Latest / Equine Assisted World with Rupert Isaacson / Ep 8: Lynn Thomas - Arenas of Change & Horses for Mental Health

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Ep 8: Lynn Thomas - Arenas of Change & Horses for Mental Health · Equine Assisted World with Rupert Isaacson

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  Rupert Isaacson: Welcome to Equine Assisted World.
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  I'm your host, Rupert Isaacson.
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  New York Times bestselling author of the Horse Boy.
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  Founder of New Trails Learning Systems and long ride home.com.
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  You can find details of all our programs and shows on Rupert isaacson.com.
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  Here on Equine Assisted World.
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  We look at the cutting edge and the best practices currently being developed and,
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  established in the equine assisted field.
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  This can be psychological, this can be neuropsych, this can be
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  physical, this can be all of the conditions that human beings have.
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  These lovely equines, these beautiful horses that we work with, help us with.
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  Thank you for being part of the adventure and we hope you enjoy today's show
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  And please remember to press, subscribe and share.
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  Welcome back to equine assisted world where we talk to people at the cutting
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  edge of this rapidly developing field that we're all involved in and interested in
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  and fascinated by, how horses help humans and how humans can help horses back.
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  Assist.
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  It's a very different world now, the equine assisted world, to where
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  it was a couple of decades ago.
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  Twenty years ago, it was really on the hippie margins still.
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  And a lot of us who were in the field or beginning in the field We're having to
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  justify ourselves all the time, basically, explain why we didn't suck constantly,
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  which is very annoying and tiring.
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  But, nonetheless, understandable when you were dealing with mental health
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  world that had no understanding about natural animal based therapies, let
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  alone movement in the brain, let alone axons and dendrites and BDNF and oxytocin
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  and all these things, which we now know about almost in a mainstream way.
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  But back then, only a few neuroscientists here and there knew about.
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  So, way back when that was is still the case.
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  There was a pioneering group and a pioneering organization and a pioneering
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  modality known to a lot of us as Igala.
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  I'm lucky enough to have the founder of Igala, Lynn Thomas, here with us, today.
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  She's awesome.
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  And she's going to talk to us not just about Igala and how that evolved and what
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  were the achievements were there, but also about her two very exciting new ventures
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  in the equine assisted world, arenas for Change and Horses for Mental Health.
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  We're all waiting with bated breath to find out what you're up to, Lynn.
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  So, Lynn thank you so much for coming on the podcast.
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  Lynn Thomas: Yeah.
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  Thank you, Rupert.
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  Thanks for having me on, and I love your introduction.
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  I think that was a really great description of what this journey has
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  been like for the work that we all do.
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  Rupert Isaacson: Yeah.
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  It's it's it's we've all been through it.
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  And now here we are, suddenly A bit surprised, I think, that we're suddenly
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  you know, insurance companies will now pay for stuff that they laughed at,
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  twenty years ago and that the neuroscience and medical field has caught up and now
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  does recognize very strongly the the the work that we do, largely, I think,
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  because a lot of them ended up having kids personally themselves who ended up
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  in our programs or, patients that ended up in our programs, and then at a certain
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  point, they couldn't ignore it anymore.
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  But, yeah, whatever the evolution, it's been positive.
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  So, Lynn, I've talked too much already.
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  Who are you, and how did you get into this?
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  Lynn Thomas: Yeah.
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  Thanks.
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  And I And just to say too, I do agree it's really been a grassroots
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  effort with all these programs sacrificing and pioneering so much.
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  But, yeah, my my as you mentioned, my name is Lynn Thomas.
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  I am a mental health professional, licensed clinical social worker.
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  And I like to share that my background is not with horses at all.
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  I grew up in the city.
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  I didn't have Espoie.
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  To horses.
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  The most I'd ever done was girl scout camp, horse camp for one week, and that
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  was the extent of my, Exposure to that.
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  So didn't even know that I had an interest in horses.
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  And I had an opportunity.
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  I went to school, went to college, got my degree my My bachelor's degree in
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  psychology and trying to figure out what I was gonna do because I had no
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  idea what what I was gonna do with that.
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  And I saw a little classified ad in the college newspaper that said wilderness
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  counselors wanted and a phone number.
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  And I was like, I don't know what that is.
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  I had never really backpacked.
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  I had never done anything like that.
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  I the most I've done was car camping with my family.
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  So I called up and and it turned out to be this, like, survival
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  kind of program for troubled youth going through the deserts of Utah.
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  I I live in Utah.
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  So, and I was like, well, this sounds interesting.
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  So I embarked on a new journey in my life that got me into that realm of nature, of
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  Experiential learning of survival skills and and the concept of not just talking,
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  but doing And also challenging ourselves.
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  We can get you know, I kinda got into this, like, well, we don't
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  really grow unless we're challenged.
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  And so that kinda got me on that path and journey.
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  And then I years sometime later, Uh, I left that wilderness program
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  because you we live out there two weeks at a time, have one week off.
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  You're you're hiking around in survival with troubled teens, and
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  it's It's a high burnout rate.
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  Let me just put it that way, but it was very rewarding and decided I wanted to
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  go back to school and get my master's degree so I could be a therapist.
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  And in the wilderness program, the therapist could come in for one day and
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  hang out and camp out if they wanted, or they could go home if they want.
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  And I was like, oh, this what I wanna do.
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  So I went back to school to be a therapist.
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  Well, in the meanwhile, I ended up working at a a a residential
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  youth program on a ranch setting.
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  And that's what got me introduced to horses.
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  And there, I said, Wow.
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  The stuff with horses is really powerful because I love what
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  we do with the wilderness.
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  Like, you really gotta be out there for a while, but then in a one hour
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  session with these horses, you see these phenomenal changes happening.
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  And so that's what got me interested in it.
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  That's where I was introduced to Greg Kerstin, and That led on to a path.
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  I went back to school with the intention to go back to the wilderness
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  program, be a therapist there.
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  Well, while so I did that.
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  Went back to the wilderness program.
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  While I was in the wilderness program, they said, hey.
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  We don't want you to stay in this wilderness part.
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  We're starting this ranch program, treatment boarding
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  school in a ranch setting, and we want you to move over there.
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  And I was like, well, I don't I don't know what okay.
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  And it was just starting.
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  The person who was running it, it was really rough.
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  There was five kids there.
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  They were kinda running the place.
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  And within a month, I was then asked to become the executive
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  director of that program.
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  And, I was What's that?
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  How old are you at this point?
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  I was twenty two.
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  I I was fresh out of college, out of my master's program.
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  They clearly
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  Rupert Isaacson: had a lot of other people they could draw prom.
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  Right?
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  Lynn Thomas: Yeah.
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  I think it was one of those situations where I was like, what?
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  I and, actually, at the time, I think I was, There weren't many
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  women directors of treatment boarding schools, but, also, I was, like,
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  twenty two years old or twenty one.
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  I can't remember now.
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  But, Um, and at first, I was like, no.
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  No.
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  I don't I don't want to this is not what I wanna do.
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  And I was married at the time, and my husband you gotta do this.
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  This is an amazing opportunity.
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  Okay.
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  Fine.
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  Well, I ended up running in that program and And wanting it
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  to revolve around the horses.
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  It's on a ranch, wanting the horses to be the primary focus.
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  Why?
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  Why
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  Rupert Isaacson: With so little horse experience and just one sort of exposure
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  on a ranch with in a therapeutic setting.
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  Why were you already at this point convinced, um, that you wanted the
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  whole thing to run around the horse?
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  Lynn Thomas: Yeah.
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  I mean, that's a great question.
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  It was really that little exposure that I had for the I think I was at that
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  other program for a year, Or maybe a year and a half, but it it was so powerful
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  that I saw what the horses could do.
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  And this ranch had horses, And so I really felt strongly that I want that to
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  be the main element of everything would revolve and focus around the central.
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  So there's school.
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  There's other, recreational programming because these kids live there.
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  Right?
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  And there's nature and all that, but I felt so strongly.
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  And And that's a good question.
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  I mean, I think I've just seen the power of it.
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  Rupert Isaacson: What had you seen out of interest?
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  Because, I mean, people like me, I'm a horse obsessive.
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  I always was.
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  So, So, of course, I'm gonna revolve my life around horses
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  because I want ponies in my life.
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  You're coming from a different place.
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  So what so you're obviously observant.
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  What had you observed that was so transformative in that one year that you
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  were on that other ranch that made you so sure that you wanted this new program
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  to revolve entirely around horses despite not having a horse background yourself.
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  Lynn Thomas: I think one was they're living beings.
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  And so you can go out in the wilderness.
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  You can do ropes courses, which I did a lot of that, and they're
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  not really reacting to you.
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  And so I I saw these horses react Or respond to these interactions,
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  relationships with these with these kids and their families when
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  their families would come out.
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  And it was that it was that response that made such an impact.
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  And, yeah, then people say, well, why not other animals?
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  Well, The horses respond in a way that seems more authentic.
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  They don't care if you're their friend.
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  They don't they've got their own thing going on.
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  Like dogs or other animals, they tend to well, maybe not cats, but they tend
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  to, um, not have that level of dynamic response that you see horses have.
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  And I saw it through that relationship, through that interaction, Have such
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  feedback and have such meaning in a safe way because you can talk to
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  kids or talk to them and say, hey.
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  It would be good if you change your behaviors this way.
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  But the horses give that nonverbal feedback, like, I
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  don't like what you're doing.
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  And when it comes from An animal like that and not from a human that has biases
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  and agendas and and there's histories with different humans in their past.
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  But when it comes from a horse, that seemed to impact.
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  That seemed to have meaning, and they wanted to have that relationship.
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  They wanted to make it better.
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  And so I think seeing those kind of scenarios where I saw people change more
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  rapidly in that kind of environment.
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  So that And that's what motivated
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  Rupert Isaacson: me.
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  I've just written down these two words, dynamic response.
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  The dynamic response of the voice.
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  This that's an intriguing, way to put it.
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  Can you can you can you tell us a bit more what you mean?
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  Let's imagine you were not talking to an audience of people who who were
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  already sold on Equine assisted stuff.
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  Dynamic response, it's effectively immediate strong feedback.
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  In what particular way?
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  Because let's say, for example, you worked with goats.
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  I've worked with goats.
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  If a goat doesn't like what you're doing, there's some immediate feedback.
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  They leave.
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  And they leave pretty fast.
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  If they really, really don't like what you're doing, they'll
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  butt you and then leave.
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  So that's dynamic feedback.
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  Obviously, a dog might run away, whine, lie on the floor, show its belly, or bite
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  you depending on what sort of dog it was.
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  That's dynamic feedback.
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  So what is it about the horse's dynamic feedback that sold you.
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  Lynn Thomas: Yeah.
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  I think that's a really great question because I've had
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  really powerful experiences too with other animals as well.
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  And I think, one, when you were when you were saying that, I was
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  thinking, well, one, their size.
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  Maybe the dynamicness of it is they're bigger and the responses feel bigger.
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  And Because they're bigger, there's they can be more intimidating and can be scare.
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  I mean, they could hurt us in a maybe a a more A more dynamic way.
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  But then at the same time, there's an element of gentleness.
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  Yeah.
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  They are soft.
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  They have these soft eyes, tend, tend to have these soft eyes.
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  And I think maybe because of our evolutionary history with them too.
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  There might be that connection with them.
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  So I think when you ask that, it feels bigger, Um, in a dynamic way because
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  their responses feel more impactful.
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  Maybe, like I said, their size, our history with them, That fear draw.
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  Like, I'm fear I'm fearful of them, but I'm I'm also drawn towards them.
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  As a They're
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  Rupert Isaacson: iconic.
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  They're beautiful.
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  They're Yeah.
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  Back to
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  Lynn Thomas: Yeah.
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  Yeah.
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  Yeah.
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  And I really do think I mean, they're die I mean, being a prey animal, they really
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  are more aware of their environment.
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  I I think maybe them potentially in other animals.
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  And so I do feel like they have this kind of way of sensing and Responding
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  to people that might end up having more meaning because as a human, I'm
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  also maybe, have a traumatic ground.
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  And I'm also maybe scared of of my environment.
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  Mhmm.
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  And I also want connection and have a herd like the horses have.
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  And I think there's a lot of parallels that horses have in their kind of
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  just organic way of being, natural way of being that That I don't think
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  is as clear with other animals.
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  Rupert Isaacson: And you have you have observed all of this in that
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  short year despite not really having a background with horses.
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  That's interesting to me because, it takes a while, I think, for many people
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  even when they're learning to ride and they really want to engage with horses.
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  It takes people a long time to learn how to read horses.
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  You must have a unusual Series of Observation Skills.
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  You also must have had good mentors, presumably, on-site there to help
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  you interpret what you were seeing.
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  No?
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  Well,
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  Lynn Thomas: did you come Yeah.
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  I mean, I think that's definitely the case.
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  And, um, you're right.
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  I mean, I think the way my mind works, I'm looking as a third I'm
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  looking for what's gonna help our clients in the best way I can find.
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  And I had experienced different things, Different environments
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  and had been working with troubled teens since I was eighteen kinda
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  thing too in different capacities.
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  And I I just I think I just saw the teens respond and the families respond to horses
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  in a way I hadn't seen in other places.
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  So that captured me.
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  And And then when I had the opportunity to run this program and kinda turn it
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  into the program, I'm so I had enough experience working with troubled teens
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  that I knew How to create a program to support troubled teens in their growth.
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  And involving the horse is just like, oh, I could see the The power
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  of it, and I wanted to do more.
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  I wanted to offer more of it.
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  And so at that time, like you said, this wasn't There were other programs
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  out there, and it was mostly teaching horsemanship and and that kind of thing.
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  So, I mentioned cofounded the gala with with Greg Kirson.
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  So we haven't cofounded the gala yet, but I actually had worked
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  with him at that other program.
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  So I contacted him And invited him to come to where what I was doing now.
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  He was a horse, presumably.
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  Yeah.
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  And he's a horseman.
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  Yeah.
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  And so that and he had been working Working a lot with troubled teens
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  too and doing kinda more the, I would say, ropes course concept,
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  the experiential learning concept of creating problem solving activities.
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  And through that, you learn things about yourself, and you get
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  confidence Because you overcome the problems and find solutions.
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  So it was setting up more activities like that.
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  That, again, I think, was novel at the time maybe, um, whereas most was, again,
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  teaching basic horse or not basic, but teaching horsemanship, Teaching
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  writing and involving and doing maybe competitive equestrian experiences.
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  So I ended up I was in this program, running this program, and
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  then ended up getting pregnant.
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  And it was one of those life Scenarios where okay.
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  What do I do?
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  Do I stay do I stay working?
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  Because I was working probably eighty hour weeks when you're working residential,
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  and then they had put me over the wilderness program by this time too.
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  So the programs were doing well, and I was like, oh, okay.
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  Do I stay?
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  Do I You know, what do I do?
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  And then I found out and I was planning on I'm gonna I'm gonna keep working.
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  I'm gonna stay.
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  And then I found out I was having twins.
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  And I was like, oh.
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  And I said, okay.
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  That's I don't think I can do an eighty hour work week
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  And also take care of twins.
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  That kinda put me over the edge of, okay, maybe I I need to leave.
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  And so I did.
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  I decided that I needed to stay home and take care of the twins, and that's
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  where it was because of that That talking with Greg, and we're like he was
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  like, I'd like to train other people.
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  Like, that's great.
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  And because I'm not doing this eighty hour week, I'm staying at home.
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  I need a hobby on the side.
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  Sure.
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  Let's start doing training other professionals.
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  And like you said, back then, that was I I think I'm trying to remember.
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  We did our first training in nineteen ninety seven or nineteen ninety eight
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  and decided to formally start eGala, Equine Assisted Growth and Learning
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  Association, as a nonprofit organization to train professionals how to do this.
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  There really wasn't much Out there at the time, there was, EFMA, which
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  was a subsection of what was back then called NARA, now called PATH.
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  I know Barbara Rector.
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  I mean, there were kind of things kinda happening out there, but
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  it really wasn't a whole lot.
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  So it was kinda starting this new niche That as I I really did think it was
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  gonna be a small hobby on the side.
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  I didn't expect there to be that much time, Um, to it.
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  But as you can see, that journey, I was pleasantly surprised that, See,
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  there's a lot of people interested in incorporating horses for mental health.
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  So, within a year so we formally started Yigal in nineteen ninety nine.
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  Within a year, it grew, and I, once again, was working.
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  Every time I could Every time the twins were sleeping, I I was working.
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  I look back now.
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  I was much younger than, obviously, so I was like, how on earth did I do that?
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  But we we really started getting the word out there.
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  And and, ultimately, I feel that my lack of background in horses was
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  one of the strengths to that because trying to get credibility in the mental
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  health community, especially back Then as you said, we were looked at
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  as very alternative, very out there.
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  And so I felt like I could speak the language to people who knew nothing
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  about horses, who had no interest in horses, and what did they and And
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  being a mental health professional, what did they need to hear to start
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  being open to this kind of concept?
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  So we're really focused our marketing and our Efforts to kinda get out there
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  in the mental health world, and I feel like that was a great kind of beginning
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  of of getting that credibility, of building that awareness, And something
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  that's not associated with horses and and something that looked at us as crazy.
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  So
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  Rupert Isaacson: But if you now if you were bootstrapping something at age twelve
• 20:04
  with so mum and and married and so on.
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  I presume that you you you had to some some advantages and that you had this
• 20:17
  ranch at your disposal with the horses at your disposal so that you could Use that.
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  Did were you doing your initial trainings from there?
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  And then you talked about marketing.
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  We all know marketing's very expensive.
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  So How were you able to fund so young and so raw, um, that kind of machine
• 20:39
  because that's that's not easy.
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  We know I mean, there's lots of people who've been doing things for twenty,
• 20:43
  thirty years who haven't the budget for that or haven't cracked that.
• 20:47
  What what what What was it that made that possible?
• 20:52
  Lynn Thomas: Well, by this point, I'd left that, A program I was
• 20:55
  directing, became a stay at home mom.
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  My husband at that time was starting a new business too
• 21:02
  As an a real estate appraiser.
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  And so that we didn't really have money coming in, and it was one of
• 21:09
  those leaps of faith, you could say.
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  So I think anybody who's an entrepreneur might be able to relate somewhat.
• 21:15
  So what funded it?
• 21:17
  My Our credit cards, that's what and I do not I'm not promoting that as a good idea.
• 21:22
  I'm just saying that, Um, I yeah.
• 21:28
  We played that game of every little bit that came in went Back into the business.
• 21:33
  And then yeah, my my personal credit cards got bigger and bigger and bigger, the debt
• 21:40
  on them, but played that game of, okay.
• 21:42
  I'm paying this credit card with that credit card.
• 21:44
  And that's literally how it started and Why it kinda kept going for a while there
• 21:50
  till we could start paying those off.
• 21:52
  I remember finally being able to pay.
• 21:55
  That was, oh, Three years, I think, into it that I was finally able we
• 22:02
  were bringing in enough money that I could at least cover that that debt
• 22:06
  that had it had taken to get it going.
• 22:09
  So I and I will say the other benefit at that time, That's when
• 22:13
  the Internet was really kinda starting to gain some traction.
• 22:19
  Mhmm.
• 22:19
  It was still very, very slow Internet, dial up Internet.
• 22:23
  But it was enough where, as a small business entrepreneur, you
• 22:27
  were able to have a way to get the word out there that didn't cost
• 22:30
  Thousands and thousands of dollars.
• 22:32
  And we spent some money putting in some little ads in, like, horse and rider
• 22:36
  and, American hort practical horsemen and, some of those kind of magazines
• 22:43
  that helped us get the word out too.
• 22:45
  And then That the Internet really started playing a role
• 22:49
  in helping us spread the word.
• 22:51
  So that was a very fortunate timing and a great gift Aquinas.
• 22:55
  That way to get exposure to the world.
• 22:58
  Rupert Isaacson: Awash with five bazillion people all offering their stuff.
• 23:01
  It was, yeah, it was, Yeah.
• 23:03
  And then presumably then the ranch as well you were were you able to run the
• 23:07
  trainings there so that you The cost of those horses and that sort of thing
• 23:12
  were taken care of by the institution.
• 23:14
  Presumably, you weren't having to, in addition to getting this new thing up
• 23:18
  and run, also, uh, workout the hay belt.
• 23:22
  Presumably, all were you?
• 23:24
  Yeah.
• 23:24
  Lynn Thomas: So, at that time, Then Greg and I cofounded that.
• 23:30
  He had moved up to the area I was in, and we literally he
• 23:34
  had one horse and a backyard.
• 23:36
  That's where we so we were doing a private practice.
• 23:39
  I was doing some, again, also that on the side.
• 23:41
  We're doing some sessions worked with youth corrections.
• 23:44
  Okay.
• 23:44
  So this
• 23:45
  Rupert Isaacson: is no longer at the original app.
• 23:47
  Right.
• 23:47
  And
• 23:47
  Lynn Thomas: this was no longer at that nice corporate on Yahoo.
• 23:50
  So That that was run by a nice, well funded corporate entity.
• 23:55
  And so we had that going, but we went the route of people hosting the trainings.
• 24:00
  So as we got a training, people host it, so they provided their facility.
• 24:04
  They provided their horses.
• 24:05
  And so, I mean, I think that first year, um, Nineteen ninety nine,
• 24:12
  we did six trainings, which was actually better than I thought.
• 24:18
  And I kinda thought, like, Like, that's all we would be doing in a
• 24:20
  year was six trainings in a year.
• 24:24
  iT ultimately grew later And years to like, we were doing, like, eighty Yeah.
• 24:30
  Trainings a year.
• 24:31
  So you can kinda see the growth of what happened.
• 24:34
  And it didn't take that long to get there back then, like I said, a few years.
• 24:38
  And so, yeah, that's how it started.
• 24:41
  And that's why I tell people, you even with a if you wanna get a program
• 24:45
  started, we started with a one horse in a backyard, not even a proper arena.
• 24:51
  Yeah.
• 24:52
  So it it was And because of our our approach wasn't mounted work,
• 24:56
  it was Primarily on the ground and later became all on the ground.
• 25:00
  We used to do some mounted back in the beginning days.
• 25:03
  onE horse Would be okay.
• 25:05
  And we didn't have that many clients either to worry
• 25:07
  about the horse burning out.
• 25:08
  So
• 25:09
  Rupert Isaacson: What became of that horse out of interest?
• 25:11
  Who was that horse?
• 25:12
  Did that horse have an interesting personality?
• 25:16
  Lynn Thomas: I am trying to remember if that was I mean, jazz is the
• 25:20
  course that has the most Memory for me, I don't it wasn't jazz, though.
• 25:24
  And now I'm trying to remember what that horse was.
• 25:28
  Chief anyway anyway, he was a quarter horse, And most of the horses that
• 25:34
  end up getting were quarter horses and, yeah, great personalities.
• 25:41
  Yeah.
• 25:41
  Rupert Isaacson: Dynamic feedback is their thing
• 25:43
  Lynn Thomas: for sure.
• 25:43
  Very dynamic feel.
• 25:44
  And I'll share a story with you.
• 25:45
  I don't know if now is the right time of one of the more prominent
• 25:50
  stories that It's not with clients.
• 25:52
  It's with practitioners.
• 25:54
  That kind of really impacted my view about horses.
• 25:59
  sO Maybe.
• 26:01
  I don't know when that time will be, but alright.
• 26:04
  It's the teaser.
• 26:05
  I said the
• 26:05
  Rupert Isaacson: teaser.
• 26:07
  Alright.
• 26:07
  Well, we're all teased.
• 26:09
  Okay.
• 26:11
  Tell it if you if you feel you can.
• 26:12
  If you feel not, we'll
• 26:14
  Lynn Thomas: skip.
• 26:14
  No.
• 26:14
  I This is kinda one of the things that impacted me and my view of horses.
• 26:19
  So there's a horse named Jazz a beautiful gray, , speckled gray.
• 26:27
  And, yeah, he he was this horse that, Like, when kids will walk in
• 26:32
  and and they would like, I'm tough.
• 26:34
  I'm cool.
• 26:36
  He put his ears straight back And chase them right out of the arena.
• 26:40
  Really?
• 26:42
  And he I mean, ultimately, yeah, he just didn't like any double messages At all.
• 26:48
  If you were not in if you were not congruent with what you felt
• 26:51
  inside to what that mask was that you had on the outside, he just
• 26:55
  was like, I'm gonna kick at you.
• 26:56
  I'm gonna, like I mean, he He'd do all sorts of dynamic nonverbal reactions to
• 27:02
  that, and you really had to be completely congruent For him to want to interact with
• 27:08
  Rupert Isaacson: you.
• 27:09
  Interesting.
• 27:10
  And you didn't select him because of that.
• 27:12
  He just he just
• 27:13
  Lynn Thomas: No.
• 27:14
  It just emerged as his personality, which was really awesome.
• 27:17
  And, well, one time we were doing a training, and we were
• 27:22
  doing stuff in the round pen.
• 27:24
  And this was with a group of practitioners, many who are horse
• 27:28
  trainers or self proclaimed horse trainers or whatever, but, have horse
• 27:31
  background and horse Experience.
• 27:33
  And they were just gonna do back then, we were doing some round pen stuff
• 27:36
  and what we did, and they would go in there with Jazz and just, Yeah.
• 27:41
  Try to do what they do as as experienced horse people and
• 27:45
  get the horse to move around.
• 27:47
  And he would just, Uh, ears back, turn his butt, do the little kick
• 27:53
  ups, um, and just Chase them out too, which was, like, amazing.
• 27:59
  But, anyway there was a a person there at our training, a mental health
• 28:03
  professional, and I had known him.
• 28:05
  He works with troubled youth.
• 28:07
  Really good counselor.
• 28:09
  Very green in the horse world.
• 28:10
  Really doesn't have much horse experience at all.
• 28:13
  And he went in that round pen, and jazz just start going around.
• 28:18
  And that was one of those moments that I was, first of all, in awe of,
• 28:22
  but second of all, that realization of how much horses can pick up on
• 28:28
  things, and it's not always our book knowledge, and it's not to minimize the
• 28:31
  importance of having that knowledge of of an expertise working with horses.
• 28:39
  And this horse, I guess, was just so sensitive and so, I
• 28:43
  don't know, his personality.
• 28:44
  But, anyway, I was just amazed by what they pick up on.
• 28:49
  And this was you know, he picked up on that guy's personality
• 28:54
  and was not I guess he wasn't a threat maybe the way he came in.
• 28:57
  I don't now, but he's also really good with people.
• 29:01
  So
• 29:02
  Rupert Isaacson: okay.
• 29:02
  So you you evolve Igala.
• 29:04
  What If you were you know, let's say I didn't know anything about
• 29:09
  equine therapy stuff at all.
• 29:12
  What did Igala do?
• 29:14
  What does igartner do?
• 29:18
  Lynn Thomas: As far as the actual models
• 29:20
  Rupert Isaacson: of Yeah.
• 29:20
  What is it set out to do?
• 29:21
  What's what's the purpose, and how does it do it?
• 29:24
  So I think,
• 29:25
  Lynn Thomas: One of the things that we were getting interest from the mental
• 29:28
  health community and and starting to get more credibility is we set standards.
• 29:33
  And the standards are not just about how to be with horses.
• 29:36
  The standards were about for the mental health community.
• 29:38
  So for instance, we required The team of a mental health professional and
• 29:44
  an equine specialist, and both had to have certain minimum qualifications in
• 29:48
  their their areas of scopes of practice.
• 29:51
  So by requiring that a mental health professional is always there.
• 29:56
  We were very, very clear that we are doing a mental health service.
• 30:00
  This is not equine whatever.
• 30:02
  We're doing a mental health service, and we're involving Aquinas.
• 30:05
  In that.
• 30:06
  So being very clear about that.
• 30:07
  We were we at first, we did do some mounted stuff I mentioned.
• 30:11
  Later, we became all on the ground, and there Couple of reasons.
• 30:15
  One was because we saw the value of that connection with the horses while
• 30:18
  you're on the ground where horses can be maybe more authentically themselves
• 30:22
  And not to say again, there are wonderful benefits with riding too,
• 30:26
  but the other thing was perception.
• 30:29
  When you would say we're involving horses, the immediate thing was, oh, that's nice.
• 30:33
  That's recreation.
• 30:34
  How nice to do that.
• 30:35
  Right?
• 30:38
  When we talked about doing stuff on the ground, it kinda helped, I think, that
• 30:42
  perception of, well, maybe this is a little bit different than recreation.
• 30:48
  And so, I think that helped as well.
• 30:51
  anD then the other thing that we did was too was we were clear
• 30:54
  we're not Teaching horsemanship.
• 30:56
  Now, again, clients may we would learn a lot about horses along the way, but
• 31:00
  I think, again, we were very clear.
• 31:01
  We're setting up we're structuring sessions in a way That's deliberate
• 31:06
  to meet treatment goals, and learning about horses is not our objective.
• 31:13
  So I think, again, getting that message out there was also very helpful.
• 31:18
  And and then we did things with the horses that didn't look like normal horsemanship.
• 31:22
  And, actually, later, we even started many several years later,
• 31:26
  we even started encouraging.
• 31:27
  Don't even use horsemanship tools.
• 31:28
  Don't use halters.
• 31:29
  Don't Use leader ropes.
• 31:31
  Get all that out of the space, again, partly for perception
• 31:35
  that this is different.
• 31:37
  This is not your typical type of thing that you think of
• 31:40
  when you think of horses.
• 31:41
  And so I think that was part of our messaging that was getting maybe some
• 31:45
  kinda like, Oh, maybe this is something a little different and and really being
• 31:50
  clear about these are professionals.
• 31:52
  These are mental health professionals.
• 31:54
  Nationals.
• 31:54
  They're doing what they would do in an office, but they're doing
• 31:57
  it in this different environment that has these additional benefits.
• 32:01
  So
• 32:03
  Rupert Isaacson: Okay.
• 32:03
  So I I I begin to understand more now about the Agala model.
• 32:08
  That's very it's very astute of you guys to to address, I think, upfront that
• 32:14
  people would regard it as recreation and wouldn't take it seriously unless there
• 32:19
  was a mental health professional involved.
• 32:21
  Of course, that, I guess, to some degree, is a limiting factor too
• 32:25
  because unless you can find that mental health Professional to work with.
• 32:30
  You then wouldn't be able to do the program, I presume.
• 32:34
  What so what how did did you help people or mentor people to say, Okay.
• 32:38
  You're a horse person.
• 32:39
  You want to do this stuff, but you're gonna need to find a mental
• 32:43
  health professional to work with.
• 32:45
  Here is the ABC of how you Do that or find that?
• 32:47
  Would or did people just have to hunt it up themselves and then
• 32:50
  show up together for a training?
• 32:52
  How how how did how did it work?
• 32:53
  Because it's It's a relatively tall order, I think, for a lot of homeless people
• 32:57
  that don't exist in any kind of mental health professional world to team up with
• 33:02
  those people, particularly back then.
• 33:05
  Lynn Thomas: Yeah.
• 33:05
  In fact, when we first started, I would say I don't know.
• 33:08
  Just get but probably at least ninety percent of our membership
• 33:11
  were equine professionals.
• 33:12
  Okay.
• 33:13
  And ten percent more mental health.
• 33:15
  So you're absolutely right.
• 33:16
  It was starting to get that interest.
• 33:18
  And then the next Step was like you said, it was usually mental
• 33:21
  health professionals that were also horse professionals that they had
• 33:24
  experience with horses and background.
• 33:26
  So then they started, oh Oh, this exists?
• 33:29
  I can include both my interests into one thing?
• 33:32
  This is amazing.
• 33:34
  And so we kinda started the next step was attracting those
• 33:38
  Mental health professionals.
• 33:39
  And then, really, I think it became more that broader awareness, more word-of-mouth
• 33:45
  that started to introduce, And we were presenting it that I'd present at mental
• 33:49
  health conferences and and as well as other programs would and practitioners.
• 33:53
  But then it started getting that is peaking that interest of people
• 33:57
  who don't have horse experience.
• 33:58
  And we would say straight out on materials.
• 34:01
  You don't need horse experience.
• 34:02
  You need to work with an equine specialist that has horse experience, but you don't.
• 34:07
  Now back then too, I think there was some criticism about that.
• 34:10
  Like, everybody should have that horse knowledge, and I I agree.
• 34:12
  You do need to have some.
• 34:14
  But to get the the feet in the door, um, so we started then these mental health
• 34:20
  professionals that had zero like me.
• 34:22
  I had no background with horses.
• 34:25
  I had no interest in it, and I would share that straight out.
• 34:27
  I don't have a background with horses.
• 34:29
  I have no experience with that, but here's why I do it.
• 34:32
  Mhmm.
• 34:32
  As a mental health professional, I see our clients change in ways
• 34:35
  that I don't see in the office.
• 34:38
  And that's very rewarding as a mental health professional to
• 34:41
  know you're making a difference.
• 34:43
  Mhmm.
• 34:43
  And so I think that it did take some time, but it you know, I think
• 34:48
  within probably four four years, For sure, we were had probably equal
• 34:55
  equine specialists and mental health professionals in in the membership.
• 34:59
  And then it became even more mental health professionals because we had the
• 35:01
  mental Professionals that also had Equine and then mental health professionals
• 35:04
  know Equine, and it actually ended up becoming, I would say, the majority of our
• 35:09
  membership ended up being mental health.
• 35:11
  So that was that progression of getting that word out there.
• 35:15
  Rupert Isaacson: Now we all know the dangers involved in working with horses.
• 35:20
  Jazz.
• 35:20
  Obviously, showed you some of those.
• 35:22
  I presume he never actually did nail anybody.
• 35:24
  I presume it was mostly mock charges rather than actually putting
• 35:28
  someone on the ground and kneeling on them or or that sort of thing.
• 35:31
  So, and, of course, that we know that's what horses mostly do, but, nonetheless,
• 35:35
  it's an it's a dangerous thing.
• 35:37
  How could you, without horse experience, discern whether somebody truly had
• 35:43
  enough horse experience or the right horse experience to be able to do
• 35:47
  this work professionally and safely because this is one of the hard
• 35:51
  things as as all the listeners know.
• 35:54
  In the world of horses, it's such a specific knowledge set.
• 35:57
  And there are a lot of people, sadly, who claim to have more knowledge than they do.
• 36:04
  And we all know that it's something that real knowledge with horses, Really
• 36:08
  being able to keep people safe around horses takes decades, to to acquire.
• 36:12
  So how could you at that early stage and then how could you help mental
• 36:17
  health people with no equine background.
• 36:20
  How could you help them discern who were the right equine
• 36:23
  professionals to work with?
• 36:25
  Lynn Thomas: I, yeah, I mean, that's such a great question, and
• 36:28
  I think it's the ongoing challenge.
• 36:31
  And And I think it's still this way, but back then too, especially yeah.
• 36:36
  There's no nothing standardized in the equine industry.
• 36:39
  Right?
• 36:39
  And there's no one USA.
• 36:41
  No.
• 36:41
  Yeah.
• 36:42
  Yeah.
• 36:42
  And there's no one, uh, like I said, there's so many different knowledge bases
• 36:47
  you could have and routes you could go in your horse experience and journey.
• 36:51
  So, we ended up having, membership discussions about what could we set as
• 36:56
  a minimum Standard and decided, like, well, how do we define a professional?
• 37:00
  And a professional is someone that has formal training, that
• 37:05
  has hands on experience as well and that follows Standards and
• 37:12
  ethical guidelines and what they do.
• 37:15
  So we kinda created our own standard back then in a gala that has pretty much
• 37:20
  stayed the entire time, and that just basically says you have this many hours of
• 37:27
  Rupert Isaacson: I mean And how does somebody prove that to to
• 37:30
  Lynn Thomas: to you?
• 37:30
  And then they would they would send in yeah.
• 37:33
  And you can't always prove it because a lot of these things don't have you
• 37:35
  don't get certificates Necessarily.
• 37:37
  Right?
• 37:38
  Absolutely.
• 37:38
  I mean, it was honor policy.
• 37:40
  Most of it, they would send in, here's what we did to achieve this.
• 37:44
  I mean, you have some organizations like Path, that will, like, test you.
• 37:49
  You send them videos maybe, and can you do this?
• 37:52
  And I think, again, you still it's a it's a tough one because people who do have a
• 37:58
  lot of hands on background and experience may still be not as Qualified or one
• 38:04
  you can trust as maybe someone else.
• 38:06
  Right?
• 38:07
  So it's and I and I will say it's the same in the mental in the mental health world.
• 38:11
  There's schooling and testing and licensure registration in
• 38:16
  different parts of the world.
• 38:17
  So you have that, but that doesn't make Mean that someone's a good
• 38:20
  mental health professional.
• 38:21
  Yes.
• 38:22
  But at least there's a minimum standard.
• 38:23
  Right?
• 38:24
  There's at least something a minimum standard.
• 38:27
  And I think that was one of our reasons too to have a team approach.
• 38:31
  A team approach gives some checks and balance.
• 38:34
  Rupert Isaacson: We've gone through this a little bit with Horse Boy because we went
• 38:37
  through a we've gone through a learning curve, and we're still on a learning curve
• 38:40
  with this where, Like you, I started in a a field with one horse and my son, but I
• 38:46
  did have, by then, twenty five years plus.
• 38:50
  I just I grew up with it.
• 38:51
  It's what I had always made my living partly from it.
• 38:54
  I was part of that culture from my childhood on.
• 38:59
  So I had skills to draw on and I could discern whether other people did or not.
• 39:04
  However, when we first began doing what we did.
• 39:07
  We took at face value some some things and ended up realizing that was a mistake.
• 39:14
  And then, also, um, realizing that there were such vast amounts
• 39:21
  of differences in in in in what people's experience with horses were.
• 39:27
  What how could we distill that down to a base minimum?
• 39:32
  Because as you say, just because if if they were coming from a European country
• 39:36
  where there are standardized exams that you do with horses and that sort of thing.
• 39:41
  It's it's it's it's actually more regulated.
• 39:43
  iT didn't necessarily mean that they knew that much.
• 39:50
  And so we realized that The only way we could know was to see them
• 39:57
  and talk to them, and that's why we ended up creating a a level one entry
• 40:02
  course where one could discern exactly what somebody's experience base was.
• 40:13
  And if they didn't have enough to really go further, then they couldn't
• 40:16
  go up the levels until they had you could say to someone, look.
• 40:20
  Go away for eighteen months or go away for two years.
• 40:23
  Do this, do this, do this, and do this, and come back.
• 40:25
  And if you do that, you would be ready.
• 40:27
  But currently, now, you we couldn't trust you to keep someone safe on someone
• 40:32
  else's child safe on a horse like this.
• 40:34
  But it took us a while.
• 40:37
  And, Um, I'm always intrigued by how other people do this because it's it's
• 40:43
  it's it's it's an art, not a science.
• 40:45
  It's as you say.
• 40:47
  Is it would you think it was because Greg who you began this, was he
• 40:50
  a particularly good horseman?
• 40:52
  Did you rely to a large degree on his discernment.
• 40:55
  And, presumably, his discernment must have been quite sound.
• 40:58
  Otherwise, the whole thing would have died to death.
• 41:00
  Right?
• 41:01
  That He must have also been able to help you put into place a series of ways to
• 41:07
  discern that could make it function.
• 41:11
  Can you talk to us just a little bit about how that evolved?
• 41:14
  And
• 41:16
  Lynn Thomas: Yeah.
• 41:17
  I think, again, like, I came in this with Not knowledge of horses.
• 41:22
  So my fear level was and I think that's good.
• 41:25
  I mean, I think in some ways, the fact that maybe I was a little
• 41:28
  more acute to This scares me.
• 41:31
  anD then you're absolutely right.
• 41:33
  I need to trust my partner and feel reassured.
• 41:37
  No.
• 41:38
  This is okay what they're doing.
• 41:39
  It's okay for them to be putting their ears back in this case.
• 41:42
  They're not past their threat the horse is not past their threshold yet.
• 41:46
  And at any time, if they are starting to get past their threshold, we would teach
• 41:49
  any any gala, call the clients and, hey.
• 41:51
  Everybody come back here.
• 41:52
  And you get them out of that in that space, and immediately
• 41:55
  everything deescalates.
• 41:57
  Right?
• 41:58
  So and then you can talk about it.
• 41:59
  But so, yeah, absolutely.
• 42:01
  I think there's a level of You gotta have to trust your partner as well
• 42:05
  as the equine specialist, and you can trust the mental health professional
• 42:08
  on the emotional side of the clients.
• 42:10
  Right?
• 42:12
  So I I did feel that trust and that level of discernment, and I learned a lot.
• 42:17
  I had the opportunity you know, working with Greg and then working
• 42:20
  with other equine professionals who were genuinely very comfortable and
• 42:25
  confident and experienced with horses.
• 42:29
  And I think working with them where they knew limits to push that
• 42:33
  helped me push my limits, Where I started to get more comfortable.
• 42:38
  I mean, I'll share a quick story again about jazz as another example
• 42:41
  about learning about horses.
• 42:43
  sO I was out at the farm.
• 42:45
  By this time, I moved to a farm and, feeding and And I had my kids.
• 42:50
  By this, I had another child, right, by accident.
• 42:54
  Of course he did.
• 42:54
  Twins was not planned, and then I had one that kinda Dan, so eighteen
• 42:57
  months younger than the twins.
• 42:59
  I was raising three children.
• 43:01
  And, um, well, my youngest, I think he was probably two or three.
• 43:05
  Anyways, Young, he could walk.
• 43:07
  He's toddling around.
• 43:08
  I'm pretty far away, and I see him walk right up behind Jazz.
• 43:13
  And I see and he goes right behind the legs.
• 43:16
  I'm far enough away.
• 43:18
  There's nothing I can do about it.
• 43:19
  And I remember I had learned by this point too, like, even
• 43:22
  if I had yelled, like, Hey.
• 43:24
  All I would do is startle the horse.
• 43:26
  Like, there's really nothing I can do but watch.
• 43:29
  And Jazz cocked his back leg like he's gonna kick.
• 43:33
  And my heart, like, stopped.
• 43:36
  Right?
• 43:37
  And then he put his foot and touched Wyatt Just ever so gently and just kinda nudged
• 43:44
  him and moved him out of the way and Wyatt went toddling on, walking on his way.
• 43:48
  And I was like, wow.
• 43:50
  Here's this horse That kicks aggressively looking, um, but, all that.
• 43:55
  And then that's what he did with this little child.
• 43:58
  So gentle.
• 43:59
  Rupert Isaacson: It is so interesting how they modify behavior like that.
• 44:02
  We I have a similar story, which is that Betsy, who was the horse
• 44:05
  who I did everything initially on with my son had a a foal, and
• 44:10
  this foal was an absolute witch.
• 44:12
  One of the only truly vicious by nature, and most I've ever
• 44:17
  come across ever in almost fifty years of of being a professional.
• 44:21
  And this horse was exceptional.
• 44:23
  And it turned out that the stallion she'd come from was really known for this.
• 44:27
  Anyway, She kicked everyone and everything and bit everyone and everything.
• 44:31
  And much later on even, I had to I ended up inheriting her
• 44:35
  because nobody wanted her.
• 44:37
  Had to move her off the farm and move her to someone who was a real professional
• 44:40
  because we had kids going around.
• 44:41
  I once found what my my, Uh, guy who was running my barn at the time.
• 44:48
  This is years in.
• 44:49
  He was a real professional, really qualified dude.
• 44:52
  I found him unconscious, uh, after having been kicked by her.
• 44:56
  I was like, okay.
• 44:57
  We have to get up.
• 44:57
  And and, weirdly, she was always very very submissive under
• 45:00
  saddle, but on the ground.
• 45:01
  Anyway, when she was very young, I saw a very similar thing happen where Rowan, my
• 45:06
  son, somehow got away from me and Aquinas.
• 45:10
  Ran up to Manila.
• 45:12
  I was like, and exactly as you described, you cannot shout.
• 45:17
  And I saw her raise the leg, He grabbed it, and I saw her look around at him.
• 45:28
  And you could see in her own brain, she I don't really understand why
• 45:32
  I'm not kicking you, but I am putting my leg down now, and I myself am
• 45:36
  a little bit confused about this.
• 45:38
  And off you went.
• 45:40
  And this this interesting dynamic, this this a pure line of communication.
• 45:47
  I'd seen it before with him with Betsy, and I'd realized, oh, he has a direct
• 45:51
  line to the horses that I do not.
• 45:53
  My ego is firmly in the way because I'm a neurotypical human being.
• 45:57
  Him being not neurotypical, the that veil, there was no veil across.
• 46:01
  I've now seen this, so many times in anyone.
• 46:03
  I think he's worked with autism a lot would tell the same stories, but No.
• 46:09
  It's almost a cult because it seems to defy all the accepted rules.
• 46:15
  And, uh, I I I I agree with you.
• 46:20
  This this this thing of how these animals can modify their behavior for better or
• 46:29
  worse with people is something which I think until the therapeutic riding world
• 46:36
  the the therapeutic equine world really took off, was something that was really
• 46:43
  sidelined to anecdote among horsemen.
• 46:46
  And now, of course, we use it as a tool.
• 46:49
  And you I suppose one could always say, well, one did use it always as tools
• 46:52
  with sort of schoolmaster horses and that sort of thing, teaching people to ride,
• 46:56
  but, nonetheless, I think the awareness of just how much horses cut us a break.
• 47:06
  I think it's only beginning to be understood, and therefore,
• 47:10
  a window on their intelligence that we haven't had before.
• 47:16
  It's an evolving out of our work.
• 47:18
  But I'm I'm seeing a pattern emerge in your story, which is that You are clearly
• 47:23
  someone who learns very, very fast based on observation because you started this
• 47:28
  story saying you had no wilderness at all.
• 47:30
  You're a city girl.
• 47:31
  What city was that, by the way?
• 47:34
  Lynn Thomas: Well, I moved around growing up, but mainly in Houston.
• 47:38
  Okay.
• 47:39
  Texas.
• 47:40
  Then I actually lived near London of my last two years of high school.
• 47:44
  So In the UK?
• 47:46
  Rupert Isaacson: Yep.
• 47:47
  Okay.
• 47:47
  Yeah.
• 47:47
  Right.
• 47:48
  So, yeah, in Houston, I I lived and my ranch was outside Austin.
• 47:51
  I know what a suburban behemoth Houston is.
• 47:54
  Yes.
• 47:55
  Despite the image of Texas as all branches or Houston as anything but that.
• 48:00
  Yeah.
• 48:00
  Okay.
• 48:00
  So Then you this Houston girl, you're out with teenagers who aren't very
• 48:09
  good at looking after themselves.
• 48:11
  You know nothing about the wilderness, really.
• 48:13
  And in a relatively short period of time, you are is trusted to keep these
• 48:17
  kids alive in an environment that you yourself have not grown up in that usually
• 48:21
  takes, again, some decades to get to know in order to keep people safe in.
• 48:26
  Yet there you are doing it, not yet twenty years old.
• 48:30
  And then to the point that They want you to run the program, and then you go off
• 48:35
  and you work on this ranch for a year, admittedly, with a very good with Greg,
• 48:39
  a very good mentor, but nonetheless I mean, Mentorship Still Takes Its Time.
• 48:45
  And a year later, there you are able to judge, discern, and apply these things.
• 48:55
  What what is it in your family line that has this acuity for
• 49:01
  observation and implementation of what you observe, do you think?
• 49:05
  Who do you get it from?
• 49:08
  Lynn Thomas: wEll, thank you.
• 49:09
  As you were sharing that, I was like or people are crazy enough.
• 49:12
  They're desperate enough.
• 49:14
  But, yeah, you're right.
• 49:15
  No.
• 49:15
  I do, Um, I do observe.
• 49:19
  I do listen, and I do take it all in.
• 49:22
  And I and I think I have a way of Organizing information that,
• 49:28
  helped create what we did with Eigala and helped create the model
• 49:31
  and helped create how to teach it.
• 49:33
  I'm always trying to break things down.
• 49:35
  I mean, my dad definitely comes to mind because my dad is an engineer,
• 49:40
  Mechanical engineer, and he has that kind of perfectionist, problem solving,
• 49:46
  working things out kinda brain.
• 49:48
  So I do, I guess probably feel them a lot like my dad.
• 49:53
  So that could be and, Yeah.
• 49:58
  I like to learn.
• 49:59
  I mean, I think Are you we would get criticized for what we were
• 50:04
  doing, we would get Challenge.
• 50:05
  We got, oh, you're being abusive to horses.
• 50:08
  You're do you know, all these things.
• 50:10
  And I would listen to that Because those perspectives are important, and
• 50:15
  those perspectives are meaningful.
• 50:17
  And then it would help me it's like, I guess I'm a research gatherer in the sense
• 50:20
  that I like to gather information and then parse through it and then organize it.
• 50:24
  So
• 50:25
  Rupert Isaacson: my personal thinker, and you don't and somewhere in there,
• 50:31
  Your ego must be very quiet because when you come under attack and in the
• 50:35
  horse world and the mental health world, super factional world, as we know.
• 50:40
  People come out.
• 50:40
  Everybody comes under attack.
• 50:42
  That you you can't be in that world, either of those worlds,
• 50:45
  and not come under attack.
• 50:46
  It's like academia.
• 50:47
  You're gonna come under attack.
• 50:48
  That's just it.
• 50:51
  Yet to to be able to not take it personally and to filter the
• 50:56
  information, and then make it work to make the thing better.
• 51:02
  That takes a certain lack of ego defensiveness, which is
• 51:08
  unusual in both the horse world and the mental health world.
• 51:12
  Why is it that you don't take it personally when people
• 51:15
  go after you like that?
• 51:19
  Equinix.
• 51:20
  You were young back then too, isn't it?
• 51:21
  Lynn Thomas: I I was young.
• 51:26
  Yeah.
• 51:26
  I mean, I think there is that level of humility as a characteristic.
• 51:31
  I was someone that really wasn't trying to have any recognition of who in
• 51:35
  fact, What years later that I now you, starting new things and leaving a gala.
• 51:41
  Yeah.
• 51:41
  I didn't actually really knew people even knew who I was, because That was
• 51:44
  not something that's important to me.
• 51:47
  But, yeah, I mean, I think even when you're asking about finding equine
• 51:50
  specialists and that Standard.
• 51:52
  So one of our standards too was continuing education.
• 51:55
  Ah, okay.
• 51:56
  Continuing education is an important standard to me Personally, because,
• 52:00
  one, I think as a professional, that's part of being a professional
• 52:03
  is you're always learning.
• 52:04
  You're always trying to improve your craft And challenge yourself in your craft.
• 52:08
  Yeah.
• 52:09
  And the other part of it, though, is people who do continue education usually
• 52:13
  tend to be more open to learning.
• 52:16
  And it's it is, like, I think horses pick up on that.
• 52:19
  Like you said, that ego versus openness to learning something new
• 52:23
  and openness to being challenged.
• 52:25
  Like, Just because I think this way doesn't mean my way is
• 52:28
  the only way or the right way.
• 52:30
  So I I think there is that, I don't know that belief system that kinda instilled
• 52:34
  with me somehow or maybe personality, but I I think that's why education, always
• 52:39
  learning, continue education Equinix.
• 52:40
  Requirements even like you're talking about in in a certification or a training
• 52:44
  program is important, at least to me.
• 52:47
  Rupert Isaacson: And when you when you talk about continuous education.
• 52:51
  Do you mean that when people went through Nagana certification, if they didn't
• 52:56
  do a certain amount of continuous that they would lose their certification, or
• 53:01
  do you mean or and do you mean that you looked for applicants who were already
• 53:06
  involved in who had to show in some way before they even began that they
• 53:11
  were people who were seeking education in various ways, or did you wait till
• 53:20
  they got their their certification and then say, alright, chaps.
• 53:23
  You we've certified you, but there's some hoops to jump through now.
• 53:25
  Let's see if you jump through them.
• 53:28
  Lynn Thomas: So, I mean, I yeah.
• 53:30
  Hoops to jump through, that Drives me crazy.
• 53:33
  So it is first of all, I'll say both to what you're saying, that they come
• 53:37
  showing a history of getting continuing
• 53:38
  Rupert Isaacson: education.
• 53:39
  Did ask for that.
• 53:40
  You look for Okay.
• 53:41
  That's
• 53:41
  Lynn Thomas: interesting.
• 53:42
  Yep.
• 53:42
  That they have that.
• 53:43
  And then the second thing is that they commit to continuing
• 53:46
  education going forward.
• 53:47
  And how do you get And of it.
• 53:49
  Including with the gala yeah.
• 53:51
  Aquinas.
• 53:51
  Oh, sorry.
• 53:51
  Go ahead, Ruth.
• 53:52
  How do you get them to commit?
• 53:54
  Well, that's why we had with Ygala, we had a certification that had a
• 53:58
  two year Limited time limit on it.
• 54:01
  So you did need to renew, and you did need to do continuing education.
• 54:05
  And it did include continuing education Specific to the model.
• 54:09
  Because if you're saying you're a specialist in this model,
• 54:13
  then there's continued learning.
• 54:15
  So while I was doing a gala I mean, the last training manual
• 54:19
  that I wrote for the training program, I mean, it was continually
• 54:23
  evolving, continually changing.
• 54:24
  It was the ninth edition.
• 54:26
  And, technically, I was making little changes along the way that I didn't
• 54:28
  just change the edition number.
• 54:30
  So the ninth edition training manual was a complete rewrite From the
• 54:35
  eighth edition training manual.
• 54:36
  So it was kinda like every few years, there was this, like, okay.
• 54:40
  We've learned new things.
• 54:41
  We've learned new ideas.
• 54:42
  And so, yeah, we would want people who are saying, I did the YALA model to
• 54:46
  be able to say, and I'm up to date on some of the latest ideas and concepts.
• 54:50
  And I think for me, one, I believe in always learning.
• 54:56
  Right?
• 54:56
  And I believe in pushing ourselves, like I said.
• 54:58
  But two, I probably would be bored If we've stayed only the same.
• 55:04
  So I think I like there's a part of me that likes to try new ideas out,
• 55:08
  and, oh, let's Try this and see what happens, and it could be a complete fail.
• 55:12
  And sometimes I would talk to my colleagues and say, okay.
• 55:15
  I have this idea.
• 55:16
  Will you go try this?
• 55:17
  And then they come back.
• 55:18
  Well, That worked really well, and I'd be like, really?
• 55:21
  It did.
• 55:22
  Be shocked and surprised.
• 55:24
  But that kinda makes it fun for me too to try
• 55:27
  Rupert Isaacson: things out.
• 55:28
  Okay.
• 55:29
  So now let's assume people are listening to this podcast, and they're
• 55:33
  perhaps driving and they can't.
• 55:36
  Maybe they don't even maybe they know the word igala, but they don't
• 55:40
  actually know what igala did or does.
• 55:43
  What Was is the purpose of Igala?
• 55:46
  What's it trying to people ask me this about horse boy, for example, and I so
• 55:50
  I learned to ask myself that question.
• 55:52
  It's basically what we're after, first and foremost, with Horse Boys' communication.
• 55:57
  And we use our key for that is oxytocin, and that's generally for us
• 56:03
  produced by rhythmic rocking of the hips on a horse that's in collection.
• 56:08
  And if the rider is very small, they're up there with us and
• 56:13
  being supported by our bodies.
• 56:14
  And if they're not if they're bigger or adult.
• 56:17
  They are in long reigns or we're working the horse in hand, but we're
• 56:20
  looking for that collected rhythm.
• 56:22
  And we're looking to do it in a that's for the oxytocin for communication, calming
• 56:26
  the nervous system, and we're doing it in a place with no negative sensory triggers.
• 56:31
  So we're not exacerbating the existing problem of the overactive
• 56:35
  amygdala being triggered by an over sensitive nervous system.
• 56:39
  So that means nature as much as possible or bringing the outside
• 56:42
  inside if we have to be inside.
• 56:43
  And then there's a a human environment as well, of not being an asshole,
• 56:49
  basically, so that the the person doesn't feel under threat and you're not
• 56:52
  activating an already overactive amygdala.
• 56:56
  And then we once we begin to get these brain changes through the oxytocin
• 57:00
  is the first bit, then there's BDNF, which is the protein that's
• 57:04
  the beginning of neuroplasticity.
• 57:06
  This happens through the activities that we're doing.
• 57:09
  Then we feed information in, and we basically begin to teach academics
• 57:13
  first rule based games and then academics on or with the horse.
• 57:17
  And, eventually, the kid learns to teach us.
• 57:19
  And that's horse boy.
• 57:21
  So It evolved basically through me doing that with my son and then realizing
• 57:25
  that this was replicable after I got neuroscientists to explain to me what
• 57:28
  was going on with with this oxytocin and BDNF effect and why the collection
• 57:33
  that I had just noticed got me a better response, just observed it.
• 57:37
  Now I knew why it worked, and now I knew We could go on and do it more.
• 57:42
  But at the bottom line, it's communication, brain change, and then
• 57:48
  feeding in information so that life skills can be taught because as well
• 57:52
  as the academics that, bring someone to a place where they can begin to swim
• 57:57
  more effectively in the shark infested waters of neurotypical humanity.
• 58:01
  So, that sort of horse point in a nutshell.
• 58:03
  What's Igala in a nutshell?
• 58:08
  In a nutshell, but in a nutshell.
• 58:11
  Lynn Thomas: Well and I will say just even listening to your description
• 58:15
  too, and I I think of horse boy method, um, having that clear identity.
• 58:22
  I mean, if Someone is working with neurotypical, like you said,
• 58:26
  and your background and your experience is really valuable.
• 58:30
  So I think first and foremost, both the Gall and Ollie's organizations that are
• 58:35
  training and certifying in different approaches, Besides the learning that
• 58:39
  you get of tools and an understanding of why it's working like you were just
• 58:43
  sharing, here's some of the rationale, the theoretical frameworks, the the
• 58:47
  knowledge base To understand why what we're doing makes sense to achieve
• 58:52
  the goals we're trying to achieve.
• 58:54
  So there's that of learning those tools and that knowledge base and understanding.
• 58:58
  But then there's the community of So I think both the Galen and other
• 59:05
  organizations, one, it's providing a professional community both
• 59:08
  to learn from each other, But to support and uplift one another too.
• 59:13
  Especially like you said in the earlier years, I would say Main objective that
• 59:18
  we had with the gala was really getting that credibility and awareness out
• 59:22
  there to the mental health community.
• 59:24
  So that's where we started, like, okay.
• 59:26
  How can we get mental health people to start referring to these programs
• 59:30
  and, like you say, Insurance or funding sources to be willing to pay for these
• 59:36
  services because it does cost more When you're incorporating all that
• 59:40
  you're incorporating with horses and and so how can we get that credibility?
• 59:45
  And, One, having standards so that, like I shared earlier, those
• 59:49
  standards help achieve that objective.
• 59:52
  Having a professional community so we're not alone.
• 59:55
  I mean, when you go to someone say, hey.
• 59:56
  I'm one program out there doing this.
• 59:58
  That's nice.
• 59:58
  But when you say, hey.
• 1:00:00
  There's two thousand People, there's five hundred programs that are connected with
• 1:00:05
  one another, um, that are doing this work.
• 1:00:08
  All of a sudden, it's like, Oh, that piques interest.
• 1:00:11
  So I think having a louder voice by having a community is also really valuable.
• 1:00:18
  Rupert Isaacson: And when you when you went to the mental health gatekeepers and
• 1:00:21
  said, we have this way of working, what is it that you're saying you're doing?
• 1:00:24
  We are ameliorating mental health challenges.
• 1:00:29
  We are ameliorating quality of life.
• 1:00:32
  We are teaching life skills.
• 1:00:33
  We are, healing trauma.
• 1:00:38
  We we are all of the above.
• 1:00:41
  When when you were sitting in front, What's Igala doing
• 1:00:47
  specifically for the client?
• 1:00:50
  Self regulation, is
• 1:00:51
  Lynn Thomas: it?
• 1:00:53
  Yeah.
• 1:00:53
  And just to share too, I think that's another great point.
• 1:00:56
  We were very specific that we're focused on mental health.
• 1:01:00
  So a lot of what's out there kind of like, well, I do a little bit
• 1:01:03
  of recreational riding for physical therapy benefits or there's actual
• 1:01:08
  physical therapist There there's occupational therapists, and there's
• 1:01:11
  so many different types of services.
• 1:01:13
  So I think to having a clear that's why I said having a clear identity.
• 1:01:17
  Okay.
• 1:01:18
  We're focused on mental health.
• 1:01:19
  Now people will know us for mental health.
• 1:01:21
  And when you ask specifically about that what I hear you asking
• 1:01:25
  maybe again is maybe explaining to the mental Health Committee.
• 1:01:27
  When I go to a conference, here's what the horse adds to the process.
• 1:01:32
  So we weren't so specific to mental health saying it's only
• 1:01:35
  this one area of mental health.
• 1:01:37
  We were broad to any psycho cycle psychological practice out there kinda
• 1:01:43
  thing would, fall under that umbrella.
• 1:01:45
  So mental health is pretty broad, but it was specific to mental health.
• 1:01:48
  So people are working with all sorts of different Either
• 1:01:51
  disorders or well-being in general.
• 1:01:55
  So then I hear you saying, well, what is it that the horse brings?
• 1:02:00
  How why would I take the extra effort, cost, and logistical struggle to
• 1:02:07
  as a mental health professional to then involve a horse in the session.
• 1:02:12
  And I guess, does that what you're say sharing is, like, what
• 1:02:15
  Rupert Isaacson: we would explain?
• 1:02:15
  We would say, well, we can get this oxytocin and this BDNF, and this
• 1:02:20
  neuroplasticity in a way that we couldn't quite get it if we didn't do it this way.
• 1:02:25
  We'll get more of it if we do it this way than if we don't.
• 1:02:29
  Lynn Thomas: And I think, I mean, I think it'd be I think some of the
• 1:02:33
  knowledge has grown because From what I recall back in the when we first
• 1:02:38
  started Egala, the knowledge about the size of the horse I mean, the horse, the
• 1:02:42
  size of the heart of the horse And that energy field and how that could impact.
• 1:02:48
  And, definitely, there was that how, yeah, the oxytocin and how we can relax
• 1:02:53
  and how Outcomes our nervous system.
• 1:02:55
  So there was some of that back then that we could share, but that's really kinda
• 1:02:58
  come along the way, in a bigger way.
• 1:03:00
  And the whole concept of trauma and and embodiment, And that's
• 1:03:04
  really been more recent as well.
• 1:03:06
  So that's all stuff we can now add into why horses.
• 1:03:10
  Horses help us physically Engage with a relationship, and we
• 1:03:17
  can heal through relationship.
• 1:03:19
  There's so much research on that now.
• 1:03:20
  We can heal through Our bodies our bodies have more knowledge than our
• 1:03:25
  mental heads have about our past and what we bring into to our lives.
• 1:03:30
  And so, courses can help us do that.
• 1:03:33
  So back then when we first started, we focused a lot on experiential.
• 1:03:37
  And because that was a big thing back then too, The value of experiencing,
• 1:03:42
  the value of doing versus just talking.
• 1:03:44
  So we're talking to, but we're also adding the doing and the physicality
• 1:03:47
  part, And then the value of getting that feedback, uh, from the horse.
• 1:03:52
  It's like a bio back then, biofeedback is really big.
• 1:03:55
  So bio it's like a biofeedback that's alive, though.
• 1:03:59
  That gives us authentic relationship focused experience.
• 1:04:03
  And then, How we can feel.
• 1:04:05
  And then we would add into the engagement factor.
• 1:04:09
  If people are not engaged in treatment, If they don't stick with
• 1:04:13
  it, if they don't want to come, then they're not gonna get the benefits.
• 1:04:17
  So horses have An ability to engage.
• 1:04:21
  Rupert Isaacson: Makes people wanna come back and complete the Yeah.
• 1:04:23
  The program.
• 1:04:24
  Lynn Thomas: Yeah.
• 1:04:25
  They wanna come back.
• 1:04:26
  They wanna see their horse Connections their relationships are starting to make.
• 1:04:30
  They want to learn.
• 1:04:31
  So, I mean, that's that can't be underestimated,
• 1:04:35
  the value of the engagement
• 1:04:36
  Rupert Isaacson: factor.
• 1:04:36
  Here.
• 1:04:37
  Absolutely.
• 1:04:38
  I just wrote down while you were talking the the the note
• 1:04:41
  that I wrote engagement to.
• 1:04:43
  This is under dynamic response, but healing through relationship.
• 1:04:48
  So when I say, well, what is it Igala does?
• 1:04:49
  And I I think then if, let's say, I was going out as your rep.
• 1:04:54
  So, well, gosh.
• 1:04:55
  I've gotta go give a little talk now on Lynn's thing.
• 1:04:58
  Shit.
• 1:04:59
  Again, I'm busily taking notes about what she's saying, but dynamic response
• 1:05:02
  healing through relationship engagement.
• 1:05:03
  So because healing through relationship can cover so many things.
• 1:05:06
  Right?
• 1:05:06
  That is oxytocin.
• 1:05:07
  That is serotonin.
• 1:05:09
  That is brain change and neuroplasticity.
• 1:05:11
  That is BDNF.
• 1:05:12
  That is axons and dendrites.
• 1:05:14
  That is all those things and it's also the nervous system.
• 1:05:16
  It's the vagus nerve.
• 1:05:17
  It's so one could break it down into that biological okay.
• 1:05:21
  This is why it works in the sort of Lego pieces.
• 1:05:24
  But healing through relationship is, I think, a concept that anybody can
• 1:05:28
  get because I think given that we are relationship animals ourselves,
• 1:05:36
  The worst thing one can do to a human is put them in solitary confinement.
• 1:05:38
  We know this.
• 1:05:40
  That healing through relationship with an animal that doesn't
• 1:05:44
  press your mirror neurons, but does give you dynamic feedback.
• 1:05:48
  iF you and I, You're my therapist.
• 1:05:50
  I'm your therapist.
• 1:05:51
  We're relating to each other as human beings in a way that could get in the way.
• 1:05:57
  With a horse.
• 1:05:58
  No.
• 1:05:59
  And we we found this, obviously, with autism that because the horse doesn't
• 1:06:03
  have these bazillion facial muscles that are so incredibly confusing
• 1:06:08
  to someone who's already having trouble reading human faces anyway.
• 1:06:13
  The the horse presents a simpler, easier to understand thing.
• 1:06:16
  This has come out later.
• 1:06:18
  Do you think it could be true that, people who are dealing
• 1:06:24
  with compromised mental health.
• 1:06:27
  Because they're humans, Their healing has to come through relationship, but
• 1:06:32
  relationship with another human is going to bring all the baggage that it cannot be
• 1:06:40
  avoided emotionally, yet a horse will not.
• 1:06:47
  Do you think that there's a value in that?
• 1:06:49
  Do you think that that is a a factor of the success?
• 1:06:54
  Because this has been successful.
• 1:06:55
  Igala is a thing.
• 1:06:58
  Lynn Thomas: YEah.
• 1:06:59
  I mean, I think that's that was probably one of our biggest Points not with
• 1:07:03
  all the wonderful scientific knowledge of the body and the brain that you
• 1:07:08
  were sharing there, but back then, that idea of having A relationship
• 1:07:12
  with a being that's nonjudgmental.
• 1:07:14
  They don't come with our biases.
• 1:07:16
  They don't come with the same human agendas.
• 1:07:19
  They don't know what your background, whether you're rich or poor, and what
• 1:07:21
  your academic experience is and knowledge.
• 1:07:24
  So that was definitely An appealing element because, yeah, that does make
• 1:07:29
  a difference to have a relationship with someone that isn't judging you
• 1:07:32
  and telling you you're wrong and bad and those kinds of and you're making
• 1:07:37
  me think of I probably I mean, my elevator speech probably, changed a
• 1:07:40
  bit, and especially has changed now.
• 1:07:42
  I'm definitely more focused on On the relationship component
• 1:07:45
  than I used to be and benefit of horses and the calming, Factor.
• 1:07:51
  In the early days of a gala, a lot of it was focused, like I said, on
• 1:07:55
  doing problem solving activities.
• 1:07:57
  And that idea of as you work through these problems And solve them and find your
• 1:08:02
  ways of solving them, not someone else.
• 1:08:05
  You discover your own ways so that That journey of self discovery, of
• 1:08:10
  problem solving, of building resilience, that kind of concept was some of it.
• 1:08:15
  And then the other thing was and and interesting, I think
• 1:08:19
  that's still part of it.
• 1:08:20
  I don't think for me, that's as big of a part anymore.
• 1:08:23
  But the other thing I would say to people, they say, oh, what do you know?
• 1:08:27
  Oh, I involve horses for mental health.
• 1:08:29
  Oh, so you're, like, riding and stuff.
• 1:08:32
  No.
• 1:08:32
  Actually, we don't ride at all.
• 1:08:33
  They're not usually oh, yeah.
• 1:08:35
  Okay.
• 1:08:36
  So you're, like, petting them and feeding them, taking care of them.
• 1:08:40
  Oh, actually, what we're doing is horses, as a prey animal, are really
• 1:08:44
  good at reading their environments, And they're very sensitive to
• 1:08:47
  what's going on around them.
• 1:08:49
  So and they all have different personalities as well.
• 1:08:52
  So when you're engaging with horses, They end up responding to you in ways that
• 1:08:57
  might feel familiar to other relationships you're having in your life and maybe
• 1:09:01
  the struggles you're having with your children or with your coworkers or and
• 1:09:06
  I said, and so we're able to deal in a really safe way because the horses end up
• 1:09:10
  responding a way that feel kinda similar.
• 1:09:12
  So we can then work through those relationship struggles on a
• 1:09:14
  really safe way with the horses.
• 1:09:17
  And then they go, oh, so they could be like my My children,
• 1:09:20
  I'm gonna be like, yeah.
• 1:09:21
  It's really and think, oh, wow.
• 1:09:22
  That sounds interesting.
• 1:09:23
  So that seemed to peak people's interest that maybe The the parallel to the
• 1:09:29
  relationship with the horse might be a parallel to other relationships seem to
• 1:09:33
  Rupert Isaacson: connect.
• 1:09:33
  Right.
• 1:09:34
  Allegorical but but but also real.
• 1:09:37
  Give me an example of a go to problem solving exercise that somebody
• 1:09:43
  might use with with your the with the modalities that you evolved.
• 1:09:49
  Lynn Thomas: Right.
• 1:09:50
  And just so you know, I'm gonna say what I'm doing now is different, has evolved.
• 1:09:55
  Okay?
• 1:09:56
  So I'm gonna tell you from the beginning, but now Equinix.
• 1:09:58
  I'm gonna do
• 1:09:59
  Rupert Isaacson: We're still we're still back in Igala.
• 1:10:01
  Lynn Thomas: We're still in the past, but I I mean, again and I'll I I it's
• 1:10:05
  not that there's not value to all of this, but I think What the way I've
• 1:10:08
  mostly shifted now is more the thought process behind what you're doing.
• 1:10:12
  Mhmm.
• 1:10:12
  But back then, we were teaching specific activities.
• 1:10:15
  Here's an activity you can do, and simple as Go catch and halter a horse,
• 1:10:19
  but they don't know how to use a halter.
• 1:10:21
  Here's a jump, and have this horse go over this jump.
• 1:10:25
  How a horse go through this path.
• 1:10:27
  And so it was more that there wasn't necessarily a real connection to
• 1:10:33
  relationship back then as much as it was, here's an activity to try, and
• 1:10:37
  the horse isn't always gonna do what you wanna do, so you're gonna struggle.
• 1:10:41
  And, Um, and you're gonna need you know, you can work out you have
• 1:10:45
  the opportunity to work out how to achieve this objective with this
• 1:10:50
  horse And find your way of doing it.
• 1:10:53
  Rupert Isaacson: I presume you did you give them any basic safety
• 1:10:56
  tips, like don't shove a fork up their ass, or something like that?
• 1:11:00
  I mean, Did did you or do people really go in cold?
• 1:11:05
  Lynn Thomas: iT really would depend on the practitioner.
• 1:11:08
  Yeah.
• 1:11:08
  I mean, there would be an informed consent and talk about
• 1:11:10
  horses, uh, to a level extent.
• 1:11:13
  But for most So that it was really being open because wanting to see the
• 1:11:18
  real them without too much influence on us, but then we can intervene.
• 1:11:22
  Okay.
• 1:11:22
  Right?
• 1:11:23
  And say, hey.
• 1:11:25
  Let's just kinda check out if you notice what the horse's response
• 1:11:28
  was to what you did there.
• 1:11:30
  Rupert Isaacson: And you you wouldn't say, for example, get this horse over
• 1:11:34
  your this jump that represents your relationship with your mother, or the
• 1:11:39
  jump is your mother, or the The horse is your mother, and the jump is you.
• 1:11:42
  You weren't introducing any language like that.
• 1:11:44
  You were just simply saying, observe what happens when you try to do this,
• 1:11:50
  Lynn Thomas: basically.
• 1:11:50
  So yeah.
• 1:11:51
  No.
• 1:11:51
  We would use metaphorical language like that too.
• 1:11:54
  So if if they're having a struggle with family or work,
• 1:11:57
  maybe that jump is that struggle.
• 1:11:58
  Okay.
• 1:11:59
  Yeah.
• 1:11:59
  And and
• 1:12:00
  Rupert Isaacson: so would the company the struggle, or would
• 1:12:02
  would the horse be the struggle?
• 1:12:04
  Lynn Thomas: The horse could be.
• 1:12:06
  Yeah.
• 1:12:07
  Like, I remember, because we had with substance abuse issues, and she really
• 1:12:12
  wanted to get A relationship with this one horse, um, and there was a horse that
• 1:12:19
  kept coming between her and that horse.
• 1:12:22
  And yeah.
• 1:12:23
  So the horse that she really wanted to get was her sobriety, but
• 1:12:26
  there was another horse that kept coming between her and that horse.
• 1:12:29
  And so she labeled that horse, Um, her friends, her peer pressures
• 1:12:33
  that gets her to wanna use.
• 1:12:35
  And then there was a horse that would come up and just kept bumping behind
• 1:12:38
  her, like, putting its nose on her back, nudging her, and she ended up
• 1:12:43
  labeling, that's her mom that keeps bugging her to make better decisions.
• 1:12:48
  And then that kinda plays out, Um, that scenario.
• 1:12:52
  So And she
• 1:12:53
  Rupert Isaacson: offered those mentors herself rather than the therapist
• 1:12:55
  saying, do you think that that horse coming between you and the other
• 1:12:59
  horse could be your friends, your peers blocking you from sobriety.
• 1:13:02
  Right.
• 1:13:02
  Was that suggested to her or that she came up with that spontaneously?
• 1:13:06
  Lynn Thomas: Yeah.
• 1:13:07
  Well and the facilitators may would check-in about it.
• 1:13:09
  But, yeah, They wouldn't put the idea with the model was that we don't put our
• 1:13:14
  perceptions and our judgments and our interpretations on what's happening that
• 1:13:20
  we really want it to be open for the client to put their interpretations on it.
• 1:13:24
  And did you ever That that would probably that's a main premise.
• 1:13:27
  Did you find
• 1:13:28
  Rupert Isaacson: people resistant to to that, or did you find that
• 1:13:31
  actually the horses made you talked about engagement, that the horses
• 1:13:38
  got brought that out of people in a way that perhaps humans would not.
• 1:13:42
  Like, I could imagine taking a bunch of humans into a room with, say, a bunch
• 1:13:48
  of cardboard boxes and say, build a house out of these cardboard boxes, and
• 1:13:55
  them doing it because they're there.
• 1:13:57
  Why not?
• 1:13:58
  But maybe not wanting to come up with those allegories themselves because
• 1:14:06
  at the end of the day, You represent an authority figure that they might
• 1:14:11
  want to resist or something like that.
• 1:14:12
  Whereas with the horse, I could see that that's taken out of the picture, and that
• 1:14:18
  neutralizes those I mean, why do you think that people would come up spontaneously
• 1:14:29
  and engage spontaneously with their own challenges in that kind of a frank and
• 1:14:33
  open candid way more easily in that Equine
• 1:14:36
  Lynn Thomas: environment.
• 1:14:38
  I think I mean, can you can picture yourself sitting in front of in an
• 1:14:42
  office, for instance, and saying, okay.
• 1:14:45
  What are the struggles in your life?
• 1:14:47
  What's blocking you from your success To sobriety.
• 1:14:50
  Like and it's kinda like, well, I don't know.
• 1:14:53
  Or I maybe not be thinking of everything.
• 1:14:55
  So I think And it's all in your head too.
• 1:14:59
  So I could say the right things.
• 1:15:01
  I could believe it in my head even.
• 1:15:03
  Right.
• 1:15:03
  It doesn't mean our body believes it.
• 1:15:06
  And so
• 1:15:07
  Rupert Isaacson: You can manipulate a human therapist too.
• 1:15:09
  I guess you can't manipulate a horse.
• 1:15:11
  Right?
• 1:15:11
  Yeah.
• 1:15:12
  Lynn Thomas: Right.
• 1:15:12
  And so and you can't I I mean, you're not training these horses to do that.
• 1:15:15
  People are like, oh, you train the horses.
• 1:15:17
  No.
• 1:15:18
  No.
• 1:15:18
  They're not trained to do this.
• 1:15:19
  They're being themselves, and they just Happened to be playing
• 1:15:21
  out whatever that's going to be bringing up for you, right, for them.
• 1:15:26
  So I think, one, the horses start, doing things that are a catalyst for awareness
• 1:15:33
  of things that kinda reside deep inside that we might not even be thinking of.
• 1:15:37
  All of a sudden, when this one's bumping up against me, oh, it
• 1:15:39
  makes me think of this, and maybe I wasn't consciously thinking of that.
• 1:15:43
  Right.
• 1:15:44
  And so I think and then they then we're not just thinking it, we're feeling it.
• 1:15:48
  And we're not just feeling it, we're seeing it outside of ourselves.
• 1:15:52
  So So it's not just residing in here.
• 1:15:54
  I now see it externalized for myself.
• 1:15:57
  And now I can do some I can you can say, oh, let's Work on my feelings inside.
• 1:16:03
  That's very abstract.
• 1:16:06
  But now my feelings are out here in the in the body of a horse.
• 1:16:10
  I That horse is struggling.
• 1:16:12
  I can go pet the horse.
• 1:16:13
  I can move the horse.
• 1:16:15
  I can do something with that feeling.
• 1:16:17
  And as I'm doing something with that, I'm feeling it deep inside my body too.
• 1:16:21
  So I think there's that element of it being so, yes, you can do projection
• 1:16:26
  stuff inside your office with the painting or with the sand tray or with
• 1:16:30
  play or whatever too, but you don't get the characters are not responding back.
• 1:16:35
  The characters are not making choices Outside of your choices.
• 1:16:39
  Right?
• 1:16:40
  That's what the horses can add to the experience that brings up things
• 1:16:44
  you may not have been thinking
• 1:16:46
  Rupert Isaacson: about.
• 1:16:47
  Do you think that you talk you used the word catalytic.
• 1:16:49
  Do you think that that horses make people more are catalyzers for human curiosity?
• 1:16:55
  Do you think they make people more curious about themselves and what's
• 1:17:01
  going on with themselves because they're intrinsically Curious about what the horse
• 1:17:06
  is thinking and doing because the horse is such a compelling and iconic creature.
• 1:17:13
  Do you think why do you think why do you think a horse is catalytic
• 1:17:18
  to making somebody more curious and inquire inquiring maybe is perhaps a
• 1:17:23
  better word about their condition than they would be if there was no horse.
• 1:17:28
  Lynn Thomas: Yeah.
• 1:17:28
  I think curiosity is a big thing.
• 1:17:30
  And, actually, with what I'm doing now, that's actually a really big focus
• 1:17:33
  too of what we have about how they do.
• 1:17:36
  They are a catalyst for our Curiosity our natural innate curiosity.
• 1:17:39
  Like, that's why we watch TV show movies and books.
• 1:17:43
  Like, what's gonna happen next?
• 1:17:45
  Yeah.
• 1:17:46
  It's that desire to kinda understand what the future may be too.
• 1:17:50
  So I think horses absolutely spark Our natural curiosity because they do
• 1:17:55
  like I said, they do things that we're not necessarily asking them to do.
• 1:17:59
  They do the opposite maybe of what we think we're asking them
• 1:18:02
  to do, And that is surprising.
• 1:18:06
  That's novel.
• 1:18:07
  That sparks, um, those feelings inside of us that make us more open to learning
• 1:18:14
  as well as you mentioned all the natural calming effects that they have.
• 1:18:20
  They also sparked that curiosity and sense of surprise and novelty
• 1:18:24
  that, like, oh, I didn't expect that.
• 1:18:25
  Oh, I didn't know they would do that.
• 1:18:28
  Okay.
• 1:18:28
  You think it's taking my my my perspective in a whole new direction.
• 1:18:32
  Rupert Isaacson: Right.
• 1:18:33
  Exactly.
• 1:18:33
  Because I'm I'm just thinking about, say, dogs, for example.
• 1:18:38
  Equinix.
• 1:18:44
  The, the the social predators who strategize.
• 1:18:48
  Their eyes are in front.
• 1:18:49
  They they have social structures that are quite similar to ours, There's
• 1:18:59
  even a theory that we learned to become hunters when we came down from the
• 1:19:05
  trees by watching and emulating hyenas, interestingly interestingly enough.
• 1:19:09
  There's there's there's a whole branch of paleontology around that.
• 1:19:12
  And that that one can see a little bit because when somebody has a dog,
• 1:19:16
  you don't really need a background in dogs to be able to train a dog to
• 1:19:22
  basic functionality, uh, intuitively because the dog kinda wants to do
• 1:19:26
  A dog is mirroring you to a large degree, but horses don't, of course.
• 1:19:30
  And the word that came up for me is enigmatic.
• 1:19:32
  Do you think that one of the reasons why they spark our curiosity so much
• 1:19:36
  is because they are enigmas, because they don't respond like we respond.
• 1:19:41
  They don't respond, but sometimes they do a bit.
• 1:19:45
  But on the whole, they are so their own thing that they rather like an
• 1:19:50
  enigma in one's life that one can't understand, once addiction, once
• 1:19:56
  dysfunctions, once impulses that seem to come almost from outside.
• 1:20:00
  Or even if they can't seem to come from inside, Why can't we control them?
• 1:20:04
  Blah blah blah.
• 1:20:05
  That's an enigma in and of itself.
• 1:20:06
  Right?
• 1:20:07
  Horses are enigmatic.
• 1:20:09
  They don't we can't read necessarily their facial emotion.
• 1:20:14
  Like, you can read a dog's facial emotions immediately without
• 1:20:17
  needing to to be trained in dogs.
• 1:20:18
  But horses, you actually need some training to be able to read Of course.
• 1:20:23
  Yeah.
• 1:20:23
  What I'm fishing for here is do you think that one of the reasons why
• 1:20:26
  they spark an unusual amount or they catalyze an An unusual amount of
• 1:20:31
  curiosity in a human inquiring after their mental health is because of this
• 1:20:36
  enigmatic quality that they are enigmas
• 1:20:39
  Lynn Thomas: to us.
• 1:20:40
  Yeah.
• 1:20:40
  I'd love that thought, and I absolutely think that's true.
• 1:20:43
  So, when we talk about our the some of the new adventures I'm doing With
• 1:20:47
  Arenas for Change, we are actually broadening to not just horses.
• 1:20:52
  And we just did our first scene through dogs focusing on dogs, corporate dogs
• 1:20:56
  and and mental health, well-being, coaching, um, those kinda education.
• 1:21:01
  So and it was really interesting to me, like, for For instance, just
• 1:21:05
  something, one, dogs are more familiar.
• 1:21:09
  Do you see a lot more dogs around in cities too?
• 1:21:11
  Like, I think there's a because of that level of familiarity
• 1:21:15
  versus horses, for most people, there's that Much less familiarity.
• 1:21:22
  So that novelty and that somewhat intimidate you know, that's a little
• 1:21:25
  bit more scary to go into an environment that you don't Know or understand,
• 1:21:29
  but that's, of course, one like you said, one of the values of life.
• 1:21:33
  Technically, we think we're in control of our lives, And we think we're
• 1:21:37
  predicting everything next, but so often, life is entering into the unknown.
• 1:21:42
  Mhmm.
• 1:21:42
  And I think entering into that experience with horses For a lot
• 1:21:45
  of people, one is the unknown.
• 1:21:47
  And the other thing I else with dogs besides the familiarity is
• 1:21:51
  a lot of the time they're short.
• 1:21:52
  They're small.
• 1:21:53
  You're sitting on the ground.
• 1:21:56
  You're bending over.
• 1:21:57
  You're not moving as much.
• 1:21:59
  Whereas horses, your your whole body changes.
• 1:22:02
  Yeah.
• 1:22:02
  That's true.
• 1:22:02
  Right?
• 1:22:03
  You're up.
• 1:22:04
  You're moving.
• 1:22:05
  You're walking.
• 1:22:05
  There's a lot more space.
• 1:22:07
  Of course, it's easier for you moving in a lot more space.
• 1:22:09
  Yeah.
• 1:22:10
  Yeah.
• 1:22:11
  anD so I think just that change in dynamic makes a difference in how our bodies
• 1:22:16
  move, how our bodies react and respond.
• 1:22:19
  And then, yeah, because horses are the unknown, the unfamiliar, and then they
• 1:22:26
  aren't maybe quite as readily Desire is to please us, essay, like the dogs.
• 1:22:35
  Yeah.
• 1:22:35
  I do absolutely think they they respond in ways Equinix.
• 1:22:38
  Even for experienced horse professionals.
• 1:22:40
  Right?
• 1:22:41
  Like, they don't always respond in the ways we think they're gonna respond.
• 1:22:44
  Oh, no.
• 1:22:46
  And that's why they always say, you have to be so present.
• 1:22:49
  You have to really build on the moment.
• 1:22:50
  You really have to be listening to the horse because They're not going
• 1:22:54
  to react in ways as predictably Yeah.
• 1:22:58
  As, for instance, dogs might Might do.
• 1:23:01
  So they do require us and they could hurt us more.
• 1:23:04
  I mean, dogs can bite us.
• 1:23:06
  But, They're a lot bigger, so we have to be a little bit more I think it no.
• 1:23:11
  We don't have to, but I think it encourages us To be a little bit more
• 1:23:15
  present, a little bit more on our guard, perhaps, but it teaches us more
• 1:23:21
  to be more present and listen than I think some other animals because
• 1:23:25
  Rupert Isaacson: of that.
• 1:23:25
  I agree.
• 1:23:26
  I agree.
• 1:23:28
  The one one of the things we began to understand with neuroscience and
• 1:23:35
  what we do with Hors Boy was that this this protein in the brain, BDNF, brain
• 1:23:40
  derived neurotrophic factor, one of five neurotrophins, but mostly just creating
• 1:23:46
  more cells in the nervous system.
• 1:23:48
  This one is specific to brain cells.
• 1:23:51
  We do it when we move and problem solve at the same time.
• 1:23:54
  And, um, one of the things we realized we'd stumbled into through
• 1:23:59
  work with horses was that because, as you say, you have to do all this
• 1:24:04
  normal movement with your body.
• 1:24:06
  You have to do more movement because you gotta walk more.
• 1:24:09
  You gotta run more.
• 1:24:10
  You gotta And when you're on them, you've got balance and you've got to
• 1:24:15
  that there's a problem to be solved at every turn that people's intellects
• 1:24:20
  come alive around horses, perhaps because of, among other things, the
• 1:24:27
  fact that they have to move and problem solve so much, and then this creates
• 1:24:30
  neuroplasticity, positive neuroplasticity.
• 1:24:34
  But I and so I suppose the idea of dealing with an enigma, a moving
• 1:24:38
  enigma that gives you feedback that you can't quite understand is
• 1:24:41
  automatically, I'm gonna give you this brain derived neurotrophic factor.
• 1:24:46
  Right?
• 1:24:46
  It's gonna give you this brain effect because your brain's just gonna have
• 1:24:50
  to be on firing, firing, firing.
• 1:24:51
  And, also, with that little bit of cortisol, that little
• 1:24:55
  bit of stress hormone going.
• 1:24:56
  I also need to stay alive in this situation.
• 1:24:58
  There's no direct threat yet, but I know it could go into that.
• 1:25:02
  There's always the latent potential that it could go into that.
• 1:25:05
  So therefore, I'm I'm I'm paying particular attention.
• 1:25:08
  I'm on high alert.
• 1:25:09
  One last question before because I want to now move on a little bit
• 1:25:12
  to where you what you're doing now.
• 1:25:14
  diD you ever encounter with the Igala work people becoming frustrated with the the
• 1:25:19
  very fact that horses are enigmatic and lashing out at becoming violent with or
• 1:25:24
  venting their frustration on the horses.
• 1:25:28
  Lynn Thomas: Yes.
• 1:25:29
  Yeah.
• 1:25:31
  I think for the most part as facilitators with with clients, you
• 1:25:36
  can kinda see that threshold both with the horses and with the clients.
• 1:25:40
  And that's where, again, you kinda saw, hey.
• 1:25:42
  Let's come in.
• 1:25:43
  Let's and that, again, brings down that That thing.
• 1:25:47
  But that's, I mean, that's part of how horses bring out our authentic selves too.
• 1:25:55
  If If that I mean, we actually had a member.
• 1:25:58
  We would do staff trainings.
• 1:26:00
  We would do staff hiring with the horses.
• 1:26:04
  And remember this one staff got frustrated with the horse and hit it, plopped it.
• 1:26:11
  Didn't really hurt the horse.
• 1:26:12
  Right?
• 1:26:12
  Horses can take a lot.
• 1:26:15
  But it was like, if that's what you do when you're These
• 1:26:19
  kids are gonna frustrate you.
• 1:26:20
  I guarantee it.
• 1:26:22
  This probably is not this is not the right fit of of an environment for for you at
• 1:26:28
  this stage in your life where you're at.
• 1:26:29
  So, yeah.
• 1:26:31
  I mean, it definitely horses Horses are authentic, and I think they can
• 1:26:36
  push us and bring out some of our authentic sides that maybe sides
• 1:26:39
  that we don't even wanna look at.
• 1:26:40
  Yeah.
• 1:26:41
  Absolutely.
• 1:26:41
  And I think that's where it's important to have facilitators
• 1:26:44
  that do have that training.
• 1:26:45
  Like, okay.
• 1:26:46
  What's important is how we respond to that, what we do with that.
• 1:26:51
  And, yes, we're always keeping in mind the welfare of the horse.
• 1:26:55
  Are are the horses getting too maybe this horse is sick of this person
• 1:26:59
  too, Um, and how we can create that space where the horses can have
• 1:27:04
  choice and take care of their needs.
• 1:27:07
  Rupert Isaacson: How how are typically horses in a Niigala program being kept?
• 1:27:10
  Like, for that reason, if they need to be particularly authentic, Do you then
• 1:27:15
  require that they live in herds so that they rather than boxes, for example,
• 1:27:19
  so that they are more authentic or that they live outside rather than inside?
• 1:27:22
  But, of course, That's not always possible, say, for example,
• 1:27:24
  if you have an urban program.
• 1:27:26
  So how do you how do you, a, ensure the authenticity of the horse's personality
• 1:27:32
  to be as naturalistic as possible.
• 1:27:34
  And then how do you also look after the welfare of the horse in
• 1:27:38
  terms of the intensity, emotional intensity of what's going on.
• 1:27:41
  Do they cycle in and out of the program?
• 1:27:43
  Do they do a certain number of sessions and then take a break?
• 1:27:46
  Like, What what what thought processes are behind that?
• 1:27:52
  Lynn Thomas: So how we address that?
• 1:27:53
  Because like you said, there's so many different perspectives and environments
• 1:27:57
  And and to not be too prescriptive.
• 1:27:59
  Mhmm.
• 1:28:00
  But one, we'd say, okay.
• 1:28:02
  There's ethical codes and welfare codes out there.
• 1:28:05
  There's the American Horse Council's welfare code.
• 1:28:08
  There's the I know in Europe, they have their The codes out there.
• 1:28:12
  So one, people would sign that they're, one, aware of these codes, and two, follow
• 1:28:18
  these codes, And that that's part of their mindfulness about the environment.
• 1:28:23
  I mean, two, we're training that how you Keep your horses gives a
• 1:28:29
  message to how you're gonna take care of your clients and what kind
• 1:28:32
  of safe is this a safe environment?
• 1:28:34
  So that consciousness about that.
• 1:28:37
  So that's part of the training, and it's part of the commitment and the actual
• 1:28:41
  role of the equine specialist that they're committed to as an equine specialist.
• 1:28:45
  But, Again, like I said, it's never I mean, people have different opinions.
• 1:28:49
  That's what I've learned in the horse world.
• 1:28:51
  I go here, and this is, like, abusive.
• 1:28:53
  And over here, they They don't think that's abusive.
• 1:28:55
  Like, it's it's that thing.
• 1:28:56
  So we kinda try to honor the diversity that's out there.
• 1:29:01
  In one country, how they keep horses may be just absolutely appalling to
• 1:29:05
  someone else in another country even.
• 1:29:07
  So I think Having those I I think those welfare codes codes that have come out
• 1:29:11
  have been really well written, and, it's kinda more like, here's considerations.
• 1:29:18
  And so no.
• 1:29:20
  I mean, we encourage that horses Artist natural and authentically
• 1:29:25
  themselves, which by the way, when we first started, Gallo was cutting edge.
• 1:29:28
  Like, the idea of horses being able to be themselves was like, What?
• 1:29:32
  That's you know?
• 1:29:33
  Because they're they need to be trained, and they need to be horses
• 1:29:37
  have to act this certain way.
• 1:29:39
  And and so the idea of just natural horses, letting horses be themselves,
• 1:29:43
  and how to create that environment is just, For me, a lot of great discussion,
• 1:29:50
  consideration, how can we keep doing that.
• 1:29:52
  So I think it's something that's a prominent What we did in a gala
• 1:29:56
  was a prominent consideration that we actually taught.
• 1:29:59
  We want horses to be authentically themselves, but how can they be
• 1:30:02
  healthy Authentically themselves.
• 1:30:05
  I mean, I went to a barn.
• 1:30:06
  We went to do a training one time, and the horses were so they're competitive horses.
• 1:30:16
  I won't say because I don't wanna dis on anybody, but they're competitive
• 1:30:20
  horses, and they were So, like, the idea of being free in a space
• 1:30:26
  with other horses was not possible.
• 1:30:28
  Yeah.
• 1:30:28
  Because they were never allowed to do that.
• 1:30:32
  And that doesn't fit for us.
• 1:30:33
  And in fact, the the facility owner said, well, we can drug them to be Able
• 1:30:39
  to be doing this, and I was like, okay.
• 1:30:41
  If if a horse has to be drugged to be able to be free and naturally itself
• 1:30:46
  with other herd members, then, this is not this horse can't do this work.
• 1:30:51
  Yeah.
• 1:30:51
  The horse the horse is now a client.
• 1:30:53
  That right directly in the manual.
• 1:30:54
  You I was like, okay.
• 1:30:55
  I never encountered that before.
• 1:30:57
  That was extreme, but I was like, okay.
• 1:30:59
  Rupert Isaacson: Yeah.
• 1:30:59
  But these things inform one.
• 1:31:00
  Do do do now or did it evolve to a point with a gala where people had to prove
• 1:31:06
  that they were keeping their horses in a certain way for you to certify them?
• 1:31:10
  Or, Like, did they have to show video or anything like that of their
• 1:31:16
  horsekeeping environments or submit, I don't know, their training programs
• 1:31:22
  or their their their horse welfare and care program or that sort of thing.
• 1:31:26
  Or Was it to some degree left on trust, but you recommended those guidelines
• 1:31:33
  and and taught those guidelines?
• 1:31:36
  Lynn Thomas: So we decided, yeah, to not go that route because of the
• 1:31:38
  logistics of that at at a larger scale, especially, and the cost of that.
• 1:31:45
  So we went the route of people signing a commitment.
• 1:31:48
  Mhmm.
• 1:31:49
  And and then having a system in place, So ethics process committee
• 1:31:55
  where people could make complaints.
• 1:31:57
  Okay.
• 1:31:58
  There was if they did encounter something they disagreed or felt was unsafe and
• 1:32:03
  didn't consider the welfare of the horse.
• 1:32:05
  So we had a system in place to actually address Those.
• 1:32:09
  And, usually, it would involve, like, if if one like that came in, it would
• 1:32:13
  involve maybe asking that a veterinarian goes out and does a check Aquinas.
• 1:32:18
  Letter from the veterinarian.
• 1:32:19
  And, so we did that's how we decided to handle it back with Ygawa.
• 1:32:23
  Rupert Isaacson: Right.
• 1:32:23
  No.
• 1:32:24
  That makes sense.
• 1:32:25
  So but if if there was a a complaint, then you could do follow-up.
• 1:32:29
  Yeah.
• 1:32:30
  Okay?
• 1:32:30
  Yeah.
• 1:32:31
  Cool.
• 1:32:33
  We talked a lot about Igala.
• 1:32:36
  Clearly, you're somebody who not only a good Systems Thinker, but
• 1:32:42
  when you come up with a good system, you then create other good systems.
• 1:32:47
  I know a few people like you.
• 1:32:50
  It's a great quality.
• 1:32:51
  And so you haven't rested on your laurels with Agala, which you could have done.
• 1:32:56
  It's a very, very successful model.
• 1:32:57
  It's helped thousands, hundreds of thousands probably
• 1:32:59
  of people around the world.
• 1:33:02
  You are now doing these two interesting new things, arenas for
• 1:33:08
  change and horses for mental health.
• 1:33:13
  I Want you to tell us about them and what they do, but first what prompted
• 1:33:19
  you to change gears like this?
• 1:33:21
  Lynn Thomas: Yeah.
• 1:33:22
  I mean, Yeah.
• 1:33:23
  I had the opportunity and this amazing journey starting at E Gala
• 1:33:27
  back in nineteen ninety nine And then evolving through that with
• 1:33:32
  that, evolving the model, and up until the end of twenty twenty.
• 1:33:38
  And it was kinda one of those things of unanticipated life events and at the same
• 1:33:43
  time, things going where they need to go.
• 1:33:48
  We talked earlier.
• 1:33:48
  I think you mentioned about the systems focus, and I have a systems mindset maybe.
• 1:33:53
  But I think that kind of explains a lot too of As, one evolves and
• 1:33:57
  maybe that the organization and what involves and what's a fit anymore.
• 1:34:02
  And and I did have some new interests, new ideas along with just kinda
• 1:34:08
  things weren't connecting anymore.
• 1:34:10
  So And, of course, Zigal is a nonprofit, and there's a board, and
• 1:34:14
  and they have the authority of things.
• 1:34:15
  And so it was kinda one of those scenarios of, well, is this a fit anymore?
• 1:34:19
  Ultimately, the end of twenty twenty, myself and a wonderful team of people
• 1:34:24
  did leave eGala and decide to start on these new projects that That
• 1:34:28
  you're mentioning, and that was really exciting for me because I had some
• 1:34:33
  interest and some passions that weren't quite a fit anymore in the system.
• 1:34:37
  That was a gala.
• 1:34:38
  And, again, a wonderful system and and a place for that.
• 1:34:42
  And, we been twenty one years, so it's time to maybe do something
• 1:34:46
  new and start on some new projects.
• 1:34:49
  So that's where it went, and It was first the first project was forces
• 1:34:54
  for mental health that I think I'll go ahead and mention if you think.
• 1:34:57
  Or
• 1:34:58
  Rupert Isaacson: Please do.
• 1:34:58
  I'm I'm I'll
• 1:35:00
  Lynn Thomas: wait.
• 1:35:01
  Because that was one of the big passions that I was having is I was
• 1:35:04
  really I mean, we talked about really trying to get the mental health
• 1:35:07
  community and the public start to have more awareness An understanding
• 1:35:11
  of this type of work and that there is credibility to this type of work.
• 1:35:15
  And I think we've come a long way Since the nineteen nineties when it really
• 1:35:19
  started more in a more formal way.
• 1:35:21
  But we have a long ways to go.
• 1:35:23
  And There was a vision that I was having along with my cofounder, Jackie Balmer
• 1:35:28
  of horses for mental health, to really start a public awareness Campaign in a way
• 1:35:33
  that would take things to another level.
• 1:35:35
  I mean, ultimately, there's a lot of people out there who still
• 1:35:38
  don't know that horses' Programs involving mental health services
• 1:35:43
  and corporate harnesses even exist.
• 1:35:45
  They don't know anything about horses as well.
• 1:35:48
  So we thought, What can we do to get the word out in a bigger way?
• 1:35:52
  So we started horses for mental health as a nonprofit organization
• 1:35:55
  to amplify awareness of the work that we do and to also support All the
• 1:36:00
  many grassroots programs out there providing these services because it's
• 1:36:04
  a big sacrifice to do these programs.
• 1:36:05
  There's a lot of expense running a horse farm As you were just you know?
• 1:36:11
  I know you came in from the snow and and things like that.
• 1:36:13
  So We have been swimming
• 1:36:15
  Rupert Isaacson: in poo today.
• 1:36:16
  Lynn Thomas: Yes.
• 1:36:16
  It's it's Yeah.
• 1:36:18
  So there's a lot to it, and I think anything we can do as a sector to support
• 1:36:23
  one another, uplift one another, and help these programs, Who are pioneering
• 1:36:29
  the way to to bring in more funding.
• 1:36:31
  So so we started horses for mental health with that first that that vision.
• 1:36:36
  And with the plan, the way of going about doing that is to do a national
• 1:36:41
  and hopefully, eventually, global Awareness and fundraising campaign
• 1:36:46
  as a collaborative effort through all the leading organizations, other
• 1:36:53
  businesses, membership organizations, us all collaborating together,
• 1:36:58
  and then along with the programs Altogether because when we're working
• 1:37:01
  together, our voice is louder.
• 1:37:03
  Mhmm.
• 1:37:04
  And we get more credibility, and we get more recognition.
• 1:37:07
  And so we started doing this awareness campaign called the
• 1:37:11
  seen three horses campaign.
• 1:37:13
  Tell us about that.
• 1:37:15
  So the seen three horses campaign is We call a peer to peer
• 1:37:19
  awareness and fundraising campaign.
• 1:37:21
  And what that mean is I I explain it a couple ways.
• 1:37:24
  One, for people who have Been on Facebook and which might be most of
• 1:37:28
  most of the people, but have been on Facebook, and they see people with,
• 1:37:32
  oh, for my birthday, I want to raise money for this cause I believe in.
• 1:37:37
  Right.
• 1:37:38
  Well, when they do that, not only are they raising money for the cause they
• 1:37:41
  believe They're bringing awareness to all their friends and their network.
• 1:37:44
  Hey.
• 1:37:44
  There's this cause that exists, and I believe in it.
• 1:37:47
  Right.
• 1:37:47
  And all of a sudden, their friends went, what?
• 1:37:49
  Oh, there's a cause that I may not have known about.
• 1:37:53
  And so that's what we're trying to do is create this kind of
• 1:37:56
  peer to peer network campaign.
• 1:37:59
  So, it's sometimes a little hard to explain, but, ultimately, what we're
• 1:38:03
  doing is we're collaborating with the leading, Different organizations
• 1:38:07
  in the sector so that they can reach out to their network of programs.
• 1:38:11
  So, like, with your organization, Rupert, with, Path International or the
• 1:38:17
  Heard Institute, Natural Livemanship, and Polyvaginal Equine Institute, and
• 1:38:21
  of course, Arenas for Change and other organizations, American Horse Council,
• 1:38:25
  Horse Human Research Foundation.
• 1:38:27
  And I know that will keep growing each year, but When we're all working
• 1:38:31
  together, first of all, and say, hey.
• 1:38:33
  Let's do something that's gonna amplify awareness, then we can go to
• 1:38:38
  sponsors, and we can go to Supporters or influencers and celebrities say, hey.
• 1:38:45
  While maybe we just have a network of Two thousand or five thousand people.
• 1:38:50
  Okay.
• 1:38:50
  That's nice.
• 1:38:50
  They're not gonna really pay much attention.
• 1:38:52
  But now when we're working together, oh, now we suddenly have
• 1:38:55
  a network of three hundred thousand.
• 1:38:57
  Okay.
• 1:38:58
  Now let's involve the grassroots programs too.
• 1:39:00
  Okay.
• 1:39:00
  Now we have a network of five hundred thousand and a and a reach.
• 1:39:05
  Next thing the businesses and the sponsors pay a little
• 1:39:07
  more attention, and say, okay.
• 1:39:09
  Yeah.
• 1:39:09
  We wanna get on board with this.
• 1:39:11
  We'll support this.
• 1:39:13
  And so what we're doing with horses for mental health is doing all that legwork,
• 1:39:19
  creating the infrastructure to put on an awareness and fundraising campaign.
• 1:39:24
  And what that means is we are Creating a fundraising plat or providing a
• 1:39:29
  fundraising platform for nonprofit and other organizations who provide
• 1:39:34
  services to be able to utilize.
• 1:39:35
  We're providing And creating videos of stories of transformation
• 1:39:39
  because stories are so powerful.
• 1:39:40
  We're creating quality professionally made videos that programs can share.
• 1:39:44
  We create a whole Calendar of here's what you can post on your social media,
• 1:39:50
  and we're bringing in media attention.
• 1:39:53
  We're bringing in celebrities, influencers, we're doing this
• 1:39:55
  altogether during the month of May.
• 1:39:57
  We we decided to go with May, which is mental health awareness month.
• 1:40:01
  Okay.
• 1:40:02
  We we did our first one in October of twenty twenty two for one week, and
• 1:40:08
  it went much better than expected, but we also realized one week was
• 1:40:11
  not enough time to really Mobilize everyone, get all this information.
• 1:40:16
  We had all these videos to share, and it was just like a frenzy.
• 1:40:19
  So we decided to make it a full month.
• 1:40:22
  May was chosen, um, and we did our second one in twenty twenty three.
• 1:40:28
  And in that process, the nonprofit organizations are
• 1:40:31
  raising money for themselves.
• 1:40:33
  They're creating teams of people.
• 1:40:34
  Hey.
• 1:40:35
  We have a Fundraising team, ambassadors that are going out and saying, hey.
• 1:40:38
  I believe in this cause, this particular program.
• 1:40:41
  They involve horses for mental health and well-being.
• 1:40:45
  Please support them by donating money to them, and then that's
• 1:40:49
  spreading awareness at the same time.
• 1:40:51
  And so they're raising money.
• 1:40:53
  It's getting more awareness.
• 1:40:55
  The celebrities and influencers that we got on board are also
• 1:40:58
  posting on their social media to their one million Followers or
• 1:41:02
  hundreds of thousands of followers.
• 1:41:03
  Hey, everybody.
• 1:41:04
  That you may have never even heard of this before, but I believe
• 1:41:07
  in the power of horses that the horses can impact people's lives.
• 1:41:11
  And there are programs out there who provide these services, and it's something
• 1:41:15
  you might wanna check into and support.
• 1:41:17
  So are we just getting a lot broader a lot More quickly and by working
• 1:41:22
  together, we're all stronger.
• 1:41:24
  Rupert Isaacson: Let me ask you a couple of questions on this
• 1:41:26
  because, if I hope that listeners' ears are breaking up on this one.
• 1:41:32
  So let me just translate what you just heard a little bit my listeners, if
• 1:41:36
  you are running an equine assisted program somewhere, which you may
• 1:41:40
  well be, um, and you are on the hunt for cash, which you will be.
• 1:41:47
  Basically, what Lynn is saying is that here's a fundraising program for you and
• 1:41:51
  an awareness raising raising program for you and also, a celebrity involvement, um,
• 1:42:00
  a program for you without you having to do much more than do what you do and be who
• 1:42:06
  you are, she's creating a wonderful plan.
• 1:42:10
  This isn't this is incredible.
• 1:42:13
  This is this is something absolutely groundbreaking.
• 1:42:16
  So now I've got a couple of practical questions.
• 1:42:20
  Okay.
• 1:42:21
  So I'm driving my car.
• 1:42:22
  I'm going, oh my gosh.
• 1:42:23
  I've got this, a a quantitative program over here in this place that I live.
• 1:42:27
  And, um, how do I, as a small, um, struggling, uh, equine assisted program,
• 1:42:38
  uh, get in contact with horses for mental health and get myself up on this
• 1:42:42
  seen through horses thing because when you talk about going through the larger
• 1:42:47
  organizations even if it's a smaller organization like mine, like Horsepower
• 1:42:51
  Foundation or whatever, um, obviously, we have a set each one has a certain number
• 1:42:55
  of programs under their AEGIS, under their umbrella, but we all know that there's a
• 1:42:59
  lot of programs out there struggling by themselves, and we also know that the the
• 1:43:03
  larger organizations can be very political and often factional one to the other
• 1:43:09
  unfortunately, but it's human nature.
• 1:43:11
  And scarcity mentality can very quickly kick in, and people start trying to
• 1:43:16
  block each other from because they they think, oh, it's you know, there's just a
• 1:43:20
  a a certain pot of money out there and, if they get it, then I won't get it.
• 1:43:23
  We know that that's erroneous.
• 1:43:24
  Right.
• 1:43:24
  But we know, unfortunately, that that has led to a certain toxicity
• 1:43:28
  within our own world of the Equinixys.
• 1:43:31
  What what I love about what you're doing is you're going over that and saying, no.
• 1:43:36
  No.
• 1:43:36
  No.
• 1:43:36
  Chaps, we gotta stand together.
• 1:43:39
  So but if someone is not necessarily affiliated with a big organization,
• 1:43:50
  even if they are, but they want to act independently or reach out themselves
• 1:43:55
  to horses for mental health, how do they
• 1:43:58
  Lynn Thomas: do that?
• 1:44:00
  Yeah.
• 1:44:01
  And I love what you're sharing there because I think with this kind of
• 1:44:04
  infrastructure like this, we're creating a platform for collaboration and that, Yeah.
• 1:44:09
  Getting over that mindset of scarcity into a rising tide lifts all boats.
• 1:44:14
  When we work together, we're all stronger, and we're all more successful.
• 1:44:19
  So people can con go to our website, horses for mental health dot org.
• 1:44:23
  You can get information there or our social media.
• 1:44:26
  Sign up for our email list so that you're staying updated on what we're doing.
• 1:44:30
  Because like I said, we just started in twenty twenty one.
• 1:44:33
  And I'll I'll be I I actually was because this has been a vision for the
• 1:44:37
  last, I don't know, five or something years, and it just has been block
• 1:44:42
  after block and hasn't been happening.
• 1:44:44
  And We started horses for mental health as the structure for it to happen
• 1:44:48
  in, and then all of a sudden, things started happening that I I was It was
• 1:44:53
  like it was meant to be kinda thing.
• 1:44:55
  We got a wonderful sponsor, Zoetis, which is an animal pharmaceutical
• 1:44:59
  company, And they've been so supportive.
• 1:45:02
  And as we've partnered with Equine Network, which is a equine media
• 1:45:05
  company, and they do events as well and have a lot of publications.
• 1:45:09
  And between those relationships, gave us the resources and to be able
• 1:45:14
  to move forward with this project.
• 1:45:16
  And we're always trying we're we're coming up with new ideas.
• 1:45:19
  It's gonna grow each year.
• 1:45:21
  So get on our mailing list.
• 1:45:22
  That's step one.
• 1:45:23
  Go to horses for mental health dot org.
• 1:45:24
  Get on our mailing list.
• 1:45:26
  Keep up with our emails and and our announcements.
• 1:45:29
  We are gearing up for our twenty twenty four campaign, Which will be in May.
• 1:45:34
  However applications to be a charity partner, which is one of the grassroots
• 1:45:38
  one of your programs, Maybe you wanna get involved formally as a charity
• 1:45:42
  partner, which means you're gonna set up a team, and you're gonna be
• 1:45:45
  part of the fundraising efforts.
• 1:45:47
  The fundraising goes to your program that you do, Um, but we
• 1:45:50
  provide all the resource resources, and we provide training for you.
• 1:45:55
  The applications are happening right now until January
• 1:45:58
  twenty second is The deadline.
• 1:46:00
  Oh.
• 1:46:01
  Yeah.
• 1:46:01
  So I don't know when this is coming out, but but just keep on our
• 1:46:05
  Rupert Isaacson: mailing list.
• 1:46:05
  We will put this out as quickly as we can then.
• 1:46:07
  We we are now in December, what is it?
• 1:46:10
  December sixth that we're having this conversation?
• 1:46:13
  And you're saying January the what is the deadline?
• 1:46:15
  Lynn Thomas: Twenty sec I think January twenty second.
• 1:46:17
  We got about
• 1:46:18
  Rupert Isaacson: six weeks from this conversation Yeah.
• 1:46:19
  The
• 1:46:20
  Lynn Thomas: deadline.
• 1:46:20
  Now I'm gonna preface this as saying that right now, for the
• 1:46:24
  charity partners, we are US focused.
• 1:46:27
  And, um, for this year, again, we're gonna be US.
• 1:46:31
  So if you're a US based program now the reason is just because of our
• 1:46:35
  resources and being able to Support the programs so that you are as
• 1:46:39
  successful as possible in the campaign.
• 1:46:42
  However, it is our vision, and I'm hoping in twenty twenty five That we will expand
• 1:46:48
  it to include several different yeah.
• 1:46:50
  The globe.
• 1:46:51
  We wanna include the globe and be able to have the resources to Support each of
• 1:46:55
  the programs in in the campaign journey.
• 1:46:58
  So
• 1:46:59
  Rupert Isaacson: Well, maybe that's a conversation that you and I can have then
• 1:47:01
  because, obviously, with Horse Boy, we we work in quite a few countries and there's
• 1:47:10
  different needs and different setups in each place, it varies quite a lot how
• 1:47:16
  things present which I find fascinating.
• 1:47:19
  But I would imagine that the corporate structures in in terms of looking for
• 1:47:22
  sponsors and celebrities, we could widen our net considerably if we were
• 1:47:29
  to look in different nationalities for that as well particularly Germany.
• 1:47:35
  Yeah.
• 1:47:36
  I know that that would be very I mean, but also Ireland is extremely
• 1:47:41
  cutting edge when it comes to, uh, institutional support of equine
• 1:47:46
  programs, unusually so, I I I've been rather amazed in in the work there.
• 1:47:52
  Also the UK, also the Netherlands Scandinavia, etcetera.
• 1:47:55
  So maybe we should have that conversation.
• 1:47:57
  But okay.
• 1:47:59
  Listeners, if you are a US based equine organization, get onto this horses for
• 1:48:05
  mental health website and start looking because this could really help you.
• 1:48:10
  Also, my what I would also say is do not panic.
• 1:48:13
  And if you and try desperately to get in by next May.
• 1:48:16
  If you realize that it's gonna take a little more time, let
• 1:48:20
  it take a little more time.
• 1:48:21
  Presume you'll be doing one in twenty twenty five as well, Lynn.
• 1:48:24
  Is that
• 1:48:24
  Lynn Thomas: correct?
• 1:48:25
  Yeah.
• 1:48:26
  Our goal is that this is an annual event, and, The experience with other sectors
• 1:48:31
  who've done these types of things, so other nonprofit sectors, nothing like
• 1:48:34
  this has actually been done in the equine industry that we're aware of.
• 1:48:37
  So this has been cutting edge and to get some of the companies and
• 1:48:41
  everybody on board to understand what we're trying to do in the vision.
• 1:48:44
  So that's why it's been so great that Zoetis and network jumped on board
• 1:48:48
  really quickly for a brand new, and we were brand new organization too.
• 1:48:51
  So that was exciting.
• 1:48:53
  And it will grow each year.
• 1:48:54
  And I think the main thing is even if you're not formal charity partner
• 1:48:58
  being part of that aspect of it, the vision of this is to amplify
• 1:49:02
  awareness, and we can all do that.
• 1:49:04
  If we're all sharing on our social media, we're creating these wonderful videos.
• 1:49:08
  And if you find a video that you see that is touches you and represents
• 1:49:12
  your program well and the kind of work that you do, Please share it.
• 1:49:15
  Put it on your website.
• 1:49:16
  Share it on social media.
• 1:49:18
  And when we're especially doing altogether, it impacts the algorithms
• 1:49:21
  and I that's all Language I don't really know, but I have this amazing team who
• 1:49:26
  has background and experience doing these kinds of large Sector wide campaigns,
• 1:49:32
  and they are absolutely amazing.
• 1:49:34
  So please share it.
• 1:49:35
  Get involved in spreading the word because, again, it lifts all
• 1:49:39
  of our programs when we do that.
• 1:49:41
  I think
• 1:49:41
  Rupert Isaacson: what we should do, Lynn, if it's alright with you then, is
• 1:49:44
  every year, when you begin the horses for mental health call for submissions,
• 1:49:51
  um, I think we should do this podcast.
• 1:49:53
  I think we should repeat this because each year, there'll be new people
• 1:49:57
  coming in, and this is a call to arms, which I think can't just happen once.
• 1:50:03
  I think, we need to get as much media behind it as we can.
• 1:50:06
  You talked about celebrities.
• 1:50:08
  wHat celebrity involvement have you managed to get so far?
• 1:50:13
  Lynn Thomas: Yeah.
• 1:50:13
  We've for especially being so new, we've gotten some wonderful
• 1:50:17
  celebrities and influence involved.
• 1:50:19
  Probably the more well known, maybe, Randy Travis Okay.
• 1:50:22
  The country singer.
• 1:50:24
  Tanya Tucker, country singer.
• 1:50:27
  We have some other actors, Riley Smith, born boy sorry.
• 1:50:33
  Bork Floyd Sophie Grace, And then we have others, singers.
• 1:50:38
  We have a, Emmy award winning fashion designer, Um, songwriter, people
• 1:50:44
  like that that have been really, really supportive along the way.
• 1:50:48
  So We also I mean, it's funny.
• 1:50:50
  I was on a podcast, um, where they asked me, who would I wanna go meet dinner Go
• 1:50:56
  to dinner with and I do not know why this came out of my mouth because, like, okay.
• 1:51:00
  I coulda said, like, mother Teresa or the pope or something.
• 1:51:04
  No.
• 1:51:05
  I said, Kevin Costner.
• 1:51:07
  I said Kevin Costner.
• 1:51:08
  I don't know.
• 1:51:10
  It's like, oh, I'm a big fan.
• 1:51:11
  Yellowstone, I'm a fan of Yellowstone.
• 1:51:13
  Wouldn't it be so cool if we could get the Cast of Yellowstone on board with
• 1:51:17
  because they've really, opened up that western genre and the horses again
• 1:51:21
  out there in the world in a big way.
• 1:51:22
  I agree.
• 1:51:23
  And well, sure enough, we happen to get Forrie j Smith on board.
• 1:51:28
  He is one of the cast members of Yellowstone, and that was in our this
• 1:51:32
  year's Twenty twenty three campaign, and I was just, like, so excited.
• 1:51:36
  And we're excited because then, of course, that that connects us to,
• 1:51:40
  Two other cast members and and, of course, the director and producer.
• 1:51:44
  So, very excited about the possibilities there, but We know it'll keep
• 1:51:49
  growing because word spreads, and then we get credibility that this is
• 1:51:52
  a legit and a successful campaign.
• 1:51:56
  And, again, what's been neat and what my team has shared with me too with
• 1:51:59
  compared to other campaigns, what they've experienced is, One, the collaborative
• 1:52:06
  energy in our sector has been amazing.
• 1:52:09
  Mhmm.
• 1:52:10
  One of the biggest challenges of putting on campaigns is exactly what you said.
• 1:52:13
  One, the competitive nature and the scarcity mindset and people
• 1:52:16
  not wanting to collaborate.
• 1:52:18
  And we haven't experienced that with our programs and with our organizations
• 1:52:22
  out there, there has been an embrace of this campaign, which has been so
• 1:52:26
  fun and so exciting and And gratifying that people hold those values.
• 1:52:31
  And then the second thing is with the celebrities and influencers
• 1:52:34
  is how excited and passionate they have been to get on board.
• 1:52:38
  Again, a lot of times their experience in other campaigns have been you really have
• 1:52:42
  to it's really not easy to get to get them on board and these kind of campaigns, and
• 1:52:47
  then to actually post and be active in it.
• 1:52:50
  Mhmm.
• 1:52:51
  And we've experienced the opposite.
• 1:52:52
  They they are passionate about horses, and they are passionate
• 1:52:55
  about mental health, and that has really gotten people on board.
• 1:52:58
  And they have posted, and they have shared videos.
• 1:53:01
  And it has been absolutely a phenomenal experience.
• 1:53:05
  So we know that it's just gonna keep growing each year.
• 1:53:13
  Rupert Isaacson: So the bottom line is is someone could be driving in their car
• 1:53:16
  right now, who's running a program, right, and could basically have you or horses
• 1:53:25
  for mental health, you, being Horses for Mental Health, effectively fundraised
• 1:53:29
  for them, an awareness raise for them, and alongside with them, everybody else
• 1:53:36
  in our I hate to call it industry, but let's say in our field, I don't think
• 1:53:44
  I've heard of anybody doing anything like this outside of private philanthropy,
• 1:53:49
  where perhaps someone really hears about a particular program and says, okay.
• 1:53:54
  I'm gonna get behind this.
• 1:53:55
  But somebody who's struggling could contact horses for mental
• 1:54:00
  health, create a video, submit it.
• 1:54:03
  And have you stand a chance of having you guys help them take their course to
• 1:54:12
  the wider audience, is is is that right?
• 1:54:16
  Lynn Thomas: Yeah.
• 1:54:16
  And and I appreciate that you can clarify because we're not
• 1:54:19
  doing For, we're doing it with.
• 1:54:21
  Right.
• 1:54:21
  And I think that's really important because I think sometimes we're
• 1:54:24
  like, oh, we're gonna just come be a charity partner, and we'll just
• 1:54:28
  Do nothing, and somehow money's just gonna miraculously come to us.
• 1:54:31
  No.
• 1:54:31
  This is about all of us putting in the effort.
• 1:54:33
  Okay.
• 1:54:34
  We're just creating an education.
• 1:54:35
  We're providing the Creating the platform, we're creating the infrastructure.
• 1:54:39
  So, I I'm glad you you clarified That part of it because, it's
• 1:54:44
  not just we're directing money.
• 1:54:46
  It's like by doing it together, by you posting.
• 1:54:50
  You you take the effort To schedule some posts or share with your
• 1:54:54
  friends or put in an email, hey.
• 1:54:57
  This work is powerful, Then that that's meaningful, but it does take time.
• 1:55:02
  Right?
• 1:55:02
  It does take effort.
• 1:55:03
  So, the neat thing is, like I said, yeah, you can go to our website.
• 1:55:07
  I should have mentioned too.
• 1:55:08
  Can you go to our stories page, and we have our celebrities and influences
• 1:55:12
  on there along with their stories that Of why horses are so meaningful
• 1:55:15
  for them and their and mental health, and we also have videos on there.
• 1:55:20
  To to do all that, to create that kind of infrastructure, Pretty much most of
• 1:55:24
  all of our individual programs would not have the resources to do that.
• 1:55:27
  Right.
• 1:55:28
  There's just I mean, the amount of money that it takes to do what
• 1:55:31
  we're doing to create this campaign.
• 1:55:33
  The There's no way.
• 1:55:34
  But by doing it together and by getting the bigger sponsors that we've been able
• 1:55:38
  to get because we're doing it together, Then we can, have the money have that
• 1:55:43
  money to put all this stuff together to support all of all of the programs.
• 1:55:47
  So but, yeah, it's it's a joint effort.
• 1:55:50
  Yeah.
• 1:55:50
  So if somebody
• 1:55:51
  Rupert Isaacson: wants to participate in this with their program let's
• 1:55:54
  say they go and they create a video, are there some parameters?
• 1:55:57
  And then they they said they get they send you that video.
• 1:56:00
  Right?
• 1:56:00
  And then, also, uh, you help them encourage them to get it out on their
• 1:56:08
  and other people's social media, do you do you provide some guidance on how to
• 1:56:14
  make a video like this because, I mean, a lot of people just have no idea even
• 1:56:17
  though we've all got cell phones now that have very good cameras on them.
• 1:56:22
  Do you is there some guidance for how to put a short video together and how to
• 1:56:28
  put things out on social media in this way because I I think for many of us who
• 1:56:32
  are dinosaurs like me I mean, obviously, I grew up when mastodon still bellowed
• 1:56:37
  to mastodon Across the Primeval Swamp and somewhat before the invention of
• 1:56:42
  the wheel so as an analog person trying to work in a digital age, sometimes
• 1:56:48
  I get a little bit oogled and oogled.
• 1:56:50
  Like, the only reason I can do this podcast is because my wife,
• 1:56:52
  Eliana, used to work for IBM and knows how to do this stuff.
• 1:56:55
  Otherwise, I'd be completely lost.
• 1:56:57
  So a lot of us are a bit old school like that.
• 1:57:00
  How do we old schoolers create these things, can can is there some guidance?
• 1:57:05
  Is the guidance just, well, go get some young people that know how to do it?
• 1:57:08
  Or what yeah.
• 1:57:12
  How do we get help to do
• 1:57:13
  Lynn Thomas: this?
• 1:57:15
  Yeah.
• 1:57:17
  We actually do trainings for the charity partners, and, eventually,
• 1:57:21
  we're gonna get that on our website so everyone has access to them.
• 1:57:24
  That's just, one of those things on the list to do.
• 1:57:27
  So we do train in social media and and things like what you're talking
• 1:57:31
  about with helping create videos.
• 1:57:33
  Now I will clarify that horses from mental health is actually producing
• 1:57:37
  some videos that we're producing that are very professionally made that That
• 1:57:42
  the programs can also utilize to share.
• 1:57:44
  Whether you're a charity partner or not, anyone can share those videos.
• 1:57:48
  So you could
• 1:57:48
  Rupert Isaacson: they could they could use the videos that
• 1:57:50
  you've made to help themselves fundraise, say, this is the field.
• 1:57:53
  This is what we do.
• 1:57:55
  Lynn Thomas: Yes.
• 1:57:56
  Yes.
• 1:57:56
  And so we've created Some different feature videos that are, around the
• 1:58:00
  five minute range, we've created then also, if anyone's seen them
• 1:58:04
  yet or not, the animated videos.
• 1:58:06
  So we are getting Case stories from different programs, and we
• 1:58:10
  turn those case stories into a three minute animated, Story.
• 1:58:16
  So that's it's always, again, very interesting process to go and try to
• 1:58:20
  take a story, a case experience, and make it Three minutes where it has an
• 1:58:25
  emotional impact where people understand how how this can work, and we use the
• 1:58:30
  animation one because of confidentiality, and it's a great way to Tell a story.
• 1:58:34
  And it's also been fun, going to other countries now and realizing, actually,
• 1:58:38
  these animated videos could fit for Any country, any culture, we literally would
• 1:58:43
  just need to do a different voice over.
• 1:58:45
  Right.
• 1:58:45
  And so that's exciting that we hope to do in the future as well.
• 1:58:49
  So, Yeah.
• 1:58:50
  So we're telling these stories of transformation in a way that
• 1:58:53
  hopefully highlights that is our goal is to highlight the unique
• 1:58:57
  impact that horses bring to people's journey of transformation.
• 1:59:01
  When you're
• 1:59:02
  Rupert Isaacson: doing these sorry.
• 1:59:03
  I I just I got a question there.
• 1:59:04
  When you're doing these these videos of these stories, transformative stories
• 1:59:10
  are you also saying this happened at this program with some sort of link at the
• 1:59:14
  end that say, if you want to support the work of this program follow this link,
• 1:59:19
  or will will will potential funders or viewers know which program that came
• 1:59:26
  from and then have a way of supporting
• 1:59:28
  Lynn Thomas: them?
• 1:59:29
  Yeah.
• 1:59:30
  The the very end of the video, we have Credits that acknowledge our
• 1:59:33
  sponsor, acknowledge the premier partners, acknowledge all the charity
• 1:59:37
  partners, and then thank the story, the program of which the story came
• 1:59:42
  Rupert Isaacson: fantastic.
• 1:59:43
  Okay.
• 1:59:43
  So people would know, okay.
• 1:59:44
  This story came from this program.
• 1:59:46
  I love this.
• 1:59:47
  I'd like to support that program.
• 1:59:49
  Lynn Thomas: And our goal with these short animated videos that that
• 1:59:53
  share case stories is to have a diversity of different populations,
• 1:59:57
  ages, And needs, therapeutic goals.
• 2:00:01
  So we hopefully as the library grows, there'll be something that
• 2:00:05
  fits for maybe your population focus And your objectives and focus
• 2:00:09
  Rupert Isaacson: areas.
• 2:00:10
  Fantastic.
• 2:00:11
  Fantastic.
• 2:00:12
  I I have never heard of anything so unselfishly helpful, um,
• 2:00:19
  it's rather astonishing.
• 2:00:21
  And and fair fair full disclosure listeners.
• 2:00:24
  So, at our horse boy tribe day, we have a a gathering of of all our as many of
• 2:00:31
  our members who want to show up as show up and we had that this year in Colorado
• 2:00:37
  at place called Horsebuds in Greeley, Colorado run by the amazing, Deb, uh,
• 2:00:44
  there who Deb Michael, who hosting this was they're basically mini conferences.
• 2:00:51
  And Lynn was kind enough to show up and kind enough to talk us through
• 2:00:55
  arenas for change and, sorry.
• 2:00:56
  I meant what was this for mental health?
• 2:00:58
  And the next thing, arenas for change, which we're gonna get to in a minute.
• 2:01:01
  And I was just blown away because, I hadn't seen anybody in this field
• 2:01:10
  come forward with something that said, let's just Uplift, everybody, every
• 2:01:17
  organization, altogether from the small you showed us that video of of what
• 2:01:23
  was the place in Oakland again that that is running such a great program?
• 2:01:28
  We Ride two.
• 2:01:29
  We write to, yeah, we write to a really, really good video short video of of a
• 2:01:35
  program there of, people of color, youth of color, um, in in Oakland, obviously,
• 2:01:42
  very needed place, somewhere you wouldn't necessarily expect a program to see and
• 2:01:46
  and it was really beautifully done, and you could see how the attention that
• 2:01:53
  that program would get through what you were doing, just them as one small
• 2:01:58
  little thing could be an absolute game changer, let alone for all of us who
• 2:02:02
  are running the larger organizations who, also need to raise the profile
• 2:02:06
  that to have all that done at the same time, I'm not saying, well, I favor
• 2:02:10
  path over Igala or Igala over horse boy or horse boy over, lifemanship.
• 2:02:14
  No.
• 2:02:14
  No.
• 2:02:15
  No.
• 2:02:15
  No.
• 2:02:15
  No.
• 2:02:15
  We're all the same.
• 2:02:16
  We're all doing the same job.
• 2:02:19
  We're all in this together, and you were the first person, I think, to
• 2:02:25
  that I've seen coming along with a with a with a program that really
• 2:02:30
  right across that board without any any factionalism, uplifts us all.
• 2:02:34
  And so, what you viewers can't see is I've I've I've got an imaginary hat on
• 2:02:37
  here, and I'm taking this hat off to Lynn.
• 2:02:40
  I'm taking my hat off.
• 2:02:42
  In fact, I'm gonna do it several times because it's it's an it's
• 2:02:45
  it's it's a work of great vision.
• 2:02:46
  And and when you you explain what you're doing, you think, yeah.
• 2:02:50
  Well, of course.
• 2:02:52
  Yeah, that's obvious.
• 2:02:53
  We should all do that, but but nobody has.
• 2:02:55
  It's always like when you listen to a a reading of pop song on the radio.
• 2:02:58
  Well, I could write that, but, yeah, but you didn't.
• 2:03:02
  It's like all good ideas, it seems like a no brainer.
• 2:03:07
  And yet in the, what, fifty, sixty years of our field, it
• 2:03:12
  actually hasn't been done.
• 2:03:14
  So I'm immensely impressed and immensely excited.
• 2:03:21
  Lynn Thomas: Yeah.
• 2:03:21
  Well well, thank you.
• 2:03:22
  And really again, acknowledging my cofounder, Jackie and Tyler, Uh, who had
• 2:03:28
  the experience with doing these campaigns that brought the knowledge and the idea.
• 2:03:33
  I mean, we knew we wanted to do something, but it's Like, how to go about doing
• 2:03:36
  Rupert Isaacson: it?
• 2:03:37
  Tell us about the amazing Jackie Tyler because they're not here right now.
• 2:03:40
  Let's let's think That's
• 2:03:41
  Lynn Thomas: two different people.
• 2:03:41
  Yeah.
• 2:03:42
  Jackie.
• 2:03:42
  Rupert Isaacson: Jackie and Tyler.
• 2:03:43
  Okay.
• 2:03:43
  Yeah.
• 2:03:44
  So let let's let's hear about
• 2:03:45
  Lynn Thomas: them.
• 2:03:46
  Yeah.
• 2:03:47
  They've done campaigns in other sectors, um, ending polio.
• 2:03:50
  They did in Australia that ended up raising I've millions, it might have
• 2:03:55
  been in the billions, actually, raising that amount of money by getting by
• 2:03:59
  the same concept of convening all the Organizations in the end polio
• 2:04:03
  sector, and then, hey, everybody.
• 2:04:06
  Let's work together because and we can reach out to these celebrities,
• 2:04:09
  and we can put on this event.
• 2:04:11
  You And then they get all the government leaders.
• 2:04:13
  Well, hey.
• 2:04:13
  The government leaders now, wow.
• 2:04:15
  This is a big audience.
• 2:04:16
  We might wanna, pump pump ourselves up a bit.
• 2:04:18
  And then they would then say, yes.
• 2:04:21
  We're gonna dedicate government funds.
• 2:04:23
  Businesses say, oh, I wanna get in front of this.
• 2:04:25
  We're gonna ded dedicate business funds and sponsorships To end polio.
• 2:04:30
  So they've done that with that and some other kind of
• 2:04:36
  Big, huge projects like that.
• 2:04:39
  And so Jackie has a background with Horses and with mental health, and this
• 2:04:44
  has been a vision and a passion for her.
• 2:04:46
  And so she wanted to bring this to our sector and connected with
• 2:04:49
  me, and then I was like, Yeah.
• 2:04:51
  I was this is what we wanna do.
• 2:04:52
  So that's that's where it comes from.
• 2:04:55
  So she's better at talking about it than I am.
• 2:04:58
  I'm just here as the yes.
• 2:05:00
  Let's do it because I believe in collaboration.
• 2:05:03
  I believe in when we work together, we're all better off.
• 2:05:06
  The And and just to share, I mean, some of just from our last two campaigns,
• 2:05:11
  so we're talking about five, six weeks of time, we had a reach of Over
• 2:05:17
  thirty five million on social media.
• 2:05:19
  I believe.
• 2:05:20
  Our videos have been watched over a million times.
• 2:05:22
  Yeah.
• 2:05:23
  And This kind of stuff is only happening because we're doing it together.
• 2:05:27
  Right.
• 2:05:29
  And it can keep growing.
• 2:05:30
  Rupert Isaacson: What what Jackie clearly has has identified is that
• 2:05:38
  what we're dealing with here is a public health issue in a public health
• 2:05:42
  campaign the the fact that it's you you bring up, the end polio thing.
• 2:05:46
  People think, well, horses and equinexes and stuff, it's a niche, and it's, it's
• 2:05:49
  people who, are looking for therapy and just, wanna, gaze at their navels and talk
• 2:05:54
  about how to press they are, and we we all know that this is not the case at all.
• 2:05:58
  We all know that people's lives are being saved daily in these programs.
• 2:06:04
  It it was interesting to me.
• 2:06:05
  I was at I I've just come back from doing a series of trainings in Ireland
• 2:06:13
  last week, and one of the clear messages you get whenever you go to any of
• 2:06:19
  these programs, because they're all offering in a slightly different way,
• 2:06:23
  is there a lot there's always one or two young people who are there who
• 2:06:26
  will say to you and I don't mean young, like, twenties or young, like, teens,
• 2:06:30
  after being, like, young, like, eleven.
• 2:06:32
  So if it was not for this program, I would not be here.
• 2:06:34
  Like, I I would not be here.
• 2:06:35
  I would have left the planet at this point.
• 2:06:38
  And we all know this.
• 2:06:43
  We the fact that we do have a crisis in mental health, for sure, in our society
• 2:06:48
  today in a way that is whether it's more acute than it was before, whether
• 2:06:52
  it's more we're because we're more aware of it its effects on us than we were
• 2:06:57
  before, nonetheless, now is its time.
• 2:07:00
  And just as we need to end polio, we need to ameliorate our mental health.
• 2:07:05
  If we're going to meet the challenges of all of the stuff that's up the
• 2:07:10
  road for us as a society because we know there's some big stuff coming.
• 2:07:15
  Doesn't matter which end of the climate thing you sit on, you know it's there.
• 2:07:18
  It's a conversation.
• 2:07:19
  Stuff is happening.
• 2:07:21
  Doesn't matter which end of the thing you're on, whether it's
• 2:07:23
  on Ukraine and is it's there.
• 2:07:26
  It's happening.
• 2:07:27
  Stuff's going on.
• 2:07:28
  Stuff's going down.
• 2:07:28
  Life is getting more stressful.
• 2:07:30
  Costs are going up.
• 2:07:32
  The world is getting more competitive, blah blah blah, and
• 2:07:36
  mental health is now a crucial thing.
• 2:07:39
  So the fact that Jackie identified that in the same way as, okay, we
• 2:07:43
  we've almost learned how to deal with pandemics and epidemics, but this is a
• 2:07:47
  different type of pandemic, and this is a much more insidious type of pandemic
• 2:07:50
  that claims the lives of millions of people every day around the world.
• 2:07:54
  People just feel they can't go on anymore and that's the work we're all doing.
• 2:07:59
  So it's really interesting to me that she identified that, sir, got another hat on.
• 2:08:04
  Jackie, you can't see me, but I'm taking this hat off to you.
• 2:08:07
  Thank you for deciding to make it a public health issue in the same way
• 2:08:13
  that polio will be, tell us about Tyler.
• 2:08:15
  Who who's Tyler on this So Tyler is
• 2:08:18
  Lynn Thomas: the executive producer of the campaign, and, Again, he's just
• 2:08:22
  the the one doing all the operational steps behind the scenes of which there
• 2:08:27
  are many, and he's absolutely wonderful to work with, Incredibly good at
• 2:08:33
  putting together really good campaigns.
• 2:08:35
  So I'm really appreciative of him and then the rest of the team.
• 2:08:39
  Everybody has their different roles doing all there's a lot of
• 2:08:42
  pieces to put on these campaigns.
• 2:08:43
  It's kinda like putting on a conference Yeah.
• 2:08:45
  And even and Probably bigger in some ways too.
• 2:08:49
  Yeah.
• 2:08:49
  Because I've experienced putting on conferences too.
• 2:08:51
  So, so there's a lot of pieces behind the scenes, and what's neat
• 2:08:54
  is, yeah, we're doing the legwork.
• 2:08:57
  And I think that's where yeah.
• 2:08:59
  With horses for mental health, really, I think that was the vision as I it was
• 2:09:03
  time to step away from a The training, the and the model that I was doing with
• 2:09:08
  the gala and really had this vision to look more macro, you could say Absolutely.
• 2:09:13
  And do something that brings us all together, and it's been so fun because
• 2:09:17
  it has been bringing us all together, and I can't wait to see where it keeps
• 2:09:20
  Rupert Isaacson: going.
• 2:09:20
  I've got one more question before we go on to arenas the change so you're
• 2:09:24
  talking about the month in May.
• 2:09:27
  This is obviously a massively and mostly, um, social media event, is there actually
• 2:09:33
  also a single event event, like physical event that people can show up to, or
• 2:09:37
  is the whole thing online and virtual?
• 2:09:39
  But, basically, how do people participate even if they're not
• 2:09:42
  submitting information about their programs hoping to be involved?
• 2:09:47
  Lynn Thomas: Yeah.
• 2:09:48
  So right now, it's all online.
• 2:09:50
  However, our vision is to do some more event based experiences, and we encourage
• 2:09:54
  the charity partners as maybe part of their, Way of getting awareness with
• 2:09:59
  their fundraising teams that are out there saying, we believe in this program and
• 2:10:02
  this amazing cause to do little events.
• 2:10:05
  Do a dinner or do a Ride the horse, or walk with the horse or anything
• 2:10:09
  like that, so we provide some ideas for the charity partners to utilize.
• 2:10:14
  And, yeah, our our vision and what we're already starting to strategize and plan
• 2:10:18
  is that horses for mental health is gonna be conducting efforts year round, Not
• 2:10:22
  just the one big campaign seen throughout this campaign in the month of May.
• 2:10:26
  We wanna keep that momentum going year round with different types
• 2:10:30
  of events and And experiences.
• 2:10:32
  Rupert Isaacson: Brilliant.
• 2:10:33
  So the the idea for physical events is is is in at least in conversation and Yes.
• 2:10:41
  Apprised of things we can actually physically show up at or
• 2:10:45
  organize ourselves as part of it.
• 2:10:48
  Lynn Thomas: Right.
• 2:10:48
  Yeah.
• 2:10:49
  I mean, you you know, like, you have the, bike for multiple sclerosis or walk for
• 2:10:53
  cancer, Big events like that, um, like as mentioned with Jackie and her background
• 2:10:59
  with, like, the end polio, or she she was also part of starting the global citizen
• 2:11:03
  project, which is to end world poverty.
• 2:11:07
  tHose are big concert events.
• 2:11:09
  And so people take actions on social media.
• 2:11:12
  And by taking actions on social media spreading awareness, they get a free
• 2:11:16
  ticket to go to Concert that has all these big name, singers, and then
• 2:11:19
  that's where the big companies and the government officials get on the stage,
• 2:11:23
  and it's one of those kind of events too.
• 2:11:25
  So That might be in our future, something like that too, and we'll
• 2:11:29
  just see how it continues to unfold.
• 2:11:31
  Rupert Isaacson: Fantastic.
• 2:11:32
  I can't wait I can't wait to stay abreast of it, and we'll do our our
• 2:11:36
  best on this podcast to dig it up and spread it out and let people know.
• 2:11:42
  Lynn Thomas: Yeah.
• 2:11:42
  Thank you.
• 2:11:43
  Thank you for spreading the word.
• 2:11:45
  You for
• 2:11:45
  Rupert Isaacson: for for for doing what none of us have done.
• 2:11:47
  Yes.
• 2:11:48
  It's wonderful.
• 2:11:50
  Okay.
• 2:11:50
  So horses for mental health, amazing.
• 2:11:53
  So arenas for change, not content with just doing one new thing
• 2:11:58
  on a global potential scale.
• 2:12:01
  You're now doing two, what is arenas for change, and how does it differ
• 2:12:05
  from horses for mental health?
• 2:12:07
  Lynn Thomas: Yeah.
• 2:12:07
  It's funny you say that because, After a gala, twenty one years
• 2:12:11
  building a business, and I know you know what it takes.
• 2:12:13
  I know all these programs know what it takes to to be an
• 2:12:16
  entrepreneur and build a business.
• 2:12:17
  And there was a part of me I was like, oh, I'm really, really tired.
• 2:12:21
  I am so I'm just gonna go work for some corporation and Make money for change.
• 2:12:26
  Like, that's the space I was in.
• 2:12:28
  And then I had this wonderful team like, Lynn, what are we doing next?
• 2:12:31
  And it's like, oh, okay.
• 2:12:32
  We're doing something next.
• 2:12:33
  But it's you know, arenas for change was basically born out of, like
• 2:12:37
  well, now what are we gonna do, Lynn?
• 2:12:39
  And and it really came about because there's A lot of us had just we
• 2:12:43
  just love to learn, and we love to learn in a community because
• 2:12:46
  then we're pushing ourselves.
• 2:12:47
  We're building on ideas, and we're getting better when doing it together
• 2:12:51
  and learning with one another.
• 2:12:53
  And so are for change was born with this, like, well, we wanna keep learning.
• 2:12:57
  And what do we wanna keep learning?
• 2:12:58
  Where would we wanna focus, and how do we wanna do it?
• 2:13:02
  And so we we started with First, again, our foundation is involving horses
• 2:13:08
  for mental health and any kind of well-being education, coaching, personal
• 2:13:12
  development, organizational development.
• 2:13:15
  However, there's a lot of people that were like, well,
• 2:13:17
  we also like other animals too.
• 2:13:19
  Yeah.
• 2:13:20
  We like we like to do dogs.
• 2:13:21
  We work with chickens, goats, llamas.
• 2:13:24
  We like nature.
• 2:13:25
  And a lot of us, thanks to the pandemic too, did really get into doing
• 2:13:29
  more telehealth online Experiences.
• 2:13:32
  And so we created the word arenas, and it's plural, to acknowledge that
• 2:13:38
  while we're still very much Engage with the horses because that's our base.
• 2:13:44
  wE work in a lot of different arenas, and we still wanna learn with one another.
• 2:13:48
  So and then for change, because we're about change.
• 2:13:50
  Well, then one of our team members said, well, arenas for change, a r
• 2:13:56
  Farina, c h for change is Arch, and so that could be our our simplified name.
• 2:14:02
  So Arch came about because arches are symbolic.
• 2:14:06
  They're symbolic of new beginnings, new perspectives, and transformation,
• 2:14:11
  which, of course, fit very well with the place In our journey that
• 2:14:14
  we were at, and it fits very well with the clients that we work with.
• 2:14:18
  So, we started there, and the next thing we went with was,
• 2:14:20
  well, Where do we wanna focus?
• 2:14:22
  And and we kinda talked about we're doing good work, and so many great
• 2:14:28
  organizations Training, so many wonderful programs, doing amazing things.
• 2:14:31
  We're all doing really good work out there.
• 2:14:34
  And what can we do to keep improving?
• 2:14:37
  What can we do to keep building on the great work that's
• 2:14:39
  already being done out there?
• 2:14:40
  So that was the first thing.
• 2:14:42
  And the second thing was we really Wanted to focus on our facilitation skills
• 2:14:47
  and how we can continue to increase creating an emotionally safe environment.
• 2:14:52
  Because when clients feel safe, When horses feel safe, when everybody feels
• 2:14:57
  when when our team members feel safe, when everybody feels safe, learning can
• 2:15:02
  increase, And our process can go deeper.
• 2:15:06
  So and we, really wanted to look at what can we do as facilitators Where
• 2:15:11
  clients really feel seen and heard.
• 2:15:12
  I mean, horses do that so well.
• 2:15:15
  And I think sometimes as facilitators, we're the ones that
• 2:15:17
  are getting in the way of that.
• 2:15:18
  So That was another thing we wanted to focus at.
• 2:15:22
  And then the other thing we wanted to do was well, I didn't wanna do a model again.
• 2:15:26
  I I I believe models have a place, so you needed very Structured more
• 2:15:30
  structured programs that can be replicated, um, we just kinda wanted
• 2:15:35
  to do like well, we like to embrace all the different Interventions and ideas,
• 2:15:40
  and yet we still need a foundation.
• 2:15:42
  And so we created what we call the scene keystones, Um, which, of course, goes
• 2:15:47
  with clients feeling seen and heard.
• 2:15:48
  But the seeing keystones are just a framework for us as facilitators to
• 2:15:51
  hold In our minds, ask ourselves these questions which are around sense of self.
• 2:15:57
  What am I, Yeah.
• 2:16:00
  Am I knowing myself?
• 2:16:01
  Am I understanding myself?
• 2:16:02
  How can I better understand myself?
• 2:16:04
  What is my sense of self In this moment.
• 2:16:07
  What is my opposite in this moment?
• 2:16:10
  Because when we look at our opposites, then we learn so much about ourselves.
• 2:16:15
  So, I'll go through the questions in a minute.
• 2:16:16
  But, basically, it's a set of questions we ask ourselves under each of these
• 2:16:19
  acronym of scenes, sense of self, Empowering mindset, externalizing story,
• 2:16:24
  and natural flow is what that stands for.
• 2:16:27
  And so when it's just a set of questions that we ask ourselves, Then it can
• 2:16:32
  be applied in a lot of different ways in a lot of different settings.
• 2:16:35
  And I think for those of us who've been doing this work for a while, I think
• 2:16:38
  it helps us look at the nuances of what we're doing and how we're doing
• 2:16:42
  it and how we're facilitating and engaging with the client and with the
• 2:16:45
  experience and with the environment.
• 2:16:48
  And for new people, what we're finding I I I first wondered if this was gonna be
• 2:16:52
  for maybe more experienced people, but, actually, we've had a lot of new people
• 2:16:55
  come through our trainings just Looking at this framework and asking ourselves
• 2:16:59
  these questions around sense of self and power mindset, externalizing story,
• 2:17:03
  natural flow, And really setting a great foundation for their learning as well.
• 2:17:09
  So Okay.
• 2:17:11
  Yeah.
• 2:17:11
  That's what we're doing.
• 2:17:12
  And I'll I'll mention externalizing story, of course, really got us down the path of
• 2:17:17
  story and store the story framework and mindset and how that applies in our work.
• 2:17:22
  So I'll stop there because that was a mouthful, but that's what we started.
• 2:17:26
  Questions.
• 2:17:26
  Yes.
• 2:17:27
  Yeah.
• 2:17:27
  I know.
• 2:17:28
  And I just realized there was more I missed.
• 2:17:30
  But, anyway, I'm gonna pause because I know that was a mouthful.
• 2:17:32
  Rupert Isaacson: Maybe maybe we we'll get to those things that you missed.
• 2:17:34
  So so so arenas for change is a training program that say I could do where I could
• 2:17:42
  learn to emphasize making my learning slash professional environment slash
• 2:17:53
  service provision environment safer, um, by allowing the service users, let's say,
• 2:18:06
  to be more seen and heard by training me through certain questions, um, to keep
• 2:18:20
  that ethic front and center in my work and the environment that I provide and whether
• 2:18:29
  it's for me, whether it's for the client, whether it's for the horses, what it's
• 2:18:31
  all of us, is that have I got it right?
• 2:18:35
  Is
• 2:18:35
  Lynn Thomas: that what You do.
• 2:18:36
  That's Thank you for helping concise it.
• 2:18:39
  You're right.
• 2:18:39
  It's a learning environment, so we we provide training.
• 2:18:43
  And mainly, like I said, it started because we just all A group of
• 2:18:46
  us all wanted to keep learning, and they were like, well, anybody
• 2:18:48
  else can join us who wants to.
• 2:18:50
  And then it's turned into it keeps growing as well.
• 2:18:53
  Oh, so, and then and then we added certification be due to popular
• 2:18:59
  requests or or, requests for that.
• 2:19:02
  And even how we're doing that is a little bit different.
• 2:19:04
  But, ultimately, yes, you can come and learn this.
• 2:19:06
  And and let me just kinda share too what I mentioned about what we started.
• 2:19:12
  We actually what then when we first were starting, we're
• 2:19:14
  like, well, what's our mission?
• 2:19:15
  What's our vision?
• 2:19:17
  And we actually were going around in circles.
• 2:19:19
  We were, like, debating what's a mission and what's a vision, and we
• 2:19:22
  had different opinions and Mission.
• 2:19:24
  That whole thing.
• 2:19:24
  A mission.
• 2:19:25
  I know.
• 2:19:26
  So our but then we started talking about our values.
• 2:19:29
  And it was when we started talking about our values that we really lit up.
• 2:19:33
  And so we have a set of values.
• 2:19:35
  They're actually long paragraphs because at first, we're, like, Coming up with
• 2:19:38
  the one word things, and then we're like, well, it doesn't have to be one word.
• 2:19:41
  So, so we came up with value.
• 2:19:44
  So that's our foundation is we wanna connect with others Who
• 2:19:47
  wanna keep learning and growing, improving our skills as facilitators,
• 2:19:52
  and we share these values.
• 2:19:55
  Okay.
• 2:19:56
  So that that's the the first thing.
• 2:19:57
  And then the second thing is, well, what do we wanna learn?
• 2:20:00
  Because we do we can't be too broad.
• 2:20:02
  We can't be all things to all people.
• 2:20:04
  And so this idea of the scene keystones, okay, here's here's where
• 2:20:08
  we're gonna focus, and then that led into a little bit more about Story.
• 2:20:12
  So we talk about for people who are interested and wanna learn more
• 2:20:16
  about how to apply a story mindset, which we can talk more about that,
• 2:20:21
  In environments with animals, horses, nature, or even online or in your office,
• 2:20:27
  that's really what a lot of our focus
• 2:20:29
  Rupert Isaacson: is.
• 2:20:30
  Okay.
• 2:20:30
  Talk to me about these stories, how we how we involving story, how we're using story.
• 2:20:37
  So,
• 2:20:38
  Lynn Thomas: There's a couple ways.
• 2:20:38
  Because I think the first thing people out with with, like, narrative
• 2:20:41
  therapy and stuff you think about, well, we all are grow up, and
• 2:20:44
  we Tell ourselves these stories.
• 2:20:46
  We have these narratives in our mind that influence how we
• 2:20:48
  engage with our relationships and with the world around us.
• 2:20:52
  So, I'm not good enough Or nice people with people who are manipulating me.
• 2:20:58
  Rupert Isaacson: Or whatever.
• 2:20:59
  Yeah.
• 2:20:59
  Yeah.
• 2:21:00
  Lynn Thomas: Those those kind of narratives.
• 2:21:02
  So there's that aspect of the stories that we tell ourselves and really
• 2:21:06
  investigating, exploring those.
• 2:21:08
  What we're really looking at this, though, is looking at life As a story.
• 2:21:13
  And you probably have a lot to have input on this because
• 2:21:15
  you're a storyteller, Rupert.
• 2:21:17
  So When we look at life as a story, we get new perspectives.
• 2:21:22
  So we look at one, I'm the main character of my life right now.
• 2:21:26
  I'm I'm in the story of this podcast with Rupert, and, we're
• 2:21:31
  having an experience right now.
• 2:21:32
  We're feeling things.
• 2:21:33
  We're experiencing things.
• 2:21:34
  I'm in it.
• 2:21:35
  I'm a character In this story right now.
• 2:21:37
  Right?
• 2:21:38
  And as are you.
• 2:21:39
  We're characters in the story, and I'm feeling experience in it.
• 2:21:41
  However, if in my mind or or even physically, if I were to Take a
• 2:21:45
  step back and say, I'm gonna look at this podcast with Rupert as a story.
• 2:21:51
  Now I'm gonna kinda watch.
• 2:21:53
  I'm gonna take and look as if I'm a viewer watching a movie
• 2:21:56
  or a reader reading a book.
• 2:21:58
  Now I'm still going to be Feeling and experiencing things because we do.
• 2:22:02
  When we're watching a movie, we still have some emotional connection.
• 2:22:04
  We're putting ourselves in the shoes of the characters a lot of times,
• 2:22:07
  But we are getting a little different perspective when we step back.
• 2:22:11
  Right?
• 2:22:11
  We can see new things.
• 2:22:13
  Do not walk into that scary room.
• 2:22:15
  But when we're a character, we don't see that.
• 2:22:17
  Right?
• 2:22:18
  So as a viewer, we're seeing new perspectives, but then we also
• 2:22:21
  have another perspective stepping further back as an author.
• 2:22:26
  And when you're looking at your life as a story from an author's perspective,
• 2:22:31
  that's another whole different type of perspective that you get.
• 2:22:35
  And so as facilitators, we can engage with our clients and invite or flow
• 2:22:40
  through these different perspectives as a character, as a viewer, and as an author.
• 2:22:45
  Eric took you
• 2:22:46
  Rupert Isaacson: out of that okay.
• 2:22:47
  That's interesting.
• 2:22:48
  Sorry.
• 2:22:48
  I just wanted to clarify that.
• 2:22:50
  Okay.
• 2:22:51
  So go on.
• 2:22:52
  Lynn Thomas: Yeah.
• 2:22:53
  So, and so when we're working with our clients as a character, say
• 2:22:57
  they're they're in the space with the horses, They're having an experience.
• 2:23:02
  Our role as a facilitator then is to hold that space for
• 2:23:04
  them to have that experience.
• 2:23:06
  We might become fellow characters in their story.
• 2:23:09
  That's possible too.
• 2:23:10
  And so I'm gonna engage with them a way that might be more like I'm
• 2:23:13
  a character in their story, and how would I be as that character?
• 2:23:16
  Meaning, like, maybe I'm the listening ears.
• 2:23:18
  They just need someone to listen.
• 2:23:21
  I've you know, maybe I I remember so a client one time saying, Wow.
• 2:23:26
  I was afraid to say this.
• 2:23:28
  I didn't wanna say this because I'm having grief, but I know that you have a loss
• 2:23:33
  too, and I was, worried about saying too much because you have this loss.
• 2:23:36
  Okay.
• 2:23:38
  I did have a loss.
• 2:23:39
  Alright.
• 2:23:40
  And I was having feelings genuinely hearing her loss story.
• 2:23:45
  And now I can step back a little bit in my own mind as a facilitator and
• 2:23:49
  say, I'm the I'm the character in her story that she's worried about hurting,
• 2:23:55
  and, therefore, she's not taking care of herself because she's worried or
• 2:23:58
  she's not sharing or whatever because she's worried about the other person.
• 2:24:01
  I'm that character in this story, so I'm gonna be that character.
• 2:24:05
  So that's how we're gonna engage.
• 2:24:06
  A lot of it's more holding space, allowing that process
• 2:24:09
  for them to feel and experience.
• 2:24:11
  As a viewer, if the client's in viewer role, we're stepping back.
• 2:24:14
  Maybe we're watching the space with the horses, and maybe
• 2:24:17
  they're narrating some things.
• 2:24:19
  And I'm gonna be more like, wow.
• 2:24:21
  I'm gonna join in them with the curiosity.
• 2:24:23
  Like, I'm sitting next to someone watching a movie.
• 2:24:25
  Like, wow.
• 2:24:26
  That was interesting, or I wonder what that's about, or
• 2:24:28
  wonder what's gonna happen next.
• 2:24:30
  Now we don't wanna overdo it because then it becomes annoying.
• 2:24:34
  So as a facilitator, again, I'm doing a lot of holding
• 2:24:37
  space, Lot of being present.
• 2:24:39
  A lot of joining with our clients.
• 2:24:41
  Right.
• 2:24:41
  You
• 2:24:41
  Rupert Isaacson: don't want the DJ to interrupt the song too often.
• 2:24:43
  Right?
• 2:24:44
  Yeah.
• 2:24:44
  Right.
• 2:24:45
  Lynn Thomas: Exactly.
• 2:24:45
  Right.
• 2:24:47
  So and then when they're in the author role, when we invite
• 2:24:49
  that, we'll we'll step out.
• 2:24:50
  We'll literally change our physical location.
• 2:24:53
  Okay.
• 2:24:53
  And it's almost like you're sitting a bunch like, we're
• 2:24:55
  the editor is a facilitator.
• 2:24:57
  They're the author, so we're really paying attention that we're
• 2:25:00
  supporting them as the author, that we don't become the author.
• 2:25:03
  But as a story editor, I'm gonna educate about so I'm gonna look at, well, what
• 2:25:07
  are the main characters of this story?
• 2:25:09
  What are some of the characteristics of those characters?
• 2:25:12
  We're gonna deepen and develop the story.
• 2:25:13
  We'll look at locations.
• 2:25:15
  Settings matter.
• 2:25:17
  The scenes matter.
• 2:25:18
  Look at the locations, characteristics.
• 2:25:19
  We'll look at what is this really a story about?
• 2:25:22
  What's looking to transform?
• 2:25:25
  So we have a whole process that we've learned and we started exploring
• 2:25:28
  and experimenting with, and we teach that because we've actually
• 2:25:31
  found it to be really powerful.
• 2:25:33
  And it helps clients get these new perspectives, but also it
• 2:25:38
  helps organize the experience in a way that's really meaningful.
• 2:25:41
  Even Something simple like if you were to put a title to the experience, if
• 2:25:46
  you were to look at this experience with the horse as a story, and you were to
• 2:25:49
  put a title at what might you title it?
• 2:25:52
  Yeah.
• 2:25:53
  And that actually can be really meaningful, and it anchors the
• 2:25:56
  experience in a concise way.
• 2:25:58
  So, Again, there's so much about it because I get really
• 2:26:01
  excited about this story.
• 2:26:02
  There's a lot of depth to how story and a story mindset can be utilized.
• 2:26:08
  But the biggest thing in what we say is when our stories change, we change.
• 2:26:11
  And it's not just about changing the narratives.
• 2:26:14
  The experience we're having with the horses is a story.
• 2:26:18
  And the stories, we like to say, are some of the most amazing
• 2:26:22
  story editors we have seen because they shift and they do things.
• 2:26:26
  And next thing you know, our story changes, and
• 2:26:28
  something inside of us shifts.
• 2:26:31
  Rupert Isaacson: I love it.
• 2:26:32
  When's the next training that I can join?
• 2:26:36
  Lynn Thomas: Well, that was the other thing we wanted to do with Arch is I I
• 2:26:39
  really wanted it to be accessible Because so much that's out there, it it's, again,
• 2:26:45
  wonderful trainings, and it costs a lot.
• 2:26:48
  And so we really wanted Accessibility, which we can do
• 2:26:52
  nowadays with a lot of the online.
• 2:26:53
  So we have some really wonderful online courses.
• 2:26:56
  People can just get monthly subscription, stay as long as it works for you, learn
• 2:27:00
  what you wanna learn, and then, of course, we have people who stay longer
• 2:27:03
  because they like to be part of the community and the continued learning.
• 2:27:07
  But, yeah, feel free to jump on arenas for change dot com, you can get a
• 2:27:10
  monthly subscription one, access the online courses, including there's
• 2:27:14
  videos of actual sessions in there that you can watch, and then we debrief.
• 2:27:18
  You can watch us debrief those actual sessions and learn what
• 2:27:22
  our thought process was and what we learned going through it.
• 2:27:25
  So there's that in there and a whole course talking about the scene Keystone's
• 2:27:29
  and also about there's whole section about the horse horse the horse's role,
• 2:27:35
  horse specialists, and their role and things they can consider, , and think
• 2:27:39
  about questions they can ask themselves.
• 2:27:41
  We also have an online live interactive workshop called seen through story.
• 2:27:47
  It's two days.
• 2:27:48
  It's intense.
• 2:27:50
  It's immersive, and it's fun.
• 2:27:52
  It's very interactive.
• 2:27:53
  You're gonna create your own personal growth story Using the tools we teach you
• 2:27:58
  and as a way to learn it and apply it.
• 2:28:00
  So, and you'll leave with seven very like, Seven really good tools that
• 2:28:05
  you can just add to your toolbox.
• 2:28:06
  You can apply them as it fits for you, but they are definitely tools tools
• 2:28:10
  that will help when you feel stuck with your clients, when When the process
• 2:28:14
  feels a little stuck and you need a way to expand or move, these story
• 2:28:19
  tools are really effective with that.
• 2:28:21
  So So we have that seen through story workshop two days that
• 2:28:25
  you can look into attending to.
• 2:28:28
  And then we do have some in person Well, I'm just sharing that right
• 2:28:31
  now because that's where it makes it more accessible that anyone can
• 2:28:34
  can join in, learn Learn with us.
• 2:28:37
  We learn from each other.
• 2:28:39
  We talk about we're all teachers.
• 2:28:40
  We're all learners.
• 2:28:41
  We have a whole process in our platform too that we all learn from each other.
• 2:28:45
  And, yeah,
• 2:28:47
  Rupert Isaacson: that's the If we do wanna come and attend one
• 2:28:49
  of the physical courses, I'm, as I said, a mastodon Hunter.
• 2:28:55
  So, my name, by the way, is Ugh.
• 2:28:57
  And and, I come from the Ugh tribe, Where We Speak Book, so,
• 2:29:02
  I I do very well in live events.
• 2:29:05
  Where where are they being held?
• 2:29:07
  And, I presume I obviously, I could sign on to them by going on to the the website.
• 2:29:13
  But yeah, do you have a particular venue, are there many venues?
• 2:29:17
  How does it work if if you wanna do it live?
• 2:29:20
  Well,
• 2:29:21
  Lynn Thomas: so we started Arch in twenty twenty one.
• 2:29:23
  So I'm saying that because we shifting what we're doing.
• 2:29:26
  We keep well, I always I always shifted with the gal.
• 2:29:28
  It was all over
• 2:29:29
  Rupert Isaacson: the place.
• 2:29:29
  Anything about that.
• 2:29:30
  Yeah.
• 2:29:30
  Lynn Thomas: Yeah.
• 2:29:31
  Right?
• 2:29:31
  It's always changing.
• 2:29:32
  It's always evolving.
• 2:29:33
  So right now, what we're doing, one, we have what we call the
• 2:29:36
  arch gatherings, which reminded me of your tribe experience.
• 2:29:40
  Very, similar, we we kinda we say in our gatherings, it is experiential.
• 2:29:45
  It's in an environment with horses and nature and Anything else?
• 2:29:49
  And it's like an experiential conference.
• 2:29:51
  So we say there's no PowerPoints.
• 2:29:54
  Mhmm.
• 2:29:54
  It's it's when we're together, Someone who's gonna share their experience or
• 2:29:58
  their specialization or they wanna try something new, and they talk about but
• 2:30:03
  then they create an experience that we're gonna actually hands on practice.
• 2:30:06
  Okay.
• 2:30:07
  And so we have a lot of different, members and nonmembers alike attend
• 2:30:11
  and and present and share, and we We've done stuff with mounted work.
• 2:30:17
  We've done stuff on the ground with different populations.
• 2:30:20
  We've done
• 2:30:20
  Rupert Isaacson: I want to come on with these courses.
• 2:30:22
  Where is it?
• 2:30:23
  Where where do I
• 2:30:24
  Lynn Thomas: go?
• 2:30:24
  Oh my gosh.
• 2:30:24
  Okay.
• 2:30:25
  Go to our website.
• 2:30:26
  We are doing them in different regions of the world.
• 2:30:28
  So we have Minnesota in June.
• 2:30:31
  So once a year they're once a year in the different regions.
• 2:30:34
  Minnesota in June, we usually have a Latin America one.
• 2:30:37
  We have a Australia one In October.
• 2:30:40
  And then we're gonna have a we were in the Netherlands this year.
• 2:30:44
  This twenty twenty four, we're gonna be in Denmark In September.
• 2:30:48
  It's not on the website yet.
• 2:30:49
  It's got we gotta get that up there.
• 2:30:50
  But so we do them in those different regions.
• 2:30:53
  So once a year, Check out our website or get on our email list.
• 2:30:57
  And this would be
• 2:30:58
  Rupert Isaacson: for how long?
• 2:30:58
  Is this a two day thing?
• 2:30:59
  Five It's three days.
• 2:31:00
  Three
• 2:31:00
  Lynn Thomas: days.
• 2:31:01
  Three days.
• 2:31:02
  Rupert Isaacson: Around three years.
• 2:31:02
  Brilliant.
• 2:31:03
  How many people?
• 2:31:07
  Lynn Thomas: They've been around, like, in the twenty to thirties
• 2:31:10
  Rupert Isaacson: Range.
• 2:31:11
  Okay.
• 2:31:11
  Good.
• 2:31:11
  So, like, a a a not too small, but not too big.
• 2:31:14
  Somewhere where it's intimate, but you can also divide people up into smaller
• 2:31:19
  groups and get back together again and
• 2:31:23
  Lynn Thomas: Right.
• 2:31:23
  Okay?
• 2:31:24
  Yep.
• 2:31:25
  Yep.
• 2:31:25
  That's exactly right.
• 2:31:26
  I mean, again, we want I guess for me and maybe I I Yeah.
• 2:31:30
  Go ahead.
• 2:31:31
  In person, it's a time for connection.
• 2:31:34
  Yeah.
• 2:31:34
  Because that's why I say no PowerPoints.
• 2:31:35
  If we're gonna do a PowerPoint, we can do that online.
• 2:31:38
  Sure.
• 2:31:39
  And if if, a lot of this
• 2:31:41
  Rupert Isaacson: How else will I fall asleep, Lynn?
• 2:31:42
  If if you don't put me in a a nice, um, darkened room with a PowerPoint,
• 2:31:46
  we can snooze gently in the back.
• 2:31:48
  And
• 2:31:50
  Lynn Thomas: Well, there are hammocks.
• 2:31:51
  Actually, you don't even need the PowerPoint because
• 2:31:53
  we're like, you know what?
• 2:31:54
  Do you?
• 2:31:55
  We you know, if you need a break, go take a break.
• 2:31:57
  This is just about we're here to learn with Each other and if you wanna
• 2:32:01
  go sleep in the hammock, you don't even need a dark end room report.
• 2:32:04
  You could just go take a hammock and say, I'm out of here.
• 2:32:09
  I'm gonna go hang with the horses.
• 2:32:10
  I that's what I need right now.
• 2:32:13
  Rupert Isaacson: So okay.
• 2:32:13
  So if I so if I was in Minnesota in June, I could do one of these.
• 2:32:17
  If I was Yeah.
• 2:32:18
  The other thing in Denmark, where when would that
• 2:32:20
  Lynn Thomas: be?
• 2:32:22
  It's going to be in September Next
• 2:32:24
  Rupert Isaacson: year?
• 2:32:25
  Okay.
• 2:32:25
  Any policy to do the thing?
• 2:32:26
  Sorry.
• 2:32:26
  I forgot the exact
• 2:32:27
  Lynn Thomas: date.
• 2:32:28
  Do you have Yeah.
• 2:32:29
  And that's the second weekend of October is Australia k?
• 2:32:33
  In Queensland.
• 2:32:34
  Rupert Isaacson: Okay.
• 2:32:35
  And are you there yourself at this?
• 2:32:39
  Lynn Thomas: I have been so far.
• 2:32:41
  Yes.
• 2:32:41
  So if we if
• 2:32:42
  Rupert Isaacson: we wish to touch the hem of your garment and avert it Right.
• 2:32:45
  From from your brilliance, that would be the place to do it.
• 2:32:49
  Lynn Thomas: Yes.
• 2:32:50
  Yeah.
• 2:32:50
  Otherwise, I'm staying hold up.
• 2:32:52
  And, actually, no.
• 2:32:54
  You know what's been fun is Yeah.
• 2:32:57
  I've just been spending more time just going around to other people's Yeah.
• 2:33:01
  Trainings and events.
• 2:33:02
  It's been so fun.
• 2:33:03
  I like I said, we can learn from everybody.
• 2:33:07
  Lynn And if we have the opportunity to do that, I say absolutely do that.
• 2:33:12
  And so I've had the wonderful chance To, come visit you you and
• 2:33:16
  your tribe, which was amazing.
• 2:33:18
  And natural I went to the natural life internship conference, went
• 2:33:22
  to the herd institute conference.
• 2:33:23
  Gonna go to the Polyvagal Equine Institute training.
• 2:33:26
  And I'm just really at the stage of life where I'm excited to just flow
• 2:33:30
  with what It's interesting to me.
• 2:33:33
  Yeah.
• 2:33:34
  Rupert Isaacson: And Yeah.
• 2:33:35
  Well, I I guess what what we've all found those of us who've been doing this
• 2:33:38
  for a while, is that as the field has expanded, it just gets more interesting.
• 2:33:46
  And as as more people bring more to it what you're doing here,
• 2:33:51
  as you say, I'm a storyteller.
• 2:33:52
  And one of the thing one of the reasons I find that so attractive is I know
• 2:33:55
  the healing power of Dory I mean, everybody does because people talk
• 2:33:59
  about our species, or we are called Homo sapiens sapiens, which means
• 2:34:05
  the thinking ape, but there's nothing special to our species about thinking.
• 2:34:10
  Right?
• 2:34:10
  Anything where the brain thinks, and many, many things on the planet have
• 2:34:13
  a brain in fact, you could even say that many people, if you look at Rupert
• 2:34:16
  Sheldrake's work or that sort of thing with the conscious universe and, the
• 2:34:19
  mycelium network, maybe the entire everything is conscious and thinking, so
• 2:34:23
  there's nothing special to us about that.
• 2:34:25
  But it seems that what we have, which other let's say, animals don't at
• 2:34:30
  least, is the the larynx, the voice box, which is the ability to tell stories.
• 2:34:35
  So other animals vocalize.
• 2:34:37
  Right?
• 2:34:37
  But and they can do it in a in a very, very, very complex way, but
• 2:34:41
  we're the ones who write Shakespeare, rap, epic poetry, whatever.
• 2:34:45
  That's us.
• 2:34:46
  That's the humor.
• 2:34:46
  So, really, we're the storytelling in it, aren't we?
• 2:34:49
  And I I find that with with autism, that's one of the big challenges is is
• 2:34:53
  when one encounters someone with auto, a u t o ism, selfism, auto is the Greek
• 2:35:00
  word for the south, locked in the south.
• 2:35:01
  The the relationship with the exterior world is the problem, then it can be
• 2:35:05
  very difficult for for one not to other these these people because they're not
• 2:35:09
  storytelling, at least in a way that we can immediately understand because
• 2:35:13
  they're not doing it with the larynx.
• 2:35:14
  So it's fascinating to me.
• 2:35:17
  And having lived with hunting and gathering tribes, what I know
• 2:35:20
  is that all healing is story.
• 2:35:22
  So for example, if you go to the the healer or the shaman, if you're in
• 2:35:25
  the Kalahari, you go with a story.
• 2:35:27
  But it you also do that, of course, when you go to a doctor, you go over the story.
• 2:35:30
  Oh, oh, it's my leg.
• 2:35:31
  Oh, it's my this.
• 2:35:32
  It's my that.
• 2:35:33
  And then the doctor goes into their research or into their computer or into
• 2:35:36
  their knowledge bank or the shaman goes into the spirit world through an altered
• 2:35:40
  state of consciousness, then they come out with a series of instructions because
• 2:35:43
  they've been told a story in there.
• 2:35:45
  And then they give you another story, you then leave, of
• 2:35:48
  course, and create a new story.
• 2:35:50
  And so we know that storytelling is at the absolute center of the healing
• 2:35:56
  experience for humans, really at the center of the life experience, and one
• 2:36:01
  of the things which I've I've found and, of course, many people who've everyone,
• 2:36:04
  basically, who's who's ever lived with a hunting and gathering group has found
• 2:36:08
  us that the original human cultures are all cultures of conflict resolution
• 2:36:12
  because they're all cultures of strategy.
• 2:36:14
  They're not they're not cultures of competition because we're
• 2:36:18
  weak mid level predators.
• 2:36:19
  Right?
• 2:36:19
  There's everything out that's gonna eat us.
• 2:36:20
  We don't have claws, big teeth, we're not fast.
• 2:36:23
  We're not like the other great apes which can rip a leopard in half.
• 2:36:25
  No.
• 2:36:26
  No.
• 2:36:26
  No.
• 2:36:26
  No.
• 2:36:26
  The only way we stand a chance is if we cooperate.
• 2:36:29
  And, um, now we are cannibalizing ourselves a little bit, but it's really
• 2:36:34
  only the last ten thousand years.
• 2:36:36
  So I love basically, this is me just getting excited and
• 2:36:39
  go blah blah blah blah blah.
• 2:36:40
  Because what I see you're doing is that you're really bringing that healing Power
• 2:36:47
  of Story into the work that we're all doing and by putting it into it sorry.
• 2:36:53
  It's character, author and editor.
• 2:36:56
  Is that right?
• 2:36:57
  Lynn Thomas: Viewer.
• 2:36:58
  Character, viewer, author.
• 2:37:00
  Now the client is the author.
• 2:37:01
  We look at ourselves as facilitators, as story editors, meaning not the kind that
• 2:37:05
  corrects or not the proofreading kind, the kind of story editors that support
• 2:37:09
  authors in deepening their stories.
• 2:37:11
  But what you've
• 2:37:11
  Rupert Isaacson: basically got that is is the is the classic
• 2:37:15
  structure of good storytelling.
• 2:37:17
  Right?
• 2:37:17
  Because you've got always a prologue.
• 2:37:19
  Right?
• 2:37:19
  So it starts at the height of the action, either there's a crisis, you
• 2:37:24
  you say I've got a problem or something.
• 2:37:26
  Then there's act one, the call for adventure, the adventure is always
• 2:37:31
  reluctantly pulled in, doesn't want to because it's a schlep.
• 2:37:35
  Then there's act two, it all goes wrong.
• 2:37:37
  And at the end of act two, the their protagonist, has to go and learn something
• 2:37:42
  and change something about themselves.
• 2:37:44
  Go find Yoda and learn how to use the force or whatever.
• 2:37:47
  Act three, they reencounter Darth Vader, and it all goes wrong again just as the
• 2:37:52
  lightsabers at their throat, they remember what Yoda showed them and call upon it
• 2:37:57
  an effective change and then epilogue, you see them leave into a changed world.
• 2:38:01
  I mean, that's every story.
• 2:38:02
  Right?
• 2:38:02
  That's the power and that's basically everyone's life story, more or less, and
• 2:38:06
  everyone's seasons of life story, you've absolutely broken down this work into that
• 2:38:14
  hero's journey which I think is is the universal human experience, and whether
• 2:38:17
  you did that consciously, I don't know.
• 2:38:19
  Did you do that consciously, or or did that just come from the the Akashic record
• 2:38:24
  from from the from the from the greater conscious universe into you, because it's
• 2:38:28
  it's really inspired what you've done.
• 2:38:31
  Lynn Thomas: Well, I mean, absolutely, I think we can learn so much from
• 2:38:34
  story and storytelling, exactly what you're saying, the hero's journey.
• 2:38:37
  And When we look at our life that way, we get those new perspectives.
• 2:38:41
  And so as to what you're saying.
• 2:38:43
  And then I I was curious for you.
• 2:38:46
  I mean So when you had the experience you had with Rowan going to Mongolia,
• 2:38:53
  um, and you had that experience, And then you chose to put it on paper.
• 2:39:00
  And I'm curious for you, like, what was your experience like Of integrating
• 2:39:05
  that experience by going from actually being in it to then putting it on paper.
• 2:39:10
  Because you were a character in it, and then you became an author of it.
• 2:39:14
  Rupert Isaacson: Okay.
• 2:39:15
  That's a very good question.
• 2:39:16
  I was asked me that before.
• 2:39:19
  aS it was happening, I was writing it down so I was writing down every moment,
• 2:39:25
  um, and I knew I couldn't make anything up because there were cameras on.
• 2:39:30
  And the people behind the cameras were not me.
• 2:39:33
  So it was the best will in the world.
• 2:39:36
  They were gonna show what they were gonna show.
• 2:39:39
  So it kept things authentic, but I also knew that I would be able
• 2:39:45
  to see things the camera couldn't see because, obviously, there's my
• 2:39:48
  internal experience and then there's the camera can only point one way.
• 2:39:52
  There might be, a bird flying over the hill or a particular light
• 2:39:55
  falling on a mountainside that that that camera can't get because it's
• 2:39:59
  pointed at me or it's pointed at a horse or it's pointed at a round.
• 2:40:03
  So I realized that there were these multiple perspectives.
• 2:40:07
  And so it became important to do more than journal, but to really try to
• 2:40:13
  chronicle, I think is would be the word, the experience as we went so I filled up
• 2:40:21
  notebooks as I went, and it became you know, I would be leaping off the horse
• 2:40:25
  to to scribble things because I would have Rowan in front of me, and I couldn't
• 2:40:29
  actually write, while that was going on.
• 2:40:31
  So, and then later when the time came to to write the book, I
• 2:40:37
  had that record to draw upon.
• 2:40:38
  And, um, the the the the the the detached observer who's always there in all of us,
• 2:40:50
  right, whenever any of us is going through something, no matter what it is, I mean,
• 2:40:54
  something banal, you're driving your car.
• 2:40:55
  There's always a part of you observing yourself driving the car, and there's
• 2:40:58
  a part of you driving the car.
• 2:41:00
  And consciousness is a really interesting thing because there's
• 2:41:03
  that part of us that is us, I.
• 2:41:07
  E.
• 2:41:08
  Rupert going downstairs now to have a glass of wine or something, and there's
• 2:41:11
  that other part of me observing Rupert going down, have a glass of wine.
• 2:41:13
  I say, Rupert, do you really need that glass of wine?
• 2:41:15
  To which the answer is clearly yes.
• 2:41:17
  So that then became clearer, obviously as I was then able to review what had
• 2:41:25
  been written because you don't remember.
• 2:41:27
  That's the thing.
• 2:41:28
  You remember certain things, but you don't remember at and then you you
• 2:41:32
  can look at it and go, oh oh, yes.
• 2:41:33
  Gosh.
• 2:41:34
  That happened.
• 2:41:34
  And then, of course, then we're at the same time, we're editing
• 2:41:36
  the film, and we're editing two hundred and fifty hours footage.
• 2:41:40
  So we were looking at a lot of stuff and remembering and being reminded of
• 2:41:48
  and then wondering how to condense it down so it was a coherent narrative that
• 2:41:53
  wouldn't just send everybody to sleep, so we know we really went through that.
• 2:41:58
  And then and then what happens is you go through other people's reactions to your
• 2:42:02
  story, and then your own reactions to other people's reactions to your story and
• 2:42:08
  then the story taking on a greater energy and going on and doing its own thing so so
• 2:42:14
  what happened with Horse Boy with, Horse Boy now I feel I'm being interviewed here.
• 2:42:19
  But, uh, second, I'm flipping into interviewee mode.
• 2:42:23
  But what was interesting was that I could feel from the get go on an intuitive
• 2:42:28
  level in my solar plexus, in my gut, in my gut villi inside my gut, I could feel
• 2:42:34
  that there was some ancestral process at work where there was a job to do
• 2:42:43
  with this story and that I had stumbled into by to know a talent or intelligence
• 2:42:52
  of my own a series of being mentored.
• 2:42:54
  I was mentored by Temple Grandin, then I was mentored by Rowan, then
• 2:42:58
  I was mentored by Betsy, then I was mentored by the Schrammster, then I
• 2:43:00
  was mentored by the neuroscientists.
• 2:43:03
  And that all resulted in something replicable that today we would call
• 2:43:07
  horse boy method or movement method.
• 2:43:09
  But, um, I could feel even before any of that happened that there was
• 2:43:14
  something at work, a a shift, a a pull, that I must just keep putting one
• 2:43:18
  foot in front of the other, and that is the power of story, I think, that
• 2:43:23
  you can sense story as it's evolving.
• 2:43:26
  You can sense story when it's still unformed, but calling, and this is why
• 2:43:35
  people go and do things in the world.
• 2:43:37
  So I I think that what you're doing, just to bring it back to you with Arch,
• 2:43:42
  is if you can help people to facilitate that process I just described, because
• 2:43:50
  everybody has a story like that in them in their life, which is of great benefit
• 2:43:57
  to everybody else because, I went through this thing of, well, then why make why
• 2:44:00
  go public with it, why why not just say I fell into this thing with this horse,
• 2:44:03
  Betsy, that it's great for my son.
• 2:44:04
  He started speaking, and then he got literate, and then he got numerate.
• 2:44:07
  And, yeah, I observed it working for other kids, but I just keep this one
• 2:44:09
  to myself honestly, that's easier.
• 2:44:12
  But as a as a father who was in crisis surrounded by other parents who were in
• 2:44:17
  the same crisis, having stumbled into something that worked, I I realized
• 2:44:20
  that I had a bit of an obligation to make it available if I possibly could, I
• 2:44:25
  think that what you're doing here we'll allow an awful lot of people to do that
• 2:44:33
  because if we, the human species, are effectively a storytelling species and a
• 2:44:40
  conflict resolution species, and you are doing something with arenas for change
• 2:44:46
  where that can be magnified, perhaps for people who for whom story is is
• 2:44:54
  something of a new concept even though they've been unconsciously living it,
• 2:44:59
  then the net effect must be more healing.
• 2:45:02
  Right, it can only be more healing because that is what story does.
• 2:45:08
  So that's just amazing to me what you're doing.
• 2:45:11
  Lynn Thomas: Oh, and thank yeah.
• 2:45:12
  Thank you for sharing.
• 2:45:13
  That was so beautifully summarized too.
• 2:45:15
  And and I think, again, that was such a neat example of you had an experience.
• 2:45:20
  You were in this experience with your son, and you were feeling it.
• 2:45:24
  And then you had the experience of writing it down while you were there.
• 2:45:28
  And that Learning that you got from that, then you had the experience
• 2:45:31
  of putting it on paper and then also watching footage video footage and
• 2:45:36
  then Responding to the stories of other viewers, like, you relived and looked
• 2:45:43
  and experienced that same experience In multiple ways with multiple perspectives.
• 2:45:51
  I mean, each one of those and I think you're absolutely right.
• 2:45:53
  I mean, How that expanded your story?
• 2:45:56
  What insights they that gave you to watch yourself on video, to write it in
• 2:46:01
  a book, To see how other people respond, um, how that expanded your story, how
• 2:46:07
  that deepened that same story, Um, and where it took you by doing that.
• 2:46:13
  So you're absolutely right.
• 2:46:14
  That is our hope that as facilitators, we can create similar experiences like
• 2:46:18
  that with our clients where they can experiencing things from all those
• 2:46:22
  multiple storytelling perspectives Of different distances like that from their
• 2:46:30
  experience that and with their experience.
• 2:46:32
  So I think it does deepen.
• 2:46:34
  It deepens the experience.
• 2:46:36
  It helps us see new perspectives we may not have seen.
• 2:46:39
  It helps takes us in new directions.
• 2:46:41
  Our stories are impacted in ways they wouldn't have been had we
• 2:46:44
  not gone through that journey.
• 2:46:46
  Yeah.
• 2:46:46
  Rupert Isaacson: No.
• 2:46:46
  I I I agree.
• 2:46:47
  It's and I think I think we're not allowed or in our current society a
• 2:46:52
  little bit to look at our lives that way.
• 2:46:54
  We'll we we or or to look we we can look at them linearly as stories.
• 2:47:00
  I was here.
• 2:47:01
  That's the past, now I've got this present.
• 2:47:04
  I'm supposed to always be in the present moment, and then there's this
• 2:47:07
  future that hasn't yet happened here but what if it's all simultaneous?
• 2:47:11
  Like, that say that's very much, say, the the sun bushman or the Aboriginal
• 2:47:17
  Australian perspective, is that actually they call the dream time or whatever.
• 2:47:20
  That's past, present, and future are really the same thing and and this linear
• 2:47:25
  line that we're following is a sort of stubborn illusion created perhaps
• 2:47:30
  by gravity, the time could even be a construct of gravity, that's that's
• 2:47:34
  what Einstein was hinting at, and the multiple perspectives, whether or not
• 2:47:41
  you believe in a multiverse or whether you believe in past, present, future
• 2:47:44
  all the same time or whether you think it's all in it, doesn't much matter.
• 2:47:48
  Because what we do know is that we experience things
• 2:47:51
  from multiple perspectives.
• 2:47:52
  And I think that if you, through Arch, are drawing people's attention
• 2:47:58
  to that, the healing potential of that, I think, is that, as you
• 2:48:01
  say, when someone has perspective on a problem, that is soothing.
• 2:48:06
  It's automatically soothing to look at a problem from the outside.
• 2:48:12
  People talk about taking the macro perspective or imagining that you
• 2:48:14
  were looking down from space at your problem, but I and all of
• 2:48:18
  these things are useful tools.
• 2:48:21
  However they can be a little hard to achieve or to to suddenly jump to.
• 2:48:27
  Oh, suddenly, I'm just gonna look at my thing from the outside.
• 2:48:29
  I think what you're talking about here is guiding people through a step
• 2:48:33
  by step process where each of these small steps from, uh, character to
• 2:48:41
  viewer to author, and then you've also got you guys as editors, but
• 2:48:46
  perhaps they could also become learn to become their own editors, etcetera.
• 2:48:49
  Editor's lovely because you can rewrite a story.
• 2:48:51
  You can go back and make amends if you feel you've done something
• 2:48:55
  wrong, even in your mind, in your heart, that's actually still putting
• 2:48:59
  it out there into the universe.
• 2:49:00
  You can forgive somebody even if you have not see you can't see them anymore.
• 2:49:05
  Maybe they're even dead.
• 2:49:06
  But you you can do that, and that affects the story, yours and the greater one and
• 2:49:12
  theirs and so on and so on, I love this.
• 2:49:17
  So by by taking it down into these small step by step processes as you as
• 2:49:22
  you describe, each of which is in its individual form, you can help someone
• 2:49:31
  do something that's actually quite complex by by putting them all together.
• 2:49:34
  Whereas if you said, be in the present moment or, look at it from the outside
• 2:49:37
  and have perspective on it or that would be a tall order because it's too big
• 2:49:41
  of a jump from where one is now to that thing, but these stages that you've
• 2:49:46
  outlined, I think, make it possible.
• 2:49:50
  Lynn Thomas: Yeah.
• 2:49:50
  And and it's fun, and it's engaging.
• 2:49:52
  Stories are fun and easy.
• 2:49:54
  Fun?
• 2:49:55
  Where there it can be fun.
• 2:49:56
  I It's a lot of fun.
• 2:49:58
  Fun.
• 2:49:59
  I mean, horse is already engaged, help people feel more engaged.
• 2:50:02
  And then when you add into when the clients start, having that
• 2:50:06
  it's a timing thing when they are able to step back and look at it
• 2:50:09
  from those different perspectives.
• 2:50:10
  But when they do it, the next thing, it's like, yeah.
• 2:50:12
  What I wonder what is gonna happen next in this unfolding Story that we
• 2:50:16
  don't know where it's actually going and the horses just keep changing
• 2:50:19
  things unpredictably, and then the story changes, and it's like, woah.
• 2:50:23
  What's happening?
• 2:50:24
  But we have found that with the clients, it's been really effective
• 2:50:28
  and impactful in in sparking that curiosity and, like, Yeah.
• 2:50:33
  This is this is a story, and I'm I'm in the story, but I'm writing the
• 2:50:38
  story, Or I'm authoring the story.
• 2:50:40
  It doesn't mean we control everything in our life because characters
• 2:50:43
  have to go into the unknown.
• 2:50:45
  Rupert Isaacson: But Right.
• 2:50:45
  And any anyone who's ever written a story knows characters have a funny habit
• 2:50:48
  of doing whatever they wanna do Yeah.
• 2:50:51
  Right now.
• 2:50:52
  I'm saying, my characters do not behave.
• 2:50:53
  I structure out what they're gonna do, and they just rebel all the time and
• 2:50:57
  breaking on characters, and it's just
• 2:51:00
  Lynn Thomas: like So yeah.
• 2:51:01
  Yeah.
• 2:51:02
  I mean, we get new insights, and it and it can be intriguing
• 2:51:05
  and interesting just like it is.
• 2:51:06
  In fact we were just sharing, like, with this veterans group, one of our
• 2:51:10
  programs member programs was sharing about they call it each each week is
• 2:51:14
  called an episode, and they title the episode, and they get really excited
• 2:51:17
  about coming coming back and, Okay.
• 2:51:20
  What's gonna be the next part?
• 2:51:21
  What's gonna be in the next episode?
• 2:51:23
  And they do a little trailer to talk about the last episode, the last week's session.
• 2:51:26
  Well, okay.
• 2:51:27
  Here's a little trailer, previously on, and then you know?
• 2:51:31
  Okay.
• 2:51:32
  And then they get to experience the next one.
• 2:51:34
  So, it it's again, It doesn't have to always look like that.
• 2:51:38
  It's more we're just we're adding tools in our toolbox.
• 2:51:41
  And as facilitators, I know it's helped me yeah.
• 2:51:45
  Watching the sessions as a story, because then I start looking at
• 2:51:50
  things as characters, and I wonder what the main character, who the
• 2:51:53
  impact characters are and and some of their characteristics, and it and it
• 2:51:57
  brings out my own curiosity as well.
• 2:52:00
  Right.
• 2:52:00
  And what's important about the Space itself and the learning itself
• 2:52:04
  Rupert Isaacson: is very healing.
• 2:52:05
  Right?
• 2:52:05
  The learning brain is the happy brain.
• 2:52:08
  Yeah.
• 2:52:08
  As you said earlier, under stress, one cannot learn.
• 2:52:11
  But we are curious, curious monkeys.
• 2:52:13
  Right?
• 2:52:14
  And I could see how doing what you're doing also allows people
• 2:52:18
  through that perspective to take things less personally, including
• 2:52:20
  you as the facilitator, right, and when Susan stops taking something
• 2:52:24
  personally, you're healed.
• 2:52:26
  Right?
• 2:52:27
  Or at least you're along the path to healing.
• 2:52:32
  Lynn Thomas: Well, I will say if people are interested to learn more
• 2:52:35
  on our website arenas for change dot com, On some of the pages, I know
• 2:52:39
  the story page, the newsletter page.
• 2:52:41
  There's there's a freebie you can download.
• 2:52:44
  It's a little ebook about Story and it takes you part of that little ebook,
• 2:52:48
  it takes you through an experience that you get to do on yourself.
• 2:52:52
  And so if people wanna kinda get in more of a feel about it, You can go there.
• 2:52:56
  Sign up for our email list as part of that, and you get
• 2:52:58
  our ebook, but it's it's fun.
• 2:53:00
  Might get a a feel for what it can look like and what you can learn too.
• 2:53:04
  Rupert Isaacson: This is amazing.
• 2:53:05
  Okay.
• 2:53:05
  So we're gonna have to we we've gone for a long time, and there's more I want to ask.
• 2:53:12
  So here's what I'd like to do if you're amenable.
• 2:53:15
  You talked about what's the next episode.
• 2:53:18
  Well, for me, what I'd like to do is I would like to come back actually
• 2:53:22
  on this podcast with you and do a separate one on arenas for change.
• 2:53:27
  I think that I think that we've, introduced this concept, but it's
• 2:53:31
  a it there's a lot more here that I'd like to delve into, and I'm
• 2:53:34
  sure view listeners would do.
• 2:53:37
  The same, of course with horses for mental health.
• 2:53:40
  And so if it would be okay with you, because we covered about since nineteen
• 2:53:46
  ninety nine to here in this podcast, it's a fair bit of ground, and I'm so
• 2:53:52
  grateful and you've massively informed me.
• 2:53:56
  So what I would like to do, if possible, is could we come back?
• 2:53:59
  It's now we're having this conversation December sixth.
• 2:54:03
  May is going to be the month four horses for mental health and and getting
• 2:54:08
  all that stuff together, perhaps do you think it might be a good idea if
• 2:54:11
  we come back and we look at that in more depth during that month, if you
• 2:54:15
  have the time, you might be very busy or perhaps leading up to that month.
• 2:54:18
  You tell me.
• 2:54:19
  And then I would like to do something in more detail on this healing
• 2:54:23
  power of story, please with arenas for change so that we can give it
• 2:54:27
  its due, would that be amenable?
• 2:54:30
  Lynn Thomas: Well, that's amazing.
• 2:54:31
  Yes.
• 2:54:32
  We'd absolutely love to.
• 2:54:33
  And, yeah, we can definitely talk and talk.
• 2:54:37
  I don't know how long this has actually been, but, Tom Oh, I need five days.
• 2:54:42
  So It's been so engaging.
• 2:54:44
  It's been so engaging for me.
• 2:54:46
  I appreciate your questions and your curiosity.
• 2:54:48
  And, um, so, yes, I would be honored to come back and and
• 2:54:53
  continue having conversations.
• 2:54:55
  Rupert Isaacson: Thank you.
• 2:54:55
  Well, let's do it because, there's there's just so much to cover.
• 2:55:00
  Once again, before we sign off on this one, please the websites where
• 2:55:04
  people can go for information.
• 2:55:06
  Lynn Thomas: So first is horses for mental health dot org.
• 2:55:11
  And, again, definitely sign up on our email list there and check
• 2:55:13
  out our different Resources.
• 2:55:15
  In fact, we have a a research summary resource peep programs can use to download
• 2:55:19
  to give the evidence base, Along with a lot of other information and the
• 2:55:24
  videos and about the campaign there.
• 2:55:26
  And then the other website is arenas for change dot com.
• 2:55:32
  aNd would love for you to come check us out and and even join
• 2:55:35
  us for a month if you want and learn everything you can learn.
• 2:55:39
  And We just love learning with whoever wants to come and join in with
• 2:55:43
  Rupert Isaacson: us.
• 2:55:44
  So horses for mental health dot org?
• 2:55:47
  Lynn Thomas: Dot org.
• 2:55:49
  Arenas arenas for change dot com.
• 2:55:52
  Rupert Isaacson: Arenas for change dot com.
• 2:55:54
  Very good.
• 2:55:54
  You have
• 2:55:55
  Lynn Thomas: it.
• 2:55:56
  Yes.
• 2:55:56
  Yes.
• 2:55:56
  You're right.
• 2:55:57
  I I wasn't satisfied with starting another one new business.
• 2:56:00
  We start two new businesses.
• 2:56:02
  Rupert Isaacson: One one dot org and one dot com, which is its
• 2:56:05
  Lynn Thomas: own panel.
• 2:56:06
  I question that quite a bit sometimes too, but they are very different purposes.
• 2:56:10
  So Welcome to your
• 2:56:11
  Rupert Isaacson: story Lynn Thomas.
• 2:56:15
  Alright.
• 2:56:15
  Well, listen.
• 2:56:16
  Thank you.
• 2:56:18
  We will reconvene.
• 2:56:22
  Lynn Thomas: Well, thank you.
• 2:56:23
  Thanks for all you do to spread the word and transform lives, and, also,
• 2:56:29
  thanks for everybody for listening.
• 2:56:30
  Appreciate
• 2:56:31
  Rupert Isaacson: it.
• 2:56:32
  It's been amazing.
• 2:56:33
  Alright.
• 2:56:34
  So until the next time, I guess we will do that difficult thing where we
• 2:56:40
  press that red button because I don't wanna press that red button because
• 2:56:43
  Lynn Thomas: it's been so amazing.
• 2:56:44
  Well, actually, that's one of the things we do with our clients is invite
• 2:56:46
  them how they would wanna close the episode or close closed the scene.
• 2:56:49
  You have to close it.
• 2:56:50
  Yeah.
• 2:56:50
  Sometimes they say they wanna push the pause button.
• 2:56:53
  Sometimes they put a bookmark in it.
• 2:56:54
  We had a client that actually literally Said he wanted to do
• 2:56:58
  a fade out, and we all literally walked backwards to do a fade out.
• 2:57:03
  So we had fun with that too.
• 2:57:04
  But yeah.
• 2:57:04
  Really?
• 2:57:06
  Rupert Isaacson: Okay, then in that case
• 2:57:08
  Lynn Thomas: To be continued.
• 2:57:09
  Dot dot dot.
• 2:57:10
  How about that?
• 2:57:11
  Rupert Isaacson: Okay.
• 2:57:11
  We have some music.
• 2:57:16
  Alright.
• 2:57:16
  Till the next time.
• 2:57:17
  Can't wait.
• 2:57:18
  Lynn, thank you so much.
• 2:57:19
  Thank you for yeah.
• 2:57:21
  Thank you.
• 2:57:22
  Alright.
• 2:57:23
  Thank you.
• 2:57:24
  thank you for joining us.
• 2:57:25
  We hope you enjoyed today's podcast.
• 2:57:27
  Join our website, new trails learning.com, to check out our online
• 2:57:32
  courses and live workshops in Horse Boy Method, movement Method, and Athena.
• 2:57:38
  These evidence-based programs have helped children, veterans, and people
• 2:57:42
  dealing with trauma around the world.
• 2:57:45
  We also offer a horse training program and self-care program
• 2:57:49
  for riders on long ride home.com.
• 2:57:52
  These include easy to do online courses and tutorials that
• 2:57:56
  bring you and your horse joy.
• 2:57:59
  For an overview of all shows and programs, go to rupert isaacson.com.
• 2:58:03
  See you on the next show.