24 - Unlocking the Secrets of Horse Whispering w/ Anna Twinney

 Guest Name - Anna Twinney

Summary:
Explore the profound connection between humans and horses through body language, telepathy, and energetic resonance. Anna Twinney shares insights on horse whispering, trauma healing, and the transformative power of animal communication.

Keywords
Horse whispering, animal communication, body language, telepathy, trauma healing, energetic resonance, spiritual connection, horse training, emotional awareness, healing with horses

Key Topics:

• Horse whispering and body language
• Telepathic connection with animals
• Healing trauma through horses
• The role of energetic resonance in communication
• The importance of the sacred pause in interactions

Titles
Unlocking the Secrets of Horse Whispering: Body Language, Telepathy & Energy
The Magic of Horses: Healing, Connection & Communication

Sound Bites
"Horses read 93% body language, only 7% spoken."
"Horses see beyond words, into the soul."
"Horses reflect our truth and help us heal."

Chapters
00:00 Introduction to Horse Whispering and Healing
02:00 Understanding Horse Whispering: Body Language and Emotion
10:14 The Trifactor of Truth: Body Language, Telepathy, and Energy
13:31 The Unique Connection Between Humans and Horses
16:57 Horses as Healers: Impact on Trauma and Vulnerability
21:48 Emotional Connection with Horses
26:19 The Sacred Pause in Horsemanship
32:08 Anna's Journey from Police to Horse Whisperer
37:00 Holistic Approaches and Upcoming Events
43:24 intro and outro.wav

Resources / Show Notes
Anna Twinney's Website - https://annatwinney.com
Equine Warrior Foundation - https://equinewarrior.org
Instagram - https://instagram.com/annatwinney

Be Well Asheville Platform - https://bewellasheville.com

Be Well Asheville Meetup (Wellness pros) -
http://meetup.com/asheville-health-wellness-networking

Be Well Asheville Collective (Wellness pros) -
https://bewellasheville.com/be-well-asheville-wellness-collective

The Wellness in Asheville podcast is produced by Be Well Asheville, your local news source covering health + wellness news + events in Asheville. Get the latest at bewellasheville.com or follow @bewellasheville.

Transcript

Travis Richardson (00:01)
All right. Today's guest is Anna Twinney, an internationally recognized equine and animal linguist whose spiritual calling has led her to translate the silent language of souls for almost three decades. From British police officer to mystical communicator, Anna has become the first female clinician to carry ancient horse wisdom to China and Mongolia.

working with over 10,000 individuals and horses worldwide, including gentling more than 1,500 wild horses. Based at Whispering Feather Farm with her Spanish Mustang soulmate Excalibur, founded the Way of the Equine Warrior, where horses serve as powerful healers for veterans, at-risk youth,

and survivors seeking restoration through her revolutionary trifactor of truth approach, combining body language, telepathic connection, and divine energetic resonance. Now, I have to say, this was a pretty powerful episode. I actually broke down in tears around 20 minutes in, and the reason that was is because for whatever reason, I had...

during the conversation with Anna, this large horse just staring literally through my soul. And as we were speaking, it just caught me so off guard that I had to pause for a moment because I had a couple of tears running down my cheeks. So I've never had this happen before on a podcast episode. And so I was going to cut this out. But for the listeners, I thought it might be interesting to leave it in. So.

You want to find out what that emotional moment was about and how I handled that and how Anna handled that, go ahead and listen on. And without further ado, let's jump right in and meet Anna.

Travis Richardson (02:00)
Welcome to the show, Anna.

Anna Twinney (02:02)
Well, good morning and thank you for having me.

Travis Richardson (02:06)
Well, I'm really fascinated by this topic around horse whispering. think there's going to be a lot of listeners that feel the same. think we've kind of heard of maybe like the dog. The dog whisperer is how I know he was a famous guy on some channel on TV many years ago. And then there's some other whispering. But I'm really curious about this topic because I've met a

friend some some years ago who owned a farm and they did a lot of she did a lot of work around horses and healing it was trauma based I think it was around veterans and then you do something very similar so ⁓ let's start off by just defining what is this term horse whispering

Anna Twinney (02:47)
I think I would define it in my own way, because there's so many angles that you can take. And often people have said to me, when I've done animal communication or horse whispering, do they need to be near their horse or do I need to be near their horse that I'm whispering in their ear? And it's nothing like that. It truly is about capturing the whisper. And what that might mean is, it's honing in the nuances of understanding body language would be one piece.

to realize that every individual, horses, dogs, cats, humans, everybody shows how they're truly feeling through their body. And with the horses, you're looking at about 93 % to be body language and only 7 % spoken. So horses are very quiet in nature and you might hear a little nicker and you might hear the whinny, but as a whole, they're quiet. So they're going off of...

Tiny things like what the eye would be saying and the intention that we carry within our eye, the mood, the emotion, intention, everything like that. They are masters at reading body language. Well, the same thing means that we could become masters reading it too, to say, let's not wait for the kick or the bite or the rushing or what people like to class as bad manners or inappropriate behavior, but instead let's look at what they're saying through their motion.

And particularly for me, the eyes, because they can show sorrow, sadness, lack of understanding, grief, any emotion that we have, they have. And if you can capture that through the eyes, then you realize, yeah, that horse is in pain. And pain doesn't have to be physical, it could be emotional and mental pain, and it's gonna show up somewhere. So catching the relaxation signs, catching the stress signals,

allows us to be horse whisperers. And in doing so, now let's flip that around, Travis, it would also mean that we're not yelling back. So we're not looking at force and violence and prodding and poking and sticks and paraphernalia, but instead we're looking at ourselves. And that's where we become the mirror for ourselves to say, what kind of force are you attracting? What kind of problem are you attracting? What...

Travis Richardson (04:57)
Hmm.

Anna Twinney (05:11)
part are you playing in this individual's life to support and save and be there for them? And at the same time, what are they reflecting in you that you can become the best version of yourself and your authentic self?

Travis Richardson (05:25)
Hmm. The only thing I can relate to this idea of horse whispering is I'm a new ish cat dad. And I love my little furry furry friends. I've been before that really wasn't into animals. But my partner had like, you know, for a few years was kind of working on me to get get some cats. And so we did.

And we just recently I'm sharing this because I'm going to be curious how this relates to horses. But we just recently was watching this. I think it was on Instagram or something. And of course, now I'm getting all the cat videos, which I love. I'm like, serve me more. Serve me more of those. But they were talking about how to cats only understand people as large cats. So if you want to speak.

Anna Twinney (06:03)
Yes, of course.

Travis Richardson (06:16)
cat language, you need to understand how cats, how they look at other cats. what I learned is if you close your eyes, like you blink really slowly or put your head down, it's a sign of either submission or you're not a threat. Whereas if you direct directly or eyeballing them and looking straight at them, that is frightening. ⁓ can be frightening, especially when you're trying to take a cat where like we've, we've got some outdoor cats that are

⁓ we we'd like to take care of them, but they're so scared because they just have been traumatized or whatever. So I've been practicing this and it seems like it's working. Like the cats are way, they're, they're starting to come closer to us. They're less afraid. And with horses though, you mentioned the eyes, how it feels like for you, must be very sensitive because

An eye is an eye. don't know, you how much does an eye change from one moment to the next? Is it you that has changed to become more sensitive or is it really something that the eye of a horse is doing or is it something you're doing? Do you know what I mean?

Anna Twinney (07:24)
I do, I feel like it's our birthright as a whole. When we're born into these bodies, we have that ability to sense the rooms and many people can relate to that. If they think back to when they were children, they know if they were welcome in a room and in the British culture, it's, it once was said, they need to be seen and not heard. And so children relate to individuals that embrace them. They like to be seen.

And if you hold their hand or look into the eye, show the interest, that child senses it, not just through your actions, but ultimately through your thoughts, your behavior, your mannerism, your recognition, your eye contact, your energy. So none of this, none of this goes for one species alone. And I think we're oversimplifying when people come back with, you've got to act like a horse or you've got to act like a cat.

And I don't think that's true, because through animal communication, when you talk to them, I think they would think that's the most absurd thing that they've ever heard to go, you're not a cat, you're not a horse, you're a human. And so there's certain behaviors one can adopt and adjust to, and there's certain cultures that we can learn about. And it's like me, I went to China and Morocco and I talk natural horsemanship to these countries.

Travis Richardson (08:23)
Mm. Mm.

Anna Twinney (08:48)
And while I didn't spend weeks, months or years learning about the culture, I learnt the basics to be able to be respectful of that culture, not come in as maybe an American or Brit to go, I'm wearing what I wanna wear, I'm saying what I wanna say. No, I'm going to look at how you want us to behave and what's important to you for respect. And so the same happens with the horses. You're adapting and adjusting your body language to awareness, to realize if you put your eyes on eyes and you're coming...

Travis Richardson (08:58)
you

Anna Twinney (09:17)
forward at a great speed and you're a little bit invasive and you're very excited, that's going to set it back. That horse is going to retreat, spin, run, not want to be approached because they're very gentle as a whole. So adjusting to it to realize, drop your eyes when a horse gets eye contact with you, that's out of respect. Pause a moment when they're thinking, should I stay or should I go now? Pause.

Travis Richardson (09:36)
Hmm.

Anna Twinney (09:42)
take a deep breath to ground yourself so that you're not all over the place. Realize that they can hear your heartbeat up to four feet away. So if you're very excited, nervous, confused, they're going to hear that heartbeat and they need to, they're tuned into it, they're not spoiled like us. So they don't have the distractions and they don't have the white noise, right? So they're still very connected with nature, with their feet on the ground and they could look in your eyes and go, well, you're overthinking this.

Travis Richardson (10:04)
Mm-hmm.

Anna Twinney (10:11)
Because you know, it's like this Travis, if I stare at you and over stare at you, often that's a sign of somebody not being able to focus. They're gonna go, my God, I gotta really focus because I can't focus. And they do get a little bit more intense. If I'm somewhere else with my thoughts, my eyes will get glazed. So if I'm thinking about what I've got to do this afternoon, my eyes get glazed.

because you either see in pictures or you see in words or whatever it might be and you're not really present. So these horses are identifying, are you blinking? Are you present? Are you really in the now? So is your cat. They're looking at where are you with your thoughts? Because if you're too intense, and this is like any human, I was teaching actually some of the military the other day, SEAL Team Six to be precise. And you know, and I'm thinking, I wonder if they look down.

Travis Richardson (10:47)
Hmm.

wow, holy cow.

Anna Twinney (11:07)
No, instead they're staring. It was the yes ma'am and they're staring and I'm going, my God, I've got to identify now. Are you doing this for this reason, this reason, this reason? And when they worked with a couple of the horses, I said to the one guy, you gotta blink. You're too intense, know, blink. This horse doesn't know what the hell you're saying and you're just coming at him with your eyes. So you gotta blink.

Travis Richardson (11:12)
Mm-hmm.

Ha ha ha.

Anna Twinney (11:32)
And these were the things that we could relate back to families to say, you know what, I know you're focused and I know you're trying hard, but if you glaze over and you don't blink, that's too much for any human being to handle in a vulnerable situation or in a conversational situation. And so yeah, this comes back to the eyes to realize it's all in the intention. I tell my students you can hide behind a smile, but you can't hide behind your eyes.

Travis Richardson (11:50)
Hmm.

Yeah, right. They're sort of the gateway to the soul, I guess. Right. That's what the thing is. Well, this is a good segue into your I was reading on your website about this trifactor of truth that you an approach here where you combine body language, a bit of ⁓ what you call telepathic connection and divine energetic resonance. I was like, Whoa, that is a lot. And before you answer what that is, I'm

Anna Twinney (12:02)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Travis Richardson (12:25)
The thing that was curious to me was, does that mean then, as you were talking about body language just a second ago, is there something that a person needs to do internally that is kind of, I guess, independent of body language where how you're being, of course that shows up in the body, but is there something in addition to the body that, the telepathy thing, I guess, are the horses sensing what's going on inside?

regardless of how you're behaving.

Anna Twinney (12:55)
which is a beautiful way to look at the horse whispering again, because if you're talking to the layman, the lay person, one would say the whispers in the eyes and the whispers in the minor nuance. And yet when we get that little bit deeper, the truth is the whispers in the thought. It's the thought, you're setting intention with the thought. So imagine if you're going out to say hello to a horse.

and you've got one foot out of the door already, because you're on a timeframe, they're going to read that in every part of your body language and your eyes, if you've got control issues. Like if you're nervous around that horse or you've got control issues, it's going to show up through the nervous system. And so where does that all start? It starts in the thought. So therefore, what makes them magical, there's too many things to mention as to what makes the horse magical, but at the same time, they're teaching you to be

truthfully in the now, in that present time, to let go of your past in that moment and not worry about the future. And instead, you're thinking about what you're doing, right? So that thought will transmit. And this, this is kind of fun because often people think it's a little spiritual woo-woo and at the same time, it's not.

we have the ability to connect with loved ones and family members and twins and so on through our minds. Well, we have the ability to connect with every single species. This isn't simply narrowed down to horses. We're looking at every single species with a heartbeat. If you can find that vibrational frequency, they are masters at it already and they're living in a world where they're waiting for us to catch up.

And so when we can align our thoughts with their thoughts, then we're connecting on that telepathic level, which means they're going to pick up on thought. And hopefully the listeners are going, well, where is that vibrational frequency? You know, how can I find that platform? It's the same for the reptiles, the furry friends, the scaled friends, and it's called love. It's called love. You connect with your heart, you drop from your head to your heart, then you can...

tune out the white noise and identify the animal's conversation.

Travis Richardson (15:13)
Love that reminds me of the movie Avatar when the person connects to the horse through a really a neural network, but it's really the ⁓ example of the telepathy part of what you're talking about that takes place just kind of kind of through that. ⁓ So how I mean, what do you what is it do you think that makes horses? I mean, they are I feel like a special creature. You mentioned that.

Anna Twinney (15:30)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Travis Richardson (15:42)
they are

magical and there's lots of reasons why. Is it because we've just been with, I mean, you can say the same thing for like dogs, I guess, in some ways that we have kind of evolved with them now for many, years and relied upon them. What do you think? What's your take on why horses are unique, special and why we should spend more time with them?

Anna Twinney (15:57)
Yep.

Well, you mentioned dogs and while I think there's crossovers between predators and prey, so the dog and the horse, and you could look at behavior modification and training techniques that are actually exceedingly similar, beyond that, the dog is so loyal and they live with us 24-7.

that they don't necessarily reflect everything that we're doing, saying, or being, because they love you unconditionally. That's the known fact is the unconditional love. But the horses have to stay in that frame of protection and self-awareness first. And with that protection comes the fact that they read people beyond any other species.

Travis Richardson (16:35)
Mm.

Anna Twinney (16:54)
So they are listening to the heartbeats, they're seeing the intention, the nuance, they're looking at nervous systems in that way. And there's probably uncharted territory that we haven't looked at, being our body language, their body language, her dynamics, a natural state of being with the land. Then I'm looking at telepathy, energy healing and energetic connection. Well,

What about vibration of the land? What about colors that they see that we don't? There's so much that we haven't explored. And yet with this comes the fact that they're a thousand pounds, 2,000 pounds, they're large, and they can become so soft and so connected and so communicative. And when you do things right, they're seeking the path of least resistance. They're seeking to support you. They can be...

Travis Richardson (17:48)
Hmm.

Anna Twinney (17:51)
and misunderstood so quickly and people will fear them. So with that comes this partnership that can only be gained through trust-based ways of being. They are therefore your true reflection. When you got a bad day, they might not approach. When you got a good day, they're going to be all open. But there's other horses that will reach out and want to hug you. There's other horses that want to stabilize your heartbeat.

Travis Richardson (18:16)
Mmm.

Anna Twinney (18:19)
So it just depends on the personality. I found that there's about 28 personalities in horses. So if you put that together with different learning styles and different beings, they're all going to help in different ways. They can help you to become grounded, to remain in the present time, find unconditional love, correct communication, drop that which no longer serves you, connect you to spirit. The list is so long, you could probably say a word and you could go, yeah.

Horses could do that and you could come up with a patience. Yep, horses can do that. Trust, horses can do that. Gratitude, horses can do that. They can do it all. It's remarkable.

Travis Richardson (18:58)
Hmm.

It sounds like different teachers in like school and there's obviously you've got a psychology professor and you've got a, you know, math professor and they all have their different things all here to teach. So you have experience ⁓ working with courses around with veterans and trauma, trauma healing, at risk youth, those kinds of things.

Anna Twinney (19:07)
Yeah.

Travis Richardson (19:26)
What kinds of things have you seen horses be able to do in terms of impact for those kinds of populations?

Anna Twinney (19:36)
Yeah.

If I think of the youth, what jumps out for me would be that they could be loved anyway. And that was huge for them to say, I'm seen and I'm being seen. No matter sexual preferences, past abuse, traumas, the horses would see them as to who they truly are. And with that, comes with everything of,

You don't need to tell your story. Perhaps they know their story already and they can sense it.

and to see people, I guess, to become vulnerable, and even prod, the horse can prod them to tell the truth. And if you have the right translator to say, what does this mean to you? Like if a horse puts his head right at the solar plexus, what does that mean to you? Does it mean that it's to do with your self-esteem or is it your tummy? You know, is this horse referencing a loss of a child?

Is it referencing your desire to be whole again? What does that mean to you? When the horse hugs you over the shoulder, is it perhaps the first hug you've had in a long, long time? And does that melt away all the guards, the heart guards that you've been carrying? These are the things that you see on the youth and the children and seeing children speak again that haven't spoken.

When it comes to the veterans, I found that equally as powerful, where I've had a Vietnam vet turn around on a wild horse gently clinic and say, I have not cried since the 1970s. And when you touched him, he felt like an ironing board. It was so, so solid. And he said something that will never be forgotten.

Travis Richardson (21:21)
Hmm. my gosh.

Anna Twinney (21:34)
because the horses had asked him to look into their eyes, and this is perhaps not for the podcast, but he said it was such an awakening. The last vision he had of looking in somebody's eyes was when he shot them. And so to look into this eye and be seen and to see and replace that memory and replace that blueprint, as I get choked up, for a window to the soul, was the greatest gift he could ever have.

Travis Richardson (21:48)
Hmm.

Hmm.

Yeah.

Anna Twinney (22:05)
So the

Travis Richardson (22:08)
you

Anna Twinney (22:08)
breakthroughs you couldn't make up and you couldn't foresee. It simply happens that they would say from inside what's been going on and how these horses reach you. They make it a little bit lighter. There used to be the Budweiser commercial of the Heineken that it can reach body parts that nothing else can reach. Well, that's where the horse comes in.

They can touch people like nobody else can touch. Talk therapy, therapist, you name it, cannot get through as quickly as the horses. And I've been told that time and time again where they might say, I've had 10, 20, 30 decades of coaching, but nothing like this.

Travis Richardson (22:52)
When you were just talking, I literally got goosebumps and I actually started, it's a little bit embarrassing, but I almost started to get a bit emotional. ⁓ And as I'm thinking about it now, I'm thinking about, I had this vision of a horse being ⁓ standing in someone's pain and like kind of...

Anna Twinney (23:04)
Yeah.

Travis Richardson (23:20)
You know what a horse does? You can get on top of the horse and you can ride the horse. It's like the horse can transport you through the fire of your life, it seems like. It's like the spiritual equivalent of what they can do physically. Yeah. And all the other image I had is it's hard to have armor on when in the presence.

Anna Twinney (23:29)
over here.

It's beautiful way to say it.

Yeah, it really is. It would be the struggle to keep it on like you say and try to force it on because it's as though it melts, just melts.

Travis Richardson (23:59)
Yeah, yeah, I'm having a moment. I don't know. to like I got to like

Take a second here. I don't know why I'm getting emotional. I've got really powerful, like, there's a horse.

Anna Twinney (24:07)
Yeah.

Travis Richardson (24:11)
It's like, I'm literally feeling like I've got this past life horse thing coming through or something. don't know why, but it's like looking at me. So it's like, it's. ⁓

This has never happened. I have no idea what's going on right now, honestly. I'd like to say it's something else in my life, but I don't think it is. There's this horse in my mind that I can't... Whoever you are, I'll get back to you later trying to do a podcast.

Anna Twinney (24:37)
God bless you.

when you feel into it because you can see your horse, it's an incredible moment for you to realise we allow ourselves to feel into it.

and so much transformation happens. And maybe for you there's a recognition that you look at this horse to go, my gosh, I recognize him. And that for me is also the Buddha within. We recognize one another, the healer recognizes the other. There's something profound about the way they recognize us and us on a soul level.

Travis Richardson (25:13)
It feels like ⁓ the I see you, I see you kind of thing is really strong in the vision I'm currently experiencing right now. And you said something about being seen. And I feel like I feel like I'm pretty certain that horses do that in a way that's not really done any other way. That's, think, I'm feeling pretty certain about. And I also feel like I'm going to meet that.

Anna Twinney (25:26)
Yes.

Travis Richardson (25:39)
this horse I'm having this vision. I'm gonna meet this horse someday and I'll be like, you are the one. You're the one that I had a vision of. I know it's gonna happen. That's so interesting. Maybe that's what it is. ⁓ my god, I'd love to.

Anna Twinney (25:52)
That's awesome. You're gonna have to visit then. Maybe they're here. Maybe it's somebody here coming through on the property.

I've often said when we work at Liberty with them, so Liberty where they've got nothing on them, we're stripped naked in the sense of they see you so clearly, you can't hide. And so where people will hide behind their words or hide behind their clothes, their mannerism, you can't, you cannot hide, you're going to be seen with the horse, they reveal it all. And that for me,

Travis Richardson (26:06)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Anna Twinney (26:26)
is unmatched, especially with the coaching. It's unmatched. And there's times to be silent in coaching, and there's times to make suggestions, and there's other times to be really blunt. And I'm known to be blunt when the question was, the question from one of the soldiers was, how can I find inner peace? And the answer that came back,

was.

you still want to go to these, you want assignments, you want to go abroad, you're still getting a calling to go to war, you don't really want a normal life. And when you try to be at peace at home, you're searching and you're yearning to go back. So therefore your peace comes with a knowing that there's more, there's more to life, there's more to do.

and you go between the worlds, between your family and away. And so this was all about connecting to spirit, to know that you're not alone when you're out there. You're not alone, and yet you love both worlds, and that for you gives you peace. And you look at this to go, these aren't placebos. These aren't just telling you what you want to hear or you lying out loud to say what.

you want the world to hear. The horses will show the lies, they'll show the truth, and all it takes is either yourself to go inside or a good translator.

Travis Richardson (28:06)
Yeah, that's so, that is feels so true. Yeah, so how do you, so I also was reading this concept of the sacred pause. And I don't know what that is, but it feels to me like pretty, like pretty powerful. And I think we talked about the stillness that horses provide. Can you expand upon this term? Did you come up with that or is that something that's?

Anna Twinney (28:27)
Yep.

Yeah,

it's become a big emphasis, I think, in the last few years more than ever before, because in horsemanship, there's the structure, and I've started to create kind of columns to go, well, here's the structure of the pause, because we need to pause on a pressure and release, and horses learn from pressure release. And then you're looking at the pause to be able to determine the whys. Why is this individual doing it? When did it start? What's happening, et cetera? So those pauses.

And yet, if we go to the sacred pause, it would be, let's pause to feel into what's being said here. Let's pause to get the intention. And equally as much, let's pause to allow them to speak back. So many people are constantly asking through movements, like if you're riding a horse, could you go left? Could you go right? Could you go forward? Could you stop? Pick up the speed, do this.

and you can watch it in any performance world or any trial ride, it's compliance based. If I'm sitting and I'm telling you what to do and you're carrying me wherever I want to go. But what if we pause to say, where does this horse want to go? How does he want to move? Does he want to go home? And we give a voice and the choice. So therefore, this pause means allow them to fill the void.

also pause to find the reasoning behind something because if we can't find why they're doing something and we only go into our head through scientific knowledge and intelligence, we're missing everything. We're missing what this is truly about. I believe, I know, because I've also lectured on when does a belief become a knowing. I know they're having a spiritual journey too. So they're going to have

they're gonna have to make sacrifices. They have this spirituality. They have their life lessons, their destiny. So let's pause for a minute to look at what is their destiny? What is their life lesson? And how can we change the part that we play in this? I could go on and on because a lot of what I've done for 30 years is help in the rescue world for the Mustangs, the rescues, the therapeutic riding, you name it. And you're looking at,

Is this individual living in their story? Is the human putting them in their story? Are they introducing them as the victim or are they empowering them? Because you're changing that vibrational frequency for every single individual each time you introduce them. So with that, you're looking at that pause of, do they want to hear that story all the time? Or should we say that at the barn and then come over to them? How do we move? What's our responsibility in all of this? Is it us causing?

them to leave? it us causing them to bark? Have we looked at the bits, the saddle fitting, the feet, the management, their care, their social life? Generally speaking, humans like to change everything. They go against the very nature of the horse, like they were never meant to be ridden. They split them up from their friends, because it's inconvenient if they call. They label everything.

like her bound or bucking, but they don't look at the fact that 90 % of behavioral issues are pain related. See, this sacred pause means so much to go pause. He doesn't want to hurt you. Pause for a minute. He's not gotten out of his door this morning saying, I'm going to have a terrible day. Pause. What could be going on for him? Could you walk in his hoof beats in any shape or form? Everything comes back to the pause. I think it's everything.

Travis Richardson (31:53)
Hmm.

Hmm. And isn't

that everything for the rest of our lives as well? you know what I mean? I mean, this idea of pausing. I have used this before. I used to work at a job that I really didn't like, and I would sometimes bring the pain of that into the house, into the home. you know, I was never...

Anna Twinney (32:20)
Pause and

Travis Richardson (32:40)
⁓ I would be sometimes, I could be reclusive or subdued, kind of like not wanting to engage in family stuff. And so I started to pause before I enter the house. said, you know what, you have a choice. You're gonna make it again. You do this every single day and you have a choice about how you're gonna enter the house. Once I started being more conscious about it, I was able to kind of get through

Anna Twinney (32:51)
Yeah.

Travis Richardson (33:10)
some of those painful time periods. I think, of course, what you're saying is essentially something that can be done. If you practice this with horses, should, you can and you should take it into other parts of your life.

Anna Twinney (33:10)
Yeah.

Yeah, and

you'd have to do what you say, make that conscious decision. Some people will have the miracles and take them immediately home because they didn't have the awareness around it. And others are going to have to make a step-by-step kind of plan and structure to consciously take it there. if you, anything for those that are listening, if you're going to pause and not take your baggage to the horse, that's great. If you could pause as you're around the animals,

That's great, you know, but it goes beyond that, right? Like we're saying, pause and breathe to connect to spirit so that this is a guided peace and that we remember who we truly are and where we truly came from. And so horses will reflect all of that. If people are just bulldozing through, they'll show it. If people are attached to the outcome, they'll show it. And these patterns started or start to reveal themselves. And you have...

Travis Richardson (33:56)
Yeah.

Anna Twinney (34:16)
We have the conscious decision to make we can change our blueprint. We can change the patterns we've brought into our lives.

Travis Richardson (34:21)
Yeah.

Yeah, yeah. By the way, I forgot to ask you earlier on how that you I know you were a British police officer. And so how in the world did you usually the people ask this at the beginning of the thing, but I kind of find it fascinating or interesting to to ask it later now because it's.

Anna Twinney (34:42)
How did I

get there?

Travis Richardson (34:43)
Yeah,

how have you gotten to the point where you're, I mean, you've just dropped like, I can tell that was decades of wisdom condensed into 20 minutes, 30 minutes. So what brought you to the point you are now?

Anna Twinney (34:51)
Hmm, funny.

What brought me there? Well, let's look at the point of what brought me to policing. I was actually in investment banking in London and I was an assistant compliance officer. So one of my paths that I am noticing is the truth seeker. And so I was clearly at a young age looking for truth within investment banking. My then husband was special forces and went to Desert Storm. And while he was fighting for our country,

the investment bankers were raking it in monetary-wise. It was January and the big bonus came. And usually people would get a quarter to a half of their salary in the bonus. One of the investment bankers didn't like what had happened. He threw a computer out of the fourth story onto the car because of the value of his bonus. That's where the trajectory of my life changed.

And I went, I don't want to be around people like this. ⁓ I want to be around the real people that are serving the country and that have their values, their core values placed elsewhere. So my then husband and I became the first married couple in the United Kingdom's history to join the British police force. People had met along the way, but not joined together. So it's kind of a fun fact to say we joined the police together.

Travis Richardson (35:53)
Ugh.

wow.

Anna Twinney (36:23)
And I loved it. I loved it, perhaps I wasn't cut out for it as much as I loved it. And my deciding factor in the change in my life came with a head-on car accident, PTSD, having been rape and child abuse trained, and my horse. So three paths led for a mega change in my life. So with that,

With that, I packed a suitcase. My then husband basically said, I'm giving you the wings to fly and I can't come with you. Your destiny is in the United States. And I left my horse, my home, my dog, my career, my family, my husband to follow the call of the horse. I moved to California, got great debt, lived out of a horse stall for a short period of time.

and found myself in an abusive relationship on top of all of that. So I gave up everything to become a horse whisperer. When I realized there was no path back, I couldn't leave the country because once you're in the process of certain visas, you can't. I had no job to go back to. My marriage had come to an end and money was scarce. It basically meant that at that point in time, I threw myself into the horse's language. And so I felt like spirit.

God for me, it stripped me from everything I was used to. Faith had to play a part and everything became faith guided and I watched horses in the wild, basically traveled the world in pursuit of the true language of the horse. And that's how I found myself on this path.

Travis Richardson (38:15)
Hmm. Wow. I think. Yeah. What do you even say to that? What I say is you you that's massive courage ⁓ to leave the known for the absolute unknown and then to face the things that you have and to still pursue your calling. You know that that's so rare. ⁓ I aspire to.

Anna Twinney (38:19)
In a nutshell.

Yeah.

Travis Richardson (38:43)
be more like that. I'm trying to do that with what I do. But you know, because I was an engineer and I didn't like that at all. Hated it, despised it, whatever the most negative word you could think of to feel about it. That was what I felt. And ⁓ it just wasn't worth it. All the money in the world is not worth feeling like that because you have this life. Like, it's so precious. We should do what we're called to do. ⁓

talking about speaking of that, you have lots of cool things coming up for you've got a horse, a holistic course certification course. And some other things. Do you want to talk about what you're up to? mean, tell us like, what's your because I want to know like, what's your day to day? Like, what do you what do you how do you operate? How can people work with you? What are your courses? Just tell us more about like, what it is that you're how to work with you? What do you what are you doing?

Anna Twinney (39:11)
Yeah.

I do. I do.

You're so kind. ⁓ I do wanna say, you and I share these things. I had the two by four. It's not like I listened. Remember, I was broken mentally, emotionally and physically before I listened. So I took the bus, not the two by four. ⁓ And more than once actually, more than once in my life. So that was a big one. And this past year has been a big one as well since the hurricane took another bus load there.

Travis Richardson (39:38)
Yeah.

Ha!

Yeah.

Anna Twinney (40:07)
So it looks like there was a bit of a pattern and I do think at the pearly gates, I turn around and go, why didn't I get this quicker? Why couldn't I have been amused by it and lighter by it and chosen an easier path? So I think we share that. My day-to-day varies so dramatically from teaching energy healing for horses for one week, the SEAL team another week, private clinic.

Travis Richardson (40:14)
I know it.

Yeah. ⁓

Anna Twinney (40:35)
than looking at cult starting, Nakoda horses or Warm Springs Mustangs, behavior modification, and now moving into the 24 day course. So yes, it varies extensively. If I'm not doing that, I'm talking to animals and sitting down at home or going to people's homes and helping with all species. We just came back from Costa Rica from a life coaching course that we were teaching. And now I'm here until I go to Ohio to help.

at a veterans non-profit and to teach another clinic to the public there. Coming back for a 24 day course. So it never ends and there's so much variety. For me, the common denominator has been the horse's language. That's one, to say, let's speak the truth. Give a voice to the voiceless, speak the truth. Be that animal communication or horsemanship.

Travis Richardson (41:11)
Cool.

Anna Twinney (41:32)
And it also goes over into the life coaching to go, let's look at the truth of what's coming on and what's happening and what's coming up for people. So everything really leads, you said the trifactor, there's the trifactor of truth, right? To go, this is all about truth seeking. What makes life challenging is being around inauthentic people. What makes life joyous is to see the miracles and the magic.

Travis Richardson (41:46)
Yeah.

Anna Twinney (42:01)
And so every day can be so different. We are home to 50 animals here at our farm in Mill Spring, and 50 animals are the ducks and the chickens and the pigs, the piggies, huckers, sheep, goats, cats, dogs, horses. So it's a beautiful place to call home. We moved here with the view that I wouldn't travel so much, and yet it seems like I still travel five months of the year.

and take the methodologies to people that can't leave their homes or can't leave their state or need to be in a certain area. So therefore, we love having courses here. Upcoming would be energy healing Reiki. I'm a Reiki master practitioner and I love it. Every path leads back to Reiki despite the fact that there's a beautiful soup bowl of all these healing modalities. That's mine.

I have animal communication coming up as well. And I guess one of the things that we're really excited to be doing is a three day Navajo, Navajo ceremony. And we're bringing the Navajo in from New Mexico for our property in support of those that have been through Hurricane Elaine, as well as veterans and first responders. That's my passion and love alongside everything else.

Travis Richardson (43:12)
Hmm.

Anna Twinney (43:22)
So lots of events coming up at the farm for people to look at one day events for a holistic horse day through to 24 day event, if that's what they're seeking. If we're not working on reach out to horses, then we have equinewarrior.org and that's where the equine warrior and that's our nonprofit. That's three, that also has three pillars of the nonprofit too, cause it's no horse left behind.

Travis Richardson (43:31)
Mm-hmm.

Anna Twinney (43:49)
Trainers Without Borders taking it to other countries as well as the First Responders support. So I've got fingers in many, many pies.

Travis Richardson (43:55)
Ooh,

tons of stuff to check out. And if you haven't already, you should list all these things. You should get onto the Be Well Asheville platform. Put all these events out there because if you do that, I will automatically share them on my email list, on social media, your podcast guests. So please make use of that. We'll get you promoted in that way. Love to. And I need to come out and take a look. So love to come out there.

Anna Twinney (44:06)
Thank you.

Thank you.

You do, you do.

You'll get on very well with us. My husband's a martial artist as well. So you have more in common with us than you perhaps realize, which would be adorable to have you here.

Travis Richardson (44:25)
Check it out. Yeah.

⁓ okay.

We'll set the date.

Let's set the date after this call. And I just really appreciated everything that you said today and the energy that you brought. And I just really personally want to learn more about what you do. And I can't wait to come say hi in person. ⁓ Thank you for being with us today, Anna.

Anna Twinney (44:54)
We'd love to have you.

Thank you, Travis. It's been wonderful. Thank you for embracing and even for allowing, right? It was really touching to see how moved you are by the animals and the horses.

Travis Richardson (44:59)
Yep.

Well, something's coming through pretty strong for me. And I'm just going to be curious about that all day today and probably the rest of this week is what that was. ⁓ who knows? There's magic all around us. And sometimes it pops in and we don't need to even name it. Just know it's

Anna Twinney (45:14)
Bye.

You

Travis Richardson (45:25)
Thank you for listening you can explore Anna's transformative work at equinewarrior.org and reachouttohorses.com. Follow her on Facebook at AnnaTwenty and check out her YouTube channel, Reach Out to Horses for incredible demonstrations of her work.

Anna is also offering custom freebies for our listeners. Reach out to her directly to discuss eBooks, DVD streaming or other resources that call to you.