• 1:27:33
  I have to, I, I don't want to miss anything.
• 1:27:35
  And I ran down to him and I said, can you imagine?
• 1:27:39
  When I was under the shower, it exactly felt the day like
• 1:27:42
  when the children were born.
• 1:27:43
  And I first took my first shower after birth.
• 1:27:47
  It was the same, exactly the same feeling.
• 1:27:50
  And he was laughing.
• 1:27:52
  And then, then I said, did you ever imagine that you were more
• 1:27:56
  important than the horses one time?
• 1:27:58
  And we both sat there laughing as hard as we as we could, because
• 1:28:02
  that was always our running joke.
• 1:28:04
  Young always said, okay with Carla, first come the horses, then the kids.
• 1:28:09
  And some way back then I come and we always had much fun about that saying.
• 1:28:16
  And it was exactly like I said, young was in the first place.
• 1:28:21
  And, and realizing that this, this feeling was the same, gave me that, that
• 1:28:29
  feeling that everything is connected.
• 1:28:33
  Mm-hmm.
• 1:28:33
  Like when somebody is born, you don't have a, an a, an impact on it.
• 1:28:39
  And when somebody dies neither.
• 1:28:43
  So maybe that is what all life is about.
• 1:28:46
  That, that the energy that is between life and death is, is so sacred that you, that
• 1:28:56
  you can only be like in a, in a state of, of wonder to keep every day a little bit
• 1:29:10
  in a, in a, in a sacred way, feel alive.
• 1:29:14
  Rupert Isaacson: Yeah.
• 1:29:14
  This is why we must have ceremony and ritual, because ceremony and
• 1:29:17
  ritual are the acknowledgement of the sacred, aren't they?
• 1:29:20
  Yeah.
• 1:29:20
  It, it, it says, I recognize that this is sacred.
• 1:29:24
  And I, I remember being, when I came down to be with, to visit when I, and Rowan
• 1:29:31
  was with me and young was still alive.
• 1:29:35
  The moment I walked into the room, I could feel the sacred.
• 1:29:38
  Karla Brahms: Mm-hmm.
• 1:29:39
  Rupert Isaacson: And then when I came back and he was gone, but he was laid
• 1:29:42
  out the same feeling, the same thing.
• 1:29:45
  But our culture denies us this.
• 1:29:48
  And it's so interesting.
• 1:29:50
  Back to earlier in this conversation, we were talking about
• 1:29:57
  putting to death all the wise women, you know, 400 years ago.
• 1:30:02
  So now when we discover something like your, you know, neuro imaginative
• 1:30:06
  gestalt and it's effectively shamanic process with science behind it, but
• 1:30:11
  shamanism also has science behind it.
• 1:30:13
  There are things going on
• 1:30:14
  Karla Brahms: Yeah.
• 1:30:14
  Rupert Isaacson: That we now consider in our culture.
• 1:30:17
  This is something new when actually the original horse people were always doing
• 1:30:23
  this because this is, you know, part of what it means to be a human being.
• 1:30:28
  Now.
• 1:30:28
  Now, when I entered that space, that sacred space with Jan, both on
• 1:30:37
  the way to death and after death.
• 1:30:39
  I realized this felt totally new to me.
• 1:30:42
  So, so yeah, I felt that I, this was something unfamiliar to me and new
• 1:30:48
  to me in my fifties, which shouldn't be, should, should be, should have
• 1:30:57
  been very much a part of life.
• 1:31:01
  And just as we're cut off from nature in so many ways, cutting our ourselves
• 1:31:07
  off from life, from death, from birth, you know, most people meant not everyone
• 1:31:10
  attends the birth of their children.
• 1:31:12
  I was lucky I did get to do that.
• 1:31:14
  So you now are turning your work to this, to this very problem.
• 1:31:21
  Karla Brahms: I try to,
• 1:31:22
  Rupert Isaacson: yeah.
• 1:31:23
  Te tell us about, I mean, you, you, you've, you've mentioned it in brief and I
• 1:31:26
  know you're going to be offering retreats.
• 1:31:36
  I just like to, ah.
• 1:31:37
  I'd like to know your thoughts on it.
• 1:31:39
  Yeah.
• 1:31:40
  What do you, what do you see?
• 1:31:41
  How do you see it developing what you're doing?
• 1:31:44
  And are you, are you reaching out to others who are beginning
• 1:31:48
  to offer the same type of work?
• 1:31:50
  Are there others out there in the equestrian, the equine assisted
• 1:31:53
  world, also looking at grief?
• 1:31:55
  Are you in contact with them?
• 1:31:57
  Where's this going?
• 1:31:58
  I think this is a field we should all be aware of.
• 1:32:01
  Karla Brahms: Yeah.
• 1:32:02
  That is a thing that I start now to get connected with other people who
• 1:32:08
  are working with horses and offer grief therapy or grief accompanying with horses.
• 1:32:17
  And it's like I met a community in the internet, it's called Toast
• 1:32:25
  Heden where people in grief can talk to other people in grief.
• 1:32:30
  Rupert Isaacson: Helden is a, is a, is a, is a hero, by the way.
• 1:32:33
  In Yeah.
• 1:32:35
  Karla Brahms: What
• 1:32:35
  Rupert Isaacson: in, in English, just a to helden would be grief heroes.
• 1:32:40
  Yes.
• 1:32:40
  Would that, yeah, yeah,
• 1:32:42
  Karla Brahms: yeah, yeah,
• 1:32:45
  Rupert Isaacson: yeah.
• 1:32:46
  Okay.
• 1:32:47
  So I just wanted to translate that for people.
• 1:32:49
  Yeah.
• 1:32:49
  Karla Brahms: Yeah.
• 1:32:49
  Rupert Isaacson: Okay.
• 1:32:50
  So you met this, you found this community.
• 1:32:52
  How did you find this community?
• 1:32:55
  Karla Brahms: I don't remember.
• 1:32:56
  Rupert Isaacson: Okay.
• 1:32:56
  Yeah.
• 1:32:56
  I think
• 1:32:56
  Karla Brahms: it found me and, and I realized that writing and talking
• 1:33:02
  about my emotions really helped.
• 1:33:06
  And so about over that community, I have a lot of contact with people who are working
• 1:33:14
  with grief and, and that is an amazing new field that's opening up with a lot of
• 1:33:20
  possibilities to learn and to, to bring my experiences into, into that community.
• 1:33:30
  And I don't know where the journey is going to, I mean, look at us about
• 1:33:36
  that one click in the internet to connect my friend Sarah with you.
• 1:33:42
  Rupert Isaacson: Mm-hmm.
• 1:33:43
  Karla Brahms: We got in touch and Matt is each other, and now we're sitting here.
• 1:33:47
  Rupert Isaacson: Yeah.
• 1:33:47
  Karla Brahms: And I mean, with the, with the energy, it was the same thing.
• 1:33:50
  I was looking for a method and I found this institution and, and now I'm, I'm
• 1:33:58
  doing that teaching training people for the NIG practitioner with horses.
• 1:34:04
  And, and I never dreamed five years ago, or six years ago when I started
• 1:34:09
  with it, that it would come this far.
• 1:34:12
  I have the feeling that when you follow your heart.
• 1:34:16
  When you follow your dreams, when you have dreams and you follow your dreams
• 1:34:20
  you don't have to do a lot of things.
• 1:34:24
  Sometimes the things they just develop.
• 1:34:27
  Yeah.
• 1:34:27
  And, and, but you have to be open to new chances and yeah, step over your shadow,
• 1:34:35
  get out of your comfort zone, some say.
• 1:34:38
  But just trust yourself and try.
• 1:34:43
  All you can do is fail and even failing is an experience.
• 1:34:49
  Rupert Isaacson: if you're a horse nerd, and if you're on this podcast,
• 1:34:52
  I'm guessing you are, then you've probably also always wondered a little
• 1:34:57
  bit about the old master system.
• 1:35:00
  of dressage training.
• 1:35:01
  If you go and check out our Helios Harmony program, we outline there step by step
• 1:35:10
  exactly how to train your horse from the ground to become the dressage horse
• 1:35:16
  of your dreams in a way that absolutely serves the physical, mental and emotional
• 1:35:23
  well being of the horse and the rider.
• 1:35:25
  Intrigued?
• 1:35:26
  Like to know more?
• 1:35:28
  Go to our website, Helios Harmony.
• 1:35:33
  Check out the free introduction course.
• 1:35:35
  Take it from there.
• 1:35:36
  All right.
• 1:35:36
  I'm, I'm just thinking of all the, all the various types of therapeutic
• 1:35:40
  riding or therapeutic equine things that are out there in the world.
• 1:35:44
  As you know, I, I work in many countries and I don't see this offered.
• 1:35:50
  Okay.
• 1:35:51
  I am not offering it.
• 1:35:54
  Okay.
• 1:35:54
  We should be offering it.
• 1:35:56
  How do we offer it?
• 1:35:57
  Well, if I was going to offer it, I would need to work with
• 1:36:01
  somebody who knew what to do.
• 1:36:05
  That would be you.
• 1:36:07
  So if I said, okay, we need to add this to our practice, then I will reach out to my
• 1:36:16
  friend Carla Brahms and say, Carla, would you please come and lead some retreats?
• 1:36:22
  Perhaps in Spain, perhaps when we go to the US perhaps, would you come
• 1:36:26
  and help some people there, get going with this or something like that?
• 1:36:30
  Or even if you just talk to them over Zoom.
• 1:36:32
  But I think it's really interesting to me now that we're having this
• 1:36:36
  conversation, one would think if our job with equine assisted stuff is to
• 1:36:43
  alleviate suffering, I think we can all agree that that is sort of our job.
• 1:36:49
  Karla Brahms: Mm-hmm.
• 1:36:50
  Rupert Isaacson: And we are very used to looking at that in certain
• 1:36:53
  contexts like autism or trauma.
• 1:36:56
  Of course grief is trauma.
• 1:36:57
  Karla Brahms: Mm-hmm.
• 1:36:58
  Rupert Isaacson: It's such an obvious glaring hole and absence in our field.
• 1:37:05
  The taboo that we talked about has actually permeated our own work.
• 1:37:14
  Hmm.
• 1:37:14
  We are not offering this as equine assisted practitioners of any kind.
• 1:37:19
  You are.
• 1:37:22
  Karla Brahms: But you know, I think, I think that every
• 1:37:24
  person has experience of grief.
• 1:37:28
  Yes.
• 1:37:29
  'cause grief is not only connected to losing a person.
• 1:37:32
  You can also grieve if you move from a town to another, you
• 1:37:37
  lose your, your, your high.
• 1:37:40
  Rupert Isaacson: Yes.
• 1:37:41
  Your homeland,
• 1:37:41
  Karla Brahms: you're, you're losing your job.
• 1:37:43
  You're losing your.
• 1:37:45
  Your cat, your dog,
• 1:37:46
  Rupert Isaacson: your identity,
• 1:37:47
  Karla Brahms: using friendship.
• 1:37:48
  All that is, is, is, yes.
• 1:37:51
  Is having grief in, in, in its tail and working with the nurses.
• 1:37:56
  Rupert Isaacson: Right?
• 1:37:56
  Absolutely.
• 1:37:57
  Yeah.
• 1:37:57
  Karla Brahms: And, and I mean, you, as a parent of an artistic child, you
• 1:38:01
  lose your, your vision of the future.
• 1:38:06
  Rupert Isaacson: Yeah, yeah.
• 1:38:07
  Karla Brahms: When you, remember, when you got the diagnosis from, from
• 1:38:09
  bro, it, it hits you like a baseball.
• 1:38:13
  Rupert Isaacson: Right.
• 1:38:14
  Well, particularly because they tell you there is no,
• 1:38:17
  Karla Brahms: and, and that's the thing you,
• 1:38:18
  Rupert Isaacson: which
• 1:38:18
  Karla Brahms: is so at the moment where you are responsible visions,
• 1:38:21
  you're inner, inner landscape is shattered, then you feel grief.
• 1:38:27
  And it doesn't only rely on on, on losing a person you love.
• 1:38:32
  Rupert Isaacson: That is very true.
• 1:38:33
  Karla Brahms: And the, the good thing about working with horses
• 1:38:37
  is that they carry that too.
• 1:38:40
  If you mention it or not, they just carry it and they, they heal it.
• 1:38:48
  They
• 1:38:48
  must
• 1:38:48
  Karla Brahms: all go through it.
• 1:38:49
  Being together with the horses and, and offering the clients to feel their needs
• 1:38:58
  and to, to speak about their needs.
• 1:39:03
  That's, that's only, that's most you can do.
• 1:39:06
  That's, that's the best you can do.
• 1:39:08
  And if you, if you offer a surrounding.
• 1:39:11
  Where they can find out what they need.
• 1:39:17
  You don't have to do much more.
• 1:39:19
  You know what I mean?
• 1:39:20
  Rupert Isaacson: I do, I do.
• 1:39:21
  I'm just thinking about the horses themselves as well.
• 1:39:24
  Most horses living in therapeutic stables must be, must experience grief because
• 1:39:32
  the vast majority of them are donation horses that have been given away.
• 1:39:42
  And many of them, most horses, as we know, go through several big life and herd Yeah.
• 1:39:49
  Changes in my,
• 1:39:51
  Karla Brahms: and they can't, they can't decide with which
• 1:39:53
  horse they are neighbors.
• 1:39:56
  Rupert Isaacson: Absolutely.
• 1:39:58
  Absolutely.
• 1:39:59
  They're weaned and then they're sold and then, yeah.
• 1:40:02
  Karla Brahms: Yeah.
• 1:40:02
  Yeah.
• 1:40:02
  Rupert Isaacson: There must be so much grief.
• 1:40:04
  Karla Brahms: Mm-hmm.
• 1:40:05
  Rupert Isaacson: I'm thinking about my own herd, you know, so I've got
• 1:40:09
  two horses in my herd who I bred, so they've always been with us.
• 1:40:15
  Karla Brahms: Mm.
• 1:40:15
  Rupert Isaacson: And it really is interesting, the differences in their
• 1:40:18
  behavior and their relationship with other horses and with us compared to
• 1:40:23
  the other guys who came up through a slightly more normal thing.
• 1:40:28
  And then I've got another horse welt.
• 1:40:33
  I bought him as a foal.
• 1:40:34
  He grew up with the breeder, but then was with us from the age of three.
• 1:40:39
  Karla Brahms: Mm-hmm.
• 1:40:41
  Rupert Isaacson: And he's a little different.
• 1:40:42
  He's a little closer to those guys.
• 1:40:44
  But say my horse zag, for example, you know, very well, who's, you
• 1:40:47
  know, superb, amazing horse.
• 1:40:50
  He's probably been passed around quite a bit, you know and his way
• 1:40:54
  of looking at the world is wounded.
• 1:40:58
  There's no question, there's no question he gives from that wound
• 1:41:06
  enormous healing.
• 1:41:10
  But you are right.
• 1:41:14
  I don't think we consider, I mean, we, we consider it within equine wellbeing.
• 1:41:17
  Yes.
• 1:41:17
  But now that we're on the subject of grief, we don't really consider, I think
• 1:41:22
  much how in grief a lot of horses must be
• 1:41:28
  Karla Brahms: Hmm.
• 1:41:29
  Rupert Isaacson: You know, you, you have a very particularly integrated herd
• 1:41:31
  because that herd lives and dies together.
• 1:41:36
  Yeah.
• 1:41:37
  Karla Brahms: But even them, when, when I gave away the, the three ponies mm-hmm.
• 1:41:40
  I had to give them away.
• 1:41:41
  I couldn't keep them anymore.
• 1:41:43
  Rupert Isaacson: Mm-hmm.
• 1:41:43
  Karla Brahms: It changed the behavior of the herd.
• 1:41:46
  Rupert Isaacson: Mm-hmm.
• 1:41:46
  Karla Brahms: Like my, my only male horse is the son of my, my oldest horse.
• 1:41:52
  He's now the only male with two ma mares.
• 1:41:55
  And he is.
• 1:41:57
  So tense.
• 1:41:59
  And I think it's the, the fear of losing these two again,
• 1:42:05
  of losing more of his herd.
• 1:42:07
  Okay.
• 1:42:08
  And I remember when, when my my first horse that was very close to
• 1:42:14
  Flocker, they were like a couple, when he died, she was like two weeks.
• 1:42:20
  She, I couldn't, I couldn't get near her.
• 1:42:22
  Mm-hmm.
• 1:42:22
  She always ran away because I had the feeling that she connected me with, with
• 1:42:27
  the death of, of her partner, which was on the, on the field where they lived.
• 1:42:33
  And they, they all saw what we did and they all saw how
• 1:42:38
  he died with a veterinarian, giving him the, the final yeah.
• 1:42:43
  Injection poison.
• 1:42:44
  Rupert Isaacson: Yeah.
• 1:42:45
  Yeah.
• 1:42:45
  Karla Brahms: And it took more than two weeks for me to get close to her
• 1:42:50
  again, because she was looking for him.
• 1:42:53
  She couldn't handle that.
• 1:42:54
  He's not there anymore.
• 1:42:55
  The other horses, they went to the dead body and sniffed on him, but she was just
• 1:43:00
  running at the fence and looking for him.
• 1:43:03
  And that was the moment when I realized that horses are in grief too.
• 1:43:07
  But they handled it differently than we Yeah,
• 1:43:10
  Rupert Isaacson: they do.
• 1:43:11
  Karla Brahms: After weeks, she, she was like, okay, he's gone.
• 1:43:15
  Now we take it further.
• 1:43:18
  Life goes on.
• 1:43:20
  Rupert Isaacson: I dunno if you're familiar with a book called
• 1:43:21
  Gulliver's Travels, which is a, an
• 1:43:24
  Karla Brahms: at Yeah, yeah,
• 1:43:25
  Rupert Isaacson: yeah, yeah.
• 1:43:25
  They make
• 1:43:26
  Karla Brahms: a little bit like
• 1:43:26
  Rupert Isaacson: movies like
• 1:43:27
  Karla Brahms: all children do.
• 1:43:28
  Yeah,
• 1:43:28
  Rupert Isaacson: yeah, yeah.
• 1:43:29
  So everyone knows the the adventure on Lilipu where he
• 1:43:33
  meets all the little people and they tie him up and all of that.
• 1:43:37
  But the actual Book of Gulls travels, he goes to all these different
• 1:43:41
  places, and one of the places he goes to is the Land of the Hui Hams.
• 1:43:46
  And the Hui Hyams are horses.
• 1:43:49
  And they're horses that have a, a culture and a and a they kind of
• 1:43:54
  live like civilized human beings sort of thing, but they're horses.
• 1:43:56
  Oh, wow.
• 1:43:57
  Karla Brahms: Yeah.
• 1:43:57
  Rupert Isaacson: And Daniel Defoe, who wrote that book, was Anglo-Irish.
• 1:44:01
  So he was in the 18th century growing up and living in a very,
• 1:44:06
  very, very rich horse culture of Thoroughbreds, early thoroughbred.
• 1:44:11
  The, the, the Dar the, the Bali Turk, which is one of the foundation
• 1:44:16
  stallions of the Thoroughbred think was, was standing at stud very close
• 1:44:20
  to where he was living, and he was very much part of that whole world.
• 1:44:23
  So horses were a big part of his Irish life.
• 1:44:25
  And so he has a lot of respect for horses and he uses the horses as a sort
• 1:44:30
  of a metaphor for how we should be.
• 1:44:33
  And he's, he's invited to Tea by a me.
• 1:44:39
  This chestnut ma and he's, he's having tea with the Chestnut Ma.
• 1:44:44
  And it somehow comes up in conversation that her husband just died.
• 1:44:49
  And he's immediately, oh my gosh, I'm so sorry.
• 1:44:51
  You know, I, I hate to impose, you know, this must be such
• 1:44:54
  a difficult time for you.
• 1:44:55
  Are you sure I shouldn't be here?
• 1:44:57
  And she says, no, no, no, no, no.
• 1:44:59
  You don't understand.
• 1:45:00
  We, we, Huey hins, we horses.
• 1:45:02
  For us it's very different.
• 1:45:03
  I very, very much loved my husband, and I very, very much enjoyed my life with him.
• 1:45:08
  And I reflect on everything that's good with him.
• 1:45:12
  And now he's gone and we go forward and would you like some sugar in
• 1:45:18
  your tea or would you like some, you know, and he's trying to get
• 1:45:21
  his head around this in the book.
• 1:45:23
  And I remember reading that when I was in my twenties.
• 1:45:26
  And horses do serve for us as such a good metaphor of resilience, I feel.
• 1:45:34
  Because what is grief?
• 1:45:35
  What is trauma really?
• 1:45:37
  But the process of resilience, I, I, I think that people often get
• 1:45:42
  the relationship with trauma wrong.
• 1:45:44
  That trauma is this place where you stay, you, you do not stay in trauma.
• 1:45:48
  Trauma is a thing that happens.
• 1:45:49
  It can happen in a sustained way even, but it builds resilience.
• 1:45:55
  One, we otherwise life on the planet would just.
• 1:46:00
  Be extinguished.
• 1:46:01
  Karla Brahms: Yeah.
• 1:46:02
  Rupert Isaacson: But that process of resilience is personal and
• 1:46:07
  different for every being.
• 1:46:10
  Karla Brahms: Yeah.
• 1:46:11
  And you know, one thing that having horses behind your house is
• 1:46:15
  helping through grief is that you feel you are still able to act.
• 1:46:23
  You have to go outside every morning, feed them hay, clean
• 1:46:27
  the stables, get them exercised.
• 1:46:31
  Rupert Isaacson: Yep.
• 1:46:31
  Karla Brahms: And that keeps you in a state of, in control
• 1:46:37
  Rupert Isaacson: positive mental health.
• 1:46:38
  Yeah.
• 1:46:38
  Karla Brahms: Yeah.
• 1:46:38
  You're in control of your, of your day, of your structure and
• 1:46:44
  you are able to handle things.
• 1:46:49
  And that is maybe one of the most of the best things that happened to me
• 1:46:55
  in that, in that state of I what I am.
• 1:46:59
  Because when I read in the community, in the grief community about all these
• 1:47:05
  persons who sit alone at home with no job, no reason to live, they only
• 1:47:16
  sit there and sit in their memories.
• 1:47:21
  That's so hard to get out of that.
• 1:47:25
  That I'm so glad to have the horses and the animals that I have to take
• 1:47:29
  care for because they keep me in life.
• 1:47:34
  They keep me in the now and in the presence and in the, and they force
• 1:47:39
  me to make decisions, decisions for them, and decisions for me.
• 1:47:45
  Mm.
• 1:47:49
  And that is maybe the, the, the greatest gift that they could give me.
• 1:47:59
  And maybe that's, that's a part of the benefits of equine therapy.
• 1:48:06
  That horses help us to acknowledge the present.
• 1:48:12
  They keep us in the now and now.
• 1:48:15
  And now, now is important.
• 1:48:19
  Not what was yesterday, not what is will be tomorrow.
• 1:48:22
  But now they're living in, in the, in the presence all the time.
• 1:48:27
  And they, they care for themselves.
• 1:48:29
  And they always do things to feel good.
• 1:48:33
  If they're not feeling good, they try to do things to feel better.
• 1:48:38
  Rupert Isaacson: That is true.
• 1:48:40
  Yeah.
• 1:48:41
  They'll seek out the edible delicacy.
• 1:48:45
  They'll roll, they'll rub against the tree.
• 1:48:48
  They'll
• 1:48:48
  Karla Brahms: Yeah.
• 1:48:49
  Rupert Isaacson: Seek out each other and groom on each other.
• 1:48:52
  Yeah.
• 1:48:53
  Yeah.
• 1:48:53
  Yeah.
• 1:48:55
  Yeah.
• 1:48:56
  And of course in our taboo laden culture, okay, we might hug each other, but we
• 1:49:03
  might not lie there and hold each other.
• 1:49:05
  Karla Brahms: Yeah.
• 1:49:06
  Rupert Isaacson: Or stroke each other or groom each other
• 1:49:08
  like a, like an ape would.
• 1:49:10
  Karla Brahms: Yeah.
• 1:49:10
  And that's al also.
• 1:49:11
  And, and, and that benefit of using horses in these processes of therapy because
• 1:49:19
  they can offer a physical closeness Yeah.
• 1:49:22
  That we as a therapist could never offer.
• 1:49:25
  That would be too much in, in, is it called insult?
• 1:49:30
  Rupert Isaacson: Well, let's just say that within the strange
• 1:49:34
  way, our culture has evolved.
• 1:49:36
  Karla Brahms: Yeah.
• 1:49:36
  Rupert Isaacson: The very thing that would be the most help is the very thing
• 1:49:39
  that we probably are not allowed to give.
• 1:49:41
  Karla Brahms: Yeah.
• 1:49:41
  Rupert Isaacson: That's the thing.
• 1:49:41
  But luckily our horses can, yeah.
• 1:49:43
  Karla Brahms: Yes.
• 1:49:44
  And that's the thing.
• 1:49:45
  It's, it's innocent to hug a horse and to stay there for at least 10,
• 1:49:49
  15 minutes as long as you need it.
• 1:49:52
  Or if you lie on the back of a horse,
• 1:49:54
  Rupert Isaacson: yeah.
• 1:49:55
  Karla Brahms: You can, you can just inhale the healing for as long as you need
• 1:50:00
  it and the horses will give it to you.
• 1:50:03
  Rupert Isaacson: Yep, yep, yep.
• 1:50:05
  Karla Brahms: And they always feel warm because their body temperature is
• 1:50:09
  higher than ours and they always feel soft, and they will always offer it to
• 1:50:14
  us because they're such sweethearts.
• 1:50:18
  Rupert Isaacson: Yeah.
• 1:50:18
  Generosity.
• 1:50:20
  Karla Brahms: Yeah, generosity.
• 1:50:21
  That's it.
• 1:50:21
  Yeah.
• 1:50:25
  And that's one thing I, I realized in these processes with the, with
• 1:50:29
  my NIG work, that the horses will always offer themself to help
• 1:50:37
  when the, the people start crying on the pictures because
• 1:50:40
  emotions are overwhelming them.
• 1:50:42
  The horses will always go close to them and just stand
• 1:50:46
  at their back or at their side.
• 1:50:49
  Yeah.
• 1:50:49
  And just be there.
• 1:50:50
  Rupert Isaacson: Yeah.
• 1:50:51
  Yeah.
• 1:50:52
  Karla Brahms: And this presence is helping.
• 1:50:54
  Rupert Isaacson: Yes.
• 1:50:54
  And sending out that enormous electromagnetic
• 1:50:57
  Karla Brahms: Yes.
• 1:50:58
  Rupert Isaacson: Photon, laden love beam that we now
• 1:51:02
  Karla Brahms: know.
• 1:51:02
  And if you, if you think of help and grief, not words are helping,
• 1:51:06
  not, not big gestures are helping.
• 1:51:10
  Just being there.
• 1:51:13
  Being there and, and maybe offering a handkerchief
• 1:51:19
  Rupert Isaacson: Yeah.
• 1:51:20
  Karla Brahms: Is enough.
• 1:51:21
  Rupert Isaacson: Yes.
• 1:51:21
  Karla Brahms: And that presence, that that still and calm presence
• 1:51:24
  of horses to be just there and, you know, you can rely on them.
• 1:51:31
  That's
• 1:51:31
  Rupert Isaacson: now, but what, what about the other, what about the other
• 1:51:33
  necessary mechanisms of grief, though?
• 1:51:35
  So many cultures, you know, you know, obviously Africa's a big part of my life.
• 1:51:42
  In Africa, when people grieve, they grieve really actively.
• 1:51:45
  You're allowed to scream, you're allowed to wail, you're allowed to
• 1:51:49
  tear your clothing, you're allowed to
• 1:51:56
  embody it.
• 1:51:57
  Karla Brahms: Mm-hmm.
• 1:51:58
  Rupert Isaacson: Our grief rituals are very restrained.
• 1:52:00
  Karla Brahms: Mm-hmm.
• 1:52:01
  Rupert Isaacson: You go to a funeral, you know if you're lucky, you go
• 1:52:05
  to an Irish wake where everyone's getting drunk and celebrating.
• 1:52:08
  Or you go to a, a memorial like the one you threw in your village where the whole
• 1:52:16
  village showed up and was eating and drinking together and finding commun.
• 1:52:20
  They
• 1:52:20
  Karla Brahms: brought the, the, the eating.
• 1:52:23
  I only cared for the drinks.
• 1:52:24
  Rupert Isaacson: Yes.
• 1:52:25
  Karla Brahms: Everybody brought something to eat and that was wonderful.
• 1:52:28
  Rupert Isaacson: Oh, it was an amazing, actually experience in,
• 1:52:30
  in, in really cool German food.
• 1:52:32
  It was like, wow.
• 1:52:32
  All these, all these delicacies.
• 1:52:34
  Yeah.
• 1:52:35
  But the idea to have a grieving, allowed grieving ritual to allow that energy
• 1:52:44
  to that's very much also a human need.
• 1:52:49
  Karla Brahms: Yeah.
• 1:52:49
  Rupert Isaacson: You know, how, how do we bring that into
• 1:52:55
  a retreat and equine practice?
• 1:52:57
  You know, we need both.
• 1:52:58
  We need that quiet presence, but we also need.
• 1:53:05
  But I, I, I, so is it, for example, if you just speak personally, I'll
• 1:53:10
  let to ask this as a question.
• 1:53:11
  Let's say
• 1:53:14
  it was closer to the time of Jan's actual death.
• 1:53:19
  Would it have been more helpful
• 1:53:22
  just say, if I had showed up at a that particular time to
• 1:53:29
  which I guess I did, to engage in a loud grieving, or was it more
• 1:53:36
  helpful to engage in a quiet grieving,
• 1:53:43
  if you can look back on it now?
• 1:53:45
  Karla Brahms: Mm-hmm.
• 1:53:50
  Rupert Isaacson: Or would you say, no, actually Rupert, I
• 1:53:51
  need, I, I would've, I need both.
• 1:53:54
  What, yeah, just, I think this is really useful to, for people to consider
• 1:54:00
  what's, what's the interplay, what's the sequence really of grieving
• 1:54:05
  that we need to be aware of?
• 1:54:08
  'cause it's outg gone from our culture.
• 1:54:10
  Karla Brahms: Yeah.
• 1:54:11
  That's
• 1:54:11
  Rupert Isaacson: the point.
• 1:54:11
  Karla Brahms: Yeah.
• 1:54:13
  Rupert Isaacson: It,
• 1:54:16
  if, if, if you, let's say you weren't living in Germany and you were living
• 1:54:20
  somewhere where the traditional norms of German culture did not apply.
• 1:54:27
  What would've been your ideal way to grieve?
• 1:54:31
  Karla Brahms: I think exactly the way I did.
• 1:54:33
  Rupert Isaacson: Okay.
• 1:54:34
  Karla Brahms: Because
• 1:54:36
  I can't imagine doing it in another way because I, I always did what
• 1:54:44
  felt right for me, and I still do.
• 1:54:48
  Rupert Isaacson: Yes.
• 1:54:48
  I
• 1:54:48
  Karla Brahms: don't care if I break out in tears in public.
• 1:54:52
  It doesn't bother me.
• 1:54:54
  And
• 1:54:54
  Rupert Isaacson: did you have a process of loud grieving and if so,
• 1:54:58
  how did it, how did it play out?
• 1:55:02
  Karla Brahms: Alone in the forest.
• 1:55:03
  Rupert Isaacson: Okay.
• 1:55:04
  And
• 1:55:07
  Karla Brahms: it's like
• 1:55:10
  you can't push it back if it comes.
• 1:55:13
  Rupert Isaacson: Yeah.
• 1:55:15
  Yeah.
• 1:55:17
  Karla Brahms: And if to, if you allow yourself to, to just do it.
• 1:55:25
  And, and I think it's wrong to say people how they have to behave in grief.
• 1:55:34
  Rupert Isaacson: Absolutely.
• 1:55:35
  Karla Brahms: It's actually more to allow them to feel what they need and give them
• 1:55:46
  the room and the possibility to do that.
• 1:55:50
  Rupert Isaacson: Yeah.
• 1:55:50
  Karla Brahms: What's inside them?
• 1:55:53
  It's screaming, then scream.
• 1:55:55
  If it's being quiet, then be quiet.
• 1:55:59
  You know, the thing is, one funny thing is
• 1:56:04
  Yan and I had the ritual when we were sitting on the sofa in the evening
• 1:56:08
  that he was putting either his feet on my lap or his head on my lap.
• 1:56:13
  And I was always either massaging his toes or I was scrambling his skull.
• 1:56:19
  Rupert Isaacson: Oh.
• 1:56:20
  So maybe he came a little bit higher up the hierarchy of affection.
• 1:56:23
  Karla Brahms: And after he, he was dead.
• 1:56:25
  I was sitting on the sofa and my hands had nothing to do, and I
• 1:56:30
  was like, I have to do something.
• 1:56:33
  And, and it was not cuddling the cat or cuddling the, the dog.
• 1:56:36
  That would help.
• 1:56:37
  And I started knitting.
• 1:56:39
  Rupert Isaacson: Okay.
• 1:56:40
  Karla Brahms: And I started knitting.
• 1:56:41
  I, I wanted to knit a sock, like a sock without the, the foot.
• 1:56:47
  Rupert Isaacson: Yeah.
• 1:56:48
  Karla Brahms: And I knitted.
• 1:56:49
  I knitted and knitted.
• 1:56:50
  And then suddenly I felt, oh, it's far too long for a tuper.
• 1:56:54
  And I said, oh, I don't care.
• 1:56:55
  I just knit.
• 1:56:57
  And I knitted and knitted and knitted for I think six months.
• 1:57:00
  And the, the tuper I made was, is now like seven meters long.
• 1:57:07
  And I didn't care because I felt it, it, it felt good for
• 1:57:11
  me to sit on the sofa and knit.
• 1:57:14
  Yes.
• 1:57:15
  And I had the pleasure of, oh, which wool will I take now?
• 1:57:19
  Which, which color is, is my grief at the moment, which color will suit me?
• 1:57:26
  And so that the thing that that that happened is a colorful, multi mixed up.
• 1:57:35
  It's, look, it looks like a snail house, like, like a snicker.
• 1:57:40
  But if I roll it out, it's like seven meters long.
• 1:57:43
  And suddenly I felt now it's okay.
• 1:57:47
  Interesting.
• 1:57:47
  Now I don't need it anymore.
• 1:57:49
  Okay.
• 1:57:49
  And I think if we give people the possibility to do what they feel, what
• 1:57:57
  helps and allow them to do that, that's more than we can ever help anybody.
• 1:58:06
  Rupert Isaacson: And now what you've done, of course, is you've
• 1:58:08
  created a sacred object, right?
• 1:58:09
  You've created a shamanic I can imagine how Yeah.
• 1:58:15
  A snail.
• 1:58:16
  Oh, isn't it interesting that you, I was gonna ask you this, but I didn't want to
• 1:58:20
  interrupt you when you were doing your NIG thing in the early stages of Jan's cancer.
• 1:58:28
  Karla Brahms: Yeah.
• 1:58:28
  Rupert Isaacson: And you drew the GaN the grant, the happy.
• 1:58:32
  Happy granny.
• 1:58:34
  Karla Brahms: Yeah.
• 1:58:34
  Rupert Isaacson: The widow,
• 1:58:34
  Karla Brahms: the happy granny.
• 1:58:36
  The happy widow.
• 1:58:37
  Rupert Isaacson: The happy widow in her heels and party dress,
• 1:58:42
  which we now need you to get.
• 1:58:45
  'cause I, I think you, you drew that costume for a reason.
• 1:58:48
  Right?
• 1:58:49
  But you talked about the superhero, the meta think being
• 1:58:52
  Gary the snail and you the snail.
• 1:58:55
  Yeah.
• 1:58:55
  You said it like, I should know who Gary the snail is.
• 1:58:57
  And then you created a sna.
• 1:58:58
  No,
• 1:58:59
  Karla Brahms: SpongeBob.
• 1:59:00
  Rupert Isaacson: Ah, okay.
• 1:59:02
  Okay.
• 1:59:03
  SpongeBob.
• 1:59:04
  Okay.
• 1:59:04
  Okay.
• 1:59:04
  Okay.
• 1:59:05
  Karla Brahms: The wise Gary, I even drew a picture in a NIG session once about Gary.
• 1:59:11
  See this?
• 1:59:13
  Rupert Isaacson: Okay.
• 1:59:13
  Okay.
• 1:59:14
  Karla Brahms: This is my, Gary and Gary stood for the what
• 1:59:18
  is the English word for ghe?
• 1:59:20
  Rupert Isaacson: Tension.
• 1:59:20
  No, not tension.
• 1:59:21
  Not
• 1:59:22
  Karla Brahms: tension.
• 1:59:22
  The, the opposite.
• 1:59:23
  Rupert Isaacson: Yeah.
• 1:59:23
  So relaxation.
• 1:59:25
  Koen height.
• 1:59:25
  Yeah.
• 1:59:25
  Suppleness.
• 1:59:26
  Relaxation.
• 1:59:26
  Flexibility.
• 1:59:28
  Calmness.
• 1:59:29
  Calmness.
• 1:59:29
  Yeah.
• 1:59:29
  Calmness.
• 1:59:29
  Yeah.
• 1:59:31
  Karla Brahms: And that was my wish.
• 1:59:33
  I wished that things would calm down and I would feel calm and safe and secure.
• 1:59:41
  And then I was supposed to draw three talents of mine.
• 1:59:45
  Three things that I can do.
• 1:59:47
  Good.
• 1:59:48
  The funny thing was that I drew, I think I drew empathy and
• 1:59:52
  love and having a lot of ideas.
• 1:59:57
  And these three pictures for themselves, they were only colored in one color.
• 2:00:03
  So empathy was like blue and the heart love was red.
• 2:00:09
  A red heart and the ideas was a yellow star.
• 2:00:13
  And in the end, my, my metta, I didn't, I, I don't know what meta was.
• 2:00:18
  That time when Metta was looking at these pictures, it said, well,
• 2:00:24
  in Gary's house, all these pictures all these colors are already there.
• 2:00:32
  So my ghe is already in me.
• 2:00:38
  And realizing that it all is already there made me calm.
• 2:00:45
  Isn't that funny?
• 2:00:46
  Rupert Isaacson: It is.
• 2:00:47
  And now you've knitted it.
• 2:00:49
  Karla Brahms: And now I've knitted it.
• 2:00:51
  Right.
• 2:00:53
  Rupert Isaacson: I'm just thinking that if, if you're going on, you know, if
• 2:00:56
  someone's coming to your retreat, I think that knitted gsen height, that
• 2:01:04
  knitted sna Gary, the snail shell, seven meters long, could be an object
• 2:01:14
  that could bring great insight.
• 2:01:18
  And comfort at the same time.
• 2:01:20
  Karla Brahms: Yeah.
• 2:01:21
  Rupert Isaacson: And also serve it as an inspiration of what, 'cause I, I think
• 2:01:25
  we often do this when we're in pain.
• 2:01:26
  When we're in pain, we throw ourselves into a task.
• 2:01:29
  Karla Brahms: Yeah.
• 2:01:30
  Rupert Isaacson: It's a really necessary thing.
• 2:01:32
  I remember the first time I really got my heart broken.
• 2:01:37
  I went from being a student who couldn't give a shit about his grades
• 2:01:43
  to, I threw myself into my degree.
• 2:01:46
  Okay.
• 2:01:46
  You know, and I became like the best researcher.
• 2:01:49
  And began to write, actually
• 2:01:53
  Karla Brahms: Okay.
• 2:01:53
  Rupert Isaacson: Threw myself into story.
• 2:01:55
  And obviously, you know, when I was in that state of great grief
• 2:01:59
  in the early stages of Rowan's diagnosis, well, that's what Horse
• 2:02:03
  Boy came out of and all of that.
• 2:02:04
  Mm-hmm.
• 2:02:05
  So,
• 2:02:07
  Karla Brahms: so grief brought out the best in you.
• 2:02:09
  Rupert Isaacson: Yes.
• 2:02:11
  Yes.
• 2:02:12
  Do you feel it's doing the same for you?
• 2:02:13
  Mm,
• 2:02:18
  yeah.
• 2:02:18
  I think it is too.
• 2:02:19
  Karla Brahms: Mm.
• 2:02:20
  Rupert Isaacson: Even though I would say that there was, you were
• 2:02:23
  still the best Carla, where before going through that you were still
• 2:02:28
  the best when, when Y was there.
• 2:02:31
  Karla Brahms: Yeah.
• 2:02:31
  Rupert Isaacson: Now, yeah.
• 2:02:33
  I, yeah.
• 2:02:33
  I, and, and so this is my, this is my final.
• 2:02:37
  Question really is how does one deal with the sense of unfairness and injustice?
• 2:02:41
  You remember I said that when I saw Y laid out and there I had that sense of outrage.
• 2:02:47
  This is not right.
• 2:02:48
  Karla Brahms: Mm-hmm.
• 2:02:50
  Rupert Isaacson: This is not fair.
• 2:02:51
  You are too young.
• 2:02:52
  You are too good looking.
• 2:02:53
  You're too healthy, you're too talented.
• 2:02:55
  You have too much left to do.
• 2:02:57
  You have, you know, you and Carla have this karmic love.
• 2:03:03
  You guys really were are one of those couples who
• 2:03:10
  have found, you know, the lucky ones who've really
• 2:03:12
  found, really found it right.
• 2:03:15
  Not just the romance, but also the partnership and the
• 2:03:18
  creativity and the respect and the, the, the, the whole thing.
• 2:03:26
  The, the, the, the being something greater than the two of you individually
• 2:03:32
  are the, the, the very thing for which we all aspire in our relationships.
• 2:03:38
  Karla Brahms: Yeah.
• 2:03:39
  Rupert Isaacson: You have, I feel that he's still around.
• 2:03:45
  I've ever since my exposure to a healer in England when I was in my mid
• 2:03:50
  twenties, funny old guy, he used to go around healing horses, but he was so
• 2:03:55
  effective that vets used to refer people to him, and he said he was the hands
• 2:04:00
  of a dead friend and his dead mother.
• 2:04:03
  Right.
• 2:04:03
  And I remember asking him, I said, well, what are these
• 2:04:06
  people doing hanging around?
• 2:04:08
  I mean, surely when you die, you, you, you go said, no, actually, Rupert, no.
• 2:04:12
  You can hang around for quite a while if you feel that
• 2:04:15
  there is necessary work to do.
• 2:04:17
  Karla Brahms: Mm.
• 2:04:17
  Mm-hmm.
• 2:04:18
  Rupert Isaacson: You will eventually Yeah.
• 2:04:20
  Go back to source.
• 2:04:21
  But you can, you can absolutely hang out for a bit.
• 2:04:24
  Karla Brahms: You know, your question of unfairness is
• 2:04:27
  Rupert Isaacson: Yes.
• 2:04:27
  Karla Brahms: The, the love and all the, the magic of our
• 2:04:32
  relationship is still there.
• 2:04:34
  Rupert Isaacson: Yes.
• 2:04:35
  Karla Brahms: So the love doesn't go away.
• 2:04:38
  Rupert Isaacson: Yeah.
• 2:04:39
  Karla Brahms: And if you, if you ask why did, why did that happen?
• 2:04:44
  You will never find an answer.
• 2:04:46
  Mm.
• 2:04:47
  We don't have it in our hands when we go, when we leave this planet.
• 2:04:50
  Yeah.
• 2:04:51
  I could walk with a dog in the forest and a branch fall down and hit me.
• 2:04:56
  Sure.
• 2:04:57
  I don't care.
• 2:04:59
  The thing is, it's not effectful, if you ask for the why did that happen?
• 2:05:06
  And if you say This is not, but
• 2:05:08
  Rupert Isaacson: it is a natural question.
• 2:05:10
  Nonetheless.
• 2:05:10
  Karla Brahms: It is a natural question, but it's none that can be answered.
• 2:05:16
  Rupert Isaacson: Yeah.
• 2:05:17
  Karla Brahms: And to, to stick to that question will just make you crazy.
• 2:05:24
  Rupert Isaacson: Sure.
• 2:05:25
  Karla Brahms: So.
• 2:05:26
  The healthiest thing is to say everything has reason.
• 2:05:32
  I don't know the reason now, but maybe someday I will.
• 2:05:37
  Yeah.
• 2:05:38
  And I have made the experience in my life that I often had to start at 0.0
• 2:05:47
  and every time it got better than before.
• 2:05:51
  Mm-hmm.
• 2:05:53
  And I don't know yet what will bring the next years if I live, I'm 60 now
• 2:06:05
  when I live 20 years.
• 2:06:07
  Wow.
• 2:06:07
  I'll be grateful.
• 2:06:09
  But what was the good thing about going through that experience now?
• 2:06:16
  I will only, only know then.
• 2:06:19
  Rupert Isaacson: Yeah,
• 2:06:19
  Karla Brahms: sure.
• 2:06:19
  Not now.
• 2:06:20
  Rupert Isaacson: Yeah.
• 2:06:20
  Yeah.
• 2:06:22
  You're right.
• 2:06:22
  Karla Brahms: Just trusting, trust.
• 2:06:24
  Just trusting that everything will go out fine.
• 2:06:27
  It's the only thing that I can do right now.
• 2:06:29
  Rupert Isaacson: Right.
• 2:06:29
  And I'm thinking about the difference between you and other people
• 2:06:32
  who might be going through this.
• 2:06:33
  You know, you talked about horses, and horses bring us into the present.
• 2:06:37
  I think one of the things that horses also do is they teach us trust.
• 2:06:40
  Right?
• 2:06:40
  Karla Brahms: Yes.
• 2:06:41
  Yeah.
• 2:06:42
  Rupert Isaacson: They really do.
• 2:06:42
  And
• 2:06:43
  Karla Brahms: just stay in the presence.
• 2:06:44
  Rupert Isaacson: Well, I'd be very honored if you would start to
• 2:06:48
  offer your grief retreats through.
• 2:06:52
  The various places and centers that do our work, because I
• 2:06:56
  know that this is necessary.
• 2:06:59
  Mm-hmm.
• 2:07:00
  So I hope that's a conversation we'll be having.
• 2:07:05
  And I think it starts with an event.
• 2:07:06
  It's, it, it has to start with, I mean, I know obviously you're
• 2:07:09
  doing them at your place too.
• 2:07:11
  Karla Brahms: Mm-hmm.
• 2:07:12
  Rupert Isaacson: Which is magical.
• 2:07:13
  So people I think, who are going through this, you can obviously tell by now
• 2:07:21
  if you're listening or watching that Carla's grasp of English is perfect.
• 2:07:27
  So if you were an English speaker going through grief, you could
• 2:07:33
  absolutely, I would just find
• 2:07:34
  Karla Brahms: a way,
• 2:07:35
  Rupert Isaacson: go to Germany and enter that magical forest of light and dark
• 2:07:39
  Karla Brahms: Yeah.
• 2:07:41
  Rupert Isaacson: Of fairytale and reality in the denal where she is with
• 2:07:45
  her horses and take a retreat with her.
• 2:07:50
  How do people contact you?
• 2:07:53
  How do they find you?
• 2:07:54
  Karla Brahms: They can find me with my homepage am point de or in Instagram,
• 2:08:03
  I have an Instagram account too.
• 2:08:05
  It's also called,
• 2:08:10
  or they just ask you.
• 2:08:11
  And you can look them further.
• 2:08:13
  Rupert Isaacson: So, Lampen Hein.
• 2:08:15
  Karla Brahms: Lampen Hein.
• 2:08:16
  Yeah.
• 2:08:17
  Rupert Isaacson: Lhe is the, is the name of the village?
• 2:08:18
  Well, the, the, the local town.
• 2:08:21
  And so I think you need to spell it out for people.
• 2:08:24
  'cause when you say Lhe, people go, sure.
• 2:08:27
  What?
• 2:08:27
  So let's, let's, so Veon is of course, with a W, right?
• 2:08:33
  Yeah.
• 2:08:33
  Because in German, the, or
• 2:08:34
  Karla Brahms: they can just Google.
• 2:08:35
  Kala.
• 2:08:36
  Brams.
• 2:08:37
  Rupert Isaacson: There we go.
• 2:08:37
  Karla Brahms: You will find me.
• 2:08:38
  Brams.
• 2:08:39
  Like, Beethoven,
• 2:08:40
  Rupert Isaacson: like the, like B
• 2:08:41
  Karla Brahms: Kala with a K.
• 2:08:42
  Rupert Isaacson: Yeah.
• 2:08:43
  Carla with a k, K-A-R-L-A.
• 2:08:46
  And Brahms.
• 2:08:47
  B-R-A-H-M-S.
• 2:08:50
  But we will of course also put your website in the show notes.
• 2:08:54
  Thank you.
• 2:08:54
  Yeah.
• 2:08:54
  So re if you, you know, if you can't get your English heim, if you a, if
• 2:09:00
  you can't get your English speaking head around that, and a few years
• 2:09:03
  ago, I wouldn't have been able to.
• 2:09:05
  Don't worry.
• 2:09:06
  Carla Brahms type her into Google, but you could also type in horses, equine therapy.
• 2:09:14
  Carla Brahms it, she'll come up.
• 2:09:16
  But Len Reer, W-E-L-L-E-N.
• 2:09:21
  And then re is R-E-I-T-E-R.
• 2:09:27
  All one word.
• 2:09:28
  Len Writer.
• 2:09:28
  If you type that in, Carla Brahms.
• 2:09:31
  Yeah, she's gonna come up, but as you say, you can also contact us.
• 2:09:35
  Karla Brahms: Yeah.
• 2:09:35
  Rupert Isaacson: But I think I, I think it's it's it's a field we need to expand.
• 2:09:39
  I think it's an underserved area.
• 2:09:43
  We know that most people who are going through grief
• 2:09:47
  Karla Brahms: Yeah.
• 2:09:47
  Rupert Isaacson: Are facing the tyranny of this kind of taboo that we talked about.
• 2:09:53
  Karla Brahms: And just hope to see you soon.
• 2:09:56
  Rupert Isaacson: Say that again.
• 2:09:57
  Karla Brahms: And I just hope to see you soon.
• 2:10:01
  Rupert Isaacson: Well, the other thing, which if you're listening to
• 2:10:04
  this, you might want to consider is every June there is a massive reggae
• 2:10:13
  party at Carla's place in the forest.
• 2:10:17
  And the stage is the style, the, the open, stable, where the horses normally are.
• 2:10:24
  The horses go to the field for this and give it over to the reggae bands.
• 2:10:29
  And we dance in that space.
• 2:10:33
  And then the forest goes up from there and there are hammer.
• 2:10:35
  It's just, it's like a festival.
• 2:10:37
  Karla Brahms: Yeah.
• 2:10:37
  And we,
• 2:10:37
  Rupert Isaacson: and it's
• 2:10:38
  Karla Brahms: Celebrate Love, music and life.
• 2:10:41
  Rupert Isaacson: It, it's one of the most joyful events I've ever attended.
• 2:10:46
  It's everything a festival should be because it's not an official festival.
• 2:10:51
  And it's also a, a fundraiser for you'll experience.
• 2:10:58
  Excellent.
• 2:10:58
  Reggae, excellent nature, German culture, warmth, love, happiness.
• 2:11:04
  You can fly into Frankfurt Airport to go there.
• 2:11:07
  I highly recommend it.
• 2:11:09
  Bring a sleeping bag, sleep in the forest, sleep in one
• 2:11:12
  of the hammocks, bring a tent.
• 2:11:14
  I'm gonna try to be there for this one because we'll be up in Germany
• 2:11:20
  on and off through the summer.
• 2:11:21
  We'll prioritize it.
• 2:11:22
  Karla Brahms: Mm-hmm.
• 2:11:23
  Rupert Isaacson: It's on
• 2:11:23
  Karla Brahms: the
• 2:11:23
  Rupert Isaacson: last
• 2:11:24
  Karla Brahms: Saturday in June.
• 2:11:25
  Rupert Isaacson: I know that I have to be in the USA in, in Michigan in June,
• 2:11:30
  but I'm hoping we're we're back for it.
• 2:11:32
  Karla Brahms: Okay.
• 2:11:33
  Rupert Isaacson: Yeah.
• 2:11:35
  And it's, it just, it, it, that reggae night is the absolute product of Carla
• 2:11:44
  and Jan's relationship, and if anything, served as a metaphor for the absolute
• 2:11:52
  excellence of that human relationship.
• 2:11:57
  It's that event, which has been going for some years now.
• 2:12:02
  Karla Brahms: Thank you.
• 2:12:03
  Rupert Isaacson: Yeah, Carla, it's been a real honor to talk to you.
• 2:12:07
  Karla Brahms: Same, same.
• 2:12:10
  Rupert Isaacson: Always.
• 2:12:11
  So, until soon.
• 2:12:13
  Karla Brahms: Until soon, yeah.
• 2:12:15
  Rupert Isaacson: I hope you enjoyed today's conversation as much as I did.
• 2:12:18
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• 2:12:23
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