Author and program creator of Horse Boy Method, book, and film, and so much more talks about a variety of things connected to horses and humans and the larger matrix. Don't miss how these fascinating pieces fit together forming ideas of peace, healing and growth. This episode truly has something for everyone!
For more information on names or materials referenced, or to contact Ishe- please email. iabel.hhc@gmail.com
For more information on names or materials referenced, or to contact Ishe- please email. iabel.hhc@gmail.com
Author and program creator of Horse Boy Method, book, and film, and so much more talks about a variety of things connected to horses and humans and the larger matrix. Don't miss how these fascinating pieces fit together forming ideas of peace, healing and growth. This episode truly has something for everyone!
For more information on names or materials referenced, or to contact Ishe- please email. iabel.hhc@gmail.com
For more information on names or materials referenced, or to contact Ishe- please email. iabel.hhc@gmail.com
This is the Horse Human Connection, a captivating podcast where we extend into the world of equine assisted learning, horse training. and gentleness in working with these magnificent creatures. Captivating stories from the leading professionals and ordinary people alike unravel novel ideas in being with horses. The Horse Human Connection is an idea, a place, and a voice. The idea is to support the quiet revolution and recognize the intelligence and true nature of the horse. The place is a destination farm near the Umpqua Forest and River that slows down visitors and patrons enough to experience the shift. The Voice is this podcast. Welcome to today's episode. Here we are in season two of the Horse Human Connection. I am Ishi Abel, and today I have an honored guest, Rupert Isaacson. Rupert is a journalist and author. He's written Horseboy, Long Way Home, and The Meaning of the Hunt. Horseboy was made into a movie. Horseboy is also a method, a method to help autistic children enhance learning on horseback. Rupert has several other programs as well. Welcome to the podcast, Rupert. Thank you for having me on. Wonderful. In case people are not familiar with your work, can you tell us a little bit more about the programs that you offer and your facility? Sure I have three programs or we have three programs. The first one is called horse boy method and that's Basically getting communication Using or with horses as your colleague And it's predominantly mounted work Either with a very small child in front of you in a very large synthetic western saddle, or if people are older putting them up with us walking at the shoulder or driving them in long reins. And the reason why we do those three ways of being mounted is that way we can create, under the rider collection in the horse, which creates rocking of the hips. in the rider, rhythmic rocking of the hips, and the relaxation of the psoas muscle, which is inside the hip, and this creates a hormone, a feel good hormone in the body called oxytocin, but oxytocin is also the hormone of communication. So that's horseboy method. We create, we create Oxytocin in people's bodies that helps them to communicate and takes away stress. That's the first program. Second program is a movement method and that's basically doing the same thing without horses. It's never quite as strong as without horses, but you can do it more because most people are not on horses all the time. And so we show people how to do the same thing using play equipment, stuff in the home, stuff in a classroom. And that works well, and then we have something called Athena. And Athena is how we train the horses into collection, which is all done from the ground in hand work and long reining work. We do that as its own therapy program, both for horses to rehab and maintain therapy horses, and also for adults and young adults with, who are neurodivergent, learning how to become horse trainers. And that's very empowering. and very healing by itself. We do a lot with PTSD. Also with veterans, we work with the German army, the American air force, and that sort of thing with the Athena program. So it's three things. Horseboy method, movement method, and Athena. So when you're working with the PTSD do you use EMDR on horseback and the rocking of the hips to enhance that or? Yeah, we can do, we can do, but, but the, the, Doing mounted work with adults is always dependent on a couple of things. It's dependent on height to weight ratio, you know, body mass BMI. You know, there are some horses in therapy programs that are just too small and cannot support large adults on their backs and most most therapy programs have donation horses that have some degree of stiffness, injury or arthritis. So one has to be a little bit careful with that. And, you know, so if I have some big dude, you know, coming back from a hot zone, the last thing he wants to worry about is, is he too big for this horse? You know, so I would do mounted work with somebody like that if, I have a large enough horse and I do in some programs, but not in others, but Athena is mostly an unmounted program. Horse boy method is mostly the mounted program. Okay. Yeah, that makes sense. Is there, is there a place in any of your programs where there is self regulation or regulation with the horse? Like, do you work with that at all? Yeah, we do that all the time. I mean, horses actually demand that of you. So horses are possibly one of the most powerful vehicles for humans to learn self regulation because their feedback is so immediate. If we don't regulate our emotions around them, well, it's just not possible to really do anything with horses. So We generally find that working with and around horses in any way at all brings an ever greater amount of self regulation. So we don't really need to talk about it explicitly. However we can sort of let nature take its course with that. When you fill somebody with oxytocin who is emotionally dysregulated, then yeah, for sure, they're going to regulate. And then one of the other things that happens in all of our programs is people are moving and problem solving all the time. When you move and problem solve, your brain actually produces a protein called BDNF and that stands for brain derived. Neurotrophic factor and that's the building block of neuroplasticity. It's basically growing yourself in your brain and Among the trillions of brain cells that get fired when you move like this are a series of cells with a funny name So if people you want to know what these cells are run and get a piece of paper because you will not remember it I promise you it's a it's it sounds like a Pokemon character. So the name of these cells is is Purkinje cells, that's P U R K I N J E. We really ought to pronounce it Purkinje, because Purkinje was the Czech scientist who discovered them at the end of the 19th century. These are the largest neurons, brain cells you've got, and they govern, among other things, Social skills. So if you fill somebody with oxytocin and BDNF, which is giving them all these Purkinje cells, which are governing social skills, and at the same time, the horses demand so much self regulation anyway, you've got a fairly winning combo. So I'd say all of our programs do that to some degree. Yes. It's really fascinating to me just very recently to learn about the neurochemicals and what's actually going on. I was very fortunate to have a mentor and trainer who understood this. I don't know if, as soon as the book Horsebrain Human Brain came out, she wanted me to have a copy and she read it and we talked about it. But bringing all those things in as the explanation of what happens between horses and humans, when we haven't understood, just, it just gives that much more awareness and possibility and being able to tailor things in ways that really, really make sense. I just heard about that protein hormone you were talking about, because I listened to your hunter gatherer. Interview with Warwick the other day and it made me realize the things that I've done and it so that there's this place like I've recently discovered that I'm mildly autistic and so there are these things that I've always done and kind of intuitively integrated into my life and now. A lot from listening to you and other people, I'm figuring out how some of these pieces fit together, but there's still things that aren't really obvious to me. So that particular hormone hormone or neurochemical, the, the protein one. BDNF, brain derived neurotrophic factor. Yes. How do you see that fitting with people with autism? Well, it's in the same way that it fits with anyone, any mammal's brain. All mammals produce it. Probably reptiles probably produce it too. I'd need to check on that. But mammals certainly do. So if you put, say, a horse, forget humans for a moment. If you put horses through A really good training program that involves all sorts of novel movement and crossing their midlines. So that would be sort of a mix of dressage done well and not done badly, but, you know, and good trail riding and some jumping and problem solving labyrinths. Well, then you're going to get that in the horse and what you'll see is a massive change of personality in the horse where they become. Extremely interested in working with you. Where they might previously not have been. And you get the same thing with humans. You can test it out in yourself. The more you move and problem solve, the, and particularly the more you move in novel ways and cross your midline when you move, the cleverer er er er you will be, and the more curious and seeking you will be, and the more you sit still, the more judgmental and You know unwilling to look at change and afraid of change and Effectively atrophying in the brain you become and there is this is true of all of us. We're not designed to sit still this is a recent thing in in our culture we've we've arrived at this very strange place. I don't know if you're familiar with the work of jane pike She's a a great friend and colleague and she's a an amazing horsewoman and Knows the neuro the autonomic nervous system very well. I absolutely recommend having her on this podcast And you know, she points out often that we have reached this strange Point in history where for the first time we have the choice about whether to move or not You can sit in the middle of an empty room have all your brain stimulated through, you know Your computer and you don't even have to get up to get food. You can just have it brought. You might have to answer the door for Uber Eats and you might have to get up to go to the toilet, but that's about it. And this is unprecedented. But what happens is our brains, you know, don't appreciate it at all. So there's a, there's a parallel here with dementia, for example, you know, if you put old people in old people parking. their brains die. And if you if young people with developing brains don't move enough, their brains don't develop properly. And the the figures on this are are interesting. In the USA, I think the average child gets outside for about seven minutes a day. It's horrible. I mean, it's not Well, what's extraordinary is that that's even an option. Because what often people think of as going outside is I've left the house, but actually one's left the house in a, in a mode of transport. So, and then you go to school or wherever, and then you're in there, and you might be walking around in school and so on, but, you know, we know that recess has been Chipped away at and chipped away at and chipped away at and then they often don't let kids out of the weathers Quote unquote in clement because they don't want to get sued if the kid, you know gets sick so what happens is they just go outside and When you aren't interacting with the environment that your organism because we're organisms if you're not interacting with the environment that your organism is, designed to be in It's gonna go squiffy. all these pieces are coming together more and more of, of things that I'm so interested in, and you are giving me all these reasons why, like, intuitively, I wanna offer programs that, that encompass so much of this, and now I'm understanding the, the real reasons behind it. I wanted to ask you about the, I know you've had like. I have some background with shaman and lived with bush people. How do shamanic practices relate to the programs that you offer? Okay. Well, there was, when you were introducing me, you were, you were very kind and you introduced a couple of books that I'd written. There was one that you didn't talk about called the healing land and the healing land is a book that really the first book I wrote that it predates the horse boy. And it predates my third book, which is The Long Ride Home. But The Healing Land, The Horseboy, and The Long Ride Home are all books about healing, really. The first book sort of describes how I fell into knowing about shamanic practices in the Kalahari area of southern Africa with sun bushman hunter gatherers. And the reason I got pulled in there was For human rights reasons, actually, I was a journalist. And so I was first reporting on and then became involved as an activist in their attempts to regain ancestral lands that they had been illegally evicted from. And in the event we were actually successful we helped them win the four times the largest land claims in African history. Areas, you know unthinkably big areas and that they've been kicked off to make way for diamond mines when you're hanging out with hunting and gathering people and I just want to stress that the sun are also involved in the modern economy as well, but they still hunt and gather there's a few things that you notice. And the first one And this is true whether you're dealing with hunter gatherers in Africa, or the Amazon, or Siberia, or Australia, or the Arctic, or wherever. They are super egalitarian societies. So, for example, there's gender equality, because there's no separation of importance. between, say, hunting and gathering. And they have different seasons. So you don't tend to hunt in the hot season because the meat doesn't keep, the animals are breeding and there's enough wild foods, why would you expend so much energy and expose yourself to so much danger? But in the dry season or the cold season, you have to. So men and women economically participate at an equal level. They don't have chiefs, they don't have head men, they don't have hierarchies, they have councils of elders. Who have varying levels of expertise in different areas and you, you, you sort of defer to the obvious person, male or female, who's got the experience in the field that you need to talk about. The other thing that you notice about these societies is that they are societies of conflict resolution. And the reason they're societies of conflict resolution is it doesn't pay to overpopulate. As an agriculture, agricultural societies have to overpopulate. And that's what leads to warfare, that leads to the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, basically. You know, pestilence, famine, warfare, and death. Well, death was always there, but you know what I mean. And but that's not really there at all in the hunting and gathering cultures, which are much older. So, but they do know that if Conflict gets beyond a certain point in the community the community will fragment and if the community fragments everybody dies So that's not a good thing So the shamanic practices that they have are all based around this so that can be actual healing someone is sick and need healing, or has broken their leg, or got nuts, or whatever. But it can equally be just to make sure that the psychic dirty laundry of the community doesn't get beyond a certain level. And so they will tend to have these transcendental ceremonies in which a healer or healers will go into an altered state of consciousness and intercede with ancestor spirits usually on behalf of either an individual or the group as a whole or both, frequently it's both. And what this does is it kind of keeps everybody cool. And you notice how functional these people are and are so, but it started very, very quickly for me because I realized that when we were relaying information from the lawyers on these land claims to the communities, the communities, of course, were going to their healers and say, well, what do you think? And then the healers were going into their normal state of consciousness and going into the spirit world and coming back with a series of. Comments and instructions, which would then become the brief for the lawyers. And I realized that this was what was going on and that this was actually really effective. The people were just nailing it every time. And I realized, too, that the lawyers could never be told what was going on, because we were dealing, you know, in the high courts and all of that. So it was really interesting to see how it this, this, this supposedly magical thing. Informed this extremely dry, rational thing, you know, the court process and so on. And so, from that point on, really, I have never seen any separation. Between that side of life and the rational side of life and they are always completely integrated in any every moment of my day So do you go to the spirit world to help to help get in? Programs. Yeah. No, not really because I'm not a trained. I'm not a trained shaman. I mean to be a trained shaman in that way is about a 30 year training and you have to go live in the Kalahari, but they, what, what those healers will say is about 50 percent of people have a knack for healing. to some degree. And so I'm certainly one of them. And so I can access empathy within myself to a degree that is healing. Yes, that I can do. And you can probably do that. And I'm sure a lot of listeners can do that. To take it further than that, to fall into a state of altered consciousness and go into the spirit world and climb the ropes to God's village and do all the things that those, that those shamans do. No, no, that, that, that is a decades long. training process, but can you, can you work from the heart? Yes. And is that, is that effective? Absolutely. And so with that, do you have some, I mean, how do you describe the animal communication that you have with your horses? Like, you must have a favorite horse. I don't describe it. So I think animal communication is often or not often, sometimes misunderstood. So I have known animal communicators over the years. But I very seldom run across an animal communicator who said they were an animal communicator. Most people that are really good animal communicators would never let on. They'd never go out there and put up a website and say, I'm an animal communicator. Because the way in which animals communicate is not in that humanistic way. That's probably a product of our imaginations, and it doesn't mean that there's no value in it. Doesn't mean that somebody projecting their imagination through A horse or a cat or, or something couldn't come up with some good intuitive things and perhaps very much believe that that is what they're being told, but because they'd be getting a very good intuitive sense. And so they could give very good advice. I'm not saying that because someone puts up a website saying they're an animal communicator, they don't give a good advice. They might work very well, give good advice, but it's not quite the same as being a real animal communicator. And I could, I could explain in more detail if, if, if you want. What that's that that sort of real animal communication is but it's not, it's not what you think it is. Yeah, I'm interested in your, your perspective on that. Okay, well, the, the, the primary relationship with animals, with humans is as hunters. And so if you're going to be an effective hunter in a hunting and gathering, you know context, which is the original human context, which is still there on planet Earth, it's not like these people haven't gone away. There's less of them than there were, but they're still around and they'll be around after our civilization disappears. They're older than us and they'll be around after us. They must communicate with animals. In a way that allows animals to decide when to offer themselves for the arrow. When they are hunting, they're very much aware that there's a supernatural process at work, which will decide whether or not they're successful in the hunt, that only has, to some degree, a relationship with how good they are as a hunter or a tracker. And they must have those skills as well. But It doesn't stop there. So they will wait until They will get a real sense of whether an animal says, I have been set aside for you or not. Then for example, let's say a group of hunters wants to go one way because there's a, you know, some antelope have gone that way. But perhaps there's a lion in the area. What would they do about that? Well, they'll contact the lion. They'll have the healer contact the lion when he's in that sort of shamanic state and say, where are you going to be? And let's, we'll go the other way. And then you'll have experiences like animals that produce rain and how you interact with animals in order to create rain. And then you'll have animals that you can ask to help with healing. I've seen, for example, leopards called out of the bush to the fireside, stuff like that, that you just can't credit that you're seeing. And then there's shape shifting, where a trained healer would take on, an animal would allow a healer to go inside its body in order to go and travel a distance that they couldn't perhaps travel by foot and do healing work. And this all sounds completely cuckoo, but I can tell you that if you are in areas like the Kalahari where, you know, you're very far from western medicine, this is what goes on. And where, you know, success or failure in hunting. Will decide life or death and this is how people do it and they're successful So there's there's value in it when it comes into the to our world the best animal communicator I ever worked with was a man called Charles Siddle in England Who was a funny old dude who lived in a trailer? north of London, but vets used to vets used to refer people to him in that area. If it was a bullet job, if it was something that they just couldn't deal with and the horse was going to have to be put down, it was like the last try. And he consistently got these extraordinary results. And I followed him as a journalist and I saw him take on horses, which had, you know, stuff that they shouldn't, they shouldn't have been able to recover from. And they all made recoveries and went back into work. I asked him what was going on and how he did this. And he said, Oh, When the animals are communicating what they need, it has nothing to do with their owners. It has nothing to do with how they're being kept or how they're being trained or anything like that. It's, this is much, much, much more basic. It's, it's about I am sick. I'm having this pain. Change my water these three times. Change my rugs at this time of day. Give me hay at this hour and at this hour and at this hour. Boom. Enough. Because, because their emotional life, the emotional life of animals is partly tied up with humans when we own, when, you know, when we have them living with us, of course. But mostly not. Mostly the emotional life of animals and the spiritual life of animals goes on between them and their own species. Which is why, for example, with horses, it's so much better for them if they can live in a herd because that's, that's their emotional life. Without that, then they have to kind of try to have an emotional life with monkeys. That's us, who are their predators. And I mean, it's not impossible, but it's not ideal. Because it means they're always a bit on our terms. So in terms of the relationship I have with my own horses, Well, I just love them. I mean, that's all I, I just love them, you know, that's enough and if I approach them with that sort of empathy and I'm, you know, I, I do keep them in a herd, they do live out. They can walk in and out of sheds, you know, even now in the winter here we are in Germany, it's snowy and icy, but they have rugs on and they can wander in and out as they like, 24 hour access to hay and in the, you know, and they go out to the field when it hasn't, when they want to, and they interact within their herd. This in, in many ways is the best I can give them. And then the training I do for their minds and bodies is an extra layer, but they'd be okay if they were just horses. However, most horses are living in situations, including mine, where, as domestic animals, they do require to be looked after by us. And they're bred by us and they never have a time when they're not with us, you know, we decided to breed them. We will sign their death warrants usually when it's time to go. We will. We don't like to think about it, but we will. We, they interact with us every day and they completely rely on us for their well being. So it's natural to have a level of communication. I think every horse owner, every dog owner has a level of communication with their animal that is. Above and beyond the norm, that I do believe in, yes. And I do believe that one can get a lot intuitively from them about what they need. But, are they actually contacting us and saying, you know, That saddle doesn't fit so well, and I don't like the fact, I don't like that man over there. I don't know. I suspect that that's a human thing, but I could be wrong. Yeah, that's a lot. That all makes sense. I've had some different kinds of experiences. I spend time meditating with the horses, and a lot of the work that I like to do, like, they are right in there with it, and it's Oh yeah, I mean, I do that too. I'll sit there and meditate with the horses, and they'll absolutely come hang out with me and meditate with me. Because I'm giving my heart resonance, you know, the electromagnetic field off my heart is nice to stand next to, you know, if that, and if I'm in a bad mood, it's probably not so nice to stand next to. But it, you know, I, yes, I, I, I think that that's a really good thing to do, for example. But I'm, I guess animal communication can be something much deeper and more interesting. It has many, many different levels. And I think one of the first things that brought my awareness to it was the Temple Grandin movie. At that time I was laying down with cows to get the calves to come over to me because so they wouldn't be afraid. And somebody asked me if I'd seen the movie. I watched the movie and the thing that I took away from, from that is how she talks about herd animals communicating in pictures in their heads. And autistic people being more apt to communicate in pictures or to think in pictures and how there's like a match up with that. And I know that it's like that for everybody. I mean, and everybody doesn't think to do that or to think, to think that way, but I think everybody does think that way, actually intrinsically, but I think people get trained out of thinking that way. So I think, I think all infants think that way. And I think all young children think that way. And then it's sort of beaten out of them. All of, you know, all of my earliest memories were of direct conversations with God. And at a certain point it was beaten out of me, you know, and I was lucky enough to re find it. But our societies don't promote it because if people are wandering around Having a nice time like that. They're a bit difficult to control and they're unlikely to go fight your wars for you. And you know, etc Yes, just too happy And happy. This is the other interesting thing that you notice about the hunter gatherer state is that the intrinsic human state is actually happy It's not unhappy. It's happy and unhappiness is something that comes in sometimes But it's not the overarching state whereas of course in our society. It is the overarching state, but that's an anomaly That's an abomination. That's not how it's designed. And that's where we're lucky if we do spend a lot of time with animals because they bring us back to that. They do very much. In fact, I see, and I really, really appreciated the comments I've heard you make in different interviews and on your own podcast about about the herd dynamics and so much has been focused on like lead mares and dominance and, you know, pulling away like what Monty Roberts seems to have started with, with, you know, the language of Equus and this is how we do it in the round pen because we can get their attention the way a horse would. And I have moved very much from I really don't like that dominance model. It reminds me of slavery. I like the term benevolent leadership When I need to and I have to make a joke all good slave owners would say that That's what they said in the south y'all And that's what they said in south africa as well. No, i'm joking i'm messing with you There's all the time I want to spend as much time with horses co creating whether we're co creating and meditating or they're showing me things about somebody who's in the in the round pen who's come for some introspection or we're on a ride that's being co created and I only like to have to move to the benevolent leadership when it's safety travel or health you know where I need them to submit but I'd rather them submit without the pure dominance. Yeah, I don't think you need pure dominance in the, in the, you know, people that live with their horses. If you are part of a horse culture, rather than it's something that you do as a hobby, then you're so in sync with your horses that I think it's just not even a conversation you have to have, that there is a bottom line sometimes, as you say, with that benevolent thing, and you do obviously see that in horse dynamics and herd dynamics, but most of the time, you know, horses are not arguing. And those little bits of Is back to push you away from that bit of the ram bale because I want that bit of the ram bale or something like that These things are momentary most of the time occasionally We know that they do corner each other and kick the hell out of each other and break each other's eggs They do do that and they do that in the wild as well, by the way you know, we're not the only animals that behave dysfunctionally to each other. Horses can do that too. All mammals can do that but the you know, there's a shadow side to everything. But just not that big. But yeah, I, I, one can fall into a danger of extremes when one starts to go down this valley, it's a valid rabbit hole, but one can end up falling into extremes, which is that, you know, some people say, well, you know, perhaps you shouldn't even ride horses or, you know, put a saddle on them or put a bit in their mouth or this or this or this or this. And although those are, those are worthy philosophical questions, it's not that one shouldn't. Pose those questions and think about those questions and talk about those questions. But one doesn't want to create a new fascism, and a new intolerance, where now there's, now there's a new dogma, you know, and it's got to be like this. Because these things are all to some degree products of the human imagination. Horses are also athletes, need to move like we do. And if we don't move like that, we're not happy, we're not happy, we need to move to the best of our abilities as much as we can because we're designed to hunt and gather, which is a, which is a, you know, a physical thing. And until the day we die, you know, hunter gatherers don't retire, they might do less, but they don't retire, you know, nobody wants to retire, that's again, these are, these are concepts that come from, you know, making people go for 30 years into a factory. Well, yes, you definitely want to retire from that, but you don't want to stop moving. You don't want to put your feet up in an armchair for 20 years because you'll die. So yeah, it's horses are the same. They want to do stuff. They want to learn stuff. They want to check stuff out. They want, they're curious. If having a bit in their mouth was so terrible, probably no by now, but if you don't want to put a bit in a horse's mouth, that's also fine. Everyone has their own ways. If you don't want to do any mounted work, that's also fine. But I think what one must do is consider the needs of the horse. For that kind of movement, as well as the stillness, and one just has to give them those opportunities you know, as best one can.
MacBook Air Microphone:I see that it's time for a break. We'll be right back with part two.